Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVII, August 1852, Vol. V

Now it was that the noble nature of aunt Jane came grandly into view. Her sister was stricken down – swallowed up in grief. Life, for her, had lost its charm. The world was as if left without its sun. She was utterly overwhelmed. Even the faces of her children served only to awaken her to a quicker sense of misery. But aunt Jane's energies were only awakened to renewed life and vigor. To these orphans she was now both father and mother in one. What woman can interfere in business matters without risk of censure? But Jane interfered: she exerted herself to wind up the affairs of the deceased; and she did so; she succeeded! There was but little left; only enough to live upon, and that meanly. Every thing was sold off – the grand house was broken up – and the family subsided into the ranks of the genteel poor. Elizabeth could not bear up under such a succession of shocks. She was not querulous, but her sorrows were too much for her, and she fed upon them – she petted them, and they became her masters. A few years passed, and the broken-down woman was laid in the same grave with her husband.

But Jane's courage never flagged. The gentle, dear, good creature, now advancing into years, looked all manner of difficulties courageously in the face; and she overcame them. They fled before her resolution. Alone she bore the burden of that family of sons and daughters not her own, but as dear to her now as if they were. What scheming and thought she daily exercised to make the ends meet – to give to each of them alike such an amount of school education as would enable them "to make their way in the world," as she used to say – can not be described. It would take a long chapter to detail the patient industry, the frugal care, the motherly help, and the watchful up-bringing with which she tended the helpless orphans. But her arduous labors were all more than repaid in the end.

It was my privilege to know this noble woman. I used occasionally to join the little family circle in an evening, round their crackling fire, and contribute my quota of wonderful stories to the listening group. Aunt Jane herself, was a capital story-teller; and it was her wont thus, of an evening, to entertain the youngsters after the chief part of the day's work was done. She would tell the boys – John and Edward – of those self-helping and perseverant great men who had climbed the difficult steeps of the world, and elevated themselves to the loftiest stations by their own energy, industry, and self-denial. The great and the good were her heroes, and she labored to form those young minds about her after the best and noblest models which biographic annals could furnish. "Without goodness," she would say – and her bright, speaking looks (plain though her features were), with her animated and glowing expression, on such occasions, made the lessons root themselves firmly in their young minds and hearts – "Without goodness, my dear children, greatness is naught – mere gilding and lacker; goodness is the real jewel in the casket; so never forget to make that your end and aim."

I, too, used to contribute my share toward those delightful evenings' entertainments, and aunt Jane would draw me on to tell the group of the adventures and life of our royal Alfred – of his struggles, his valor, his goodness, and his greatness; of the old contests of the Danes and the Saxons; of Harold, the last of the Saxon kings; of William the Norman, and the troublous times which followed the Conquest; and of the valorous life of our forefathers, out of which the living English character, habits, and institutions had at length been formed. And oftentimes the shadow would flit across those young faces, by the fire's light, when they were told of perilous adventures on the lone sea; of shipwrecked and cast-away sailors; of the escape of Drake, and the adventures of Cook, and of that never-ending source of wonderment and interest – the life and wanderings of Robinson Crusoe. And there was merriment and fun, too, mixed with the marvelous and the imaginative – stories of giants, and fairies, and Sleeping Beauties – at which their eyes would glance brightly in the beams of the glowing fire. Then, first one little face, and then another, would grow heavy and listless, and their little heads begin to nod; at which the aunt would hear, one by one, their little petitions to their "Father which art in Heaven," and with a soft kiss and murmured blessing, would then lay them in their little cribs, draw the curtains, and leave them to sleep.

But, as for the good aunt, bless you, nearly half of her work was yet to do! There she would sit, far on into the night, till her eyes were red and her cheeks feverish, with her weary white seam in her hand; or, at another time, she would be mending, patching, and eking out the clothes of the children just put to bed – for their wardrobe was scanty, and often very far gone. Yes! poor thing! she was ready to work her fingers to the bone for these dear fatherless young ones, breathing so softly in the next room, and whose muttered dreams would now and then disturb the deep stillness of the night; when she would listen, utter a heartfelt "bless them," and then go on with her work again. The presence of those children seemed only to remind her of the need of more toil for their sakes. For them did aunt Jane work by day, and work by night; for them did she ply the brilliant needle, which, save in those gloaming hours by the fireside, was scarcely ever out of her hand.

