The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863

In this arrangement, Hiram had unquestionably decided to forego the luxury of pleasant female society. Mrs. Eastman had a sour-looking countenance, which did not in the least belie her disposition. In fact, her husband had a hard time of it, and doubtless thought Hiram's presence might prove a distraction for him—or for his wife. In either case, he would be the gainer, even if Hiram suffered somewhat. The latter did not appear to be apprehensive, but made himself at home in short order.

Then, and not before, he called on Mr. Bennett, and told him, ere the latter had time to inquire, that he had quit Burnsville, and was now clerk for Hendly, Layton & Gibb, ship chandlers.

'Well, that's a move, I declare! Did you suppose I was so full I could not make room for you?'

'Not that; but, you see, I am not going into your line,' said Hiram, blandly.

Till that moment Mr. Bennett had himself no idea how much he was calculating on Hiram's assistance in his largely increasing business. He was greatly disappointed. He was too shrewd, however, to express much regret. He only said, 'I should have been glad to have had you with me, but you know your own business best, I dare say. You will do anywhere, I guess. Now you are here, come and see us often, and let me know when I can be of use to you.'

Keen men sympathize with keen; knaves with knaves; the good with the good.

CHAPTER XVI

When Sarah Burns, after Hiram's departure, sat down, quietly to think over the events of the past few days—for during the week he remained in the house she had no opportunity for reflection—she was sensible of a species of relief that she was no longer bound to him.

It was not permitted in nature nor in God's providence that this fellow should have lasting power over one so true hearted. With such, his influence was not to become absolute or controlling.

This was Sarah's first love affair, and she had no experience as to her own emotions, and possessed, therefore, no test by which to judge of their intensity. Now she could look back and see that her heart had not been satisfied.

'Not satisfied!' How many a young girl has been forced bitterly to take up this burden—when too late. 'Disappointed!' How many, when it is past help, whisper the terrible word in secret to their souls! How many are now dragging out a despairing existence, chained to some Hiram Meeker, with heart-wants never to be filled; with sympathies never to be responded to; with rich capacities for loving, which find in return neither tenderness nor appreciation; with affections, and no lawful object;—glowing, earnest natures companioned with calculation and selfishness and a remorseless subtlety; full, fresh, joyous vitality, yoked to a living corpse.

Thank God! for Sarah Burns it was not too late.

It is true, she persuaded herself she loved Hiram, and that she enjoyed every delight which flows from affections mutually pledged. But, really, it was entirely on one side. He, as we know, utterly selfish, had no genuine affection to impart; so all was made up by her. Out of her full imagination she brought rich treasures, and bestowed them on her lover, and then, valued him for possessing them.

Still, for Sarah Burns it was not too late.

That afternoon, when she came and threw her arms around her father's neck, and pleaded to come back again to his confidence, she was fully convinced of Hiram's real character. From that moment everything was settled. She permitted no explanations; for Hiram, when he saw how summarily he was to be disposed of, felt not only piqued, but roused, I may say, to a certain degree of appreciation of the object he was to lose so unexpectedly. He believed Sarah was so strongly attached to him that she would become reconciled to his going to New York, and then he could permit the affair to drag along to suit his convenience, to be revived or die out at his pleasure. So all his attempts at a private interview, his injured looks, and woful countenance went for nothing.

Sarah treated him precisely as she would treat an ordinary acquaintance, while Mr. Burns was careful to make no allusion to the subject, or permit the slightest difference in his conduct toward his confidential clerk. Hiram, therefore, was the one to feel uncomfortable; but the week was soon brought to a close, and he departed.

