The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862

'How was it Cragin?' I asked, greatly pleased.

A short rap came at the office-door, and Frank entered, his hat in his hand.

'Mother insists on my taking supper with her—will you go now, sir?' he said, addressing me.

Before I could reply, Mr. Hallet, rather sharply, asked:

'Have you finished your letters for the steamer?'

'Yes, sir.'

'What have you said to Maclean, Maris & Co., about the gum-copal?'

'I will show you, sir.'

And going into the other room, Frank returned in a moment with an open letter, still wet from the copying-press. Mr. Hallet took it and read it over slowly and carefully, then handing it back, he said, in the slightly pompous tone which was natural to him:

'That will do—you can go.'

I was rising to bid them 'good-evening,' when the senior said to me:

'Mr. Kirke, I dislike to trespass on your time, but I would like to confer with you for a moment, on a private matter.'

'Certainly, sir.' And I added: 'Frank, tell your mother I will meet you at the hotel in half an hour.'

'But I must be in Cambridge by eight o'clock,' replied the young man, looking a little chop-fallen.

'Well, don't wait for me—I will see you to-morrow.'

Bidding me 'good-night,' he left; and Mr. Cragin, seeing that his partner would be alone with me, left shortly afterward. As soon as Cragin was gone, Mr. Hallet, opening the door, called:

'David!'

The book-keeper entered, and took a seat beside me.

'Mr. Kirke,' said Mr. Hallet, when the other was seated, 'I want to talk with you and David about Frank. He has entangled himself with that Southern girl, and, I hear, means to marry her. I strongly object to it. I've not a particle of influence with him, and you must prevent it.'

'Why should we prevent it?' I asked, rather sharply. 'What is there against the young woman?'

'Nothing against her character, but she'd not be a fit wife for Frank. These Southern women are educated with wrong ideas—they make poor wives for poor men. He must marry a rich girl, or one brought up with New-England habits. This one would bring him nothing, and spend all he made.'

'But she is an only child, and her father is rich.'

'Pshaw! that is bosh! Preston always lived high, and I'll guarantee his estate is bankrupt. I'm sorry for it, for he owes us.'

'Is that so! Largely?' 'No, not largely; how much is he overdrawn, David?'

'Eighty-two hundred and odd.'

'I'm surprised at that,' I said. 'The old house did not allow such things.'

'Neither do we; 'twas Cragin's work. He thought 'twould annoy Frank if the drafts went back, and'—he hesitated a moment—'he insisted upon it.'

'I am opposed to interfering in such matters. I always taught Frank to think for himself,' I remarked.

'You taught him to think too much for himself. He is self-willed and headstrong to a fault.'

'Perhaps his father might have trained him better, if—he had tried,' I replied, with a slight sneer.

'Pardon me, Mr. Kirke, I meant no reflection on your management of him. I only feel that this is a most important step, and he ought to be advised. He should marry rich, for he has nothing, and can not rely upon me.'

'He does not rely upon you; but he is a partner now, and his income ought to enable him to support a wife.'

'His income is uncertain; he may not remain long in the concern,' replied Mr. Hallet coolly.

David started; his face reddened to the roots of his hair, and he asked in a sententious way, showing even in his expenditure of breath the close economy that was the rule of his life: 'Who told you that, Mr. Hallet?'

'No one,' replied that gentleman, seemingly surprised at the abrupt question; 'I am deliberating on it myself. He is sowing dissension between Cragin and me. The lowest boy in the office; even you, David, pay more heed to him than to me.'

'That may be your own fault,' I said, a little sarcastically; 'if you should treat him as Cragin and David do, you might have nothing to complain of.'

'I treat him well, sir; but I make him know his place.' The last words were emphasized in a hard, wicked tone.

Certain old recollections had been rushing across my memory during the latter part of this conversation, and this last remark brought me to my feet, as I said: 'You treat him like a dog, sir! I have seen it. If he were not your son, he should not stay with you another day! But I warn you, John Hallet—do not go too far. Cast that boy off—harm him to the extent of a hair—and, so help me God, I will strip you of the lying cloak in which you hide your false, hypocritical soul, and show men what you are!'

