But all in secret does the bridegroom plight His troth, and each unto the other vow Mutual allegiance. Such espousals, too, Are authorized on earth, and many daughters Of royal saints thus wedded to their lords, Have still received their father's benison. SAKOONTALÁ. SAKOONTALÁ. Venerable mother, there is certainly a change for the better. GAUTAMI. Let me sprinkle you with this holy water, and all your ailments will depart. [Sprinkling SAKOONTALA on the head.] The day is Leave me, leave me; I must take counsel closing, my child; come, let us go to the cotwith my female friends. 1 That is, the male and female of the Chakra-váka, commonly called Chakwa and Chakwi, or Bráhmaní duck (anas casarca). These birds associate together during the day, and are, like turtle-doves, patterns of connubial affection: but the legend is, that they are doomed to pass the night apart, in consequence of a curse pronounced upon them by a saint whom they had offended. As soon as night commences, they take up their station on the opposite banks of a river, and call to each other in piteous cries. The Bengális consider their flesh to be a good medicine for fever. tage. [They all move away. pose. Whither now shall I betake myself? I will Here printed on the flowery couch I see Things that recall her image, can I quit This bower, e'en though its living charm be fled? Great King, A VOICE IN THE AIR. Scarce is our evening sacrifice begun, Come along, come along; we have gathered flowers enough. [They move away. THE SAME VOICE BEHIND THE SCENES. Woe to thee, maiden, for daring to slight a guest like me! Shall I stand here unwelcomed; even I, Thus set at nought the ever sacred ties He, even he of whom thou thinkest, he Shall think no more of thee; nor in his heart Retain thine image. Vainly shalt thou strive To waken his remembrance of the past; The words he uttered in his revellings. PRIYAMVADÁ. Alas! alas! I fear a terrible misfortune has occurred. Sakoon talá, from absence of mind, must have offended some guest whom she was bound to treat with respect. [Looking behind the scenes.] Ah! yes; I see, and no less a person than the great sage Durvásas,' who is excessively choleric and inexorably severe. A saint or Muni, represented by the Hindú poets as The Puránas and other poems contain frequent accounts of the terrible effects of his imprecations on various occasions, [Smiling. Even a little was much for him. Say on. PRIYAMVADÁ. PRIYAMVADÁ. I agree with you. Who would think of watering a tender jasmine with hot water? [The rest of the play deals almost entirely with the supernatural, or rather with Hindú superstition. As indicated in the Prelude to the 4th Act, Sakoon talá sets forth, properly attended, to seek the King at his palace in the distant capital of Delhi, or Hastinapur as it was then called; but on the way she loses the ring When he refused to turn back, I implored his forgiveness in these words: "Most venerable sage, pardon, I beseech you, this first offence of a young and inexperienced girl, who was ignorant of the respect due to your saintly while washing her hands at a fountain; so, when she character and exalted rank." ANASUYA. And what did he reply? PRIYAMVADÁ. "My word must not be falsified; but at the sight of the ring' of recognition the spell shall cease." So saying, he disappeared. the slightest offence being in his eyes deserving of the most fearful punishment. On one occasion he cursed Indra, merely because his elephant let fall a garland he had given to this god; and in consequence of this imprecation, all plants withered, men ceased to sacrifice, and the gods were overcome in their wars with the demons. On this ring the subsequent trouble hinges. In the 5th Act, which we do not give, Sakoon talá and her friends journey to the city of the King, but on the way the ring is lost; and when Sakoon talá presents herself, the King fails to recognize her, and she departs in des reaches the presence of the King (being moved by the spell of the offended sage Durvásas), he forgets that he has ever seen her, and, though much impressed by her beauty, he dismisses her, much puzzled at her condition and her claims. A poor fisherman is now brought on the scene, having been found in possession of a magnificent ring with the King's signet and other marks; and he narrowly escapes death as a robber, till he ex plains that he cut the ring from the maw of a carp which he had caught at the public fountain. The ring being shown the King, he immediately remembers all about Sakoon talá, and at once sets to work to find his Queen; but she has disappeared mysteriously. As the play explains, she was taken up to Heaven by her mother, where the King, being privileged to enter, finds her with their boy well grown; and they return to earth, and lived happy ever after.] pair. But