authoritative stamp carry them through wider areas of mental traffic, and give them a worth and credit which mankind never before perceived, passing them by unnoticed in their cruder forms." This was substantially what Mr. Buckle was inveigled into getting off. I say inveigled, for when he had given merely this exordium of the forty foolscap pages, he caught himself suddenly with the thought-"Can I be Buckle-the man who is talking thus to a woman ?” Mrs. Godfrey was as much surprised as he was. Though a lyceum lecture is not the best kind of talk for any body, still it was such an advance toward the right kind of thing, so far beyond bashful reserve, awkward small-talk, or quotations, that she could hardly believe it was Buckle more than that gentleman himself. She sat listening with fixed admiration, and when he abruptly concluded, replied, "What beautiful ideas! Those are not quoted, are they?" "I believe they are my own, Ma'am." "I thought so. Will you talk to me a great deal in that way between here and Savannah?" Mr. Buckle faintly replied "Yes," and wondered whether he could remember the whole lec "I thought so! What you've just been saying about crystals gave me the impression. Now here's an idea. I'm one of those dreadfully ignorant little women I spoke of a moment ago, who never have time to learn or do any thing. But I've always wished so much to study mineralogy! We haven't any minerals on board, have we?" "Coal," said Buckle, after grave reflection. "That would dirty your hands though." "I don't care! I can wash them." "And salt," added Buckle, as the result of wider consideration. "That wouldn't be open to the same objection." "To be sure! And, as you draw, you can make me pictures of the other minerals. Capital! Won't I be a wise woman when we get to Savannah!" And the little witch clapped her hands for glee and scientific enthusiasm. Buckle felt sensations of gratification at being good for something, useful to somebody, such as he had not experienced since he used to hold his mother's skeins. "I feel much better for this open air-especially, too, for this conversation-it has kept me stirring, which is the best thing to prevent seasickness. But I think, if you please, that I'll go down now." As Mrs. Godfrey said this Mr. Buckle arose, took the stool out of her way, and offering her his arm with a novel resemblance to gallantry which was astonishing in such a beginner, led her down to the cabin. III. When Mr. Buckle awoke the next morning he heard the steward tell a gentleman in the cabin that they were passing the Delaware Capes. Those objects not being visible through the bull'seye of his port, he rose to dress and go on deck. As he began to robe himself-for the first time in his manhood-the thought came upon him, "How shall I dress? What shall I wear?" As he regarded his somewhat rumpled shirt-bosom, his vest a little threadbare at the pocket-edges, his knee-sprung pantaloons, his shoes showing a spot of reddish-brown leather at the toes, and his old faded neck-tie, a new, indescribable pain afflicted him. He had clad himself in the same manner of raiment for numerous successive years, taking thought as little as any other sublimely independent Christian philosopher "wherewithal he might be clothed;" but now the thought came, and would not be put away. With emotions of deep sorrow he endued himself in the inevitable suit of a baggageless man, having a dim sensation of dressing for the public-that public, too, an entirely different one from the type which he had imagined propitiable by Maud and small talk. Considering these things he sighed once more within himself, "Oh, Piper, Piper! how could you?" and took a resolution never hereafter to go even as far from home as Wall Street without a valise containing raimentary provision for one week at least. His coat was tolerably nappy-though cut with a noble disregard of that worldly fashion which passeth away-and evidently the work of a tailor who may have found sermons in stones and good in every thing, but did not attend the homilies of the current Brooks. This garment Mr. Buckle buttoned to as great an extent as possible over all the rest, knocked his last year's wide-awake into a resemblance of intentional negligé, had the Purser's boy administer a little blacking tonic to his fainting shoes, and became comfortably uneasy for the day. "Well, how do you stand it?" asked the Captain, encountering him by the pilot-house. "Pretty well, thank you; only I'm anxious to reach Savannah." "Not sea-sick?" "Not at all." 66 'Well, you're pretty safe, then. We roll as