Faithful Bean

THERE are some now living (not many) who can remember.the day of the American serving-man, the day when the farmer’s son came in from the hill-side and took a situation in the village or larger town as the “hired man,” gardener, coachman, woodchopper, and so on. Now, America can do something better, and Ireland has taken the place. Mr. Abbott, in Ids Rollo stories, embalmed the character of the hired man in Jonas. The only trouble with Jonas was, that he had no glimpse of human fallibility. Had Mr. Abbott named his hero “ Abstract Perfection endowed with a Knowledge of the Useful Arts,” it would have been a more truthful description; even the smallest child began to fear that Jonas was but another name for Abbott. However, there might be high artistic finish claimed for this, for a boy almost believed in the infallibility of the Yankee hired man. He was the Archimedes of kites, the Stephenson of boats and rafts, the Christopher Wren of the workshop, the Agassiz of the neighboring forest and field. Woodchucks and water-rats seemed to come at his bidding; he had all sorts of practical accomplishments; he was the interpreter of nature to the young neophyte, and, if good-tempered and obliging, the best possible company for the growing boys of the family.

Then, the hired man held the happiness of the ladies of the family in the hollow of his hand, for, adding the duty of coachman to his other duties, he could always pretend that “ them bosses was n’t fit to go out ” (if he did not choose to go himself). It is astonishing how many things can happen to a horse, if you want to use him; and the distempers, accidents, and drawbacks which suggest themselves to a pampered coachman in full possession of the situation are like those great perils to the state which are constantly about to happen in the imagination of a rival politician.

As I write, there comes to me the memory of a large, old-fashioned, and most comfortable country-house in a village in Connecticut, filled with a queer and composite family, a nest of orphans holding all degrees of relationship to each other, but gathered under the roof of one benevolent and kindly soul whom we called “ Uncle.” This excellent man bad a sort of lieutenancy of Providence; he deemed himself the person to go forward and succor those who had lost father and mother. Uncle was rich, and of great social esteem; his name was quoted throughout the country; but much of the good which he did remained unknown until the sod had covered him. Through his ample and profusely ordered kitchen marched a phalanx of “ hired men,” designated by the oddest of Puritan names. Benight Plumstone was the one I shall select as the type of the disagreeable; Faithful Bean was the typical saint and success of them all. Benight never had dry wood for the fires, his work was never done ; a grumbler by profession, he spoiled every Virginia reel of a whole winter, by declaring that “ them hosses was a-freezin’ to death,” long before the young ladies were ready to go home. “ Benight,” indeed! be darkness, be desolation, be disappointment, wherever Benight is, or was, or is to be!

Accustomed, as we were, to New England names, we were undoubtedly amused when uncle told us he had hired a man by the name of “ Faithful Bean.” To sober us, he added gravely that Faithful’s mother came from those very fens of Lincolnshire from which Oliver Cromwell drew his Puritan followers, such as “ Praise-God Barebones,” etc. This, as an historical fact, of course, had a calming influence, and reminded us of the sombre circumstance that the academy demanded of us a history lesson, not yet committed to memory, on the morrow; but youth is elastic and sheds trouble, and a knowledge of history, easily. We watched for Faithful with considerable tittering.

He made his entrée on a scene which he was destined to fill for many years, one cold winter evening, by bringing up to the parlor a leather apron full of wood, and by making so brilliant and successful a fire, that it illuminates now the forsaken shores of the past like some lonely Pharos, burning brightly through the ages. I should be mortified to confess how many years I remember that fire! and how uncle drew up to it, extending his large hands, fan-shaped, from his knees, and exclaimed, “ Now, this is something like! ”

Uncle was always parenthetical in his expression of satisfaction.

After tea we crept down into that warm, spacious, and enchanting kitchen, which must have covered several acres; a wooden “ horse,” full of freshly ironed clothes, always seemed like a theatre property, in the background, with the stately form of Statira, our cook and tyrant, before it; an immense fire-place bore its holocaust of logs, and an altar stone was erected to the perpetual cracking of butternuts. We found that Faithful had already been approached by Dick, the adventurous Columbus of the family, and that he had already cracked some of the most obtuse butternuts which had ever stained the fingers or baffled the zeal of an ardent and exploring people. Faithful knew, what, alas! so few do know, the secret of extracting the soft, yellow, satin kernels whole!

