Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36 New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 by Various

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From the time of the coin-robbery the older acquaintances of Mr. Mickley
noticed a decided change in him. On the subject of coins, once so voluble,
he grew very reticent. His business, which had for many years appeared
rather a pastime than a task to him, grew irksome. After a period of
uncertainty, he finally decided to close up his affairs and spend some
years in foreign travel. In spite of advanced age, he was both physically
and mentally well equipped for such a journey. His health had always been
good. His temper seemed never to be ruffled. Of the French and German
languages he was a master, and he had some knowledge of the Spanish,
Italian, and Swedish. His previous extensive acquaintance with men of many
nations and habits was kept fresh in mind by a remarkable memory. With all
these advantages, the period of his travels was the most interesting of
his life.

Mr. Mickley set sail on the 5th of June, 1869, being at that time a few
months past his seventieth year. He remained abroad for three years,
visiting every country in Europe, ascending the Nile to the first cataract,
passing through the Suez Canal, and across a portion of Asia Minor and
Palestine. He made two trips to Northern Sweden to behold the spectacle of
the midnight sun. Being a week too late on the first season, he tried it
again the following year. Passing through the entire length of the Gulf of
Bothnia, and ascending the Tornea River, he entered Lapland, crossing the
Arctic circle and penetrating the Arctic zone in a sledge-journey of
seventy miles. The indomitable old traveller pushed on until he reached a
small lumber-village named Pajala. On the night of June 23, 1871, crossing
the river with a small party of Swedes and Finns, he ascended Mount
Avasaxa, in Finland. At this altitude, he says, "the sky happened to be
clear in the direction of the sun, and he shone in all his glory as the
clock struck twelve."

During this prolonged absence he visited almost every considerable town in
Germany, Holland, Italy, and England. The instant that he arrived at a
town, he seemed to know the shortest cut to its museum. If there was an
antiquarian in the place, he knew of it beforehand, and hastened either to
make or renew an acquaintance. In the larger cities he was surrounded by
these people, and he expressed unaffected surprise and pleasure at their
attentions. He made visits of inspection to nearly every mint in Europe,
having been commissioned by the Philadelphia Mint to make purchases of
rare coins for its cabinet. Here the old passion appears to have blazed up
again for a little while. It was an entire surprise to his family to
discover among his possessions at his death the nucleus of a new
collection, which was sold for about two thousand dollars.

Mr. Mickley made at this period some valued acquaintances. Among these was
the Italian composer Mercadante. At the time of Mickley's visit, in April,
1870, the composer, who was also president of the Conservatoire in Naples,
had been blind for eight years. "The old gentleman," says Mickley (who, by
the way, was only two years his junior), "held out his hand and bade me
welcome. I told him it would be a lasting pleasure to have shaken hands
with so highly distinguished a man, whose name had long since been
favorably known in America. At this his face brightened; he arose from the
sofa, shook my hand cordially, wishing me health, happiness, and a safe
voyage." Later, at Brussels, he called on M. Fetiss, the famous French
musical critic and biographer. At that time, in his eighty-eighth year,
Fetis was a fugitive from Paris, owing to the troubles of the
Franco-Prussian war. Mr. Mickley's picture of the veteran _litterateur_
and critic is an engaging one. He says, "Considering his great age, Mr.
Fetis is very active. He climbed up the stepladder to get books and to
show me such as he considered the most rare and interesting. He is not
only active in body, but he retains all the faculties of his mind. He
appears to have a very happy disposition. While I was with him a continual
smile was on his face, and it seemed to give him great pleasure to show me
his books. He has been engaged in collecting them for over fifty years,
and they have cost him a sum equal to three hundred thousand dollars,
exclusive of a great many presents. The first book on music was printed in
1480." At Trieste he spent some time with the United States consul there,
Mr. Thayer, of Boston, best known to musical and literary people as the
author of an exhaustive Life of Beethoven, which has been under way for
nearly thirty years and is not yet finished. Mr. Thayer showed his visitor
all the historic data and personal relics which he had collected for the
book, of which at that date only one volume had been published. Since then
Mercadante and F?s have been gathered to their fathers. Their genial guest
is also gone. The industrious Mr. Thayer lives, with three volumes of the
Life completed, and every American, either literary or musical, will wish
him well on to the conclusion of his _magnum opus_.