much as we ever do, unless in a nice hard blow." "How is Mrs. Godfrey this morning?" continued the Captain. "Upon my word I don't know. Perhaps she isn't up yet; I don't find her in the cabin." "Bless my soul! she's under your care! Why don't you go and knock at her state-room door and ask? She may be very sick-not able to turn out at all.” "Would it be strictly-proper?" asked Buckle, with slight enlargement of the eyes. "I guess you'd think so, if you were sick and had nobody to take care of you! Our stewardess-I had to take her at the last minute, because the old one left in a huff-is a green hand, and she's down this morning, not able to do a stroke. If I'd known you weren't looking after | opened her eyes wide as in her wellest moments, Mrs. Belle Godfrey I'd have done it myself." "I declare! I had no idea that was the marine system of behavior! If it's all right I'll go immediately." Buckle found his charge as the Captain feared. A faint voice answered his knock, "Come in,' and summoning all his resolution, he followed the bold lead of the cabin-boy, who was just entering No. 14 to get the lamp to fill. Nothing but a pretty little night-cap, with a pretty little, pale, hopeless face in it, like a human flower in a lace calyx, appeared to Mr. Buckle. The eyes were closed as if they would never open again, and the long, dark lashes of their lids lay on the cheeks without stir, adding fringed petals to the other vraisemblance of a blossom. Mr. Buckle had never seen any body desperately sea-sick before, and the dreadful thought instantly struck him, "She is dead, and I never came to help her!" The boy had gone out and shut the door; Buckle was alone, and he gave vent to his fears in the startled exclamation, "Oh, Mrs. Godfrey, are you-fuint?" He didn't wish to compromise himself or terrify her by saying "dead" while there was a chance to the contrary. There was so much real pain in his tone that, although a moment before she would have thought the act impossible, Mrs. Belle opened her eyes and smiled, then shook her head and whispered, "No-very sick." For the first time he saw a woman suffering. He had been sick himself, though never at sea. He remembered well how dreadfully it felt. And here was a woman brought to his own familiar level, into his own range of sympathies. As creatures of whalebone, spring-steel, berage, and eternal smiles-as, in fine, he had seen them in his few timid invasions of society-they were immeasurably distant from him-quite at the other end of the volume of Zoology. But here was a woman who did not babble nothings trippingly-who could not speak at all for very weakness-who was not mad with ecstasy at fribbles, but prostrate under a real distress. And as last night her orbit had been made first to touch, then to intersect, his own, by her being sensible, now the two came instantly to coincide through her being sick. He understood her now-as the riotous Walt Whitman would say, he "included" her; and another utterly new mental phenomenon took place in Buckle-he had no fear of the once terrible creature. A change seemed wrought in his whole nature. With as little bashfulness and the same straightforward, natural gentleness with which he would have addressed a like-suffering man, he said to her, "Mrs. Godfrey, perhaps you would feel better for having your head bathed. I'll wet a towel and smooth your hair away from your face. won't disturb you, will it?" It These words and their plain, manly tone were like a shock of galvanism to Mrs. Godfrey. She lifted herself a little on her elbow, and replied, "Yes, if you please," instead of saying, "Are you Mr. Buckle?" which was on her tongue-tip. He went to work in the most unhesitating, business-like, but at the same time most tender manner. He wet the towel, wrung it out, and proceeded to caress the widow's hair with it; then to smooth her forehead and her cheeks, which grew almost rosy (from the reaction); and finally he gave her eyes two careful little dabs-just as you or I would do to a sick wife or sister. After arranging the ruffles of the little lace cap as deliberately and softly as if he were tending a baby, he asked if there was nothing else that he could do-nothing she would like to drink, for instance. Somehow or other Buckle's change of nature had so sharpened his perception of fitness that he never thought of proposing hot-buttered toast again. The widow said brokenly that pounded ice and Congress water always made her feel better. Buckle would not permit any one else to pound the ice. From beginning to end he attended to the mixture-even