with a vigorous arm she gave a thump upon the door-post. "It would have served him right, too. But it's a lie!"
"He will not tell me," I said. "But you have done so!"
Crawford was in bed, in one of the great, dreary wards of the hospital, looking as a man looks who has been laid up for three weeks with a compound fracture of the knee. I had seen no small amount of physical misery, but I had never seen anything so poignant as the sight of my once brilliant friend in such a place, from such a cause. I told him I would not ask him how his misfortune occurred: I knew! We talked awhile, and at last I said, "Of course you will not go back to her!"
He turned away his head, and at this moment, the nurse came and said that I had made the poor gentleman talk enough.
Of course he did go back to her—at the end of a very long convalescence. His leg was permanently injured; he was obliged to move about very slowly, and what he had called the value of his working-power was not thereby increased. This meant permanent poverty, and all the rest of it. It lasted ten years longer—until 185-, when Mrs. Crawford died of delirium tremens. I cannot say that this event restored his equanimity, for the excellent reason that to the eyes of the world—and my own most searching ones—he had never lost it.
Victorious in her senate-house she stands,
Mighty among the nations, latest born;
Armed men stood round her cradle, violent hands
Were laid upon her, and her limbs were torn;
Yet she arose, and turned upon her foes,
And, beaten down, arose,
Grim, as who goes to meet
And grapple with Defeat,
And pull Destruction from her iron seat!
When saw the Earth another,
O valorous Daughter of imperious Mother,
Who greatly dared as thou?
Making thy land one wide Thermopylæ,
And the long leagues of sea thy Salamis,
Determined to be free
As the unsealed heaven is,
Whose calm is in thy eyes, whose stars are on thy brow!
Thy children gathered round thee to defend,
O mother of a race of hardy sons!
Left plows to rust in the furrows, snatched their guns,
And rode hot haste as though to meet a friend,
Who might be nigh his end,
Which thou wert not, though often sore beset;
Nor did they fall in vain who fell for thee;
Nor could thy enemies, though its roots they wet
With thy best blood, destroy thy glorious tree,
That on its stem of greatness flowers late:
Hedged with sharp spines it shot up year by year,
As if the planets drew it to their sphere,
The quick earth spouting sap through all its veins,
Till of the days that wait
To see it burst in bloom not one remains—
Not so much as an hour,
For, lo! it is in flower
Bourgeoned, full blown in an instant! Tree of trees,
The fame whereof has flown across the seas,
Whereat the elder sisters of the race
Have hastened to these high walls,
These populous halls,
To look on this Centurial Tree,
And to strike hands with thee,
And see thy happy millions face to face!
First comes, as nearest, an imperial dame,
Named for that king's fair daughter whom Jove bore
Through the blue billows to the Cretan shore,
Where she its queen became:
Parent of many peoples, strong and proud,
Comes Europe in her purples, peaceful here:
Her great sword sheathed, and rent the battle-cloud
Wherewith her kings surround her—
The chains that long have bound her
Concealed, though clanking loud,
As stately she draws near;
Often in sorrow bowed,
She slips the shroud
Over her royal mantle, wrings her hands,
That dripped so late with slaughter,
Of some brave son, dear daughter,
And heaps on her head the ashes of her desolated lands!
Hither Europe, great and mean,
Half a slave, and half a queen;
Hear what words are to be spoken,
What the Present doth foretoken,
Hear, and understand, and know,
As did our wiser Mother a hundred years ago!
England, our Mother's Mother, twice our foe,
But now our friend, for coming thus to-day
Should bury past contentions, and it may:
