While ciphering over the thing, And make him the servant of man ! He flies on the fleetest of pinions, And carries the news of the day All over his master's dominions! One morning while taking a stroll Saluted St. Jonathan's ear, That his bosom-which wasn't of stone Was melted with pity to hear. That night he invented a charm So potent that folks who employ it, In losing a leg or an arm, Don't suffer, but rather enjoy it! A miracle, you must allow, As good as the best of his brothers', And blessed St. Jonathan now Is patron of cripples and mothers. There's many an excellent Saint: St. George with his dragon and lance; St. Nicholas, so jolly and quaint; St. Vitus, the saint of the dance; St. Denis, the saint of the Gaul; St. Andrew, the saint of the Scot; 10 15 20 25 30 XXIV. CHARLES AND MARY LAMB. BY ROBERT COLLYER.' CHARLES LAMB' died in 1834, as the year was closing, at Edmonton by London, a place known to you and me through the diverting history of John Gilpin. And, if we could have gone there in the fall of that year, the chances are we should have seen Mr. Lamb, as the neighbors called him, wandering along the lanes while the leaves were turning brown on the trees, and the mists were falling far and wide; for the splendid pillars of golden fire our maples rear against the azure here are not seen in the mother land, and if you had the maples 10 there you would not have the azure in which ours are framed. . . . A short and slender person you would have seen in those lanes, with what Thomas Hood' called a pair of immaterial legs; a head of wonderful beauty, if you 15 could see it bare, well set on the bent shoulders, with black curly hair in plenty, threaded through with gray; eyes of soft brown, like that you see in some gentle animals, but not quite of the same color-odd eyes, you would call them; and a face of the finest Hebrew type 2 rather than the Saxon. "But who shall describe his face," an old friend says, "or catch its quivering sweetness? Deep thought, shot through with humor, and lines of suffering wreathed with mirth." He would be dressed in black, also, of an old fashion, though the time: was when he favored a decent gray; and when a friend! asked him once why he wore such queer old clothes, he answered, very simply, "Because they are all I have, my boy." He would have a dog with him, also; a creature which answered, or rather did not answer, to the name of Dash, 5 and would rush away wherever his wayward fancy led him, while he who should have been his master would stand still in deep dismay, calling to him, fearing he would get lost, and resolving to teach him better manners; only when the rogue did return in an hour or so, 10 his victim would be so glad he could not bear even to scold him, and so he had to send him away at last in sheer despair. So the gentle old man would walk about the lanes in those days, with Dash to torment him; turn in, perhaps, to the Bell, where John Gilpin should have 1 dined, for a glass of ale; and then go home to the lodgings where he lived with his sister. This sister depended on her brother so that he said very tenderly to her one day when he came home, “ You must die first, Mary"; and she answered, with a cheer-20 ful little laugh," Yes, Charles, I must die first." But on a day not long after, as I make out, he fell, as he was walking alone, and was much bruised and shaken. He had said in a letter not long before," God help me when I come to put off these snug relations, and get abroad 23 in the world to come." And long before, “A new state of things staggers me. Sun, sky, and breeze, solitary walks and summer holidays, the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, society and its good cheer, candlelight and fireside conversations, and 30 innocent vanities and jests, and irony itself-do we lose these with life? Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides? And you, my folios, must I part with you?" Must knowledge come to me, if it comes at all, by some awkward turn of intuition, and no longer by this famil iar process of reading? Shall I enjoy friendship there, wanting the smiles and the faces I know, and the sweet assurance of a look ?" So he lived, this gentle and most sensitive spirit, all his life subject to bondage and the fear of death, as we have known others live of his noble and delicate mold. But after he got his hurt he did not know what had befallen him, and was only dreaming pleasant dreams of old friends and of some little festival he had in his 10 mind; and so he passed away, and did not see death, for God took him, while the sister who was to have gone first survived him almost twelve years. 5 He was born in London, as your fathers were blowing at the fires which flamed up at Lexington and Bunker 15 Hill.' 8 His father was a lawyer's clerk in the Temple, where the boy passed the first seven years of his life close to the great tides that set in, as he tells us, from the east and west, in the very heart of the great city he came to 20 love so well that he told Wordsworth' once his mountains and lakes might hang for all he cared, and, when at last he went to look at them, found he was composing his mind and staying his heart, not all on their glory and beauty, but on a famous ham and beef shop: he knew of in the Strand. 25 He has drawn a portrait of his father as a man of "an incorruptible and losing honesty," and not only clerk to the old lawyer, but his good servant, dresser, friend, guide, stop watch, and treasurer. The liveliest little fel-30 low breathing, he says, with a face as gay as Garrick's ;" a man Izaak Walton would have loved to go with a-fishing," and clever with his hands though he was small. For once when he saw a man of quality, so called, insult 10 ing a woman, and came to her rescue, and the brute drew his sword on him, the little fellow wrenched the sword out of his hand, and mauled him soundly with the hilt. They were very poor, these Lambs; and the undercurrent of rumor, which may go for what it is worth, is that the children were neglected. But no word of this comes from Lamb, like those we have from another humorist, who shames himself and his genius by telling the story of his own hard lot as a child, and then draws IC the portrait of his father in Micawber1 very much after the manner of one in the Scriptures who mocked at his father's weakness and shame. He went to a sort of charity school for his education, Christ's Hospital," so called, a place in those days, of the old brutal British 15 type, where they never spared the rod to spoil the child; stayed there seven years, learning what they used to call the humanities. . . When Lamb was about fourteen, they could afford to keep him at school no longer; so he had to turn out, and 20 help make the living, for the years had brought no release from the bitter pinch of poverty. There was a brother much older than Charles, who was doing well in the world and had only himself to care for; but he only cared for himself, being a man of fine tastes," and 2 left the family to its doom. So the boy of fourteen found work to do and became presently the head of the household and its staff and stay. Then in the course of time he saw the maid he could dream of as his wife, and worship from afar until it should please God to open the 30 way to his great desire. And then, when he was just coming of age, a great tragedy opened, and changed the whole plan and purpose of his life. They were living in a poor little place, to which they |