ribbon stamped with a likeness of Lafayette, and a little dim metal medal with the inscription, "Welcome to Lafayette, the Nation's Guest." These our cousin had worn when Lafayette had passed through her native town, in 1824, during his triumphal journey through the country. A set of dull cut-steel pearl buttons were in the box with these Lafayette trophies. These buttons had been worn at the French court, by some Story ancestor who was one of the members of the first legation from the United States to France. He had died of small-pox and his clothes had all been destroyed, and only these metal buttons remain - but on them our cousin hung a long and interesting tale.

One day when we looked in the drawer we saw, to our great surprise, two new articles — books bound in gold and black: "The Parent's Assistant," and "Sketch of my Friend's Family." These our cousin presented to us, judging rightly that we should value them far more highly because they came out of the top drawer. One other gift of hers gave us great delight two little yellow downy chickens. Why these special chickens should have been so great sources of pleasure and interest is difficult to understand, since chickens were plenty enough at our home, and indeed we each had a special brood, which was our very own; but we carefully fed Cousin Eliza's precious gifts, until they grew up into long-legged, awkward fowl, wearing untidy brown feather pantalets, that appeared to be continually dropping off.

But to return to the time-worn and faded treasures of the top-drawer. Four snuff-boxes of varying, but not very high degrees of beauty and elegance were designated as the Hancock, Washington, D'Estaing and Putnam snuff-boxes. They were so called because from each respective box these Revolutionary heroes had taken snuff, and thus given to the much honored snuff-holder its distinguished name. These wonderfully historical snuffboxes were probably a practical joke on the part of some Story ancestor, who thus perpetually guyed his descendants. It was too big a Revolutionary dose to take all at once. One might believe about Washington, for we know his won

derful capacity as a snuff-taker and a sleeper all over the country, but not about all four heroes. Our cousin never doubted the report of the little explanatory slip of paper enclosed in each box, nor did we either at that time. These snuff-boxes were kept in a carved sandal-wood box, which Captain Eb had brought from China, and in their company were the knee-buckles of Paul Revere. These knee-buckles had for many years before their retirement into the dignified company of the historical snuff-boxes done good service to Cousin Eliza as garterclasps. Two or three old faded fans; a pair of long white kid gloves, of which the backs and wrists were curiously pierced in an open-work design; two high tortoise-shell back-combs, and a pair of pointed heelless slippers bore further testimony to our cousin's vanity in past years.

All these happy days of story-telling and relic-seeing were, however, to be interrupted and ended in a sudden, most unexpected and, I think, unjust manner. There was in this casket of delights one terrifying article, which had always been a great astonishment to us, from an illcomprehended sense of its incongruity with its mild and pretty surroundings, but which nevertheless excited in us the unhealthy interest which always attaches itself to instruments of torture. It was always wrapped in a faded red silk handkerchief, which was figured with brown palm-leaves, and it was, we were told, an old-fashioned dental-hook or key for extracting teeth. The sharp, steel hook, the lever which when in use pressed on the victim's jaw, the powerful spring-hinge, and the massive handle, constituted an instrument so appalling that it is no wonder that old-time dentists and physicians always carefully concealed it from their patient's view, in the voluminous folds of a silk handkerchief. Many times had we shrinkingly handled this strange object, with the vague idea of wonder in our childish minds that one so dainty, so fastidious as our cousin should care to preserve the horrid symbol of so much suffering. Unfortunately, one day, a halfcomprehended suspicion of an explanation entered my precocious brain, and

with the open and transparent disingenousness of childhood I said, "Cousin Eliza, was John Chadwick a dentist?" Though that question of childish guile and diplomacy was asked many years ago, I have never forgotten the expression of our cousin's face; disappointment, slight indignation, and amused comprehension were all combined, and each visible, as she answered, "No, Ellen, he was not a dentist, he had no profession, he was a gentleman - little girls must not ask too many questions — you may go to the door and call Sarah," -and she began at once to replace in the drawer the boxes and packages.