In an hour’s time, after much pleasant conversation, and a conviction, deep as the butternuts were oleaginous, that Faithful was a good fellow, we bore the plate of butternut “ meats,” as we called them, proudly and triumphantly to Cousin Miranda.

We were all possessed, even then, of the subtle divination of courtiers. We knew that Cousin Miranda was the power behind the throne. She could prohibit butternut cracking, and visits to the kitchen, and she could send away Faithful, if she chose. There were no limits to Cousin Miranda’s powers. She was housekeeper, guardian angel, guide, philosopher and friend to our poor little group. A young girl, beautiful, educated, accomplished, with the fair hair, blue eyes, and slender figure of the Alruna Maiden, with the hands and arms which the Venus of Milo has lost, — I should need the pencil which drew the Monna Lisa or the Madonna della Seggiola to picture Miranda! She was in love with duty, and had been brought up in the hard New England school of self-renunciation, which preached the steep and thorny road to heaven. She could stand by a bedside and assist a surgeon through a terrible operation, with no greater sign of emotion than a deep red spot on either usually pale cheek. She was the most perfect of nurses, never feverish or flustered, and having a superhuman control over her patient. Did he rebel at her refusal of some expected luxury and mentally call her cold-hearted,” he repented when he woke at early dawn, and found that her blue eyes had been watching with untiring solicitude during the night, and that the hand which she pressed on his hot forehead was as cool as the dew of heaven, and not less pure. Miranda had a natural habit of command, and took authority so much as a matter of course, that no one questioned her right. My uncle put her at the head of his house when she was sixteen; and from that time until a certain event which shall be nameless, but described hereafter, she remained a youthful, beautiful, able empress, a sort of combination of Maria Theresa, Mrs. Fry, Florence Nightingale, and a Fra Angelico angel.

It is easy to imagine with what anxiety we awaited the imperial signet to our approval of Faithful. Those blue eyes of my cousin were as sweet as violets usually, but they could grow terrible at times. There was a steel lance in them, which penetrated to the heart of a humbug. Like all sovereigns, she repelled questioning, and reserved her decision; but Faithful soon won her approval, and perhaps with subtle tact conquered her by a shamefaced confession that his education had been neglected, and he should like a few lessons in arithmetic and writing. This was an appeal to that hidden desire to be a schoolmistress which is said to lurk in every New England woman’s heart, and it was not long before the altar to butternut-cracking was degraded; its lamps were put out, its vestals swept the last shells into the fire, and a table covered with green baize, and with a huge inkstand in the middle, was erected in its place. One of the young gentlemen, fresh from the genteel curriculum of the academy, was installed as teacher, and Miranda herself “ set some copies” in her own bold flowing English handwriting. I think I see poor Faithful now, in the most painful of attitudes, like Mr. Weller signing his loveletter. We were destined to have some interesting letters from Faithful afterwards, and Miranda’s “y’s ” and “ g’s ” were always recognizable. He proved a prodigy of industry, a true Yankee, doing his work with intelligence, but with a certain deference to his employers, which has become one of the lost arts, He was a coachman! — rendered even more amiable by the black shadow of Benight Plumstone; we could stay at parties as late as we pleased; no dashing of the rose-leaves from the goblet, they floated to the brim. Faithful would “ hitch his bosses,” go himself into the kitchen, where, I dare say, he did some robust flirting on his own account with the rosy maids, and await our pleasure. Did one, more conscientious than the rest, go out to inquire for the horses, she was met by Faithful in a sympathetic state of hilarity, and received the comforting assurance that “ them hosses had two buffalo apiece onto them, and no need to hurry!” Such a fact in natural history might have alarmed a foreigner, but we “were to the manner born,” and were not alarmed. We went back to chase the glowing hours with flying feet, determined to dance while there was life, and, if possible, we left a crack of the door open, that Faithful might look through and enjoy the scene. After such an evening he would carefully tuck his young charges in the sleigh, and, with some more of “ them buffalo,” to defend us against an atmosphere which fairly crackled with oxygen, we would drive home under the splendid protection of Orion and the Great Bear, who looked down kindly on us; and we should have been ungrateful to all the starry influences, to Faithful and to fate, if we had not pronounced life a success, and Faithful a “hired man” worth having. When the spring came, Faithful found the farm-work not enough to exhaust his energies, and he informed us that lie was “ goin’ trainin’.” Now this meant a great deal to us, for the Mossbrook Light Infantry was a model militia company, and uncle’s great pet. It was, indeed, a handsome body of stalwart men. How pretty and brilliant was the uniform, how thrilling the military band! Our ears were as fortunate in their non-eritical admiration as were the monks who sat at the lower end of the table, and who could

