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Errors in Language Learning and Use
 APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND
LANGUAGE STUDY

General Editor
PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER N. CANDLIN,
MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY, SYDNEY

For a complete list of books in this series see pages v-vi

Errors in Language
Learning and Use
Exploring Error Analysis

Carl James

~ ~~o~1~~n~~~up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1998 by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2013 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 1998, Taylor & Francis.

The right of Carl James to be identified as the author of this Work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, in-
cluding photocopYing and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, with-
out permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and expe-
rience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or
medical treatment may become necessaf}T.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in
evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described
herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and
the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibili1:}r.

To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or edi-
tors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of
products liabili1:}r, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods,
products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.

ISBN: 978-0-582-25763-4 (Pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

James, Carl, 1939-

Errors in language learning and use: exploring error analysis /
Carl James.
p. cm. - (Applied linguistics and language study)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Language and languages-Study and teaching-Error analysis.
I. Title. II. Series.
P53.3J36 1998
418'.007-dc21 97-34548
CIP
Set by 35 in 10/12 pt Baskerville
 APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND
LANGUAGE STUDY

GENERAL EDITOR
PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER N. CANDLIN

Macquarie University, Sydney

Language and Development: Language, Literature and the

Teachers in a Changing World Learner: Creative Classroom
BRIAN KENNY and Practice
WILLIAM SAVAGE (Eds) RONALD CARTER and
JOHN MCRAE (Eds)
Autonomy and Independence in
Language Learning Theory and Practice of Writing:
PHIL BENSON and An Applied Linguistic
PETER VOLLER (Eds) Perspective
WILLIAM GRABE and
Literacy in Society ROBERT B. KAPLAN
RUQAIYA HASAN and GEOFFREY
WILLIAMS (Eds) Measuring Second Language
Performance
Phonology in English Language TIM MCNAMARA
Teaching: An International
Approach Interaction in the Language
MARTHA C. PENNINGTON Curriculum: Awareness,
Autonomy and Authenticity
From Testing to Assessment: LEO VAN LIER
English as an International
Language Second Language Learning:
CLIFFORD HILL and Theoretical Foundations
MICHAEL SHARWOOD SMITH
KATE PARRY (Eds)

Language as Discourse: Analysing Genre - Language Use

Perspectives for Language in Professional Settings
V.K. BHATIA
Teaching
MICHAEL MACCARTHY and Rediscovering Interlanguage
RONALD CARTER
LARRY SELINKER

Language and Discrimination: Language Awareness in the

A Study of Communication in Classroom
Multi-Ethnic Workplaces CARL JAMES and
CELIA ROBERTS, EVELYN DAVIES PETER GARRETT (Eds)
and TOM JUPp
Process and Experience in the
Translation and Translating: Language Classroom
Theory and Practice MICHAEL LEGUTKE and
ROGER T. BELL HOWARD THOMAS
An Introduction to Second Listening to Spoken English
Language Acquisition Research Second Edition
DIANE LARSEN-FREEMAN and GILLIAN BROWN
MICHAEL H. LONG
Observation in the Language
Listening in Language Learning Classroom
MICHAEL ROST DICK ALLWRIGHT

The Classroom and the Vocabulary and Language

Language Learner: Teaching
Ethnography and Second- RONALD CARTER and MICHAEL
language Classroom Research MCCARTHY (Eds)
LEO VAN LIER
Bilingualism in Education:
Second Language Grammar: Aspects of Theory, Research and
Learning and Teaching Practice
WILLIAM E. RUTHERFORD MERRILL SWAIN and JIM CUMMINS

An Introduction to Discourse Reading in a Foreign Language

Analysis J. CHARLES ALDERSON and
Second Edition A. H. URQUHART (Eds)
MALCOLM COULTHARD
Language and Communication
Learning to Write: First JACK c. RICHARDS and RICHARD
Language/Second Language w. SCHMIDT (Eds)
AVIVA FREEDMAN, IAN PRINGLE
and JANICE YALDEN (Eds)
Error Analysis: Perspectives on
Second Language Acquisition
Stylistics and the Teaching of JACK RICHARDS
Literature
HENRY WIDDOWSON

Contrastive Analysis
CARL JAMES
 Contents

Publisher's Acknowledgements ix
Author's Preface x
Abbreviations XUl

1 Definition and Delimitation 1

Human error 1
Successive paradigms 2
Interlanguage and the veto on comparison 6
Learners and native speakers 9
The heyday of Error Analysis 11
Mounting criticism of Error Analysis 15
Data collection for Error Analysis 19
2 The Scope of Error Analysis 25
Good English for the English 26
Good English for the FL/SL learner 39
The native speaker and the power dimension 46
The Incompleteness hypothesis 53
Other reference points for Error Analysis 56
3 Defining 'Error' 62
Ignorance 62
Measures of deviance 64
Other dimensions: errors and mistakes 76
Error:mistake and acquisition:learning - an equation? 85
Lapsology 86
4 The Description of Errors 90
Error detection 91
Locating errors 92
Describing errors 94
Error classification 97

vii
viii Errors in Language Learning and Use

Error taxonomies 102

Counting errors 114
Profiling and Error Analysis 117
Computerized corpora of errors 124
5 Levels of Error 129
Substance errors 130
Text errors 141
Lexical errors 142
Classifying lexical errors 144
Grammar errors 154
Discourse errors 161
6 Diagnosing Errors 173
Description and diagnosis 173
Ignorance and avoidance 175
Mother-tongue influence: interlingual errors 179
Target language causes: intralingual errors 184
Communication strategy-based errors 187
Induced errors 189
Compound and ambiguous errors 200
7 Error Gravity and Error Evaluation 204
Evaluation 204
Criteria for error gravity (EG) 206
Viewpoint 226
8 Error Correction 235
What is 'correction'? 235
Whether to correct: pros and cons 240
How to do error correction: some options and principles 249
Noticing error 256
Rules and the role of corrective explanation 263
9 A Case Study 267
Elicitation and registration 267
Error identification 268
Categorizing the errors 273
Status: error or mistake? 273
Diagnosis 275

References 278
Intkx 300
 Publisher's Acknowledgements

We are indebted to the very Revd. Dr. N T Wright for permission

to reproduce an extract from his letter to The Times 7 December
1996.

ix
 Author's Preface

I notice on my travels that students on TEFL and Applied Lin-

guistics courses, in the UK and beyond, study not only the
Interlanguage paradigm of foreign language learning. Courses in
Contrastive Analysis are still generally offered, and Error Analysis
(EA) continues to enjoy widespread appeal. The explanation is
not hard to find: teachers cannot escape from a preoccupation
with learners' errors, and they are attracted towards EA by its pro-
mise of relevance to their everyday professional concerns. Students,
for their part, enjoy the 'hands on' contact with real data that EA
provides. As Vivian Cook puts it, Error Analysis is 'a methodology
for dealing with data, rather than a theory of acquisition' (1993:
22). In fact, while some people want theory of Second Language
Acquisition (SlA), I am convinced that many others want meth-
odology for dealing with data.
Though there are a number of books available on Contrastive
Analysis (or 'Language Transfer' as it is now called) and on Inter-
language study, there is no well-documented and reasonably com-
prehensive monograph on EA. This is all the more surprising when
you consider that Bernd Spillner's diligent Comprehensive Bibliography
of Error Analysis carried, back in 1991, a staggering 5,398 entries.
We have only the excellent but short handbooks for teachers
by John Norrish: Language Learners and their Errors (1983) and by
J. Edge: Mistakes and Correction (1989). The only other books avail-
able on EA are the edited anthologies by J.C. Richards: Error
A nalysis: Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition (Longman, 1974),
and that by R. Freudenstein: Error in Foreign Languages (1989).
Nickel's Fehlerkunde (1972) did much to define parameters of
the field, especially that of error evaluation, and S.P. Corder's
Error Analysis and Interlanguage (1981) is a collection of his seminal

