The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vassall Morton, by Francis Parkman This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Vassall Morton A Novel Author: Francis Parkman Release Date: May 23, 2012 [EBook #39768] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VASSALL MORTON *** Produced by Ron Swanson (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries) VASSALL MORTON. A Novel. BY FRANCIS PARKMAN, AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC," AND "PRAIRIE AND ROCKY MOUNTAIN LIFE." Ecrive qui voudra! Chacun à ce mêtier, Peut perdre impunément de l'encre et du papier. BOILEAU. BOSTON: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY. 1856. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1856, by PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. CHAPTERS I XI XXI XXXI XLI LI LXI LXXI II XII XXII XXXII XLII LII LXII LXXII III XIII XXIII XXXIII XLIII LIII LXIII LXXIII IV XIV XXIV XXXIV XLIV LIV LXIV LXXIV V XV XXV XXXV XLV LV LXV VI XVI XXVI XXXVI XLVI LVI LXVI VII XVII XXVII XXXVII XLVII LVII LXVII VIII XVIII XXVIII XXXVIII XLVIII LVIII LXVIII IX XIX XXIX XXXIX XLIX LIX LXIX X XX XXX XL L LX LXX Vassall Morton. CHAPTER I. Remote from towns he ran his godly race.—Goldsmith. "Macknight on the Epistles,—that's the name of the book?" "Yes, sir, if you please. I am desirous of consulting it with a view—" "Well, this way, Mr. Jacobs. Here's the librarian. Mr. Stillingfleet, let me introduce my friend, the Reverend Mr. Jacobs, of West Weathersfield." "I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir," said Mr. Jacobs, taking the librarian's hand with an air of diffident veneration. "Mr. Jacobs wishes to consult Mackwright on the Epistles." "Macknight, if you please, Dr. Steele." "O, Macknight. Will you be so kind as to let him have the use of it in my name?" "If you will go with Mr. Rubens, sir," said the librarian, "he will show you the book." "Thank you, sir," replied Mr. Jacobs, to whom the words were addressed; and he followed the assistant among the alcoves in a timid, tiptoe progress, for, to him, the very air he breathed seemed redolent of learning, and the dust beneath his feet consecrated to science. Dr. Steele remained behind, conversing with the librarian. "My friend has something of the ancient apostolic simplicity hanging about him still. He looks with as much awe at Harvard College library as I did myself forty-five years ago, when I came down from Steuben to join the freshman class." "So you came from Steuben! Did not old John Morton come from the same place?" "To be sure he did. He was the glory of the town. He pulled down the old clapboard meeting house that his father used to preach in, and built a new one for him: besides giving a start in business to half the young men of the village." "Do you see that undergraduate at the end of the hall, standing by the last alcove, reading?" "Yes; what about him? He seems a hardy, good-looking young fellow enough." "He is John Morton's son." "Is it possible? I remember him when he was a child, but have not seen him for these ten years. After his father's death, his mother took him to Europe, to be educated; but she never came back; she died in Paris." "He is Mr. Morton's only child—is he not?" "Yes; his first wife had no children; and after he had buried her,—which, by the way, I believe was the happiest hour of his life,—he married a very different sort of person, Margaret Vassall, this boy's mother." "What, one of the old Vassall race?" "Exactly; and, I suppose, the last survivor. I used to know her. She was a handsome woman, and, bating her family pride, altogether a very fine character. She managed her husband admirably." "Why, what need had John Morton of being managed?" "O, Morton was a noble old gentleman, a merchant of the old school, and generous as the day; but he had his faults. He made nothing of his three bottles of Madeira at dinner, and besides— Ah, Mr. Jacobs, so you have found Macknight." "Yes, sir," said Mr. Jacobs, coming up, "I have the volumes." "See that young man, yonder. That's the son of your old friend, Mr. Morton." "Really! upon my word! Ah! Mr. Morton was a friend to me, sir—a very kind friend." And, in the simplicity of his heart, Mr. Jacobs glided up to the student, and blandly accosted him. "How do you do, young gentleman? I knew your worthy father. I knew him well. I have often sat at his hospitable board on anniversary week." Thus addressed, Vassall Morton looked up from his book,—it was Froissart's Chronicle,—inclined his head in acknowledgment, and waited to hear more. "Ahem!" coughed Mr. Jacobs, a little embarrassed: "your father was a most worthy and estimable gentleman: a true friend of the feeble and destitute. Ahem!—what class are you in, Mr. Morton?" "The junior class," said the young man, a suppressed smile flickering at the corner of his mouth. "Ahem! I hope, sir, that, like your father, you will long live to be an honor to your native town." "Thank you, sir." "I wish you good morning." "Good morning, sir," said Morton, divided between an inclination to smile at the odd, humble little figure before him, and an unwillingness to wound the other's feelings. "Are you ready to go, Mr. Jacobs?" said Dr. Steele. "If you please, sir, we will now take our departure;"—gathering the four volumes of Macknight on the Epistles under his arm;—"Good morning, Mr. Stillingfleet; good morning, Mr. Rubens. I am indebted to your kindness, gentlemen— ahem!" "This is the way out, Mr. Jacobs," said Steele to his diffident friend from West Weathersfield, who, in his embarrassment, was going out at the wrong door. "I beg your pardon, sir—ahem!" replied Mr. Jacobs, with a bashful smile. And Dr. Steele, pointing to the true exit, ushered his rustic and reverend protégé from the sacred precinct of learning. CHAPTER II. Richt hardie baith in ernist and play.