POET AND NOVELIST OF DENMARK.

My life is a lovely story, happy and full of incident. If, when I was a boy, and went forth into the world poor and friendless, a good fairy had met me and said, "Choose now thy own course through life, and the object for which thou wilt strive, and then, according to the development of thy mind, and as reason requires, I will guide and defend thee to its attainment," my fate could not, even then, have been directed more happily, more prudently, or better. The history of my life will say to the world what it says to me,—There is a loving God, who directs all things for the best.

In the year 1805 there lived at Odense, in a small mean room, a young married couple, who were extremely attached to each other; he was a shoemaker, scarcely twenty-two years old, a man of a richly gifted and truly poetical mind. His wife, a few years older than himself, was ignorant of life and of the world, but possessed a heart full of love. The young man had himself made his shoemaking bench, and the bedstead with which he began housekeeping; this bedstead he had made out of the wooden frame which had borne only a short time before the coffin of the deceased Count Trampe, as he lay in state, and the remnants of the black cloth on the wood-work kept the fact still in remembrance.

Instead of a noble corpse, surrounded by crape and waxlights, here lay, on the 2d of April, 1805, a living and weeping child,—that was myself, Hans Christian Andersen. During the first day of my existence my father is said to have sat by the bed and read aloud in Holberg, but I cried all the time. "Wilt thou go to sleep, or listen quietly?" it is reported that my father asked in joke; but I still cried on; and even in the church, when I was taken to be baptized, I cried so loudly that the preacher, who was a passionate man, said, "The young one screams like a cat!" which words my mother never forgot. A poor emigrant, Gomar, who stood as godfather, consoled her in the mean time by saying that, the louder I cried as a child, all the more beautifully should I sing when I grew older.

Our little room, which was almost filled with the shoemaker's bench, the bed, and my crib, was the abode of my childhood; the walls, however, were covered with pictures, and over the workbench was a cupboard containing books and songs; the little kitchen was full of shining plates and metal pans, and by means of a ladder it was possible to go out on the roof, where, in the gutters between it and the neighbor's house, there stood a great chest filled with soil, my mother's sole garden, and where she grew her vegetables. In my story of the "Snow Queen" that garden still blooms.

I was the only child, and was extremely spoiled; but I continually heard from my mother how very much happier I was than she had been, and that I was brought up like a nobleman's child. She, as a child, had been driven out by her parents to beg; and once, when she was not able to do it, she had sat for a whole day under a bridge and wept.

My father gratified me in all my wishes. I possessed his whole heart; he lived for me. On Sundays he made me perspective-glasses, theatres, and pictures which could be changed; he read to me from Holberg's plays and the "Arabian Tales"; it was only in such moments as these that I can remember to have seen him really cheerful, for he never felt himself happy in his life and as a handicraftsman. His parents had been country people in good circumstances, but upon whom many misfortunes had fallen,—the cattle had died; the farm-house had been burned down; and, lastly, the husband had lost his reason. On this the wife had removed with him to Odense, and there put her son, whose mind was full of intelligence, apprentice to a shoemaker; it could not be otherwise, although it was his ardent wish to attend the grammar school, where he might learn Latin. A few well-to-do citizens had at one time spoken of this, of clubbing together to raise a sufficient sum to pay for his board and education, and thus giving him a start in life; but it never went beyond words. My poor father saw his dearest wish unfulfilled; and he never lost the remembrance of it. I recollect that once, as a child, I saw tears in his eyes, and it was when a youth from the grammar school came to our house to be measured for a new pair of boots, and showed us his books and told us what he learned.

"That was the path upon which I ought to have gone!" said my father, kissed me passionately, and was silent the whole evening.

He very seldom associated with his equals. He went out into the woods on Sundays, when he took me with him; he did not talk much when he was out, but would sit silently, sunk in deep thought, whilst I ran about and strung strawberries on a bent, or bound garlands. Only twice in the year, and that in the month of May, when the woods were arrayed in their earliest green, did my mother go with us; and then she wore a cotton gown, which she put on only on these occasions and when she partook of the Lord's Supper, and which, as long as I can remember, was her holiday gown. She always took home with her from the wood a great many fresh beech boughs, which were then planted behind the polished stone. Later in the year sprigs of St. John's wort were stuck into the chinks of the beams, and we considered their growth as omens whether our lives would be long or short. Green branches and pictures ornamented our little room, which my mother always kept neat and clean; she took great pride in always having the bed linen and the curtains very white.

One of my first recollections, although very slight in itself, had for me a good deal of importance, from the power by which the fancy of a child impressed it upon my soul; it was a family festival, and can you guess where? In that very place in Odense, in that house which I had always looked on with fear and trembling, just as boys in Paris may have looked at the Bastile,—in the Odense house of correction.

My parents were acquainted with the jailer, who invited them to a family dinner, and I was to go with them. I was at that time still so small that I was carried when we returned home.

The House of Correction was for me a great storehouse of stories about robbers and thieves; often I had stood, but always at a safe distance, and listened to the singing of the men within and of the women spinning at their wheels.

I went with my parents to the jailer's; the heavy iron-bolted gate was opened and again locked with the key from the rattling bunch; we mounted a steep staircase,—we ate and drank, and two of the prisoners waited at the table; they could not induce me to taste of anything, the sweetest things I pushed away; my mother told them I was sick, and I was laid on a bed, where I heard the spinning-wheels humming near by and merry singing, whether in my own fancy or in reality I cannot tell; but I know that I was afraid, and was kept on the stretch all the time; and yet I was in a pleasant humor, making up stories of how I had entered a castle full of robbers. Late in the night my parents went home, carrying me; the rain, for it was rough weather, dashing against my face.

Odense was in my childhood quite another town from what it is now, when it has shot ahead of Copenhagen, with its water carried through the town, and I know not what else! Then it was a hundred years behind the times; many customs and manners prevailed which long since disappeared from the capital. When the guilds removed their signs, they went in procession with flying banners and with lemons dressed in ribbons stuck on their swords. A harlequin with bells and a wooden sword ran at the head; one of them, an old fellow, Hans Struh, made a great hit by his merry chatter and his face, which was painted black, except the nose, that kept its genuine red color. My mother was so pleased with him that she tried to find out if he was in any way related to us; but I remember very well that I, with all the pride of an aristocrat, protested against any relationship with the "fool."

In my sixth year came the great comet of 1811; and my mother told me that it would destroy the earth, or that other horrible things threatened us. I listened to all these stories and fully believed them. With my mother and some of the neighboring women I stood in St. Canut's Churchyard and looked at the frightful and mighty fire-ball with its large shining tail.

All talked about the signs of evil and the day of doom. My father joined us, but he was not of the others' opinion at all, and gave them a correct and sound explanation; then my mother sighed, the women shook their heads, my father laughed and went away. I caught the idea that my father was not of our faith, and that threw me into a great fright. In the evening my mother and my old grandmother talked together, and I do not know how she explained it; but I sat in her lap, looked into her mild eyes, and expected every moment that the comet would rush down, and the day of judgment come.

The mother of my father came daily to our house, were it only for a moment, in order to see her little grandson. I was her joy and her delight. She was a quiet and most amiable old woman, with mild blue eyes and a fine figure, which life had severely tried. From having been the wife of a countryman in easy circumstances she had now fallen into great poverty, and dwelt with her feeble-minded husband in a little house, which was the last poor remains of their property. I never saw her shed a tear; but it made all the deeper impression upon me when she quietly sighed, and told me about her own mother's mother,—how she had been a rich, noble lady, in the city of Cassel, and that she had married a "comedy-player,"—that was as she expressed it,—and run away from parents and home, for all of which her posterity had now to do penance. I never can recollect that I heard her mention the family name of her grandmother; but her own maiden name was Nommesen. She was employed to take care of the garden belonging to a lunatic asylum; and every Sunday evening she brought us some flowers, which they gave her permission to take home with her. These flowers adorned my mother's cupboard; but still they were mine, and to me it was allowed to put them in the glass of water. How great was this pleasure! She brought them all to me; she loved me with her whole soul. I knew it, and I understood it.

