Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861




To those who, without experience, are commencing a jobbing-business,
a capital of thirty, forty, or fifty thousand dollars seems an
inexhaustible fund. Experience teaches that an incautious and unskilful
man may easily bury even the largest of these sums in a single season.
If not actually lost, it has in effect ceased to be capital, because it
cannot be collected, and the notes he has taken are such as will not be
discounted.

Success in the jobbing-business makes such demand on talent and capacity
as outsiders seldom dream of. Half-a-dozen Secretaries of State, with a
Governor and a President thrown in, would not suffice to constitute a
first-class jobbing-firm. The general or special incompetency of these
distinguished functionaries in their several spheres may probably be
covered by the capacity of their subordinates. The President of these
United States--of late years, at all events--is not supposed to be in
a position to know whether the will is or is not "a self-determining
power." But no jobbing-firm can thus cloak its deficiencies, or shirk
its responsibilities. Goods must be bought, and sold, and paid for; and
a master-spirit in each department, capable of penetrating to every
particular, and of controlling every subordinate, cannot be dispensed
with. He must know that every man to whom he delegates any portion of
his work is competent and trustworthy. He must be able to feel that the
thing which he deputes to each will be as surely and as faithfully done
as though done by his own hand. No criticism is more common or more
depreciatory than that "Such a one will not succeed, because he has
surrounded himself with incompetent men."

It is much to be regretted that it cannot be said, that no man can
succeed in the jobbing-business who is not a model of courtesy.
Unhappily, our community has not yet reached that elevation. But this
may with truth be affirmed,--that many a man fails for the want of
courtesy, and for the want of that good-will to his fellows from which
all real courtesy springs. There is small chance for any man to succeed
who does not command his own spirit. There is no chance whatever for
an indolent man; and, in the long run, little or no chance for the
dishonest man. The same must be said for the timid and for the rash man.
Nor can we offer any encouragement to the intermittent man. From year's
end to year's end, the dry-goods jobber finds himself necessitated to be
studying his stock and his ledger. He knows, that, while men sleep, the
enemy will be sowing tares. In his case, the flying moments are the
enemy, and bad stock and bad debts are the tares. To weed out each of
these is his unceasing care. And as both the one and the other are
forever choking the streams of income which should supply the means of
paying his own notes, his no less constant care is to provide such other
conduits as shall insure him always a full basin at the bank. Nobody but
a jobber can know the vexation of a jobber who cannot find money to cash
his notes when they are beginning to be thrown into the market at a
price a shade lower than his neighbor's notes are sold at.

In conclusion, a few material facts should be stated.

As a general proposition, it is not to be denied, that those who are
in haste to get rich will find in the dry-goods jobbing-business many
temptations and snares into which one may easily fall. A young man who
is not fortified by a faithful home-training, and by sound religious
principle, will be likely enough to degenerate into a heartless
money-maker.

While the young man who has been well trained at home, who appreciates
good manners, good morals, and good books, will derive immense advantage
in acquiring that quick discernment, that intuitive apprehension of
the rights and of the pleasure of others, and that nice tact, which
characterize the highest style of merchants,--he who has not been thus
prepared will be more than likely to mistake _brusquerie_ for manliness,
and brutality for the sublime of independence. As in a great house there
are vessels unto honor and also unto dishonor, so in the purlieus of
the dry-goods trade there are gentlemen who would honor and adorn any
society, and also men whose manners would shame Hottentots,--whose
language, innocent of all preference for Worcester or Webster, a terror
to all decent ideas, like scarecrows in corn-fields, is dressed in the
cast-off garments of the refuse of all classes.

Success in retailing does not necessarily qualify a man to succeed in
the dry-goods jobbing-business. The game is played on a much larger
scale; it includes other chances, and demands other qualifications,
natural and acquired. Instances are not wanting of men who, in the
smaller towns, had made to themselves a name and acquired an honorable
independence, sinking both capital and courage in their endeavors to
manage the business of a city-jobber.

It should be well remembered, that, while it is not indispensable to
success in the jobbing-business that each partner should be an expert
in every department of the business, in buying, selling, collecting,
paying, and book-keeping, it is absolutely necessary that each should
be such in his own department,--and that the firm, as a unit, should
include a completely competent man for each and every one of these
departments. The lack of the qualities which are indispensable to any
one of these may, and probably will, prove an abyss deep enough to
ingulf the largest commercial ship afloat.