A little surprised at this action, for the afternoon was not half gone, and many parcels were still unopened, I went slowly to the door and called to Sarah. The old woman came in, clambered as usual into the great "Washington chair," lifted the drawer with its contents, slid it into its high resting-place, turned the little brass key in the lock, and handed it to our cousin, who placed it in her reticule, and said, "Now Anna and Ellen, we will go into the parlor." We picked up our little crickets" and walked slowly out before her, and as I heard the lock turn in the door of "my room," I was oppressed, young as I was, with a sense of loss, of separation, of a severing of ties, such as I feel now when I leave a wellknown place that I may never visit again, or say good-by to some friend whose illhealth makes me dread that I never again may see her.

That vague undefined oppression proved a true foreboding of farewell, for I never again entered the room.

Many times after this did we visit cousin Eliza, and play with her Chinese worktable, and drink her barberry water, and eat her seed cakes; and often did we timidly ask to see the contents of her top drawer, only to be met with the answer: "Not to-day, Anna and Ellen, little girls ask too many questions."

Bitterly did my childish heart resent this injustice from one who had so gladly

answered all previous questions, and vainly did I try to decipher why that question had so annoyed her; but now I can understand that while she thought us. little children, with only infantile receptive brains, she could share with us the sight of those hoarded relics of her childhood and youth; but when we grew old enough to have inventive ideas, and suspicions of some story connected with those treasured mementoes other than the simple account she gave to us, then the long habit of loneliness made her close to us forever the door of that secret room.

I can fancy her sitting there alone by the side of the great table spread with pale greek okra stars, in the great Washington chair, with the single dancing ray of sunlight shining into the drawer, slowly untying the little parcels and opening the boxes, but telling to no one their story. And though in that lonely room she doubtless thought often of John Chadwick and the days of her youth, I doubt not she thought as often, as regretfully, and as tenderly, of the two little round freckled-faced girls, in "French print " frocks and long sleeved dimity "tyers," that had looked up to her so often with such sincere affection, and listened to her with such rapt attention.

Per

Cousin Eliza died, as she had lived, alone. We were then far away from the old seaport town, and when we next visited it, the house was sold and the furniture gone to various distant heirs. Never have I been able to trace the fate of the treasures in the top drawer. haps in her last feeble days she destroyed them, ere they fell into rough and unloving hands; possibly they were sold with the painted high chest at auction; perhaps they were cast aside as rubbish and sold as "a lot," to the wily Hebrew, or bargain-hunting Yankee; they may be safely preserved by distant heirs; but I never turn over the old books in a second-hand book-shop without looking eagerly for a Morse's "Gazetteer," bearing the inscription, "John Chadwick's Book"; perhaps some time I shall find it.

E

MERSON'S views on Reform are of peculiar interest. Emerson was not

66

a reformer, in the ordinary sense of the word; yet he lived in a time of intellectual expansion and social agitation, and there is hardly a reform or proposal of reform, belonging to the second and third quarters of our century, that is not touched upon in his pages, and is not illuminated or made interesting by his characteristic method of treatment. Religion itself, in his apprehension of it, came to be closely allied to reform. No longer did religion, he said, tend to a cultus, but to a heroic life. It was hard, he thought, to conceive any church, any liturgy, any rite, that would be quite genuine; "? but all things urged leading 66 a man's life." Religion came thus practically to be an attitude of the soul an attitude in accordance with which, when justice or any ideal good is presented to us, we are instinctively drawn to it, believe in it, trust it, work for it, and are persuaded that the world and the system of things are meant to go that way. The opposite of religion is moral deadness, unresponsiveness, unbelief, the worldly wisdom which limits the possibilities of the future by the experiences of the past.