She burned, twice in the year, the green rubbish of the garden; on such occasions she took me with her to the asylum, and I lay upon the great heaps of green leaves and pea-straw; I had many flowers to play with, and—which was a circumstance upon which I set great importance—I had here better food to eat than I could expect at home.

All such patients as were harmless were permitted to go freely about the court; they often came to us in the garden, and with curiosity and terror I listened to them and followed them about; nay, I even ventured so far as to go with the attendants to those who were raving mad. A long passage led to their cells. On one occasion, when the attendants were out of the way, I lay down upon the floor, and peeped through the crack of the door into one of these cells. I saw within a lady almost naked, lying on her straw bed; her hair hung down over her shoulders, and she sang with a very beautiful voice. All at once she sprang up, and threw herself against the door where I lay; the little valve through which she received her food burst open; she stared down upon me, and stretched out her long arm toward me. I screamed for terror,—I felt the tips of her fingers touching my clothes,—I was half dead when the attendant came; and even in later years that sight and that feeling remained within my soul.

I was very much afraid of my weak-minded grandfather. Only once had he ever spoken to me, and then he had made use of the formal pronoun, "you." He employed himself in cutting out of wood strange figures,—men with beasts' heads and beasts with wings; these he packed in a basket and carried them out into the country, where he was everywhere well received by the peasant-women, because he gave to them and their children these strange toys. One day, when he was returning to Odense, I heard the boys in the street shouting after him; I hid myself behind a flight of steps in terror, for I knew that I was of his flesh and blood.

I very seldom played with other boys; even at school I took little interest in their games, but remained sitting within doors. At home I had playthings enough, which my father made for me. My greatest delight was in making clothes for dolls, or in stretching out one of my mother's aprons between the wall and two sticks before a currant-bush which I had planted in the yard, and thus to gaze in between the sun-illumined leaves. I was a singularly dreamy child, and so constantly went about with my eyes shut, as at last to give the impression of having weak sight, although the sense of sight was especially cultivated by me.

An old woman-teacher, who had an A B C school, taught me the letters, to spell, and "to read right," as it was called. She used to have her seat in a high-backed arm-chair near the clock, from which at every full stroke some little automata came out. She made use of a big rod, which she always carried with her. The school consisted mostly of girls. It was the custom of the school for all to spell loudly and in as high a key as possible. The mistress dared not beat me, as my mother had made it a condition of my going that I should not be touched. One day having got a hit of the rod, I rose immediately, took my book, and without further ceremony went home to my mother, asked that I might go to another school, and that was granted me. My mother sent me to Carsten's school for boys; there was also one girl there, a little one somewhat older than I; we became very good friends; she used to speak of the advantage it was to be to her in going into service, and that she went to school especially to learn arithmetic, for, as her mother told her, she could then become dairy-maid in some great manor.

"That you can become in my castle when I am a nobleman!" said I; and she laughed at me, and told me that I was only a poor boy. One day I had drawn something which I called my castle, and I told her that I was a changed child of high birth, and that the angels of God came down and spoke to me. I wanted to make her stare as I did with the old women in the hospital, but she would not be caught. She looked queerly at me, and said to one of the other boys standing near, "He is a fool, like his grandpapa," and I shivered at the words. I had said it to give me an air of importance in their eyes; but I failed, and only made them think that I was insane like my grandfather.

I never spoke to her again about these things, but we were no longer the same playmates as before. I was the smallest in the school, and my teacher, Mr. Carsten, always took me by the hand while the other boys played, that I might not be run over; he loved me much, gave me cakes and flowers, and tapped me on the cheeks. One of the older boys did not know his lesson, and was punished by being placed, book in hand, upon the school-table, around which we were seated; but seeing me quite inconsolable at this punishment, he pardoned the culprit.

The poor old teacher became, later in life, telegraph-director at Thorseng, where he still lived until a few years since. It is said that the old man, when showing the visitors around, told them with a pleasant smile, "Well, well, you will perhaps not believe that such a poor old man as I was the first teacher of one of our most renowned poets!"

Sometimes, during the harvest, my mother went into the field to glean. I accompanied her, and we went, like Ruth in the Bible, to glean in the rich fields of Boaz. One day we went to a place the bailiff of which was well known for being a man of a rude and savage disposition. We saw him coming with a huge whip in his hand, and my mother and all the others ran away. I had wooden shoes on my bare feet, and in my haste I lost these, and then the thorns pricked me so that I could not run, and thus I was left behind and alone. The man came up and lifted his whip to strike me, when I looked him in the face and involuntarily exclaimed, "How dare you strike me, when God can see it?"

The strong, stern man looked at me, and at once became mild; he patted me on my cheeks, asked me my name, and gave me money.

When I brought this to my mother and showed it her, she said to the others, "He is a strange child, my Hans Christian; everybody is kind to him. This bad fellow even has given him money."

MADAME MICHELET,

FRENCH AUTHOR, WIFE OF THE WELL-KNOWN WRITER, MICHELET.

Among my earliest recollections, dating (if my memory deceive me not) from the time when I was between the ages of four and five, is that of being seated beside a grave, industrious person, who seemed to be constantly watching me. Her beautiful but stern countenance impressed one chiefly by the peculiar expression of the light blue eyes, so rare in Southern Europe. Their gaze was like that which has looked in youth across vast plains, wide horizons, and great rivers. This lady was my mother, born in Louisiana, of English parentage.

I had constant toil before me, strangely unbroken for so young a child. At six years of age, I knit my own stockings, by and by my brothers' also, walking up and down the shady path. I did not care to go farther; I was uneasy if, when I turned, I could not see the green blind at my mother's window.

Our lowly house had an easterly aspect. At its northeast corner, my mother sat at work, with her little people around her; my father had his study at the opposite end, towards the south. I began to pick up my alphabet with him; for I had double tasks. I studied my books in the intervals of sewing or knitting. My brothers ran away to play after lessons; but I returned to my mother's work-room. I liked very well, however, to trace on my slate the great bars which are called "jambages." It seemed to me as if I drew something, from within myself, which came to the pencil's point. When my bars began to look regular, I paused often to admire what I had done; then, if my dear papa would lean towards me, and say, "Very well, little princess," I drew myself up with pride.

My father had a sweet and penetrating voice; his dark complexion showed his Southern origin, which also betrayed itself in the passionate fire of his eyes, dark, with black lashes, which softened their glance. With all their electric fire, they were not wanting in an indefinable expression of tenderness and sweetness. At sixty years of age, after a life of strange, and even tragic, incidents, his heart remained ever young and light, benevolent to all, disposed to confide in human nature,—sometimes too easily.

I had none of the enjoyments of city-bred children, and less still of that childish wit which is sure to win maternal admiration for every word which falls from the lips of the little deities. Mother Nature alone gave me a welcome, and yet my early days were not sad; all the country-side looked so lovely to me.

Just beyond the farm lay the cornfields which belonged to us; they were of no great extent, but to me they seemed infinite. When Marianne, proud of her master's possessions, would say, "Look, miss, there, there, and farther on,—all is yours," I was really frightened; for I saw the moving grain, undulating like the ocean, and stretching far away. I liked better to believe that the world ended at our meadow. Sometimes my father went across the fields to see what the reapers were doing, and then I hid my face in Marianne's apron, and cried, "Not so far, not so far! papa will be lost!"

I was then five years old. That cry was the childish expression of a sentiment, the shadow of which gained on me year by year,—the fear that I might lose my father. I desired to please, to be praised, and to be loved. I felt so drawn towards my mother, that I sometimes jumped from my seat to give her a kiss; but when I met her look, and saw her eyes, pale and clear as a silvery lake, I recoiled, and sat down quietly. Years have passed, and yet I still regret those joys of childhood which I never knew,—a mother's caresses. My education might have been so easy; my mother might have understood my heart,—a kiss is sometimes eloquent; and in a daily embrace she would perhaps have guessed the thoughts I was too young to utter, and would have learned how faithfully I loved her.

No such freedom was allowed us. The morning kiss and familiar speech with one's parents are permitted at the North, but are less frequent in the South of France. Authority overshadows family affection. My father, who was an easy man and loved to talk, might have disregarded such regulations; but my mother kept us at a distance. It made one thoughtful and reserved to watch her going out and coming in, with her noble air, severe and silent. We felt we must be careful not to give cause for blame.