x
 Author's Preface Xl

papers, wherein one can trace his developing thoughts. But some
of these collections are to some extent dismissive of EA and defend
the Interlanguage approach. The would-be student of EA there-
fore has no option but to seek out individual articles published by
the thousands in a wide range ofjournals. This is an unsatisfactory
situation at a time when the rising cost ofjournals, tougher copy-
right law enforcement and higher numbers of students make easier
access to study materials a high priority.
EA used to be associated exclusively with the field of foreign
language teaching, but it has recently been attracting wider inter-
est, having become associated with other domains of language
education: mother-tongue literacy, oracy and writing assessment;
language disorders and therapy work; and the growing field of
forensic linguistics. In fact, it was in the course of a friendly con-
versation that Malcolm Coulthard, doyen of forensic linguistics,
bemoaning the lack of a solid monograph on EA for people in his
field to train on, suggested I write this book.
There is also an increased interest in error among cognitive and
educational scientists outside the field of language: Pickthorne's
work on Error Factors in children's arithmetic is an example, while
the Chomskian discussion of the roles of 'evidence' (especially
negative evidence in the form of error) and the renewed interest
in feedback (now delivered to the learner by computer) in lan-
guage acquisition all point to a revival of interest in EA. I there-
fore believe the time is ripe for a publication on Error Analysis,
and the best channel must be Chris Candlin's Applied Linguistics
and Language Study series with Longman.
I published Contrastive Analysis with Longman in 1980, and one
of the reviews it received in particular (that written by my good
friend Eddie Levenston), has been giving me food for thought for
17 years. Eddie wrote that Contrastive Analysis was a book that
anyone could have written but only Carl James did. Did he mean
I was an opportunistic carpetbagger who saw a chance and grabbed
it? Or that the book wasn't really worth writing because it said
nothing new - nothing at least to the scores of applied linguists
who could have written it? Criticism on this score would be invalid,
since the book was not written for my peers and was not intended
as an advancement of human knowledge, but rather it was a text-
book, written to clarify the field to students and to serve as a set
text and catalyst of discourse for applied linguistics classes. Now
though I believe I know what Eddie was 'saying', in his very subtle
xii Errors in Language Learning and Use

way, and he hit the nail right on the head: that this book was in
fact written by others, all of them acknowledged in the Bibliography
of course. I had merely been the agent, organizing and putting
their original ideas into one, I hope, coherent text. I would not
be disappointed if the present volume were to receive the same
judgement from the same eminences.
We have seen in recent years a plethora of publication of
encyclopaedias of language, linguistics and applied linguistics.
The present volume is a non-alphabetic and non-thematic, but
perhaps a procedurally organized encyclopaedia of Error Analysis.
I certainly have tried to be encyclopaedic (in the sense of com-
prehensive), in my coverage of the subject matter. Its principal
merits: it seeks coherence; it is wide-ranging; it is balanced; and,
most important, I am riding no bandwagon. At the very least, the
book can be used as an annotated bibliography.
The present book, Errors in Language Learning and Use, is
conceived as a companion volume to Contrastive Analysis, and is
similarly a compendium, a digest and a history of the vast and
amorphous endeavours that hundreds of scholars and teachers
have made over the years in trying to grapple with foreign lan-
guage learners' learning difficulties and the inadequacies in their
repertoires that bear testimony to the daunting undertaking of
foreign language learning.
I am indebted to many people, too numerous to name. But I
could never have witten this book without the generosity of the
Government of Brunei Darussalam, whose Visiting Professorship
at the University of Brunei offered me a year's ac~demic asylum in
that veritable 'Abode of Peace' from the numbing 60-hour work-
ing weeks endemic to British universities.
Special thanks and admiration are due also to Chris Candlin,
General Editor of the Longman Applied Linguistics and Language
Study series, for his constant encouragement of the author at times
of self-doubt and for his advanced insights into the most intricate
subject matter: long may he maintain his genius - and his stamina!

Carl James
Bangor, Wales
 Abbreviations

Applied linguistics has spawned its myriad of specialistjargon terms,

many of which have been abbreviated and some expressed as
acronyms. While the newcomer might be daunted by their use,
I have tried to define them by use in context. There follows a
grouped listing of the most common:

NL (native language), MT (mother tongue), Ll (first language):

synonyms here

FL (foreign language): unlike SL/L2 in being learnt/used solely

in class
SL or L2 (second language): synonyms here
TL (target language), language (FL or SL/L2) being learnt
(T)ESL/EL2 (Teaching) (English as a second language)
(T)EFL (Teaching) (English as a foreign language)
ELT (English Language teaching)

SlA (second language acquisition) cf. FLL (foreign language

learning)

NS (native speaker); NNS (non-native speaker), NrNS (near-native

speaker)

CA (Contrastive analysis: contrasting MT and TL of the learner)

EA (Error analysis)
TA (Transfer analysis)
IL (Interlanguage: the version of the TL used or known by the
learner)
ID (idiosyncratic dialect: near-synonym for IL, q.v.)

xiii
XIV Errors in Language Learning and Use

ElL (English as an international language)

WSE (World standard English: an ideal global norm for English)

I.A (Language awareness: a person's explicit knowledge about their

linguistic competence)
CR (Consciousness raising: drawing learners' attention to forms
of the TL)

Two common bracketing conventions are used: [ ... ] enclose

phonetic elements; < ... > enclose spellings.
The asterisk * signals error, while the tick ~ indicates well-
formedness. * and ~ are often juxtaposed.

The question mark ? indicates linguistic strangeness.

Bold type indicates key concepts in the text.

Italic type is used for emphasis and examples.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 Not pausing to indulge the emotions which these cruel words
awoke, Vance went in search of Ripper & Co. The firm had been
broken up more than ten years before. Not one of the partners was
in the city. They had disappeared, and left no trace. Were any of
their old account-books in the warehouse? No. The building had
been burnt to the ground, and a new one erected on its site.
“Where next?” thought Vance. “Plainly to Natchez, to see if I can
learn anything of Davy and his wife.”
 CHAPTER XXV.
MEETINGS AND PARTINGS.

“I hold it true, whate’er befall,—

I feel it when I sorrow most,—
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”
Tennyson.