Sorrowful needle! What eyes have followed thee, strained themselves at thee, wept over thee! And what sorrow yet hangs about the glittering, polished, silver-eyed needle! What lives hang upon it! What toil and night-watching, what laughter and tears, what gossip and misery, what racking pains and weary moanings has it not witnessed! And, would you know the poetry it has inspired – then read poor Hood's terrible wail of "The Song of the Shirt!" The friend of the needy, the tool of the industrious, the helper of the starving, the companion of the desolate; such is that weakest of human instruments – the needle! It was all these to our aunt Jane!

I can not tell you the life-long endurance and courage of that woman; how she devoted herself to the cherishment and domestic training of the girls, and the intellectual and industrial education of the boys, and the correct moral culture of all the members of her "little family," as she styled them.

Efforts such as hers are never without their reward, even in this world; and of her better and higher reward, surely aunt Jane might well feel assured. Her children did credit to her. Years passed, and one by one they grew up toward maturity. The character of the aunt proved the best recommendation for the youths. The boys got placed out at business – one in a lawyer's office, the second in a warehouse. I do not specify further particulars; for the boys are now men, well-known in the world; respected, admired, and prosperous. One of them is a barrister of the highest distinction in his profession, and it has been said of him, that he has the heart of a woman, and the courage of a lion. The other is a well-known merchant, and he is cited as a model of integrity among his class. The girls have grown into women, and are all married. With one of these aunt Jane now enjoys, in quiet and ease, the well-earned comforts and independence of a green old age. About her knees now clamber a new generation – the children of her "boys and girls."

Need I tell you how that dear old woman is revered! how her patient toils are remembered and honored! how her nephews attribute all their successes in life to her, to her noble example, to her tender care, to her patient and long-suffering exertions on their behalf. Never was aunt so honored – so beloved! She declares they will "spoil her" – a thing she is not used to; and she often beseeches them to have done with their acknowledgments of gratitude. But she is never wearied of hearing them recall to memory those happy hours, by the evening's fire-light, in the humble cottage in which I was so often a sharer; and then her eye glistens, and a large tear of thankfulness droops upon the lower lid, which she wipes off as of old, and the same heartfelt benison of "Bless them," mutters on her quivering lips.

I should like, some day, to indulge myself in telling a long story about that dear aunt Jane's experiences; but I am growing old and a little maudlin myself, and after all, her life and its results are best told in the character and the history of the children she has so faithfully nurtured and educated.

VENTRILOQUISM

The art and practice of ventriloquism, has of late years exhibited so much improvement that it deserves and will reward a little judicious attention directed toward its all but miraculous phenomena, and the causes and conditions of their astonishing display. The art is of ancient date, the peculiarity of the vocal organs in which it originates, like other types of genius or aptitude, having been at intervals repeated. References in Scripture to "the familiar spirits that peep and mutter" are numerous. In the early Christian Church the practice also was known, and a treatise was written on it by Eustathius, Archbishop of Antioch, in Greek. The main argument of the book is the evocation of the ghost of Samuel.

