The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 42, April, 1861

"Why, Mr. Peckham," she said, "do you mean this? If I am of so much value to you that you must take off twenty-five dollars for ten days' absence, how is it that my salary is to be cut down to less than seventy-five dollars a quarter, if I remain here?"

"I gave you fair notice," said Silas. "I have a minute of it I took down immed'ately after the intervoo."

He lugged out his large pocket-book with the strap going all round it, and took from it a slip of paper which confirmed his statement.

"Besides," he added, slyly, "I presoom you have received a liberal pecooniary compensation from Squire Venner for nussin' his daughter."

Helen was looking over the bill while he was speaking.

"Board and lodging for ten days, Mr. Peckham,—whose board and lodging, pray?"

The door opened before Silas Peckham could answer, and Mr. Bernard walked into the parlor. Helen was holding the bill in her hand, looking as any woman ought to look who has been at once wronged and insulted.

"The last turn of the thumbscrew!" said Mr. Bernard to himself. "What is it, Helen? You look troubled."

She handed him the account.

He looked at the footing of it. Then he looked at the items. Then he looked at Silas Peckham.

At this moment Silas was sublime. He was so transcendency unconscious of the emotions going on in Mr. Bernard's mind at the moment, that he had only a single thought.

"The accaount's correc'ly cast, I presoom;—if the' 's any mistake of figgers or addin' 'em up, it'll be made all right. Everything's accordin' to agreement. The minute written immed'ately after the intervoo is here in my possession."

Mr. Bernard looked at Helen. Just what would have happened to Silas Peckham, as he stood then and there, but for the interposition of a merciful Providence, nobody knows or ever will know; for at that moment steps were heard upon the stairs, and Hiram threw open the parlor-door for Mr. Dudley Venner to enter.

He saluted them all gracefully with the good-wishes of the season, and each of them returned his compliment,—Helen blushing fearfully, of course, but not particularly noticed in her embarrassment by more than one.

Silas Peckham reckoned with perfect confidence on his Trustees, who had always said what he told them to, and done what he wanted. It was a good chance now to show off his power, and, by letting his instructors know the unstable tenure of their offices, make it easier to settle his accounts and arrange his salaries. There was nothing very strange in Mr. Venner's calling; he was one of the Trustees, and this was New Year's Day. But he had called just at the lucky moment for Mr. Peckham's object.

"I have thought some of makin' changes in the department of instruction," he began. "Several accomplished teachers have applied to me, who would be glad of sitooations. I understand that there never have been so many fust-rate teachers, male and female, out of employment as doorin' the present season. If I can make sahtisfahctory arrangements with my present corpse of teachers, I shall be glad to do so; otherwise I shell, with the permission of the Trustees, make sech noo arrangements as circumstahnces compel."

"You may make arrangements for a new assistant in my department, Mr. Peckham," said Mr. Bernard, "at once,—this day,—this hour. I am not safe to be trusted with your person five minutes out of this lady's presence,—of whom I beg pardon for this strong language. Mr. Venner, I must beg you, as one of the Trustees of this Institution, to look at the manner in which its Principal has attempted to swindle this faithful teacher, whose toils and sacrifices and self-devotion to the school have made it all that it is, in spite of this miserable trader's incompetence. Will you look at the paper I hold?"

Dudley Venner took the account and read it through, without changing a feature. Then he turned to Silas Peckham.

"You may make arrangements for a new assistant in the branches this lady has taught. Miss Helen Darley is to be my wife. I had hoped to announce this news in a less abrupt and ungraceful manner. But I came to tell you with my own lips what you would have learned before evening from my friends in the village."

Mr. Bernard went to Helen, who stood silent, with downcast eyes, and took her hand warmly, hoping she might find all the happiness she deserved. Then he turned to Dudley Venner, and said,—

"She is a queen, but has never found it out. The world has nothing nobler than this dear woman, whom you have discovered in the disguise of a teacher. God bless her and you!"

Dudley Venner returned his friendly grasp, without answering a word in articulate speech.

Silas remained dumb and aghast for a brief space. Coming to himself a little, he thought there might have been some mistake about the items,—would like to have Miss Darley's bill returned,—would make it all right,—had no idee that Squire Venner had a special int'rest in Miss Darley,—was sorry he had given offence,—if he might take that bill and look it over—

"No, Mr. Peckham," said Mr. Dudley Venner; "there will be a full meeting of the Board next week, and the bill, and such evidence with reference to the management of the Institution and the treatment of its instructors as Mr. Langdon sees fit to bring forward, will be laid before them."