a fisherman has found the ring in the entrails of a fish, and it is conveyed to the King, who instantly on beholding the ring remembers all about Sakoon talá, as explained in the note above. TOWN AND COUNTRY LIFE IN mire of the country roads were of the far AMERICA IN 1800. famed Conestoga breed. These creatures were of English origin. Some emigrants who settled in Chester county brought a few horses with them. From the English, in turn, the Swiss Mennonites obtained that stock which, in the valley of the Pequea and along the banks of ConesSur-toga Creek, they brought to a high state of perfection. The horse and the ox were the only draught animals in general use. The mule was almost unused. [John Bach McMaster, an American historical writer, was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., June 29, 1852. Educated at the College of the City of New York, where he graduated in 1872, he at first pursued the profession of a civil engineer, and published Bridge and Tunnel Centres (1876), and Geometry of Position Applied to veying (1883). He was instructor in civil engineering in the College of New Jersey, at Princeton, 1877-83. In 1883 he was appointed professor of American history in the University of Pennsylvania, and has since resided at Philadelphia. He has become widely known by his History of the People of the United States, from the Revolution to the Civil War, which is intended to be comprised in five volumes. The first volume appeared in 1883 and the second in 1885, bringing the history down to the year 1803. This work is remarkable for the wide research among early newspapers, pamphlets, travellers' narratives, etc., the fruits of which are evinced upon almost every page, and for the minute and sometimes graphic descriptions of places, manners, and modes of life. Judged by strict canons of historical writing, the work has been criticised as fragmentary, episodical, and wanting in logical sequence and due literary propor tion; but that it is extremely entertaining as a lifelike description of characters and scenes long passed away cannot be denied. Indeed, the writer often tells the story of the times almost in the language of the writers of the times, briefing controversial pamphlets and news paper articles in such a way that the absence of quotation marks sometimes makes it doubtful whether the author uses his own or another's language. Our selection (from the second volume of McMaster's History) well describes the New England life and the Western emigration at the close of the last century.] Among the Germans, as among farmers of all sorts, agriculture was believed to be much affected by the moon. Grain should not be sown, orchards should not be pruned, reaping should not begin, till the proper moon had reached its proper quarter and appearance. Whether it lay upon its back or stood upon its horn, whether it gave promise of drought or rain, were all matters of deep concern. When at last the crops had been gathered, the labor of transporting them began. Then the great wagons were brought from under the shed, and, while the men put on the load, the women made ready the provisions for the whole trip. The capacity of the vehicles was often four tons. Their covers of linen were high at each end and low in the middle. Their wheels were at times fifteen inches wide. The horses that tugged them through the VOL. X. Twelve years had not passed since the first pair of jacks in America landed at Portsmouth, in New Hampshire. The King of Spain had sent them to Washington, that mules might be bred at Mount Vernon. In a few years the progeny of "Royal Gift" was scattered over the plantations of Northern Virginia, and regularly offered for sale on the racecourse at Annapolis. Other jacks were afterward imported from Spain by numbers of breeders, and finally great cargoes of mules. Yet the animals were little used north of the Virginia line. In every State the number of farmers who had ever in their lives beheld a mule was extremely small. Through the whole farming region of New England and New York ox-carts and ox-sleds were oftener met with than horses and wagons. There most of the vehicles went upon two wheels. Only in the large towns were chariotees and coaches, gigs, carriages and stage-coaches to be seen. The stage-coach was little better than a huge covered box mounted on springs. It had neither glass windows, nor door, nor steps, nor closed sides. The roof was upheld by eight posts, which rose from the body of the vehicle, and the body was commonly breast-high. From the top were hung curtains of leather, to be drawn up when the day was fine, and let down and buttoned when rainy and cold. Within were four seats. Without was the baggage. Fourteen pounds of luggage were allowed to be carried free by each passenger. But if his portmanteau