THE Worcester Talisman. NO. 24. FEBRUARY 21, 1829. MISCELLANY. HANNAH BINT. BY MISS MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. The Shaw, leading to Hannah Bint's habitation, is a very pretty mixture of wood and coppice; that is to say, a track of thirty or forty acres covered with fine growing timber-ash, and oak, and elm-very regularly planted; and interspersed here and there with large patches of underwood, hazel, maple, birch, holly, and hawthorn, woven into almost impenetrable thickets by long wreaths of the bramble, the briar, and the briar-rose, or by the pliant and twisting garlands of the wild honey-suckle. In other parts, the Shaw is quite clear of its bushy undergrowth, and clothed only with large beds of feathery fern, or carpets of flowers, primroses, orchises, cowslips, ground-ivy, crane's-bill, cotton-grass, solomon's seal, and forget-me-not, crowded together with a profusion and brilliancy of color, such as I have rarely seen equalled even in a garden. Here the wild hyacinth really enamels the ground with its fresh and lovely purple; there, "On aged roots, with bright green mosses clad, Dwells the wood-sorrel, with its bright thin leaves Heart-shaped and triply folded, and its root The variety is much greater than I have enumerated; for the ground is so unequal, now swelling in gentle ascents, now dimpling into dells and hollows, and the soil so different in different parts, that the sylvan Flora is unusually extensive and complete. VOL. I. vine-covered dwelling of Hannah Bint rises from amidst the pretty garden, which lies bathed in the sunshine around it. The living and moving accessories are all in keeping with the cheerfulness and repose of the landscape. Hannah's cow grazing quietly beside the keeper's pony; a brace of fat pointer puppies holding amicable intercourse with a litter of young pigs; ducks, geese, cocks, hens, and chickens, scattered over the yard; Hannah herself sallying forth from the cottagedoor, with her milk-bucket in her hand, and her little brother following with the milking stool. My friend, Hannah Bint, is by no means an ordinary person. Her father, Jack Bint, (for in all his life he never arrived at the dignity of being called John; indeed, in our parts, he was commonly known by the cognomen of London Jack,) was a drover of high repute in his profession. No man, between Salisbury Plain and Smithfield, was thought to conduct a flock of sheep so skilfully through all the difficulties of lanes and commons, streets and high-roads, as Jack Bint, and Jack Bint's famous dog, Watch; for Watch's rough, honest face, black, with a little white about the muzzle, and one white ear, was as well known at fairs and markets, as his master's equally honest and weather-beaten visage. Lucky was the dealer that could secure their services; Watch being renowned for keeping a flock together, better than any shepherd's dog on the road-Jack, for delivering them more punctually, and in better condition. A rheumatic fever came on, one hard winter, and finally settled in his limbs, reducing the most active and hardy man in the parish to the state of a confirmed cripple; then his reckless improvidence stared him in the face, and poor Jack, a thoughtless, but kind creature, and a most affectionate father, looked at his three motherless children with the acute misery of a parent, who has brought those whom he loves best in the world, to abject destitution. He found help, where he probably least expected it, in the sense and spirit of his young daughter, a girl of twelve years old. A sudden turn brings us to the boundary of the Shaw, and leaning upon a rude gate, we look over an open space of about ten acres of ground, still more varied and broken than that which we have passed, and surrounded on all sides by thick woodland. The pasture of which so great a part of the waste consists, Hannah was the eldest of the family, and looks as green as an emerald; a clear pond, had, ever since her mother's death, which with the bright sky reflected in it, lets light in- event had occurred two or three years before, to the picture; the white cottage of the keep-been accustomed to take the direction of their er peeps from the opposite coppice; and the domestic concerns, to manage her two broth ers, to feed the pigs and the poultry, and to keep house during the almost constant absence of her father. She was a quick, clever lass, of a high spirit, a firm temper, some pride, and a horror of accepting parochial relief, which is every day becoming rarer amongst the peasantry; but which forms the surest safeguard to the sturdy independence of the English character. Our little damsel possessed this quality in perfection; and when her father talked of giving up their comfortable cottage, and removing to the workhouse, whilst she and her brothers must go to service, Hannah formed a bold resolution, and, without disturbing the sick man by any participa tion of her hopes and fears, proceeded, after settling their trifling affairs, to act at once on her own plans