It being too late to take the boat for Natchez, Vance proceeded to
the St. Charles. The gong for the fire o’clock ordinary had sounded.
Entering the dining-hall, he was about taking a seat, when he saw
Miss Tremaine motioning to him to occupy one vacant by her side.
“Truly an enterprising young lady!” But what could he do?
“I’m so glad to see you, Mr. Vance! I’ve not forgotten my promise.
I called to-day on Mrs. Gentry,—found her in the depths. Miss Murray
has disappeared,—absconded,—nobody knows where!”
“Indeed! After what you’ve said of her singing, I’m very anxious to
hear her. Do try to find her.”
“I’ll do what I can, Mr. Vance. There’s a mystery. Of that much I’m
persuaded from Mrs. Gentry’s manner.”
“You mustn’t mind Darling’s notions on slavery.”
“O no, Mr. Vance, I shall turn her over to you for conversion.”
“Should you succeed in entrapping her, detain her till I come back
from Natchez, which will be before Sunday.”
“Be sure I’ll hold on to her.”
Mr. Tremaine came in, and began to talk politics. Vance was sorry
he had an engagement. The big clock of the hall pointed to seven
o’clock. He rose, bowed, and left.
“Why,” sighed Laura, “can’t other gentlemen be as agreeable as
this Mr. Vance? He knows all about the latest fashions; all about
modes of fixing the hair; all about music and dancing; all about the
opera and the theatre; in short, what is there the man doesn’t
know?”
Papa was too absorbed in his terrapin soup to answer.
Let us follow Vance to the little house, scene of his brief, fugitive
days of delight. He stood under the old magnolia in the tender
moonlight. The gas was down in Clara’s room. She was at the piano,
extemporizing some low and plaintive variations on a melody by
Moore, “When twilight dews are falling soft.” Suddenly she stopped,
and put up the gas. There was a knock at her door. She opened it,
and saw Vance. They shook hands as if they were old friends.
“Where are the Bernards?”
“They are out promenading. I told them I was not afraid.”
“How have you passed your time, Miss Perdita?”
“O, I’ve not been idle. Such choice books as you have here! And
then what a variety of music!”
“Have you studied any of the pieces?”
“Not many. That from Schubert.”
“Please play it for me.”
Tacitly accepting him as her teacher, she played it without
embarrassment. Vance checked her here and there, and suggested a
change. He uttered no other word of praise than to say: “If you’ll
practise six years longer four hours a day, you’ll be a player.”
“I shall do it!” said Clara.
“Have you heard that famous Hallelujah Chorus, which the
Northern soldiers sing?”
“No, Mr. Vance.”
“No? Why, ’tis in honor of John Brown (any relation of Perdita?)
You shall hear it.”
And he played the well-known air, now appropriated by the hand-
organs. Clara asked for a repetition, that she might remember it.
“Sing me something,” he said.
Clara placed on the reading-frame the song of “Pestal.”
 “Not that, Perdita! What possessed you to study that?”
“It suited my mood. Will you not hear it?”
“No!... Yes, Perdita. Pardon my abruptness. But that song was the
first I ever heard from lips, O so fair and dear to me!”
Clara put aside the music, and walked away toward the window.
Vance went up to her. He could see that she was with difficulty
curbing her tears.
O, if this man whose very presence inspired such confidence and
hope,—if it was sweeter to him to remember another than to listen
to her,—where in the wide world should she find, in her desperate
strait, a friend?
There was that in her attitude which reminded Vance of Estelle.
Some lemon-blossoms in her hair intensified the association by their
odors. For a moment it was as if he had thrown off the burden of
twenty years, and was living over, in Clara’s presence, that ambrosial
hour of first love on the very spot of its birth. “For O, she stood
beside him like his youth,—transformed for him the real to a dream,
clothing the palpable and the familiar with golden exhalations of the
dawn!” Be wary, Vance! One look, one tone amiss, and there’ll be
danger!
“Let us talk over your affairs,” he said. “To-morrow I must leave
for Natchez. Will you remain here till I come back?”
Clara leaned out of the window a moment, as if to enjoy the balmy
evening, and then, calmly taking a seat, replied: “I think ’t will be
best for me to lay my case before Miss Tremaine. True, we parted in
a pet, but she may not be implacable. Yes, I will call on her. To you,
a stranger, what return for your kindness can I make?”
“This return, Perdita: let me be your friend. As soon as ’t is
discovered you’ve no money, your position may become a painful
one. Let me supply you with funds. I’m rich; and my only heir is my
country.”
“No, Mr. Vance! I’ve no claim upon you,—none whatever. What I
want for the moment is a shelter; and Laura will give me that, I’m
confident.”
Vance reflected a moment, and then, as if a plan had occurred to
him by which he could provide for her without her knowing it, he
replied: “We shall probably meet at the St. Charles. You can easily
send for me, should you require my help. Be generous, and say
you’ll notify me, should there be an hour of need?”
“I’ll not fail to remember you in that event, Mr. Vance.”
“Honor bright?”
“Honor bright, Mr. Vance!”
“Consider, Perdita, you can always find a home in this house. I
shall give such directions to Mrs. Bernard as will make your presence
welcome.”
“Then I shall not feel utterly homeless. Thank you, Mr. Vance!”
“And by the way, Perdita, do not let Miss Tremaine know that we
are acquainted.”
“I’ll heed your caution, Mr. Vance.”
“We shall meet again, my dear young lady. Of that I feel assured.”
“I hope so, Mr. Vance.”
“And now farewell! I’ll tell Bernard to order a carriage and attend
to your baggage. Good by, Perdita!”
“Good by, Mr. Vance.”
Again they shook hands, and parted. Vance gave his directions to
the Bernards, and then strolled home to his hotel. As he traversed
the corridor leading to his room, he encountered Kenrick. Their
apartments were nearly opposite.
“I was not aware we were such near neighbors, Mr. Kenrick.”
“To me also ’t is a surprise,—and a pleasant one. Will you walk in,
Mr. Vance?”
“Yes, if ’t is not past your hour for visitors.”
They went in, and Kenrick put up the gas. “I can’t offer you either
cigars or whiskey; but you can ring for what you want.”
“Is it possible you eschew alcohol and tobacco?”
“Yes,” replied Kenrick; “I once indulged in cigars. But I found the
use so offensive in others that I myself abandoned it in disgust. One
sits down to converse with a person disguised as a gentleman, and
suddenly a fume, as if from the essence of old tobacco-pipes, mixed
with odors from stale brandy-bottles, poisons the innocent air, and
almost knocks one down. It’s a mystery that ladies endure the
nuisance of such breaths. My sensitive nose has made me an anti-
rum, anti-tobacco man.”
“But I fear me you’re a come-outer, Mr. Kenrick! Is it conservative
to abuse tobacco and whiskey? No wonder you are unsound on the
slavery question!”
“Come up to the confessional, Mr. Vance! Admit that you’re as
much of an antislavery man as I am.”
“More, Mr. Kenrick! If I were not, I might be quite as imprudent as
you. And then I should put a stop to my usefulness.”
“You puzzle me, Mr. Vance.”
“Not as much as you’ve puzzled me, my young friend. Come here,
and look in the mirror with me.”
Vance took him by the hand and led him to a full-length looking-
glass. There they stood looking at their reflections.
“What do you see?” asked Vance.
“Two rather personable fellows,” replied Kenrick, laughing; “one of
them ten or twelve years older than the other; height of the two,
about the same; figures very much alike, inclining to slimness, but
compact, erect, well-knit; hands and feet small; heads,—I have no
fault to find with the shape or size of either; hair similar in color;
eyes,—as near as I can see, the two pairs resemble each other, and
the crow’s-feet at the corners are the same in each; features,—nose,
—brows—I see why you’ve brought me here, Mr. Vance! We are
enough alike to be brothers.”
“Can you explain the mystery?” asked Vance, “for I can’t. Can
there be any family relationship? I had an aunt, now deceased, who
was married to a Louisianian. But his name was not Kenrick.”
“What was it?”
“Arthur Maclain.”
“My father! Cousin, your hand! In order to inherit property, my
father, after his marriage, procured a change of name. I can’t tell
you how pleasant to me it is to meet one of my mother’s relations.”
They had come together still more akin in spirit than in blood. The
night was all too short for the confidences they now poured out to
each other. Vance told his whole story, pausing occasionally to calm
down the excitement which the narrative caused in his hearer.
 When it was finished Kenrick said: “Cousin, count me your ally in
compassing your revenge. May God do so to me, and more also, if I
do not give this beastly Slave Power blood for blood.”
“I can’t help thinking, Charles,” said Vance, “that your zeal has the
purer origin. Mine sprang from a personal experience of wrong;
yours, from an abstract conception of what is just; from those inner
motives that point to righteousness and God.”
“I almost wish sometimes,” replied Kenrick, “that I had the spur of
a great personal grievance to give body to my wrath. And yet
Slavery, when it lays its foul hand on the least of these little ones
ought to be felt by me also, and by all men! But now—now—I shall
not lack the sting of a personal incentive. Your griefs, cousin, fall on
my own heart, and shall not find the soil altogether barren. This
Ratcliff,—I know him well. He has been more than once at our
house. A perfect type of the sort of beast born of slavery,—moulded
as in a matrix by slavery,—kept alive by slavery! Take away slavery,
and he would perish of inanition. He would be, like the plesiosaur, a
fossil monster, representative of an extinct genus.”
“Cousin,” said Vance, “all you lack is to join the serpent with the
dove. Be content to bide your time. Here in Louisiana lies your work.
We must make the whole western bank of the Mississippi free soil.
Texas can be taken care of in due time. But with a belt of freedom
surrounding the Cotton States, the doom of slavery is fixed. Give me
to see that day, and I shall be ready to say, ‘Now, Lord, dismiss thy
servant!’”
“I had intended to go North, and join the army of freedom,” said
Kenrick; “but what you say gives me pause.”
“We must not be seen together much,” resumed Vance. “And now
good night, or rather, good morning, for there’s a glimmer in the
east, premonitory of day. Ah, cousin, when I hear the braggarts
around us, gassing about Confederate courage and Yankee
cowardice, I can’t help recalling an old couplet I used to spout, when
an actor, from a play by Southern,—

‘There is no courage but in innocence,

No constancy but in an honest cause!’”
 CHAPTER XXVI.
CLARA MAKES AN IMPORTANT PURCHASE.

