Kavanagh
Page 1
A LIST OF BOOKS RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY TICKNOR, REED AND FIELDS, Corner of Washington and School Streets, BOSTON.
May 1, 1849.
LONGFELLOW’S POEMS.
I. LONGFELLOW’S EVANGELINE; A Tale of Acadie. Just published. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents.
II. LONGFELLOW’S VOICES OF THE NIGHT. A New Edition. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents.
III. LONGFELLOW’S BALLADS and Other Poems. A New Edition. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents.
IV. LONGFELLOW’S SPANISH STUDENT. A Play in Three Acts. A New Edition. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents.
V. LONGFELLOW’S BELFRY OF BRUGES and other poems. A New Edition. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents.
VI. THE WAIF. A Collection of Poems. Edited by Longfellow. A New Edition. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents.
VII. THE ESTRAY. A Collection of Poems. Edited by Longfellow. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents.
LONGFELLOW’S PROSE WORKS.
I. LONGFELLOW’S KAVANAGH. A Tale. Just Published. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents.
II. LONGFELLOW’S OUTRE-MER. A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea. A New Edition. In one volume, 16mo, price $1.00.
III. LONGFELLOW’S HYPERION. A Romance. A New Edition. In one volume 16mo, price $1.00
POETRY.
I. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. Poems. In one volume, 16mo. New Edition, Enlarged. Just out. Price $1.00.
II. ALFRED TENNYSON. Poems. A New Edition. Enlarged. In two volumes, 16mo, price $1.50.
III. ALFRED TENNYSON. The Princess. A Medley. Just out. In one volume, 16mo, price 50 cents.
IV. WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. Poems, Narrative and Lyrical. A New Edition, Enlarged. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents.
V. WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern. With an historical introduction and notes. In two volumes, 16mo, price $1.50.
VI. RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. Poems of Many Years. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents.
VII. LEIGH HUNT. Story of Rimini and Other Poems. In one volume, 16mo, price 50 cents.
VIII. REJECTED ADDRESSES. From the 19th London Edition. Carefully Revised. With an Original Preface and Notes. By Horace and James Smith. In one volume, 16mo, price 50 cents.
IX. BARRY CORNWALL. English Songs and other Small Poems. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents.
X. JOHN BOWRING. Matins and Vespers, with Hymns and Occasional Devotional Pieces. In one volume, 32mo, cloth, gilt edges, price 37 1-2 cents.
XI. GEORGE LUNT. The Age of Gold and Other Poems. In one volume, 16mo, price 50 cents.
XII. MARY E. HEWITT. Songs of Our Land and Other Poems. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents.
XIII. T. BUCHANAN READ. Poems. In one volume, 16mo, price 50 cents.
each of the above poems and prose writings, may be had in various styles of handsome binding.
MISCELLANEOUS.
I. ALDERBROOK; A Collection of Fanny Forester’s Village Sketches, Poems, etc. In two volumes, 12mo, with a fine Portrait of the Author. A New Edition, Enlarged. Just out.
II. BEN PERLEY POORE. The Rise and Fall of Louis Philippe, with Pen and Pencil Sketches of his Friends and his Successors. Portraits. $1.00.
III. F. W. P. GREENWOOD. Sermons of Consolation. A New Edition, on very fine paper and large type. In one volume, 16mo, price $1.00.
IV. CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN: Moral, Poetical and Historical. By Mrs. Jameson. New Edition, Corrected and Enlarged. In one volume, 12mo, price $1.00.
V. MRS. PUTNAM’S RECEIPT BOOK; and Young Housekeeper’s Assistant. In one volume, 16mo, price 50 cents.
VI. THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN; Considered in Relation to External Objects. By George Combe. With an Additional Chapter, on the HARMONY BETWEEN PHRENOLOGY AND REVELATION. By J. A. Warne, A. M. Twenty-sixth American Edition. In one volume, 12mo, price 75 cents.
VII. ORTHOPHONY; Or the Culture of the Voice in Elocution. A Manual of Elementary Exercises, adapted to Dr. Rush’s “PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN VOICE,” and the System of Vocal Culture introduced by Mr. James E. Murdoch. Designed as an Introduction to Russell’s “AMERICAN ELOCUTIONIST.” Compiled by William Russell, Author of “Lessons in Enunciation,” etc. With a Supplement on Purity of Tone, by G. J. Webb, Professor, Boston Academy of Music. Improved Edition. One Volume, 12mo, price 62 1-2 cents.