The essence of the reform sentiment has rarely been better stated than in these words of Emerson's: "The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact." "For the origin of all reform is in that mysterious fountain of the moral sentiment, which amidst the natural, ever contains the supernatural for men. That is new and creative. That is alive. That alone can make a man other than he is. Here or nowhere resides unbounded

energy, unbounded power." He accordingly called the reformers of his day "the visible church of the existing generation." "The leaders of the crusades against war, negro slavery, intemperance, government based on force, usages of trade, court and custom-house oaths, and

so on to the agitators on the system of education and the laws of property, are the right successors of Luther, Knox, Robinson, Fox, Penn, Wesley, and Whitefield. They have the same virtue and vices; the same noble impulse, and the same bigotry." Ethics pledges us to the reform side. If we take our stand on necessity, we shall go for the conservative, he says; if on ethics, for the reformer. Back of this view is the thought that human nature is not the measurable thing we ordinarily take it to be; the conviction "that there is an infinite worthiness in man, which will appear at the call of worth." All particular reforms are but the removing of some impediment. For we must see, "that the world not only fits the former men, but fits us," and "clear ourselves of every usage which has not its roots in our own mind." "What is a man born for but to be a Re-former, a re-maker of what man has made, ting that great nature which embosoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day, and with every pulsation a new life?" Hence ancient institutions should not have too much respect.

imita

Emerson witnessed with exhilaration the growth of the reform spirit in his time.

While for ages, he said, the higher inspirations of the mind had been consigned to the poet and musical composer, to the prayers and sermons of the churches, without any thought that they could ever have a footing in real life, the new voices in the wilderness revived a hope that these thoughts might yet be executed. "These reforms are our contemporaries; they are ourselves; our own light, and right, and conscience; they only name the relation which subsists between us and the vicious institutions which they go to rectify." He did not escape being classed himself with the "new lights." John Quincy Adams gives this description

of him: "A young man named Ralph Waldo Emerson, after failing in the everyday avocations of a Unitarian preacher and schoolmaster, starts a new doctrine of transcendentalism, declares old revelations superannuated and worn out, and announces the approach of new revelations and prophecies." One of Emerson's early lectures was called Democratic-locofoco throughout, and, it is said, put Mr. George Bancroft, who was then the Collector of the port of Boston, into such esctacies that he wished Emerson to come and address three thousand listeners in his "Bay State" Club; and Theodore Parker, who narrates this, tells us that a certain grave, Whig-looking gentleman, who had heard Emerson, remarked that he could only account for Emerson's giving such a lecture on the supposition that he wished to get a place in the Custom-House.

The Dial, projected by Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and others, came out in 1840, and Emerson had very earnest wishes regarding it. He urged that it should contain the best advice on the topics of Government, Temperance, Abolition, Trade, and Domestic Life. Poetry and Sentiment it should certainly have, but it should not be a mere literary journal; it should go straight into life, and lead the opinion of the generation on every great interest. He even proposed "courting some of the good fanatics" and publishing chapters on every head in the whole art of living. "I am just now," he writes, "turning my pen to scribble and copy on the subjects of Labor, Farm, Reform, Domestic Life, etc."

Coming to somewhat closer quarters with our subject, we find Emerson putting his hand on the weak spot in our civilization in this manner:

"Our culture is very cheap and intelligible. Unroof any house and you shall find it. The well-being consists in having a sufficiency of coffee and toast, with a daily newspaper; a well-glazed parlor, with marbles, mirrors and centre-table; and the excitement of a few parties and a few rides in a year. Such as one house, such are all.

The owner of a New York manor imitates the mansion and equipage of the London nobleman; the Boston merchant rivals his brother of New

York; the villages copy Boston. There have

been nations elevated by great sentiments. Such

was the civility of Sparta and the Dorian race, whilst it was defective in some of the chief elements of ours. That of Athens, again, lay in intellect dedicated to beauty. That of Asia Minor

trade.

Our civility,

It is

in poetry, music, and arts; England determines the style of. that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of that profession. And we are shopkeepers, and have acquired the vices and virtues that belong to We peddle, we truck, we sail, we row, we to market and for the sale of goods. The national ride in cars, we creep in teams, we go in canalsaim and employment streams into our ways of thinking, our laws, our habits, and our manners. The customer is the immediate jewel of our souls. Him we flatter, him we feast, compliment, vote for and will not contradict."

The end to be rich thus infects us all together, and even shows by the state and the church. Government and education are only for the protection of property; and religion, even, is a lever out of the spiritual world to work for this. "Tis true that the cause of education was urged with great earnestness- but on what ground? Emerson asks; and he replies: "Why, on this: that the people have the power, and if they are not instructed to sympathize with the intelligent, trading, and governing class, inspired with a taste for the same competition and prizes," they may make trouble.

