The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 12, October, 1858

What new torture the betrothed Katrine felt is not to be told. Three years were to her an eternity; and her imagination called up such visions of danger from wounds, privations, and disease, that she parted from her lover as though it were forever. The miller found that the light and the melody of his house were gone. Katrine was silent and sorrowful; her frame wasted and her step grew feeble. To all his offers of condolence she made no reply, except to remind him how with tears she had besought his interference in Carl's behalf. She would not be comforted. The father little knew the feeling she possessed; he had thought that her attachment to her rustic lover was only a girlish fancy, and that she would speedily forget him; but now her despairing look frightened him. To the neighbors, who looked inquisitively as he sat by the mill-door, smoking, he complained of the quality of his tobacco, vowing that it made his eyes so tender that they watered upon the slightest whiff.

For six months Schönfeld wisely kept away; that period, he thought, would be long enough to efface any recollection of the absent soldier. Then he presented himself, and, in his usual imperious way, offered his hand to Katrine. The miller was inclined to favor his suit. In wealth and position Schönfeld was first in the village; he would be a powerful ally, and a very disagreeable enemy. In fact, Rauchen really feared to refuse the demand; and he plied his daughter with such argument as he could command, hoping to move her to accept the offer. Katrine, however, was convinced of the truth of her former suspicion, that Carl was a victim of Schönfeld's craft; and her rejection of his proposal was pointed with an indignation which she took no pains to conceal. The old scar showed strangely white in his purple face, as he left the mill, vowing vengeance for the affront.

Rauchen and his daughter were now more solitary than ever. The father had forgotten the roaring stories he used to tell to the neighboring peasants, over foaming flagons of ale, at the little inn; he sat at his mill-door and smoked incessantly. Katrine shunned the festivities in which she was once queen, and her manner, though kindly, was silent and reserved; she went to church, it is true, but she wore a look of settled sorrow that awed curiosity and even repelled sympathy. But scandal is a plant that needs no root in the earth; like the houseleek, it can thrive upon air; and those who separate themselves the most entirely from the world are apt, for that very reason, to receive the larger share of its attention. The village girls looked first with pity, then with wonder, and at length with aversion, upon the gentle and unfortunate Katrine. Careless as she was with regard to public opinion, she saw not without pain the altered looks of her old associates, and before long she came to know the cause. A cruel suspicion had been whispered about, touching her in a most tender point. It was not without reason, so the gossip ran, that she had refused so eligible an offer of marriage Schönfeld's. The story reached the ears of Rauchen, at last. With a fierce energy, such as he had never exhibited before, he tracked it from cottage to cottage, until he came to Schönfeld's housekeeper, who refused to give her authority. The next market-day Rauchen encountered the former suitor and publicly charged him with the slander, in such terms as his baseness deserved. Schönfeld, thrown off his guard by the sudden attack, struck his adversary a heavy blow; but the miller rushed upon him, and left him to be carried home, a bundle of aches and bruises. After this the tongues of the gossips were quiet; no one was willing to answer for guesses or rumors at the end of Rauchen's staff; and the father and daughter resumed their monotonous mode of life.

The three years at length passed, and Carl Proch returned home,—a trifle more sedate, perhaps, but the same noble, manly fellow. How warmly he was received by the constant Katrine it is not necessary to relate. Rauchen was not disposed to thwart his long-suffering daughter any further; and with his consent the young couple were speedily married, and lived in his house. The gayety of former years came back; cheerful songs and merry laughter were heard in the lately silent rooms. Rauchen himself grew younger, especially after the birth of a grandson, and often resumed his old place at the inn, telling the old stories with the old gusto over the ever-welcome ale. But one morning, not long after, he was found dead in his bed; a smile was on his face, and his limbs were stretched out as in peaceful repose.

There was no longer any tie to bind Carl to his native village. All his kin, as well as Katrine's, were in the grave. He was not bred a miller, and did not feel competent to manage the mill. Besides, his mind had received new ideas while he was in the army. He had heard of countries where men were equal before the laws, where the peasant owed no allegiance but to society. The germ of liberty had been planted in his breast, and he could no longer live contented with the rank in which he had been born. At least he wished that his children might grow up free from the chilling influences that had fallen upon him. At his earnest persuasion, Katrine consented that the mill should be sold, and soon after, with his wife and child, he went to Bremen and embarked for America.