taking the bottle out of the steward's hands and drawing the cork himself. Then he brought to his patient's berth-side the refreshing brimful tumbler, and with a tea-spoon fed it to her lump by lump, drop by drop-actually having the audacity to support her white neck with his big man's-hand. The widow finally said she had had enough and felt better. Buckle quietly set down the tumbler, and told her in a tone of mild authority to go to sleep. He would come in every now and then to look after her. "You would make such a good doctor!" said Mrs. Godfrey, with as grateful a smile as seasickness ever allows. "I believe I would," replied Buckle, firmly; "I feel it in me. I ought to have been one.' Then he tucked the quilt neatly around his patient's neck-opened the bull's-eye a little way to give her air—and repeated his injunction about sleeping. Finally, he cast his eyes on the poor little helpless woman, with a look that meant all manner of sympathy, and said, loud enough for her to hear, "Poor little thing!" After which he retired, shutting the door gently; and it was well he did, for elsewise would he have seen such an expression of marvel on the face in the lace cap as might have speedily brought him back to his old self-consciousness. It was not till he had reached the deck that any perception of the change wrought in him, as a change, dawned upon Buckle's mind. And then, remembering what he had been doing, and the kind of Buckle he was yesterday, he sat down in mute surprise, regarding himself like a man's first view of Niagara Falls, till breakfast. The gale steadily blew harder. When they passed Hatteras at 11 o'clock that night it was a storm. Mr. Buckle had been all day taking the place of stewardess to Mrs. Godfrey; his labors were now increased by the giving out of sundry brothers, fathers, husbands, and sons, who having fought Neptune as long as they could stand, at last capitulated without terms and lay prostrate on their battlemented berths, reduced to feminine weakness. He carried ladies bodily to their state-roomsbathed their heads when he had deposited them -and brought innumerable drinks of water. He prophesied a green old age to several who were going to die-they knew they were; he tossed up pillows, smoothed quilts, and (which is the whole summing up to any mind and body acquainted with marine foul weather) totally forgot himself. But his visits were most frequent, longest, patientest, most particular, upon No. 14. So violent was the storm that it was not until Sunday night that the Montgomery came to the wharf at Savannah. Ten miles of quiet steaming up the river resuscitated the pale denizens of all the state-room mausoleums; they leaped to their feet; blessed Heaven with a ten-Columbus fervor for the sight of land; and proved their return to vitality by thinking how they looked, for the first time in seventy-two hours. Foremost among these appeared Mrs. Belle Godfrey, in a fresh halo of tarleton as resplendent as the one which had nestled on her little head åt Mr. Buckle's first introduction—a clean traveling dress-the bewitching gaiter-bootsand that charming token of civilization close by, a parasol. Mr. Buckle understood her. He was now getting punished for all the slovenly habits of his whole bachelor life by being as far from presentable as any man of his commanding appearance can be, unless he gets torn to rags in a railway collision. So, out of respect for his own feelings as well as the widow's, he retired for a season. When he returned, he was clothed and in his right mind. "Do you stay in Savannah all winter?" he asked, in the old-timed manner, and not quite sure that he had a right to propound even that question, and so strangely polite had she become. But he felt some interest in knowing, and if he hadn't, thought he ought to ask the information to appear interested-the storm having prevented any inquiry of the sort before. "No, Sir. I am going to Florida-to winter at St. Augustine. Not that any thing serious is the matter, but Northern cold weather is disagreeable to me. I'm sorry we must part here. When we go back don't fail to remember me to your mother." When Mrs. Belle 'No, I will not. I'm sorry too." Then there was a pause. Godfrey resumed the conversation it was directed into another channel. For three days more they punched up the lions of Savannah in every direction. That three-days' space was a climax and anti-climax of the following character. Day 1. Mr. Buckle moody, and in his manner evidencing a return to the old congealed state of bashfulness which he had once broken through. The