No More Learning

With the exception of the principle of universal suffrage,
now so happily established, the representative democracy was as
perfect two centuries ago as it is to-day. Even the magistrates,
who acted as judges, held their office by the annual popular
choice. “Elections cannot be safe there long," said the lawyer
Lechford. The same prediction has been made these two hun-
dred years. The public mind, ever in perpetual agitation, is still
easily shaken, even by slight and transient impulses; but, after
all vibrations, it follows the laws of the moral world, and safely
recovers its balance.
Copyrighted by D. Appleton and Company, New York.
KING PHILIP'S WAR
From History of the United States)
T"
hus was Philip hurried into “his rebellion”; and he is reported
to have wept as he heard that a white man's blood had been
shed. He had kept his men about him in arms, and had
welcomed every stranger; and yet, against his judgment and his
will, he was involved in war. For what prospect had he of suc-
cess ?
The English were united; the Indians had no alliance:
the English made a common cause; half the Indians were allies
of the English, or were quiet spectators of the fight: the English
had guns enough; but few of the Indians were well armed, and


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GEORGE BANCROFT
1443
they could get no new supplies: the English had towns for their
shelter and safe retreat; the miserable wigwams of the natives
were defenseless: the English had sure supplies of food; the
Indians might easily lose their precarious stores. Frenzy prompted
their rising. They rose without hope, and they fought without
mercy. For them as a nation, there was no to-morrow.
The minds of the English were appalled by the horrors of the
impending conflict, and superstition indulged in its wild inventions.
At the time of the eclipse of the moon, you might have seen the
figure of an Indian scalp imprinted on the centre of its disk.
The perfect form of an Indian bow appeared in the sky. The
sighing of the wind was like the whistling of bullets. Some heard
invisible troops of horses gallop through the air, while others
found the prophecy of calamities in the howling of the wolves.
At the very beginning of danger the colonists exerted their
wonted energy. Volunteers from Massachusetts joined the troops
from Plymouth; and, within a week from the commencement of
hostilities, the insulated Pokanokets were driven from Mount
Hope, and in less than a month Philip was a fugitive among the
Nipmucks, the interior tribes of Massachusetts. The little army
of the colonists then entered the territory of the Narragansetts,
and from the reluctant tribe extorted a treaty of neutrality, with
a promise to deliver up every hostile Indian. Victory seemed
promptly assured. But it was only the commencement of horrors.
Canonchet, the chief sachem of the Narragansetts, was the son of
Miantonomoh; and could he forget his father's wrongs ? Desola-
tion extended along the whole frontier. Banished from his patri-
mony, where the pilgrims found a friend, and from his cabin,
which had sheltered the exiles, Philip, with his warriors, spread
through the country, awakening their brethren to a warfare of
extermination.
The war, on the part of the Indians, was one of ambuscades
and surprises. They never once met the English in open field;
but always, even if eightfold in numbers, fled timorously before
infantry. They were secret as beasts of prey, skillful marksmen,
and in part provided with firearms, fleet of foot, conversant with
all the paths of the forest, patient of fatigue, and mad with a
passion for rapine, vengeance, and destruction, retreating into
swamps for their fastnesses, or hiding in the greenwood thickets,
where the leaves muffled the eyes of the pursuer. By the rapid-
ity of their descent, they seemed omnipresent among the scattered


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GEORGE BANCROFT
villages, which they ravished like a passing storm; and for a full
year they kept all New England in a state of terror and excite-
ment. The exploring party was waylaid and cut off, and the
mangled carcasses and disjointed limbs of the dead were hung
upon the trees.
The laborer in the field, the reapers as they
sallied forth to the harvest, men as they went to mill, the shep-
herd's boy among the sheep, were shot down by skulking foes,
whose approach was invisible. Who can tell the heavy hours of
woman? The mother, if left alone in the house, feared the
tomahawk for herself and children; on the sudden attack, the
husband would fly with one child, the wife with another, and,
perhaps, one only escape; the village cavalcade, making its way
to meeting on Sunday in files on horseback, the farmer holding
the bridle in one hand and a child in the other, his wife seated
on a pillion behind him, it may be with a child in her lap, as
was the fashion in those days, could not proceed safely; but, at
the moment when least expected, bullets would whizz among
them, sent from an unseen enemy by the wayside. The forest
that protected the ambush of the Indians secured their retreat.
Copyrighted by D. Appleton and Company, New York.
THE NEW NETHERLAND
From History of the United States )
D'
URING the absence of Stuyvesant from Manhattan, the war-
riors of the neighboring Algonkin tribes, never reposing
confidence in the Dutch, made a desperate assault on the
colony. In sixty-four canoes they appeared before the town, and
ravaged the adjacent country.
The return of the expedition
restored confidence. The captives were ransomed, and industry
repaired its losses. The Dutch seemed to have firmly established
their power, and promised themselves happier years. New
Netherland consoled them for the loss of Brazil. They exulted
in the possession of an admirable territory, that needed no
embankments against the ocean. They were proud of its vast
extent, — from New England to Maryland, from the sea to the
Great River of Canada, and the remote Northwestern wilderness,
They sounded with exultation the channel of the deep stream,
which was no longer shared with the Swedes; they counted
with delight its many lovely runs of water, on which the beavers


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GEORGE BANCROFT
1445
built their villages; and the great travelers who had visited
every continent, as they ascended the Delaware, declared it one
of the noblest rivers in the world, with banks more inviting than
the lands on the Amazon.
Meantime, the country near the Hudson gained by increasing
emigration. Manhattan was already the chosen abode of mer-
chants; and the policy of the government invited them by its
good-will. If Stuyvesant sometimes displayed the rash despotism
of a soldier, he was sure to be reproved by his employers. Did
he change the rate of duties arbitrarily, the directors, sensitive
to commercial honor, charged him "to keep every contract
inviolate. ” Did he tamper with the currency by raising the
nominal value of foreign coin, the measure was rebuked as dis-
honest. Did he attempt to fix the price of labor by arbitrary
rules, this also was condemned as unwise and impracticable.
Did he interfere with the merchants by inspecting their accounts,
the deed was censured as without precedent “in Christendom”;
and he was ordered to “treat the merchants with kindness, lest
they return, and the country be depopulated. ” Did his zeal for
Calvinism lead him to persecute Lutherans, he was chid for his
bigotry. Did his hatred of "the abominable sect of Quakers”
imprison and afterward exile the blameless Bowne, “let every
peaceful citizen," wrote the directors, “enjoy freedom of con-
science; this maxim has made our city the asylum for fugitives
from every land; tread in its steps, and you shall be blessed. ”
Private worship was therefore allowed to every religion.
Opinion, if not yet enfranchised, was already tolerated. The
people of Palestine, from the destruction of their temple an out-
cast and a wandering race, were allured by the traffic and the
condition of the New World; and not the Saxon and Celtic
races only, the children of the bondmen that broke from slavery
in Egypt, the posterity of those who had wandered in Arabia,
and worshiped near Calvary, found a home, liberty, and a burial
place on the island of Manhattan.
The emigrants from Holland were themselves of the most
various lineage; for Holland had long been the gathering-place
of the unfortunate. Could we trace the descent of the emigrants
from the Low Countries to New Netherland, we should be
carried not only to the banks of the Rhine and the borders of
the German Sea, but to the Protestants who escaped from
France after the massacre of Bartholomew's Eve, and to those