In my excitement, I had crossed the room, and stood then directly before him. His face flushed and his eye quailed before my steady gaze, but he said nothing.

David remarked, in a mild tone: 'Edmund, that an't the right spirit; it an't.'

'You don't know the whole, David; if you did, even you would say he is the basest man living.'

Hallet pressed his teeth together; his eyes flashed fire, and he seemed about to spring upon me; but mastering his passion, he rose after a moment and extended his hand, saying: 'Come, Mr. Kirke, this is not the talk of old friends! Let us shake hands and forget it.'

'Never, sir! I took your hand for the last time when I left this counting-room, twenty years ago. I never touch it again! I shall tell that boy to-night that you are his father.'

'You will not do so imprudent a thing. I will do any thing for him—any thing you require. I promise you—on my honor,' and the stately head of the great house of Russell, Rollins & Co., sank into a chair and bent down his face like a criminal in the dock.

'I can not trust you,' I said, as I paced the room,

'You can, Edmund; he means it. He is sorry for the wrong he's done,' said the old book-keeper, in that mild, winning tone which had made me so love him in my boyhood.

'Well, let him prove that he means it; let him tell you all; let him tell you how much he has had to repent of!'

'I have told him all. I told him years ago.'

'Did you tell him how you cast off that poor girl? how for years on her knees she vainly plead for a paltry pittance to keep her child from starving and herself from sin? Did you tell him how you forced her on the street? how you drove her from you with curses, when she prayed you to save her from the pit of infamy into which you had plunged her? Did you tell him,' and I hissed the words in his ear, while he writhed on his seat in such agony as only the guilty can feel; 'how, at last, after all those wretched years, she died of starvation and disease, with all that mountain of sin on her soul, and all of it heaped on her by YOU!'

'Oh! no! I did not—could not tell him that! I did not know I had done that!' groaned the stately gentleman.

'You lie, John Hallet! You know you lie! and may God deal with you as you dealt with her,' and I took up my hat and laid my hand on the door.

'Stop, stop, Edmund; don't go with those words. You would not have God do to you as you have done to others!' said David, in the same mild tone as before.

'True, David. I ought not to wish him harm; but I loathe and detest the hypocritical villain. Frank shall leave him to-night, and forever!' and again I laid my hand on the door.

Mr. Hallet looked up; his face was pale as marble, and his hands clenched tightly the arms of his chair, 'Don't go, Mr. Kirke,' he cried; 'stay one moment. Can't this be arranged?'

'Yes, sir. Sign a dissolution article at once—here—NOW, and give Frank your check for twenty thousand dollars.'

'No, no! You don't mean that! It is too much—you can not ask that!' gasped the great merchant.

'Too much for the son of a man worth a million? Too much to pay for starving his mother, and turning him adrift at six years old? It is not enough! He must have thirty thousand!'

'You are mad, Mr. Kirke!' And he rose, and looked at me with a pleading face. 'I can not pay that amount down. It is impossible.'

'David, how much has he in bank on private account?'

Mr. Hallet cast a beseeching glance at his book-keeper; but without moving a muscle, the old man quietly replied: 'Fifty-three thousand.'

'I knew you lied, Hallet. It is natural to you.'

'But I can't let Frank go without Mr. Cragin's consent.'

'I will arrange with Cragin. Sign the check and draw the paper at once, or I go.'

'But give me time to think—see me to-morrow.'

'I shall never exchange a word with you after to-night. You can have ten minutes—not a second more,' and I took out my watch to count the time.

He seated himself at his desk, and rested his head on his hand for a moment; then turning to me, he said: 'You promise that this interview, and all that has passed, shall never be mentioned by you?'

'I do—never to your injury.'

'David, please write the check,' said the senior partner, as he proceeded himself to draw up the agreement. In a few minutes he handed it to me. It was short, and merely recited that the co-partnership which had theretofore existed between John Hallet, Augustus Cragin, and Henry F. Mandell, under the name and style of Russell, Rollins & Co., was on that day dissolved by mutual consent; said Mandell withdrawing, and assigning the control of all the assets of said firm to said Hallet and Cragin, and releasing to said Hallet any portion of its capital and profits to which he might be entitled.