* * * * *

We must now follow the absconding Stolzen, who, with his bag of thalers, had made good his escape into England. He lived in London, where he found society among his countrymen. His habitual shrewdness never deserted him, and from small beginnings he gradually amassed a moderate fortune. His first experiment in proposing for a wife satisfied him, but in a great city his sensual nature was fully developed. His brutal passions were unchecked; conscience seemed to have left him utterly. At length he began to think about quitting London. He was afraid to return to Germany, for, as he had left Carl to all appearance dead, he thought the officers of the law would seize him. He determined to go to Australia, and secured a berth in a clipper ship bound for Melbourne, but some accident prevented his reaching the pier in season; the vessel sailed without him, and was never heard of afterwards. Then he proposed to buy an estate in Canada; but the owner failed to make his appearance at the time appointed for the negotiation, and the bargain was not completed. At last he took passage for New York, whither a Hebrew acquaintance of his had gone, a year or two before, and was established as a broker. Upon arriving in that city, Stolzen purchased of an agent a tract of land in a Western State, situated on the shore of Lake Michigan; and after reserving a sum of money for immediate purposes, he deposited his funds with his friend, the broker, and started westward. He travelled the usual route by rail, then a short distance in a mail-coach, which carried him within six miles of his farm. Leaving his luggage to be sent for, he started to walk the remaining distance. It was a sultry day, and the prairie road was anything but pleasant to a pedestrian unaccustomed to heat and dust. After walking less than an hour, he determined to stop at a small house near the road, for rest, and some water to quench his thirst; but as he approached, the baying hounds, no less than the squalid children about the door, repelled him, and he went on to the next house. He now turned down a green lane, between rows of thrifty trees, to a neat log-cabin, whose nicely-plastered walls and the regular fence inclosing it testified to the thrift and good taste of the owner. He knocked; all was still. Again, and thirsty as he was, he was on the point of leaving, when he heard a step within. He waited; the door opened, and before him stood–Katrine!

She did not know him; but he had not forgotten that voluptuous figure nor those melting blue eyes. He preferred his requests, looking through the doorway at the same time to make sure that she had no protector. Katrine brought the stranger a gourd of water, and offered him a chair. She did not see the baleful eyes he threw after her as she went about her household duties. Stolzen had dropped from her firmament like a fallen and forgotten star. Secure in her unsuspecting innocence, she chirruped to her baby and resumed her sewing.

That evening, when Carl Proch returned from his field, after his usual hard day's labor, he found his wife on the floor, sobbing, speechless, and the child, unnoticed, crying in his cradle. His dog sat by the hearth with a look of almost intelligent sympathy, and whined as his master entered the room. He raised Katrine and held her in his arms like a child, covered her face with kisses, and implored her to speak. She seemed to be in a fearful dream, and shrunk from some imagined danger in the extremest terror. Gradually her sobs became less frequent, her tremors ceased, and she smiled upon the manly face that met hers, as though she had only suffered from an imaginary fright. But when she felt her hair floating upon her shoulders, saw the almost speaking face of the dog, Bruno, and became conscious of the cries of the neglected child, the wave of agony swept over her again, and she could utter only broken ejaculations. As word after word came from her lips, the unhappy husband's flesh tingled; his hair stiffened with horror; every nerve seemed to be strung with a new and maddening tension. There was for him no such thing as fatigue, no distance, no danger,—no law, no hereafter, no God. All thought and feeling were drowned in one wild desire for vengeance,—vengeance swift, terrible, and final.

He first caressed the dog as though he had been a brother; he put his arms about the shaggy neck, and shook each faithful paw; he made his wife caress him also. "God be praised, dear Katrine, for your protector, the dog!" said he. "Come, now, Bruno!"

Katrine saw him depart with his dog and gun; but if she guessed his errand, she did not dare remonstrate. He walked off rapidly,—the dog in advance, now and then baying as though he were on a trail.