My mother could spin like a fairy. All winter she sat at her wheel; and perhaps her wandering thoughts were soothed by the gentle monotonous music of its humming. My father, seeing her so beautiful at her work, secretly ordered a light, slender spinning-wheel to be carved for her use, which she found one morning at the foot of her bed. Her cheek flushed with pleasure; she scarcely dared to touch it, it looked so fragile. "Do not be afraid," said my father; "it looks fragile, but it can well stand use. It is made of boxwood from our own garden. It grew slowly, as all things do that last. Neither your little hand nor foot can injure it." My mother took her finest Flanders flax, of silvery tresses knotted with a cherry-colored ribbon. The children made a circle round the wheel, which turned for the first time under my mother's hands. My father was watching, between smiles and tears, to see how dexterously she handled the distaff. The thread was invisible, but the bobbin grew bigger. My mother would have been contented if the days had been prolonged to four-and-twenty hours, while she was sitting by her beautiful wheel.

When we rose in the morning, we said a prayer. We knelt together; my father standing, bareheaded, in the midst. After that, what delight it was to run to the hill-top, to meet the first rays of the sun, and to hear our birds singing little songs about the welcome daylight! From the garden, the orchard, the oaks, and from the open fields, their voices were heard; and yet, in my heart, I hid more songs than all the birds in the world would have known how to sing. I was not sad by nature. I had the instincts of the lark, and longed to be as happy. Since I had no wings to carry me up to the clouds, I would have liked to hide myself like him among the tall grain and the flax.

One of my great enjoyments was to meet the strong south-winds that came to us from the ocean. I loved to struggle with the buffets of the blast. It was terrible, but sweet, to feel it tossing and twisting my curls, and flinging them backward. After these morning races on the hills, I went to visit the wild flowers,—weeds that no one else cherished; but I loved them better than all other plants. Near the water, in little pools hollowed by the rains in stormy weather, on the border of the wood, sprang up, flourished, and died, forests of dwarf proportions; white, transparent stars; bells full of sweet odors. All were mysterious and ephemeral; so much the more did I prize and regret them.

If I indeed had the merry disposition of the lark, I had also his sensitive timidity, that brings him sometimes to hide between the furrows in the earth. A look, a word, a shadow, was enough to discourage me. My smiles died away, I shrunk into myself, and did not dare to move.

"Why did my mother choose three boys, rather than three girls, after I was born?" This problem was often in my mind. Boys only tear blouses, which they don't know how to mend. If she had only thought how happy I would be with a sister, a dear little sister! How I should have loved her,—scolded her sometimes, but kissed her very often! We should have had our work and play together, thoroughly independent of all those gentlemen,—our brothers.

My eldest sister was too far from my age. There seemed to be centuries between us. I had one friend,—my cat, Zizi; but she was a wild, restless creature, and no companion, for I could scarcely hold her an instant. She preferred the roof of the house to my lap.

I became very thoughtful, and said to myself, "How shall I get a companion? and how do people make dolls?" It did not occur to me, who had never seen a toy-shop, that they could be purchased ready-made. My chin resting on my hand, I sat in meditation, wondering how I could create what I desired. My passionate desire overruled my fears, and I decided to work from my own inspiration.

I rejected wood, as too hard to afford the proper material for my dolly. Clay, so moist and cold, chilled the warmth of my invention. I took some soft, white linen, and some clean bran, and with them formed the body. I was like the savages, who desire a little god to worship. It must have a head with eyes, and with ears to listen; and it must have a breast, to hold its heart. All the rest is less important, and remains undefined.

I worked after this fashion, and rounded my doll's head by tying it firmly. There was a clearly perceptible neck,—a little stiff, perhaps; a well-developed chest; and then came vague drapery, which dispensed with limbs. There were rudiments of arms,—not very graceful, but movable; indeed, they moved of themselves. I was filled with admiration. Why might not the body move? I had read how God breathed upon Adam and Eve the breath of life; with my whole heart and my six years' strength I breathed on the creature I had made. I looked; she did not stir. Never mind. I was her mother, and she loved me; that was enough. The dangers that menaced our mutual affection only served to increase it. She gave me anxiety from the moment of her birth. How and where could I keep her in safety? Surrounded by mischievous boys, sworn enemies to their sisters' dolls, I was obliged to hide mine in a dark corner of a shed, where the wagons and carriages were kept. After being punished, I could conceive no consolation equal to taking my child to bed with me. To warm her, I tucked her into my little bed, with the friendly pussy who was keeping it warm for me. At bedtime, I laid her on my heart, still heaving with sobs; and she seemed to sigh too. If I missed her in the night, I became wide awake; I hunted for her, full of apprehension. Often she was quite at the bottom of the bed. I brought her out, folded her in my arms, and fell asleep happy.

I liked, in my extreme loneliness, to believe that she had a living soul. Her grandparents were not aware of her existence. Would she have been so thoroughly my own, if other people had known her? I loved better to hide her from all eyes.

One thing was wanting to my satisfaction. My doll had a head, but no face. I desired to look into her eyes, to see a smile on her countenance that should resemble mine. Sunday was the great holiday, when everybody did what they liked. Drawing and painting were the favorite occupations. Around the fire, in winter time, the little ones made soldiers; while my elder brother, who was a true artist, and worked with the best colors, painted dresses and costumes of various sorts. We watched his performances, dazzled by the marvels which he had at his finger-ends.

It was during this time of general preoccupation that my daughter, carefully hidden under my apron, arrived among her uncles. No one noticed me; and I tried, successfully, to possess myself of a brush, with some colors. But I could do nothing well; my hand trembled, and all my lines were crooked. Then I made an heroic resolution,—to ask my brother's assistance boldly. The temptation was strong, indeed, which led me to brave the malice of so many imps. I stepped forward, and, with a voice which I vainly endeavored to steady, I said, "Would you be so kind as to make a face for my doll?" My eldest brother seemed not at all surprised, but took the doll in his hands with great gravity, and examined it; then, with apparent care, chose a brush. Suddenly he drew across her countenance two broad stripes of red and black, something like a cross; and gave me back my poor little doll, with a burst of laughter. The soft linen absorbed the colors, which ran together in a great blot. It was very dreadful. Great cries followed; everybody crowded round to see this wonderful work. Then a cousin of ours, who was passing Sunday with us, seized my treasure, and tossed it up to the ceiling. It fell flat on the floor. I picked it up; and, if the bad boy had not taken flight, he would have suffered, very likely, from my resentment.

Sad days were in store for us. My child and I were watched in all our interviews. Often was she dragged from her hiding-places among the bushes and in the high grass. Everybody made war upon her,—even Zizi, the cat, who shared her nightly couch. My brothers sometimes gave the doll to Zizi as a plaything; and, in my absence, even she was not sorry to claw it, and roll it about on the garden walks. When I next found it, it was a shapeless bunch of dusty rags. With the constancy of a great affection, I remade again and again the beloved being predestined to destruction; and each time I pondered how to create something more beautiful. This aiming at perfection seemed to calm my grief. I made a better form, and produced symmetrical legs (once, to my surprise, the rudiment of a foot appeared); but the better my work was, the more bitter the ridicule, and I began to be discouraged.

My doll, beyond a doubt, was in mortal peril. My brothers whispered together; and their sidelong glances foreboded me no good. I felt that I was watched. In order to elude their vigilance, I constantly transferred my treasure from one hiding-place to another; and many nights it lay under the open sky. What jeers, what laughter, had it been found!

To put an end to my torments, I threw my child into a very dark corner, and feigned to forget her. I confess to a shocking resolution; for an evil temptation assailed me. But, if self-love began to triumph over my affection for her, it was but as a momentary flash, a troubled dream. Without the dear little being, I should have had nothing to live for. It was, in fact, my second self. After much searching, my unlucky doll was discovered. Its limbs were torn off without mercy; and the body, being tossed up into an acacia-tree, was stuck on the thorns. It was impossible to bring it down. The victim hung, abandoned to the autumnal gales, to the wintry tempests, to the westerly rains, and to the northern snows. I watched her faithfully, believing that the time would come when she would revisit this earth.