I read the document, and quietly handed it back. 'That will not do, Mr. Hallet. Thirty thousand dollars settles with you, his father. I have not, and shall not make any settlement with the firm. David must pay Frank what is his due—no more, no less.'

'But,' began Mr. Hallet.

'I have nothing more to say on the subject, sir.'

He drew a deep sigh. The parting with an only son, and with thirty thousand dollars, at one and the same time, affected him deeply. He might have borne the loss of the son; but the loss of so much money rent his small, black soul into fragments. However, he rewrote the paper, and passed it to me. It was all right; and when he had signed and David had witnessed it, I placed it in my pocket-book. Then, with a trembling hand, he handed me the check. It was drawn to my order; and I remarked, as I took it: 'This is not what I require, sir. I want your check, indorsed by David.'

'This is most unaccountable, Mr. Kirke. Do you question my check for thirty thousand dollars?' he asked, his face flushing with anger.

'Oh! no, sir, not at all; but you might stop its payment. With David's indorsement, you would not dare to do it.'

'I will indorse it,' said David; and he quietly proceeded to write another.

That cold, hard, soulless man had a wife and children; but that old book-keeper was the only being in all this wide world that he loved!

Placing the check with the other paper, I shook David by the hand, and bidding him 'good-night', passed down the old stairway.

As Frank is the hero of my history, I will, in another chapter, go back some seventeen years, and tell the reader how he came to be under my control, and how he rose to be a partner in the great house of Russell, Rollins & Co.

CORN IS KING

            Up among the Granite mountains,                By the Bay State strand,            Hark! the paean cry is sounding                Through all Yankee land.            'Wave the stars and stripes high o'er us,                Let every freeman sing,            In a loud and joyful chorus:                Brave young Corn is King!Join, join, for God and freedom! Sing, Northmen, sing:Old King Cotton's dead and buried: brave young Corn is King.'            Southward rolls the cry of gladness,                On past Washington;            Where the bond-slave stoops no longer,                But stands up, a Man!            O'er battle-fields of 'Ole Virginny,'                Floats the black man's song:            'Brudders, God is takin' vengeanceFor de darky's wrong!Shout, shout, for God and Freedom! Sing, darkies, sing!Ole Massa Cotton's dead foreber: Young Massa Corn am King!'            Through the Mississippi valley,                Down the river's tide,            Hosts of patriots rush to rally                On their Country's side;            And across the green savannahs                Of the Southern clime,            Armies, under Union banners,To this song keep time:'March, march, for God and Freedom! Sing, soldiers, sing!Pallid Cotton's dead and buried: Yellow Corn is King!'            Let the tidings swell o'er ocean                To another shore,            Till proud England pales and trembles                Where she scoffed before!            Ne'er again shall serpent-friendship                Rise to hiss and sting!            Cotton leagues no more with Traitors:Honest Corn is King!Jubilate! God and Freedom! Sing, Americans, singTyrant Cotton's dead forever! Honest Corn is King!

LITERARY NOTICES

Among the Pines. By Edmund Kirke. New-York: J. R. Gilmore, 532 Broadway. 1862.

Perhaps it is not altogether in rule to say much of a work which has appeared in our pages. But we may at least call attention to what others have said. And good authority—plenty of it, such authority as should make a reputation for any book—has declared The Pines to be in truth a work of the highest merit and of a new order. It is a perfectly truthful record of scenes and characters drawn from personal experience in the South; combining the accuracy of Olmstead's works with the thrilling interest of Uncle Tom. It should be fairly stated—as the author desires it should be—that every thing did not occur precisely in the order in which it is here narrated. But all is true—every page speaks for itself in this particular. No stronger piece of local coloring ever issued from the American press. We seem, in reading it, to live in the South—to know the people who come before us. All of them are, indeed, life-portraits. In one or two instances, the very names of the originals remain unchanged.