By the Mosaic law the Hebrews were prohibited from consulting those who had familiar spirits. By one of such it is stated that the Witch of Endor divined, or perhaps that she was possessed by it; for the Hebrew ob designates both those persons in whom there is a familiar spirit, as well as those who divined by them. The plural oboth corresponds with the word ventriloquism. In the Septuagint, it is associated with gastromancy – a mode of ancient divination, wherein the diviner replied without moving his lips, so that the consulter believed he actually heard the voice of a spirit; from which circumstance, many theologians have doubted whether Samuel's ghost really appeared, or rather whether the whole were not a ventriloquial imposition on the superstitious credulity of Saul. We may see in this unfortunate monarch and his successor the distinction between true religion and false superstition; and, indeed, in the poets and prophets generally of the Israelites, who continually testify against the latter in all its forms. To them, to the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Assyrians, ventriloquism was evidently well known. By reference to Leviticus, we shall find, as we have said, the law forbids the Hebrews to consult those having familiar spirits. The prophet Isaiah also draws an illustration from the kind of voice heard in a case of divination. "Thou shalt be brought down, shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust; thy voice shall be as one that hath a familiar spirit out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust." It is curious that the Mormons quote this text as prophetic of the discovery of their Sacred Book. In the Acts, Paul is described as depriving a young woman of a familiar spirit, in the city of Philippi in Macedonia; – she is announced as "a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination, which brought her master much gain by sooth-saying." There is also that well-known tale in Plutarch, which is so impressive even to this day on the Christian imagination – the story we mean, of Epitherses, who, having embarked for Italy in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, suddenly heard a voice from the shore, while becalmed one evening before the Paxe – two small islands in the Ionian sea, which lie between Corcyra and Leucadia; such voice addressing Thamus, a pilot, and an Egyptian by birth, who refused to answer till he received the third summons, whereupon it said, "When thou art come to the Palodes, proclaim aloud that the great Pan is dead!" It is added, that "the passengers were all amazed; but their amazement gave place to the most alarming emotions, when, on arriving at the specified place, Thamus stood in the stern of the vessel, and proclaimed what he had been commanded to announce." St. Chrysostom and the early fathers mention divination by a familiar spirit as practiced in their day; and the practice is still common in the East; as it is also among the Esquimaux. As to the treatise of Eustathius, the good bishop's notion was that the Witch of Endor was really possessed of a demon; whose deception the vision was, being produced by supernatural agency, not, as cited in the Septuagint, by Engastrimism, or Ventriloquy.

In the nineteenth century, we are told by Sir David Brewster, that ventriloquists made great additions to their art. The performances, he says, of Fitzjames and Alexandré were far superior to those of their predecessors. "Besides the art of speaking by the muscles of the throat and the abdomen, without moving those of the face, these artists had not only studied, with great diligence and success, the modifications which sounds of all kinds undergo from distance, obstructions, and other causes, but had acquired the art of imitating them in the highest perfection. The ventriloquist was therefore able to carry on a dialogue in which the dramatis voces, as they may be called, were numerous; and, when on the outside of an apartment, could personate a mob with its infinite variety of noise and vociferation. Their influence over the minds of an audience was still further extended by a singular power which they had obtained over the muscles of the body. Fitzjames actually succeeded in making the opposite or corresponding muscles act differently from each other; and while one side of his face was merry and laughing, the other side was full of sorrow and tears. At one time, he was tall, and thin, and melancholy, and after passing behind a screen, he came out bloated with obesity and staggering with fullness. M. Alexandré possessed the same power over his face and figure, and so striking was the contrast between two of these forms, that an excellent sculptor (M. Joseph) has perpetuated them in marble. This new acquirement of the ventriloquist of the nineteenth century, enabled him in his own single person, and with his own single voice, to represent a dramatic composition which would formerly have required the assistance of several actors. Although only one character in the piece could be seen at the same time, yet they all appeared during its performance; and the change of face and figure on the part of the ventriloquist was so perfect that his personal identity could not be recognized in the dramatis personæ. This deception was rendered still more complete by a particular construction of the costumes, which enabled the performer to appear in a new character, after an interval so short that the audience necessarily believed that it was another person."

Some amusing anecdotes may be gathered, illustrative of ventriloquism.