and designs. Careless of the future as the poor drover had seemed, he had yet kept clear of debt, and by subscribing constantly to a benefit club, had secured a pittance that might at least assist in supporting him during the long years of sickness and helplessness to which he was doomed to look forward. This his daughter knew. She knew, also, that the employer in whose service his health had suffered so severely, was a rich and liberal cattle-dealer in the neighborhood, who would willingly aid an old and faithful servant, and had, indeed, come forward with offers of money. To assistance from such a quarter Hannah had no objection. Farmer Oakley and the parish were quite distinct things. Of him, accordingly, she asked, not money, but something much more in his own way" a cow! any cow! old or lame, or what not, so that it were a cow! she would be bound to keep it well; if she did not, he might take it back again. She even hoped to pay for it by and by, by instalments, but that she would not promise!" and partly amused, partly interested by the child's earnestness, the wealthy yeoman gave her, not as a purchase, but as a present, a very fine young Alderney. She then went to the lord of the manor, and, with equal knowledge of character, begged his permission to keep her cow in the Shaw common. "Farmer Oakley had given her a fine Alderney, and she would be bound to pay the rent, and keep her father off the parish, if he would only let it graze on the waste;" and he, too, half from real good nature-half, not to be outdone in liberality by his tenant, not only granted the requested permission, but reduced the rent so much, that the produce of the vine seldom fails to satisfy their kind landlord. Now, Hannah showed great tact in setting up as a dairy-woman. She could not have chosen an occupation more completely unoccupied, or more loudly called for. One of the most provoking of the petty difficulties which beset people with a small establishment, in this neighborhood, is the trouble, almost the impossibility, of procuring the pastoral luxuries of milk, eggs, and butter, which rank, un fortunately, amongst the indispensable necessaries of housekeeping. To your thorough bred Londoner, who, whilst grumbling over his own breakfast, is apt to fancy that thick cream, and fresh butter, and newlaid eggs, grow, so to say, in the country-form an actual part of its natural produce-it may be some comfort to learn, that in this great grazing district, however the calves and the farmers may be the better for cows, nobody else is; that farmers' wives have ceased to keep poultry, and that we unlucky villagers sit down often to our first meal in a state of destitution, which may well make him content with his thin milk, and his Cambridge butter, when compared to our imputed pastoralities. Hannah's Alderney restored us to one rural privilege. Never was so cleanly a little milkmaid. She changed away some of the cottage finery, which, in his prosperous days, poor Jack had pleased himself with bringing home; the China tea-service, the gilded mugs, and the painted waiters, for the more useful utensils of the dairy, and speedily established a regular and gainful trade in milk, eggs, butter, honey, and poultry-for poultry they had always kept. Her domestic management prospered equally. Her father, who retained the perfect use of his hands, began a manufacture of mats and baskets, which he constructed with great nicety and adroitness; the eldest boy, a sharp and clever lad, cut for him his rushes and oziers ; erected, under his sister's directions, a shed for the cow, and enlarged and cultivated the garden (always with the good leave of her kind patron, the lord of the manor) until it became so ample, that the produce not only kept the pig, and half-kept the family, but afforded another branch of merchandize to the indefatigable directness of the establishment. For the younger boy,less quick and active, Hannah contrived to obtain an admission to the charity-school, where he made great progress retaining him at home, however, in the haymaking reaping, and leasing season, or whenever his services could be made available, to the great annoyance of the schoolmaster, whose favorite he is, and who piques himself so much on George's scholarship (your heavy sluggish boy at country work often turns out clever at his book,) that it is the general opinion of the village, that this much-vaunted pupil will, in process of time, be promoted to the post of assistant, and may, possibly, in course of years, rise to the dignity of a parish pedagogue in his own person; so that his sister, although still making him useful at odd times, now considers George as pretty well off her hands, whilst his elder brother, Tom, could take an undergardener's place directly, if he were not too important at home to be spared even for a day. In short, during the five years that she has ruled at the Shaw cottage, the world has gone well with Hannah Bint. Her cow, her calves, is so. head. There they stand, as much like lovers as may be; he smiling, and she blushinghe never looking so handsome, nor she so pretty, in all their lives. There they stand, in blessed forgetfulness of all except each other; as her pigs, her bees, her poultry, have each, in to the becoming, the suitable both in form and their several ways, thriven and prospered.