Mr. Mickley's plain personal habits remained almost unchanged by the many
unforeseen exigencies of foreign travel. Once, at Rouen, six months after
leaving home, he says, "Tasted wine for the first time in Europe, as the
water here did not agree with me." A little later, at Munich, he remarks,
"Drank beer for the first time." His pockets remained as accessible as
heretofore to the nimble-fingered gentry. Upon his first visit to Naples,
he records very naively, "Three silk handkerchiefs have been stolen from
me here,--which is one more than in London." At Jaffa, on his way from
Egypt to Palestine, besides the robbery of coins alluded to some time back,
he lost a choice autograph manuscript of Mozart which had cost him two
hundred and fifty francs at Salzburg. If careless in these particulars, he
was very watchful and jealous of opportunities to uphold America's
position in the world. He took special pains to inform the mint-masters at
various points concerning the superior appliances and machinery of the
Philadelphia Mint. On the way back from Lapland, while steaming southward
along the upper waters of the Gulf of Bothnia, he writes, under date of
July 4, 1871, "This being our national holiday, I put up my flag on the
door of my berth, but was obliged to explain the meaning of the holiday to
nearly all the passengers." While in England, he met at Manchester a
barrister who had formerly been his guest in Philadelphia. This gentleman
proposed to introduce him to an American lawyer then practising there. "I
asked the name. He said it was Judah P. Benjamin. I declined the
invitation."

Wherever Mr. Mickley journeyed, so long as any fresh acquisition of
knowledge was to be gained the old traveller appeared insensible to
fatigue. When halfway up the Great Pyramid an English group who were in
his company stopped and insisted upon going no farther. He resolutely
continued, and they, unwilling to see so aged a man out-distance them,
followed reluctantly, until all reached the summit and congratulated each
other on the famous view. In St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other Russian
cities, which he visited in the winter season, he was equally untiring and
undaunted. As a specimen of his accuracy of observation, he writes during
his first journey in Italy, "I counted forty-six tunnels between Pisa and
Bologna." Several severe accidents fell to his lot. In Rome, while
exploring a dark, arched passage, he fell into "Cicero's Well," receiving
severe bruises. In a street in Constantinople, where there are no
sidewalks, he was knocked down by a runaway horse and taken up for dead,
remaining insensible for several hours. The former of these mishaps
occupies three lines in his diary; the latter, twelve lines. On his third
visit to Leipsic he was confined in his room for several weeks with an
attack of smallpox. But in regard to none of these accidents, although an
aged man, thousands of miles from home, and entirely alone, does he betray
any symptoms of apprehension. He merely adds, on the date of his recovery
from the attack at Leipsic, "This sickness has detained me much longer
than I had expected to stay."

In one of Mickley's trips he made a not unimportant contribution to
musical history. Almost every student of instrumental music is acquainted
with the name of Jacob Steiner or Stainer, the most successful of
violin-makers outside of the Cremonese school of workmen. Of Steiner's
life but little is known, and no biography of him extant in either French,
German, or English contains either the date or place of his death. The
account commonly given is that he separated from his wife and died in a
convent. Mr. Mickley, with his accustomed perseverance, started out to see
if this matter might not be cleared up. At Innspruck he inquired in vain
for information. As Fetis and Forster both fixed his birthplace at Absom,
a small village some twelve miles from Innspruck, Mickley repaired
thither. For some time his errand was fruitless. He stopped in at a little
shop where an old woman sold photographs, etc. "I asked her, 'Did you
never hear of Jacob Steiner, the violin-maker?' She replied, 'There is no
Steiner nor violin-maker living in this town.' I then said that a
celebrated violin-maker of that name, of whom I desired some information,
had lived there two hundred years before. She replied, quite seriously, 'I
am not two hundred years old.'" A few minutes later, in the course of his
walk, his eye fell upon an old church, the outer wall of which contained a
number of stone tablets with inscriptions. A search of five minutes
revealed the desired information. On a plain tablet Steiner's name was
found, together with the information, given in very old-fashioned German,
that he had died there in 1683, "at the rising of the sun."

The closing field of Mr. Mickley's travels covered Southern France and
Spain, Lisbon, where he passed the winter of 1871-72, and Madrid. The
weather being very severe, he was detained two months at Lisbon, where he
engaged a teacher and took daily lessons in Portuguese. He had done the
same at Stockholm the previous winter with the Swedish language, which he
mastered pretty thoroughly. At Madrid he examined what he emphatically
pronounced the finest collection of coins in the world, numbering one
hundred and fifty thousand specimens. He adds, "This is the only place in
Europe where the subject is properly understood. Alfonzo V., King of
Aragon, in the fifteenth century, was the first person known to have
collected coins for study or amusement, and Augustin, Archbishop of
Tarragona, was the first writer on the subject. The science of numismatics
is, therefore, of Spanish origin."