Old Mr. Doolittle’s feeble performance on the key-bugle seemed to us “ the horns of Elfland faintly blowing.” Poor little man! he mended our shoes of week-days, but on training-days he interpreted the Hunters’ Chorus for us; we received it with a proud swelling of the heart. Where he failed, we assisted with a readiness to be pleased, which had something kingly in its generosity.

On muster day, — glorious autumnal festival!—tlm boys were permitted to go to that portion of the Elysian Fields where Faithful and other warriors had stacked their guns, and were resting on their laurels; but we (oh, the disabilities of women!) were restricted to the aristocratic dullness of the family carriage, and only allowed to see the pageant as it passed, not to explore its glittering mysteries. There was a splendid moment, however, when the general (who but uncle?) rode on the field in blue and gold, with a long yellow feather floating in the wind, followed by his staff, all the best young men of the State and county, “the rose and the expectancy,” — our favorite beaux, and those who might become so! Hope donned her brightest robe about that time. Shade of Harry Hotspur, Godfrey de Bouillon, Ivanhoe, were you like one of these? Napoleon! were you more impressive? Alexander the Groat, heroes of romance, days of chivalry, ye were come again!

We should laugh at the meagreness of the details now, which then made hearts beat high. We did not know that the angel of the future was watching over this holiday soldiering, nor did we know what deep experiences of our own were hanging on that flag, which idly floated in the breeze. Those men who snatched their “ training ” from the unending toil of a farmer’s life, afterwards went to fields which had no holiday about them; the world knows what qualities they showed, — our hearts did not beat too high.

Faithful would return to the farmwork with renewed zest after training; he was a temperate man, and did not supplement the exhilaration of a warrior’s career with cider and whiskey, as I am afraid some members of the Mossbrook Light Infantry did; so he was none the worse for it. But Cousin Miranda, who found out everything, suddenly found out a flaw in Faithful’s character which proved almost worse than anything we could have imagined.

Dick, of whom I have spoken as the Columbus of the family, was more properly the Dr. Kane, for he was always searching for that open polar sea which exists under the treacherous ice of a running river; in fact, Dick had a habit of seeking for death by all sorts of disagreeable and unheard-of methods. He was partial to high sloping roofs, lightning-rods, bridges with only the string-pieces between him and the river, vicious horses, unbroken colts, guns and pistols and edged tools; he had escaped lockjaws, mad dogs, falls, perils by sea and perils by land, only by a hair’s breadth, when Faithful pulled him out from under the ice, at the risk of his own life. As Dick was a “ne’er do weel,” he was, of course, Cousin Miranda’s darling, the very light of her eyes; constantly poulticing and plastering and medicating Dick, she got to love him as a sculptor does his statue, — she had worked over him so much. Of course Faithful’s heroic effort in saving Dick endeared him to the boy, to Cousin Miranda, to all of us. Personal bravery is one of the most fascinating of all qualities, and it lent its halo to Faithful’s little shock head of red hair and his black ferret eyes. Dick was consequently allowed to be much with Faithful, and the confidence felt in him was perfect.

What a terrible revelation to hear that Dick, that fearful contemner of danger, was afraid to go to bed in the dark! Dick became alarmed at ghosts, and had awful stories of a pair of large eyes, without the usual adjuncts of a brow and cheeks, which glared at him from the north bin of the corn-chamber! Cousin Miranda was immediately on the trail of these ghosts with the courage of an Amazon and the scent of a French policeman. She tracked them to Faithful. This hardy little New England man proved to have the superstition of a Scotch Highlander. He had not only a sort of native belief in ghosts, but he had what would now be called “ spiritual manifestations; ” tables tipped under his hands, and that half-defined experience which has since almost assumed the dignity of a science, so interesting and so dangerous, had forced its way through the tough cuticle of Faithful’s anti-nervous organization, He had no fear of a palpable danger, but be was a very coward before an omen, a bad dream, a shadow, or an unusual or uncanny experience. Cousin Miranda was baffled; she talked and reasoned with him to no purpose. She could not lay the ghosts, she only told him to keep silent; and she sent Dick off to boarding-school, where the inferiority of the viands, and the necessity of protecting his fifth rib, took his attention for the moment from the terrors of the unseen world.