Miss Helen Darley became that very day the guest of Miss Arabella Thornton, the Judge's daughter. Mr. Bernard made his appearance a week or two later at the Lectures, where the Professor first introduced him to the reader.

He stayed after the class had left the room.

"Ah, Mr. Langdon! how do you do? Very glad to see you back again. How have you been since our correspondence on Fascination and other curious scientific questions?"

It was the Professor who spoke,—whom the reader will recognize as myself, the teller of this story.

"I have been well," Mr. Bernard answered, with a serious look which invited a further question.

"I hope you have had none of those painful or dangerous experiences you seemed to be thinking of when you wrote; at any rate, you have escaped having your obituary written."

"I have seen some things worth remembering. Shall I call on you this evening and tell you about them?"

"I shall be most happy to see you."

* * * * *

This was the way in which I, the Professor, became acquainted with some of the leading events of this story. They interested me sufficiently to lead me to avail myself of all those other extraordinary methods of obtaining information well known to writers of narrative.

Mr. Langdon seemed to me to have gained in seriousness and strength of character by his late experiences. He threw his whole energies into his studies with an effect which distanced all his previous efforts. Remembering my former hint, he employed his spare hours in writing for the annual prizes, both of which he took by a unanimous vote of the judges. Those who heard him read his Thesis at the Medical Commencement will not soon forget the impression made by his fine personal appearance and manners, nor the universal interest excited in the audience, as he read, with his beautiful enunciation, that striking paper entitled "Unresolved Nebulas in Vital Science." It was a general remark of the Faculty,—and old Doctor Kittredge, who had come down on purpose to hear Mr. Langdon, heartily agreed to it,—that there had never been a diploma filled up, since the institution which conferred upon him the degree of Doctor Medicinae was founded, which carried with it more of promise to the profession than that which bore the name of

Bernardus Caryl Langdon

CHAPTER XXXII

CONCLUSION

Mr. Bernard Langdon had no sooner taken his degree, than, in accordance with the advice of one of his teachers whom he frequently consulted, he took an office in the heart of the city where he had studied. He had thought of beginning in a suburb or some remoter district of the city proper.

"No," said his teacher,—to wit, myself,—"don't do any such thing. You are made for the best kind of practice; don't hamper yourself with an outside constituency, such as belongs to a practitioner of the second class. When a fellow like you chooses his beat, he must look ahead a little. Take care of all the poor that apply to you, but leave the half-pay classes to a different style of doctor,—the people who spend one half their time in taking care of their patients, and the other half in squeezing out their money. Go for the swell-fronts and south-exposure houses; the folks inside are just as good as other people, and the pleasantest, on the whole, to take care of. They must have somebody, and they like a gentleman best. Don't throw yourself away. You have a good presence and pleasing manners. You wear white linen by inherited instinct. You can pronounce the word view. You have all the elements of success; go and take it. Be polite and generous, but don't undervalue yourself. You will be useful, at any rate; you may just as well be happy, while you are about it. The highest social class furnishes incomparably the best patients, taking them by and large. Besides, when they won't get well and bore you to death, you can send 'em off to travel. Mind me now, and take the tops of your sparrowgrass. Somebody must have 'em,—why shouldn't you? If you don't take your chance, you'll get the butt-ends as a matter of course."

Mr. Bernard talked like a young man full of noble sentiments. He wanted to be useful to his fellow-beings. Their social differences were nothing to him. He would never court the rich,—he would go where he was called. He would rather save the life of a poor mother of a family than that of half a dozen old gouty millionnaires whose heirs had been yawning and stretching these ten years to get rid of them.

"Generous emotions!" I exclaimed. "Cherish 'em; cling to 'em till you are fifty,—till you are seventy,—till you are ninety! But do as I tell you,—strike for the best circle of practice, and you'll be sure to get it!"

