of the ridge on duty, and have a strange tale to tell of it. desolate; and in the year 1840 I crossed that portion | for my course, it is not surprising that I became lost. Any one ever lost in the north-western prairie is aware that when once astray, every attempt at correction makes matters worse, and what with the After a furlough of some years, I returned in 1840 to the west, and after reporting for duty to the head-uniformity of the whole face of the country, at nightquarters of the department, was ordered to join a fall I was utterly bewildered. I was forced to ensquadron of my regiment then stationed on the Red camp on the bald prairie, sacrificing to my comfort River. The navigation of the western rivers was the solitary tree which I afterward learned was a then most uncertain, and I was ordered to cross the land-mark. It made a very bad fire, being filled with intermediate country by land instead of trusting to sap, but sufficed to broil a rasher of bacon which, the tortuous navigation of the Arkansas, emphatically with a cup of coffee transformed into what the one of those streams of which John Randolph said, Spaniards call a gloria by a glass of "old corn," "they were dry in summer and choked up with constituted my supper. The sleet had by this time ice during the winter." disappeared, and the cattle hobbled and allowed to wander at will, fared better than I, on the young prairie grass, which they relished not a little after their dry provender at Fort Gibson. Tuesday came fair and bright, and far in the distance I saw one of the Ozark's peaks rising tall and solitary in just the direction I had not been marching on the day before. To it I directed my course. The old officers of the post told me I might easily have my orders changed by applying to the general, and advised me to do so, as my route lay through a peculiarly wild and desolate country. They told me what they had heard of the Ozark Mountains, of the precipices and torrents, the almost impassable resacas, etc. I was, however, an old coureur des bois, and all this but stimulated me to attempt the passage. Fort Gibson lay at the head of navigation at that time, though steamboats have since passed far above the Cape Farewell of 1840. Similarly situated was Fort Towson, on the Red River; between the two lay the country of the Cherokees, Chactas, and Chichasas, and many formidable rivers, such as the Canadienne, the Verdigris, and the whole of the southern tributaries of the Arkansas. To cross this country with all its difficulties on the first Wednesday in April, 1840, I left Fort Gibson, with no equipage, or what Cæsar calls impedimenta, other than one pack mule, loaded with provisions, and a servant, like myself, mounted, who rejoiced in the name of Barny. I often wonder what has become of him, and whether, like Latour d'Auvergne, first grenadier of France, he may not have "died on the field of glory," during the Mexican war. 1 As my orders contained no recommendation to make the journey with peculiar rapidity, and as I was aware that nothing awaited me at Fort Towson but the monotonous existence of a subaltern, I loitered along the road systematically, as a veteran colonel en route to reinforce a militia general, and on Sunday lay by on the banks of a picturesque stream, whiling away time with my rod and angle, which Isack Walton recommends as "fosterers of meditation, and gratitude to God for having made so many fine fish for man's especial benefit," and which I was too old a soldier to be without in the North American wilderness. Monday broke upon me cold and chill, and wearied even by my voluntary halt, I set out to continue my journey. There had been during the night a mist and sleet, so that the prairie, which on the day before had looked like a garden covered with periwinkles, the beautiful wild indigo, and the sensitive-plant, was now become a glacier. I rode on, therefore, wrapped in the cape of my dragoon cloak, and scarcely noticing what passed around me. Few persons except half-breeds had ever crossed the prairie in this direction before, and having to depend merely on general direction The country soon became broken, and on each side of me rose rough hills. I knew at once I would be forced to cross the ridge, and set manfully to the task. As I progressed the scenery became every mile more grand, and I began to be thankful for the accident which had led me into the bewildering maze. I have stood on tall mountains, having threaded the Alleghany, and looked on the boldest peaks of wilder lands. Above rose a tall peak with half precipitous sides, its base skirted with a dense growth of the Osage orange. This strange and peculiar tree merits a more minute description. It belongs, I believe, to the same genus with the box-tree of our forest, for from its limbs and leaves, when broken, exudes a milky gelatinous humor, not unlike that of the fig and India-rubber plant. Its leaves are smooth and glazed and so precisely like those of the Florida orange that the two cannot easily be distinguished. It bears a large fruit in character similar to the balls of the sycamore, but which becomes during the process of decay a noisome pulp, and is said to be a deadly poison. The size of the fruit is about that of the cocoa-nut, divested of its husk, and the heighth of the tree about thirty-five feet, with thick, gnarled limbs, covered with long, straight spines, like those of the honey accacia. By the Canadian colonists of Arkansas and the French of