“Allow slavery to be ever so humane. Grant that the man who owns me is ever
so kind. The wrong of him who presumes to talk of owning me is too unmeasured
to be softened by kindness.”

L aura Tremaine had just come in from a drive with her invalid
mother, and stood in the drawing-room looking out on a company
of soldiers. There was a knock at the door. A servant brought in a
card. It said, “Will Laura see Darling?” The arrival, concurring so
directly with Laura’s wishes, caused a pleasurable shock. “Show her
in,” she said; and the next moment the maidens were locked in each
other’s embrace.
“O, you dear little good-for-nothing Darling,” said Laura, after
there had been a conflux of kisses. “Could anything be more
apropos? What’s the meaning of all this? Have you really absconded?
Is it a love affair? Tell me all about it. Rely on my secrecy. I’ll be
close as bark to a tree.”
“Will you solemnly promise,” said Clara, “on your honor as a lady,
not to reveal what I tell you?”
“As I hope to be saved, I promise,” replied Laura.
“Then I will tell you the cause of my leaving Mrs. Gentry’s. ’T was
only day before yesterday she told me,—look at me, Laura, and say
if I look like it!—she told me I was a slave.”
“A slave? Impossible! Why, Darling, you’ve a complexion whiter
than mine.”
“So have many slaves. The hue of my skin will not invalidate a
claim.”
 “That’s true. But who presumes to claim you?”
“Mr. Carberry Ratcliff.”
“A friend of my father’s! He’s very rich. I’ll ask him to give you up.
Let me go to him at once.”
“No, Laura, I’ve seen the man. ’T would be hopeless to try to melt
him. You must help me to get away.”
“But you do not mean,—surely you do not mean to—to—”
“To what, Laura? You seem gasping with horror at some frightful
supposition. What is it?”
“You’d not think of running off, would you? You wouldn’t ask me to
harbor a fugitive slave?”
Clara looked at the door. The color flew to her cheek,—flamed up
to her forehead. Her bosom heaved. Emotions of unutterable
detestation and disgust struggled for expression. But had she not
learnt the slave’s first lesson, duplicity? Her secret had been confided
to one who had forthwith showed herself untrustworthy. Bred in the
heartless fanaticism which slavery engenders, Laura might give the
alarm and have her stopped, should she rise suddenly to go.
Farewell, then, white-robed Candor, and welcome Dissimulation!
After a pause, “What do you advise?” said Clara.
“Well, Darling, stay with me a week or two, then go quietly back to
Mrs. Gentry’s, and play the penitent.”
“Hadn’t I better go at once?” asked Clara, simulating meekness.
“O no, Darling! I can’t possibly permit that. Now I’ve got you, I
shall hold on till I’ve done with you. Then we’ll see if we can’t
persuade Mr. Ratcliff to free you. Who’d have thought of this little
Darling being a slave!”
“But hadn’t I better write to Mrs. Gentry and tell her where I am?”
“No, no. She’ll only be forcing you back. You shall do nothing but
stay here till I tell you you may go. You shall play the lady for one
week, at least. There’s a Mr. Vance in the house, to whom I’ve
spoken of your singing. He’s wild to hear you. I’ve promised him he
shall. I wouldn’t disappoint him on any account.”
Clara saw that, could she but command courage to fall in with
Laura’s selfish plans, it might, after all, be safer to come thus into
the very focus of the city’s life, than to seek some corner, penetrable
to police-officers and slave-hunters.
“How will you manage?” asked Clara.
“What more simple?” replied Laura. “I’ll take you right into my
sleeping-room; you shall be my schoolmate, Miss Brown, come to
pass a few days with me before going to St. Louis. Papa will never
think of questioning my story.”
“But I’ve no dresses with me.”
“No matter. I’ve a plenty I’ve outgrown. They’ll fit you beautifully.
Come here into my sleeping-room. It adjoins, you see. There! We’re
about of a height, though I’m a little stouter.”
“It will not be safe for me to appear at the public table.”
“Well, you shall be an invalid, and I’ll send your meals from the
table when I send mother’s. Miss Brown from St. Louis! Let me see.
What shall be your first name?”
“Let it be Perdita.”
“Perdita? The lost one! Good. How quick you are! Perdita Brown! It
does not sound badly. Mr. Onslow,—Miss Brown,—Miss Perdita Brown
from St. Louis! Then you’ll courtesy, and look so demure! Won’t it be
fun?”
Between grief and anger, Clara found disguise a terrible effort. So!
Her fate so dark, so tragic, was to be Laura’s pastime, not the
subject of her grave and tender consideration!
Already had some of the traits, congenital with slavery, begun to
develop themselves in Clara. Strategy now seemed to her as
justifiable under the circumstances as it would be in escaping from a
murderer, a lunatic, or a wild beast. Was not every pro-slavery man
or woman her deadly foe,—to be cheated, circumvented, robbed,
nay, if need be, slain, in defence of her own inalienable right of
liberty? The thought that Laura was such a foe made Clara look on
her with precisely the same feelings that the exposed sentinel might
have toward the lurking picket-shooter.
An expression so strange flitted over Clara’s face, that Laura
asked: “What’s the matter? Don’t you feel well?”
Checking the exasperation surging in her heart, Clara affected
frivolity. “O, I feel well enough,” she replied. “A little tired,—that’s all.
What if this Mr. Onslow should fall in love with me?”
“O, but that would be too good!” exclaimed Laura. Between you
and me, I owe him a spite. I’ve just heard he once said, speaking of
me, ‘Handsome,—but no depth!’ Hang the fellow! I’d like to punish
him. He’s proud as Lucifer. Wouldn’t it be a joke to let him fall in love
with a poor little slave?”
“So, you don’t mean to fall in love with him yourself?”
“O no! He’s good-looking, but poor. Can you keep a secret?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I mean to set my cap for Mr. Vance.”
“Possible?”
“Yes, Perdita. He’s fine-looking, of the right age, very rich, and so
altogether fascinating! Father learnt yesterday that he pays an
enormous tax on real estate.”
“And is he the only string to your bow?”
“O no. But our best young men are in the army. Onslow is a
captain. O, I mustn’t forget Charles Kenrick. Onslow is to bring him
here. Kenrick’s father owns a whole brigade of slaves. Hark! Dear
me! That was two o’clock. Will you have luncheon?”
“No, thank you. I’m not hungry.”
“Then I must leave you. I’ve an appointment with my dressmaker.
In the lower drawers there you’ll find some of my last year’s dresses.
I’ve outgrown them. Amuse yourself with choosing one for to-night.
We shall have callers.”
Laura hurried off. Clara, terrified at the wrathfulness of her own