Mr. Langdon did as I told him,—took a genteel office, furnished it neatly, dressed with a certain elegance, soon made a pleasant circle of acquaintances, and began to work his way into the right kind of business. I missed him, however, for some days, not long after he had opened his office. On his return, he told me he had been up at Rockland, by special invitation, to attend the wedding of Mr. Dudley Venner and Miss Helen Darley. He gave me a full account of the ceremony, which I regret that I cannot relate in full. "Helen looked like an angel,"—that, I am sure, was one of his expressions. As for her dress, I should like to give the details, but am afraid of committing blunders, as men always do, when they undertake to describe such matters. White dress, anyhow,—that I am sure of,—with orange-flowers, and the most wonderful lace veil that was ever seen or heard of. The Reverend Doctor Honeywood performed the ceremony, of course. The good people seemed to have forgotten they ever had had any other minister,—except Deacon Shearer and his set of malecontents, who were doing a dull business in the meeting-house lately occupied by the Reverend Mr. Fairweather.

"Who was at the wedding?"

"Everybody, pretty much. They wanted to keep it quiet, but it was of no use. Married at church. Front pews, old Doctor Kittredge and all the mansion-house people and distinguished strangers,—Colonel Sprowle and family, including Matilda's young gentleman, a graduate of one of the fresh-water colleges,—Mrs. Pickins (late Widow Rowens) and husband,—Deacon Soper and numerous parishioners. A little nearer the door, Abel, the Doctor's man, and Elbridge, who drove them to church in, the family-coach. Father Fairweather, as they all call him now, came in late, with Father McShane."

"And Silas Peckham?"

"Oh, Silas had left The School and Rockland. Cut up altogether too badly in the examination instituted by the Trustees. Had moved over to Tamarack, and thought of renting a large house and 'farming' the town-poor."

* * * * *

Some time after this, as I was walking with a young friend along by the swell-fronts and south-exposures, whom should I see but Mr. Bernard Langdon, looking remarkably happy, and keeping step by the side of a very handsome and singularly well-dressed young lady? He bowed and lifted his hat as we passed.

"Who is that pretty girl my young doctor has got there?" I said to my companion.

"Who is that?" he answered. "You don't know? Why, that is neither more nor less than Miss Letitia Forester, daughter of—of—why, the great banking-firm, you know, Bilyuns Brothers & Forester. Got acquainted with her in the country, they say. There's a story that they're engaged, or like to be, if the firm consents."

"Oh!" I said.

I did not like the look of it in the least. Too young,—too young. Has not taken any position yet. No right to ask for the hand of Bilyuns Brothers & Co.'s daughter. Besides, it will spoil him for practice, if he marries a rich girl before he has formed habits of work.

I looked in at his office the next day. A box of white kids was lying open on the table. A three-cornered note, directed in a very delicate lady's-hand, was distinguishable among a heap of papers. I was just going to call him to account for his proceedings, when he pushed the three-cornered note aside and took up a letter with a great corporation-seal upon it. He had received the offer of a professor's chair in an ancient and distinguished institution.

"Pretty well for three-and-twenty, my boy," I said. "I suppose you'll think you must be married one of these days, if you accept this office."

Mr. Langdon blushed.—There had been stories about him, he knew. His name had been mentioned in connection with that of a very charming young lady. The current reports were not true. He had met this young lady, and been much pleased with her, in the country, at the house of her grandfather, the Reverend Doctor Honeywood,—you remember Miss Letitia Forester, whom I have mentioned repeatedly? On coming to town, he found his country-acquaintance in a social position which seemed to discourage his continued intimacy. He had discovered, however, that he was a not unwelcome visitor, and had kept up friendly relations with her. But there was no truth in the current reports,—none at all.

Some months had passed, after this visit, when I happened one evening to stroll into a box in one of the principal theatres of the city. A small party sat on the seats before me: a middle-aged gentleman and his lady, in front, and directly behind them my young doctor and the same very handsome young lady I had seen him walking with on the side-walk before the swell-fronts and south-exposures. As Professor Langdon seemed to be very much taken up with his companion, and both of them looked as if they were enjoying themselves, I determined not to make my presence known to my young friend, and to withdraw quietly after feasting my eyes with the sight of them for a few minutes.

"It looks as if something might come of it," I said to myself.

At that moment the young lady lifted her arm accidentally, in such a way that the light fell upon the clasp of a chain which encircled her wrist. My eyes filled with tears as I read upon the clasp, in sharp-cut Italic letters, E.V. They were tears at once of sad remembrance and of joyous anticipation; for the ornament on which I looked was the double pledge of a dead sorrow and a living affection. It was the golden bracelet,—the parting-gift of Elsie Venner.