VIII. ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON MINERALOGY. Comprising an INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE. By William Phillips. Fifth Edition, from the Fourth London Edition. By Robert Allan. Containing the Latest Discoveries in American and Foreign Mineralogy, with numerous Additions to the Introduction, by Francis Alger. With numerous Engravings. One volume, 12mo, price $3.00.
IX. THE USE OF THE BLOWPIPE IN CHEMISTRY AND MINERALOGY. By J. J. Berzelius. Translated from the 4th Enlarged and Corrected Edition, by J. D. Whitney. With Plates. In one volume, 12mo, price $1.50.
X. A BRIEF PRACTICAL TREATISE ON MORTARS IN BUILDING. With an Account of the Processes employed on the Public Works in Boston Harbor. By Lieut. William H. Wright, U. S. Corps of Engineers. With Plates. In one volume, 12mo, price $1.00.
XI. A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE CULTIVATION OF THE GRAPE VINE ON OPEN WALLS. To which is added, a Descriptive Account of an Improved Method of Planting and Managing the Roots of Grape Vines. With Plates. In one volume, 12mo, price 62 1-2 cents.
XII. THE SCENERY-SHOW-ER; with Word-Paintings of the Beautiful, the Picturesque, and the Grand in Nature. By Warren Burton. In one volume, 18mo, price 37 1-2 cents.
XIII. DR. JOHN C. WARREN. Physical Education and The Preservation of Health. Third Edition, Enlarged. 18mo, price 25 cents.
XIV. ANGEL-VOICES; or Words of Counsel for Overcoming the World. In one volume, 18mo, A New Edition, Enlarged.
XV. A BUDGET OF LETTERS, OR Things which I saw Abroad. In one volume, 12mo, price $1.00.
XVI. CONSUELO, and the Countess of Rudolstadt. By George Sand. Translated by Francis G. Shaw. Complete in five volumes, 12mo, price 50 cents per volume. Each work sold separate.
XVII. DR. WALTER CHANNING. A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth. Illustrated by 581 cases. In one volume, 8vo, just published, price $2.00.
FRENCH.
COUNT DE LAPORTE’S FRENCH GRAMMAR; Containing all the Rules of the Language, upon a New and Improved Plan. New (Stereotype) Edition. 1 vol. 12mo, half-embossed morocco, $1.50.
COUNT DE LAPORTE’S SPEAKING EXERCISES. For the Illustration of the Rules and Idioms of the French Language. New (Stereotype) Edition. 1 vol. 12mo, half-embossed morocco, 63 cents.
COUNT DE LAPORTE’S KEY TO THE FRENCH EXERCISES. New (Stereotype) Edition. 1 vol. 12mo, half-embossed morocco, 50 cents.
COUNT DE LAPORTE’S EXERCISES AND KEY. Bound in 1 volume, half-embossed morocco, $1.00.
COUNT DE LAPORTE’S SELF - TEACHING READER. For the Study of the Pronunciation of the French Language, after a Plan entirely New, which will enable the Student to acquire with facility a Correct Pronunciation, with or without the assistance of a Teacher. New (Stereotype) Edition. 1 volume, 12mo, half-embossed morocco, 50 cents.
The above Series is used in the Universities of Cambridge, Hanover, and Virginia, as well as in many other Colleges, Academies, and Schools, in New England and elsewhere.
KAVANAGH, A TALE. BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. The flighty purpose never is o’ertook,
Unless the deed go with it.
Shakspeare BOSTON: TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS. M DCCC XLIX. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by H. W. Longfellow, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY METCALF AND COMPANY, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
KAVANAGH. — I.
Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God, and secret passages running deep beneath external nature give t
heir thoughts intercourse with higher intelligences, which strengthens and consoles them, and of which the laborers on the surface do not even dream!
