SIGHT IN SAVAGES


In Patagonia [Footnote: Patagonia: the southern part of Argentine
Republic.] I added something to my small stock of private facts
concerning eyes--their appearance, color, and expression--and vision,
subjects which have had a mild attraction for me as long as I can
remember. When, as a boy, I mixed with the gauchos [Footnote: Gauchos:
these people are of Spanish-American descent. They are the native
inhabitants of the pampas, and live chiefly by cattle-raising.] of the
pampas, [Footnote: Pampas: vast plains in the southern part of South
America, chiefly in the Argentine Republic.] there was one among them
who greatly awed me by his appearance and character. He was
distinguished among his fellows by his tallness, the thickness of his
eyebrows and the great length of his crow-black beard, the form and
length of his "facon," or knife, which was nothing but a sword worn
knife-wise, and the ballads he composed, in which were recounted, in a
harsh tuneless voice to the strum-strum of a guitar, the hand-to-hand
combats he had had with others of his class--fighters and
desperadoes--and in which he had always been the victor, for his
adversaries had all been slain to a man. But his eyes, his most
wonderful feature, impressed me more than anything else; for one was
black and the other dark blue. All other strange and extranatural things
in nature, of which I had personal knowledge, as, for instance,
mushrooms growing in rings, and the shrinking of the sensitive plant
when touched, and Will-o'-the-wisps, and crowing hens, and the murderous
attack of social birds and beasts on one of their fellows, seemed less
strange and wonderful than the fact that this man's eyes did not
correspond, but were the eyes of two men, as if there had been two
natures and souls in one body. My astonishment was, perhaps, not
unaccountable, when we reflect that the eye is to us the window of the
mind or soul, that it expresses the soul, and is, as it were, the soul
itself materialized.

Some person lately published in England a book entitled "Soul-Shapes,"
treating not only of the shapes of souls but also of their color. The
letter-press of this work interests me less than the colored plates
adorning it. Passing over the mixed and vari-colored souls, which
resemble, in the illustrations, colored maps in an atlas, we come to the
blue soul, for which the author has a very special regard. Its blue is
like that of the commonest type of blue eye. This curious fancy of a
blue soul probably originated in the close association of eye and soul
in the mind. It is worthy of note that while the mixed and other colored
souls seem very much out of shape, like an old felt hat or a stranded
jelly fish, the pure colored blue soul is round, like an iris, and only
wanted a pupil to be made an eye.

Here again I recall an incident of my boyhood, and am not sure that it
was not this that first gave me an interest in the subject.

One summer day, at home, I was attentively listening, out of doors, to a
conversation between two men, both past middle life and about the same
age, one an educated Englishman, wearing spectacles, the other a native,
who was very impressive in his manner, and was holding forth in a loud
authoritative voice on a variety of subjects. All at once he fixed his
eyes on the spectacles worn by the other, and, bursting into a laugh,
cried out, "Why do you always wear those eye-hiding glasses straddled
across your nose? Are they supposed to make a man look handsomer or
wiser than his fellows, or do you, a sensible person, really believe
that you can see better than another man because of them? If so, then
all I can say is that it is a fable, a delusion; no man can believe such
a thing."

He was only expressing the feeling that all persons of his class, whose
lives are passed in the semi-barbarous conditions of the gauchos on the
pampas, experience at the sight of such artificial helps to vision as
spectacles. They look through a pane of glass, and it makes the view no
clearer, but rather dimmer--how can the two diminutive circular panes
carried before the eyes produce any other effect? Besides, their sight
as a rule is good when they are young, and as they progress in life they
are not conscious of decadence in it; from infancy to old age the world
looks, they imagine, the same; the grass as green, the sky as blue as
ever, and the scarlet verbenas in the grass just as scarlet. The man
lives in his sight; it is his life; he speaks of the loss of it as a
calamity great as the loss of reason. To see spectacles amuses and
irritates him at the same time; he has the monkey's impulse to snatch
the idle things from his fellow's nose; for not only is it useless to
the wearer, and a sham, but it is annoying to others, who do not like to
look at a man and not properly see his eyes and the thought that is in
them.

