unsophisticated nature! Well child! What have you to say?" "Momo Dinah says she can't find the carving knife." The old negress, wanting pot-herbs, had taken the knife as the first trenchant instrument she could lay her hand upon, and having accomplished her purpose, left it in the garden; she now looked for it in every other place she could think of, 66 I thought as much! Sophy! run after the man! He's a thief! Tell him to bring back my carving-knife-Why do you stand gazing like an idiot! Run! instantly! Where is there a constable? Why do you stop?-Run!-bring him back!" The girl, who feared the lady more than she did any of her own country folk, after recovering from her surprise, darted off in pursuit, and soon overtook the heavy trudging yeoman, who was every now and then ejaculating, "Well!-after all! these old-country folk are more queer than cute. Salt water fish up here in the green mountains !” "Mister!" shouted Sophy as she drew near. "I don't know your name, sir!"— 66 "No-I suppose not," and he put down his basket of fish. My name's Bloodgood. Well, my child, and what would you havewith me?-Why you are out of breath with running. Does the fine lady want some lobsters? You are a nice little girl," he continued, as he smiled and patted her curly head, are you from the old country too? I have half a dozen at home, and not one as pretty as you." 66 "Mrs. Lovedog-sir-" and the child' stopped-partly from want of breath, and partly from shame and reluctance to deliver her message for she would as soon have suspected the parson of stealing, as any other of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. "Ha ha ha! salt water fish for Mrs. Lovedog! If she wants the fish she must come arter um-fresh or salt!" "She says, sir-she says-you must bring back--" "Must! No, no I'll be dang'd if I do. I am not one of your brook trout to be played back and forth with a hair line as her husband catches um. I am not angry with you, my dearbut the fish won't bite again." "She says, sir-you must bring back the carving-knife." "The what?" "The carving-knife, sir." My American readers will understand the feelings of the Green Mountain yeoman, when the thought occurred that he was suspected of being a thief.-He repeated several times the words "carving-knife," before he formed any conception that he had been accused of stealing. When he understood the mes sage, the blood rushed to his face and he shouted in a voice of thunder, "What! Does she take me for a thief?" Sophy frightened, answered, "Yes, sir," and made one of her best curtseys. "Well, that's too good! Don't be frightened, child! If her husband!-Don't be scar't!-Go back and tell her, she may go to-England." And so saying, Bloodgood took up his basket, turned and trudged on again towards Spiffard's, rather sullenly-but soon began to laugh. "Well, I will be the first to tell squire Spiffard of this, however! A thief!-Steal! a carving-knife! Why the woman's mad!" "He says, Poor Sophy returned with the message of, ma'am-" "Where's the knife?" "He says, Ma'am, you may go to England." Just then Lovedog with his pointers at his heels and his game bag full of woodcock, returned from the chase. He had come from an opposite direction to that yeoman Bloodgood had taken. He was tired-but there was no rest for him. He "must go," so said his wife, "to Spiffard's, and take measures to apprehend the thief of the carving-knife." What would have been the result of the meeting under such circumstances, between the English sportsman and the Yankee yeoman, we will not pretend to say. May strife never again arm the son of Old England and the New England man against each other! The trial of valour was not now destined to be made, for happily, Dinah, wanting more pot-herbs for her cookery, took another knife, and, as Shakspeare says, "shooting another bolt the self-same way," she found the first. That is, carrying a second knife to the parsley bed, she found the first where she had left it.* Such, sometimes, English men and English women appear amongst Yankees. So they torment themselves, and are laughed at by those around them—and then they go home, and the learned ladies write books, (Mrs. Lovedog published three volumes) to show, that men, where all men have equal rights, (and are not divided into the two European classes of the oppressors and the oppressed, the many and the few,) their manners and pursuits are not the same as in Europe; and to show, above all things, their own ignorance. Surely, every thinking mind must know that where none are exclusively the inheritors of riches; This incident is founded on fact. where none are in consequence of birth exclusively the highly educated; but, where neither honours nor riches are hereditary, and the roads to wealth and the highest offices are open to all equally; the universal exertion for acquirement, whether of fortune, fame, or official station, must cause a greater equality on a higher level for the mass of the people; and must give to society a greater proportion of those who attain high intellectual powers and extensive knowledge, than in monarchies and aristocracies. It will be said, perhaps, that the inheritors of fortune have a fairer starting post for the race, either of intellectual improvement, or official rank—but can it be a question which state of society tends most to general improvement and national happiness? But what has all this to do with the memoirs of Zebediah Spiffard?" Reader, you must not only be gentle and courteous, but patient. If you are used to novel reading, you must know that you have waded through many a tedious introductory page in the hope that all the present prosing is necessary to, and will give clearness and additional zest to the future story. The plot must be made intricate to be interesting, and what appears dull now, will be bright as a sun-ray at the unravelling. We have our plot too. Trust us now; we will pay hereafter-if we can. To conclude the history of the