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GEORGE BANCROFT
earlier inquirers who were swayed by the voice of Huss in the
heart of Bohemia. New York was always a city of the world.
Its settlers were relics of the first fruits of the Reformation,
chosen from the Belgic provinces and England, from France and
Bohemia, from Germany and Switzerland, from Piedmont and
the Italian Alps.
The religious sects, which, in the middle ages, had been fos-
tered by the municipal liberties of the south of France, were
the harbingers of modern freedom, and had therefore been sac-
rificed to the inexorable feudalism of the north. After a bloody
conflict, the plebeian reformers, crushed by the merciless leaders
of the military aristocracy, escaped to the highlands that divide
France and Italy. Preserving the discipline of a benevolent,
ascetic morality, with the simplicity of a spiritual worship,
“When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,
it was found, on the progress of the Reformation, that they had
by three centuries anticipated Luther and Calvin. The hurricane
of persecution, which was to have swept Protestantism from the
earth, did not spare their seclusion; mothers with infants were
rolled down the rocks, and the bones of martyrs scattered on the
Alpine mountains, The city of Amsterdam offered the fugitive
Waldenses a free passage to America, and a welcome was pre-
pared in New Netherland for the few who were willing to emi-
grate.
The persecuted of every creed and every clime were invited
to the colony When the Protestant churches in Rochelle were
razed, the Calvinists of that city were gladly admitted; and the
French Protestants came in such numbers that the public docu-
ments were sometimes issued in French as well as in Dutch and
English. Troops of orphans were shipped for the milder destinies
of the New World; a free passage was offered to mechanics; for
“population was known to be the bulwark of every State. ” The
government of New Netherland had formed just ideas of the fit
materials for building a commonwealth; they desired farmers
and laborers, foreigners and exiles, men inured to toil and
penury. ” The colony increased; children swarmed in every vil-
lage; the advent of the year and the month of May were wel-
comed with noisy frolics; new modes of activity were devised;
lumber was shipped to France; the whale pursued off the coast;
the vine, the mulberry, planted; flocks of sheep as well as cattle


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GEORGE BANCROFT
1447
(
were multiplied; and tile, so long imported from Holland, began
to be manufactured near Fort Orange. New Amsterdam could,
in a few years, boast of stately buildings, and almost vied with
Boston. “This happily situated province,” said its inhabitants,
may become the granary of our fatherland; should our Nether-
lands be wasted by grievous wars, it will offer our countrymen
a safe retreat; by God's blessing, we shall in a few years become
a mighty people. ”
Thus did various nations of the Caucasian race assist in colo-
nizing our central states.
Copyrighted by D. Appleton and Company, New York.
FRANKLIN
From History of the United States)
F
RANKLIN looked quietly and deeply into the secrets of nature.
His clear understanding was never perverted by passion, nor
corrupted by the pride of theory. The son of a rigid Cal-
vinist, the grandson of a tolerant Quaker, he had from boyhood
been familiar not only with theological subtilities, but with a
catholic respect for freedom of mind. Skeptical of tradition as
the basis of faith, he respected reason rather than authority; and,
after a momentary lapse into fatalism, he gained with increasing
years an increasing trust in the overruling providence of God.
Adhering to none of all the religions in the colonies, he yet
devoutly, though without form, adhered to religion. But though
famous as a disputant, and having a natural aptitude for meta-
physics, he obeyed the tendency of his age, and sought by obser-
vation to win an insight into the mysteries of being. The best
observers praise his method most. He so sincerely loved truth,
that in his pursuit of her she met him half-way. Without preju-
dice and without bias, he discerned intuitively the identity of the
laws of nature with those of which humanity is conscious; so that
his mind was like a mirror, in which the universe, as it reflected
itself, revealed her laws. His morality, repudiating ascetic severi-
ties and the system which enjoins them, was indulgent to appe-
tites of which he abhorred the sway; but his affections were of a
calm intensity: in all his career, the love of man held the mas-
tery over personal interest. He had not the imagination which
inspires the bard or kindles the orator; but an exquisite propriety,


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GEORGE BANCROFT
parsimonious of ornament, gave ease, correctness, and graceful
simplicity even to his most careless writings. In life, also, his
tastes were delicate. Indifferent to the pleasures of the table, he
relished the delights of music and harmony, of which he enlarged
the instruments. His blandness of temper, his modesty, the
benignity of his manners, made him the favorite of intelligent
society; and, with healthy cheerfulness, he derived pleasure from
books, from philosophy, from conversation, — now administering
consolation to the sorrower, now indulging in light-hearted
gayety. In his intercourse, the universality of his perceptions
bore, perhaps, the character of humor; but, while he clearly dis-
cerned the contrast between the grandeur of the universe and the
feebleness of man, a serene benevolence saved him from contempt
of his race or disgust at its toils. To superficial observers, he
might have seemed as an alien from speculative truth, limiting
himself to the world of the senses; and yet, in study, and among
men, his mind always sought to discover and apply the general
principles by which nature and affairs are controlled, - now dedu-
cing from the theory of caloric improvements in fireplaces and
lanterns, and now advancing human freedom by firm inductions
from the inalienable rights of man. Never professing enthusiasm,
never making a parade of sentiment, his practical wisdom was
sometimes mistaken for the offspring of selfish prudence; yet his
hope was steadfast, like that hope which rests on the Rock of
Ages, and his conduct was as unerring as though the light that
led him was a light from heaven. He never anticipated action
by theories of self-sacrificing virtue; and yet, in the moments of
intense activity, he from the abodes of ideal truth brought down
and applied to the affairs of life the principles of goodness, as
unostentatiously as became the man who with a kite and hempen
string drew lightning from the skies. He separated himself so
little from his age that he has been called the representative of
materialism; and yet, when he thought on religion, his mind
passed beyond reliance on sects to faith in God; when he wrote
on politics, he founded freedom on principles that know no
change; when he turned an observing eye on nature, he passed
from the effect to the cause, from individual appearances to
universal laws; when he reflected on history, his philosophic
mind found gladness and repose in the clear anticipation of the
progress of humanity.