Some such thought as this was floating vaguely through the brain of Mr. Churchill, as he closed his school-house door behind him; and if in any degree he applied it to himself, it may perhaps be pardoned in a dreamy, poetic man like him; for we judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. And moreover his wife considered him equal to great things. To the people in the village, he was the school-master, and nothing more. They beheld in his form and countenance no outward sign of the divinity within. They saw him daily moiling and delving in the common path, like a beetle, and little thought that underneath that hard and cold exterior, lay folded delicate golden wings, wherewith, when the heat of day was over, he soared and revelled in the pleasant evening air.
To-day he was soaring and revelling before the sun had set; for it was Saturday. With a feeling of infinite relief he left behind him the empty school-house, into which the hot sun of a September afternoon was pouring. All the bright young faces were gone; all the impatient little hearts were gone; all the fresh voices, shrill, but musical with the melody of childhood, were gone; and the lately busy realm was given up to silence, and the dusty sunshine, and the old gray flies, that buzzed and bumped their heads against the window-panes. The sound of the outer door, creaking on its hebdomadal hinges, was like a sentinel’s challenge, to which the key growled responsive in the lock; and the master, casting a furtive glance at the last caricature of himself in red chalk on the wooden fence close by, entered with a light step the solemn avenue of pines that led to the margin of the river.
At first his step was quick and nervous; and he swung his cane as if aiming blows at some invisible and retreating enemy. Though a meek man, there were moments when he remembered with bitterness the unjust reproaches of fathers and their insulting words; and then he fought imaginary battles with people out of sight, and struck them to the ground, and trampled upon them; for Mr. Churchill was not exempt from the weakness of human nature, nor the customary vexations of a school-master’s life. Unruly sons and unreasonable fathers did sometimes embitter his else sweet days and nights. But as he walked, his step grew slower, and his heart calmer. The coolness and shadows of the great trees comforted and satisfied him, and he heard the voice of the wind as it were the voice of spirits calling around him in the air. So that when he emerged from the black woodlands into the meadows by the river’s side, all his cares were forgotten.
He lay down for a moment under a sycamore, and thought of the Roman Consul Licinius, passing a night with eighteen of his followers in the hollow trunk of the great Lycian plane-tree. From the branches overhead the falling seeds were wafted away through the soft air on plumy tufts of down. The continuous murmur of the leaves and of the swift-running stream seemed rather to deepen than disturb the pleasing solitude and silence of the place; and for a moment he imagined himself far away in the broad prairies of the West, and lying beneath the luxuriant trees that overhang the banks of the Wabash and the Kaskaskia. He saw the sturgeon leap from the river, and flash for a moment in the sunshine. Then a flock of wild-fowl flew across the sky towards the sea-mist that was rising slowly in the east; and his soul seemed to float away on the river’s current, till he had glided far out into the measureless sea, and the sound of the wind among the leaves was no longer the sound of the wind, but of the sea.
Nature had made Mr. Churchill a poet, but destiny made him a school-master. This produced a discord between his outward and his inward existence. Life presented itself to him like the Sphinx, with its perpetual riddle of the real and the ideal. To the solution of this dark problem he devoted his days and his nights. He was forced to teach grammar when he would fain have written poems; and from day to day, and from year to year, the trivial things of life postponed the great designs, which he felt capable of accomplishing, but never had the resolute courage to begin. Thus he dallied with his thoughts and with all things, and wasted his strength on trifles; like the lazy sea, that plays with the pebbles on its beach, but under the inspiration of the wind might lift great navies on its outstretched palms, and toss them into the air as playthings.
The evening came. The setting sun stretched his celestial rods of light across the level landscape, and, like the Hebrew in Egypt, smote the rivers and the brooks and the ponds, and they became as blood.
Mr. Churchill turned his steps homeward. He climbed the hill with the old windmill on its summit, and below him saw the lights of the village; and around him the great landscape sinking deeper and deeper into the sea of darkness. He passed an orchard. The air was filled with the odor of the fallen fruit, which seemed to him as sweet as the fragrance of the blossoms in June. A few steps farther brought him to an old and neglected church-yard; and he paused a moment to look at the white gleaming stone, under which slumbered the old clergyman, who came into the village in the time of the Indian wars, and on which was recorded that for half a century he had been “a painful preacher of the word.” He entered the village street, and interchanged a few words with Mr. Pendexter, the venerable divine, whom he found standing at his gate. He met, also, an ill-looking man, carrying so many old boots that he seemed literally buried in them; and at intervals encountered a stream of strong tobacco smoke, exhaled from the pipe of an Irish laborer, and pervading the damp evening air. At length he reached his own door.