In the spring, the gardener came to prune the trees. With tears in my eyes, I said, "Bring me back my doll from those branches." He found only a fragment of her poor little dress, torn and faded. The sight almost broke my heart.

All hope being gone, I became more sensitive to the rough treatment of my brothers; and I fell into a sort of despair. After my life with her whom I had lost; after my emotions, my secret joys and fears,—I felt all the desolation of my bereavement. I longed for wings to fly away. When my sister excluded me from her sports with her companions, I climbed into the swing, and said to the gardener, "Jean, swing me high,—higher yet: I wish to fly away." But I was soon frightened enough to beg for mercy.

Then I tried to lose myself. Behind the grove which closed in our horizon stretched a long slope, undulating towards a deep cut below. With infinite pains, I surmounted all obstacles, and gained the road. How far, far away from home I felt! My heart was beating violently. What sorrow this would give to my dear father! Where should I sleep? I should never dare to ask shelter at a farm-house, much less lie down among the bushes, where the screech-owls made a noise all night. So, without further reflection, I returned home.

Animals are happier. I wished to be little Lauret, the gold-colored ox, who labors so patiently, and comes and goes all day long. Or I'd like to be Grisette or Brunette, the pretty asses who are mother's pets.

After all, who would not like to be a flower? However, a flower lives but a very little while: you are cut down as soon as born. A tree lasts much longer. Yet what a bore it must be to stay always in one place! To stand with one's foot buried in the ground,—it is too dreadful; the thought worried me when I was in bed, thinking things over.

I would have been a bird, if a good fairy had taken pity on me. Birds are so free, so happy, they sing all day long. If I were a bird, I would come and fly about our woods, and would perch on the roof of our house. I would come to see my empty chair, my place at table, and my mother looking sad; then, at my father's hour for reading, alone in the garden, I would fly, and perch on his shoulder, and my father would know me at once.

View of Woods View of Woods

JEAN PAUL RICHTER,

ONE OF THE GREAT AUTHORS OF GERMANY.

It was in the year 1763 that I came into the world, in the same month that the golden and gray wagtail, the robin-redbreast, the crane, and the red-hammer came also; and, in case anybody wished to strew flowers on the cradle of the new-born, the spoonwort and the aspen hung out their tender blossoms,—on the 20th of March, in the early morning. I was born in Wunsiedel, in the highlands of the Fitchtelbirge. Ah! I am glad to have been born in thee, little city of the mountains, whose tops look down upon us like the heads of eagles, and where we can glance over villages and mountain meadows, and drink health at all thy fountains!

To my great joy I can call up from my twelfth or, at farthest, my fourteenth month of age one pale little remembrance, like an early and frail snow-drop, from the fresh soil of my childhood. I recollect that a scholar loved me much, and carried me about in his arms, and took me to a great dark room and gave me milk to drink.

In 1765 my father was appointed minister to Joditz, where I was carried in a girl's cap and petticoat. The little Saale River, born like myself in the Fitchtelbirge, ran with me to Joditz, as it afterwards ran after me to Hof when I removed there. A small brook traverses the little town, that is crossed on a plank as I remember. The old castle and the pastor's house were the two principal buildings. There was a school-house right opposite the parsonage, into which I was admitted, when big enough to wear breeches and a green taffety cap. The schoolmaster was sickly and lean, but I loved him, and watched anxiously with him as he lay hid behind his birdcage placed in the open window to catch goldfinches, or when he spread a net in the snow and caught a yellow-hammer.

My life in Joditz was very pleasant, all the four seasons were full of happiness. I hardly know which to tell of first, for each is a heavenly introduction to the next; but I will begin with winter. In the cold morning my father came down stairs and learned his Sunday sermon by the window, and I and my brother carried the full cup of coffee to him,—and still more gladly carried it back empty, for we could pick out the unmelted sugar from the bottom. Out of doors, the sky covered all things with silence,—the brook with ice, the village roofs with snow; but in our room there was warm life,—under the stove was a pigeon-house, on the windows goldfinch-cages; on the floor was the bull-dog and a pretty little poodle close by. Farther off, at the other end of the house, was the stable, with cows and pigs and hens. The threshers we could hear in the court-yard beating out the grain.

In the long twilight our father walked back and forth, and we trotted after him, creeping under his nightgown, and holding on to his hands if we could reach them. At the sound of the vesper-bell we stood in a circle and chanted the old hymn,

The evening chime in our village was indeed the swan-song of the day, the muffle of the over-loud heart, calling from toil and noise to silence and dreams. Then the room was lit up, and the window-shutters bolted, and we children felt all safe behind them when the wind growled and grumbled outside, like the Knecht Ruprecht, or hobgoblin. Then we could undress and skip up and down in our long trailing nightgowns. My father sat at the long table studying or composing music. Our noise did not disturb the inward melody to which he listened as we sat on the table or played under it.

Once a week the old errand-woman came from Hof with fruit and meats and pastry-cakes. Sometimes the housemaid brought her distaff into the common room of an evening, and told us stories by the light of a pine-torch. At nine o'clock in the evening I was sent to the bed which I shared with my father. He sat up until eleven, and I lay wide awake, trembling for fear of ghosts, until he joined me. For I had heard my father tell of spiritual appearances, which he firmly believed he had himself seen, and my imagination filled the dark space with them.

When the spring came, and the snows melted, we who had been shut up in the parsonage court were set free to roam the fields and meadows. The sweet mornings sparkled with undried dews. I carried my father's coffee to him in his summer-house in the garden. In the evening we had currants and raspberries from the garden at our supper before dark. Then my father sat and smoked his pipe in the open air, and we played about him in our nightgowns, on the grass, as the swallows did in the air overhead.

The most beautiful of all summer birds, meanwhile, was a tender, blue butterfly, which, in this beautiful season, fluttered about me, and was my first love. This was a blue-eyed peasant-girl of my own age, with a slender form and an oval face somewhat marked with the small-pox, but with the thousand traits that, like the magic circles of the enchanter's wand, take the heart a prisoner. Augustina dwelt with her brother Romer, a delicate youth, who was known as a good accountant, and as a good singer in the choir. I played my little romance in a lively manner, from a distance, as I sat in the pastor's pew in the church, and she in the seat appropriated to women, apparently near enough to look at each other without being satisfied. And yet this was only the beginning; for when, at evening, she drove her cow home from the meadow pasture, I instantly knew the well-remembered sound of the cow-bell, and flew to the court wall to see her pass, and give her a nod as she went by; then ran again down to the gateway to speak to her, she the nun without, and I the monk within, to thrust my hand through the bars (more I durst not do, on account of the children without), in which there was some little dainty sugared almonds, or something still more costly, that I had brought for her from the city. Alas! I did not arrive in many summers three times to such happiness as this. But I was obliged to devour all the pleasures, and almost all the sorrows, within my own heart. My almonds, indeed, did not all fall upon stony ground, for there grew out of them a whole hanging-garden in my imagination, blooming and full of sweetness, and I used to walk in it for weeks together. The sound of this cow-bell remained with me for a long time, and even now the blood in my old heart stirs when this sound hovers in the air.

In the summer, I remember the frequent errands that I, with a little sack on my back, made to my grandparents in the city of Hof, to bring meat and coffee and things that could not be had in the village. The two hours' walk led through a wood where a brook babbled over the stones. At last the city with its two church-towers was seen, with the Saale shining along the level plain. I remember, on my return one summer afternoon, watching the sunny splendor of the mountain-side, traversed by flying shadows of clouds, and how a new and strange longing came over me, of mingled pain and pleasure,—a longing which knew not the name of its object,—the awakening and thirsting of my whole nature for the heavenly gifts of life.

After the first autumn threshing I used to follow the traces of the crows in the woods, and the birds going southward in long procession, with strange delight. I loved the screams of the wild geese flying over me in long flocks. In the autumn evenings the father went with me and Adam to a potato-field lying on the other side of the Saale. One boy carried a hoe upon his shoulder, the other a hand-basket; and while the father dug as many new potatoes as were necessary for supper, and I gathered them from the ground and threw them into the basket, Adam gathered the best nuts from the hazel-bushes. It was not long before Adam fell back into the potato-beds, and I in my turn climbed the nut-tree. Then we returned home, satisfied with our nuts and potatoes, and enlivened by running for an hour in the free, invigorating air; every one may imagine the delight of returning home by the light of the harvest festivals.