—Sir David Lyndsay. "Morton, what was the little old fogy in the white cravat saying to you just now in the library?" "Telling me that my father was a worthy man, and that he hoped I should make just such another." "Ah, that was kind of him." "What a pile of books you are lugging! Here, let me take half a dozen of them for you. You look as if you were training to be a hotel porter." "I am laying in for vacation." "What sense is there in that? Let alone your Latin, Greek, and mathematics; what the deuse is vacation made for? Take to the woods, as I do, breathe the fresh air, and see the world at large." "Do you call it seeing the world at large, to go off into some barbarous, uninhabitable place, among mosquitoes, snakes, wolves, bears, and catamounts? What sense is there in that? What can you do when you get there?" "Shoot muskrats, and fish for mudpouts. Will you go with me?" "Thank you, no. There's no one in the class featherwitted enough to go with you, except Meredith, and he ought to know better." "Stay at home, then, and improve your mind. I shall be off to-morrow." "Alone?" "Yes." Mr. Horace Vinal shrugged his shoulders, a movement which caused Sophocles and Seneca to escape from under his arm. Morton gathered them out of the mud, and thrusting them back again into their place, left his burdened fellow- student to make the best of his way towards his den in Stoughton Hall. CHAPTER III. O, love, in such a wilderness as this!—Gertrude of Wyoming. Morton, en route for the barbarous districts of which Vinal had expressed his disapproval, stopped by the way at a spot which, though wild enough at that time, had ceased to be a wilderness. This was the Notch of the White Mountains, perverted, since, into a resort of quasi fashion. Here, arriving late at the lonely hostelry of one Tom Crawford, he learned from that worthy person, to whom his face was well known, that other guests, from Boston, like himself, were seated at the tea table. Accordingly, descending thither, he saw four persons. The first was a quiet- looking man, with the air of a gentleman, and something in his appearance which seemed to indicate military habits and training. Morton remembered to have seen him before. At his side, and under his tutelary care, sat two personages, who, from their dimensions, must have been boys of some seven years old, but from the solemnity of their countenances, might have passed for a brace of ancient philosophers. They looked so much alike that Morton thought he saw double. Each was seated on a volume of Clark's Commentaries, to raise his chin to the needful height above the table cloth. Both were encased in tunics, strapped about them with shining morocco belts. Their small persons were terminated at one end by morocco shoes of somewhat infantile pattern, and at the other by enormous heads, with chalky complexions, pale, dilated eyes, wrinkled foreheads, and mouths pursed up with an expression of anxious care, abstruse meditation, and the most experienced wisdom. In amazement at these phenomena, Morton turned next towards the fourth member of the party; and here he encountered a new emotion, of a kind quite different. Hitherto, in his college seclusion, he had not very often met, except in imagination, with that union of beauty, breeding, and refinement which belongs to the best life of cities, and which he now saw in the person of a young lady, a year or two his junior. He longed for a pretext to address her, but found none; when her father—for such he seemed—broke silence, and accosted him. "I beg your pardon; is it possible that you are the son of John Morton?" "Yes." "He was my father's old friend. I thought I could scarcely mistake your likeness to your mother." "I believe I have the pleasure of speaking to Colonel Leslie." Leslie inclined his head. "My title clings to me, I find, though I have no right to it now." He had left the army long before, exchanging the rough frontier service for pursuits more to his taste. "Upon my word," pursued Leslie, after conversing for some time with the new comer on the scenery and game of the mountains, "you seem to be au fait at this sort of thing." "At least I ought to be; I have spent half my college vacations here." "It is unlucky for us that we must set out for home in the morning. You might have given us good advice in our sightseeing." "Crawford will tell you that I am tolerably well qualified to be a guide." "You do not look like a collegian. They are generally thin and pale with studying." "Oftener with laziness and cigar smoke." "Very likely. You seem too hardy and active for a student." Morton's weak point was touched. "I can do well enough, I believe, in that way. Crawford was boasting, last year, that he could outwrestle any man in New England. I challenged him, and threw him on his back." "You! Crawford is twice as heavy and strong as you are." "I am stronger than I seem," replied Morton, with great complacency. And Leslie, observing him with an eye not unused to measure the thews and sinews of men, saw that, though his frame was light, and his shoulders not broad, yet his compact proportions, deep chest, and muscular limbs, showed the highest degree of bodily vigor. "You are quite right. I would enlist you without asking the surgeon's advice." Here the nurse, attendant on the two philosophers, appeared at the door; and they, obedient to the mute summons, scrambled gravely from their seats, and, with solemn steps, withdrew. Miss Leslie presently followed, and Morton and her father were left alone. "You are from Harvard—are you not?" "Yes." "Do you know Horace Vinal?" "Very well; he is my classmate." "Is he not thought a very promising young man?" "He is our first scholar." "I hear him spoken of as a young man of fine abilities." "And he knows how to make the best of them." "Not at all dissipated." "Not at all." "And a great student." "Digs day and night." "A little ambitious, I suppose." "A little." "But very prudent." "Uncommonly so." "An excellent young man," exclaimed Leslie; "I think very highly of Horace Vinal." Morton cast a sidelong glance at him, and there was a covert smile in his eye. He began to see a weak spot in his companion. "He will certainly make his way in the world," pursued Leslie. "No doubt of it." "He is not so fond of out-door exercises as you seem to be." "He is good at one kind of