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Civil War Harper's Weekly, March 9, 1861

The March 9, 1861 edition of Harper's Weekly Featured President Abraham Lincoln, on the cover, raising a union flag.  The paper is filled with important details of the start of he Civil War.  Newspaper Thumbnails will take you to the page of interest.

 

Abraham Lincoln and the Union Flag

Abraham Lincoln Raising the Union Flag

Lincoln and the Union Flag

Miss Patterson

Miss Patterson of Baltimore

Congressional News

1861 Lincoln Assassination Plot

Story on Fort Smith and Little Rock

Completed U.S. Capitol Dome

Little Rock Arkansas

Little Rock Arkansas

General Twiggs

General David Twiggs

Continuation of Twiggs Story

Jefferson Davis Inauguration in Montgomery

Lincoln Assassination Plot

 
 

 

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

[MARCH 9, 1861

150

them for being on the opposite side of the table.

After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs. Coiler made admiring comments on their eves, noses, and legs—a sagacious way of improving their minds. There were four little girls, and two little boys, besides the baby who might have been either, and the baby's next successor who was as yet neither. They were brought in by Flopson and Millers, much as though those two non-commissioned officers had been recruiting somewhere for children and had enlisted these : while Mrs. Pocket looked at the young Nobles that ought to have been, as if she rather thought she had had the pleasure of inspecting them before, but didn't quite know what to make of them.

" Here ! Give me your fork, mum, and take the baby," said Flopson. " Don't take it that way, or you'll get its head under the table."

Thus advised, Mrs. Pocket took it the other way, and got its head upon the table ; which was announced to all present by a prodigious concussion.

Dear, dear ! Give it me back, mum," said Flopson ; " and Miss Jane come and dance to baby, do!"

One of the little girls —a mere mite, who seemed to have prematurely taken upon herself some charge of the others—stepped out of her place by me, and danced to and from the baby until it left off crying, and laughed. Then all the children laughed, and Mr. Pocket (who in the mean time had twice endeavored to lift him-self up by the hair) laughed, and we all laughed and were glad.

Flopson, by dint of doubling the baby at the joints like a Dutch doll, then got it safely into Mrs. Pocket's lap, and gave it the nut-crackers to play with; at the same time recommending Mrs. Pocket to take notice that the handles of that instrument were not likely to agree with its eyes, and sharply charging Miss Jane to look after the same. Then the two nurses left the room, and had a lively scuffle on the staircase with a dissipated page who had waited at dinner, and who had clearly lost half his buttons at the gaming-table.

I was made very uneasy in my mind by Mrs. Pocket's falling into a discussion with Drummle respecting the dates of two baronetcies while she ate a sliced orange steeped in sugar and wine, and forgetting all about the baby on her lap, who did most appalling things with the nut-crackers. At length little Jane, perceiving its young brains to be imperiled, softly left her place, and with many small artifices coaxed the dangerous weapon away. Mrs. Pocket finishing her orange at about the same time, and not approving of this, said to Jane :

" You naughty child, how dare you ? Go and it down this instant !"

" Mamma dear," lisped the little girl, "baby

baby ood have put hith eyeth out."

" How dare you tell me so !" retorted Mrs. Pocket. " Go and sit down in your chair this moment 1"

Mrs. Pocket's dignity was so crushing that I felt quite abashed, as if I myself had done some-thing to rouse it.

"Belinda," remonstrated Mr. Pocket from the other end of the table, " how can you be so unreasonable ? Jane only interfered for the protection of baby."

" I will not allow any body to interfere," said Mrs. Pocket. "I am surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the affront of interference."

" Good God !" cried Mr. Pocket, in an out-break of desolate desperation. " Are infants to be nut-crackered into their tombs, and is nobody to save them?"