- texture, which would be called the highest She has even brought Watch to like butter-degree of coquetry, if it did not deserve the milk, as well as strong beer, and has nearly better name of propriety. Never was such a persuaded her father (to whose wants and transmogrification beheld. The lass is really wishes she is most anxiously attentive) to ac- pretty, and Ned Miles has discovered that she cept of milk as a substitute for gin. Not but There he stands, the rogue close at her Hannah hath had her enemies as well as her side (for he hath joined her whilst we have betters. Why should she not? The old wo- been telling her little story, and the milking man at the lodge, who always piqued herself || is over!)--there he stands-holding her milk on being spiteful, and crying down new ways, pail in one hand, and stroking Watch with foretold, from the first, that she would come the other; whilst she is returning the comto no good, and could not forgive her for fals-pliment, by patting Neptune's magnificent ifying her prediction; and Betty Barnes, the flattering widow of a tippling farmer, who rented a field, and set up a cow herself, and was universally discarded for insufferable dirt, said all that the wit of an envious woman could devise against Hannah and her Alder-happy a couple as ever trod the earth. There ney; nay, even Ned Miles, the keeper, her next neighbor, who had, whilom held entire sway over the Shaw common, as well as its coppices, grumbled as much as so good-natured and genial a person could grumble, when he found a little girl sharing his dominion, a cow grazing beside his pony, and vulgar cocks and hens hovering around the buck wheat destined to feed his noble pheasants. Nobody that had been accustomed to see that paragon of keepers, so tall and manly, and pleasant looking, with his merry eye, and bis knowing smiles, striding gaily along, in his green coat, and his gold laced hat, with his noble Newfoundland dog, (a retriever is the sporting word,) and his beautiful spaniel flirt at his heels, could conceive how eskew he looked, when he first found Hannah and Watch holding equal reign over his old territory, the Shaw common. Yes! Hannah hath had her enemies; but they are passing away. The old woman at the lodge is dead, poor creature; and Betty Barnes, having herself taken to tippling, has lost the few friends she once possessed, and looks, luckless wretch, as if she would soon die too!-and the keeper?—why, he is not dead, or like to die; but the change that has taken place there is the most astonishing of all-except, perhaps, the change in Hannah herself. Few damsels of twelve years old, generally a very pretty age, were less pretty than Hannah Bint. Short and stunted in her figure, thin in face, sharp in feature, with a muddled complexion, wild sun-burnt hair, and eyes, whose very brightness had in them something startling, over-informed, super-subtle, too clever for her age. At twelve years old she had quite the air of a little old fairy. Now, at seventeen, matters are mended. Her complex. ion has cleared: her countenance, her figure, has shot up into height and lightness, and a sort of rustic grace; her bright, acute eye is softened and sweetened by the womanly wish to please; her hair is trimmed, and curled, and brushed, with exquisite neatness; and her whole dress arranged with that nice attention they stand, and one would not disturb them REMEMBER ME. There is not two other words in the language that can back a more fruitful train of past remembrances of friendship than these. Look through your library, and when you cast your eye upon a volume that contains the name of an old companion, it will say-remember me. Have you an ancient Album, the repository of the mementoes of early affection?-turn over its leaves, stained by the finger of time, sit down and ponder upon the names enrolled on them; each says, remember me. Go into the crowded church-yard, among the marble tombs, read the simple and brief inscriptions that perpetuate the memory of departed ones; they too have a voice that speaks to the hearts of the living, and says remember me. Walk in the scenes of early rambles: the well-known paths of the winding streams, the overspreading trees, the green and gently-sloping banks, will recal the dreams of juvenile pleasure, and the recollections of youthful companions; they too bear the treasured injunctions-remember me. And this is all that is left at last of the wide circle of our earthly friends. Scattered by fortune, or called away by death, or thrown without our band by the changes of circumstances or of character; in time, we find ourselves left alone with the recollection of what they were. Some were our benefactors, and won us by their favour; others, again, were models of virtue, and shared our praises and admiration. It was thus a little while, and then the chances of the world broke in upon the delightful intercourse, it ceased. Yet still, we do all we can to discharge the one sacred, and honest, and an honourable debt-we remember them. The tribute, too, of remembrance which we delight to pay to others, we desire for ourselves.