exercise." "What's that?" "He can draw the long bow." Leslie did not see Morton's meaning, and took the words literally, as the latter intended he should. "What, have you an archery club at college?" "No; but there are one or two among us who use the long bow, now and then, and Vinal beats them by all odds. But he is very modest on the subject, and never alludes to it. In fact, there are very few who know his skill in that way." "It is all the better for his health to have some amusement of the kind." "Yes, it would be a pity if his health should suffer." "I have often thought that his mind was too active for his constitution." Morton cast another sidelong look at Leslie. Though he admired the daughter, he refrained with difficulty from quizzing the father. "You seem to know Vinal very well." "Yes, thoroughly; I have known him from childhood; he is the son of my wife's sister, and I am his guardian. I watch his progress with great interest." "You will see him, I dare say, reach the top of the ladder. At least, it will be no fault of his if he does not." "I am very glad to hear my good opinion of him confirmed by one who has seen so much of him." And, rising, he left the room. "A very good young man, this seems to be," he thought to himself, as he did so. "Amiable, good natured, and all that; but very soft, for a man who has seen hard service," thought Morton, on his part. The party reassembled in the inn parlor. Masters William and Marlborough, having gained a reprieve from their banishment, busied themselves at the table, the one in poring over Brewster on Natural Magic, the other in solving a problem of Euclid. Leslie viewed these infant diversions by no means with an eye of favor, and soon banished the students to a retirement more suited to their tender years. The sentence overcame all their philosophy, and they were carried off howling. Morton, meanwhile, was breathing a charmed air; and though diffident in the presence of ladies, and not liberally endowed by nature with the gift of tongues, his zeal to commend himself to the good opinion of Miss Edith Leslie availed somewhat to supply the defect. He had never mixed with the world, conventionally so called, and knew as much of ladies as of mermaids. But having an ardent temperament and a Quixotic imagination; being addicted, moreover, to Froissart and kindred writers; and, indeed, visited with a glimmering of that antique light which modern folly despises, he would have been ready, with the eye of a handsome woman upon him, for any rash and ridiculous exploit. This extravagance did him no manner of harm. On the contrary, it went far to keep him out of mischief; for in the breast of this youngster a chivalresque instinct battled against the urgency of vigorous blood, and taught his nervous energies to seek escape rather in ceaseless bodily exercises, rowing, riding, and the like, than in any less commendable recreations. The close of the evening found him with an imagination much excited. In short, decisive symptoms declared themselves of that wide-spread malady, of which he had read much and pondered not a little, but which had not, as yet, numbered him among its victims. Among the various emotions, novel, strange, and pleasurable, which began to possess him, came, however, the dismal consciousness that, with the morning sun, the enchantress of his fancy was to vanish like a dream of the night. CHAPTER IV. What pleasure, sir, find we in life, to lock it From action and adventure?—Cymbeline. Morning came, and the Leslies departed. Morton watched the lumbering carriage till it disappeared down the rugged gorge of the Notch, then drew a deep breath, and ruefully betook himself to his day's sport. He explored, rod in hand, the black pools and plunging cascades of the Saco; but for once that he thought of the trout, he thought ten times of Edith Leslie. Towards night, however, he returned with a basket reasonably well filled; and, as he drew near the inn, he saw a young man, of his own age, or thereabouts, sitting under the porch. He had a cast of features which, in a feudal country, would have been taken as the sign of noble birth; and though he wore a slouched felt hat and a rough tweed frock, though his attitude was careless, though he held between his teeth a common clay pipe, at which he puffed with much relish, and though he was conversing on easy terms with two attenuated old Vermont farmers, with faces like a pair of baked apples,—yet none but the most unpractised eye would have taken him for other than a gentleman. As soon as Morton saw him, he shouted a joyful greeting, to which Mr. Edward Meredith, rising and going to meet his friend, replied with no less emphasis. "I thought," said Morton, "that you meant to do the dutiful this time, and stay with your father and family at the sea shore." "Couldn't stand the sea shore," said Meredith, seating himself again; "so I came up to the mountains to see what you were doing." "You couldn't have done better; but come this way, out of earshot." "Colonel," said Meredith, in a tone of melancholy remonstrance, "this seat is a good seat, an easy seat, a pleasant seat. Why do you want to root me up?" "Come on, man," replied Morton. "Show the way, then, Jack-a-lantern. But where do you want to lead me? I won't sit on the rail fence, and I won't sit on the grass." "There's a bench here for you." "Has it a back?" "Yes, it has a back. There it is." Meredith carefully removed a few twigs and shavings which lay upon the bench, seated himself, rested his arm along the back, and began puffing at his pipe again. But scarcely had he thus composed himself when the tea bell rang from the house. "Do you hear that, now? Another move to make! Didn't I tell you so?" "Not that I remember." "Please to explain, colonel, what you expect to gain by always bobbing about as you do, like a drop of quicksilver." "To hear you, one would take you for the laziest fellow in the universe." "There's reason in all things. I keep my vital energies against the time of need, instead of wasting them in unnecessary gyrations. Ladies at the table! New Yorkers in full feather, or