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GEORGE BANCROFT
1449
WOLFE ON THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM
From History of the United States)
Bº
UT, in the meantime, Wolfe applied himself intently to recon-
noitring the north shore above Quebec. Nature had given
him good eyes, as well as a warmth of temper to follow
first impressions. He himself discovered the cove which now
bears his name, where the bending promontories almost form a
basin, with a very narrow margin, over which the hill rises pre-
cipitously. He saw the path that wound up the steep, though so
narrow that two men could hardly march in it abreast; and he
knew, by the number of tents which he counted on the summit,
that the Canadian post which guarded it could not exceed a hun-
dred. Here he resolved to land his army by surprise. To mis-
lead the enemy, his troops were kept far above the town; while
Saunders, as if an attack was intended at Beauport, set Cook,
the great mariner, with others, to sound the water and plant
buoys along that shore.
The day and night of the twelfth were employed in prepara-
tions. The autumn evening was bright; and the general, under
the clear starlight, visited his stations, to make his final inspec-
tion and utter his last words of encouragement. As he passed
from ship to ship, he spoke to those in the boat with him of the
poet Gray, and the 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard. “I,”
said he, “would prefer being the author of that poem to the
glory of beating the French to-morrow; and, while the oars
struck the river as it rippled in the silence of the night air under
the flowing tide, he repeated :-
« The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour -
The paths of glory lead but to the grave. ”
Every officer knew his appointed duty, when, at one o'clock
in the morning of the thirteenth of September, Wolfe, Monck-
ton, and Murray, and about half the forces, set off in boats, and,
using neither sail nor oars, glided down with the tide. In three
quarters of an hour the ships followed; and, though the night
had become dark, aided by the rapid current, they reached the
cove just in time to cover the landing. Wolfe and the troops


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GEORGE BANCROFT
with him leaped on shore; the light infantry, who found them-
selves borne by the current a little below the intrenched path,
clambered up the steep hill, staying themselves by the roots and
boughs of the maple and spruce and ash trees that covered the
precipitous declivity, and, after a little firing, dispersed the picket
which guarded the height; the rest ascended safely by the path-
way. A battery of four guns on the left was abandoned to Col-
onel Howe. When Townshend's division disembarked, the English
had already gained one of the roads to Quebec; and, advancing
in front of the forest, Wolfe stood at daybreak with his invinci-
ble battalions on the Plains of Abraham, the battle-field of the
Celtic and Saxon races.
"It can be but a small party, come to burn a few houses and
retire,” said Montcalm, in amazement as the news reached him
in his intrenchments the other side of the St. Charles; but, obtain-
ing better information, “Then,” he cried, “they have at last got
to the weak side of this miserable garrison; we must give battle
and crush them before mid-day. ” And, before ten, the two
armies, equal in numbers, each being composed of less than five
thousand men, were ranged in presence of one another for bat-
tle. The English, not easily accessible from intervening shallow
ravines and rail fences, were all regulars, perfect in discipline,
terrible in their fearless enthusiasm, thrilling with pride at their
morning's success, commanded by a man whom they obeyed
with confidence and love. The doomed and devoted Montcalm
had what Wolfe had called but “five weak French battalions,”
of less than two thousand men, “mingled with disorderly peas-
antry,” formed on commanding ground. The French had three
little pieces of artillery; the English, one or two. The two
armies cannonaded each other for nearly an hour; when Mont-
calm, having summoned De Bougainville to his aid, and dis-
patched messenger after messenger for De Vaudreuil, who had
fifteen hundred men at the camp, to come up before he should
be driven from the ground, endeavored to flank the British and
crowd them down the high bank of the river. Wolfe counter-
acted the movement by detaching Townshend with Amherst's
regiment, and afterward a part of the Royal Americans, who
formed on the left with a double front.
Waiting no longer for more troops, Montcalm led the French
army impetuously to the attack. The ill-disciplined companies
broke by their precipitation and the unevenness of the ground;


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1451
and fired by platoons, without unity.
Their adversaries, espe-
cially the Forty-third and the Forty-seventh, where Monckton
stood, of which three men out of four were Americans, received
the shock with calmness; and after having, at Wolfe's command,
reserved their fire till their enemy was within forty yards, their
line began a regular, rapid, and exact discharge of musketry.
Montcalm was present everywhere, braving danger, wounded, but
cheering by his example. The second in command, De Senne-
zergues, an associate in glory at Ticonderoga, was killed. The
brave but untried Canadians, flinching from a hot fire in the
open field, began to waver; and, so soon as Wolfe, placing him-
self at the head of the Twenty-eighth and the Louisburg grena-
diers, charged with bayonets, they everywhere gave way. Of
the English officers, Carleton was wounded; Barré, who fought
near Wolfe, received in the head a ball which made him blind of
one eye, and ultimately of both. Wolfe, also, as he led the
charge, was wounded in the wrist; but still pressing forward, he
received a second ball; and having decided the day, was struck
a third time, and mortally, in the breast. "Support me,” he
cried to an officer near him; “let not my brave fellows see me
drop. ” He was carried to the rear, and they brought him water
to quench his thirst. “They run! they run! ” spoke the officer
on whom he leaned. “Who run ? ” asked Wolfe, as his life was
fast ebbing. «The French,” replied the officer, "give way every-
where. ” “What,” cried the expiring hero, “do they run already?
Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton; bid him march Webb’s regi-
ment with all speed to Charles River to cut off the fugitives. ”
Four days before, he had looked forward to early death with dis-
may. “Now, God be praised, I die happy. ” These were his
words as his spirit escaped in the blaze of his glory. Night,
silence, the rushing tide, veteran discipline, the sure inspiration
of genius, had been his allies; his battle-field, high over the ocean
river, was the grandest theatre for illustrious deeds; his victory,
one of the most momentous in the annals of mankind, gave to
the English tongue and the institutions of the Germanic race
the unexplored and seemingly infinite West and South. He
crowded into a few hours actions that would have given lustre
to length of life; and, filling his day with greatness, completed
it before its noon.
Copyrighted by D. Appleton and Company, New York.