I have two love-stories to tell, which properly come in here, and I confess myself embarrassed. Something of the old-fashioned New England shamefaced ness comes over one, as Cupid comes into court; the Puritan’s dogged, coldblooded desire to ignore this youngster is upon me. The Puritans did not intend to bring Cupid, over in the Mayflower; they intended to leave him with other superfluities at Delfthaven. But he was a stowaway in spite of precaution, the first passenger, doubtless, to go ashore.

Many a pale pair of Puritans had to confess in the language of Heine, —

So he cheated the fathers and came over, but always to be treated as a culprit. No couple in the old days were openly “engaged.” It was considered indelicate to speak of such a subject. Their courtship must be a stolen felicity, and they were the objects of much joking and jeering. Fibbing was permissible on this subject. In humble circles the formula of denial was, “ Oh, pshaw! ” “ Now, you stop! ” “ ’T ain’t so, at all; ” while amongst the better instructed and more fashionable, there was polite denial, biting of the lips, and from the father and mother of the damsel came the elegant evasion of, “I don't know what her prospects are.” To the few who had the courage to announce their intention of marrying was universally attributed a lack of delicacy; — but Cupid must come in. If the Puritan fathers could not keep him out, how can I?

One summer we rolled off, as was the fashion then, to Saratoga. At the gay and crowded watering-place I for the first time learned what a beautiful and attractive girl was my Cousin Miranda, and unfortunately for us a certain Captain Selden found it out also. I call him Selden, because that was not his name, for we must be prudent about the registered heroes of West Point, to which delightful spot we wended our way after Saratoga. If the gallant Captain had been fascinating at Saratoga, what was he on his native heath — the parade-ground at West Point? He knew how beautiful he was, when, as officer of the day, he reviewed the more beautiful cadets, turning to our enraptured vision aback which was sufficiently straight to have been used in a mathematical demonstration, and a waist which was as compact as that of Bellona herself. Our dear, reserved, prudent Miranda, the often-quoted, well-behaved model, the delight of the elderly maids and matrons of Mossbrook, actually fell in love with the Captain. We did not think she would do such a thing! She sank in the estimation of all who knew her, but she did it. The Captain followed her to Mossbrook. Uncle was furious, we were outrageous. I do not remember a more gloomy festivity than, the Captain’s first dinner at our house; but we raged like the heathen, and imagined a vain thing if we supposed that we were going to break up this loveaffair.

Miranda was twenty-three, the mistress of a very pretty fortune, and the Captain’s record was as straight as his back. Being in advance of their age, these lovers announced their engagement, and the only mitigation of our sentence was that they promised to wait a year.

Poor Miranda! what a struggle she had between her love for the Captain and her love for the boys an,d girls who had been under her guardianship from the time she was sixteen! She did not fear for the girls, they could take care of themselves; but those poor, dear, helpless boys! — especially that darling Dick (a giant at sixteen, able to floor a dozen captains). “ No one had ever understood Dick but herself,” she said; he was brought home from boardingschool, and she caught his big red hands in her small white ones whenever he passed her. She sewed up his fractures of broadcloth with streaming eyes, and plastered and poulticed him with renewed tenderness. If Dick showed temper, it was “sensitiveness;” if he climbed over the ridge-pole, it was an “ heroic defiance of danger.” Divine tenderness of the female heart for the article “boy,” undoubtedly planted for the protection of the species! Dick was grieved to the core at the thought of Miranda’s approaching marriage, and made himself as disagreeable as possible, but the ghosts had left him, never to return.

Now comes in love-story number two. We had a very pretty, rosy-cheeked maid, named Maggie, my cousin Miranda’s body-guard and chief of staff. This young lady had consistently flouted and scorned Faithful. Nothing that he did met with approval in her sight; and so it naturally followed that they should become the Katherina and Petruchio of our simple sphere.

My cousin had a great talent for flower-raising, and our parlor windows were filled with her roses and geraniums all through the winter. Maggie, who loved my cousin’s blonde tresses better than anything else in the world, used to arrange, with exquisite taste, a soft, fluffy bramble-rose, with its long pendants of green, in Miss Miranda’s hair of an evening when she was going out, and would allow no one to pick it but herself. One evening, coming down into the demi-jour of the dimly lighted parlor, she plucked her rose, and was going upstairs with it, when who should step out of the darkness and kiss her, but Faithful!

This secret was not long “ under the rose,” for who should have seen it but Dick, who immediately “ blowed,” as he would have phrased it. Poor Maggie came up with her white rose, and one very red one on each cheek, conquered, captured, tamed by Faithful Bean. Wasn’t her life a burden to her after that? And yet, a sort of deference was paid the pair after it was known that they were “keeping company.” Statira cleared the kitchen an hour earlier on Saturday night, that they might take possession of it for a few hours’ courting. The great brick oven, in a glow of persistent heat, went on calmly cooking the pork and beans and brown bread for Sunday-morning breakfast, and the wood-fire resigned itself to a dying bed of ashes as our friend Cupid fanned into new and capricious currents the flames which devoured the hearts of Maggie and her Faithful Bean.

One could almost laugh to think of the smooth, conscientious manner in which these Yankee lovers did their courting; no nonsense on working-days, no ruining a “good day’s work” by any indulgence of feeling. The bliss of courtship was confined to Saturday evening and Sunday, of which it was considered a part.

Miss Miranda very much approved of this affair. She knew the value of both, and deemed Maggie’s strong sense and robust morale as the greatest safeguard against Faithful’s only weakness. Perhaps, too, she was mortal, and liked to see the contagion spreading.

But we are never lulled into calmness in this world, but some event which we have ceased to fear bursts upon us, and overwhelms our well-laid plans. The ghosts, which we supposed effectually laid, came back upon us in a very unusual and unexpected form.

Faithful was chopping wood in the back yard one day in April, when he observed a white dove sitting on a log quite near him. It was a common pigeon, such as one sees in flocks around a well-filled barn; and had it been later in the season, or had the bird been accompanied by others, it; would not have surprised him, but its quiet regard was peculiar, and its motionless gaze perplexing and frightful. He threw a chip at it; the bird moved off a short distance, then returned. Faithful kept this up all the morning without frightening the bird away, and came in to dinner; the dove followed him. He turned pale, grasped at Maggie’s arm, and exclaiming, “ I am sent for,” dropped on the floor in a dead faint.

Cousin Miranda was on the spot before he recovered consciousness; but with a dash of cold water she had brought him back, and with her rare common-sense she mastered the situation.

“ Now, Faithful,” with incisive voice, “ I thought you were a wiser man than to believe in this poor, old, worn-out sign, that birds bring evil! Why, don’t you see that this is a tame bird which has flown out of some open window, and lost Its way? We shall have its mistress here to-morrow asking for it! I will feed and take care of it meanwhile. Come here, little bird! ”

Thus Miranda; and taking the dove in her two hands, she pressed it gently to her bosom,

“ Oh, don't! Oh, don’t! ” said Faithful; “it means sickness and it means death. Don’t let the critter come near you, Miss Miranda! Scare it away!”

“I do not believe a white dove is charged with any such message, Faithful,” said my cousin, majestically, and she walked away with the bird.

Faithful went back to his work, but he lagged perceptibly. When the gardening came round, he put the peas in the ground with a feeble hand. One day, as he was coming in from his work, Miss Miranda saw him stagger. She knew it was no doubtful sign; she saw that he was very ill. A typhoid fever was paying Mossbrook a visit that spring, anil in almost every house there was one sick. Faithful was soon in his bed, as delirious a madman as ever raved, talking of Maggie, the white dove, the Light Infantry, and the early peas.

Cousin Miranda put the house under hospital rule, and banished us to the front, while she and Maggie nursed Faithful in a large roomy apartment full of air and light, in the back of the house. It was a six weeks’ task, but she accomplished it well; the fever went no further in our house, and Faithful recovered.

During this time of anxiety and labor on Miranda’s part, she had taken a singular pleasure in the white dove, which no one had appeared to claim, and which became, of course, a great pet. She was not a woman to indulge in pets indiscriminately, but this one seemed to have been forced upon her. It followed her about like a dog, walking after her rather than flying; sometimes the dove would perch on her shoulder, and she would go about the house looking like some mediæval saint.