Louisiana it was called the bois d'are, from the fact that of this the Natchez and Opelousas made their bows. This beautiful growth is now rapidly disappearing, it having been discovered that it furnishes a dye of a brilliant yellow, long a desideratum in the arts. During the last few years many cargoes have been sent to France, and the cutting it has, like the procuring of log-wood, become a distinct and important branch of industry. Many stories are told of this tree which would make us believe it exerts an influence scarcely less baleful than that of the fabulous Upas tree of Borneo, popular superstition attributing to it the deadly disease of man and brute known as the "milk sickness." The base of the peak before me was skirted with thickets of this beautiful tree, intermingled with the dog-wood, then in the glory of its flower, and three | ridge was more difficult than the eastern, I reached the prairie through which the Red River runs. On the summit of several of the peaks I had found large springs and pools of water, and in the valleys the streams expanded into beautiful lakes. In some of these valleys were grand groves of the wild-plum, and a variety of other growths, among which was the iron-wood and box-elder. The cotton-wood, so common northward, has disappeared. At last I arrived at Fort Towson. I had missed the direction, and to reach a point about one hundred miles from Gibson, had traveled three. Twenty miles after leaving the latter post, I had seen the smoke of not one hearth till I reached the yellow water, about ten miles from Fort Towson, yet during all this time I had been in a small labyrinth of mountains, surrounded on all sides by the dense population of the Cherokee and Chickasa nation, the Opeloulas of Louisiana and Western Texas. or four varieties of the accacia and Canadian redbud. Here and there on the very hill-side were expanses grown up with the tall green-cane and the beautiful Mexican oats. Through such a growth I commenced my ascent, and soon passed by the sinuosities of an Indian trail into an expanse of cupriferous volcanic rock, almost without any other growth than the redroot, or Indian tea. Passing through this, I came into a belt of tall pines, reaching far above the crest of the peak. No engineer could have constructed a glacis with a more regular inclination than this portion of the mountain displayed. At last I stood upon the crest, and a prospect opened before me I have never seen surpassed or equaled. I was on the very backbone of the ridge, and before me lay a succession of peaks, gradually descending into the bosom of a vale perhaps ten miles wide, while beyond this happy valley rose another ridge, parallel, descending gradually as the one on which I stood had become elevated. A clear, cold stream ran at the foot of the peak on which I was, and amid the stillness of a calm spring day I distinctly heard the murmur of its ripples. Down the bleak hill-sides of the other ridge I could trace more than one silver line which marked the descent of tributary rills. I could have remained long on that bald mountainpeak, but was warned by the descent of the sun to proceed downward. Taking the horses by the bridle, for I committed the care of the pack-mule to poor Barny, I began carefully to follow the pathway, and was ultimately enabled to reach the base in spite of sundry falls of the heavy pack, which, in spite of discipline, wrung hearty curses from poor Barny's over-burdened heart. I encamped at the foot of the peak, on a branch of the Boggy, or Bogue, itself a tributary of the Red. After many days of painful travel, precisely similar to the one I have described, except that the western I afterward was informed that the Indian path I had more than once passed was a portion of the great Delaware trail which crosses the whole American continent, from Erie, in Pennsylvania, to California, and which marks the migration of those American Gitanos from the homes where the white man found them to the chief seat of the tribe on the Missouri River, to the outposts on the Red River and on the Pacific. Along it they still go, and not unfrequently two of their well-armed and gallant braves will fight their way through hordes of hostile and degenerate Indians of the prairie. It will be found always to cross the streams at the most fordable point, and he who strays from it to avoid travel, will generally find that the longest way round is the nearest way home. After my arrival at Fort Gibson I did not regret my mistake, which had made me acquainted with so beautiful a country; and I hope my reader is weary neither of the Illinois River or the Ozark Mountains. EXTRACT. BY HENRY S. HAGERT. So die the young, ere yet the bud has burst And speak their noteless epitaph-the west It clings to thee! 'T was a most lovely creed, Be there to tell thy virtues? O! 