-The wish for applause; the thirst for fame; the desire that our names would shine down to future posterity in the formed at the mouth of the Oregon. The rivers will be traversed with steamboats, and the rocky mountains will be scaled with canals and railroads, and it would not be singular if the Merchants of New Orleans should in a few years, open a trade with China by the way of the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Oregon. National Advertiser. WESTERN ANTIQUITIES. glory of recorded deeds, is a feverish, unhappy | passion, compared with the unambitious desire to retain, even beyond the span of life, the affections of the warm-hearted few who shared our joys and sorrows in the world. I once read the brief inscription, remember me,' on a tomb-stone in a country churchyard, with a tear, that the grave of Bonaparte would not have called forth. But whom do we always remember with affection?-the virtuous, the kind, the warm-hearted; those who have endeared themselves to us by the amiableness of their characters. It is the mind, the disposition, the habits, the feelings of our friends which attach us to them most strongly; which, form the only lasting bond of affection; which alone can secure our affectionate remembrance -Then, if we would be remembered with the kindliest feelings; if we would be embalmed in the memory of those we love; if we desire, that when fortune or fate shall separate us from our friends, they may long think of us, we must possess ourselves the same character we love in others. Never was a more noble line written in the history of man than this-mingled with verdure and the flowers; when "The first emotion of pain he ever causedwas on his departure." OREGON SETTLEMENT. The mouth of Columbia river, as it was named by white men, or Oregon as the natives call it, seems destined soon to become the scene of busy trade, as it may be appre hended it will in future be times of combat and bloodshed among the rival commercial nations of the earth. Already in fact, has the British government in the true character of Englishmen extended her jurisdiction over all north west America, not already in the occupancy of some other power. And nothing remains for the government of the United States but to take possession of the Rocky Mountains, washed by the Pacific Ocean, and extending back to the 61st degree of North Latitude. One of the objects contemplated in establishing the authority of this government at the mouth of the Oregon, is the assumption and protection of our rights, now seriously menaced by the all-grasping hand of Great Brit ain. A voyage to China from the mouth of the Oregon is performed in about thirty days. How splendid is the vision which imagination frames of the greatness and power of the republic; extended, not only by conquest, but by the enterprise of her free citizens from the shores of the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, united together and chained as it were to indissoluble union, by interests the most powerful and by means of easy internal communication, wonderfully designed by heaven, and still more wonderfully increased by the wisdom and industry of man. Soon shall we see the vast regions west of the Mississippi covered with a population like our own, and supplied with merchandise from a city that shall be Our country has been described abroad, as sterile of moral interest. We have, it is said, no monuments, no ruins, none of the colossal remains of temples, and baronial castles, and monkish towers: nothing to connect the heart and the imagination with the past; none of the dim recollections of the time gone by, to associate the past with the future. We have not travelled in other lands. But in travelling over our vast prairies, in viewing our ancient forests, planted by nature, and nurtured only by ages; when we have seen the sun rising over a boundless plain, where the blue of the heavens in all directions touched, and our thoughts have traversed rivers of a thou- MADMAN AND SPORTSMAN.-A physician of Milan, who understood the cure of madmen, had a pit of water in his house, in which he kept his patients, some up to the knees, some to the girdle, & some to the chin,according to the greater or lesser degree of madness with which they were affected. One of the madmen, who was on the point of his recovery, happened to be standing at the house-door, saw a young nobleman pass, with his hawk upon his fist well mounted, and with the usual equipage of hawking-dogs, falconers, &c. behind him. The madman demanded to know to what use was this preparation, and was courteously answered to kill certain birds.