To the mocking speech he had made, the other good humoredly replied that
he had worn glasses for twenty years, that not only did they enable him
to see much better than he could without them, but they had preserved
his sight from further decadence. Not satisfied with defending himself
against the charge of being a fantastical person for wearing glasses, he
in his turn attacked the mocker. "How do you know," he said, "that your
own eyesight has not degenerated with time? You can only ascertain that
by trying on a number of glasses suited to a variety of sights, all in
some degree defective. A score of men with defective sight may be
together, and in no two will the sight be the same. You must try on
spectacles, as you try on boots, until you find a pair to fit you. You
may try mine, if you like; our years are the same, and it is just
possible that our eyes may be in the same condition."

The gaucho laughed a loud and scornful laugh, and exclaimed that the
idea was too ridiculous. "What, see better with this thing!" and he took
them gingerly in his hand, and held them up to examine them, and finally
put them on his nose--something in the spirit of the person who takes a
newspaper twisted into the shape of an extinguisher, and puts it on his
head. He looked at the other, then at me, then stared all round him with
an expression of utter astonishment, and in the end burst out in loud
exclamations of delight. For, strange to say, the glasses exactly suited
his vision, which, unknown to him, had probably been decaying for years.
"Angels of heaven, what is this I see!" he shouted. "What makes the
trees look so green--they were never so green before! And so distinct--I
can count their leaves! And the cart over there--why, it is red as
blood!" And to satisfy himself that it had not just been freshly
painted, he ran over to it and placed his hand on the wood. It proved
hard to convince him that objects had once looked as distinct, and
leaves as green, and the sky as blue, and red paint as red, to his
natural sight, as they now did through those magical glasses. The
distinctness and brightness seemed artificial and uncanny. But in the
end he was convinced, and then he wanted to keep the spectacles, and
pulled out his money to pay for them there and then, and was very much
put out when their owner insisted on having them back. However, shortly
afterwards a pair was got for him; and with these on his nose he
galloped about the country, exhibiting them to all his neighbors, and
boasting of the miraculous power they imparted to his eyes of seeing the
world as no one else could see it.

--W.H. HUDSON.

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THE PINE-TREE SHILLINGS


The Captain John Hull aforesaid was the mint-master of Massachusetts,
and coined all the money that was made there. This was a of
business; for, in the earlier days of the colony, the current coinage
consisted of gold and silver money of England, and Portugal, and Spain.
These coins being scarce, the people were often forced to barter their
commodities instead of selling them.

For instance, if a man wanted to buy a coat, he perhaps exchanged a
bear-skin for it. If he wished for a barrel of molasses, he might
purchase it with a pile of pine boards. Musket-bullets were used instead
of farthings. The Indians had a sort of money, called wampum, which was
made of clam-shells; and this strange sort of specie was likewise taken
in payment of debts by the English settlers. Bank-bills had never been
heard of. There was not money enough of any kind, in many parts of the
country, to pay the salaries of the ministers; so that they sometimes
had to take quintals [Footnote: Quintals: hundredweights.] of fish,
bushels of corn, or cords of wood, instead of silver or gold.

As the people grew more numerous, and their trade one with another
increased, the want of current money was still more sensibly felt. To
supply the demand, the General Court passed a law for establishing a
coinage of shillings, sixpences, and threepences. [Footnote: Shillings:
Sixpences, and three-pences. What country did use and still uses this
system?] Captain John Hull was appointed to manufacture this money, and
was to have about one shilling out of every twenty to pay him for the
trouble of making them.

Hereupon all the old silver in the colony was handed over to Captain
John Hull. The battered silver cans and tankards, [Footnote: Tankards:
large drinking vessels.] I suppose, and silver buckles, and broken
spoons, and silver buttons of wornout coats, and silver hilts of swords
that had figured at court,--all such curious old articles were doubtless
thrown into the melting pot together. But by far the greater part of the
silver consisted of bullion [Footnote: Bullion: uncoined gold or silver
in the mass.] from the mines of South America, which the English
buccaneers [Footnote: Buccaneers: pirates.]--who were little better than





pirates--had taken from the Spaniards, and brought to Massachusetts.
All this old and new silver being melted down and coined, the result was
an immense amount of splendid shillings, sixpences, and threepences.
Each had the date, 1652, on the one side, and the figure of a pine-tree
on the other. Hence they were called pine-tree shillings. And for every
twenty shillings that he coined, you will remember, Captain John Hull
was entitled to put one shilling into his own pocket.