She was careful, however, not to bring the white dove and Faithful together until he was sufficiently recovered to bear the sight.

However, he began in July to sit up at the kitchen door, to take some fresh air, and look out with envious eyes on his substitute, who was weeding his “ gardin sass ” very badly. On one of these occasions Cousin Miranda, coming to the kitchen on some housewifely errand, was followed as usual by her white dove; the windows and doors were all open, a sudden blast blew a door to behind her, it caught the poor little bird and crushed it; a little body came dropping down, down, after my cousin, dead.

Reader, have you ever seen a mountain torrent which has been closely sealed all winter break away from its coating of ice and dash down the steep, carrying everything before it?

If you have, you can picture Miranda’s grief. The cold, reserved “ Alruna Maiden ” was gone; in her place a wild, crazed, weeping girl, another reading of Lesbia’s sparrow.

She frightened us all, but we loved her the better for it. She had laid too firm a hand on her emotions for a perfect human sympathy. It was a sight we had never expected to see,—our cousin overcome by her emotions; but she was demoralized by being in love. The bird’s death shocked Faithful, but I suspect it. acted like a mental tonic on him. For those who are curious in such matters, I may as well add, that this is no figment of the imagination; the bird’s visit, the fever, and the bird’s death, all happened as I have narrated it, in every detail.

In the autumn Cousin Miranda was to be married, Maggie was deep in tears and dress-making; Faithful was creeping round, very much annoyed that his legs would ache, and his back would give way, and that he must be “ lazy,” as he called it, for some time longer; but of one thing he was fully convinced, nobody should do anything for Miss Miranda but himself. He would be well enough to strap all the trunks and drive her to church. Deep in his heart was written that love which is born of gratitude, and his was a service which money could not buy. The gallant Captain arrived on the appointed day, and brought some fellow-officers to act as his best men. We had the joy of being bridesmaids, and of walking up the broad aisle, leaning on arms which West Point had made as hard as iron, and of having our shoulders scratched by an aggressive epaulet. A military wedding is no common pleasure to the bridesmaids!

Faithful drove the bride to church, and, throwing the reins to some less favored mortal, walked in with Maggie, after the bridal party, in a suit of clothes so new and stiff, that his arms could not touch his sides at all. Maggie bravely walked by his side; they were not ashamed to be engaged now; there was something in their hearts which raised them above the world and its critics.

Miranda went off with her Captain to the life of an officer’s wife. We did not see her for many years. Faithful and Maggie got married, and went into their own little house; the Mossbrook Light Infantry was disbanded and became a thing of the past; and we all grew up, and were absorbed into the whirlpool of existence. Dick had taken so much doctoring into his system from the hands of Cousin Miranda, that he determined to become a doctor himself, and had gone off to Paris to put the finishing touches to his education. Old Mossbrook memories began to fade away, and more positive duties, joys, and sorrows to take their place, when one day a gun was fired at Fort Sumter which echoed round the world; and as one which is fired at sea brings up the dead from their resting-place, this gun brought up dead memories, past associations, and many greater, grander, better things. It brought us scattered members of the little Mossbrook community together again, actors in the new drama.

Dear Miranda’s husband, the gallant Captain, now a colonel, was, of course, in requisition; and we saw her again, grown to be a superb matron. The drum beat in Mossbrook, and the old Light Infantry sprang to its feet.

As I went down to see my old friends, the so and so “ 22d,” march through New York, in those days of enthusiastic excitement, who should ride at the head of the column but the youth I had compared to Harry Hotspur! and who should march at the head of a company, straighter than one of his own ramrods, but Faithful Bean! who followed him but the men of Mossbrook, familiar lineaments, familiar names! The flag danced about in the dissolving view of a few tears, as I saw the realization of the heroic dreams of childish days. This was romance; this was poetry; these were the thinking bayonets. And this was New England marching to fight for her ideas, and her convictions, dearer than life!

From time to time we heard of the good conduct, soldierly gifts, and splendid courage of Faithful Bean. He wrote us many letters in that improved hand which Cousin Miranda had retouched, telling us how he was getting on. He had finally got into General Selden’s division; and Dick was army surgeon, and he saw him often. Such stories as he had to tell of Dick’s courage ami devotion to the wounded men! As for his own luck, it had been marvelous. He seemed to bear a charmed life, and believed he should come home to Maggie yet without a scar.