In the night he returned, and he smiled grimly as he set down the rifle in its accustomed corner. His wife was waiting for him with intense anxiety. It was marvellous to her that he was so cheerful. He trotted her upon his knee, pressed her a hundred times to his bosom, kissed her forehead, lips, and cheeks, called her his pretty Kate, his dear wife, and every endearing name he knew. So they sat, like lovers in their teens, till the purpling east told of a new day.

The luggage of one Stolzen, a stagecoach passenger, remained at the tavern uncalled-for, for nearly a year. No one knew the man, and his disappearance, though a profound mystery, was not an uncommon thing in a new country. The Hebrew broker in New York received no answers to his letters, though he had carefully preserved the post-office address which Stolzen had given him. He began to fear lest he should be obliged to fulfil the duty of heirship to the property deposited with him. To quiet his natural apprehensions in view of this event, he determined to follow Stolzen's track, as much of it as lay in this world, at least, and find out what had become of him. Upon arriving in the neighborhood, the Jew had a thorough search made. The country was scoured, and on the third day there was a discovery. A man walking on the sandy margin of a river, about two or three miles from Carl's house, saw a skull before him. As the steep bluff nearly overhung the spot where he stood, he conjectured that the body to which the skull belonged was to be found above on its verge. He climbed up, and there saw a headless skeleton. It was the body of Stolzen, as his memorandum-book and other articles showed. His pistol was in his pocket, and still loaded; that fact precluded the idea of suicide. Moreover, upon examining more closely, a bullet-hole was found in his breast-bone, around which the parts were broken outwardly, showing that the ball must have entered from behind. It was clear that Stolzen had been murdered.

The curse of Frau Proch had been most terribly fulfilled.

Circumstances soon pointed to Carl Proch as the perpetrator. A stranger, corresponding to the deceased in size and dress, had been seen, about the time of his disappearance, by the neighboring family, walking towards Proch's house; and on the evening of the same day an Irishman met Carl going at a rapid rate, with a gun on his shoulder, as though in furious pursuit of some one. A warrant for his arrest was issued, and he was lodged in jail to await his trial. If now the Hebrew had followed the lex talionis, after the manner of his race in ancient times, it might have fared badly with poor Carl. But as soon as the broker was satisfied beyond a peradventure that the depositor was actually dead, he hastened back to New York, joyful as a crow over a newly-found carcass, to administer upon the estate, leaving the law to take its own course with regard to the murderer.

Beyond the two facts just mentioned as implicating Carl, nothing was proved at the trial. Jameson, the lawyer, whom I mentioned at the beginning of this story, was engaged for the defence. He found Carl singularly uncommunicative; and though the government failed to make out a shadow of a case against his client, he was yet puzzled in his own mind by Carl's silence, and his real or assumed indifference. Katrine was in court with her child in her arms, watching the proceedings with the closest attention; though she, as well as Carl, was unable to understand any but the most familiar and colloquial English. The case was speedily decided; the few facts presented to the jury appeared to have no necessary connection, and there was no known motive for the deed. The jury unanimously acquitted Carl, and with his wife and boy he left the court-room. The verdict was approved by the spectators, for no man in the neighborhood was more universally loved and respected than Carl Proch.

Having paid Jameson his fee for his services, Carl was about to depart, when the lawyer's curiosity could be restrained no longer, and he called his client back to the private room of his office.

"Carl," said he, "you look like a good fellow, above anything mean or wicked; but yet I don't know what to make of you. Now you are entirely through with this scrape; you are acquitted; and I want to know what is the meaning of it all. I will keep it secret from all your neighbors. Did you kill Stolzen, or not?"

"Well, if I did," he answered, "can they do anything with me?"

"No," said Jameson.

"Not if I acknowledge?"

"No, you have been acquitted by a jury; and by our law a man can never be tried twice for the same offence. You are safe, even if you should go into court and confess the deed."

"Well, then, I did kill him,—and I would again!"