Finally, to avoid disappointment, the man who would embark in the
dry-goods trade should make up his mind to meet every variety of
experience known to mortals, and to be daunted by nothing. He will
assuredly find fair winds and head winds, clear skies and cloudy skies,
head seas and cross seas as well as stern seas. A wind that justifies
studding-sails may change, without premonition, to a gale that will make
ribbons of top-sails and of storm-sails. The best crew afloat cannot
preclude all casualties, or exclude sleepless nights and cold sweats now
and then; but a quick eye, a cool head, a prompt hand, and indomitable
perseverance will overcome almost all things.




THE OLD HOMESTEAD.


The wet trees hang above the walks
Purple with damps and earthish stains,
And strewn by moody, absent rains
With rose-leaves from the wild-grown stalks.

Unmown, in heavy, tangled swaths,
The ripe June-grass is wanton blown;
Snails slime the untrodden threshold-stone,
Along the sills hang drowsy moths.

Down the blank visage of the wall,
Where many a wavering trace appears
Like a forgotten trace of tears,
From swollen caves the slow drops crawl.

Where everything was wide before,
The curious wind, that comes and goes,
Finds all the latticed windows close,
Secret and close the bolted door.

And with the shrewd and curious wind,
That in the arched doorway cries,
And at the bolted portal tries,
And harks and listens at the blind,--

Forever lurks my thought about,
And in the ghostly middle-night
Finds all the hidden windows bright,
And sees the guests go in and out,--

And lingers till the pallid dawn,
And feels the mystery deeper there
In silent, gust-swept chambers, bare,
With all the midnight revel gone;

But wanders through the lonesome rooms,
Where harsh the astonished cricket calls,
And, from the hollows of the walls
Vanishing, stare unshapen glooms;

And lingers yet, and cannot come
Out of the drear and desolate place,
So full of ruin's solemn grace,
And haunted with the ghost of home.




THE PROFESSOR'S STORY.


CHAPTER XXVI.

THE NEWS REACHES THE DUDLEY MANSION.


Early the next morning Abel Stebbins made his appearance at Dudley
Venner's, and requested to see the maaen o' the haouse abaout somethin'
o' consequence. Mr. Venner sent word that the messenger should wait
below, and presently appeared in the study, where Abel was making
himself at home, as is the wont of the republican citizen, when he hides
the purple of empire beneath the apron of domestic service.

"Good mornin', Squire!" said Abel, as Mr. Venner entered. "My name's
Stebbins, 'n' I'm stoppin' f'r a spell 'ith ol' Doctor Kittredge."

"Well, Stebbins," said Mr. Dudley Venner, "have you brought any special
message from the Doctor?"

"Y' ha'n't heerd nothin' abaout it, Squire, d' ye mean t' say?" said
Abel,--beginning to suspect that he was the first to bring the news of
last evening's events.

"About--what?" asked Mr. Venner, with some interest.

"Dew tell, naow! Waal, that beats all! Why, that 'ere Portagee relation
o' yourn 'z been tryin' t' ketch a fellah 'n a slippernoose, 'n' got
ketched himself,--that's all. Y' ha'n't heerd noth'n' abaout it?"

"Sit down," said Mr. Dudley Venner, calmly, "and tell me all you have to
say."

So Abel sat down and gave him an account of the events of the last
evening. It was a strange and terrible surprise to Dudley Venner to find
that his nephew, who had been an inmate of his house and the companion
of his daughter, was to all intents and purposes guilty of the gravest
of crimes. But the first shock was no sooner over than he began to think
what effect the news would have on Elsie. He imagined that there was a
kind of friendly feeling between them, and he feared some crisis would
be provoked in his daughter's mental condition by the discovery. He
would wait, however, until she came from her chamber, before disturbing
her with the evil tidings.

Abel did not forget his message with reference to the equipments of the
dead mustang.

"The' was some things on the hoss, Squire, that the man he ketched
said he didn' care no gre't abaout; but perhaps you'd like to have 'em
fetched to the mansion-haouse. Ef y' _didn'_ care abaout 'em, though,
I shouldn' min' keepin' on 'em; they might come handy some time or
'nother: they say, holt on t' anything for ten year 'n' there'll be some
kin' o' use for't."

"Keep everything," said Dudley Venner. "I don't want to see anything
belonging to that young man."

So Abel nodded to Mr. Venner, and left the study to find some of the men
about the stable to tell and talk over with them the events of the
last evening. He presently came upon Elbridge, chief of the equine
department, and driver of the family-coach.

