CHAPTER XXI.

THE AMERICAN INVADER.

AFTER brief allusion to the incidents connected with Miss Dix's arrival in England, October, 1854, it became necessary, as has been seen, to turn backward for a while in order to narrate consecutively the Sable Island episode in her career, the news of the happy

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success of which reached her a month or more after her landing in Liverpool. At that time we left her sadly tired," as she confessed, but resolving to "take things easier in a week," and, by way of this, proposing in "ten days to go to Scotland to see the hospitals." Her immediate purpose, however, seems to have been changed in favor of three weeks of recuperative travel in Ireland.

Indeed, it now fairly began to look as though the overtaxed woman really intended to give herself a period of protracted rest, and would, moreover, have keenly enjoyed it, had not events soon occurred which were to awaken once again the master-passion of her nature and throw it into flaming activity. Thus, as late even as December 8, 1854, she is found writing to her friend, Miss Heath, in America:

"I could not but smile at your idea of my visiting the prisons in Italy, an idea, certainly, that you have the sole merit of suggesting, for it had not occurred to me, for any purpose, to penetrate into those places of so many bitter memories and horrible sufferings. What should I gain, or

what would others gain, by my passage through those dreary dungeons and under the Piombini? Where I do visit prisons, it is where I have before me a rational object and a clear purpose. As I write, the little birds are singing 'merrily, cheerily' below my windows, the flowers on my table yield a sweet fragrance, the lauristinas open their buds and flowers along the walks, and the grass is a vivid green."

From the tenor of the above letter, it would seem that Miss Dix's nature was imperfectly sympathetic with the order of sensibilities which lead the average American tourist to feel that a visit to Venice would hardly be worth the discomforts of a voyage across the Atlantic, unless it yielded an hour, at least, of the luxury of tears with poor Silvio Pellico, under the lead roofs of the Doge's palace. True, Silvio Pellico has now these many years been dead, and, it is devoutly to be hoped, in bliss with the saints in heaven. Still was he not once a poor, languishing prisoner? This singular contrast between the immediate practical objects for which sentimental tourists effusively explore prisons and chambers of torture, and those which actuate the Howards and Frys in their grim fight with groans, curses, typhus fever, and broken idiocy, is one frequently noted between amateurs and professionals in philanthropy.

By the 26th of February, however, it is evident that Miss Dix is "taking things more easily" after the wonted fashion of her last fifteen years. She has gone to Scotland, and is yielding herself to the line of least resistance as obediently as the gentle brook, only, in this case, the brook is a mountain torrent that finds the natural outlet to its heroic temper in forcing its way through barriers of granite. The first letter

which brings this out is addressed to her friend Miss Heath. Though the letter is written from Edinburgh, not a word does it contain about the dungeon in which hapless Mary, Queen of Scots, was immured, nor, indeed, about the sufferings of any other, though long departed, historical character.

"EDINBURGH, February 26, 1855.

“DEAR ANNIE, If you should visit Great Britain, recollect that no city will claim, rewardingly, so much of your time as this. I have had the good fortune to enjoy the best society here, and shall recollect so much with great pleasure that it is painful to connect with it what is very much the reverse of good, I mean a few of the many public institutions in the city and neighborhood, which are preeminently bad. Of these none are so much needing quick reform as the private establishments for the insane. I am confident that this move is to rest with me, and that the sooner I address myself to this work of humanity, the sooner will my conscience cease to suggest effort, or rebuke inaction. It will be no holiday work, however; but hundreds of miserable creatures may be released from a bitter bondage, which the people at large are quite unconscious of. It is true I came here for pleasure, but that is no reason why I should close my eyes to the condition of these most helpless of all God's creatures."

It is clear from this letter that Miss Dix has already begun to strike upon abuses and miseries in Scotland, that fill her heart with the same distress and moral wrath inspired in her by her first encounter with the like in her native New England. This conviction settled in an hour for her all international questions. Scotland or the United States! What matter in which of the two, outcast wretches were shivering in chill, dripping cells, chained to walls, beaten with

clubs. To what end, she vehemently argued, did Christ tell the story of the Samaritan stranger and the wounded Jew, if every effort to obey his call, “Go thou and do likewise," was to be paralyzed by the modern travesty of the old, hard-hearted Jewish maxim, "The Scotch have no dealings (of mercy even) with the Americans"? It was the Martin Luther spirit once again to the front: "Here I stand, God help me, I cannot otherwise!

Remonstrances from all sides now came from loved and honored English friends. Some told her plainly she could do no good, and that her action would be regarded as impertinent interference on the part of a stranger and outsider. Others reasoned with her as though she were under the spell of mere nervous restlessness. Still others deplored that, in her state of exhaustion, she should allow anything to interfere with needful rest, and so endanger her prospects of future usefulness. Among the last was her venerated friend, Mrs. William Rathbone, to whom she replied in a letter whose underscored words witness the vehemence of her feeling in the matter.

TO MRS. WILLIAM RATHBONE.

"I am not so very ill, only very variable, and, I assure you, do not work the more for being tired. I am not naturally very active, and never do anything there is a fair chance other people will take up. So, when you know I am busy, you may be sure it is leading the forlorn hope, which I conduct to a successful termination through a certain sort of obstinacy that some people make the blunder of calling zeal, and the yet greater blunder of having its first inciting cause in philanthropy. I have no particular love for my species at large, but own to an exhaustless fund of compassion.

"It is pretty clear that I am in for a serious work in both England and Scotland. I do not see the end of this beginning, but everybody says, who speaks at all on this question, that if I go away the whole work will fall off. So I pursue what I so strangely commenced."

Almost of the same date, February 20, is another letter to Mrs. Rathbone, which shows what rapid progress she is making in gaining adherents, and how utterly indifferent is now to her the question whether the work of mercy she is engaged in shall chance to fall within the boundaries of her own country or those of a country not her own.

"EDINBURGH, February 20, 1855. "MY DEAR MRS. RATHBONE, - The procession of my fate still holds me here. I expected this night to have lodged in Newcastle, but I am fairly in for reform of the establishments at Musselburg, and have consented under advice and request of Mr. Comb, Sir Robert Arbuthnot, Lord Irving (Senior Judge), the Lord Provost, Dr. Lincoln, and others, to delay another week. I fear the next move connected with this may be to London, but possibly not. Lord Teignmouth and Sir Walter Trevelyan are numbered with my allies. Your excellent friend Dr. Traill is earnest in this business. I have asked him to check the idea that some might naturally adopt that I came here to take up this measure, than which nothing was ever farther from my thoughts. Dr. Simpson, in his earnestness, introduced me to a party the other day as our timely-arrived benefactor and reformer.' This thought will kill my plans outright. So I gave Dr. Traill the commission to set others right. Unfortunately, everybody is very busy, and all say I can do what citizens cannot. The Sheriff and the Procurator Fiscal are in great perplexity.

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"I have written a great deal about myself, but do not suppose, therefore, that I am self-engrossed. Tell Mr. Rath