For the moment, a fierce light gleamed upon the calm and kindly face. Then, feeling that his answer would give a false view of the case, without the previous history of the parties, Carl sat down and in his broken English told to his lawyer the story I have here attempted to record. It was impossible to doubt a word of it; for the simplicity and pathos of the narrative were above all art. Here was a simple case, which the boldest inventor of schemes to punish villany would have been afraid to use. Its truth is the thing that most startles the mind accustomed to deal with fictions.

We leave Carl to return to his farm with his wife, for whom he had suffered so much, and with the hope that no further temptation may come to him in such a guise as almost to make murder a virtue.

THE TELEGRAPH

Thou lonely Bay of Trinity,Ye bosky shores untrod,Lean, breathless, to the white-lipped seaAnd hear the voice of God!From world to world His couriers fly,Thought-winged and shod with fire;The angel of His stormy skyRides down the sunken wire.What saith the herald of the Lord?—"The world's long strife is done!Close wedded by that mystic cord,Her continents are one."And one in heart, as one in blood,Shall all her peoples be;The hands of human brotherhoodShall clasp beneath the sea."Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain,And Asian mountains borne,The vigor of the Northern brainShall nerve the world outworn."From clime to clime, from shore to shore,Shall thrill the magic thread;The new Prometheus steals once moreThe fire that wakes the dead!"Earth gray with age shall hear the strainWhich o'er her childhood rolled;For her the morning stars againShall sing their song of old."For, lo! the fall of Ocean's wall,Space mocked, and Time outrun!—And round the world, the thought of allIs as the thought of one!"Oh, reverently and thankfullyThe mighty wonder own!The deaf can hear, the blind may see,The work is God's alone.Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beatFrom answering beach to beach!Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,And melt the chains of each!Wild terror of the sky above,Glide tamed and dumb below!Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove,Thy errands to and fro!Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,Beneath the deep so far,The bridal robe of Earth's accord,The funeral shroud of war!The poles unite, the zones agree,The tongues of striving cease;As on the Sea of Galilee,The Christ is whispering, "Peace!"

THE BIRDS OF THE GARDEN AND ORCHARD

The singing-birds whose notes are familiar to us, in towns and villages and the suburbs of the city, are found in the breeding-season only in these places, and are strangers to the deep woods and solitary pastures. Most of our singing-birds follow in the wake of the pioneer of the wilderness, and increase in numbers with the clearing and settlement of the country,—not, probably, from any dependence on the protection of mankind, but on account of the increased abundance of the insect food upon which they subsist, consequent upon the tilling of the ground. It is well known that the labors of the husbandman cause an excessive multiplication of all those species of insects whose larvae are cherished in the soil, and of all that infest the orchard and garden. The farm is capable of supporting insects just in proportion to its capacity for producing corn and fruit. Insects will multiply with their means of subsistence in and upon the earth; and birds, if not destroyed by artificial methods, will increase in proportion to the multiplication of those insects which constitute their principal food.

These considerations will sufficiently account for the fact, which often excites a little astonishment, that more singing-birds are found in the suburbs of the city, and among the parks and gardens of the city, than in the deep forest, where, even in the singing-season, the silence is sometimes melancholy. It is still to be remarked, that the species which are thus familiar in their habits do not include all the singing-birds, but they include all that are well known to the majority of our people. These are the birds of the garden and orchard. There are many other species, wild and solitary in their habits, which are delightful songsters in uncultivated regions remote from the town. But even these are rare in the depths of the forest. They live on the edge of the wood and in the half-wooded pasture.

The birds of the garden and orchard have been frequently described, and their habits are very generally known; but in the usual descriptions little has been said of their powers and peculiarities of song. In the present sketches, I have given particular attention to the vocal powers of the different birds, and have endeavored to designate the parts which each one performs in the grand hymn of Nature. I shall first introduce the Song-Sparrow, (Fringilla melodia,) a little bird that is universally known and admired. The Song-Sparrow is the earliest visitant and the latest resident of the vocal tenants of the field. He is plain in his vesture, undistinguished from the female by any superiority of plumage, and comes forth in the spring and takes his departure in the autumn in the same suit of russet and gray by which he is always recognized.