One M. St. Gille, a ventriloquist of France, had once occasion to shelter himself from a sudden storm in a monastery in the neighborhood of Avranche. The monks were at the time in deep sorrow for the loss of an esteemed member of their fraternity, whom they had recently buried. While lamenting over the tomb of their departed brother the slight honors which had been paid to his memory, a mysterious voice was heard to issue from the vaults of the church, bewailing the condition of the deceased in purgatory, and reproving the monks in melancholy tones for their want of zeal and reverence for departed worth. Tidings of the event flew abroad; and quickly brought the inhabitants to the spot. The miraculous speaker still renewed his lamentations and reproaches; whereupon the monks fell on their faces, and vowed to repair their neglect. They then chanted a De profundis, and at intervals the ghostly voice of the deceased friar expressed his satisfaction.

One Louis Brabant turned his ventriloquial talent to profitable account. Rejected by the parents of an heiress as an unsuitable match for their daughter, Louis, on the death of the father, paid a visit to the widow, during which the voice of her deceased husband was all at once heard thus to address her: "Give my daughter in marriage to Louis Brabant: – he is a man of fortune and character, and I endure the pains of purgatory for having refused her to him. Obey this admonition, and give repose to the soul of your departed husband." Of course, the widow complied; but Brabant's difficulties were not yet all overcome. He wanted money to defray the wedding expenses, and resolved to work on the fears of an old usurer, a M. Cornu, of Lyons. Having obtained an evening interview, he contrived to turn the conversation on departed spirits and ghosts. During an interval of silence, the voice of the miser's deceased father was heard, complaining of his situation in purgatory, and calling loudly upon his son to rescue him from his sufferings, by enabling Brabant to redeem the Christians at that time enslaved by the Turks. Not succeeding on the first occasion, Brabant was compelled to make a second visit to the miser, when he took care to enlist not only his father but all his deceased relations in the appeal; and in this way he obtained a thousand crowns.

There have been few female ventriloquists. Effects produced by the female organs of speech have always manifested a deficiency of power. The artificial voices have been few in number, and those imperfectly defined. A woman at Amsterdam possessed considerable powers in this way. Conrad Amman, a Dutch doctor in medicine, who published a Latin treatise at Amsterdam in 1700, observes of her, that the effects she exhibited were produced by a sort of swallowing of the words, or forcing them to retrograde, as it were, by the trachea, by speaking during the inspiration of the breath, and not, as in ordinary speech, during expiration. The same writer notices also the performances of the famous Casimir Schreckenstein.

Different professors of ventriloquism have given different accounts of the manner in which they succeeded in producing their illusions. Baron Mengen, one of the household of Prince Lichtenstein, at Vienna, said that it consisted in a passion for counterfeiting the cries of animals and the voices of different persons. M. St. Gille referred his art to mimicry; and the French Academy, combining these views, defines the art as consisting in an accurate imitation of any given sound as it reaches the ear. Scientific solutions are various. Mr. Nicholson thought that artists in this line, by continual practice from childhood, acquire the power of speaking during inspiration with the same articulation as the ordinary voice, which is formed by expiration. M. Richerand declares that every time a professor exhibits his vocal peculiarities, he suffers distension in the epigastric region; and supposes that the mechanism of the art consists in a slow, gradual expiration, drawn in such a way, that the artist either makes use of the influence exerted by volition over the parietes of the thorax, or that he keeps the epiglottis down by the base of the tongue, the apex of which is not carried beyond the dental arches. He observes, that ventriloquists possess the power of making an exceedingly strong inspiration just before the long expiration, and thus convey into the lungs an immense quantity of air, by the artistical management of the egress of which they produce such astonishing effects upon the hearing and imagination of their auditors.

The theory propounded by Mr. Gough in the "Manchester Memoir," on the principle of reverberated sound, is untenable, because ventriloquism on that theory would be impossible in a crowded theatre, which admits not of the predicated echoes. Mr. Love, in his account of himself, asserts a natural aptitude, a physical predisposition of the vocal organs; which, in his case, discovered itself as early as the age of ten, and gradually improved with practice, without any artistic study whatever. He states that not only his pure ventriloquisms, but nearly all his lighter vocal imitations of miscellaneous sounds, were executed in the first instance on the spur of the moment, and without any pre-meditation. The artist must evidently possess great flexibility of larynx and tongue. Polyphony, according to our modern professor, is produced by compression of the muscles of the chest, and is an act entirely different from any species of vocal deception or modulation. There is no method, he tells us, of manufacturing true ventriloquists. Nature must have commenced the operation, by placing at the artist's disposal a certain quality of voice adapted for the purpose, as the raw material to work upon. It is like a fine ear or voice for singing – the gift of Nature. It follows, therefore, that an expert polyphonist must be as rare a personage as any other man of genius in any particular art.