II.
When Mr. Churchill entered his study, he found the lamp lighted, and his wife waiting for him. The wood fire was singing on the hearth like a grasshopper in the heat and silence of a Summer noon; and to his heart the chill autumnal evening became a Summer noon. His wife turned towards him with looks of love in her joyous blue eyes; and in the serene expression of her face he read the Divine beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart.”
No sooner had he seated himself by the fireside than the door was swung wide open, and on the threshold stood, with his legs apart, like a miniature colossus, a lovely, golden boy, about three years old, with long, light locks, and very red cheeks. After a moment’s pause, he dashed forward into the room with a shout, and established himself in a large arm-chair, which he converted into a carrier’s wagon, and over the back of which he urged forward his imaginary horses. He was followed by Lucy, the maid of all work, bearing in her arms the baby, with large, round eyes, and no hair. In his mouth he held an India rubber ring, and looked very much like a street-door knocker. He came down to say good night, but after he got down, could not say it; not being able to say any thing but a kind of explosive “Papa!” He was then a good deal kissed and tormented in various ways, and finally sent off to bed blowing little bubbles with his mouth,—Lucy blessing his little heart, and asseverating that nobody could feed him in the night without loving him; and that if the flies bit him any more she would pull out every tooth in their heads!
Then came Master Alfred’s hour of triumph and sovereign sway. The fire-light gleamed on his hard, red cheeks, and glanced from his liquid eyes, and small, white teeth. He piled his wagon full of books and papers, and dashed off to town at the top of his speed; he delivered and received parcels and letters, and played the postboy’s horn with his lips. Then he climbed the back of the great chair, sang “Sweep ho!” as from the top of a very high chimney, and, sliding down upon the cushion, pretended to fall asleep in a little white bed, with white curtains; from which imaginary slumber his father awoke him by crying in his ear, in mysterious tones,—
“What little boy is this!”
Finally he sat down in his chair at his mother’s knee, and listened very attentively, and for the hundredth time, to the story of the dog Jumper, which was no sooner ended, than vociferously called for again and again. On the fifth repetition, it was cut as short as the dog’s tail by Lucy, who, having put the baby to bed, now came for Master Alfred. He seemed to hope he had been forgotten, but was nevertheless marched off to bed, without an
y particular regard to his feelings, and disappeared in a kind of abstracted mood, repeating softly to himself his father’s words,—
“Good night, Alfred!”
His father looked fondly after him as he went up stairs, holding Lucy by one hand, and with the other rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“Ah! these children, these children!” said Mr. Churchill, as he sat down at the tea-table; “We ought to love them very much now, for we shall not have them long with us!”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed his wife, “what do you mean? Does any thing ail them? Are they going to die?”
“I hope not. But they are going to grow up, and be no longer children.”
“O, you foolish man! You gave me such a fright!”
“And yet it seems impossible that they should ever grow to be men, and drag the heavy artillery along the dusty roads of life.”
“And I hope they never will. That is the last thing I want either of them to do.”
“O, I do not mean literally, only figuratively. By the way, speaking of growing up and growing old, I saw Mr. Pendexter this evening, as I came home.”
“And what had he to say?”
“He told me he should preach his farewell sermon to-morrow.”
“Poor old man! I really pity him.”
“So do I. But it must be confessed he is a dull preacher; and I dare say it is as dull work for him as for his hearers.”
“Why are they going to send him away?”
“O, there are a great many reasons. He does not give time and attention enough to his sermons and to his parish. He is always at work on his farm; always wants his salary raised; and insists upon his right to pasture his horse in the parish fields.”
“Hark!” cried his wife, lifting up her face in a listening attitude.
“What is the matter?”
“I thought I heard the baby!”
There was a short silence. Then Mr. Churchill said,—
“It was only the cat in the cellar.”
At this moment Lucy came in. She hesitated a little, and then, in a submissive voice, asked leave to go down to the village to buy some ribbon for her bonnet. Lucy was a girl of fifteen, who had been taken a few years before from an Orphan Asylum. Her dark eyes had a gypsy look, and she wore her brown hair twisted round her head after the manner of some of Murillo’s girls. She had Milesian blood in her veins, and was impetuous and impatient of contradiction.