emotions, walked the room for a while, then dropped upon her
knees in prayer. She prayed to be delivered from her own wild
passions and from the toils of her enemies.
With softened heart, she rose and went to the window.
There, on the opposite sidewalk, stood Esha! Crumpling up some
paper, Clara threw it out so as to arrest her attention, then beckoned
to her to come up. Stifling a cry of surprise, Esha crossed the street,
and entered the hotel. The next minute she and Clara had
embraced.
“But how did you happen to be there, Esha?”
 “Bress de chile, I’ze been stahndin’ dar de last hour, but what for I
knowed no more dan de stones. ’T warn’t till I seed de chile hersef it
’curred ter me what for I’d been stahndin’ dar.”
“What happened after I left home?”
“Dar war all sort ob a fuss dat ebber you see, darlin’. Fust de ole
woman war all struck ob a heap, like. Den Massa Ratcliff, he come,
and he swar like de Debble hisself. He cuss’d de ole woman and set
her off cryin’, and den he swar at her all de more. Dar was a gen’ral
break-down, darlin’. Massa Ratcliff he’b goin’ ter gib yer fortygraf ter
all de policemen, an’ pay five hundred dollar ter dat one as’ll find yer.
He sends us niggers all off—me an’ Tarquin an’ de rest—ter hunt yer
up. He swar he’ll hab yer, if it takes all he’s wuth. He come agin ter-
day an’ trow de ole woman inter de highstrikes. She say he’ll be
come up wid, sure, an’ you’ll be come up wid, an’ eberybody else as
doesn’t do like she wants ’em ter, am bound to be come up wid. Yah,
yah, yah! Who’s afeard?”
“So the hounds are out in pursuit, are they?”
“Yes, darlin’. Look dar at dat man stahndin’ at de corner. He’m one
ob ’em.”
“He’s not dressed like a policeman.”
“Bress yer heart, dese ’tektivs go dressed like de best gem’men
about. Yer’d nebber suspek dey was doin’ de work ob hounds.”
“Well, Esha, I’m afraid to have you stay longer. I’m here with Miss
Tremaine. She may be back any minute. I can’t trust her, and
wouldn’t for the world have her see you here.”
“No more would I, darlin’! Nebber liked dat air gal. She’m all fur
self. But good by, darlin’! It’s sich a comfort ter hab seed you! Good
by!”
Esha slipped into the corridor and out of the hotel. Clara put on
her bonnet, threw a thick veil over it, and hurried through St. Charles
Street to a well-known cutlery store. “Show me some of your
daggers,” said she; “one suitable as a present to a young soldier.”
The shopkeeper displayed several varieties. She selected one with
a sheath, and almost took away the breath of the man of iron by
paying for it in gold. Dropping her veil, she passed into the street. As
she left the shop, she saw a man affecting to look at some patent
pistols in the window. He was well dressed, and sported a small
cane.
“Hound number one!” thought Clara to herself, and, having walked
slowly away in one direction, she suddenly turned, retraced her
steps, then took a narrow cross-street that debouched into one of
the principal business avenues. The individual had followed her,
swinging his cane, and looking in at the shop-windows. But Clara did
not let him see he was an object of suspicion. She slackened her
pace, and pretended to be looking for an article of muslin, for she
would stop and examine the fabrics that hung at the doors.
Suddenly she saw Esha approaching. Moment of peril! Should the
old black woman recognize and accost her, she was lost. On came
the old slave, her eyes wide open and her thoughts intent on
detecting detectives. Suddenly, to her consternation, she saw Clara
stop before a “magasin” and take up some muslin on the shelf
outside the window; and almost in the same glance, she saw the
gentleman of the cane, watching both her and Clara out of the
corners of his eyes. A sideway glance, quick as lightning from Clara,
and delivered without moving her head, was enough to enlighten
Esha. She passed on without a perceptible pause, and soon
appeared to stumble, as if by accident, almost into the arms of the
detective. He caught her by the shoulder, and said, “Don’t turn, but
tell me if you noticed that woman there,—there by Delmar’s, with a
green veil over her face?”
“Yes, massa, I seed a woman in a green veil.”
“Well, are you sure she mayn’t be the one?”
“Bress yer, massa, I owt to know de chile I’ze seed grow up from a
bebby. Reckon I could tell her widout seem’ her face.”
“Go back and take a look at her. There! she steps into the shop.”
Glad of the opportunity of giving Clara a word of caution, Esha
passed into Delmar’s. Beckoning Clara into an alcove, she said: “De
veil, darlin’! De veil! Dat ole rat would nebber hab suspek noting if’t
hahdn’t been fur de veil. His part ob de play am ter watch eb’ry
woman in a veil.”
“I see my mistake, Esha. I’ve been buying a dagger. Look there!”
 “De Lord save us!” said Esha, with a shudder, half of horror and
half of sympathy. “Don’t be in de street oftener dan yer kin help,
darlin’? Remember de fotygrafs. Dar! I mus go.”
Esha joined the detective. “Did you get a good sight of her?” he
asked.
“Went right up an’ spoke ter her,” said Esha. “She’s jes as much
dat gal as she’s Madame Beauregard.”
The detective, his vision of a $500 douceur melting into thin air,
pensively walked off to try fortune on a new beat.
Clara, now that the danger was over, began to tremble. Hitherto
she had not quailed. Leaving the shop, she took the nearest way to
the hotel. For the last twenty-four hours agitation and excitement
had prevented her taking food. Wretchedly faint, she stopped and
took hold of an iron lamppost for support.
An officer in the Confederate uniform, seeing she was ill, said,
“Mademoiselle, you need help. Allow me to escort you home.”
Dreading lest she should fall, through feebleness, into worse
hands, Clara thanked him and took his proffered arm. “To the St.
Charles, sir, if you please.”
“I myself stop at the St. Charles. Allow me to introduce myself:
Robert Onslow, Captain in Company D, Wigman Regiment. May I ask
whom I have the pleasure of assisting?”
“Miss Brown. I’m stopping a few days with my friend, Miss
Tremaine.”
“Indeed! I was to call on her this evening. We may renew our
acquaintance.”
“Perhaps.”
Clara suddenly put down her veil. Approaching slowly like a fate,
rolled on the splendid barouche of Mr. Ratcliff. He sat with arms
folded and was smoking a cigar. Clara fancied she saw arrogance,
hate, disappointment, rage, all written in his countenance. Without
moving his arms, he bowed carelessly to Onslow.
“That’s one of the prime managers of the secession movement.”
“So I should think,” said Clara; but Onslow detected nothing
equivocal in the tone of the remark. Having escorted her to the door
of Miss Tremaine’s parlor, he bowed his farewell, and Clara went in.
Laura had not yet returned.
 CHAPTER XXVII.
DELIGHT AND DUTY.