"Good mornin', Abe," said Elbridge. "What's fetched y' daown here so
all-fired airly?"

"You're a darned pooty lot daown here, you be!" Abel answered. "Better
keep your Portagees t' home nex' time, ketchin' folks 'ith slippernooses
raoun' their necks, 'n' kerryin' knives 'n their boots!"

"What 'r' you jawin' abaout?" Elbridge said, looking up to see if he was
in earnest, and what he meant.

"Jawin' abaout? You'll find aout 'z soon 'z y' go into that 'ere stable
o' yourn! Y' won't curry that 'ere long-tailed black hoss no more; 'n'
y' won't set y'r eyes on the fellah that rid him, ag'in, in a hurry!"

Elbridge walked straight to the stable, without saying a word, found the
door unlocked, and went in.

"Th' critter's gone, sure enough!" he said. "Glad on't! The darndest,
kickin'est, bitin'est beast th't ever I see, 'r ever wan' t' see ag'in!
Good reddance! Don' wan' no snappin'-turkles in my stable! Whar's the
man gone th't brought the critter?"

"Whar he's gone? Guess y' better go 'n aaesk my ol' man; he kerried him
off laaes' night; 'n' when he comes back, mebbe he'll tell ye whar he's
gone tew!"

By this time Elbridge had found out that Abel was in earnest, and had
something to tell. He looked at the litter in the mustang's stall, then
at the crib.

"Ha'n't eat b't haaelf his feed. Ha'n't been daown on his straw. Must ha'
been took aout somewhere abaout ten 'r 'leven o'clock. I know that 'ere
critter's ways. The fellah's had him aout nights afore; b't I never
thought nothin' o' no mischief. He's a kin' o' haaelf Injin. What is 't
the chap's been a-doin' on? Tell 's all abaout it."

Abel sat down on a meal-chest, picked up a straw and put it into his
mouth. Elbridge sat down at the other end, pulled out his jackknife,
opened the penknife-blade, and began sticking it into the lid of the
meal-chest. The Doctor's man had a story to tell, and he meant to
get all the enjoyment out of it. So he told it with every luxury of
circumstance. Mr. Venner's man heard it all with open mouth. No listener
in the gardens of Stamboul could have found more rapture in a tale heard
amidst the perfume of roses and the voices of birds and tinkling of
fountains than Elbridge in following Abel's narrative, as they sat there
in the aromatic ammoniacal atmosphere of the stable, the grinding of the
horses' jaws keeping evenly on through it all, with now and then the
interruption of a stamping hoof, and at intervals a ringing crow from
the barnyard.

Elbridge stopped a minute to think, after Abel had finished.

"Who's took care o' them things that was on the hoss?" he said, gravely.

"Waael, Langden, he seemed to kin' o' think I'd ought to have 'em,--'n'
the Squire, he didn' seem to have no 'bjection; 'n' so,--waael, I
cal'late I sh'll jes' holt on to 'em myself; they a'n't good f'r much,
but they're cur'ous t' keep t' look at."

Mr. Venner's man did not appear much gratified by this arrangement,
especially as he had a shrewd suspicion that some of the ornaments of
the bridle were of precious metal, having made occasional examinations
of them with the edge of a file. But he did not see exactly what to do
about it, except to get them from Abel in the way of bargain.

"Waael, no,--they _a'n't_ good for much 'xcep' to look at. 'F y' ever rid
on that seddle once, y' wouldn' try it ag'in, very spry,--not 'f y'
c'd haaelp y'rsaaelf. I tried it,--darned 'f I sot daown f'r th' nex'
week,--eat all my victuals stan'in'. I sh'd like t' hev them things wal
enough to heng up 'n the stable; 'f y' want t' trade some day, fetch 'em
along daown."

Abel rather expected that Elbridge would have laid claim to the saddle
and bridle on the strength of some promise or other presumptive title,
and thought himself lucky to get off with only promising that he would
think abaout tradin'.

When Elbridge returned to the house, he found the family in a state of
great excitement. Mr. Venner had told Old Sophy, and she had informed
the other servants. Everybody knew what had happened, excepting Elsie.
Her father had charged them all to say nothing about it to her; he would
tell her, when she came down.

He heard her step at last,--a light, gliding step,--so light that her
coming was often unheard, except by those who perceived the faint rustle
that went with it. She was paler than common this morning, as she came
into her father's study.