I'll be shot! Now, what the deuse have lace and ribbons to do in a place like this?" During the meal, the presence of the strangers was a check upon their conversation. "Crawford," said Meredith, when it was over, "have you had that sofa taken into my room?" "Yes, sir." "And the arm chair?" "Yes, sir." "And the candles?" "Yes, sir." "All right. Now, then, colonel, allons." The name of colonel was Morton's college sobriquet. Meredith led the way into a room which adjoined his bed chamber, and which, under his direction, had assumed an air of great comfort. Morton took possession of the sofa; his friend of the arm chair. "What's the word with you?" began the latter; "are you bound for the Adirondacks, the Margalloway, or the Penobscot?" "To the Margalloway, I think. You mean to go with me, I hope." "To the Margalloway, or the antipodes, or any place this side of the North Pole." "Then, if you say so, we'll set off to-morrow." "Gently, colonel. One day's fishing here. We have six weeks before us. What sort of thing is that that you are smoking?" "Try, and judge for yourself," said Morton, handing his cigar case. Meredith took a sample of its contents between his fingers, and examined it with attention. "I always thought you were a kind of heathen, and now I know it. Where did you pick up that cigar?" "Do you find it so very bad?" "It would not poison a man, and perhaps might pass for a little better than none at all. But nobody except a pagan would touch it when any thing better could be had." "I forgot to bring any from town, and had to supply myself on the way." "That goes to redeem your character. Fling those away, or give them to the landlord; I have plenty of better ones. But a pipe is the best thing at a place like this, and especially at camp, in the woods." "So I have often heard you say." "Mine, though, made a sensation, not long ago." "How was that?" "The whole brood of the Stubbs, bag and baggage, passed here this afternoon." "Thank Heaven they did not stop." "They came in their private carriage. I nodded to Ben, and touched my hat to Mrs. S. You should have seen their faces. They thought there must be something out of joint in the mechanism of the universe, when a person of their acquaintance could be seen smoking a pipe at a tavern door, like a bog-trotting Irishman." "You should have asked Ben to go with us." "It would be the worst martyrdom the poor devil ever had to pass through. Ben seemed displeased with the scenery. He says that the White Mountains are nothing to any one who, like himself, has seen the Alps." "Pray when did Stubb see the Alps?" "O, the whole family have seen the Alps,—the Alps, Italy, the Rhine, the nobility and gentry, and every thing else that Europe affords. They all swear by Europe, and hold the soil of America dirt cheap. You can see with half an eye what they are—an uncommonly bad imitation of an indifferent model." "Let them pass for what they are worth. Have you come armed and equipped—rifle, blanket, hatchet, and so forth?" "Yes, and I have brought an oil cloth tent." "So much the better; it is more convenient than a birch bark shanty." "I give you notice that I mean to take my ease in that tent." "I hope you will." "One can be comfortable in the woods, as well as elsewhere. Remember, colonel, that we are out for amusement, and not after scalps. Last summer, you drove ahead, rain or shine, through thickets, and swamps, and ponds, as if you were on some errand of life and death. For this once, have mercy on frail humanity, and moderate your ardor." Morton gave the pledge required. They passed the evening in arranging the details of their journey, set forth and spent three or four weeks in the forest between the settled districts of Canada and Maine, poling their canoe up lonely streams, meeting no human face, but smoking their pipes in great contentment by their evening camp fire. They chased a bear, and lost him in a windfall; killed two moose, six deer, and trout without number; and underwent, with exemplary patience, a martyrdom of midges, black flies, and mosquitoes. And when, at last, they turned their faces homeward, they wiled the way with plans of longer journeyings,—more bear, more moose, more deer, more trout, more midges, black flies, and mosquitoes. CHAPTER V. Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.—Gray. It was a week before "class day,"—that eventful day which was virtually to close the college career of Morton and his contemporaries. The little janitor, commonly called Paddy O'Flinn, was ringing the evening prayer bell from the cupola of Harvard Hall,—its tone was dull and muffled, some graceless sophomore having lately painted it white, inside and out,—and the students were mustering at the summons. The sedate and the gay, the tender freshman and the venerable senior, the prosperous city beau and the awkward country bumpkin, one and all were filing from their respective quarters towards the chapel in University Hall. The bell ceased; the loiterers quickened their steps; the last belated freshman, with the dread of the proctor before his eyes, bounded frantically up the steps; and for a brief space all was silence and solitude. Then there was a murmuring, rushing sound, as of a coming tempest, and University Hall disgorged its contents, casting forth the freshmen and juniors at one door, and the sophomores and seniors at the other. Of these last was Morton, who, with three or four of his class, walked across the college yard, towards the great gateway. By his side was a young man named Rosny, carelessly dressed, but with a lively, dare-devil face, and the look of a good-natured game cock. "I shall be sorry to leave this place," said Morton; "I like it. I like the elms, and the gravel walks, and the scurvy old brick and mortar buildings." "Then I am not of your mind," said Rosny; "gravel or mud, brickbats or paving stones, they are the same to me, the world over. Halloo, Wren," to a mustachioed youth who just then joined them; "we are bound to your room." "That's as it should be. But where are the rest?" "Coming—all in good time; here's one of them." A