“According to our living here, we shall hereafter, by a hidden concatenation of

causes, be drawn to a condition answerable to the purity or impurity of our souls
in this life: that silent Nemesis that passes through the whole contexture of the
universe, ever fatally contriving us into such a state as we ourselves have fitted
ourselves for by our accustomary actions. Of so great consequence is it, while we
have opportunity, to aspire to the best things.”—Henry More, A.D. 1659.

It may seem strange that Onslow and Kenrick, differing so widely,

should renew the friendship of their boyhood. We have seen that
Onslow, allowing the æsthetic side of his nature to outgrow the
moral, had departed from the teachings of his father on the subject
of slavery. Kenrick, in whom the moral and devotional faculty
asserted its supremacy over all inferior solicitings, also repudiated his
paternal teachings; but they were directly contrary to those of his
friend, and, in abandoning them, he gave up the prospect of a large
inheritance.
To Onslow, these thick-lipped, woolly-headed negroes,—what were
they fit for but to be hewers of wood and drawers of water to the
gentle and refined? It was monstrous to suppose that between such
and him there could be equality of any kind. The ethnological
argument was conclusive. Had not Professor Moleschott said that the
brain of the negro contains less phosphorus than that of the white
man? Proof sufficient that Cuffee was expressly created to pull off
my boots and hoe in my cotton-fields, while I make it a penal
offence to teach him to read!
Onslow, too, had been fortunate in his intercourse with
slaveholders. Young, handsome, and accomplished, he had felt the
charm of their affectionate hospitality. He had found taste, culture,
and piety in their abodes; all the graces and all the amenities of life.
What wonder that he should narcotize his moral sense with the
aroma of these social fascinations! Even at the North, where the
glamour they cast ought not to distort the sight, and where men
ought healthfully to look the abstract abomination full in the face,
and testify to its deformity,—how many consciences were drugged,
how many hearts shut to justice and to mercy!
With Kenrick, brought up on a plantation where slavery existed in
its mildest form, meditation on God’s law as written in the
enlightened human conscience, completely reversed the views
adopted from upholders of the institution. Thenceforth the elegances
of his home became hateful. He felt like a robber in the midst of
them.
The spectacle of some hideous, awkward, perhaps obscene and
depraved black woman, hoeing in the corn-field, instead of
awakening in his mind, as in Onslow’s, the thought that she was in
her proper place, did but move him to tears of bitter contrition and
humiliation. How far there was sin or accountability on her part, or
that of her progenitors, he could not say; but that there was deep,
immeasurable sin on the part of those who, instead of helping that
degraded nature to rise, made laws to crush it all the deeper in the
mire, he could not fail to feel in anguish of spirit. Through all that
there was in her of ugliness and depravity, making her less tolerable
than the beast to his æsthetic sense, he could still detect those traits
and possibilities that allied her with immortal natures, and in her he
saw all her sex outraged, and universal womanhood nailed to the
cross of Christ, and mocked by unbelievers!
The evening of the day of Clara’s arrival at the St. Charles, Onslow
and Kenrick met by agreement in the drawing-room of the
Tremaines. Clara had told Laura, that, in going out to purchase a few
hair-pins, she had been taken suddenly faint, and that a gentleman,
who proved to be Captain Onslow, had escorted her home.
“Could anything be more apt for my little plot!” said Laura. “But
consider! Here it is eight o’clock, and you’re not dressed! Do you
know how long you’ve been sleeping? This will never do!”
 A servant knocked at the door, with the information that two
gentlemen were in the drawing-room.
“Dear me! I must go in at once,” said Laura. “Now tell me you’ll be
quick and follow, Darling.”
Clara gave the required pledge, and proceeded to arrange her hair.
Laura looked on for a minute envying her those thick brown tresses,
and then darted into the next room where the visitors were waiting.
Greeting them with her usual animation of manner, she asked
Onslow for the news.
“The news is,” said Onslow, “my friend Charles is undergoing
conversion. We shall have him an out-and-out Secessionist before
the Fourth of July.”
“On what do you base your calculations?” asked Kenrick.
“On the fact that for the last twelve hours I haven’t heard you call
down maledictions on the Confederate cause.”
“Perhaps I conclude that the better part of valor is discretion.”
“No, Charles, yours is not the Falstaffian style of courage.”
“Well, construe my mood as you please. Miss Tremaine, your piano
stands open. Does it mean we’re to have music?”
“Yes. Hasn’t the Captain told you of his meeting a young lady,—
Miss Perdita Brown?”
“I’ll do him the justice to say he did tell me he had escorted such a
one.”
“What did he say of her?”
“Nothing, good or bad.”
“But that’s very suspicious.”
“So it is.”
“Pray who is Miss Perdita Brown?” asked Onslow.
“She’s a daughter of—of—why, of Mr. Brown, of course. He lives in
St. Louis.”
“Is she a good Secessionist?”
“On the contrary, she’s a desperate little Abolitionist.”
“Look at Charles!” said Onslow. “He’s enamored already. I’m sorry
she isn’t secesh.”
“Think of the triumph of converting her!” said Laura.
 “That indeed! Of course,” said Onslow, “like all true women, she’ll
take her politics from the man she loves.”
And the Captain smoothed his moustache, and looked handsome
as Phœbus Apollo.
“O the conceit!” exclaimed Laura. “Look at him, Mr. Kenrick! Isn’t
he charming? Where’s the woman who wouldn’t turn Mormon, or
even Yankee, for his sake? Surely one of us weak creatures could be
content with one tenth or even one twentieth of the affections of so
superb an Ali. Come, sir, promise me I shall be the fifteenth Mrs.
Onslow when you emigrate to Utah.”
Onslow was astounded at this fire of raillery. Could the lady have
heard of any disparaging expression he had dropped?
“Spare me, Miss Laura,” he said. “Don’t deprive the Confederacy of
my services by slaying me before I’ve smelt powder.”
“Where’s Miss Brown all this while?” asked Kenrick.
Laura went to the door, and called “Perdita!”
“In five minutes!” was the reply.
Clara was dressing. When, that morning, she came in from her
walk, she thought intently on her situation, and at last determined
on a new line of policy. Instead of playing the humble companion
and shy recluse, she would now put forth all her powers to dazzle
and to strike. She would, if possible, make friends, who should
protest against any arbitrary claim that Ratcliff might set up. She
would vindicate her own right to freedom by showing she was not
born to be a slave. All who had known her should feel their own
honor wounded in any attempt to injure hers.
Having once fixed before herself an object, she grew calm and
firm. When her dinner was sent up, she ate it with a good appetite.
Sleep, too, that had been a stranger to her so many hours, now
came to repair her strength and revive her spirits.
No sooner had Laura left to attend to her visitors, than Clara
plunged into the drawers containing the dresses for her choice. With
the rapidity of instinct she selected the most becoming; then swiftly
and deftly, with the hand of an adept and the eye of an artist, she
arranged her toilet. A dexterous adaptation of pins speedily rectified
any little defect in the fit. Where were the collars? Locked up. No
matter! There was a frill of exquisite lace round the neck of the
dress; and this little narrow band of maroon velvet would serve to
relieve the bareness of the throat. What could she clasp it with?
Laura had not left the key of her jewel-box. A common pin would
hardly answer. Suddenly Clara bethought herself of the little coral
sleeve-button, wrapped up in the strip of bunting. That would serve
admirably. Yes. Nothing could be better. It was her only article of
jewelry; though round her right wrist she wore a hair-bracelet of her
own braiding, made from that strand given her by Esha; and from a
flower-vase she had taken a small cape-jasmine, white as alabaster,
and fragrant as a garden of honeysuckles, and thrust it in her hair. A
fan? Yes, here is one.
And thus accoutred she entered the room where the three
expectants were seated.
On seeing her, Laura’s first emotion was one of admiration, as at
sight of an imposing entrée at the opera. She was suddenly made
aware of the fact that Clara was the most beautiful young woman of
her acquaintance; nay, not only the most beautiful, but the most
stylish. So taken by surprise was she, so lost in looking, that it was
nearly a third of a minute before she introduced the young
gentlemen. Onslow claimed acquaintance, presented a chair, and
took a seat at Clara’s side. Kenrick stood mute and staring, as if a
paradisic vision had dazed his senses. When he threw off his
bewilderment, he quieted himself with the thought, “She can’t be as
beautiful as she looks,—that’s one comfort. A shrew, perhaps,—or,
what is worse, a coquette!”
“When were you last in St. Louis, Miss Brown?” asked Onslow.
“All questions for information must be addressed to Miss
Tremaine,” said Clara. “I shall be happy to talk with you on things I
know nothing about. Shall we discuss the Dahlgren gun, or the