In March, before the violet has ventured to peep out from the southern knoll of the pasture or the sunny brow of the hill, while the northern skies are liable to pour down at any hour a storm of sleet and snow, the Song-Sparrow, beguiled by southern winds, has already made his appearance, and, on still mornings, may be heard warbling his few merry notes, as if to make the earliest announcement of his arrival. He is, therefore, the true harbinger of spring, and, though not the sweetest songster of the woods, has the merit of bearing to man the earliest tidings of the opening year, and of declaring the first vernal promises of Nature. As the notes of those birds that sing only in the night come with a double charm to our ears, because they are harmonized by silence and hallowed by the hour that is sacred to repose—in like manner does the Song-Sparrow delight us in tenfold measure, because he sings the sweet prelude to the universal hymn of Nature.

His haunts are the pastures which have been half reduced to tillage, and are still partially filled with wild shrubbery; for he is not so familiar in his habits as the Hair-bird, that comes close up to our door-step, to find the crumbs that are swept from our tables. Though his voice is constantly heard in the garden and orchard, he selects a more retired spot for his nest, preferring not to trust his progeny to the doubtful mercy of the lords of creation. In some secure retreat, under a tussock of herbage or a tuft of shrubbery, the female sits upon her nest of soft dry grass, containing four or five eggs, of a greenish white ground, almost entirely covered with brownish specks. Commencing in April, she rears three broods of young during the season, and her mate prolongs his notes until the last brood has flown from the nest.

The notes of the Song-Sparrow would not entitle him to be ranked among our principal singing-birds, were it not for the remarkable variations of his song, in which respect he is equalled, I think, by no other bird. Of these variations there are seven or eight which may be distinctly recognized, and differing enough to be considered separate tunes. The bird does not warble these in regular succession; he is in the habit of repeating one several times, and then leaves it, and repeats another in a similar manner. Mr. Paine9 took note, on one occasion, of the number of times a Song-Sparrow sang each of the tunes, and the order of singing them. Of the tunes, as he had numbered them, the bird "sang No. 1, 27 times; No. 2, 36 times; No. 3, 23 times; No. 4, 19 times; No. 5, 21 times; No. 6, 32 times; No. 7, 18 times. Perhaps next he would sing No. 2, then perhaps No. 4, or 5, and so on." Mr. Paine adds, "Some males will sing each tune about fifty times, though seldom; some will only sing them from five to ten times. But as far as I have observed, each male has his seven songs. I have applied the rule to as many as a dozen different birds, and the result has been the same."

An individual will sometimes, for half a day, confine himself almost entirely to a few of these variations; but he will commonly sing each one more or less in the course of the day. I have observed also, that, when one principal singer takes up a particular tune, other birds in the vicinity will unite in the same. The several variations are mostly in triple time, a few in common time, and there is an occasional blending of both in the same tune, which consists usually of four bars or strains, sometimes five, though the song is frequently broken off at the end of the third strain. This habit of varying his notes through so many permutations, and the singularly fine intonations of many of them, entitle the Song-Sparrow to a very high rank as a singing-bird.

There is a manifest difference in the expression of these several tunes. The one which I have marked as No. 3 is particularly plaintive, and is usually in common time. No. 2 is the one which I think is most frequently sung. No. 5 is querulous and entirely unmusical. There is a remarkable precision in the song of this bird, and the finest singers are those which, in the language of musicians, have the least execution. There are some individuals that blend their notes together so promiscuously, and use so many flourishes, that it is difficult to identify their song, or to perceive its expression. Whether these tunes of the Song-Sparrow express to his mate, or to others of his species, different sentiments, and convey different messages, or whether the bird adopts them for his own amusement, I have not been able to determine. Neither have I learned whether a certain hour of the day or a certain state of the weather predisposes him to sing a particular tune. This point may, perhaps, be determined by some future observer; and it may be ascertained that the birds of this species have their matins and their vespers, their songs of rejoicing and of complaining, of courtship when in presence of their mate, and of encouragement and solace when she is sitting upon her nest. As Nature has a benevolent and a definite object in every instinct which she has established among her creatures, it is not probable that this habit of the Song-Sparrow is the mere result of accident. All the variations of his song are given, with the specimens, at the end of this article, and, though individuals differ in their singing, the notes will afford the reader a good general idea of the several tunes.