dapper little person approached, with a shining beaver, yellow kid gloves, a switch cane, and a very stiff but somewhat dashing cravat, surmounted by a round and rubicund face. "Ah, Chester!" exclaimed Wren; "the very man we were looking for. Come and take a glass of punch at my room." "Punch, indeed!" replied Chester, whose face had changed from a prim expression to one of great hilarity the moment he saw his friends—"no, no, gentlemen, I renounce punch and all its works. The pure unmixed, the pure juice of the grape for me." "But, Chester," urged Wren, "won't the pure mountain dew be a sufficient inducement?" "The good company will be a sufficient inducement," said Chester, waving his hand,—"the good company, gentlemen, —and the good liquor. But what have we here? Meredith and Vinal walking side by side. Good Heavens, what a conjunction!" The objects of Chester's astonishment, on a flattering invitation from Wren, joined the party, which, however, was weakened by the temporary secession of Rosny, who, pleading an errand in the village, left them with a promise to rejoin them soon. His place was in a few moments more than supplied by a new party of recruits, among whom was Stubb. Arrived at Wren's room, the desk and other appliances of study were banished from the table; bottles and glasses usurped their place, and the company composed themselves for conversation, most of them permitting their chairs to stand quietly on all fours, though one or two, like heathen Yankees from the backwoods, forced them to rear rampant on the hind legs, the occupant's feet resting on the ledge over the fireplace. A few minutes passed, when a quick, firm step came up the stairs, and Rosny entered. "How are you again, Dick?" said Meredith. "Good evening, Mr. Rosny," echoed Stubb, who sat alone on the window seat. "Eh? what's that?" demanded Rosny, turning sharp round upon the last speaker, with a face divided between indignation and laughter. "I said, 'Good evening,'" replied Stubb, much disconcerted. "And why didn't you say, 'Good morning,' yesterday, eh?—when I met you in Boston, eh? He gave me the cut direct," turning to the company. "Mr. Benjamin Stubb, here, gave me the cut direct! It was the pepper-and-salt coat and the thunder-and-lightning breeches that Stubb couldn't think of bowing to when he was walking in —— Street, with a lady. Look here, Stubb,"—again facing the victim,—"what do you take me for? and what the devil do you take yourself for? I know your dirty family history. Your grandfather was a bricklayer, and the Lord knows who your great grandfather was. The best Huguenot blood of France runs in my veins! My ancestors were fighting at Ivry and Jarnac, while yours were peddling coal and potatoes about London streets, or digging mud in a ditch, for any thing you or I know to the contrary." Stubb gasped. "Your father has a crest painted on his carriage; but where did he get it? Why, Cribb, the engraver, stole it for him out of the British peerage." Stubb, who was weak and timorous, here rose in great confusion, muttered something about conduct unbecoming to a gentleman, and meaning to require an explanation, and abruptly left the room. "That job is finished," said Rosny, composedly seating himself. "His bill is settled for him." "But, Dick," said Morton, who had been laughing in his sleeve during the scene, "do you want to be considered as a Frenchman or an American?" "I'm an American," answered Rosny—"an American and a democrat, every inch." Rosny had adopted democratic principles and habits partly out of spite against the class to which Stubb belonged, and which he was pleased to designate as the "codfish aristocracy," and partly because he thought that he could thus most effectually gain the ends of his impatient, hankering ambition. His ancestor, the head of an eminent Huguenot race, had been driven to America by the persecutions which followed the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The family had lived ever since in poverty and obscurity; yet this fiery young democrat nourished an inordinate pride of birth, and never forgot that he was descended from a line of warlike nobles. "No, no," said Rosny, as Morton pushed a glass towards him, "drinking is against my rule— Well, as it's about the last time,"—filling the glass,—"here's to you all." "The last time!" said Morton; "that's a dismal word. If my next four years are as pleasant as these last have been, I will never complain of them." "I tell you, boys," said Meredith, who was tranquilly puffing at his cigar, "the cream of our lives is skimmed already. Rough and tumble, hurry and worry—that will be the story with most of us, more or less, to the end of our days." "Rough and tumble!" exclaimed Rosny; "so much the better. 'Scots play best at the roughest game'—that's just my case. Who wants to be always paddling about on smooth water? Close reefed topsails, a gale astern, and breakers all round —that's the game." "Every one to his taste," said Chester, shrugging his shoulders. "I suppose a salamander loves the fire, but I don't. 'The race of ambition'—'the unconquerable will'—pshaw! Cui bono? One chases after his object, and when he has got it, he turns from it, and chases another. I profess the philosophy of Horace—enjoy the hour as it flies. Ah! he was a model man, a man after my own heart, a gentleman and a man of the world. He could drink his Falernian, and thank the gods for their gifts." Rosny whispered in Morton's ear, "Chester ought to have been born a century ago, among the John Bulls, up in the cockloft of Brazen Nose College, or some such antediluvian hole." In spite of these derogatory remarks, Chester, besides being one of the best scholars in the class, was noted for a social, jovial disposition, which, though, like Fluellen's valor, a little out of fashion, made him a general favorite. "Speaking of the next four years," said Wren, "I wonder what plans each of us has made for that time. For my part, I have no plan at all, and should be glad to profit by the suggestions of the rest. Come, Chester, what do you mean to do?" "Expatiate," said Chester, expanding his hands, and thereby revealing an odd little antique ring which he wore; "take mine ease, roaming, like the bee, from blossom to blossom. I will leave the earnest men—bah!