Ericsson Monitor?”
“So! She sets up for an eccentric,” thought Onslow. “Perhaps
politics would suit you,” he added aloud. “I hear you’re an
Abolitionist.”
“Ask Miss Tremaine,” said Clara.
“O, she has betrayed you already,” replied Onslow.
 “Then I’ve nothing to say. I’m in her hands.”
“Is it possible,” said Kenrick, who was irrepressible on the one
theme nearest his heart, “is it possible Miss Brown can’t see it,—
can’t see the loveliness of that divine cosmos which we call slavery?
Poor deluded Miss Brown! I know not what other men may think, but
as for me, give me slavery or give me death! Do you object to
woman-whipping, Miss Brown?”
“I confess I’ve my prejudices against it,” replied Clara. “But these
charges of woman-whipping, you know, are Abolition lies.”
“Yes, so Northern conservatives say; but we of the plantations
know that nearly one half the whippings are of women.”[29]
“Come! Sink the shop!” cried Laura. “Are we so dull we can’t find
anything but our horrible bête noir for our amusement? Let us have
scandal, rather; nonsense, rather! Tell us a story, Mr. Kenrick.”
“Well; once on a time—how would you like a ghost-story?”
“Above all things. Charming! Only ghosts have grown so common,
they no longer thrill us.”
“Yes,” said Kenrick,—whose trivial thoughts ever seemed to call up
his serious,—“yes; materialism has done a good work in its day and
generation. It has taught us that the business of this world must go
on just as if there were no ghosts. The supernatural is no longer an
incubus and an oppression. Its phenomena no longer frighten and
paralyze. Let us, then, since we are now freed from their terrors,
welcome the great facts themselves as illumining and confirming all
that there is in the past to comfort us with the assurance of
continuous life issuing from seeming death.”
“Dear Mr. Kenrick, is this a time for a lecture?” expostulated Laura.
“Aren’t you bored, Perdita?”
“On the contrary, I’m interested.”
“What do you think of spiritualism, Miss Brown?”
“I’ve witnessed none of the phenomena, but I don’t see why the
testimony of these times, in regard to them, shouldn’t be taken as
readily as that of centuries back.”
“My father is a believer,” said Onslow; “and I have certainly seen
some unaccountable things,—tables lifted into the air,—instruments
of music floated about, and played on without visible touch,—human
hands, palpable and warm, coming out from impalpable air:—all very
queer and very inexplicable! But what do they prove? Cui bono?
What of it all?”
“‘Nothing in it!’ as Sir Charles Coldstream says of the Vatican,”
interposed Laura.
“You demand the use of it all,—the cui bono,—do you?” retorted
Kenrick. “Did it ever occur to you to make your own existence the
subject of that terrible inquiry, cui bono?”
“Certainly,” replied Onslow, laughing; “my cui bono is to fight for
the independence of the new Confederacy.”
“And for the propagation of slavery, eh?” returned Kenrick. “I don’t
see the cui bono. On the contrary, to my fallible vision, the world
would be better off without than with you. But let us take a more
extreme case. These youths—Tom, Dick, and Harry—who give their
days and nights, not to the works of Addison, but to gambling, julep-
drinking, and cigar-smoking,—who hate and shun all useful work,—
and are no comfort to anybody,—only a shame and affliction to
somebody,—can you explain to me the cui bono of their corrupt and
unprofitable lives?”
“But how undignified in a spirit to push tables about and play on
accordions!”
“Well, what authority have you for the supposition that there are
no undignified spirits? We know there are weak and wicked spirits in
the flesh; why not out of the flesh? A spirit, or an intelligence
claiming to be one, writes an ungrammatical sentence or a pompous
commonplace, and signs Bacon to it; and you forthwith exclaim,
‘Pooh! this can’t come from a spirit.’ How do you know that? Mayn’t
lies be told in other worlds than this? Will the ignoramus at once be
made a scholar,—the dullard a philosopher,—the blackguard a
gentleman,—the sinner a saint,—the liar truthful,—by the simple
process of elimination from this husk of flesh? Make me at once
altogether other than what I am, and you annihilate me, and there is
no immortality of the soul.”
“But what has the ghost contributed to our knowledge during
these fourteen years, since he appeared at Rochester? Of all he has
brought us, we may say, with Shakespeare, ‘There needs no ghost
come from the grave to tell us that.’”
“I’ll tell you what the ghost has contributed, not at Rochester
merely, but everywhere, through the ages. He has contributed
himself. You say, cui bono? And I might say of ten thousand
mysteries about us, cui bono? The lightning strikes the church-
steeple,—cui bono? An idiot is born into the world,—cui bono? It is
absurd to demand as a condition of rational faith, that we should
prove a cui bono. A good or a use may exist, and we be unable to
see it. And yet grave men are continually thrusting into the faces of
the investigators of these phenomena this preposterous cui bono?”
“Enough, my dear Mr. Kenrick!” exclaimed Laura.
But he was not to be stopped. He rose and paced the room, and
continued: “The cui bono of phenomena must of course be found in
the mind that regards them. ‘I can’t find you both arguments and
brains,’ said Dr. Johnson to a noodle who thought Milton trashy. One
man sees an apple fall, and straightway thinks of the price of cider.
Newton sees it, and it suggests gravitation. One man sees a table
rise in the air, and cries: ‘It can’t be a spirit; ’t is too undignified for a
spirit!’ Mountford sees it, and the immortality of the soul is
thenceforth to him a fact as positive as any fact of science.”
“Your story, dear Mr. Kenrick, your story!” urged Laura.
“My story is ended. The ghost has come and vanished.”
“Is that all?” whined Laura. “Are n’t we, then, to have a story?”
“In mercy give us some music, Miss Brown,” said Onslow.
“Play Yankee Doodle, with variations,” interposed Kenrick.
“Not unless you’d have the windows smashed in,” pleaded Onslow;
and, giving his arm, he waited on Clara to the piano.
She dashed into a medley of brilliant airs from operas, uniting
them by extemporized links of melody to break the abruptness of the
transitions. The young men were both connoisseurs; and they
interchanged looks of gratified astonishment.
“And now for a song!” exclaimed Laura.
Clara paused a moment, and sat looking with clasped hands at the
keys. Then, after a delicate prelude, she gave that song of Pestal,
already quoted.[30] She gave it with her whole soul, as if a personal
wrong were adding intensity to the defiance of her tones.
Kenrick, wrought to a state of sympathy which he could not
disguise, had taken a seat where he could watch her features while
she sang. When she had finished, she covered her face with her
hands, then, finding her emotion uncontrollable, rose and passed out
of the room.
“What do you think of that, Charles?” asked Onslow.
“It was terrible,” said Kenrick. “I wanted to kill a slaveholder while
she sang.”
“But she has the powers of a prima donna,” said Onslow, turning
to Laura.
“Yes, one would think she had practised for the stage.”
Clara now returned with a countenance placid and smiling.
“How long do you stay in New Orleans, Miss Brown?” inquired
Onslow.
“How long, Laura?” asked Clara.
“A week or two.”
“We shall have another opportunity, I hope, of hearing you sing.”
“I hope so.”
“I have an appointment now at the armory. Charles, are you ready
to walk?”
“No, thank you. I prefer to remain.”
Onslow left, and, immediately afterwards, Laura’s mother being
seized with a timely hemorrhage, Laura was called off to attend to
her. Kenrick was alone with Clara. Charming opportunity! He drew
from her still another and another song. He conversed with her on
her studies,—on the books she had read,—the pictures she had
seen. He was roused by her intelligence and wit. He spoke of slavery.
Deep as was his own detestation of it, she helped him to make it
deeper. What delightful harmony of views! Kenrick felt that his time
had come. The hours slipped by like minutes, yet there he sat
chained by a fascination so new, so strange, so delightful, he
marvelled that life had in it so much of untasted joy.
Kenrick was not accustomed to be critical in details. He looked at
general effects. But the most trifling point in Clara’s accoutrements
was now a thing to be marked and remembered. The little sleeve-
button dropped from the band round her throat. Kenrick picked it up,
—examined it,—saw, in characters so fine as to be hardly legible, the
letters C.A.B. upon it. (“B. stands for Brown,” thought he.) And then,
as Clara put out her hand to receive it, he noticed the bracelet she
wore. “What beautiful hair!” he said. He looked up at Clara’s to trace
a resemblance. But his glance stopped midway at her eyes. “Blue
and gray!” he murmured.
“Yes, can you read them?” asked Clara.
“What do you mean?”
“Only a dream I had. There’s a letter on them somebody is to
open and read.”
“O, that I were a Daniel to interpret!” said Kenrick.
At last Miss Tremaine returned. Her mother had been dangerously
ill. It was an hour after midnight. Sincerely astounded at finding it so
late, Kenrick took his leave. Heart and brain were full. “Thou art the
wine whose drunkenness is all I can desire, O love!”
And how was it with Clara? Alas, the contrariety of the affections!
Clara simply thought Kenrick a very agreeable young man:
handsome, but not so handsome as Onslow; clever, but not so clever
as Vance!
 CHAPTER XXVIII.
A LETTER OF BUSINESS.