He went first to Hampton to visit his home. When the wagon drove to Mr. Burns's house to receive his luggage, Sarah was entertaining two or three young ladies who were paying her a morning visit. I dare say there was an object in the call not altogether amiable: namely, to see how Sarah would 'appear' in respect to Hiram's departure, and to find out, if possible, by the way she bore it, whether or not there was anything in the rumor of an engagement between them. Hiram had already taken a most affectionate leave of each of these young ladies the day before, and they thought he was to depart early in the morning. Much to their disappointment, Sarah Burns never appeared more natural or more at ease. She spoke of Hiram's going to New York as a settled plan, determined on even before he came to Burnsville; and (the trunks were now all in the carriage) at length exclaimed, 'Come, girls; I think Hiram must be waiting to bid us good-by.'

Thereupon, all went on the piazza, and thus frustrated a design of Hiram of taking a brief but most pathetic and impressive and never-to-be-forgotten farewell of his cruel betrothed. He had prepared a short speech for the occasion, which he believed would plant a dagger in her heart. He intended, just as soon as everything was ready, to find Sarah, deliver his speech, then rush to the carriage, and be almost instantly lost sight of.

As it was, he saw with intense mortification a bevy of girls come running out, each with something to say, and all at once—for, to conceal any little private feeling of her own, each one was as gay as possible. At last Hiram was forced to mount the wagon (the trunks filled all the vacant space, and, besides, were provokingly placed so that his seat was a most awkward one) and to drive away very unromantically, amid the adieus and railleries of the commingled voices.

CHAPTER XVII

Freed from Hiram's disagreeable presence, Sarah Burns, as soon as her visitors had left, sat down to think; and she experienced, as I have already remarked, a species of relief. By degrees her spirits rose to their old, natural level, and then the fact struck her that they had not of late been so elastic and joyous as formerly. Presently she jumped up, and, snatching her hat, she resolved to run into the office, as she used to do in 'old times,' and surprise her father by a little visit. She tripped cheerfully out, and was soon at the office door. Here she paused. Her heart beat loudly, but it was with pleasure. Then she quietly opened the door and stepped in.

'Good morning, sir,' she exclaimed. 'Here is your old clerk back again.'

She rushed up and gave him a kiss, and received a dozen in return.

Mr. Burns used afterward to say it was the most blissful moment of his life.

After that, how they enjoyed themselves!—like school children let loose. Sarah ran up, and down, and around the office, through the front room and the little room back, then in the closets, her father following, as much of a child as she—his heart also freed of a load, and his soul filled with sunshine—no Hiram Meeker to cast a baleful shadow over it.

There were not any explanations between those two. Explanations were not in the least necessary. Each felt that all was explained, and all was right and happy again. That was enough.

After a while, some one came in to see Mr. Burns on business, and Sarah took her departure. With a light heart she retraced her steps toward home. She had reached the memorable corner where she once encountered Hiram—it was on his first visit to Burnsville—when, quite abruptly, as it seemed, a tall, handsome young man stood directly in her way.

She stopped, of course; she could not do otherwise, unless she chose to run into the arms of the stranger. A pair of bright, dark eyes were turned inquiringly on her.

'I have found you at last,' said the young man, in a pleasant tone. 'I have just left your house. I did not think you would be out so early. And now that we do meet,' he continued, 'I perceive you don't know me: that is too bad!'

Sarah stood like one in a trance. At first she thought the man was deranged; but he looked so handsome and so intelligent, she quickly abandoned that hypothesis. Then she began to think she was a little out of her wits herself. That seemed to her more probable.

Meanwhile, there he stood, directly and squarely in her path. He appeared rather to enjoy Sarah's perplexity.

'Yes, it is unkind in you to forget an old friend—one you promised to remember always.'

Sarah was beginning to recover herself. It was evident, from the whole appearance of the stranger, that he would not adopt this singular mode of addressing her, unless he had some claim to her acquaintance. So she reasoned. Resolving she would no longer play the part of a bashful miss, she said: 'I am very sorry to be obliged to confess it; but, really, I have not the slightest recollection of you.'

'Ah, that is the way with the sex!' continued the other, in the same tone. 'Who would have thought it? After bestowing on me such a precious token (here he presented a locket, in which he exhibited a curl of hair), you now propose to ignore me altogether.'