—the men with a mission —to grub on in their vocation. I will renounce this land of cotton mills and universal suffrage. First for Paris, to walk the Boulevards, and go to the masked balls and the opera;—vive la bagatelle!—then for Rome, to saunter through the Vatican and the picture galleries,—but not to moralize with a long face over fallen grandeur, and the mutability of human affairs. No, no, gentlemen, I belong to another school of philosophy. I will sit among the ruins of the Forum, and laugh, like Democritus, at the image of Death. Then I will recreate myself at Capri, like the Cæsars before me; then enjoy the dolce far niente at Florence, and read the Tuscan poets in the shades of Vallombrosa." "But, Chester," interposed Wren, "don't you ever mean to marry and settle down?" "I object to that phrase, 'settle down.' It calls up disagreeable images. It reminds one of the backwoods, log cabins, men in shirt sleeves, and piles of pine boards and lumber. Yes, certainly, I mean to marry. What man of taste would leave matrimony out of his scheme of life? One likes to gather his treasures round him, his pictures, his vases, and statues; and how can he adorn his rooms with an ornament more exquisite—where can he find a piece of furniture more charmingly moulded—than a beautiful woman?" This flourish, between jest and earnest, he pronounced with a graceful wave of his hand. "If, when you have married your beautiful woman," said Morton, "you find you have caught a Tartar, it will serve you right." "Hear him," said Chester; "hear the barbarian. He will always be conjuring up some image of disquiet. 'Rest, rest, perturbed spirit.'" "He could not rest, if he tried," said Horace Vinal. "No, he is one of those unfortunates who lie under a sentence of endless activity. It is a disease, with which men are afflicted for the sins of their ancestors; and for the sins of mine I was born among a whole nation of such. Perpetual motion, bustle and whirl,—I grow dizzy to think of it. They cannot rest themselves, and will not let any one else rest. Always pursuing, always doing, never enjoying. A true American cannot enjoy. He would build a steam saw mill in Arcadia, and dam up the four rivers of Paradise for cotton factories." "But, Chester," said Wren, "that is not at all like Morton; you know he hates utilitarianism." "Yes, but still he cannot rest. He would not build saw mills and dams; but he would be sure to fire his rifle at some of Adam's live stock, and set all Eden by the ears. Come, Morton, I have told the company my plans. Let us hear what yours are." "My guardian wishes me to enter the law school." "You are twenty-one now," said Vinal, "and can do as you please." Vinal was a very tall and slender young man, with a strongly marked face, though thin and pale; a grave, thoughtful eye, and compressed lips, expressing a kind of nervous self-control. His dress was very elaborate and scrupulous, though without the smallest trace of foppery. He was less popular in the class than Morton, but had the reputation of greater talents. This he owed, perhaps, to his habitual reserve; for every one thought that he understood Morton thoroughly, while few pretended to fathom the silent and self-contained Vinal. "I should like well enough to study law," was Morton's non-committal answer. "I thought, Morton, that you were more of a philosopher. Here you are, a young fellow, full of blood, and worth half a million, and yet you speak of buckling down to the law. That is all well enough for poor dogs like me, who go into the mill from necessity. We drudge on for twenty years or more, till we have scraped together a competency, or something better, perhaps, and then we find that we have forgotten how to enjoy it. We have grown so used to harness that we are good for nothing out of it, and sacrifice body and soul to our profession. You have reached already the point that we are straining for. The world is all before you, man; launch out and enjoy yourself." "Didn't you just say," asked Rosny, "that Morton couldn't rest, if he tried?" "I said he could not rest, but I did not say he could not enjoy himself. Look at him: his cheek is ruddier and browner than any of us. Nobody would believe that a fellow like that was not made to enjoy life. I know Morton. He could roam from blossom to blossom, as Chester says, with as good a will as any body. He has an eye for the fair sex, correct as he is at present. He knows a pretty face from a plain one. The devil will catch him yet with a black eye and a rosy cheek." "Then," said Morton, "he will show his good opinion of my taste." Rosny, who had his own reasons for disliking Vinal, here broke in without ceremony,— "Be gad, Vinal, he will bait his hook differently when he fishes for you." "How will that be, Dick?" said Meredith. "With a five dollar bank note, and a lying puff in a newspaper; and Vinal will jump at it like a mackerel at a red rag." Vinal laughed, but with a bad grace. "Riches and fame!" said Chester, anxious to smooth away all traces of irritation—"riches and fame! I call those legitimate objects of pursuit; and the black eye is positively praiseworthy. Come, Morton, let us hear your plan. You have not told it yet." "I defer to Rosny—he is my senior. Dick, some ten or twelve years from this, I suppose I shall vote against you for the presidency." "Thank you. By that time you will have no whig party left to vote with. The democrats will have it all their own way." "I have often wondered what could have induced a driving man of the world like you to come to college at all. You have been here more than a year; and in the same time, with your previous knowledge, you might have learned as much any where else at half the cost. You are not the fellow to regard a degree of A. M. with superstitious veneration." "You are right there, colonel. I am of no kith nor kin to some of your New England old fogies, who would give their souls for a D. D. or an LL. D.