After a few words of salutation, he said, quietly,--

"Elsie, my dear, your cousin Richard has left us."

She grew still paler, as she asked,--

"_Is he dead?_"

Dudley Venner started to see the expression with which Elsie put this
question.

"He is living,--but dead to us from this day forward," said her father.

He proceeded to tell her, in a general way, the story he had just heard
from Abel. There could be no doubting it;--he remembered him as the
Doctor's man; and as Abel had seen all with his own eyes,--as Dick's
chamber, when unlocked with a spare key, was found empty, and his bed
had not been slept in, he accepted the whole account as true.

When he told of Dick's attempt on the young schoolmaster, ("You know
Mr. Langdon very well, Elsie,--a perfectly inoffensive young man, as I
understand,") Elsie turned her face away and slid along by the wall to
the window which looked out on the little grass-plot with the white
stone standing in it. Her father could not see her face, but he knew by
her movements that her dangerous mood was on her. When she heard the
sequel of the story, the discomfiture and capture of Dick, she turned
round for an instant, with a look of contempt and of something like
triumph upon her face. Her father saw that her cousin had become odious
to her. He knew well, by every change of her countenance, by her
movements, by every varying curve of her graceful figure, the
transitions from passion to repose, from fierce excitement to the dull
languor which often succeeded her threatening paroxysms.

She remained looking out at the window. A group of white fan-tailed
pigeons had lighted on the green plot before it and clustered about one
of their companions who lay on his back, fluttering in a strange way,
with outspread wings and twitching feet. Elsie uttered a faint cry;
these were her special favorites, and often fed from her hand. She threw
open the long window, sprang out, caught up the white fan-tail, and held
it to her bosom. The bird stretched himself out, and then lay still,
with open eyes, lifeless. She looked at him a moment, and, sliding in
through the open window and through the study, sought her own apartment,
where she locked herself in, and began to sob and moan like those that
weep. But the gracious solace of tears seemed to be denied her, and her
grief, like her anger, was a dull ache, longing, like that, to finish
itself with a fierce paroxysm, but wanting its natural outlet.

This seemingly trifling incident of the death of her favorite appeared
to change all the current of her thought. Whether it were the sight
of the dying bird, or the thought that her own agency might have been
concerned in it, or some deeper grief, which took this occasion to
declare itself,--some dark remorse or hopeless longing,--whatever it
might be, there was an unwonted tumult in her soul. To whom should
she go in her vague misery? Only to Him who knows all His creatures'
sorrows, and listens to the faintest human cry. She knelt, as she had
been taught to kneel from her childhood, and tried to pray. But her
thoughts refused to flow in the language of supplication. She could not
plead for herself as other women plead in their hours of anguish. She
rose like one who should stoop to drink, and find dust in the place of
water. Partly from restlessness, partly from an attraction she hardly
avowed to herself, she followed her usual habit and strolled listlessly
along to the school.

* * * * *

Of course everybody at the Institute was full of the terrible adventure
of the preceding evening. Mr. Bernard felt poorly enough; but he had
made it a point to show himself the next morning, as if nothing had
happened. Helen Darley knew nothing of it all until she had risen, when
the gossipy matron of the establishment made her acquainted with all its
details, embellished with such additional ornamental appendages as it
had caught up in transmission from lip to lip. She did not love to
betray her sensibilities, but she was pale and tremulous and very nearly
tearful when Mr. Bernard entered the sitting-room, showing on his
features traces of the violent shock he had received and the heavy
slumber from which he had risen with throbbing brows. What the poor
girl's impulse was, on seeing him, we need not inquire too curiously. If
he had been her own brother, she would have kissed him and cried on
his neck; but something held her back. There is no galvanism in
kiss-your-brother; it is copper against copper: but alien bloods develop
strange currents, when they flow close to each other, with only the
films that cover lip and cheek between them. Mr. Bernard, as some of us
may remember, violated the proprieties and laid himself open to reproach
by his enterprise with a bouncing village-girl, to whose rosy cheek an
honest smack was not probably an absolute novelty. He made it all up by
his discretion and good behavior now. He saw by Helen's moist eye and
trembling lip that her woman's heart was off its guard, and he knew,
by the infallible instinct of sex, that he should be forgiven, if
he thanked her for her sisterly sympathies in the most natural
way,--expressive, and at the same time economical of breath and
utterance. He would not give a false look to their friendship by any
such demonstration. Helen was a little older than he was, but the
aureole of young womanhood had not yet begun to fade from around her.
She was surrounded by that enchanted atmosphere into which the girl
walks with dreamy eyes, and out of which the woman passes with a
story written on her forehead. Some people think very little of these
refinements; they have not studied magnetism, and the law of the square
of the distance.