But after one of those terrible battles in the third year of the war, as Dick was going with his lantern and his corps of assistants over a bloody field, he turned over a wounded man who was lying on his face, and saw the familiar lineaments of our “ hired man.” He found out soon that ho was not dead, and he was conveyed to the nearest hospital. Poor Faithful came to his senses to find a woman bending over him, bathing his head with cold water.

“ I knew it,” said the poor, superstitious fellow. “ Miss Miranda, I’ve been dreaming of you. I saw your face all day yesterday in the clouds of smoke. I ‘m shot at last; but I knew you’d be here.”

Yes, she had come to him in his dire extremity; such reunions were not uncommon during the war. As for Miranda, it would have been sheer impossibility to keep her out of the hospitals; they were her natural and inevitable sphere.

Faithful’s work was ended; for several days there seemed some prospect of recovery, but even his sturdy habits and strong, wiry constitution had sunk under the hardships of three years’ service, and his wound was desperate. The good fellow read his doom in Miranda’s face. She looked, he said, as if “ she had suddenly grown very old.” He asked for Maggie.

“ Can’t she leave tne children and come here?” he asked, as a few tears stood for the first time in his little black eyes.

Miranda was the wife now of a general, and to them most things were possible; and she sent for Maggie, in spite of the confusion, dismay, and horror of those days.

Faithful’s sufferings were dreadful. Not all that Dick or Cousin Miranda might do could mitigate them much; yet he was destined to linger, and to have alternations of hope, of despair; all that could try that honest, simple soul came, but he was patient. The chaplain would read him some good words, and once he was comforted by a dream; he thought he was chopping wood at Mossbrook, and the white dove came and looked at him; he was frightened,and tried to get away; Maggie approached and drove the dove from him, and put in his arms his baby boy, born just before the war.

Ho awoke, and his own Maggie stood before him.

On this strong cordial, this breath of home and love, Faithful revived and lived several days; but on one Sunday morning he began to breathe heavily and fail hourly. He asked for an almanac. No one could imagine why he wanted it; but it was brought to him. He turned to the month of April with trembling hand, and pointed out a date to Maggie; the death dews were on his brow. Dick held a cordial to his lips. Cousin Miranda was hastily summoned; he gave her one long, earnest look. At that moment a white dove flew in at the open window and perched on the foot of his bed. “ I am sent for,” said he, with husky, broken voice, but with a smile of deep content; and he fell back and died. It was the 21st of April, the day on which be had first seen the white dove. It was a coincidence, and nothing more. These doves were friends; they had been flying about the hospital, pets of the convalescent men, and, like all pets, often the best physicians, in the dreary monotony of a sick-ward.

Death was no unusual event in this great hospital. It happened hourly. Dick and Miranda had but few moments to give to their old friend and favorite, or to poor Maggie. There was nothing for her to do, but to take her dead soldier back to Mossbrook, and lay him under the sod.

As she was consulting with her best earthly friend about the details, a sergeant entered the room, and inquired for Mrs. Selden.

He handed her a dispatch. They were written in blood in those days. This one read: “ General Selden shot through the lungs; cannot recover.”

Miranda never saw her husband alive again. She heard “how with Sidney’s grace he died,” thinking of her, his country, his duty, the wounded men about him, and never of himself. This was her consolation.

So the two widows took up their sad burdens and went back to Mossbrook. The cultivated and distinguished army officer, rich in his splendid education, his talents, and his loyal heart, was honored, mourned, and eulogized by his country; at, his feet lay the bumble militia captain, unknown save to a few faithful hearts. It is alike to them, they are alike now; they were alike before ; there was not a false note in either of them.

The great god Pan cuts the reeds in the river, so the poet sings, of lengths to suit himself, and fashions his pipe, not with reference to the reeds, but to the melody which he shall breathe through them. Poor Faithful was a reed cut in an obscure spot, but he took his place well in the great harmony, whether it was the pastoral, breathing over green fields and beside the clear waters of a New England farmer’s life, or whether it was the great diapason which swelled from our battle-fields, a mournful, magnificent symphony, — one which the world cannot exchange for a better.

Faithful had “ hired out ” to a splendid service, and he died, as he had lived, doing his best.

M. E. W. S.