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1452
GEORGE BANCROFT
LEXINGTON
From "History of the United States)
AY
D
came in all the beauty of an early spring. The trees
were budding; the grass growing rankly a full month
before its time; the bluebird and the robin gladdening
the genial season, and calling forth the beams of the sun which
on that morning shone with the warmth of summer; but distress
and horror gathered over the inhabitants of the peaceful town.
There on the green lay in death the gray-haired and the young;
the grassy field was red with the innocent blood of their breth-
ren slain,” crying unto God for vengeance from the ground.
Seven of the men of Lexington were killed, nine wounded; a
quarter part of all who stood in arms on the green. These are
the village heroes, who were more than of noble blood, proving
by their spirit that they were of a race divine. They gave their
lives in testimony to the rights of mankind, bequeathing to their
country an assurance of success in the mighty struggle which
they began. Their names are held in grateful remembrance, and
the expanding millions of their countrymen renew and multiply
their praise from generation to generation. They fulfilled their
duty not from the accidental impulse of the moment; their
action was the slowly ripened fruit of Providence and of time.
The light that led them on was combined of rays from the
whole history of the race; from the traditions of the Hebrews in
the gray of the world's morning; from the heroes and sages of
republican Greece and Rome; from the example of Him who
died on the cross for the life of humanity; from the religious
creed which proclaimed the divine presence in man, and on this
truth, as in a life-boat, floated the liberties of nations over the
dark flood of the Middle Ages; from the customs of the Germans
transmitted out of their forests to the councils of Saxon Eng-
land; from the burning faith and courage of Martin Luther;
from trust in the inevitable universality of God's sovereignty
as taught by Paul of Tarsus and Augustine, through Calvin and
the divines of New England; from the avenging fierceness of
the Puritans, who dashed the mitre on the ruins of the throne;
from the bold dissent and creative self-assertion of the earliest
emigrants to Massachusetts; from the statesmen who made, and
the philosophers who expounded, the revolution of England;


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1453
from the liberal spirit and analyzing inquisitiveness of the eight-
eenth century; from the cloud of witnesses of all the ages to the
reality and the rightfulness of human freedom. All the centuries
bowed themselves from the recesses of the past to cheer in their
sacrifice the lowly men who proved themselves worthy of their
forerunners, and whose children rise up and call them blessed.
Heedless of his own danger, Samuel Adams, with the voice
of a prophet, exclaimed: "Oh, what a glorious morning is this! ”
for he saw his country's independence hastening on, and, like
Columbus in the tempest, knew that the storm did but bear him
the more swiftly toward the undiscovered world.
Copyrighted by D. Appleton and Company, New York.
WASHINGTON
.
· From History of the United States)
THE
HEN, on the fifteenth of June, it was voted to appoint a gen-
eral. Thomas Johnson, of Maryland, nominated George
Washington; and as he had been brought forward “at the
particular request of the people of New England,” he was elected
by ballot unanimously.
Washington was then forty-three years of age. In stature he
a little exceeded six feet; his limbs were sinewy and well-propor-
tioned; his chest broad; his figure stately, blending dignity of
presence with ease. His robust constitution had been tried and
invigorated by his early life in the wilderness, the habit of occu-
pation out of doors, and rigid temperance; so that few equaled
him in strength of arm, or power of endurance, or noble horse-
manship. His complexion was florid; his hair dark brown; his
head in its shape perfectly round. His broad nostrils seemed
formed to give expression and escape to scornful anger. His
eyebrows were rayed and finely arched.
His dark-blue eyes,
which were deeply set, had an expression of resignation, and an
earnestness that was almost pensiveness. His forehead was some-
times marked with thought, but never with inquietude; his coun-
tenance was mild and pleasing and full of benignity.
At eleven years old left an orphan to the care of an excellent
but unlettered mother, he grew up without learning. Of arith-
metic and geometry he acquired just knowledge enough to be
able to practice measuring land; but all his instruction at school


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GEORGE BANCROFT
taught him not so much as the orthography or rules of grammar
of his own tongue. His culture was altogether his own work,
and he was in the strictest sense a self-made man; yet from his
early life he never seemed uneducated. At sixteen, he went into
the wilderness as a surveyor, and for three years continued the
pursuit, where the forests trained him, in meditative solitude, to
freedom and largeness of mind; and nature revealed to him her
obedience to serene and silent laws. In his intervals from toil,
he seemed always to be attracted to the best men, and to be
cherished by them. Fairfax, his employer, an Oxford scholar,
already aged, became his fast friend. He read little, but with
close attention. Whatever he took in hand he applied himself
to with care; and his papers, which have been preserved, show
how he almost imperceptibly gained the power of writing cor-
rectly; always expressing himself with clearness and directness,
often with felicity of language and grace.
When the frontiers on the west became disturbed, he at nine-
teen was commissioned an adjutant-general with the rank of
major. At twenty-one, he went as the envoy of Virginia to the
council of Indian chiefs on the Ohio, and to the French officers
near Lake Erie. Fame waited upon him from his youth; and no
one of his colony was so much spoken of. He conducted the
first military expedition from Virginia that crossed the Allegha-
nies. Braddock selected him as an aid, and he was the only man
who came out of the disastrous defeat near the Monongahela,
with increased reputation, which extended to England. The next
year, when he was but four-and-twenty, “the great esteem” in
which he was held in Virginia, and his real merit,” led the
lieutenant-governor of Maryland to request that he might be
"commissioned and appointed second in command” of the army
designed to march to the Ohio; and Shirley, the commander-in-
chief, heard the proposal with great satisfaction and pleasure,”
for he knew no provincial officer upon the continent to whom
he would so readily give that rank as to Washington. ”
In 1758
he acted under Forbes as a brigadier, and but for him that gen-
eral would never have crossed the mountains.
Courage was so natural to him that it was hardly spoken of
to his praise; no one ever at any moment of his life discovered
in him the least shrinking in danger; and he had a hardihood
of daring which escaped notice, because it was so enveloped by
superior calmness and wisdom.


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GEORGE BANCROFT
1455
His address was most easy and agreeable; his step firm and
graceful; his air neither grave nor familiar. He was as cheerful
as he was spirited, frank and communicative in the society of
friends, fond of the fox-chase and the dance, often sportive in
his letters, and liked a hearty laugh. "His smile,” writes Chas-
tellux, “was always the smile of benevolence. ” This joyousness
of disposition remained to the last, though the vastness of his
responsibilities was soon to take from him the right of displaying
the impulsive qualities of his nature, and the weight which he was
to bear up was to overlay and repress his gayety and openness.
His hand was liberal; giving quietly and without observation,
as though he was ashamed of nothing but being discovered in
doing good. He was kindly and compassionate, and of lively
sensibility to the sorrows of others; so that, if his country had
only needed a victim for its relief, he would have willingly
offered himself as a sacrifice. But while he was prodigal of
himself, he was considerate for others; ever parsimonious of the
blood of his countrymen.
He was prudent in the management of his private affairs,
purchased rich lands from the Mohawk valley to the flats of the
Kanawha, and improved his fortune by the correctness of his
judgment; but, as a public man, he knew no other aim than the
good of his country, and in the hour of his country's poverty he
refused personal emolument for his service.
His faculties were so well balanced and combined that his
constitution, free from excess, was tempered evenly with all the
elements of activity, and his mind resembled a well-ordered com-
monwealth; his passions, which had the intensest vigor, owned
allegiance to reason; and with all the fiery quickness of his spirit,
his impetuous and massive will was held in check by consummate
judgment. He had in his composition a calm, which gave him
in moments of highest excitement the power of self-control, and
enabled him to excel in patience, even when he had most cause
for disgust. Washington was offered a command when there was
little to bring out the unorganized resources of the continent but
his own influence, and authority was connected with the people
by the most frail, most attenuated, scarcely discernible threads;
yet, vehement as was his nature, impassioned as was his courage.
he so retained his ardor that he never failed continuously to
exert the attractive power of that influence, and never exerted it
so sharply as to break its force.