'I am inclined to think you are the one in error. I am quite sure you mistake me for some other person,' retorted Sarah, quietly.

'Possibly. Therefore, permit me to inquire whether or not I have the honor of addressing Miss Sarah Burns?'

'Yes.'

'Yet you have no recollection of presenting me with this?'

'You must have shown me the wrong locket,' said Sarah, dryly. 'The hair is several shades lighter than mine.'

'True, I did not think of that,' said the mysterious young gentleman.' I ought to have known it would be so; but it never occurred to me. Good-by!'

He bowed courteously and passed on his way, leaving Sarah in complete bewilderment. She walked slowly toward home. She roused her memory. She went through the list of her acquaintances. She endeavored to recall those she had encountered when taking some little trips with her father—but the stranger was not any of these.

A faint outline was, nevertheless, before her. A shadowy image, the same, yet not the same, with the young man who had stood in her path.

'Who? where? when?'

In vain she asked herself the questions.

Over the past hangs a dim uncertainty, like that which veils the future, and, young as Sarah was, she could already realize it. At length she stopped her efforts, and recurred to the more pleasing task of thinking about the young gentleman as he now appeared, without respect to any other circumstance. She recalled his manly form. He was nearly six feet in height. How bright his eyes were, and how mischievously they were turned on her, yet how kindly—she was almost ready to think lovingly—when the locket was produced! What about that locket? She never gave anybody a locket, never—not even Hiram Meeker. Faugh! It sickened her to think of him now, and in this connection. Only imagine it! A lock of her hair. How ridiculous! No living being had a lock of her hair. She knew that well enough. Besides, this was so much lighter—as light as hers was when she was a child. A sudden thought struck her. Strange; how very, very strange! Yet, it was true. Once in her life she had given a single curl! Was this it? Had she promised anything with the curl? And was this young man he? Sarah's heart beat tumultuously as she entered the house. She reflected on the words of the stranger as he turned to leave her. Should she see him again? * * *

A message came from her father. He would bring a gentleman to dine with him—that was all.

Who would it be? the one she had lately parted with? Not a doubt of it. That she felt instinctively.

On a certain occasion, as the reader may remember, Sarah had imperceptibly prepared herself to receive Hiram Meeker. It was the first time he took tea at the house. This day she did the very same thing to receive somebody else. There is no use to deny it, for such is the fact. Yet it was but a short week since she was the betrothed of Hiram, and believed she loved him. That very morning they had separated forever!

It often happens that a young girl is deceived by or disappointed in her admirer. They may prove to be incompatible, or, what is worse, he may prove unworthy; and she discards him, but with reluctance, after a struggle, leaving a pang in her heart, while she mourns over her lost love—not lover. Him she no longer regards with any feeling; but the memory of the old attachment is dear to her, though it be sad, and time is required before the heart will be attracted by new objects, or seek to be engrossed by a fresh passion.

The bond between Hiram and Sarah was of no such nature. He exercised a species of magnetism over her, in consequence of her lively and sympathetic nature; but it was of a kind that, when broken, neither pleasing nor mournful reminiscences remained—no recollection of past joys, no thought of former happiness and bliss. The fountains of the heart had not been reached, and when Hiram Meeker quitted her presence, she was as though she had never known him.

Thus it was, when she received her father's message, her pulses thrilled at the idea of meeting the one he was to bring with him.

Already she guessed who it was.

VATES

Poets are never in the wrong,Whate'er the present age may say:The future only, in their song,Will see the truth of this our day;And what a Bryant says and singsMay well outweigh all false-born things.