" I will not be interfered with by Jane," said Mrs. Pocket, with a majestic glance at that innocent little offender. " I hope I know my poor grandpapa's position. Jane, indeed I"

Mr. Pocket got his hands in his hair again, and this time really did lift himself some inches out of his chair. "Hear this !" he helplessly exclaimed to the elements. "Babies are to be nut-crackered dead, for people's poor grand-papa's positions !" Then he let himself down again, and became silent.

We all looked awkwardly at the table-cloth while this was going on. A pause succeeded, during which the honest and irrepressible baby made a series of leaps and crows at little Jane, who appeared to me to be the only member of the family (irrespective of servants) with whom it had any decided acquaintance.

"Mr. Drummle," said Mrs. Pocket, "will you ring for Flopson? Jane, you undutiful little thing, go and lie down. Now, baby darling, come with ma I"

The baby was the soul of honor, and protested with all its might. It doubled itself up the wrong way over Mrs. Pocket's arm, exhibited a pair of knitted shoes and dimpled ankles to the company in lieu of its soft face, and was carried out in the highest state of mutiny. And it gained its point after all, for I saw it through the window within a few minutes, being nursed by little Jane.

It happened that the other five children were left behind at the dinner-table, through Flop-son's having some private engagement and their not being any body else's business. I thus be-came aware of the mutual relations between them and Mr. Pocket, which were exemplified in the following manner. Mr. Pocket, with the normal perplexity of his face heightened and his hair rumpled, looked at them for some minutes as if he couldn't make out how they came to be boarding and lodging in that establishment, and why they hadn't been billeted by Nature on somebody else. Then, in a distant Missionary way, he asked them certain questions—as why little Joe had that hole in his frill: who said, Pa, Flopson was going to mend it when she had

time—and how little Fanny came by that whit-low : who said, Pa, Millers was going to poultice it when she didn't forget. Then, he melted into parental tenderness, and gave them a shilling a piece and told them to go and play ; and then as they went out, with one very strong effort to lift himself up by the hair, he dismissed the hopeless subject.

In the evening there was rowing on the river. As Drummle and Startop had each a boat I re-solved to set up mine, and to cut them both out. I was pretty good at most exercises in which country-boys are adepts, but as I was conscious of wanting elegance of style for the Thames—not to say for other waters—I at once engaged to place myself under tile tuition of the winner of a prize-wherry who plied at our stairs, and to whom I was introduced by my new allies. This practical authority confused me very much by saying I had the arm of a blacksmith. If he could have known how nearly the compliment lost him his pupil I doubt if he would have paid it.

There was a supper-tray after we got home at night, and I think we should all have enjoyed ourselves but for a rather disagreeable domestic occurrence. Mrs. Pocket was extremely sweet, and Mr. Pocket was in good spirits, when a housemaid came in, and said, " If you please, Sir, I should wish to speak to you."

Speak to your master ?" said Mrs. Pocket, whose dignity was roused again. "How can you think of such a thing ! Go and speak to Flopson. Or speak to me at some other time."

Begging your pardon, Ma'am," returned the housemaid, " I should wish to speak at once, and to speak to master."

Hereupon Mr. Pocket went out of the room, and we made the best of ourselves until he came back.

" This is a pretty thing, Belinda'." said Mr. Pocket, returning with a countenance expressive of grief and despair. " Here's the cook lying in-sensibly drunk on the kitchen-floor, with a large bundle of fresh butter made up in the cupboard ready to sell for grease 1"

Mrs. Pocket instantly showed much amiable emotion, and said, " This is that odious Mary Anne's doing !"

" What do you mean, Belinda ?" demanded Mr. Pocket.

Mary Anne has told you," said Mrs. Pocket. " Did I not see her with my own eyes and hear her with my own ears, come into the room just now and ask to speak to you ?"

" But has she not taken me down stairs, Belinda," returned Mr. Pocket, " and shown me the woman, and the bundle too ?"

" And do you defend her, Matthew," said Mrs. Pocket, " for making mischief ?"

Mr. Pocket uttered a dismal groan.