## p. 1456 (#254) ###########################################

1456
GEORGE BANCROFT
In secrecy he was unsurpassed; but his secrecy had the char-
acter of prudent reserve, not of cunning or concealment. His
great natural power of vigilance had been developed by his life
in the wilderness.
His understanding was lucid, and his judgment accurate; so
that his conduct never betrayed hurry or confusion. No detail
was too minute for his personal inquiry and continued super-
vision; and at the same time he comprehended events in their
widest aspects and relations. He never seemed above the object
that engaged his attention, and he was always equal, without an
effort, to the solution of the highest questions, even when there
existed no precedents to guide his decision. In the perfection of
the reflective powers, which he used habitually, he had no peer.
In this
way
he never drew to himself admiration for the
possession of any one quality in excess, never made in council
any one suggestion that was sublime but impracticable, never in
action took to himself the praise or the blame of undertakings
astonishing in conception, but beyond his means of execution.
It was the most wonderful accomplishment of this man that,
placed upon the largest theatre of events, at the head of the
greatest revolution in human affairs, he never failed to observe
all that was possible, and at the same time to bound his aspira-
tions by that which was possible.
A slight tinge in his character, perceptible only to the close
observer, revealed the region from which he sprung, and he
might be described as the best specimen of manhood as developed
in the South; but his qualities were so faultlessly proportioned
that his whole country rather claimed him as its choicest repre-
sentative, the most complete expression of all its attainments and
aspirations. He studied his country and conformed to it. His
countrymen felt that he was the best type of America, and
rejoiced in it, and were proud of it. They lived in his life, and
made his success and his praise their own.
Profoundly impressed with confidence in God's providence,
and exemplary in his respect for the forms of public worship, no
philosopher of the eighteenth century was more firm in the sup-
port of freedom of religious opinion, none more remote from
bigotry; but belief in God, and trust in his overruling power,
formed the essence of his character. Divine wisdom not only
illumines the spirit, it inspires the will. Washington was a man
of action, and not of theory or words; his creed appears in his


## p. 1457 (#255) ###########################################

GEORGE BANCROFT
1457
life, not in his professions, which burst from him very rarely,
and only at those great moments of crisis in the fortunes of his
country, when earth and heaven seemed actually to meet, and
his emotions became too intense for suppression; but his whole
being was one continued act of faith in the eternal, intelligent,
moral order of the universe. Integrity was so completely the
law of his nature, that a planet would sooner have shot from its
sphere than he have departed from his uprightness, which was
so constant that it often seemed to be almost impersonal. «His
integrity was the most pure, his justice the most inflexible I
have ever known,” writes Jefferson; no motives of interest or
consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his
decision. ”
They say of Giotto that he introduced goodness into the art
of painting; Washington carried it with him to the camp and the
Cabinet, and established a new criterion of human greatness.
The purity of his will confirmed his fortitude: and as he never
faltered in his faith in virtue, he stood fast by that which he
knew to be just; free from illusions; never dejected by the appre-
hension of the difficulties and perils that went before him, and
drawing the promise of success from the justice of his cause.
Hence he was persevering, leaving nothing unfinished; devoid of
all taint of obstinacy in his firmness; seeking and gladly receiv-
ing advice, but immovable in his devotedness to right.
Of a retiring modesty and habitual reserve,” his ambition
was no more than the consciousness of his power, and was sub-
ordinate to his sense of duty; he took the foremost place, for he
knew from inborn magnanimity that it belonged to him, and he
dared not withhold the service required of him; so that, with all
his humility, he was by necessity the first, though never for him-
self or for private ends. He loved fame, the approval of coming
generations, the good opinion of his fellow-men of his own time,
and he desired to make his conduct coincide with his wishes;
but not fear of censure, not the prospect of applause could tempt
him to swerve from rectitude, and the praise which he coveted
was the sympathy of that moral sentiment which exists in every
human breast, and goes forth only to the welcome of virtue.
There have been soldiers who have achieved mightier victories
in the field, and made conquests more nearly corresponding to
the boundlessness of selfish ambition; statesmen who have been
connected with more startling upheavals of society: but it is the
-92


## p. 1458 (#256) ###########################################

1458
JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM
greatness of Washington that in public trusts he used power
solely for the public good; that he was the life and moderator
and stay of the most momentous revolution in human affairs; its
moving impulse and its restraining power.
This also is the praise of Washington: that never in the tide
of time has any man lived who had in so great a degree the
almost divine faculty to command the confidence of his fellow-
men and rule the willing. Wherever he became known, in his
family, his neighborhood, his county, his native State, the con-
tinent, the camp, civil life, among the common people, in foreign
courts, throughout the civilized world, and even among the sav-
ages, he, beyond all other men, had the confidence of his kind.
Copyrighted by D. Appleton and Company, New York.
JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM
(1798-1846) (1796–1874)
were
mean,
**F THE writers who have won esteem by telling the pathetic
stories of their country's people, the names of John and
Michael Banim are ranked among the Irish Gael not lower
than that of Sir Walter Scott among the British Gael. The works of
the Banim brothers continued the same sad and fascinating story of
the “mere Irish ” which Maria Edgeworth and Lady Morgan had laid
to the hearts of English readers in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth century days. The Banim family was one of those which
belonged to the class of middlemen,” peo-
ple so designated in Ireland who
neither rich nor poor, but in the fortunate
The family home was in the his-
toric town of Kilkenny, famous alike for
its fighting confederation and its fighting
cats. Here Michael was born August 5th,
1796, and John April 3d, 1798. Michael
lived to a green old age, and survived his
younger brother John twenty-eight years,
less seventeen days; he died at Booters-
town, August 30th, 1874.
The first stories of this brotherly col-
John BANIM
laboration in letters appeared in 1825 with-
out mark of authorship, as recitals contributed for instruction and
amusement about the hearth-stone of an Irish household, called The