Wonderfully fresh and green are two other harvest flowers, preserved in the chambers of my memory, and both are indeed trees. One was a full-branched muscatel pear-tree in the pastor's court-yard, the fall of whose splendid hanging fruit the children sought through the whole autumn to hasten; but at last, upon one of the most important days of the season, the father himself reached the forbidden fruit by means of a ladder, and brought the sweet paradise down, as well for the palates of the whole family as for the cooking-stove.

The other, always green, and yet more splendidly blooming, was a smaller tree, taken on St. Andrew's evening from the old wood, and brought into the house, where it was planted in water and soil in a large pot, so that on Christmas night it might have its leaves green when it was hung over with gifts like fruits and flowers.

In my thirteenth year my father was appointed pastor of Swarzenbach, also on the Saale River, a large market town, and I had to leave Joditz, dear even to this day to my heart. Two little sisters lie in its graveyard. My father found there his fairest Sundays, and there I first saw the Saale shining with the morning glow of my life.

CHARLES LAMB,

GENIAL ENGLISH ESSAYIST.

From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about witches and witch-stories. My maid, and legendary aunt, supplied me with good store. But I shall mention the accident which directed my curiosity originally into this channel. In my father's book-closet, the "History of the Bible," by Stackhouse, occupied a distinguished station. The pictures with which it abounds—one of the ark, in particular, and another of Solomon's Temple, delineated with all the fidelity of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had been upon the spot—attracted my childish attention. There was a picture, too, of the Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish that I had never seen. Turning over the picture of the ark with too much haste, I unhappily made a breach in its ingenious fabric, driving my inconsiderate fingers right through the two larger quadrupeds,—the elephant and the camel,—that stare (as well they might) out of the last two windows next the steerage in that unique piece of naval architecture. The book was henceforth locked up, and became an interdicted treasure. With the book, the objections and solutions gradually cleared out of my head, and have seldom returned since in any force to trouble me.

But there was one impression which I had imbibed from Stackhouse, which no lock or bar could shut out, and which was destined to try my childish nerves rather more seriously. That detestable picture!

I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors,—the night-time, solitude, and the dark. I never laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, from the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life,—so far as memory serves in things so long ago,—without an assurance, which realized its own prophecy, of seeing some frightful spectre. Be old Stackhouse then acquitted in part, if I say that, to his picture of the Witch raising up Samuel, (O that old man covered with a mantle!) I owe, not my midnight terrors, the horror of my infancy, but the shape and manner of their visitation. It was he who dressed up for me a hag that nightly sat upon my pillow,—a sure bedfellow, when my aunt or my maid was far from me. All day long, while the book was permitted me, I dreamed waking over his delineation, and at night (if I may use so bold an expression) awoke into sleep, and found the vision true. I durst not, even in the daylight, once enter the chamber where I slept, without my face turned to the window, aversely from the bed, where my witch-ridden pillow was. Parents do not know what they do when they leave tender babes alone to go to sleep in the dark. The feeling about for a friendly arm, the hoping for a familiar voice when they awake screaming, and find none to soothe them,—what a terrible shaking it is to their poor nerves! The keeping them up till midnight, through candlelight and the unwholesome hours, as they are called, would, I am satisfied, in a medical point of view, prove the better caution. That detestable picture, as I have said, gave the fashion to my dreams,—if dreams they were,—for the scene of them was invariably the room in which I lay.

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End, or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire, a farm-house, delightfully situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can just remember having been there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of my sister, who, as I have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might share them in equal division. But that is impossible. The house was at that time in the occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak of; and, for the greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons inherited Mackery End,—kindred or strange folk,—we were afraid almost to conjecture, but determined some day to explore.

We made an excursion to this place a few summers ago. By a somewhat circuitous route, taking the noble park at Luton in our way from Saint Alban's, we arrived at the spot of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old farm-house, though every trace of it was effaced from my recollection, affected me with a pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year. For though I had forgotten it, we had never forgotten being there together, and we had been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till memory on my part became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought I knew the aspect of a place, which, when present, O how unlike it was to that which I had conjured up so many times instead of it!

Still the air breathed balmily about it; the season was in the "heart of June," and I could say with the poet,—

Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some few miles out of my road to look upon the remains of an old great house with which I had been impressed in infancy. I was apprised that the owner of it had lately pulled it down; still I had a vague notion that it could not all have perished, that so much solidity with magnificence could not have been crushed all at once into the mere dust and rubbish which I found it.

The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand, indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced it to—an antiquity.

I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. Where had stood the great gates? What bounded the court-yard? Whereabout did the outhouses begin? A few bricks only lay as representatives of that which was so stately and so spacious.

Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their process of destruction, I should have cried out to them to spare a plank at least out of the cheerful storeroom, in whose hot window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plot before, and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it about me,—it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns; or a panel of the yellow-room.

Why, every plank and panel of that house for me had magic in it! The tapestried bedrooms,—tapestry so much better than painting,—not adorning merely, but peopling, the wainscots, at which childhood ever and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as quickly) to exercise its tender courage in a momentary eye-encounter with those stern bright visages, staring back in return.

Then, that haunted room in which old Mrs. Brattle died, whereinto I have crept, but always in the daytime, with a passion of fear; and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold communication with the past. How shall they build it up again?

It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but that traces of the splendor of past inmates were everywhere apparent. Its furniture was still standing, even to the tarnished gilt leather battledores and crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in the nursery, which told that children had once played there. But I was a lonely child, and had the range at will of every apartment, knew every nook and corner, wondered and worshipped everywhere.

The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of thought, as it is the feeder of love, and silence, and admiration. So strange a passion for the place possessed me in those years, that though there lay—I shame to say how few roods distant from the mansion,—half hid by trees, what I judged some romantic lake, such was the spell which bound me to the house, and such my carefulness not to pass its strict and proper precincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored for me; and not till late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder devotion, I found, to my astonishment, a pretty brawling brook had been the unknown lake of my infancy. Variegated views, extensive prospects,—and those at no great distance from the house,—I was told of such,—what were they to me, being out of the boundaries of my Eden? So far from a wish to roam, I would have drawn, methought, still closer the fences of my chosen prison, and have been hemmed in by a yet securer cincture of those excluding garden walls. I could have exclaimed with that garden-loving poet,—

I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides,—the low-built roof,—parlors ten feet by ten,—frugal boards, and all the homeliness of home,—these were the condition of my birth, the wholesome soil which I was planted in. Yet, without impeachment to their tenderest lessons, I am not sorry to have had glances of something beyond; and to have taken, if but a peep, in childhood, at the contrasting accidents of a great fortune.

HUGH MILLER,

SCOTTISH GEOLOGIST AND AUTHOR.

I was born on the tenth day of October, 1802, in the low, long house built by my great-grandfather.

My memory awoke early. I have recollections which date several months before the completion of my third year; but, like those of the golden age of the world, they are chiefly of a mythologic character.

I retain a vivid recollection of the joy which used to light up the household on my fathers arrival; and how I learned to distinguish for myself his sloop when in the offing, by the two slim stripes of white that ran along her sides and her two square topsails.

I have my golden memories, too, of splendid toys that he used to bring home with him,—among the rest, of a magnificent four-wheeled wagon of painted tin, drawn by four wooden horses and a string; and of getting it into a quiet corner, immediately on its being delivered over to me, and there breaking up every wheel and horse, and the vehicle itself, into their original bits, until not two of the pieces were left sticking together. Further, I still remember my disappointment at not finding something curious within at least the horses and the wheels; and as unquestionably the main enjoyment derivable from such things is to be had in the breaking of them, I sometimes wonder that our ingenious toymen do not fall upon the way of at once extending their trade, and adding to its philosophy, by putting some of their most brilliant things where nature puts the nut-kernel,—inside.

Then followed a dreary season, on which I still look back in memory as on a prospect which, sunshiny and sparkling for a time, has become suddenly enveloped in cloud and storm. I remember my mother's long fits of weeping, and the general gloom of the widowed household; and how, after she had sent my two little sisters to bed, and her hands were set free for the evening, she used to sit up late at night, engaged as a seamstress, in making pieces of dress for such of the neighbors as chose to employ her.