Mr, Mickley left Madrid in March, crossing the Pyrenees and arriving in
Paris on the 24th of that month, his seventy-third birthday. He "made the
tour of three hundred and sixty-three miles in twelve hours, without being
in the least fatigued." After a few weeks passed in Paris and in
revisiting friends in England, he sailed for home, arriving in
Philadelphia June 5, 1872, exactly three years from the date of his
departure.

It was surprising to his friends how little change the lapse of years and
the somewhat rugged incidents of travel had made in Mr. Mickley. He
quickly settled down, and, as nearly as possible, resumed his old habits.
He bought himself a residence, but followed the Paris custom of taking his
meals elsewhere. In the house he was entirely alone, even without a
servant. After a time he showed some disposition to concede to "luxuries"
which he had previously ignored. Carpets he had never used in his life,
but he now admitted that they were very pleasant and comfortable, and
ordered his house to be carpeted throughout. The arrangement of his
library in the new quarters was a great pleasure, and took some time. Mr.
Mickley was in no sense of the word a politician, but he voted pretty
regularly. An incident connected with his last visit to the polls was
amusing. Having been three years absent, a patriotic Hibernian, who kept
the window-book and knew nothing of him, demanded to see his tax-receipt.
The old gentleman went quietly home and brought back the desired document.
He was next asked if he could read and write, which question, however, was
not pressed. The last scene in Mr. Mickley's life was as quiet and
peaceful as its whole tenor had been. On the afternoon of February 15,
1878, Mr. Carl Plagemann, the well-known musician and a friend of many
years' standing, called at his house. While he waited, Mr. Mickley wrapped
for him some violin-strings, the last work of his hands. He requested Mr.
Plagemann to go with him that evening to visit another old friend,--Oliver
Hopkinson, Esq., at whose house there were to be some quartettes. "I have
a letter," he said, "from the Russian ambassador, a part of which I am
unable to translate. A Russian lady is to play the piano there this
evening, and I shall ask her to help me out." Mr. Plagemann could not go,
and, as so often before, Mr. Mickley started out alone. Just before
reaching the house of Mr. Hopkinson he was taken suddenly ill, and,
chancing to be close by the residence of his physician, Dr. Meigs, he
stopped there and rang the bell. As the door opened, he said in husky
tones, "I am suffocating." He walked in and ascended the stairs without
assistance. Then he said, "Take me to a window." As this was being done,
he fell back insensible into the arms of the attendants, and, a few
minutes later, breathed his last.

Thus, on the very western edge of fourscore years, ended this long and
industrious, this peaceful and beautiful life. In our land of busy and
constant action there have been few like it,--surely none happier. Serene
at the close as it was placid in its course, its lot had been cast ever
between quiet shores, which it enriched on either hand with its
accumulated gifts of knowledge and of taste. And at the close of it all
there could be no happier eulogy than the one modestly yet comprehensively
delivered by his old and congenial friend William E. Dubois, himself since
summoned to take the same mysterious journey. "In fine," says he, "Mr.
Mickley seemed superior to any meanness; free from vulgar passions and
habits, from pride and vanity, from evil speaking and harsh judging. He
was eminently sincere, affable, kind, and gentle: in the best sense of the
word he was a gentleman."

J. BUNTING.

* * * * *

ROSE ROMANCE.

Two roses, freshly sweet and rare,
Bloomed in the dewy morning
On neighboring bushes green and fair,
One garden-bed adorning.
"Ah!" sighed the pair, "what joy, what pride.
If on one branch together
We two were growing side by side
Through all this golden weather!"

There came a youth who roughly tore
The roses from their bowers,
And to his sweetheart proudly bore
The two fair, fragrant flowers.
Upon her bosom with delight
They bloomed,--but not forever:
They faded--ah! but, rapture bright,
They faded there together.

ADA NICHOLS.

* * * * *

THE WHITE WHATERS.

"Down with her! Hard!" came hoarsely through the mist.