## p. 1459 (#257) ###########################################

JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM
1459
O'Hara Family. ' The minor chords of the soft music of the Gaelic
English as it fell from the tongues of Irish lads and lasses, whether
in note of sorrow or of sport, had already begun to touch with win-
some tenderness the stolid Saxon hearts, when that idyl of their
country's penal days, 'The Bit o' Writin',was sent out from the
O'Hara fireside. The almost instantaneous success and popularity of
their first stories speedily broke down the anonymity of the Banims,
and publishers became eager and gain-giving. About two dozen
stories were published before the death of John, in 1842. The best-
known of them, in addition to the one already mentioned, are “The
Boyne Water,' The Croppy,' and 'Father Connell. '
The fact that during the long survival of Michael no more of the
Banim stories appeared, is sometimes called in as evidence that the
latter had little to do with the writing of the series. Michael and
John, it was well known, had worked lovingly together, and Michael
claimed a part in thirteen of the tales, without excluding his brother
from joint authorship. Exactly what each wrote of the joint pro-
ductions has never been known. A single dramatic work of the
Banim brothers has attained to a position in the standard drama, the
play of Damon and Pythias,' a free adaptation from an Italian orig-
inal, written by John Banim at the instance of Richard Lalor Shiel.
The songs are also attributed to John. It is but just to say that the
great emigration to the United States which absorbed the Irish dur-
ing the '40's and '50's depreciated the sale of such works as those of
the Banims to the lowest point, and Michael had good reason, aside
from the loss of his brother's aid, to lay down his pen. The audi-
ence of the Irish story-teller had gone away across the great west-
ern sea. There was nothing to do but sit by the lonesome hearth
and await one's own to-morrow for the voyage of the greater sea.
THE PUBLICAN'S DREAM
From (The Bit o' Writin' and Other Tales)
He fair-day had passed over in a little straggling town in the
T,
portioned to the wild excitement it never failed to create.
But of all in the village, its publicans suffered most under the
reaction of great bustle. Few of their houses appeared open at
broad noon; and some — the envy of their competitors — continued
closed even after that late hour. Of these latter, many were of
the very humblest kind; little cabins, in fact, skirting the outlets
of the village, or standing alone on the roadside a good distance
beyond it.


## p. 1460 (#258) ###########################################

1460
JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM
About two o'clock upon the day in question, a house of
«Entertainment for Man and Horse," the very last of the descrip-
tion noticed to be found between the village and the wild tract
of mountain country adjacent to it, was opened by the propri-
etress, who had that moment arisen from bed.
The cabin consisted of only two apartmenis, and scarce more
than nominally even of two; for the half-plastered wicker and
straw partition, which professed to cut off a sleeping-nook from
the whole area inclosed by the clay walls, was little higher than
a tall man, and moreover chinky and porous in many places.
Let the assumed distinction be here allowed to stand, however,
while the reader casts his eyes around what was sometimes called
the kitchen, sometimes the tap-room, sometimes the “dancing-
flure. ” Forms which had run by the walls, and planks by way of
tables which had been propped before them, were turned topsy-
turvy, and in some instances broken. Pewter pots and pints,
battered and bruised, or squeezed together and flattened, and
fragments of twisted glass tumblers, lay beside them. The clay
floor was scraped with brogue-nails and indented with the heel of
that primitive foot-gear, in token of the energetic dancing which
had lately been performed upon it. In a corner still appeared
(capsized, however) an empty eight-gallon beer barrel, recently
the piper's throne, whence his bag had blown forth the inspiring
storms of jigs and reels, which prompted to more antics than
ever did a bag of the laughing-gas. Among the yellow turf-
ashes of the hearth lay on its side an old blackened tin kettle,
without a spout, - a principal utensil in brewing scalding water
for the manufacture of whisky-punch; and its soft and yet warm
bed was shared by a red cat, who had stolen in from his own
orgies, through some cranny, since day-break. The single four-
paned window of the apartment remained veiled by its rough
shutter, that turned on leather hinges; but down the wide yawn-
ing chimney came sufficient light to reveal the objects here
described.
The proprietress opened her back door. She was a woman of
about forty; of a robust, large-boned figure; with broad, rosy
visage, dark, handsome eyes, and well-cut nose: but inheriting a
mouth so wide as to proclaim her pure aboriginal Irish pedigree.
After a look abroad, to inhale the fresh air, and then a remon-
strance (ending in a kick) with the hungry pig, who ran,
squeaking and grunting, to demand his long-deferred breakfast,


## p. 1461 (#259) ###########################################

JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM
1461
she settled her cap, rubbed down her prauskeen [coarse apron],
tucked and pinned up her skirts behind, and saying in a loud,
commanding voice, as she spoke into the sleeping-chamber, “Get
up now at once, Jer, I bid you," vigorously if not tidily set about
putting her tavern to rights.
During her bustle the dame would stop an instant, and bend
her ear to listen for a stir inside the partition; but at last losing
patience she resumed:-
"Why, then, my heavy hatred on you, Jer Mulcahy, is it
gone into a sauvaun (pleasant drowsiness] you are, over again?
or maybe you stole out of bed, an' put your hand on one o'
them ould good-for-nothing books, that makes you the laziest
man that a poor woman ever had under one roof wid her? ay,
an' that sent you out of our dacent shop an' house, in the heart
of the town below, an' banished us here, Jer Mulcahy, to sell
drams o' whisky an' pots obeer to all the riff-raff of the
counthry-side, instead o' the nate boots an' shoes you served your
honest time to ? »
She entered his, or her chamber, rather, hoping that she
might detect him luxuriantly perusing in bed one of the muti-
lated books, a love of which (or more truly a love of indolence,
thus manifesting itself) had indeed chiefly caused his downfall in
the world. Her husband, however, really tired after his unusual
bodily efforts of the previous day, only slumbered, as Mrs.
Mulcahy had at first anticipated; and when she had shaken and
aroused him, for the twentieth time that morning, and scolded
him until the spirit-broken blockhead whimpered, — nay, wept, or
pretended to weep,- the dame returned to her household duties,
She did not neglect, however, to keep calling to him every
half-minute, until at last Mr. Jeremiah Mulcahy strode into the
kitchen: a tall, ill-contrived figure, that had once been well
fitted out, but that now wore its old skin, like its old clothes,
very loosely; and those old clothes were a discolored, threadbare,
half-polished kerseymere pair of trousers, and aged superfine black
coat, the last relics of his former Sunday finery,– to which had
recently and incongruously been added a calfskin vest, a pair of
coarse sky-blue peasant's stockings, and a pair of brogues. His
hanging cheeks and lips told, together, his present bad living
and domestic subjection; and an eye that had been blinded by
the smallpox wore neither patch nor band, although in better
days it used to be genteelly hidden from remark,- an assumption