'Tis sweet To know that when the dews from heaven have stole Then gird thy loins with patience-from the crowd Should sneer upon thee, or the rich and great The coming of that hour which shall decide The issue of the game; and then, with state, THE UNFINISHED PICTURE. BY MRS. JANE C. CAMPBELL. CHAPTER I. O God! to clasp those fingers close, ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. I WAS sitting one morning in the library of a friend, looking over a valuable collection of works of art, made during a five years residence abroad, and listening to his animated description of scenes and places now become familiar to every one who reads at all, through the medium of "Jottings," "Impressions," and "Travels," with which the press abounds. Among the paintings were small copies in oil from Corregio, Guercino, Guido, and Rafaelle. There was a head of the latter, copied from a portrait painted by himself, and preserved in the Pitti Palace. With the slightest shade of hectic on the cheek, and the large unfathomable eyes looking into the great beyond, it was truly angelic in its loveliness. No wonder the man for whom nature had done so much, and who delighted in portraying the loftiest ideal beauty, no wonder he was called "divine!" "Here," said my friend, lovingly holding forth one of those inimitable creations, the beauty of which once seen, haunts us for a lifetime, "here is the farfamed violin-player,' the friend of Rafaelle. By the bye, I must tell you an anecdote I heard while abroad. There were two gentlemen sight-seers looking at pictures in the Vatican; one called to the other, who was at a short distance from him, 'come, look at this, here is the celebrated violin-player.' 'Ah!' said his companion, hastening toward him, 'Paganini!' I give you the story as I heard it related for truth, and as a somewhat laughable example of traveled ignorance." On one side of the room in which we were conversing, stood a picture apart from all the others, which soon engrossed my entire attention. A young man was represented reclining on a couch, and wrapped in a robe falling in loose folds about his person. His countenance bore the traces of suffering, but his dark eyes were filled with the light of love, and hope, as they looked up into the face of a young female bending mournfully at his side. On the head of this female the artist had lavished all the love of genius. With the sunny hair parted on the fair forehead, and the rich braids simply confined by a silver arrow-the dark eyes from which the tears seemed about to fall—the half-parted lips quivering as if from intense devotion-oh, it was transcendently lovely! The rest of the figure was in outline, but as vividly portrayed as some of those wonderful illustrations by Flaxman, in which a single line reveals a story. "How is this," said I, after gazing long and earn Iestly upon it, "how is this?-why is the picture unfinished. And who was the painter?" "The tale," replied my friend, "is a sad one; and if you are tired of looking at pictures and medals, I will relate it to you." "Not tired, yet I should like to hear the story to which this picture imparts an unusual interest." "You remember Paul Talbot, who left here some years ago to pursue the study of his art abroad." "I do, but that young man-sick-almost dyingI thought the face a familiar one; but can that be Paul?" "Alas! yes-he is dead!" and my friend dashed away a tear as he spoke. "Dead!" repeated I. "Paul Talbot dead! when did he die?" "Not long before my return. Poor fellow! he endured much, and his career was an exemplification of what a man of untiring energy can accomplish under the most adverse circumstances. "Soon after the birth of Paul, his father died, leaving little, save a mother's love and a stainless reputation to his infant son. "Mr. Talbot was a man of refined taste, and had collected round him objects of which an amateur might be justly proud-and thus from childhood had been fostered Paul's love for the beautiful. "Well educated and accomplished, Mrs. Talbot undertook the tuition of her child, and by giving lessons in drawing, painting miniatures on ivory, and small portraits in oil, kept herself and her boy above the pressure of want. Carefully she instilled into his tender mind those lofty principles of rectitude, of uncompromising integrity, and that childlike trust in the goodness of an overruling Providence, which sustained him through all the trials of after years. "How holy, how powerful is the influence of a mother! The father may do much, but the mother can do more toward the formation of the mind, and the habits of early childhood. Exercising a power, silent, yet refreshing as the dews of heaven, her least word, her lightest look, sinks deep into the hearts of her children, and moulds them to her will. How many men have owed all that has made them great to the early teachings of a mother's love! The father, necessarily occupied with business or professional duties, cannot give the needful attention to the minor shades in the character and disposition of his little ones, but the mother can encourage and draw out the latent energies of the timid, can check the bold, and exert an influence which may be felt not only through time, but through eternity. "It was beautiful to see Paul Talbot standing by his mother's side, with his childish gaze fixed upon her face, while receiving instruction from her lips, and to hear him as he grew in years, wishing he was a man, that he might be enabled to supply her every want. "You know,' he would exclaim, while his fine eyes was flashing with enthusiasm, 'that I will be an artist; and, oh, mother, if I could, like Washington Allston, be a painter-poet; could I but paint such a head as that we saw in the Academy, and write such a book as Monaldi, then, mother, I would gain fame; orders would crowd upon me-and thenthen we would go to Italy!' "Go to Italy! of this he thought by day, and dreamed by night; and to accomplish this was the crowning ambition of the boy's life. "He was willing to toil, to endure privation and fatigue, could he but visit that land where heavenly beauty is depicted