—and get it, too, though they know no more Greek or Hebrew than I know of Choctaw, and can barely manage to stumble along through the Latin Testament. What's a piece of sheep's skin to me? Humbug is the current coin all the world over, and just as much in this free and enlightened country as any where else. I have schemes on foot,—not political,—no matter what they are,—out in the western country; and I happen to know that a degree from Harvard University is the medicine that suits my case; with that for my credentials, I shall carry it over all competitors. Yes, boys, gammon is the word; and the man who would rise in the world must use the stepping stones." "You're a victim of the national disease, Rosny," said Chester. "Rising in the world!—that's the idea that ruins us. It's that that makes us lean, starveling, nervous, restless, dyspeptic, hypochondriac,—the most prosperous and most uncomfortable people on earth. Sit down, man, and take your ease. What garden will thrive if every plant in it must be dug up every day, and set out in a better place?" "Ah, that's good doctrine for you. You have got nothing to gain, and a good deal to lose. Stand up for the status quo, old boy; I would, in your place. Look at me, though. I was cut adrift at fourteen,—parents dead,—not a cent in my pocket,—and since then I have tumbled along through the world as I could. You can't kill me. I have more lives than a cat. I have been thrown on my back a dozen times; but the harder I was flung down, the higher I bounced up again. Why, I have known the time when I was glad to earn a shilling by shovelling snow off a sidewalk. I have tried my hand at every thing,—printer's work, lecturing, politics, editing, keeping school,—and do you suppose I shall be content to rest in the mud all my days? Not a bit of it. I know my cue better. The time will come when you'll see me shooting up like a rocket." Here a broad glare against the window interrupted him, and, looking out, his auditors saw a bonfire blazing with peculiar splendor under the windows of the chamber where the Faculty were at that moment in solemn session. Three proctors and a tutor were hastening towards the scene of outrage, when a stentorian voice from the adjacent darkness roared forth a warning that there was a canister of gunpowder in the fire expected every moment to explode. The prudent officers therefore kept their distance, busying themselves with noting down the names of several innocent spectators, while the bonfire subsided to a natural death, the gunpowder hoax having perfectly succeeded. Mr. Wren's guests resumed their seats, mingling with graver matters the usual badinage of a college gathering; and when at length they separated, only a lonely light or two glimmered from among the many windows of the academic barracks which overlook the college green. CHAPTER VI. As if with Heaven a bargain they had made To practise goodness—and to be well paid, They, too, devoutly as their fathers did, Sin, sack, and sugar, equally forbid; Holding each hour unpardonably spent That on the leger leaves no monument.—Parsons. Mr. Erastus Flintlock sat at his counting room, in his old leather-bottomed arm chair. Vassall Morton, his newly emancipated ward, just twenty-one, stood before him, the undisputed master of his father's ample wealth. "What, no profession, Mr. Morton? None whatever, sir?" "No, sir, none whatever." The old man's leathery countenance expressed mingled wrath and concern. Flintlock was a stanch old New Englander, boasting himself a true descendant of the Puritans, whose religious tenets he inherited, along with most of their faults, and not a few of their virtues. He was narrow as a vinegar cruet, and just in all his dealings. There were three subjects on which he could converse with more or less intelligence—politics, theology, and business. Beyond these, he knew nothing; and except American history and practical science, he had an indistinct idea that any thing more came of evil. He distrusted a foreigner, and abhorred a Roman Catholic. All poetry, but Milton and the hymn book, was an abomination in his eyes; and he looked upon fiction as an emanation of the devil. To the list of the cardinal virtues he added another, namely, attention to business. In his early days, he had come from his native Connecticut with letters to Morton's father, who, seeing his value, took him as a clerk, placed unbounded trust in him, and at last made him his partner. He was a youth of slow parts, solid judgment, solemn countenance, steady habits, and a most unpliable conscience. He had no follies, allowed himself no indulgences, and could enjoy no other pleasures than business and church-going. He attended service morning, afternoon, and evening, and never smiled on Sundays. His old age was as upright and stiff-necked as might have been augured from such a youth. He thought the rising generation were in a very bad way, and once gave his son a scorching lecture on vanity and arrogance, because the latter, who had been two years at college, very modestly begged to be excused from carrying a roll of sample cotton, a yard and a half long, from his father's store at one end of the town, to the shop of a retail dealer at the other. "What, no profession, Mr. Morton?" "None whatever, sir." Morton was prepared for the consequence of these fatal words, and sought to arm himself with the needful patience. It would be folly, he knew, to debate the point with his guardian, who was tough and unmanageable as a hickory stump; who would never see any side of a question but his own, and on whose impervious brain reasons fell like rain drops on a tarpauline. Flintlock, therefore, opened fire unanswered, and discoursed for a full hour on duty, propriety, and a due respect for what he called the general sense of the community, which, as he assured his auditor, demands that every one should have some fixed and stated calling, by which he may be recognized as a worthy and useful member of society. Sometimes he grew angry, and scolded his ward with great vehemence; then subsided into a pathetic strain, and