## p. 1462 (#260) ###########################################

1462
JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM
of consequence now deemed incompatible with his altered condi-
tion in society.
"O Cauth! oh, I had such a dhrame,” he said, as he made
his appearance.
“An' i'll go bail you had,” answered Cauth, “an' when do
you ever go asleep without having one dhrame or another, that
pesters me off o' my legs the livelong day, till the night falls
again to let you have another? Musha, Jer, don't be ever an'
always such a fool; an’ never mind the dhrame now, but lend a
hand to help me in the work o' the house. See the pewther
there: haive it up, man alive, an' take it out into the garden,
and sit on the big stone in the sun, an' make it look as well as
you can, afther the ill usage it got last night; come, hurry, Jer
-go an do what I bid you. "
He retired in silence to “the garden,” a little patch of ground
luxuriant in potatoes and a few cabbages. Mrs. Mulcahy pursued
her work till her own sensations warned her that it was time to
prepare her husband's morning or rather day meal; for by the
height of the sun it should now be many hours past noon. So
she put down her pot of potatoes; and when they were boiled,
took out a wooden trencher full of them, and a mug of sour
milk, to Jer, determined not to summon him from his useful
occupation of restoring the pints and quarts to something of
their former shape.
Stepping through the back door, and getting him in view, she
stopped short in silent anger. His back was turned to her,
because of the sun; and while the vessels, huddled about in con-
fusion, seemed little the better of his latent skill and industry,
there he sat on his favorite round stone, studiously perusing, half
aloud to himself, some idle volume which doubtless he had smug-
gled into the garden in his pocket. Laying down her trencher
and her mug, Mrs. Mulcahy stole forward on tiptoe, gained his
shoulder without being heard, snatched the imperfect bundle of
soiled pages out of his hand, and hurled it into a neighbor's
cabbage-bed.
Jeremiah complained, in his usual half-crying tone, declaring
that she never could let him alone, so she couldn't, and he
would rather list for a soger than lade such a life, from year's
end to year's end, so he would. ”
"Well, an' do then -an' whistle that idle cur off wid you,”
pointing to a nondescript puppy, which had lain happily coiled


## p. 1463 (#261) ###########################################

JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM
1463
up at his master's feet until Mrs. Mulcahy's appearance, but that
now watched her closely, his ears half cocked and his eyes wide
open, though his position remained unaltered. "Go along to the
divil, you lazy whelp you! ” — she took up a pint in which a few
drops of beer remained since the previous night, and drained it
on the puppy's head, who instantly ran off, jumping sideways,
and yelping as loud as if some bodily injury had really visited
him — “Yes, an' now you begin to yowl, like your masther, for
nothing at all, only because a body axes you to stir your idle
legs—hould your tongue, you foolish baste! ” she stooped for a
stone — “one would think I scalded you. "
“You know you did, once, Cauth, to the backbone; an' small
blame for Shuffle to be afeard o' you ever since,” said Jer.
This vindication of his own occasional remonstrances, as well
as of Shuffle's, was founded in truth. When very young, just to
keep him from running against her legs while she was busy
over the fire, Mrs. Mulcahy certainly had emptied a ladleful of
boiling potato-water upon the poor puppy's back; and from that
moment it was only necessary to spill a drop of the coldest pos-
sible water, or of any cold liquid, on any part of his body, and
he believed he was again dreadfully scalded, and ran out of the
house screaming in all the fancied theories of torture.
“Will you ate your good dinner, now, Jer Mulcahy, an' prom-
ise to do something to help me, afther it ? - Mother o' Saints! »
- thus she interrupted herself, turning towards the place where
she had deposited the eulogized food — “see that yon unlucky
bird! May I never do an ill turn but there's the pig afther
spilling the sweet milk, an' now shoveling the beautiful white-
eyes down her throat at a mouthful! ”
Jer, really afflicted at this scene, promised to work hard the
moment he got his dinner; and his spouse, first procuring a
pitchfork to beat the pig into her sty, prepared a fresh meal for
him, and retired to eat her own in the house, and then to con-
tinue her labor.
In about an hour she thought of paying him another visit of
inspection, when Jeremiah's voice reached her ear, calling out in
disturbed accents, Cauth! Cauth! a-vourneen! For the love o'
heaven, Cauth! where are you? ”
Running to him, she found her husband sitting upright,
though not upon his round stone, amongst the still untouched
heap of pots and pints, his pock-marked face very pale, his


## p. 1464 (#262) ###########################################

1464
JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM
single eye staring, his hands clasped and shaking, and moisture
on his forehead.
"What! ” she cried, “the pewther just as I left it, over
again ! »
«O Cauth! Cauth! don't mind that now— but spake to me
kind, Cauth, an' comfort me. ”
"Why, what ails you, Jer a-vourneon ? ” affectionately taking
his hand, when she saw how really agitated he was.
"O Cauth, oh, I had such a dhrame, now, in earnest, at any
rate! ”
A dhrame! ” she repeated, letting go his hand, "a dhrame,
Jer Mulcahy! so, afther your good dinner, you go for to fall
asleep, Jer Mulcahy, just to be ready wid a new dhrame for me,
instead of the work you came out here to do, five blessed hours
ago!
“Don't scould me, now, Cauth; don't, a-pet: only listen to me,
an' then say what you like. You know the lonesome little glen
between the hills, on the short cut for man or horse, to Kilbrog-
gan? Well, Cauth, there I found myself in the dhrame; and I
saw two sailors, tired afther a day's hard walking, sitting before
one of the big rocks that stand upright in the wild place; an'
they were ating or dhrinking, I couldn't make out which; and
one was a tall, sthrong, broad-shouldhered man, an' the other was
sthrong, too, but short an’ burly; an' while they were talking very
civilly to each other, lo an' behould you, Cauth, I seen the tall
man whip his knife into the little man; an' then they both
sthruggled, an' wrastled, an' schreeched together, till the rocks
rung again; but at last the little man was a corpse; an' may I
never see a sight o' glory, Cauth, but all this was afore me as
plain as you are, in this garden! an' since the hour I was born,
Cauth, I never got such a fright; an'-oh, Cauth! what's that
now ? »
“What is it, you poor fool, you, but a customer, come at last
into the kitchen—an' time for us to see the face o' one this
blessed day. Get up out o' that, wid your dhrames — don't you
hear 'em knocking? I'll stay here to put one vessel at laste to
rights— for I see I must. ”
Jeremiah arose, groaning, and entered the cabin through the
back door. In a few seconds he hastened to his wife, more ter-
ror-stricken than he had left her, and settling his loins against
the low garden wall, stared at her.