sensible woman still kind and lady-like, but too reserved for the terrible sus She thanked Buckle in the sweetest of voices for all his great kindness during the voyage-and leaned upon his arm, but not with that Di Vernon air of taking him by siege which had character-picions of Mr. Buckle not to have some cause. ized their earlier acquaintance. She seemed, indeed, rather distant, Buckle thought with pain. Ah! could she be offended with that familiarity of his manner in the state-room-the "Poor little thing!" etc., etc.? Buckle sighed, and thought that was it. You and I, who, of course, know all about women, are aware that it wasn't. That, on the contrary, the fact was that Mr. Buckle's change had transposed their relations; that now, she was a little bit afraid of him. Buckle was hurt but said nothing, being only too glad to be allowed the pleasure of getting a sensible sick woman's nine or ten little pieces of baggage out of the hold. This operation accomplished, Mr. Buckle and the lady took carriage for the Pulaski House, where the former immediately telegraphed news to his parents which were like life from the dead -tacking on to the end of this information a request that a check on the Bank of Commerce might be instantly dispatched. When Buckle returned to the Ladies' Parlor, Mrs. Godfrey put her purse into his hands. "Pay for whatever we may need, keep the account yourself. We can settle hereafter, you know. I don't like to be burdened with money; it's only less troublesome than having none at all. We shall be continually wanting little things, you know-carriages-the tailor, etc." The Day 2. Almost perfect silence during all the drives and rides, save monosyllables, and sentences descriptive of scenery or the like. Mr. Buckle relapses quite into the old manner. sensible woman appears not to observe it, and treats him like the kindest of distant acquaintances. Day 3. Mr. Buckle's money comes from New York. He repays the widow with stilted thanks in the form of an oration about everlasting gratitude. At the same time he speaks of preparations for immediate return home. That afternoon Mrs. Belle Godfrey is unexpectedly seized with a violent headache, and is almost as wretched as she was on board ship. Mr. Buckle again bathes her head, holds the salts to her face, comes entirely out of himself, like a Newfoundland out of a kennel, and becomes positive, brave, forthspoken, as in the storm. Mrs. Belle Godfrey is sensible, weak, helpless, and grateful all at once. The result is, that Mr. Buckle writes home for more money to be sent on to St. Augustine. He can not think of letting "the poor little thing" travel thither alone. Besides, he had never seen the Far South, and now was a good chance. All this he said, innocently enough, in the letter he wrote home. Father Buckle sent it over to Piper to read. How Piper roared! IV. For some inscrutable reason Mrs. Belle Godfrey was permitted by Providence to be in feeble health all the rest of the time in Savannah, and all the way from that port to the shell-built town where Spain first made her American houses. night-so, perfectly on Buckle's level of prose humanity-and he was not in the least afraid of her. "You take such kind care of me!" said the widow, sadly. "It is in my nature, Madam-I can't help it." "How your mother and sister must prize you, you are so thoughtful!" "I have little thinking to do for them. They are never sick and fragile. I never took care of any body till I took care of you. I have got so accustomed to caring for somebody now, that I shall miss it very much when I go away.' Nothing seemed to do her any good. She was easier while Mr. Buckle bathed her eternally aching brow; and, in spite of that hidden malady of which Buckle was forever wishing Piper were there to make a diagnosis, her cheeks became ruddier, her eyes brighter, and the whole makeup of the terrible creature more agonizingly beautiful. Still the malady was there, and Buckle had to strain every nerve to keep it from carrying her off, which he was always sure it would do some time in the course of the next two days. As he nursed her he grew more and more audacious. When on the cross-country road between the St. John's River and St. Augustine, the thing that, for fun, they there call a carriage broke down in the middle of a swamp, Buckle actually lifted that hundred and twentyfive pounds of clear-through solid beauty, and in his manly arms carried it fifteen rods to the-in love?" next dry place. At St. Augustine Buckle found the second remittance of funds awaiting him, but did not mention