or his brass-nail-studded hair trunk weighed more, he paid for it at the same rate per mile as he paid for himself. Under no circumstances, however, could he be permitted to take with him on the journey more than one hundred and fifty pounds. When the baggage had all been weighed and strapped on the coach, when 220 deep that as the wheels were about to enter one the driver would call upon the passengers to lean out of the opposite side of the coach, to prevent the vehicle being overturned." Now, gentlemen,' he would say, "to the right.' "Now, gentlemen, to the left. the horses had been attached and the | and breakfast at a miserable house three way-bill made out, the eleven passengers miles from Baltimore. But the host were summoned, and, clambering to their would not suffer one of them to dry his seats through the front of the stage, sat clothes by the kitchen stove. When an down with their faces toward the driver's editor in the town was asked to publish seat. On routes where no competition an account of their trip he refused. The existed progress was slow, and the travel- owners of the coach-line might, he said, lers were subjected to all manner of ex- hinder the circulation of his newspaper. tortion and abuse. "Brutality, negli- To add to the vexation of such delays, gence and filching," says one, are as "the Apostolic Assembly of the State of naturally expected by people accustomed Delaware" had forbidden stage-coaches to travelling in America as a mouth, a to cross their hand's-breadth of territory nose and two eyes are looked for in a on the Sabbath. The worst bit of road in man's face." Another set out one day the country seems to have been between in March, 1796, to go from Frenchtown Elkton, in Maryland, and the Susqueto New Castle, on the Delaware. Seven-hanna Ferry. There the ruts were so teen miles separated the two towns, a distance which, he declares, a good healthy man could have passed over in four hours and a half. The stage-coach took six. When it finally reached New Castle it was high noon, the tide was making, the wind was fair, and the boat for Philadelphia was ready at the wharf. Yet he was detained for an hour and a half, "that the inn-keeper might scrub the passengers out of the price of a dinner." Dinner over, the boat set sail and ran up the river to within two miles of Gloucester Point. There, wind and tide failing, the vessel dropped anchor for the night. Some passengers, anxious to go on by land, were forced to pay half a dollar each to be rowed to the shore. At one in the morning the tide again turned. But the master was then drunk, and, when he could be made to understand what was said, the tide was again ebbing, and the boat was aground. Evening came before the craft reached Philadelphia. The passengers were forty-eight hours on board. Another came from New York by stage and by water. He was almost shipwrecked in the bay, lost some of his baggage at Amboy, was nearly left by the coach, and passed twenty hours going sixteen miles on the Delaware. The captain was drunk. The boat three times collided with vessels coming up the river. A gentleman set out in February to make the trip from Philadelphia to Baltimore. Just beyond Havre de Grace the axle broke. A cart was hired and the passengers driven to the next stage-inn. There a new coach was obtained, which, in the evening, overset in a wood. Toward daylight the whole party, in the midst of a shower of rain and snow, found shelter Yet another traveller had quitted Philadelphia for New York. All went smoothly till the coach drew near to the town of Brunswick. There one of a rival line was overtaken, and a race begun. At Elizabethtown a young woman, well mounted, rode up behind the coach and attempted to pass. In an instant half of the men on the stage began to revile her most shamefully, raised a great shout, frightened her horse, and all but unseated her. One, indeed, ventured to expostulate. But he was quickly silenced by the question, "What! suffer anybody to take the road of us?" At New York three of the passengers found lodgings in a single room at an inn. The custom was a general one, and of all customs was the mest offensive to foreigners. No such thing, it was said, was ever seen in the British Isles. There every decent person not only had a bed, but even a room to himself, and, if he were so minded, might lock his door. In America, however, the traveller sat down at the table of his landlord, slept in the first bed he found empty, or, if all were taken, lay down on one beside its occupant without so much as asking leave, or caring who the sleeper might be. If he demanded clean sheets, he was looked upon as an aristocrat, and charged well for the trouble he gave; for the bedclothes were changed at stated times, and not to suit the whims of travellers. |