Emerson gives an illustration of the way in which religion is sometimes turned to account. Some contractors were building a road out of Baltimore, and found their Irish laborers quarrelsome and refractory, to a degree that embarrassed the agents and seriously interrupted the progress of the work. After exhausting the ordinary remedies, the corporation were advised to call off the police, and build a Catholic chapel, which they did: the priests presently restored order, and the work went on prosperously. Of the Sabbath and other religious institutions, Emerson says we need not trouble ourselves about their preservation; "they have already acquired a marketable value as conservators of property, and if priest or church-member should fail, the chambers of commerce and the presidents of the banks, the very innholders and landlords of the country, would muster with fury to their support. Of course religion in such hands loses its essence." Among

the low it becomes low. As it loses its truth, it loses credit with the sagacious. They detect the falsehood of the preaching; but when they say so, good citizens cry, Hush!

But this materialistic spirit of our civilization produced one institution which could not be joked about. "We had found a race," Emerson says, "who were less warlike and less energetic shopkeepers than we; who had very little skill in trade. We found it very convenient to keep them at work, since, by the aid of a little whipping, we could get their work for nothing but their board and the cost of the whips. What if it cost a few unpleasant scenes on the coast of Africa? That was a great way off; and the scenes could be endured by some sturdy, unscrupulous fellows," who went for high wages and brought us the men. If mention was made of disagreeable things, such as homicide, madness, adultery, and intolerable tortures, the church bells could ring louder, the church organ swell its peal and drown the hideous sound. Emerson was the first American scholar, says Mr. Conway, to cast his dart at the Python of slavery. And what it meant we can imagine, when Emerson's biographer, Mr. Cabot, tells us that "nearly all the leading men among the scholars and the clergy, as well as the merchants, were upon the side of the South, or but feebly against it." Emerson was not an active abolitionist, — favoring compensation to slave-owners (though not on the ground of right), as England had done with the West Indian planters. He found things in the abolitionists not altogether to his tastes, "incidental petulances or infirmities," grievous one-sidedness and partialities, too; but the sense of this never led him, as it did so many others, to range himself on the other side and "be mixed up with all the rotten rabble of selfishness and tyranny." Again and again he spoke his mind; and when the Fugitive-slave law came, he declared not only that it must be abrogated, but that while it stood, it must be disobeyed." "Let us not lie nor steal, nor help to steal; and let us not call stealing by any fine names, such as union or patriotism," - these were his words; and such was

his indignation that it moved him for once in his life to personal denunciation, and this of a man for whom he had had great admiration — Daniel Webster.

Experiences of this sort did not tend to heighten Emerson's respect for government, of which indeed he never had a surplus. He tells us of a certain paper, that he liked its motto so much that he rarely found much appetite to read what stood in the columns below-the motto being, "The world is governed too much." Movements for good in the community come rather, in his estimation, from private inspiration, from the clash of mind with mind in free discussion and popular assemblies. In the midst of the anti-slavery agitation (1844) he said, "Virtuous men will not again rely on political agents. . . The superstition respecting power and office is going to the ground. The stream of human affairs flows its own way and is very little affected by the activity of legislation." It is ever the test of our moral fibre, whether, when power and force take the other side, we are ready to bow the knee. But Emerson exclaimed, (1850), after the passage of the Fugitive-slave law, "What is the effect of this evil government? To discredit government. . . . When government and courts are false to their trust, men disobey the government and put it in the wrong." He was not affected by the terror "of old people and of vicious people" at that time, lest the Union be destroyed; as if the Union had any other real basis than the good pleasure of a majority of the citizens to be united. "The wise or just man will always feel that he stands on his own feet; that he imparts strength to the state, not receives security from it; and that if all went down, he, and such as he, would easily combine in a new and better constitution."

Emerson went so far as to suggest the possibility of getting on without official government at all. Many people have a native skill, he says, "for carving out business for many hands; a genius for the disposition of affairs; and are never happier than when difficult practical questions which embarrass other men are to be solved." Why should not these men