I remember I used to wander disconsolately about the harbor at this season, to examine the vessels which had come in during the night; and that I oftener than once set my mother a-crying by asking her why the shipmates who, when my father was alive, used to stroke my head, and slip halfpence into my pockets, never now took any notice of me, or gave me anything. She well knew that the shipmasters—not an ungenerous class of men—had simply failed to recognize their old comrade's child; but the question was only too suggestive, notwithstanding, of both her own loss and mine. I used, too, to climb, day after day, a grassy knoll immediately behind my mother's house, that commands a wide reach of the Moray Frith, and look wistfully out, long after every one else had ceased to hope, for the sloop with the two stripes of white and the two square topsails. But months and years passed by, and the white stripes and the square topsails I never saw.

I had been sent, previous to my father's death, to a dame's school. During my sixth year I spelled my way, under the dame, through the Shorter Catechism, the Proverbs, and the New Testament, and then entered upon her highest form, as a member of the Bible class; but all the while the process of acquiring learning had been a dark one, which I slowly mastered, with humble confidence in the awful wisdom of the schoolmistress, not knowing whither it tended, when at once my mind awoke to the meaning of the most delightful of all narratives,—the story of Joseph. Was there ever such a discovery made before? I actually found out for myself, that the art of reading is the art of finding stories in books; and from that moment reading became one of the most delightful of my amusements.

I began by getting into a corner on the dismissal of the school, and there conning over to myself the new-found story of Joseph nor did one perusal serve; the other Scripture stories followed,—in especial, the story of Samson and the Philistines, of David and Goliah, of the prophets Elijah and Elisha; and after these came the New Testament stories and parables.

Assisted by my uncles, too, I began to collect a library in a box of birch-bark about nine inches square, which I found quite large enough to contain a great many immortal works,—"Jack the Giant-Killer," and "Jack and the Bean-Stalk," and the "Yellow Dwarf," and "Bluebeard," and "Sinbad the Sailor," and "Beauty and the Beast," and "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," with several others of resembling character.

Old Homer wrote admirably for little folks, especially in the Odyssey; a copy of which, in the only true translation extant,—for, judging from its surpassing interest and the wrath of critics, such I hold that of Pope to be,—I found in the house of a neighbor. Next came the Iliad; not, however, in a complete copy, but represented by four of the six volumes of Bernard Lintot. With what power, and at how early an age, true genius impresses! I saw, even at this immature period, that no other writer could cast a javelin with half the force of Homer. The missiles went whizzing athwart his pages; and I could see the momentary gleam of the steel ere it buried itself deep in brass and bull-hide.

I next succeeded in discovering for myself a child's book, of not less interest than even the Iliad, which might, I was told, be read on Sabbaths, in a magnificent old edition of the "Pilgrim's Progress," printed on coarse whity-brown paper, and charged with numerous woodcuts, each of which occupied an entire page, that, on principles of economy, bore letter-press on the other side. And such delightful prints as they are! It must have been some such volume that sat for its portrait to Wordsworth, and which he so exquisitely describes as

I quitted the dame's school at the end of the first twelvemonth, after mastering that grand acquirement of my life,—the art of holding converse with books; and was transferred to the grammar school of the parish, at which there attended at the time about a hundred and twenty boys, with a class of about thirty individuals more, much looked down upon by the others, and not deemed greatly worth the counting, seeing that it consisted only of lassies.

One morning, having the master's English rendering of the day's task well fixed in my memory, and no book of amusement to read, I began gossiping with my nearest class-fellow, a very tall boy, who ultimately shot up into a lad of six feet four, and who on most occasions sat beside me, as lowest in the form save one. I told him about the tall Wallace and his exploits; and so effectually succeeded in awakening his curiosity, that I had to communicate to him, from beginning to end, every adventure recorded by the blind minstrel.

My story-telling vocation once fairly ascertained, there was, I found, no stopping in my course. I had to tell all the stories I had ever heard or read. The demand on the part of my class-fellows was great and urgent; and, setting myself to try my ability of original production, I began to dole out to them long extempore biographies, which proved wonderfully popular and successful. My heroes were usually warriors like Wallace, and voyagers like Gulliver, and dwellers in desolate islands like Robinson Crusoe; and they had not unfrequently to seek shelter in huge deserted castles, abounding in trap-doors and secret passages, like that of Udolpho. And finally, after much destruction of giants and wild beasts, and frightful encounters with magicians and savages, they almost invariably succeeded in disentombing hidden treasures to an enormous amount, or in laying open gold mines, and then passed a luxurious old age, like that of Sinbad the Sailor, at peace with all mankind, in the midst of confectionery and fruits.

With all my carelessness, I continued to be a sort of favorite with the master; and when at the general English lesson, he used to address to me little quiet speeches, vouchsafed to no other pupil, indicative of a certain literary ground common to us, on which the others had not entered. "That, sir," he has said, after the class had just perused, in the school collection, a "Tatler" or "Spectator,"—"that, sir, is a good paper; it's an Addison"; or, "That's one of Steele's, sir"; and on finding in my copy-book, on one occasion, a page filled with rhymes, which I had headed "Poem on Peace," he brought it to his desk, and, after reading it carefully over, called me up, and with his closed penknife, which served as a pointer, in one hand, and the copy-book brought down to the level of my eyes in the other, began his criticism. "That's bad grammar, sir," he said, resting the knife-handle on one of the lines; "and here's an ill-spelled word; and there's another; and you have not at all attended to the punctuation; but the general sense of the piece is good,—very good, indeed, sir." And then he added, with a grim smile, "Care, sir, is, I dare say, as you remark, a very bad thing; but you may safely bestow a little more of it on your spelling and your grammar."

POET, HISTORIAN, AND NOVELIST OF SCOTLAND.

It was at Sandy Knowe, at the home of my father's father, that I had the first knowledge of life; and I recollected distinctly that my situation and appearance were a little whimsical. I was lame, and among the old remedies for lameness some one had recommended that, as often as a sheep was killed for the use of the family, I should be stripped and wrapped up in the warm skin as it was taken from the carcass of the animal. In this Tartar-like dress I well remember lying upon the floor of the little parlor of the farm-house, while my grandfather, an old man with snowy hair, tried to make me crawl. And I remember a relation of ours, Colonel MacDougal, joining with him to excite and amuse me. I recollect his old military dress, his small cocked hat, deeply laced, embroidered scarlet waistcoat, light-colored coat, and milk-white locks, as he knelt on the ground before me, and dragged his watch along the carpet to make me follow it. This must have happened about my third year, for both the old men died soon after. My grandmother continued for some years to take charge of the farm, assisted by my uncle Thomas Scott. This was during the American war, and I remember being as anxious on my uncle's weekly visits (for we had no news at another time) to hear of the defeat of Washington, as if I had some personal cause for hating him. I got a strange prejudice in favor of the Stuart family from the songs and tales I heard about them. One or two of my own relations had been put to death after the battle of Culloden, and the husband of one of my aunts used to tell me that he was present at their execution. My grandmother used to tell me many a tale of Border chiefs, like Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead. My kind aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose memory will always be dear to me, used to read to me with great patience until I could repeat long passages by heart. I learned the old ballad of Hardyknute, to the great annoyance of our almost only visitor, Dr. Duncan, the worthy clergyman of the parish, who had no patience to have his sober chat disturbed by my shouting for this ditty. Methinks I see now his tall, emaciated figure, legs cased in clasped gambadoes, and his very long face, and hear him exclaim, "One might as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as where that child is!"

I was in my fourth year when my father was told that the waters of Bath might be of some advantage to my lameness. My kind aunt, though so retiring in habits as to make such a journey anything but pleasure or amusement, undertook to go with me to the wells, as readily as if she expected all the delight the prospect of a watering-place held out to its most impatient visitors. My health was by this time a good deal better from the country air at my grandmother's. When the day was fine, I was carried out and laid beside the old shepherd among the crags and rocks, around which he fed his sheep. Childish impatience inclined me to struggle with my lameness, and I began by degrees to stand, walk, and even run.