An oil-skinned figure threw himself heavily upon the oar; the little craft
rounded tremblingly up into the wind, hurling clouds of spray and foam
aloft that were borne far away by the whistling breeze. For a moment the
sail beat furiously, as if in protest at this infringement upon its
privileges, then a second oil-skin--the cause of all this
commotion--raised his arms, a steel spear flashed, a willowy pole trembled
in the air, a quick movement, a roar of rushing waters, a shower of spray
that drenched the craft, a sound of escaping steam or hissing rope, and a
white whale had been struck by Captain Sol Gillis, of Bic.

Captain Gillis, as might be assumed, was not a native of the province of
Quebec, but merely a carpet-bagger, who moved north in the summer and
returned in early autumn about the time the wild geese went south, and all
for reasons known only to himself. He hailed from down East, and voted in
a small town not many miles from the historic shell-heaps and the ancient
city of Pemaquid.

Our meeting with the down-East skipper was entirely one of accident.
Wandering along the beach at Bic, we had come upon a boat, half dory, half
nondescript, which from the possession of certain peculiarities was
claimed by one of the party to be of Maine origin, and, to settle the
dispute, a little house a few hundred yards higher up was visited.

It was like many others along shore,--single-storied, painted white, with
green blinds, with a small garden in the rear, in which grew old-fashioned
flowers and an abundance of "yarbs" that bespoke a mistress of Thompsonian
leanings. A stack of oars, seine-sticks, and harpoon-handles leaned
against the roof; gill-nets festooned the little piazza, while a great
iron caldron, that had evidently done service on a New Bedford whaler, had
been utilized by the good housewife to capture the rain-water from the
shingled roof.

"Mornin' to ye, gentlemen. Been lookin' at the bot?" queried a tall, thin,
red-faced man, with an unusually jolly expression, stepping out from a
shed.

"Yes. We thought she was of Maine build," replied the disputant.

"Wall, so she is," said the mariner,--"so she is; and there ain't none
like her within forty mile of Bic. I'm of Maine build myself," he added.
"But I ain't owner. I'm sorter second mate to Sol Grillis; sailed with him
forty year come Christmas. Don't ye know him? What! don't know Sol
Gillis!" And a look of incredulity crept into the old man's eye. "Why, I
thought Sol was knowed from Bic to Boothbay all along shore. But come in,
do. I know ye're parched," continued the friend of the skipper, dropping
his palm and needle and motioning the visitors toward the little
sitting-room. "Mother," he called, "here's some folks from daown aour way."

As the old man spoke, a large-framed woman appeared in the door-way,
holding on to the sides for support, and bade us welcome. Her eyes were
turned upward, and had a far-away look, as if from long habit of gazing
out to sea, but, as we drew nearer, we saw that she was blind.

Leading the way into the kitchen, which was resplendent with shining pans
and a glistening stove, all the work of the thrifty but blind housewife,
she began to entertain us in her simple manner, and described a model of a
full-rigged ship that rested on a table, though she had never seen it,
with an exactness that would have done credit to many a sailor: even the
ropes and rigging were pointed out, and all their uses dwelt upon with a
tenderness strangely foreign to the subject.

"And Captain Sam built it?" we asked.

"No, no," replied the old lady, turning her head to hide a tear that stole
from the sightless eyes. "It's all we've got to remember aour boy John. He
built her and rigged her. He was his mother's boy, but--"

"He went down on the Grand Banks in the gale of '75," broke in her husband
hoarsely.

"Yes," continued the wife, "me and Sam's all alone. It's all we've got,
and Sam brings it up every summer as sorter company like. Ye're friends of
Captain Sol, I guess," she said, brightening up after a moment. "No?" and
she looked in the direction of the captain, as if for a solution of the
mystery. "Naow, ye don't tell me that ye ain't acquainted with Captain Sol,
and ye're from aour way, too? Why," she continued earnestly, "Sol's been
hog-reeve in aour taown ten years runnin'; and as for selec'-man, he'll
die in office. Positions of trust come jest as nat'ral to him as reefin'
in a gale of wind. Him and my man tuck to one another from the first."

"Then you were not townsmen always," we suggested.

"No, we wa'n't," was the reply.

"My man and Sol met under kinder unusual circumstances. Tell 'em haow it
was, Sam."

The old sailor was sitting on the wood-box, shaping a row-lock from a
piece of white pine, and, when thus addressed, looked up with a blank
expression, as if he had been on a long search for ideas and had returned
without them.

"He gits wanderin' in his ideas when he sets his mind on the '75 gale,"
whispered the old lady. "Tell 'em abaout yer meetin' Captain Sol, Sam,"
she repeated.