* * * * *

BUBBLES

II stood on the brink in childhood,And watched the bubbles goFrom the rock-fretted sunny rippleTo the smoother lymph below;And over the white creek-bottom,Under them every one,Went golden stars in the water,All luminous with the sun.But the bubbles brake on the surface,And under, the stars of goldBrake, and the hurrying waterFlowed onward, swift and cold.III stood on the brink in manhood,And it came to my weary heart,—In my breast so dull and heavy,After the years of smart,—That every hollowest bubbleWhich over my life had passedStill into its deeper currentSome sky-sweet gleam had cast;That, however I mocked it gayly,And guessed at its hollowness,Still shone, with each bursting bubble,One star in my soul the less.

CITIES AND PARKS:

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE NEW YORK CENTRAL PARK

The first murderer was the first city-builder; and a good deal of murdering has been carried on in the interest of city-building ever since Cain's day. Narrow and crooked streets, want of proper sewerage and ventilation, the absence of forethought in providing open spaces for the recreation of the people, the allowance of intramural burials, and of fetid nuisances, such as slaughter-houses and manufactories of offensive stuffs, have converted cities into pestilential inclosures, and kept Jefferson's saying—"Great cities are great sores"—true in its most literal and mortifying sense.

There is some excuse for the crowded and irregular character of Old-World cities. They grew, and were not builded. Accumulations of people, who lighted like bees upon a chance branch, they found themselves hived in obdurate brick and mortar before they knew it; and then, to meet the necessities of their cribbed, cabined, and confined condition, they must tear down sacred landmarks, sacrifice invaluable possessions, and trample on prescriptive rights, to provide breathing-room for their gasping population. Besides, air, water, light, and cleanliness are modern innovations. The nose seems to have acquired its sensitiveness within a hundred years,—the lungs their objection to foul air, and the palate its disgust at ditch-water like the Thames, within a more recent period. Honestly dirty, and robustly indifferent to what mortally offends our squeamish senses, our happy ancestors fattened on carbonic acid gas, and took the exhalations of graveyards and gutters with a placidity of stomach that excites our physiological admiration. If they died, it was not for want of air. The pestilence carried, them off,—and that was a providential enemy, whose home-bred origin nobody suspected.

It must seem to foreigners of all things the strangest, that, in a country where land is sold at one dollar and twenty-five cents the acre by the square mile, there should in any considerable part of it be a want of room,—any necessity for crowding the population into pent-up cities,—any narrowness of streets, or want of commons and parks. And yet it is an undeniable truth that our American cities are all suffering the want of ample thoroughfares, destitute of adequate parks and commons, and too much crowded for health, convenience, or beauty. Boston has for its main street a serpentine lane, wide enough to drive the cows home from their pastures, but totally and almost fatally inadequate to be the great artery of a city of two hundred thousand people. Philadelphia is little better off with her narrow Chestnut Street, which purchases what accommodation it affords by admitting the parallel streets to nearly equal use, and thus sacrificing the very idea of a metropolitan thoroughfare, in which the splendor and motion and life of a metropolis ought to be concentrated. New York succeeds in making Broadway what the Toledo, the Strand, the Linden Strasse, the Italian Boulevards are; but the street is notoriously blocked and confused, and occasions more loss of time and temper and life and limb than would amply repay, once in five years, the widening of it to double its present breadth.

It is a great misfortune, that our commercial metropolis, the predestined home of five millions of people, should not have a single street worthy of the population, the wealth, the architectural ambition ready to fill and adorn it. Wholesale trade, bankers, brokers, and lawyers seek narrow streets. There must be swift communication between the opposite sides, and easy recognition of faces across the way. But retail trade requires no such conditions. The passers up and down on opposite sides of Broadway are as if in different streets, and neither expect to recognize each other nor to pass from one to the other without set effort. It took a good while to make Broad and Canal Streets attractive business-streets, and to get the importers and jobbers out of Pearl Street; but the work is now done. The Bowery affords the only remaining chance of building a magnificent metropolitan thoroughfare in New York; and we anticipate the day—when Broadway will surrender its pretensions to that now modest Cheapside. Already, about the confluence of the Third and Fourth Avenues at Eighth Street are congregated some of the chief institutions of the city,—the Bible House, the Cooper Institute, the Astor Library, the Mercantile Library. Farther down, the continuation of Canal Street affords the most commanding sites for future public edifices; while the neighborhoods of Franklin and Chatham Squares ought to be seized upon to embellish the city at imperial points with its finest architectural piles. The capacities of New York, below Union Square, for metropolitan splendor are entirely undeveloped; the best points are still occupied by comparatively worthless buildings, and the future will produce a now unlooked-for change in the whole character of that great district.