The magistrates soon began to suspect that the mint-master would have
the best of the bargain. They offered him a large sum of money if he
would but give up the twentieth shilling which he was continually
dropping into his own pocket. But Captain Hull declared himself
perfectly satisfied with the shilling. And well he might be; for so
diligently did he labor that, in a few years, his pockets, his
money-bags, and his strong box were overflowing with pine-tree
shillings. This was probably the case when he came into possession of
Grandfather's chair; and, as he had worked so hard at the mint, it was
certainly proper that he should have a comfortable chair to rest himself
in.

When the mint-master had grown rich, a young man, Samuel Sewell by name,
came a-courting to his only daughter. His daughter--whose name I do not
know, but we will call her Betsey--was a fine, hearty damsel, by no
means so slender as some young ladies of our own days. On the contrary,
having always fed heartily on pumpkin-pies, doughnuts, Indian puddings,
and other Puritan dainties, she was as round, and plump as a pudding
herself. With this round, rosy Miss Betsey did Samuel Sewell fall in
love. As he was a young man of good character, industrious in his
business, and a member of the church, the mint-master very readily gave
his consent.

"Yes, you may take her," said he, in his rough way, "and you'll find her
a heavy burden enough!"

On the wedding day, we may suppose that honest John Hull dressed himself
in a plum-colored coat, all the buttons of which were made of pine-tree
shillings. The buttons of his waistcoat were sixpences; and the knees of
his smallclothes [Footnote: Smallclothes: knee breeches.] were buttoned
with silver threepences. Thus attired, he sat with great dignity in
Grandfather's chair; and, being a portly old gentleman, he completely
filled it from elbow to elbow. On the opposite side of the room, between
her bridemaids, sat Miss Betsey. She was blushing with all her might,
and looked like a full-blown peony, or a great red apple.

There, too, was the bridegroom, dressed in a fine purple coat and
gold-lace waistcoat, with as much other finery as the Puritan laws and
customs would allow him to put on. His hair was cropped close to his
head, because Governor Endicott [Footnote: Governor Endicott: governor
of the Massachusetts colony from 1647 to 1665.] had forbidden any man to
wear it below the ears. But he was a very personable young man; and so
thought the bridemaids and Miss Betsey herself.

The mint-master also was pleased with his new son-in-law; especially as
he had courted Miss Betsey out of pure love, and had said nothing at all
about her portion. So, when the marriage ceremony was over, Captain Hull
whispered a word to two of his men-servants, who immediately went out,
and soon returned, lugging in a large pair of scales. There were such a
pair as wholesale merchants use for weighing bulky commodities; and
quite a bulky commodity was now to be weighed in them.

"Daughter Betsey," said the mint-master, "get into one side of these
scales."

Miss Betsey--or Mrs. Sewell, as we must now call her--did as she was
bid, like a dutiful child, without any question of the why and
wherefore. But what her father could mean, unless to make her husband
pay for her by the pound (in which case she would have been a dear
bargain), she had not the least idea.

"And now," said honest John Hull to the servants, "bring that box
hither."

The box to which the mint-master pointed was a huge square, iron-bound,
oaken chest; it was big enough, my children, for all four of you to play
hide-and-seek in. The servants tugged with might and main, but could not
lift this enormous receptacle, and were finally obliged to drag it
across the floor. Captain Hull then took a key from his girdle, unlocked
the chest, and lifted its ponderous lid. Behold! it was full to the brim
of bright pine-tree shillings, fresh from the mint; and Samuel Sewell
began to think that his father-in-law had got possession of all the
money in the Massachusetts treasury. But it was only the mint-master's
honest share of the coinage.

Then the servants, at Captain Hull's command, heaped double handfuls of
shillings into one side of the scales, while Betsey remained in the
other. Jingle, jingle, went the shillings, as handful after handful was
thrown in, till, plump and ponderous as she was, they fairly weighed the
young lady from the floor.

"There, son Sewell!" cried the honest mint-master, resuming his seat in
Grandfather's chair, "take these shillings for my daughter's portion.
Use her kindly, and thank Heaven for her. It is not every wife that's
worth her weight in silver!"

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