" Am I, grandpapa's grand-daughter, to be nothing in the house ?" said Mrs. Pocket. " Besides, the cook has always been a very nice respectful woman, and said, in the most natural manner, when she came to look after the situation, she felt I was born to be a Duchess."

There was a sofa where Mr. Pocket stood, and he dropped upon it in the attitude of the Dying Gladiator. Still in that attitude, he said, with a hollow voice, " Good-night, Mr. Pip," when I deemed it advisable to go to bed and leave him.

CHAPTER XXIII.

AFTER two Or three days, when I had established myself in my room, and had gone back-ward and forward to London several times, and had ordered all I wanted of my tradesmen, Mr. Pocket and I had a long talk together. He knew more of my intended career than I knew myself, for he referred to his having been told by Mr. Jaggers that I was not designed for any profession, and that I should be well enough educated for my destiny if I could " hold my own" with the average of young men in prosperous circumstances. I acquiesced, of course, knowing nothing to the contrary.

He advised my attending certain places in London, for the acquisition of such mere rudiments as I wanted, and my investing him with the functions of explainer and director of all my studies. He hoped that with intelligent assistance I should meet with little to discourage me, and should soon be able to dispense with any aid but his. Through his way of saying this, and much more to similar purpose, he placed himself on confidential terms with me in an admirable manner ; and I may state at once that he was always so zealous and honorable in fulfilling his compact with me, that le made me zealous and honorable in fulfilling mine with him. If he had shown indifference as a master, I have no doubt I should have returned the compliment as a pupil ; he gave me no such excuse, and each of us did the other justice. Nor did I ever regard him as having any thing ludicrous about him—or any thing but what was serious, honest, and good—in his tutor communication with me.

When these points were settled, and so far carried out as that I had begun to work in earnest, it occurred to me that if I could retain my bedroom in Barnard's Inn, my life would be agreeably varied, while my manners would be none the worse for Herbert's society. Mr. Pocket did not object to this arrangement, but urged that before any step could possibly be taken in it, it must be submitted to my guardian. I felt that his delicacy arose out of the consideration that the plan would save Herbert some expense ; so I went off to Little Britain, and imparted my wish to Mr. Jaggers.

" If I could buy the furniture now hired for me," said I, " and one or two other little things, I should be quite at home there."

" Go it !" said Mr. Jaggers, with a short laugh. " I told you you'd get on. Well ! How much do you want ?"

I said I didn't know how much.

" Come !" retorted Mr. Jaggers. " How much ? Fifty pounds ?"

" Oh, not nearly so much."

" Five pounds ?" said Mr. Jaggers.

This was such a great fall that I said in discomfiture, " Oh ! more than that."

" More than that, eh ?" retorted Mr. Jaggers, lying in wait for me, with his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, and his eyes on the wall behind me ; " how much more ?"

It is so difficult to fix a sum," said I, hesitating.

" Come !" said Mr. Jaggers. " Let's get at it. Twice five ; will that do ? Three times five; will that do ? Four times five ; will that do ?"

I said I thought that would do handsomely.

" Four times five will do handsomely, will it ?" said Mr. Jaggers, knitting his brows. " Now what do you make of four times five ?"

" What do I make of it ?"

" Ah !" said Jaggers ; " how much ?"

" I suppose you make it twenty pounds," said I, smiling.

Never mind what I make it, my friend," observed Mr. Jaggers, with a knowing and contradictory toss of his head. " I want to know what you make it."

" Twenty pounds, of course."

" Wemmick !" said Mr. Jaggers, opening his office-door. " Take Mr. Pip's written order, and pay him twenty pounds."

This strongly marked way of doing business made a strongly marked impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr. Jaggers never laughed but he wore great bright creaking boots, and in poising himself on these boots, with his large head bent down and his eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, he some-times caused the boots to creak, as if they laughed in a dry and suspicious way. As he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick was brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick that I hardly knew what to make of Mr. Jaggers's manner.