the fact to his companion lest she should be alarmed by the thought that he was going to leave her in that feeble state. And a dreadful recklessness had come over Buckle-he wasn't sure when he should go home himself. One day, as he opened his pocket-book to get some change for a darkey, he saw those abominable poetical quotations which he had got off on the dear creature when she was in health. They were on little slips of paper, as he used to carry them, representing social cartridges against the army of woman. From sheer disgust at the former Buckle he took them out, tore them in bits, and scattered them to the winds. But the last one caught his eye before it was destroyedone which lay in a corner and had hitherto escaped his notice: "She let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, A thunder-bolt fell at the feet of Buckle! Light- That very evening, if opportunity offered for a feat with which he was as familiar as shaking hands with the man in the moon without a stepladder, he would test this truth! The evening came. Mrs. Godfrey had consented to try the invigorating effect of a little air and moonlight upon Buffington's Hotel veranda. The air was heavenly-likewise, as natural, the sky. Beneath the two bland influences they sat softening, upon neighboring chairs. "Alas that such a being should fade!" thought Buckle, looking at her beautiful face glorified by the moonlight. No one else was on the veranda. They were alone with Nature and each other. Mrs. Godfrey was more than usually frail to Buckle meant to say this slyly; but being an unpracticed hand, felt so ashamed of himself for using the word "go" on the strength of so small a stock of intention, that his voice trembled like a green scamp trying to utter counterfeit notes. "Ah!" replied the widow, more pensively than before. "You will soon get somebody to take care of." An opening! Buckle commended himself to Heaven and struck out. "So I shall. Did you know that I had been "No! Really?" said the widow with a start. "Yes. And I mean very soon to get married. Only, one thing troubles me. I never had any training with women. I don't know how to propose. tried. I should make an awful botch of it if I Ten to one the lady would laugh at me." "Not if she loved you," said Mrs. Belle, very sadly. "Well, now I have the utmost confidence in your good taste. As I told you when I first knew you before you began to be so feeble-I say again, You are the most sensible woman I ever knew! And I'd like to ask your advice about how to go to work. I don't feel any fear in asking you; for we've been so much together in times of weakness and distress that you seem like an old friend: we understand each other." "I think we do," said Mrs. Belle, confidently, though she knew she didn't. 66 "Put it in this form. Suppose I were with the lady in a quiet place, do you think it would be necessary for me to go down on my knees, when people might come out and catch me any minute?" "Of course not. novels." That is never done out of "Or to lay my hand upon my breast and say, ‘I swear,' in a loud tone of voice that might attract people in the court-yard?" "That would be equally uncalled for." "Very well. And seeing I don't know how to talk sentimentally as I would if I had been trained, and wouldn't like to come out with a blunt 'Do you love me?' how do you think, looking at it sensibly, that it would do if I were to say nothing at all, but merely put my face down to hers-which is very beautiful, I assure youand though I never did such a thing before in my life, give her a kiss ?" "She couldn't fail to understand you perfectly, if she loved you." Mr. Buckle rose from his chair deliberately, cast his mustache over each shoulder, bent his tall form, and before the widow had the least idea what was coming, did that very thing. V. I saw him do it again. I was standing beside him at the time, with a pair of white kids on, and can swear to it. Though to be sure he only followed the pious example of the Rev. Dr. Bedell. He did it first. I did it afterward. And it was very nice. Another sail on the Montgomery then succeeded. "Bless my soul!" said the Captain, "has it come to this? I thought it would, Mrs. Belle, when you said you'd keep your eye on him." "Dear me!" said Mr. Buckle, as we passed the Sandy Hook Light, "how little I thought the last time I saw that lantern what a mercy was my being left-no, not left, I mean! If every thing hadn't happened in just that wayif I hadn't been caught aboard-if I hadn't seen woman somewhere within range of me and no possibility of getting out—if I