THE PHYSICAL SURVEY OF NEW YORK HARBOR AND ITS APPROACHES

No coast offers more admirable opportunities for the study, on a large scale, of the effects of winds, waves, and currents, tidal and others, on the movable matters which line the ocean shores, than that from New York southward. Besides the peculiar local actions, there are general ones, which are changing, slowly or rapidly, the whole of the sandy coast line. While here the pebbles of the ancient drift are being assorted by size and shape, and rolled into ridges and heaps, by the action of the waves, there heaps and ridges of wet sand are formed by the waves and travel under their motion, and the dry sand is forced along by the winds, covering up meadows and woods, and changing the ocean shore line; and in other or the same localities, sub-currents, setting in a nearly constant general direction, roll onward the movable materials of the bottom of the sea, or tidal currents roll them forward and backward, giving the general direction of the resulting motion.

The reports of the Government and State engineers and commissioners, public and private, who have studied the improvements of different localities, have given us glimpses of the local, and even of the general actions; but most commonly there has been a want of means or such preliminary experiments as were necessary fully to develop the actions, and which, like the stitch which saves nine, would often have saved the costly experiment on the full scale of construction. Remarkable instances of complete modes of investigation occur in the examination of the Mississippi River by Captain A.A. Humphreys and Lieutenant Abbot, of the Topographical Engineers, and by the commission of which General Totten, Prof. Bache, and Admiral Davis were members. As most familiar to me, from having taken an official part in the experiments and observations made, I propose to notice the Physical Surveys of New York and Boston, indicating the chief agents which are at work in destroying and building up, so as to produce the present condition of these important ports.

In connection with the surveys made a few years since by direction of the Commissioners on Harbor Encroachments, there was undertaken, as an incidental inquiry, an investigation into the physical conditions under which the shoals and beaches in and about New York harbor had submitted to those changes of position and area which the repeated surveys revealed. It was at the request of these Commissioners that Professor Bache, the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, gave his personal attention to this subject. He drew up a comprehensive scheme for a series of observations upon all the natural agencies at work, and, for the execution of the project, selected one of his assistants, whose experience had already been considerable in similar studies.

The investigation was commenced in the lower harbor early in the spring of 1856. Records were kept of tides, currents, winds, and waves, and the most careful notes were made on the immediate effects of these working agents as observable in the movements of the sands.

A glance at a general coast chart discovers at once a marked contrast between two different sections of our seaboard: to the eastward of us, the principal harbors of New England are rockbound, with elevated back countries; while to the southward, in the region of alluvial drift, which extends all along the coast of the Middle and Southern States, the harbors have flat and sandy shores. The harbor and neighborhood of New York, holding an intermediate position between these diverse sections, exhibit a singular combination of the leading physical features of both, and present to the hydrographer a field for research that is quite without a parallel.

We recognize in the Bar of New York simply a submerged portion of that sandy cordon which skirts the coast from Montauk Point to Florida; and although, in the ordinary sense, the lower entrance to the harbor is not an inlet, it may nevertheless be regarded as belonging to the same class.

This sandy cordon, which may be said to be the principal characteristic of our coast, is an exceedingly interesting feature; it appears to have been formed by the action of the sea, which has disintegrated the borders of shallow flats, bearing away the light vegetable moulds, but suffering the coarse quartz sand to remain rolled up into ridges. In many places the dry winds have caught up these sands, when laid bare at low water, and elevated them into dunes or galls.

The distance of the sand ridge from the mainland is observed to vary with the slope of the adjacent country. It is the motion of translation which a wave acquires on reaching shallow water, that gives it such great capacity for the transportation of material.

This translative action, as it is technically called, commences ordinarily in about three fathoms water, and is most violent in six or eight feet depths, within which the sea breaks. It is just within the breaker that the windrows of sand are observed to form on exposed flats.

This disposition of the sea to cast up well defined boundaries of sand along its margin, is so great and persistent, that the inland waters are dammed up and suffered only to escape into the ocean by narrow avenues, where their rapid currents maintain a supremacy of power—albeit with unceasing contest.

Wherever, along our coast, the waves drive obliquely upon the beach, a movement of the sand takes place, and the inlets are consequently continually shifting.

The Long Island inlets are moving westward, and Sandy Hook advances to the northward, because the sea rolls in along the axis of the great bay between Long Island and New Jersey, and necessarily sweeps along the beaches, instead of taking the direction of a normal to the shore line.