So Mr. Bernard thanked Helen for her interest without the aid of the
twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet,--the love labial,--the limping
consonant which it takes two to speak plain. Indeed, he scarcely let her
say a word, at first; for he saw that it was hard for her to conceal her
emotion. No wonder; he had come within a hair's-breadth of losing his
life, and he had been a very kind friend and a very dear companion to
her.

There were some curious spiritual experiences connected with his last
evening's adventure, which were working very strongly in his mind. It
was borne in upon him irresistibly that he had been _dead_ since he had
seen Helen,--as dead as the son of the Widow of Nain before the bier was
touched and he sat up and began to speak. There was an interval
between two conscious moments which appeared to him like a temporary
annihilation, and the thoughts it suggested were worrying him with
strange perplexities.

He remembered seeing the dark figure on horseback rise in the saddle and
something leap from its hand. He remembered the thrill he felt as the
coil settled on his shoulders, and the sudden impulse which led him to
fire as he did. With the report of the pistol all became blank, until
he found himself in a strange, bewildered state, groping about for the
weapon, which he had a vague consciousness of having dropped. But,
according to Abel's account, there must have been an interval of some
minutes between these recollections, and he could not help asking, Where
was the mind, the soul, the thinking principle, all this time?

A man is stunned by a blow with a stick on the head. He becomes
unconscious. Another man gets a harder blow on the head from a bigger
stick, and it kills him. Does he become unconscious, too? If so, _when
does he come to his consciousness_? The man who has had a slight or
moderate blow comes to himself when the immediate shock passes off and
the organs begin to work again, or when a bit of the skull is pried up,
if that happens to be broken. Suppose the blow is hard enough to spoil
the brain and stop the play of the organs, what happens then?

A British captain was struck by a cannon-ball on the head, just as
he was giving an order, at the Battle of the Nile. Fifteen months
afterwards he was trephined at Greenwich Hospital, having been
insensible all that time. Immediately after the operation his
consciousness returned, and he at once began carrying out the order
he was giving when the shot struck him. Suppose he had never been
trephined, when would his intelligence have returned? When his breath
ceased and his heart stopped beating?

When Mr. Bernard said to Helen, "I have been dead since I saw you," it
startled her not a little; for his expression was that of perfect good
faith, and she feared that his mind was disordered. When he explained,
not as has been done just now, at length, but in a hurried, imperfect
way, the meaning of his strange assertion, and the fearful Sadduceeisms
which it had suggested to his mind, she looked troubled at first, and
then thoughtful. She did not feel able to answer all the difficulties he
raised, but she met them with that faith which is the strength as well
as the weakness of women,--which makes them weak in the hands of man,
but strong in the presence of the Unseen.

"It is a strange experience," she said; "but I once had something like
it. I fainted, and lost some five or ten minutes out of my life, as much
as if I had been dead. But when I came to myself, I was the same person
every way, in my recollections and character. So I suppose that loss of
consciousness is not death. And if I was born out of unconsciousness
into infancy with many _family_-traits of mind and body, I can believe,
from my own reason, even without help from Revelation, that I shall be
born again out of the unconsciousness of death with my _individual_
traits of mind and body. If death is, as it should seem to be, a loss of
consciousness, that does not shake my faith; for I have been put into a
body once already to fit me for living here, and I hope to be in some
way fitted after this life to enjoy a better one. But it is all trust in
God and in his Word. These are enough for me; I hope they are for you."

Helen was a minister's daughter, and familiar from her childhood with
this class of questions, especially with all the doubts and perplexities
which are sure to assail every thinking child bred in any inorganic
or not thoroughly vitalized faith,--as is too often the case with the
children of professional theologians. The kind of discipline they are
subjected to is like that of the Flat-Head Indian pappooses. At five or
ten or fifteen years old they put their hands up to their foreheads and
ask, What are they strapping down my brains in this way for? So they
tear off the sacred bandages of the great Flat-Head tribe, and there
follows a mighty rush of blood to the long-compressed region. This
accounts, in the most lucid manner, for those sudden freaks with which
certain children of this class astonish their worthy parents at the
period of life when they are growing fast, and, the frontal pressure
beginning to be felt as something intolerable, they tear off the holy
compresses.

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