on the canvas, where the marble wants but the clasp of him of old to warm it into life, and where the soft blue of the sky, and the delicious atmosphere brooding over the glories of centuries gone by, make it the Mecca of the artist's heart. "But amid all these dreams of the future, all these ambitious aspirings of the gifted youth, death cast his dark shadow over that peaceful dwelling, and the mother, the guardian angel of the fatherless boy, was borne away to be a dweller in the silent land. "With what passionate earnestness did he call upon her name. How did he long to lie down by her side. His mother! his mother! she had taught his lisping accents their first prayer; she had watched over his little bed, and moistened his parched lips when he was ill with fever-so ill, that his mother's watchful tenderness was all, under God, that saved him from the grave. As he grew older, she had spoken to him, not like the boy he was in years, but like the man to whom she would impart her thoughts, and with whose mind of almost premature develop ment, she might hold converse, and feel herself understood. And now, in his fifteenth year, when he was thinking of all that he could, nay, of all that he would do for her, his mother had died! Who can wonder that the boy pined, and sat upon her grave, and longed for her companionship, and wept as if his heart must break. CHAPTER II. Then all the charm Is broken-all that phantom-world so fair Vanished, and a thousand circlets spread, And each misshapes the other. COLERIDGE. "Abstracted in his habits, quiet and sensitive, from his reveries in dream-land, the orphan woke to find himself the inmate of a new home. "Mrs. Winter, the only sister of the late Mr. Talbot, was wholly unlike her brother. With little taste for the elegancies of life, except so far as she thought their possession would give her importance in the eyes of others, with no sympathy for any ambition save that of acquiring money, she looked with no very favorable eye on her brother's orphan. Dazzled by the prospect of a carriage, a town and country-house in perspective, she had married a man of sixty, when she was barely sixteen, and could never forgive her brother for not falling in with her scheme of catching the rich heiress, who, she avowed, waited but the asking to change the name of Miss Patty Pringle, for the more lofty-sounding title of Mrs. Percy Talbot. But Percy Talbot preferred the portionless Isabel Morton, and the monotony of a counting-room, to the bank-stock, real estate, and soulless face of Miss Patty Pringle. Hence there was little intercourse between the brother and sister, and when the younger Talbot sought the shelter of his aunt's roof, she auimadverted with great bitterness on the folly of people gratifying a taste for luxuries beyond their means, and encouraging boys without a shilling to spend their time in reading books and daubing canvas. "Nor could Mrs. Winter refrain from talking of stupidity, when Paul sat quietly at his drawing, while her own sons were making the house ring with their boisterous mirth. The boys, catching the spirit of their mother, ridiculed Paul's sketches, and with the petty tyranny of little minds, subjected him to every annoyance, and taunted him with his dependent state. The proud, sensitive boy, writhed under such treatment, and determined on leaving the relatives who had neither tastes nor sympathies in common with his own. "When at the age of twelve years, he hung over the landscape he was trying to imitate, and from which no boyish sports could lure him; when he saw the sketch grow beneath his touch, and look more and more like the original, until in the exultation of his young heart, he exclaimed, 'I knew that I could do it if I did but try,' he unconsciously displayed that perseverance of character without which no one can hope to attain eminence. And now that same energy was employed in seeking means to gain a livelihood without being subjected to the bitterness of insult. "He succeeded in obtaining a situation in a drygood store, and in compensation for his services, received his board and a scanty salary. True, he had but little, but that little was his own; he had earned it, and a proud feeling of independence was his, when purchasing the scanty stock of drawing materials with money obtained by his own exertions. And so passed a few years, during which he diligently devoted himself to the business of his employer through the day, and to reading and drawing at night. "The long cherished hope of visiting Italy had never been abandoned, although the many obstacles in the way seemed almost insurmountable. But now a bright thought occurred to him; 'I will give up my situation; I will hire a room with the money already saved, and devote myself entirely to the pursuit of art. I shall paint a picture-it will be placed in the exhibition-and then-' Talbot paused, and his cheek glowed, and his heart-pulse quickened as he looked into the future. "The resolution once taken, he was not long in carrying it into effect; and day after day saw him at his easel, laboring with patient assiduity, and flattering himself that his picture would not pass unnoticed. "When the day of exhibition arrived, Talbot walked nervously up and down the gallery where the pictures were hanging, every now and then glancing at his own, with the small ticket appended announcing it for sale, and pausing to observe if it attracted attention. But it had been placed in a bad light, directly