I lived at Bath a year without much advantage to my lameness. The beauties of the Parade, with the river Avon winding around it, and the lowing of the cattle from the opposite hills, are warm in my recollection, and are only exceeded by the splendors of a toy-shop near the orange grove. I was afraid of the statues in the old abbey church, and looked with horror upon the image of Jacob's ladder with its angels.

My mother joined to a light and happy temper of mind a strong turn for poetry and works of imagination. She was sincerely devout, but her religion, as became her sex, was of a cast less severe than my father's. My hours of leisure from school study were spent in reading with her Pope's translation of Homer, which, with a few ballads and the songs of Allan Ramsay, was the first poetry I possessed. My acquaintance with English literature gradually extended itself. In the intervals of my school-hours I read with avidity such books of history or poetry or voyages and travels as chance presented, not forgetting fairy-tales and Eastern stories and romances. I found in my mother's dressing-room (where I slept at one time) some odd volumes of Shakespeare, nor can I forget the rapture with which I sat up in my shirt reading them by the firelight.

In my thirteenth year I first became acquainted with Bishop Percy's "Reliques of Ancient Poetry." As I had been from infancy devoted to legendary lore of this nature, and only reluctantly withdrew my attention, from the scarcity of materials and the rudeness of those which I possessed, it may be imagined, but cannot be described, with what delight I saw pieces of the same kind which had amused my childhood, and still continued in secret the Delilahs of my imagination, considered as the subject of sober research, grave commentary, and apt illustration, by an editor who showed his poetical genius was capable of emulating the best qualities of what his pious labor preserved. I remember well the spot where I read these volumes for the first time. It was beneath a huge platanus-tree, in the ruins of what had been intended for an old-fashioned arbor in the garden adjoining the house. The summer day sped onward so fast that, notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was found still entranced in my intellectual banquet. To read and to remember was in this instance the same thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed my schoolfellows, and all who would hearken to me, with tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time, too, I could scrape a few shillings together, which were not common occurrences with me, I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently or with half the enthusiasm.

To this period also I can trace distinctly the awaking of that delightful feeling for the beauties of natural objects which has never since deserted me. The neighborhood of Kelso, the most beautiful, if not the most romantic, village in Scotland, is eminently calculated to awaken these ideas. It presents objects, not only grand in themselves, but venerable from their association. The meeting of two superb rivers, the Tweed and the Teviot, both renowned in song; the ruins of an ancient abbey; the more distant vestiges of Roxburgh Castle; the modern mansion of Fleurs, which is so situated as to combine the ideas of ancient baronial grandeur with those of modern taste,—are in themselves objects of the first class; yet are so mixed, united, and melted among a thousand other beauties of a less prominent description, that they harmonize into one general picture, and please rather by unison than by concord.

FREDERIC DOUGLASS,

THE SLAVE-BOY OF MARYLAND, NOW ONE OF THE ABLEST CITIZENS AND MOST ELOQUENT ORATORS OF THE UNITED STATES.

I was born in what is called Tuckahoe, on the eastern shore of Maryland, a worn-out, desolate, sandy region. Decay and ruin are everywhere visible, and the thin population of the place would have quitted it long ago, but for the Choptauk River, which runs through, from which they take abundance of shad and herring, and plenty of fever and ague. My first experience of life began in the family of my grandparents. The house was built of logs, clay, and straw. A few rough fence-rails thrown loosely over the rafters answered the purpose of floors, ceilings, and bedsteads. It was a long time before I learned that this house was not my grandparents', but belonged to a mysterious personage who was spoken of as "Old Master"; nay, that my grandmother and her children and grandchildren, myself among them, all belonged to this dreadful personage, who would only suffer me to live a few years with my grandmother, and when I was big enough would carry me off to work on his plantation.

The absolute power of this distant Old Master had touched my young spirit with but the point of its cold cruel iron, yet it left me something to brood over. The thought of being separated from my grandmother, seldom or never to see her again, haunted me. I dreaded the idea of going to live with that strange Old Master whose name I never heard mentioned with affection, but always with fear. My grandmother! my grandmother! and the little hut and the joyous circle under her care, but especially she, who made us sorry when she left us but for an hour, and glad on her return,—how could we leave her and the good old home!

But the sorrows of childhood, like the pleasures of after-life, are transient. The first seven or eight years of the slave-boy's life are as full of content as those of the most favored white children of the slaveholder. The slave-boy escapes many troubles which vex his white brother. He is never lectured for improprieties of behavior. He is never chided for handling his little knife and fork improperly or awkwardly, for he uses none. He is never scolded for soiling the table-cloth, for he takes his meals on the clay floor. He never has the misfortune, in his games or sports, of soiling or tearing his clothes, for he has almost none to soil or tear. He is never expected to act like a nice little gentleman, for he is only a rude little slave.

Thus, freed from all restraint, the slave-boy can be, in his life and conduct, a genuine boy, doing whatever his boyish nature suggests; enacting, by turns, all the strange antics and freaks of horses, dogs, pigs, and barn-door fowls, without in any manner compromising his dignity or incurring reproach of any sort. He literally runs wild; has no pretty little verses to learn in the nursery; no nice little speeches to make for aunts, uncles, or cousins, to show how smart he is; and, if he can only manage to keep out of the way of the heavy feet and fists of the older slave-boys, he may trot on, in his joyous and roguish tricks, as happy as any little heathen under the palm-trees of Africa.

To be sure, he is occasionally reminded, when he stumbles in the way of his master,—and this he early learns to avoid,—that he is eating his white bread, and that he will be made to see sights by and by. The threat is soon forgotten, the shadow soon passes, and our sable boy continues to roll in the dust, or play in the mud, as best suits him, and in the veriest freedom. If he feels uncomfortable, from mud or from dust, the coast is clear; he can plunge into the river or the pond, without the ceremony of undressing or the fear of wetting his clothes; his little tow-linen shirt—for that is all he has on—is easily dried; and it needed washing as much as did his skin. His food is of the coarsest kind, consisting for the most part of corn-meal mush, which often finds its way from the wooden tray to his mouth in an oyster-shell. His days, when the weather is warm, are spent in the pure, open air and in the bright sunshine. He eats no candies; gets no lumps of loaf-sugar; always relishes his food; cries but little, for nobody cares for his crying; learns to esteem his bruises but slight, because others so think them.

In a word, he is, for the most part of the first eight years of his life, a spirited, joyous, uproarious, and happy boy, upon whom troubles fall only like water on a duck's back. And such a boy, so far as I can now remember, was the boy whose life in slavery I am now telling.

I gradually learned that the plantation of Old Master was on the river Wye, twelve miles from Tuckahoe. About this place and about that queer Old Master, who must be something more than man and something worse than an angel, I was eager to know all that could be known. Unhappily, all that I found out only increased my dread of being carried thither. The fact is, such was my dread of leaving the little cabin, that I wished to remain little forever; for I knew, the taller I grew, the shorter my stay. The old cabin, with its rail floor and rail bedsteads up stairs, and its clay floor down stairs, and its dirt chimney and windowless sides, and that most curious piece of workmanship of all the rest, the ladder stairway, and the hole curiously dug in front of the fireplace, beneath which grandmammy placed the sweet potatoes to keep them from the frost, was MY HOME,—the only home I ever had; and I loved it, and all connected with it. The old fences around it, and the stumps in the edge of the woods near it, and the squirrels that ran, skipped, and played upon them, were objects of interest and affection. There, too, right at the side of the hut, stood the old well, with its stately and skyward-pointing beam, so aptly placed between the limbs of what had once been a tree, and so nicely balanced, that I could move it up and down with only one hand, and could get a drink myself without calling for help. Where else in the world could such a well be found, and where could such another home be met with? Down in a little valley, not far from grandmamma's cabin, stood a mill, where the people came often, in large numbers, to get their corn ground. It was a water-mill; and I never shall be able to tell the many things thought and felt while I sat on the bank and watched that mill, and the turning of its ponderous wheel. The mill-pond, too, had its charms; and with my pin-hook and thread line I could get nibbles, if I could catch no fish. But, in all my sports and plays, and in spite of them, there would, occasionally, come the painful foreboding that I was not long to remain there, and that I must soon be called away to the home of Old Master.