exhorted him, for the sake of his excellent father, not to grow old in idleness and frivolity. Morton, respectful, but obdurate, heard him to an end, assured him that, though renouncing commerce and the professions, his life would by no means be an idle one, thanked him for his care of his property, and took his leave; while the old merchant sank back into his chair, and groaned dismally, because the son of his respected patron was on the road to perdition. A moment's retrogression will explain the young man's recusancy. On a May evening, some two months before the close of his college career, Morton sat in lonely meditation on a wooden bench, by the classic border of Fresh Pond. By every canon of polite fiction, his meditation ought to have been engrossed by some object of romantic devotion; but in truth they were of a nature wholly mundane and sublunary. He had been much exercised of late upon the choice of a career for his future life. He liked none of the professions for itself, and had no need to embrace it for support. He loved action, and loved study; was ambitious and fond of applause. He had, moreover, enough of the American in his composition never to be happy except when in pursuit of something; together with a disposition not very rare among young men in New England, though seldom there, or elsewhere, joined to his abounding health and youthful spirits—a tendency to live for the future, and look at acts and things with an eye to their final issues. Thierry's Norman Conquest had fallen into his hands soon after he entered college. The whole delighted him; but he read and re-read the opening chapters, which exhibit the movements of the various races in their occupancy of the west of Europe. This first gave him an impulse towards ethnological inquiries. He soon began to find an absorbing interest in tracing the distinctions, moral, intellectual, and physical, of different races, as shown in their history, their mythologies, their languages, their legends, their primitive art, literature, and way of life. The idea grew upon him of devoting his life to such studies. Seated on the wooden bench at the edge of Fresh Pond, he revolved, for the hundredth time, his proposed scheme, and summed up what he regarded as its manifold advantages. It would enable him to indulge his passion for travel, lead him over rocks, deserts, and mountains, conduct him to Tartar tents and Cossack hovels, make him intimate with the most savage and disgusting of barbarians; in short, give full swing to his favorite propensities, and call into life all his energies of body and mind. In view of this prospect, he clinched his long-cherished purpose, devoting himself to ethnology for the rest of his days. He had a youthful way of thinking that any resolution deliberately adopted by him must needs be final and conclusive, and was fully convinced that his present determination was a species of destiny, involving one of three results—that he should meet an early death, which he thought very likely; that he should be wholly disabled by illness, which he thought scarcely possible; or that, in the fulness of time, say twenty or twenty-five years, his labors would have issue in some prodigious work, redounding to his own honor and the unspeakable profit of science. CHAPTER VII. 'Tis a dull thing to travel like a mill horse, Still in the place he was born in, round and blinded. Beaumont and Fletcher. A novel-maker may claim a privilege which his betters must forego. So, in the teeth of dramatic unities, let the story leap a chasm of some two years. Not that the void was a void to Morton. His nature spurred him into perpetual action; but his wanderings were over at length; and he and Meredith sat under the porch of Morton's house, a few miles from town. The features of the latter were swarthy from exposures, while those of his friend were somewhat pale, and had the expression of one insufferably bored. "Colonel, you are the luckiest fellow I know. Here you have been following the backbone of the continent from Darien to the head of the Missouri, mixing yourself up with Spaniards and Aztecs, poking sticks into the crater of Popocatapetl, and living hand and glove with Blackfeet and Assinnaboins, while I have been doing penance among bonds and mortgages, and title deeds and leases. My father has thrown up responsibility and gone to Europe—and so has every body else—and left all on my shoulders." "Your time will come." "I hope so." "But what news is there?" "Nothing." "What, nothing since I went away?" "The old story. You know it as well as I. Now and then, a new engagement came out. Mrs. A. approved it, and Mrs. B. didn't; and then characters were discussed on both sides. Something has been said of the balls, the opera, and what not; with the usual talk about the wickedness of the democrats and the fanaticism of the abolitionists." "You appear to have led a gay life." "Very!—we need a war, an invasion,—something of the sort. It would put life into us, and rid us of a great deal of nonsense. You were born with a stimulus in yourself, and can stand this stagnant sort of existence; but I need something more lively." "Then go with me on my next journey." "Are you thinking of another already? Rest in peace, and thank Heaven that you have come home in a whole skin." "I have done the North American continent; but there are four more left, not to mention the islands." "And you mean to see them all?" "Certainly." "Your science is a convenient hobby. It carries you wherever you fancy to go." "You could not do better than go with me." "I know it; but, if wishes were horses—— I am training Dick to take my place. I am a model elder brother to that youngster in the way of cultivating his mind and morals; and when I have him up to the mark, I shall gain a year's furlough for my pains. But when is your next journey to begin—next week?" "No, I mean to pin myself down here, and dig like a mole, for the next ten months, at least." "If I had not had ocular proof of what a determined dig you can be, I should set down your studies as mere humbug." "But I wish to hear the news."...