" Tell him that, and he'll take it as a compliment," answered Wemmick ; " he don't mean that-you should know what to make of it.—Oh !" for I looked surprised, " it's not personal ; it's professional : only professional."

Wemmick was at his desk, lunching — and crunching—on a dry, hard biscuit ; pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit of a mouth, as if he were posting them.

" Always seems to me," said Wemmick, " as if he had set a man-trap and was watching it. Suddenly—click—you're caught !"

Without remarking that man-traps were not among the amenities of life, I said I supposed he was very skillful ?

" Deep," said Wemmick, " as Australia." Pointing with his pen at the office floor, to ex-press that Australia was understood for the purposes of the figure to be symmetrically on the opposite spot of the globe. " If there was any thing deeper," added Wemmick, bringing his pen to paper, " he'd be it."

Then I said I supposed he had a fine business, and Wemmick said " Ca-pi-tal !" Then I asked if there were many clerks ? To which he replied :

" We don't run much into clerks, because there's only one Jaggers, and people won't have him at second-hand. There are only four of us. Would you like to see 'em ? You are one of us, as I may say."

I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had put all his biscuit into the post, and had paid me my money from a cash-box in a safe, the key of which safe he kept somewhere down his back, and produced from his coat-collar like an iron pigtail, we went up stairs. The house was dark and shabby, and the greasy shoulders that had left their mark in Mr. Jaggers's room seemed to have been shuffling up and down the staircase for years. In the front first floor, a clerk who looked something between a publican and a rat-catcher—a large pale, puffed, swollen man — was attentively engaged with three or four people of shabby appearance, whom he treated as unceremoniously as every body seemed to be treated who contributed to Mr. Jaggers's coffers. " Getting evidence together," said Mr. Wemmick, as we came out, " for the Bailey." In the room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with dangling hair (his crop-ping seemed to have been forgotten when he was a puppy) was similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes, whom Mr. Wemmick presented to me as a smelter who kept his pot always boiling, and who would melt me any thing I pleased —and who was in an excessive white-perspiration, as if he had been trying his art on him-self. In a back room, a high-shouldered man, with a face-ache tied up in dirty flannel, who was dressed in old black clothes that bore the appearance of having been waxed, was stooping over his work of making fair copies of the notes of the other two gentlemen, for Mr. Jaggers's own use.

This was all the establishment. When we went down stairs again Wemmick led me into my guardian's room, and said, " This you've seen already."

"Pray," said I, as the two odious casts with the twitchy leer upon them caught my sight again, " whose likenesses are those ?"

These ?" said Wemmick, getting upon a chair, and blowing the dust off the horrible heads before bringing them down. "These are two celebrated ones. Famous clients of ours that got us a world of credit. This chap (why you must have come down in the night and been peeping into the inkstand, to get this blot upon your eyebrow, you old rascal!) murdered his master, and, considering that he wasn't brought up to evidence, didn't plan it badly."

" Is it like him ?" I asked, recoiling from the brute, as Wemmick spat upon his eyebrow and gave it a rub with his sleeve.

" "Like him? It's himself, you know. The cast was made in Newgate, directly after he was taken down. You had a particular fancy for me, hadn't you, Old Artful ?" said Wemmick. He then explained this affectionate apostrophe, by touching his brooch representing the lady and the weeping willow at the tomb with the urn upon it, and saying, "Had it made for me, express!"

Is the lady anybody ?" said I.

" No," returned Wemmick. " Only his game. (You liked your bit of game, didn't you ?) No ; deuce a bit of a lady in the case, Mr. Pip, except one—and she wasn't of this slender, lady-like sort, and you wouldn't have caught her looking after this urn- unless there was some-thing to drink in it." Wemmick's attention being thus directed to his brooch, he put down the cast and polished the brooch with his pocket-handkerchief.