## p. 1465 (#263) ###########################################

JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM
1465
"Why, then, duoul's in you, Jer Mulcahy (saints forgive me
for cursing ! ) — and what's the matter wid you, at-all at-all ? »
« They're in the kitchen,” he whispered.
“Well, an' what will they take ? ”
“I spoke never a word to them, Cauth, nor they to me; - I
couldn't- an' I won't, for a duke's ransom: I only saw them
stannin' together, in the dark that's coming on, behind the dour,
an' I knew them at the first look — the tall one an' the little
>)
one. ”
With a flout at his dreams, and his cowardice, and his good-
for-nothingness, the dame hurried to serve her customers. Jere-
miah heard her loud voice addressing them, and their hoarse
tones answering She came out again for two pints to draw
some beer, and commanded him to follow her and “discoorse
the customers. ” He remained motionless. She returned in a
short time, and fairly drove him before her into the house.
He took a seat remote from his guests, with difficulty pro-
nouncing the ordinary words of "God save ye, genteels,” which
they bluffly and heartily answered. His glances towards them
were also few; yet enough to inform him that they conversed
together like friends, pledging healths and shaking hands. The
tall sailor abruptly asked him how far it was, by the short cut,
to a village where they proposed to pass the night- Kilbrog-
gan ? - Jeremiah started on his seat, and his wife, after a glance
and a grumble at him, was obliged to speak for her husband.
They finished their beer; paid for it; put up half a loaf and a
cut of bad watery cheese, saying that they might feel more
hungry a few miles on than they now did; and then they arose
to leave the cabin. Jeremiah glanced in great trouble around.
His wife had fortunately disappeared; he snatched up his old
hat, and with more energy than he could himself remember, ran
forward to be a short way on the road before them. They soon
approached him; and then, obeying a conscientious impulse, Jere-
miah saluted the smaller of the two, and requested to speak
with him apart. The sailor, in evident surprise, assented. Jer
vaguely cautioned him against going any farther that night, as
it would be quite dark by the time he should get to the mount-
ain pass, on the by-road to Kilbroggan. His warning was
made light of He grew more earnest, asserting, what was not
the fact, that it was "a bad road,” meaning one infested by
robbers. Still the bluff tar paid no attention, and was turning


## p. 1466 (#264) ###########################################

1466
JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM
away. "Oh, sir; oh, stop, sir,” resumed Jeremiah, taking great
courage, “I have a thing to tell you;” and he rehearsed his
dream, averring that in it he had distinctly seen the present
object of his solicitude set upon and slain by his colossal com-
panion. The listener paused a moment; first looking at Jer,
and then at the ground, very gravely: but the next moment
he burst into a loud, and Jeremiah thought, frightful laugh,
and walked rapidly to overtake his shipmate. Jeremiah, much
oppressed, returned home.
Towards dawn, next morning, the publican awoke in an
ominous panic, and aroused his wife to listen to a loud knock-
ing, and a clamor of voices at their door. She insisted that
there was no such thing, and scolded him for disturbing her
sleep. A renewal of the noise, however, convinced even her
incredulity, and showed that Jeremiah was right for the first
time in his life, at least. Both arose, and hastened to answer
the summons.
When they unbarred the front door, a gentleman, surrounded
by a crowd of people of the village, stood before it. He had
discovered on the by-road through the hills from Kilbroggan, a
dead body, weltering in its gore, and wearing sailor's clothes;
had ridden on in alarm; had raised the village; and some of
its population, recollecting to have seen Mrs. Mulcahy's visitors
of the previous evening, now brought him to her house to hear
what she could say on the subject.
Before she could say anything, her husband fell senseless at
her side, groaning dolefully. While the bystanders raised him,
she clapped her hands, and exalted her voice in ejaculations, as
Irish women, when grieved or astonished or vexed, usually do;
and now, as proud of Jeremiah's dreaming capabilities as she had
before been impatient of them, rehearsed his vision of the mur-
der, and authenticated the visit of the two sailors to her house,
almost while he was in the act of making her the confidant of
his prophetic ravings. The auditors stept back in consternation,
crossing themselves, smiting their breasts, and crying out, “The
Lord save us! The Lord have mercy upon us! "
Jeremiah slowly awoke from his swoon. The gentleman who
had discovered the body commanded his attendants back to the
lonesome glen, where it lay. Poor Jeremiah fell on his knees,
and with tears streaming down his cheeks, prayed to be saved
from such a trial. His neighbors almost forced him along.


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JOHN AND MICHAEL BANIM
1467
All soon gained the spot, a narrow pass between slanting piles
of displaced rocks; the hills from which they had tumbled rising
brown and barren and to a great height above and beyond them.
And there, indeed, upon the strip of verdure which formed the
winding road through the defile, lay the corpse of one of the
sailors who had visited the publican's house the evening before.
Again Jeremiah dropt on his knees, at some distance from
the body, exclaiming, “Lord save us! — yes! oh, yes, neighbors,
this is the very place! - only - the saints be good to us again ! -
'twas the tall sailor I seen killing the little sailor, and here's the
tall sailor murthered by the little sailor. ”
Dhrames go by conthraries, some way or another,” observed
one of his neighbors; and Jeremiah's puzzle was resolved.
Two steps were now indispensable to be taken; the county
coroner should be summoned, and the murderer sought after.
The crowd parted to engage in both matters simultaneously.
Evening drew on when they again met in the pass: and the first,
who had gone for the coroner, returned with him, a distance of
near twenty miles; but the second party did not prove so success-
ful. In fact they had discovered no clue to the present retreat
of the supposed assassin.
The coroner impaneled his jury, and held his inquest under a
large upright rock, bedded in the middle of the pass, such as
Jeremiah said he had seen in his dream. A verdict of willful
murder against the absent sailor was quickly agreed upon; but
ere it could be recorded, all hesitated, not knowing how to indi-
vidualize a man of whose name they were ignorant.
The summer night had fallen upon their deliberations, and the
moon arose in splendor, shining over the top of one of the high
hills that inclosed the pass, so as fully to illumine the bosom of
the other. During their pause, a man appeared standing upon the
line of the hill thus favored by the moonlight, and every eye
turned in that direction. He ran down the abrupt declivity
beneath him; he gained the continued sweep of jumbled rocks
which immediately walled in the little valley, springing from one
to another of them with such agility and certainty that it seemed
almost magical; and a general whisper of fear now attested the
fact of his being dressed in a straw hat, a short jacket, and loose
white trousers. As he jumped from the last rock upon the sward
of the pass, the spectators drew back; but he, not seeming to
notice them, walked up to the corpse, which had not yet been


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