“This war’s duration can be more surely calculated from the moral progress of
the North than from the result of campaigns in the field. Were the whole North to-
day as one man on the moral issues underlying the struggle, the Rebellion were
this day crushed. God bids us, I think, be just and let the oppressed go free. Let us
do his bidding, and the plagues cease.”—Letter from a native of Richmond, Va.

T he following letter belongs chronologically to this stage in our

history:—

From F. Macon Semmes, New York, to T. J Semmes, New Orleans.

“Dear Brother: I have called, as you requested, on Mr. Charlton in
regard to his real estate in New Orleans. Let me give you some
account of this man. He is taxed for upwards of a million. He
inherited a good part of this sum from his wife, and she inherited it
from a nephew, the late Mr. Berwick, who inherited it from his infant
daughter, and this last from her mother. Mother, child, and father—
the whole Berwick family—were killed by a steamboat explosion on
the Mississippi some fifteen or sixteen years ago.
“In the lawsuit which grew out of the conflicting claims of the
relatives of the mother on the one side, and of the father on the
other, it was made to appear that the mother must have been killed
instantaneously, either by the inhalation of steam from the explosion,
or by a blow on the head from a splinter; either cause being
sufficient to produce immediate death. It was then proved that the
child, having been seen with her nurse alive and struggling in the
water, must have lived after the mother,—thus inheriting the
mother’s property. But it was further proved that the child was
drowned, and that the father survived the child a few hours; and
thus the father’s heir became entitled to an estate amounting to
upwards of a million of dollars, all of which was thus diverted from
the Aylesford family (to whom the property ought to have gone), and
bestowed on a man alien in blood and in every other respect to all
the parties fairly interested.
“This fortunate man was Charlton. The scandal goes, that even the
wife from whom he derived the estate (and who died before he got
it) had received from him such treatment as to alienate her wholly.
The nearest relative of Mrs. Berwick, née Aylesford, is a Mrs.
Pompilard, now living with an aged husband and with dependent
step-children and grandchildren, in a state of great impoverishment.
To this aunt the large property derived from her brother, Mr.
Aylesford, ought to have gone. But the law gave it to a stranger, this
Charlton. I mention these facts, because you ask me to inform you
what manner of man he is.
“Let one little anecdote illustrate. Mr. Albert Pompilard, now some
eighty years old, has been in his day a great operator in Wall Street.
He has made half a dozen large fortunes and lost them. Five years
ago, by a series of bold and fortunate speculations, he placed
himself once more on the top round of the financial ladder. He paid
off all his debts with interest, pensioned off a widowed daughter,
lifted up from the gutter several old, broken-down friends, and
advanced a handsome sum to his literary son-in-law, Mr. Cecil
Purling, who had found, as he thought, a short cut to fortune.
Pompilard also bought a stylish place on the Hudson; and people
supposed he would be content to keep aloof from the stormy
fluctuations of Wall Street.
“But one day he read in the financial column of the newspaper
certain facts that roused the old propensity. His near neighbor was a
rich retired tailor, a Mr. Maloney, an Irishman, who used to come
over to play billiards with the venerable stock-jobber. Pompilard had
made a visit to Wall Street the day before. He had been fired with a
grand scheme of buying up the whole of a certain stock (in which
sellers at sixty days at a low figure were abundant) and then holding
on for a grand rise. He did not find it difficult to kindle the financial
enthusiasm of poor Snip.
“Brief, the two simpletons went into the speculation, and lost every
cent they were worth in the world. Simultaneously with their break-
down, Purling, the son-in-law, managed to lose all that had been
confided to his hands. The widowed daughter, Mrs. Ireton, gave up
all the little estate her father had settled on her. Poor Maloney had to
go back to his goose; and Pompilard, now almost an octogenarian,
has been obliged, he and his family, to take lodgings in the cottage
of his late gardener.
“The other day Mr. Hicks, a friend of the family, learning that they
were actually pinched in their resources, ventured to call upon
Charlton for a contribution for their relief. After an evident inward
struggle, Charlton manfully pulled out his pocket-book, and tendered
—what, think you?—why, a ten-dollar bill! Hicks affected to regard
the tender as an insult, and slapped the donor’s face. Charlton at
first threatened a prosecution, but concluded it was too expensive a
luxury. Thus you see he is a miser. It was with no little satisfaction,
therefore, that I called to communicate the state of his affairs in New
Orleans.
“He lives on one of the avenues in a neat freestone house, such as
could be hired for twenty-five hundred a year. There is a stable
attached, and he keeps a carriage. Soon after he burst upon the
fashionable world as a millionnaire, there was a general competition
among fashionable families to secure him for one of the daughters.
But Charlton, with all his wealth, did not want a wife who was
merely stylish, clever, and beautiful; she must be rich into the
bargain. He at last encountered such a one (as he imagined) in Miss
Dykvelt, a member of one of the old Dutch families. He proposed,
was accepted, married,—and three weeks afterwards, to his
consternation and horror, he received an application from old D., the
father-in-law, for a loan of a hundred thousand dollars.
“Charlton, of course, indignantly refused it. He found that he had
been, to use his own words, ‘taken in and done for.’ Old Dykvelt,
while he kept up the style of a prince, was on the verge of
bankruptcy. The persons to whom Charlton applied for information,
knowing the object of the inquiry and the meanness of the inquirer,
purposely cajoled him with stories of Dykvelt’s wealth. Charlton fell
into the trap. Charlotte Dykvelt, who was in love at the time with
young Ireton (a Lieutenant in the army and a grandson of old
Pompilard), yielded to the entreaties of her parents and married the
man she detested. She was well versed in the history of his first
wife, and resolved that her own heart, wrung by obedience to
parental authority, should be iron and adamant to any attempt
Charlton might make to wound it.
“He soon found himself overmatched. The bully and tyrant was
helpless before the impassive frigidity and inexorable determination
of that young and beautiful woman. He had a large iron safe in his
house, in which he kept his securities and coupons, and often large
sums of money. One day he discovered he had been robbed of thirty
thousand dollars. He charged the theft upon his wife. She neither
denied nor confessed it, but treated him with a glacial scorn before
which he finally cowered and was dumb. Undoubtedly she had taken
the money. She forced him against his inclination to move into a
decent house, and keep a carriage; and at last, by a threat of leaving
him, she made him settle on her a liberal allowance.
“A loveless home for him, as you may suppose! One daughter,
Lucy Charlton, is the offspring of this ill-assorted marriage; a
beautiful girl, I am told, but who shrinks from her father’s presence
as from something odious. Probably the mother’s impressions during
pregnancy gave direction to the antipathies of the child; so that
before it came into the world it was fatherless.
“Well, I called on Charlton last Thursday. As I passed the little
sitting-room of the basement, I saw a young and lovely girl putting
her mouth filled with seed up to the bars of a cage, and a canary-
bird picking the food from her lips. A cat, who seemed to be on
excellent terms with the bird, was perched on the girl’s shoulder, and
superintending the operation. So, thought I, she exercises her
affections in the society of these dumb pets rather than in that of her
father.
“I found Charlton sitting lonely in a sort of library scantily
furnished with books. A well-formed man, but with a face haggard
and anxious as if his life-blood were ebbing irrecoverably with every
penny that went from his pockets. On my mentioning your name, his
eyes brightened; for he inferred I had come with your semiannual
remittances. He was at once anxious to know if rents in New Orleans
had been materially affected by the war. I told him his five houses
near Lafayette Square, excepting that occupied on a long lease by
Mr. Carberry Ratcliff, would not bring in half the amount they did last
year. He groaned audibly. I then told him that your semiannual
collections for him amounted to six thousand dollars, but that you
were under the painful necessity of assuring him that the money
would have to be paid all over to the Confederate government.
“Charlton, completely struck aghast, fell back in his chair, his face
pale, and his lips quivering. I thought he had fainted.
“‘Your brother wouldn’t rob me, Mr. Semmes?’ he gasped forth.
“‘Certainly not,’ I replied; ‘but his obedience is due to the
authorities that are uppermost. The Confederate flag waves over
New Orleans, and will probably continue to wave. All your real estate
has been or will be confiscated.’
“‘But it is worth two hundred thousand dollars!’ he exclaimed, in a
tone that was almost a shriek.
“‘So much the better for the Confederate treasury!’ I replied.
“I then broached what you told me to in regard to his making a
bona fide sale of the property to you. I offered him twenty thousand
dollars in cash, if he would surrender all claim.
“‘Never! never!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll run my risk of the city’s coming
back into our possession. I see through your brother’s trick.’
“‘Please recall that word, sir,’ I said, touching my wristbands.
“‘Well, your brother’s plan, sir. Will that suit you?’
“‘That will do,’ I replied. ‘My brother will pay your ten thousand
dollars over to the Confederacy. But I am authorized to pay you a
tenth part of that sum for your receipt in full of all moneys due to
you for rents up to this time.’
“‘Ha! you Secessionists are not quite so positive, after all, as to
your fortune!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re a little weak-kneed as to your
ability to hold the place,—eh?’
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