In it the author deals fairly and honorably with the South. The renegade Yankee, and not the native planter, is made to bear the heaviest blow. The principal character, Colonel J–, is one of nature's noblemen, struggling through aristocratic education and circumstance with an evil whose evil he cannot comprehend. Very valuable indeed are the sketches of life among the 'mean whites.' No descriptions of them to be compared with these in The Pines have ever yet appeared. They rise clear as cameo-reliefs on a dark ground, and we feel that they too are like the slave-holder, victims like the slave, of a system, and not with him, deliberate wretches. Their squalor, ignorance, pride, and dependence—their whole social status, inferior to that of the blacks whom they despise, appear as set forth, we do not say by a master-hand, but by themselves.

This work, tolerant and just, yet striking, has appeared at the right time. While interesting as a novel, it is full of solid, simple facts—it is based on them and built up with them. Without attempting to set forth a principle, it shows beyond dispute that slavery does not pay in the South as well as free labor would, and that the blacks would produce more as free laborers than as slaves. It shows that Emancipation for the sake of the White Man is a great truth, and that the white man would be benefited by raising the sense of independence in the black, and by elevating him in every way in which he is capable of improvement.

It may be said with great truth of The Pines, that it would be difficult to find a book in which such striking facts and vivid pictures are set forth with such perfect simplicity of language. There is no effort at fine writing in it, and no consciousness of its absence. The author never seems to have realized that a story could be told for effect, and the natural result has been the most unintentional yet the strongest effect. The practical eye of one familiar with planks and turpentine, building and farming, business and furniture, economy and comfort, betrays itself continually. He sees how things could be bettered not as a mere philanthropist would try to see them, but as one who knows how capital ought to be employed, and he appreciates the fact that the sufferings of the people of every class in the South are really based on the wastefulness of the present system. That this spirit should be combined with a keen observation of local humor, and in several instances with narratives imbued with deep pathos, is not, however, remarkable. The man who can most vividly set forth facts and transfer nature to paper, seldom misses variety.

We rejoice that this work has met with such favorable reception from the public, and are happy to state that the author will continue his contributions to these columns. He has already, by a single effort, established a wide-spread reputation, and we know that he has that in him which will induce efforts of equal merit and a future which will be honorably recorded in histories of the literature of the present day.

Thomas Hood's Works. Volume IV. Aldine Edition. Edited by Epes Sargent. New-York: G. P. Putnam. Boston: A. K. Loring. 1862.

No better paper, no better type, can be desired than what is lavished upon these beautiful editions of Putnam's works. It is a pleasure to touch their silky, Baskerville-feeling leaves, and think that one possesses in the series one more work de luxe, which 'any one' might be glad to own. The present consists of The Whims and Oddities, with the—originally—two volumes of National Tales: the former piquant and variously eccentric; the latter written in a quaint, old-fashioned style, which the editor compares justly to that of Boccaccio, yet which was really, till within some fifty years, so very common a form of narration, having so much in common with Spanish and French nouvelettes, that it is hardly worth while to suppose that Hood followed the great. Italian at all. The whole work is one mass of entertainment, none the worse for having acquired somewhat of a game-y flavor of age, and for gradually falling a little behind the latest styles of humor. 'Mass! 'tis a merry book, and will make them merry who read it!'

The Works of Thomas Hood. Edited by Epes Sargent. Vol. V. New-York: G. P. Putnam. 1862.

The present volume of Hood's writings is composed of dramatic sketches, odes, political satires, and miscellaneous pieces not generally contained in former collections of his works. Among these is the long and beautiful 'Lamia' in dramatic form; the 'Epping Hunt;' the poems of sentiment; the inimitable Odes and Addresses to Great People, and some scores of minor poems, mostly humorous, including, however, all of those on which his reputation as a true poet of the highest rank is based. Among these is the 'Lay of the Laborer,' a standing and bitter reproach to England—the England of millions of pounds of capital—the England of piety—the England of morality—the England of 'all the rights of man,' where there are more paupers and more miseries than in any other land on earth, and where there is accordingly the most social tyranny of any country.