THE INCENDIARY.

FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF AN ATTORNEY

I knew James Dutton, as I shall call him, at an early period of life, when my present scanty locks of iron-gray were thick and dark, my now pale and furrowed cheeks were fresh and ruddy, like his own. Time, circumstance, and natural bent of mind, have done their work on both of us; and if his course of life has been less equable than mine, it has been chiefly so because the original impulse, the first start on the great journey, upon which so much depends, was directed by wiser heads in my case than in his. We were school-fellows for a considerable time; and if I acquired – as I certainly did – a larger stock of knowledge than he, it was by no means from any superior capacity on my part, but that his mind was bent on other pursuits. He was a born Nimrod, and his father encouraged this propensity from the earliest moment that his darling and only son could sit a pony or handle a light fowling-piece. Dutton, senior, was one of a then large class of persons, whom Cobbett used to call bull-frog farmers; men who, finding themselves daily increasing in wealth by the operation of circumstances, they neither created nor could insure or control – namely, a rapidly increasing manufacturing population, and tremendous war-prices for their produce – acted as if the chance-blown prosperity they enjoyed was the result of their own forethought, skill, and energy, and therefore, humanly speaking, indestructible. James Dutton was, consequently, denied nothing – not even the luxury of neglecting his own education; and he availed himself of the lamentable privilege to a great extent. It was, however, a remarkable feature in the lad's character, that whatever he himself deemed essential should be done, no amount of indulgence, no love of sport or dissipation, could divert him from thoroughly accomplishing. Thus he saw clearly, that even in the life – that of a sportsman-farmer he had chalked out for himself, it was indispensably necessary that a certain quantum of educational power should be attained; and so he really acquired a knowledge of reading, writing, and spelling, and then withdrew from school to more congenial avocations.

I frequently met James Dutton in after-years; but some nine or ten months had passed since I had last seen him, when I was directed by the chief partner in the firm to which Flint and I subsequently succeeded, to take coach for Romford, Essex, in order to ascertain from a witness there what kind of evidence we might expect him to give in a trial to come off in the then Hilary term at Westminster Hall. It was the first week in January: the weather was bitterly cold; and I experienced an intense satisfaction when, after dispatching the business I had come upon, I found myself in the long dining-room of the chief market-inn, where two blazing fires shed a ruddy, cheerful light over the snow-white damask table-cloth, bright glasses, decanters, and other preparatives for the farmers' market-dinner. Prices had ruled high that day; wheat had reached £30 a load; and the numerous groups of hearty, stalwart yeomen present were in high glee, crowing and exulting alike over their full pockets and the news – of which the papers were just then full – of the burning of Moscow, and the flight and ruin of Bonaparte's army. James Dutton was in the room, but not, I observed, in his usual flow of animal spirits. The crape round his hat might, I thought, account for that, and as he did not see me, I accosted him with an inquiry after his health, and the reason of his being in mourning. He received me very cordially, and in an instant cast off the abstracted manner I had noticed. His father, he informed me, was gone – had died about seven months previously, and he was alone now at Ash Farm – why didn't I run down there to see him sometimes, &c.? Our conversation was interrupted by a summons to dinner, very cheerfully complied with; and we both – at least I can answer for myself – did ample justice to a more than usually capital dinner, even in those capital old market-dinner times. We were very jolly afterward, and amazingly triumphant over the frost-bitten, snow-buried soldier-banditti that had so long lorded it over continental Europe. Dutton did not partake of the general hilarity. There was a sneer upon his lip during the whole time, which, however, found no expression in words.