"Me and Sol met kinder cur'us," began the captain. "That year I was first
mate of the Marthy Dutton, of Kennebec; and on this identical v'yage we
was baound daown along with a load of coal. In them days three was a
full-handed crew for a fore-an'-after, and that's all we had,--captain,
mate, and cook, and a dog and cat. One evenin',--I reckon we was ten miles
to the south'ard of Boon Island,--it was my trick at the wheel, and all
hands had turned in. It was blowin' fresh from the east'ard, and I had
everything on her I could git. I reckon it was nigh on ter two o'clock,
and as clear as it is to-day, when the fust thing I knowed the schooner
was on her beam ends. She gave a kind of groan like, pitched for'ard, and
down she went, takin' everything with her; and, afore I knowed what was
the matter, I found myself floatin' ten miles from shore. I see it was no
use, but I thought I'd make a break for it: so I got off my boots and
ile-skins in the water, and struck aout for shore, that I could see every
once in a while on a rise.

"Wall, to make a long story short, I reckon I was in the water a matter o'
four hours, when I see the lights of a schooner comin' daown on me. I
hailed, and she heard me, ran up in the wind, put aout a bot, and Sol
Gillis, the skipper, yanked me in. I couldn't have held aout ten minutes
longer. So Sol and me has been tol'able thick ever since."

"Here he comes naow," said the matron, whose quick ear had caught the
sound of approaching footsteps. "Sam, set aout my pennyroyal, will ye? Ye
see," she added apologetically, "Sol is literary, and when he comes raound
he gives us all the news, and there is sech goin's on in the papers
nowadays that it jest upsots my nerves to hear him and Sam talkin' 'em
over. Sech murders, riots, wrackin', and killin' of folks! If it wa'n't
for a dish of tea I 'low I couldn't hear to it." And the good woman held
out her hand to a burly fisherman in a full suit of oil-skins, and
presented him to the visitors as Sam's friend, Captain Sol Gillis.

"I'm a white-whaler at present, gentlemen," said the captain, with a
hearty laugh that was so contagious that all hands joined in, scarcely
knowing why.

He was a tall, robust specimen of a down-Easter, his open face reddened by
long battling with wind and weather, and shaved close except beneath the
chin, from which depended an enormous beard that served as a scarf in
winter and even now was tucked into his jacket.

"It's a curious thing, naow, for the captain and mate of a coaster to be
in furrin parts a-whalin'; but we find it pays,--eh, Sam?" And Captain Sol
closed one eye and looked wisely for a second at his friend, upon which
the two broke into hearty laughter that had a ring of smuggled brandy and
kerosene in it, though perhaps it was only a ring, after all.

"Kin yaou go whalin'?" said the captain in reply to a question of one of
the visitors. "Why, sartin. White-whalin's gittin' fashionable. There's
heaps o' chaps come daown here from Montreal and Quebec and want to go
aout: so I take 'em. Some shoots, and some harpoons, and abaout the only
thing I've seen 'em ketch yet is a bad cold; but there's excitement in it,
--heaps of it: ain't there, Sam?"

"I ain't denyin' of it," replied the latter. "What's sport for some is
hard work for others. Work I calls it."

"Wall, as I say," continued the skipper, "white-whalin' is gittin'
fashionable, so in course there ain't no hard work abaout it; and if yaou
will go, why, I'm goin' aout now, me and Sam. The only thing, it's dampish
like; but perhaps mother here kin rig yaou aout."

Half an hour later the two landsmen were metamorphosed into very
respectable whalers, and, with the two captains, were running the
whale-boat down the sands of Bic into the dark waters of the St. Lawrence.
The light sail was set, and soon we were bounding away in the direction of
Mille Vaches, Captain Sam at the oar that constituted the helm, and
Captain Sol in the bow, with harpoon at hand, ready for the appearance of
game.

The white whale, or Beluga, is extremely common at the mouth of the St.
Lawrence, and is found a considerable distance up the river beyond
Tadousac. The oil is in constant demand for delicate machinery, and Beluga
leather, made from the tanned hide, is manufactured into a great variety
of articles of necessity and luxury.

In appearance these whales are the most attractive of all the cetaceans.
They are rarely over twenty feet in length, more commonly fifteen, of a
pure creamy color, sometimes shaded with a blue tint, but in the dark
water they appear perfectly white, perhaps by contrast, and seem the very
ghosts of whales, darting about, or rising suddenly, showing only the
rounded, dome-shaped head.

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