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Page 76
Miss Martineau piled her treasures on a table and culled the specimens
worthy of pressing, and it seemed to pain her to reject the least
promising of her perishable plunder. She must have had a passion for
flowers, judging from the tenderness with which she handled the lovely
fronds and delicate petals under inspection, while her mouth was
continually open in admiring exclamation.
And now came what I still fondly remember as the _Musicale_. A little
comrade came in the twilight to sing songs with me. With arms
interlaced, we paced the upper hall, vociferously warbling as breath was
given us, when a door opened, and the gifted, dark-faced woman, with
kindly eyes, beamed out on us. "Come," she called, "come in here,
children, and sing your songs for me: I am very fond of music." Very
bashfully we signified our willingness to oblige,--indeed, we dared not
do otherwise,--and sidled into the room. Closing the door, our hostess
curled herself comfortably on a gayly-cushioned lounge, and proceeded to
adjust a serpent-like, squirming appendage to her ear. With an
encouraging nod, she bade us commence, closing her eyes meanwhile with
an air of expectant rapture. But the vibrating trumpet stirred our
foolish souls to explosive laughter, partially smothered in a
simultaneous strangled cough. Wondering at the double paroxysm and
subsequent hush of shame, she unclosed her eyes, softly murmuring,
"Don't be bashful nor afraid, my dears. I am very far from home, and you
can make me very happy, if you will. Pray begin at once, and then I will
also sing for you." Taking courage, we piped as bidden, rendering in a
childish way the strains of "Blue-Eyed Mary," "Comin' through the Rye,"
"I'd be a Butterfly," and "Auld Lang Syne," Our audience, with bright,
attentive looks, regarded the performance in pleased approval, softly
tapping time on her knee with a slender finger.
"Now it is my turn," said Miss Martineau. Straightening herself and
casting aside the trumpet, primly folding her hands and pursing her
mouth curiously, she began, in a high, quavering voice, a song whose
burden was the fixed objection on the part of a certain damsel to
forsaking the pleasures of the world for the seclusion and safety of a
convent:
Now, is it not a pity such a pretty girl as I
Should be sent to a nunnery to pine away and die?
But I _won't_ be a nun,--- no, I _won't_ be a _nun_;
I'm _so_ fond of _pleasure_ that I _cannot_ be a nun.
It is impossible to give an idea of the jerky style of the lady's
singing which so tickled our sensitive ears. At every repetition of the
refrain, Susy and I squeezed our locked fingers spasmodically in order
to suppress the unseemly laughter bubbling to our lips. At every
emphatic word she nodded at us merrily, thus adding to our inward
disquiet.
I like now, when picturing Harriet Martineau entertaining with noble
themes the men and women of letters she drew around her in England and
America, to remember, in connection with her strong, plain face and
brilliant intellect, the simple kindliness with which she once unbent to
a brace of little Hoosier maids in the "Far West."
F.C.M.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
"Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence[A]." Edited by Elizabeth
Gary Agassiz. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
The northeastern corner of the ancient Pays de Vaud, only part of which
is included in the modern canton, is little known to tourists. It lies
away from the chief lines of travel, and it has neither the magnificent
views that draw the visitor aside to Orbe nor the associations that
induce him to stop at Coppet or Clarens. Yet its breezy upland plains
and its quiet villages--some of them once populous and prosperous
towns--are not devoid of charm, or of the interest connected with
historical epochs and famous names. The "lone wall" and "lonelier
column" at Avenches date from the period when this was the Roman capital
of Helvetia. Morat still shows many a mark and relic of its siege by
Charles the Bold and of the overthrow of his forces by the Swiss.
Payerne was the birthplace, in 1779, of Jomini, the greatest of all
writers on military operations, whose precocious genius, while he was a
mere stripling and before he had witnessed any battles or manoeuvres,
penetrated the secret of Bonaparte's combinations and victorious
campaigns, which veteran commanders were watching with mere wonderment
and dismay. At Motiers, a few miles farther north, was born, in 1807,
Louis Agassiz, who at an equally early age displayed a like intuitive
comprehension of many of the workings of Nature, and who subsequently
became the chief exponent of the glacial theory and the highest
authority on the structure and classification of fishes. Each of these
two men gave his ripest powers and longest labors to a great country far
from their common home,--Jomini to Russia, Agassiz to the United States;
and, dissimilar as were their objects and pursuits, their intellectual
resemblance was fundamental. The pre-eminent quality of each was the
power of rapid generalization, of mastering and subordinating details,
of grasping and applying principles and laws. Agassiz differed as much
from an animal-loving collector like Frank Buckland, whose father was
one of his stanchest friends and co-workers, as Jomini differed from a
fighting general like Ney, to whom he suggested the movements that
resulted in the French victory at Bautzen. Switzerland is equally proud
of the great strategist and the great naturalist, but to Americans in
general the former is at the most a mere name, while the career of the
latter is an object of wide-spread and even national interest.
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