"Did that other creature come to the same end?" I asked. "He has the same look."

"You're right," said Wemmick, "it's the genuine look. Much as if one nostril was caught up with a horse-hair and a little fish-hook. Yes, he came to the same end; quite the natural end here, I assure you. He forged wills, this blade did, if he didn't also put the supposed testators to sleep—and it looked precious like it. You were a gentlemanly Cove, too" (Mr. Wemmick was again apostrophizing), "and you said you could write Greek. Yah, Bounceable! What a liar you were ! I never met such a liar as you !" Before putting his late friend on his shelf again, Wemmick touched the largest of his mourning rings, and said, "Sent out to buy it for me only the day before."

While he was putting up the other cast and coming down from the chair, the thought crossed my mind that all his personal jewelry was de& rived from like sources. As he had shown no diffidence on the subject, I ventured on the liberty of asking him the question, when he stood before me, dusting his hands.

" Oh yes," he returned, " these are all gifts of that kind. One brings another, you see ; that's the way of it. I always take 'ern. They're curiosities. And they're property. They may not be worth much, but, after all, they're property and portable. It don't signify to you with your brilliant look-out, but as to myself, my guiding-star always is, " Get hold of portable property."

When I had rendered homage to this light, he went on to say, in a friendly manner :

" If at any odd time, when you have nothing better to do, you wouldn't mind coming over to see me at Walworth, I could offer you a bed, and I should consider it an honor. I have not much to show you ; but such two or three curiosities as I have got you might like to look over ; and I am fond of a bit of garden and g summer-house.

I said I should be delighted to accept his hospitality.

" Thank'ee," said he ; " then we'll consider that it's to come off, when convenient to you. Have you dined with Mr. Jaggers yet ?"

" Not yet."

Well, " said Wemmick," he'll give you wine, and good wine, I'll give you punch, and not bad punch. And now I'll tell you something. When you go to dine with Mr. Jaggers, look at his housekeeper.

" Shall I see something very uncommon ?"

"Well," said Wemmick, "you'll see a wild beast tamed. Not so very uncommon," you'll tell me. I reply, that depends on the original wildness of the beast, and the amount of taming. It won't lower your opinion of Mr. Jaggers's powers. Keep your eye on it."

I told him I would do so with all the interest and curiosity that his preparation awakened. As I was taking my departure, he asked me if I would like to devote five minutes to seeing Mr. Jaggers "at it?"

For several reasons, and not least because I didn't clearly know what Mr. Jaggers would be found to be "at," I replied in the affirmative. We dived into the City, and came up in a crowded police-court, where a blood-relation (in the murderous sense) of the deceased with the fanciful taste in brooches was standing at the bar, uncomfortably chewing something ; while my guardian had a woman under examination or cross-examination—I don't know which—and was striking her, and the bench, and every body present, with awe. If any body, of whatsoever degree, said a word that he didn't approve of, he instantly required to have it " taken down." If any body wouldn't make an admission, he said, " I'll have it out of you!" and if any body made an admission, he said, " Now I have got you!" The magistrates shivered under a single bite of his finger. Thieves and thief takers hung in dread rapture on his words, and shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned in their direction. Which side the was on I couldn't make out, for he seemed to me to be grinding the whole place in a mill; I only know that when I stole out on tip-toe he was not on the side of the bench, for he was making the legs of the old gentleman who presided quite convulsive under the table, by his denunciations of his conduct as the representative of British law and justice in that chair that day.

DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE.

CONGRESS.

ON Friday, February 22, in the Senate, after the passage of a number of private bills, the Post-route Bill was taken up, and the question of compensation for carrying the overland mail was discussed by the members from California. The bill providing for the payment of expenses incurred in suppressing Indian hostilities in the Pacific Department was also discussed, but gave way to the Miscellaneous Appropriation Bill, upon which Senator Gwin, of California, made an effort to tack the Chiriqui amend-

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