— "And how much," said the madman, "may be the worth of all the fowls you kill in a year?" The nobleman replied, five or ten crowns." "And what," said the madman, "may your hawks, spaniels, horses, &c. stand you in the year?" "About five thousand crowns," replied the gentleman. "Five thousand crowns!" replied the madman; and gazing at him a moment with the wild earnestness of an approaching frenzy, he seized him by the shoulder, and forcing him into the pit, immerced him several times in the water, (the usual practice of his master, with his more desperate petients.) Having thus ducked him, he led him back to the door. "Hark'ye, my friend," said he, dissmissing him; "take my advice, and make all possible haste from this house-for, should our master come home, he'll drown you but what he will cure you." LAFAYETTE'S BUST.-A finely executed marble bust of Gen. Lafayette has been presented, by an unknown hand, to Congress, and deposited in one of the rooms of the Library. From whom, or whence it comes no one can tell, but it certainly is a most excellent likeness of the General. It would appear to be the work of P.J. David D'Angers, and inscrib. ed to Gen. Lafayette, 1828. Its proportions are colossal, but the marble is not very fine. On the right are inscribed the following words, taken from his last speech to the President of the United States, September 7th, 1825. "God bless you, sir, and all who surround us. God bless the American People, each of their States, and the Federal Government. Accept this patriotic farewell of an overflowing heart; such will be its last throb when it ceases to beat." On the left are the following, taken from his speech in the House of Representatives on the 10th Dec. 1824. the garden, beholds his wife lost to every pleasure, but that of weeping over the spikenard, which still flourished under her care. A GOOD NAME. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, or precious ointment. It is the richest jewel of the soul-the purest treasure of mortal things afforded. Give me this, deservedly, and I can face frowns of fortune, can be pointed at as the child of poverty, and still know what it is to be happy.-The storm may indeed beat upon me, and the chilling blasts assail me; but charity will receive me into her dwelling, will give food to eat, and raiment to put on, and will kindly assist me to raise a new roof over the ashes of the old one; and I shall again sit by my fireside, and again taste the sweets of friendship and home. SAYINGS.-The manner of giving,shows the character of the giver more than the gift itself. There is a princely manner of giving, and a royal manner of accepting. Who forgets, and does not forget himself, in the joy of giving and accepting, is sublime. Who, at the pressing solicitation of bold and noble confidence, hesitates one moment before he consents, proves himself at once inexorable. The worst of all knaves are those who can mimic their former honesty. RED JACKET.-There was a time when we looked npon this chief as a proud remnant of that beroic race whom we must yet honor as lords of the soil. We had even viewed his intemperate habits and his hatred of Missionaries, if not with complacency, at least with charity. The former had the plea of habit, planted by intercourse with whites, and "What better pledge can be given of a persevering national love of liberty, when those blessings are evidently the result of a virtuous resistance of oppression, and of institutions founded on the Rights of Man, and the repub-confirmed by an old age spent in that inlican principle of self government." AFFECTION.-One of the prettiest specimens of Hindoo Poetry celebrates the history of a youth, who soon after his marriage, being compelled to make a long journey, takes leave of his bride in the garden belonging to his house. There he plants a spikenard; and enjoins her to watch over it with the most assiduous care. tercourse; the other, the plea of ignorance, and that experience in the insid ious arts of white men, which might easily lead stronger minds to spurn what they would offer, however plausible it might seem. But when we see him, the hero of the forest, the oak of his tribe, following the sickening fashion of travelling lecturers-holding talk for moneydancing in museums and theatres, we know not which to despise most, the van "As long as this plant flourishes," said he, "all will be fortunate with me; but should it wither away, some fatal misfortune will, assuredly, happen to me." Business, of an impor-ity which moves him, or the cupidity of tant nature, detained the bridegroom from his his flatterers, who hang around him, and home for several years. On his return, he asas- make him a mere mountebank for their sumed the garb of a Hindoo mendicant in orown profit. Red-Jacket, twenty years der to see whether his wife had been faith ful ago, would scorn to hold a talk for money, or to exhibit the sacred dances of to him or not during absence. Thus disguised, he calls at his house, and being admitted into |