hadn't learned her in her little distresses-" "And her 'fragility,'" said Mrs. Belle with a malicious twinkle. ages, an extensive knowledge of various tongues is no less valuable than remarkable; and we propose in the present article to mention a few of those whose acquirements in this line have, in their day and generation, entitled them to the name of prodigious talkers. The ancients appear to have been insignificant as linguists. The Romans, with characteristic insolence, endeavored to impose their tongue upon all the nations which fell under their rule. The bad Greek of Roman Embassadors to the Tarentines called forth from that lively people jokes which the more polite Frenchmen of our days spare our own republican ministers. When Attila conquered Rome, taking up the Roman policy, he passed a law prohibiting the use of Latin, and even imported teachers from his own country, by whose aid to substitute his native Gothic-a wiser course than that of the bigoted Mussulmen, who, when they conquered Jerusalem, prohibited the "Christian dogs" from using the sacred language of the Koran. The poet Ennius was so vain of his very moderate attainments that he used to boast of having "three hearts, because he was able to speak in three tongues-the Greek, the Latin, and the Oscan.' Herodotus, notwithstanding his long "I had then been a bachelor to this mo- residence in and intimate acquaintance with ment, utterly thrown away!" "Which was kindly averted," said Mrs. Belle Buckle, "by Fate's better throw- Thrown Together.'" A PRODIGIOUS TALKERS. Egypt, was not, according to an eminent critic, familiar with Egyptian; and in all his other travels gained, if any, but a very superficial knowledge of other tongues. Xenophon is supposed to have been equally lacking as a linguist; and even Plato's knowledge of foreign languages is a matter for serious doubt. Mithridates, the poison-proof King of Pontus, stands a head and shoulders above any of the ancients as a linguist. He was able to speak thoroughly the languages of all the nations, twenty-five in number, over whom he ruled; and it is related of him that he had not a soldier in his army whom he could not address in his vernacular. Next to Mithridates comes, singularly enough, Cleopatra, of whom Plutarch relates that "there were but few of the foreign embassadors to whom she gave audience through an interpreter." He specifies as languages which she knew the Ethiopian, that of the Troglodytes (probably a dialect of the Coptic), the Hebrew, Syrian, Persian, and that of the Medes; but adds that she understood still others. FACETIOUS Scotchman, speaking of language as being the uniting bond between men, and at the same time, by the great variety of tongues, the means, more than aught else, of severing and estranging nations, compares it to the orang-outang, which, according to the traveling showman, "forms the connecting link which separates mankind from the human race." Bacon, from whom our Scotchman has "adapted" the first portion of his remark, says, in the Introductory Book of his "Advancement of Learning:""The confusion of tongues, the first great judgment of God upon the ambition of man, hath chiefly imbarred the open trade and intercourse of learning and knowledge." Adelung, the author of the Mithridates, states, as the result of accurate philological investigations, that where the difficulties of intercourse are such as existed among the ancients, and as prevail still among semi-civilized populations, ignorant of the use of steam, no language can maintain itself unchanged over a space of more than one hundred and fifty thousand miles. The progress of any given form of civilization is thereThe Crusades gave another imfore seriously checked by the diversity of tongues; petus to the study. Frederick II. spoke at least and ere we can bring about that Millennial pe- six languages; and Roderigo Ximenes, Archriod when our civilization shall rule triumphant bishop of Toledo in the thirteenth century, was over all the earth, we shall have to leave lan- able to address an audience in no less than sevguages and come to one common tongue. en, which did not include Greek or Hebrew, Pending the solution of this, the problem of with which also he was probably familiar. The The study of languages was revived at the beginning of the second century A.D. by the critical investigations into the text of the Scriptures, which were then undertaken; but while we read of many eminent men who were more or less versed in several tongues, there is no record of any one displaying extraordinary lingual attainments. |