The movement of Sandy Hook to the northward is, however, a problem not so easily disposed of as we might conceive from the above considerations; for although, in the most general sense, its existence must be regarded as the work of the waves, there are other agents influencing materially its form and its rate of progress. The currents control, to a very great extent, the final disposition of the sands worn away or kept in motion by the waves.

Professor Bache's investigations in the neighborhood of Sandy Hook have been published, and we should not especially refer to them here, except that the recent physical changes reported by Colonel Delafield to the Engineer Department, have reawakened an interest in the matter.

The measurements of the Coast Survey, made in 1856 and 1857, showed that the Hook was being washed away on the east and west shores, but was extending slowly to the northwest, where it already encroached on the main ship channel. This order of things has continued up to the present time, and is now in progress.

The able Superintendent of the fortifications at Sandy Hook has evinced considerable alarm lest the new fort shall fall a prey to the encroachments, or be separated from the main body of the beach by slue-ways. The Coast Surrey has been notified of the matter, and the assistant to whom I have already referred has visited the Hook, and made an informal report, which agrees essentially with the statements of Colonel Delafield. A complete and reliable report can only be made upon actual surveys; and we trust these will be executed, and the Government placed in possession of the whole truth.

We understand that Colonel Delafield has already, upon a small scale, made some very successful experiments of curvilineal dikes, constructed with caissons of concrete; and we have no doubt that, with adequate means at his disposal, this ingenious engineer could avert the dangers which threaten, not only the fort, but the noble harbor of New York.

To return to the Physical Survey, and to speak as briefly as we may upon so extended a subject, we hold that it is possible, by a patient collection of facts and figures, to determine the natural scheme of the harbor—we had almost said the formula of its development.

It is ascertained that the group of shoals which form the Bar—composed, as they are, for the most part, of loose and shifting sands—are not accidental accumulations, modified by violent storms and freshets, but that they are orderly arrangements, made by the currents, to whose unceasing activities are due the form and preservation of each bank and channel. The peculiar contours of the shoals given by our most ancient charts are still developed by recent surveys, although alterations in magnitude have taken place. The order of the physical forces is unchanged, but their work is still progressing.

Now, since these currents have determinable laws, regulating their periods, durations, velocities, and directions, it was only necessary to compile observations, in order to reduce this study to a simple consideration of the composition of forces.

'The process by which sand is swept along by currents upon the bottom of the sea, is not unlike the motion of dunes upon the land; a ridge of sand is propagated in the direction of the current by the continual rolling of the particles from the rear to the front. This movement is exceedingly slow when compared with that of the current which induces it, and for this reason a shoal, though traversed by violent tidal currents, may, as a whole, remain stationary when the alternate drifts are equal and opposite; for in this case, though the sand upon the surface is drifted to and fro, it undergoes no more ultimate change of position than it would if the forces which acted upon it were simultaneous and in equilibrium.'9

Of course, so simple a case as that in which the ebb and flood forces are equal and opposite, is rarely presented; for at most of the stations on the Bar the direction of the flow varies from hour to hour, going quite round the circle in a half-tidal day: the velocities and directions also vary with the depth. These circumstances complicate the computation a little, but the problem is still simple and direct. Everything depends upon the faithfulness of the observations.

The physical diagrams which have been plotted from the results of these studies may be regarded as decided successes, for they show in most cases that the shoals lie in the foci or in the equilibrium points of the observed forces.

The current stations occupied cover a district embracing not only the immediate vicinity of the shoals, but extending many miles from them in different directions; for it was deemed necessary that each elementary force should be separately studied before it reached its working point. It has been ascertained that among the causes of the different shoal formations there exists a mutual relation and dependence, so that they may be regarded as a single physical system. It will be seen from this consideration, that any artificial disturbance of the conditions, at a single point, may interrupt the operations of nature in other localities more or less remote, or cause general changes in the hydrogaphy of the harbor.