Lovedogs (who are rather exceptions to, than examples of, the characters of English gentlemen and ladies)—the sagacious reader will readily believe that they did not settle at Spiffard-town. The lady, as we have seen, had been disappointed in all her expectations; and the gentleman, who had at first been delighted with the free range of unlimited sporting ground, and the novelty presented by the game of another hemisphere, now began to sigh for the stubble fields enclosed by hedge rows, where his dogs were always in view, one backing the other on the scent of the covey-for the pheasant park, the fox hunt, the race-course, the cock-pit, the boxer's ring, and all the many joys of his youth,-in short, this happy pair sold off in disgust, removed to Connecticut-thence to New-York-and thence they returned home, the lady to write books on American manners, the gentleman to pay tithes and poor-rates, hunt, set up for parliament, and rail on republican institutions. In the meantime, Zeb, our hero, grew; as is common with other heroes between the age of ten and twenty, and he received that common unheroic kind of education which resulted from his father's circumstances, and the circumstances of the country at that time. He learned from Master McNorton, a teacher from the north of Ireland, to read without the eastern accentuation or orthoepy, and was prevented, by his out-o-door practice in language, from acquiring a slight touch of the brogue which adhered pertinaciously to his teacher's tongue. He was taught to write a decent hand (there were then no Wriffards or other doctors, native or foreign, travelling through the land to teach elegant penmanship). He was taught to cipher as far as the rule of three; and at the same time he learned to take care of the cattle, the horses and the sheep. He could run barefoot into the meadow and halter a horse, first enticing him within striking distance by holding out an ear of corn, he would then mount him by placing his toe on the joint of sorrel's hind legmaking stepping stones," as Master McNorton said, " of the poor brute's bones to get a saddle-sate on his bare back"-and he could then, without saddle or bridle, ride as fearlessly through woods or over rocks, as a Virginia negro, or a wild Arab. 66 Such were the attainments of Zebediah Spiffard, and he might have gone on in the steps of his father, that is-stepped from Vermont to Ohio, or further; emigrating, and clearing, and settling, and pulling up stakes, and emigrating again; or he might have founded another Spiffard-town in the valley of the Mississippi, and filled the great house of the founder with little Zebs and Jerrys, rever arriving at the prodigious honour of being the hero of a book, but for certain circumstances, which though still introductory, must be told before we can get at the marrow of our story. CHAPTER VII. We go from Home to Boston. "A barefoot pilgrim on a flinty world."-Unknown Play. It is not a new observation that a man's destination for life is often fixed at an age when animal spirits are most abundant, and reason most powerless. Impressions then made are indel ible, and habits are acquired which never, or at least not without great trouble and pain, can be counteracted or shaken off. At this perilous period of man's life our hero was sent from home. A raw boy of sixteen, who had never been out of the precincts of Spiffard-town, or seen man greater than squire Spiffard, was suddenly transported to the famous metropolis of Massachusetts. In the town of Boston, celebrated as the cradle, if not the birth-place, of American independence, lived the uncle of Zeb Spiff (as his schoolmates persisted in calling him, and as his intimates always called him) Mr. Abraham Spiffard, who having attained the mature age of sixty-eight in a state of single blessedness, and having made his property procreate as fast as Jacob's flocks or Shylock's ducats, now looked about him for an heir, and bethought him of his long-neglected brother, who had travelled to the wilderness of Vermont at his father's death on finding himself left nearly penniless by the will-according to the praiseworthy usage of the dear mother country, and the still more praiseworthy motive-a desire to support the name of Spiffard by devising his property to the elder born son. The brothers had not met since Jeremiah married the beautiful Louisa Atherton. Abraham had at this time a two-fold motive for thinking of one of his brother's children as an heir. He, too, wished to keep up the august family name: and he had a remaining sense of justice-a sense which is inherent with and strong in every man, if not stifled by worldliness-and that sense of justice told him, that every law or custom founded on a miscalled right of primogeniture, is contrary to the law of nature and of God; and consequently, that his younger brother had been wronged, and he himself had been living and thriving on the fruits of injustice. He therefore wrote to his brother, desiring him to send his eldest boy (for still the old leaven stuck to him, and the first-born must have preference) promising to educate and adopt him as his own. This was an opening not to be neglected, and Zeb was accordingly fitted out for a journey to the far-famed town of Boston. We must, before taking our hero from home, mention one circumstance, which had affected the domestic happiness of Squire Spiffard's family, and made an impression upon little Zebediah that moulded his character into the form which our readers will find displayed, as we proceed with his story-fixing within him an image that was through his future life ever present to his mind, and was the moving cause of thought and action. The scenes he had witnessed in his father's household, mingled with all his ideas of his fellow-creatures, coloured all the future scenes of his existence, and were the springs which impelled him in his course through his journey, until they were obliterated by the hand of death. |