'Ay, only give me work,    And then you need not fearThat I shall snare his worship's hare,    Or kill his grace's deer.''Where savage laws begrudge    The pauper babe its breath,And doom a wife to a widow's life    Before her partner's death.'

When England shall have turned aside the reproach of this poem, it will be time for her to abuse America as 'uncivilized.'

Agnes of Sorrento, By Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1862.

If there be, at the present day, an ungrateful task for an intelligent reader or a conscientious reviewer, it is to be obliged to deal with a work whose whole compass is merely that of a second-rate romance inspired by rococo sentimentalism. We regret to speak thus of a book by so eminent a writer as Mrs. Stowe; but when any one at this time undertakes to build up a novel out of such material as cloisters, monks, and nuns, Beato Angelico and frankincense, cavaliers and Savonarola, with the occasional 'purple patch' of a rhyming Latin hymn—in short, when we see the long-exhausted melo-dramatic style, which was years ago thoroughly quizzed in 'Firmilian,' revived in the year 1862 in a work of fiction, we can not refrain from expressing sorrow that a public can still be found to welcome such a bouquet of faded and tattered artificial flowers. There is something, indeed, almost painfully amusing in the liberal use of perfectly exhausted and thoroughly hackneyed elements of popular romance which appear in every page of Agnes of Sorrento. A writer has said of the heroine, that 'she is one of those ethereal females, only encountered in romance, who dwell on the brink of exaltation, and never eat bread and butter without seeming to fly in the face of Divine Providence.' But this feebly expresses the worn-out ornamental piety of the work. It would require but very little alteration to become one of the most intensely amusing books of the age.

Seventh Annual Report of the Insurance Commissioners of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

An interesting collection of documents, which will be read or examined with great pleasure by all who devote their attention to the rapidly maturing science of insurance, a science which perhaps combines in its range of material as much of the curious and useful as any other known; the whole tending to one great lesson: that every thing should be insured and that no insurance should be taxed by Government.

Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of The Board of Education. Boston: William White. 1862.

Apart from the vastly important testimony which these works bear to the efforts annually made in our good State in the cause of education—the great source, let us trust, of the politics to be—we seldom fail to find in them many useful hints as to the practical business of teaching, of which any writer on the subject would be glad to avail himself. Many such, at least, we detect in the volume before us, and sincerely trust that all will in due time bear their good fruit.

Concord Fight. By S. R. Bartlett. Second edition. Concord: Albert Tracy. Boston: Crosby, Nichols & Co. 1862.

A poem of thirty-two pages, devoted to setting forth the incidents of Concord and Lexington fights, in the Revolutionary days, and therefore very appropriate to our own time. The 'plan' is excellent; the incidents well devised, while many little lyrical touches here and there are truly admirable. For instance, 'The White Cockade.'

'Firm hearts and true, strong bands to do,    For liberty;The fierce old strain rings once again:    'Come death or victory!''The lips that woke the dawning note    Are passed away;But the echoes of the 'White Cockade'    Ring round our hills to-day.'

Long may they ring, and long may the descendants of the men of '76 prove that they still hear in spirit 'the dawning notes.'

EDITOR'S TABLE

The English journals and statesmen, in their excessive anxiety to regulate every thing for the world in general and for America in particular, quite lose sight of the fact, that before interfering in a neighbor's affairs, it is best to know what the state of affairs may really be. Of late, we have seen these makers of public opinion making mischief through gross ignorance, to a degree well-nigh unparalleled in history. On the strength of flying rumors, unfinished events imperfectly reported, and through Secession slanders, their great leaders, both representative and editorial, have ventured to spread before the masses statements which must unavoidably tend to greatly exasperate and alienate the people of our respective nations. They are blindly running up scores of hatred, which at some day may call for fearful settlement. Their influence is very great on the rank-loving multitude in their own country—a multitude which, after all, is, in the majority, more miserable and nearly as ignorant as that of any realm in Europe, or even the East, for there are fewer paupers in Turkey or Syria than in wealthy England. Yet, quite unheeding this, they continue to express sympathy for the South, declare with Brougham that the bubble of Democracy has at length burst, and chuckle over every Northern defeat. All of which shall be duly remembered.