The huddling together of our American cities is due to the recentness of the time when space was our greatest enemy and sparseness our chief discouragement. Our founders hated room as much as a backwoods farmer hates trees. The protecting walls, which narrowed the ways and cramped the houses of the Old-World cities, did not put a severer compress upon them, than the disgust of solitude and the craving for "the sweet security of streets" threw about our city-builders. In the Western towns now, they carefully give a city air to their villages by crowding the few stores and houses of which they are composed into the likeliest appearance of an absolute scarcity of space.

They labor unconsciously to look crowded, and would sooner go into a cellar to eat their oysters than have them in the finest saloon above ground. And so, if a peninsula like Boston, or a miniature Mesopotamia like New York, or a basin like Cincinnati, could be found to tuck away a town in, in which there was a decent chance of covering over the nakedness of the land within a thousand years, they rejoiced to seize on it and warm their shivering imaginations in the idea of the possible snugness which their distant posterity might enjoy.

Boston owes its only park worth naming—the celebrated Common—to the necessity of leaving a convenient cow-pasture for the babes and sucklings of that now mature community. Forty acres were certainly never more fortunately situated for their predestined service, nor more providentially rescued for the higher uses of man. May the memory of the weaning babes who pleaded for the spot where their "milky mothers" fed be ever sacred in our Athens, and may the cows of Boston be embalmed with the bulls of Egypt! A white heifer should be perpetually grazing, at her tether, in the shadow of the Great Elm. Would it be wholly unbecoming one born in full view of that lovely inclosure to suggest that the straightness of the lines in which the trees are planted on Boston Common, and the rapidly increasing thickness of their foliage, destroy in the summer season the effect of breadth and liberty, hide both the immediate and the distant landscape, stifle the breeze, and diminish the attractiveness of the spot? Fewer trees, scattered in clumps and paying little regard to paths, would vastly improve the effect. The colonnades of the malls furnish all the shade desirable in so small an inclosure.

For the most part, the proper laying-out of cities is both a matter of greater ease and greater importance in America than anywhere else. We are much in the condition of those old Scriptural worthies, of whom it could be so coolly said, "So he went and built a city," as if it were a matter of not much greater account than "So be went and built a log-house." Very likely some of those Biblical cities, extemporized so tersely, were not much more finished than those we now and then encounter in our Western and Southern tours, where a poor shed at four cross-roads is dignified with the title. We believe it was Samuel Dexter, the pattern of Webster, who, on hanging out his shingle in a New England village, where a tavern, a schoolhouse, a church, and a blacksmith's shop constituted the whole settlement, gave as a reason, that, having to break into the world somewhere, he had chosen the weakest place. He would have tried a new Western city, had they then been in fashion, as a still softer spot in the social crust. But this rage for cities in America is prophetic. The name is a spell; and most of the sites, surveyed and distributed into town-lots with squares and parks staked out, are only a century before their time, and will redound to the future credit, however fatal to the immediate cash of their projectors. Who can doubt that Cairo of Illinois—the standing joke of tourists, (and the standing-water of the Ohio and Mississippi,) though no joke to its founders—will one day rival its Egyptian prototype? America runs to cities, and particularly in its Northern latitudes. As cities have been the nurses of democratic institutions and ideas, democratic nations, for very obvious reasons, tend to produce them. They are the natural fruits of a democracy. And with no people are great cities so important, or likely to be so increasingly populous, as with a great agricultural and commercial nation like our own, covered with a free and equal population. The vast wealth of such a people, evenly distributed, and prevented from over-accumulation in special families by the absence of primogeniture and entail,—their general education and refined tastes,—the intense community of ideas, through the all-pervading influence of a daily press reaching with simultaneous diffusion over thousands of square miles,—the facilities of locomotion,—all inevitably cooperate with commercial necessities to create great cities,—not merely as the homes of the mercantile and wealthy class, but as centres where the leisure, the tastes, the pride, and the wants of the people at large repair more and more for satisfaction. Free populations, educated in public schools and with an open career for all, soon instinctively settle the high economies of life.