I was A SLAVE,—born a slave; and though the fact was strange to me, it conveyed to my mind a sense of my entire dependence on the will of somebody I had never seen; and, from some cause or other, I had been made to fear this Somebody above all else on earth. Born for another's benefit, as the firstling of the cabin flock I was soon to be selected as a meet offering to the fearful and inexorable Old Master, whose huge image on so many occasions haunted my childhood's imagination. When the time of my departure was decided upon, my grandmother, knowing my fears, and in pity for them, kindly kept me ignorant of the dreaded event about to happen. Up to the morning (a beautiful summer morning) when we were to start, and, indeed, during the whole journey,—a journey which, child as I was, I remember as well as if it were yesterday,—she kept the sad fact hidden from me. This reserve was necessary, for, could I have known all, I should have given grandmother some trouble in getting me started. As it was, I was helpless, and she—dear woman!—led me along by the hand, resisting, with the reserve and solemnity of a priestess, all my inquiring looks to the last.

The distance from Tuckahoe to Wye River, where Old Master lived, was full twelve miles, and the walk was quite a severe test of the endurance of my young legs. The journey would have proved too hard for me, but that my dear old grandmother—blessings on her memory!—afforded occasional relief by "toting" me on her shoulder. My grandmother, though old in years,—as was evident from more than one gray hair, which peeped from between the ample and graceful folds of her newly-ironed bandanna turban,—was marvellously straight in figure, elastic, and muscular. I seemed hardly to be a burden to her. She would have "toted" me farther, but that I felt myself too much of a man to allow it, and insisted on walking. Releasing dear grandmamma from carrying me did not make me altogether independent of her, when we happened to pass through portions of the sombre woods which lay between Tuckahoe and Wye River. She often found me increasing the energy of my grip, and holding her clothing, lest something should come out of the woods and eat me up. Several old logs and stumps imposed upon me, and got themselves taken for wild beasts. I could see their legs, eyes, and ears till I got close enough to them to know that the eyes were knots, washed white with rain, and the legs were broken boughs, and the ears only fungous growths on the bark.

As the day went on the heat grew; and it was not until the afternoon that we reached the much-dreaded end of the journey. I found myself in the midst of a group of children of many colors,—black, brown, copper-colored, and nearly white. I had not seen so many children before. Great houses loomed up in different directions, and a great many men and women were at work in the fields. All this hurry, noise, and singing was very different from the stillness of Tuckahoe. As a new-comer, I was an object of special interest; and, after laughing and yelling around me, and playing all sorts of wild tricks, the children asked me to go out and play with them. This I refused to do, preferring to stay with grandmamma. I could not help feeling that our being there boded no good to me. Grandmamma looked sad. She was soon to lose another object of affection, as she had lost many before. I knew she was unhappy, and the shadow fell on me, though I knew not the cause.

All suspense, however, must have an end, and the end of mine was at hand. Affectionately patting me on the head, and telling me to be a good boy, grandmamma bade me to go and play with the little children. "They are kin to you," said she; "go and play with them." Among a number of cousins were Phil, Tom, Steve, and Jerry, Nance and Betty.

Grandmother pointed out my brother and sisters who stood in the group. I had never seen brother nor sisters before; and though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters we were by blood, but slavery had made us strangers. I heard the words "brother" and "sisters," and knew they must mean something; but slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning. The experience through which I was passing, they had passed through before. They had already learned the mysteries of Old Master's home, and they seemed to look upon me with a certain degree of compassion; but my heart clave to my grandmother. Think it not strange that so little sympathy of feeling existed between us. The conditions of brotherly and sisterly feeling were wanting; we had never nestled and played together. My poor mother, like many other slave-women, had many children, but NO FAMILY! The domestic hearth, with its holy lessons and precious endearments, is abolished in the case of a slave-mother and her children. "Little children, love one another," are words seldom heard in a slave-cabin.

I really wanted to play with my brother and sisters, but they were strangers to me, and I was full of fear that grandmother might leave without taking me with her. Entreated to do so, however, and that, too, by my dear grandmother, I went to the back part of the house, to play with them and the other children. Play, however, I did not, but stood with my back against the wall, witnessing the mirth of the others. At last, while standing there, one of the children, who had been in the kitchen, ran up to me, in a sort of roguish glee, exclaiming, "Fed, Fed! grandmammy gone! grandmammy gone!" I could not believe it; yet, fearing the worst, I ran into the kitchen, to see for myself, and found it even so. Grandmamma had indeed gone, and was now far away, clean out of sight. I need not tell all that happened now. Almost heartbroken at the discovery, I fell upon the ground, and wept a boy's bitter tears, refusing to be comforted.

CHARLES DICKENS,

FIRST NOVELIST OF THE PERIOD.

I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas tree.

Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not care to resist, to my own childhood. Straight in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of its growth by no encircling walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree arises; and, looking up into the dreamy brightness of its top,—for I observe in this tree the singular property that it appears to grow downward towards the earth,—I look into my youngest Christmas recollections.

All toys at first, I find. But upon the branches of the tree, lower down, how thick the books begin to hang! Thin books, in themselves, at first, but many of them, with deliciously smooth covers of bright red or green. What fat black letters to begin with!

"A was an archer, and shot at a frog." Of course he was. He was an apple-pie also, and there he is! He was a good many things in his time, was A, and so were most of his friends, except X, who had so little versatility that I never knew him to get beyond Xerxes or Xantippe: like Y, who was always confined to a yacht or a yew-tree; and Z, condemned forever to be a zebra or a zany.

But now the very tree itself changes, and becomes a bean-stalk,—the marvellous bean-stalk by which Jack climbed up to the giant's house. Jack,—how noble, with his sword of sharpness and his shoes of swiftness!

Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy color of the cloak in which, the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through with her basket, Little Red-Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas eve, to give me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling wolf who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red-Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect bliss. But it was not to be, and there was nothing for it but to look out the wolf in the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded.

O the wonderful Noah's Ark! It was not found seaworthy when put in a washing-tub, and the animals were crammed in at the roof, and needed to have their legs well shaken down before they could be got in even there; and then ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door, which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch; but what was that against it?

Consider the noble fly, a size or two smaller than the elephant; the lady-bird, the butterfly,—all triumphs of art! Consider the goose, whose feet were so small, and whose balance was so indifferent that he usually tumbled forward and knocked down all the animal creation! consider Noah and his family, like idiotic tobacco-stoppers; and how the leopard stuck to warm little fingers; and how the tails of the larger animals used gradually to resolve themselves into frayed bits of string.

Hush! Again a forest, and somebody up in a tree,—not Robin Hood, not Valentine, not the Yellow Dwarf,—I have passed him and all Mother Bunch's wonders without mention,—but an Eastern king with a glittering scymitar and turban. It is the setting-in of the bright Arabian Nights.

O, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me! All lamps are wonderful! all rings are talismans! Common flower-pots are full of treasure, with a little earth scattered on the top; trees are for Ali Baba to hide in; beefsteaks are to throw down into the Valley of Diamonds, that the precious stones may stick to them, and be carried by the eagles to their nests, whence the traders, with loud cries, will scare them. All the dates imported come from the same tree as that unlucky one, with whose shell the merchant knocked out the eye of the genii's invisible son. All olives are of the same stock of that fresh fruit concerning which the Commander of the Faithful overheard the boy conduct the fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive-merchant. Yes, on every object that I recognize among those upper branches of my Christmas tree I see this fairy light!

But hark! the Waits are playing, and they break my childish sleep! What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them set forth on the Christmas tree! Known before all the others, keeping far apart from all the others, they gather round my little bed. An angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travellers, with eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a spacious temple, talking with grave men; a solemn figure with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the waters in a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude; again, with a child upon his knee, and other children around; again, restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant; again, dying upon a cross, watched by armed soldiers, a darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice heard, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do!"

Encircled by the social thoughts of Christmas time, still let the benignant figure of my childhood stand unchanged! In every cheerful image and suggestion that the season brings, may the bright star that rested above the poor roof be the star of all the Christian world!

A moment's pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs are dark to me yet, and let me look once more. I know there are blank spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have shone and smiled, from which they are departed. But, far above, I see the Raiser of the dead girl and the widow's son,—and God is good!

THE END.