beneath two brightly-tinted landscapes, and so low down that you were obliged to put one knee on the floor before it could be examined. Poor Paul! no one gave more than a passing glance to what had cost you weeks of patient labor, and the papers passed it by with merely announcing its name and number on the catalogue. "What a rude dashing down of all his hopes was here! What a fading of the air-built castles he had taken such delight in building? The land of promise had receded from his view, and the shores of Italy were as a far-off vision seen in the dimness of deepening twilight. Oh, what a sinking of the heart follows such disappointments! A goal is to be won -the aspirant rushes eagerly to the race-hope lures him on he grows weary, oh, how weary-courage -the thrilling sound of fame's trumpet-peal is ringing on those heights afar-courage-one more struggle and the prize will be his own! One more struggle and hope fades from his sight-and the last faint echo of fame's music dies upon his ear-and a dull lethargy seizes on his mind-and the pulses of his heart grow still and cold as the waveless, tideless surface of a deep, dark lake! Happy he who can shake off the despondency attendant on times like these, and, like the bird momentarily driven back by the storm, can plume his wings and dare a nobler flight. CHAPTER III. Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart. LONGFELLOW. 6 | mistaken his vocation, he had taken his ill-fated picture to a place where engravings were kept for sale, and left it with the shopkeeper, promising to pay him one half the money for which it might be sold. How discouraging to see it week after week in the window, until it began to look like a soiled fixture of the establishment. No one would ever buy it, that was certain, and if they would not purchase this his best work, how could he ever hope to dispose of others of less merit, which were standing round the walls of his little room? Alas, no! but when once in Italy-then he would paint pictures such as he dreamed of in imagination. For the present, with weary frame and throbbing brow, he must labor on. "There are few but know 6 How cruelly it tries a broken heart To see a mirth in any thing it loves.' And who that has ever walked forth on a particularly bright morning, when he was nursing a deep sorrow, or was weighed down by the pressure of misfortune, but felt annoyed by the light, and noise, and cheerfulness around him? Those vast tides of human life what are they to him? He is but a drop in a wave of the mighty ocean-but a pebble thrown upon the sand-a broken link in the great chain of the Universe. Thus felt Paul, as on one of the loveliest days of laughing June, he wended his way to the office where he had left a manuscript to be examined by the publisher. "How can those people look so smilingly,' thought he, while glancing at the well-dressed groups on the side-walk. And those children, how noisy they are -and see that carriage with its liveried attendantspshaw Now Paul was not envious, and he was particularly fond of children, but the feeling of loneliness in the crowd was oppressive, and with another half audible pshaw! he turned into a quieter street. "The smiling face of the great man who employed so many subordinates in his large establishment, somewhat reassured the desponding youth, and after "The spirits of youth are elastic, and after great a little preliminary talk about encouraging native pressure will naturally rebound. Hope on, hope talent, a sum was offered, which, though small in ever,' is a maxim seldom forgotten until age has itself, was just then a god-send to the needy Paul, chilled the blood and palsied the powers of life. who with many thanks bowed himself out of the After a few days spent in brooding over the present, publisher's presence. One ray of light had dawned Paul again looked forward to the future, and deter- on his darkened path, one beam of hope had shed its mined to seek some other avenue by which he might warmth upon his heart, and how differently now gather up a little, just a little, of the treasure which looked the scene through which he had lately passed! others possessed in such abundance. His fondness With buoyant step he went on. He, too, could for literature suggested the idea that his pen might smile,-the darling little ones, how delighted he was be employed with more profit than his pencil, and to see them looking so happy-and the poor blind the periodicals of the day appeared to offer a wide man at the corner must not be forgotten! Like the field for exertion. But emolument from such sources child who plays with the kaleidoscope, and every mowas precarious at best. All who held an established ment sees some new beauty, so Paul toyed with the reputation in the world of letters were contributors many-colored hues in the rainbow of Hope, groupto the various popular publications, and Paul Talboting them together in the most beautiful and dazzling wanted the "magic of a name" to win golden opinions from the Press. Sometimes he met with those who were more just, and more generous, and thus encouraged he toiled on, hoping even against hope, that his desires would yet be accomplished. forms. "It was destined to be a red-letter day in his book of life. As he passed the print-shop he saw that his picture was gone from the window. It had been sold, and a companion-piece ordered by the pur"With many misgivings, and a fear that he had chaser. Oh that my mother were living!' sighed |