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LAUS PERENNIS.[133]

In the early days of emigration, before the industry of the Old World had cut down the forests and muddied the streams of the New, a young man sat at noontide by the banks of a river, an insignificant tributary of one of those mighty veins that intersect the continent from Canada to Florida. His face was a study. He had the features of the North, with thick, fair hair and glittering blue eyes, but his form was slighter, though not less sinewy, than a Saxon's. Nerves of steel and a will of iron, generosity and self-sacrifice, the bravery of an Indian and the fidelity of a dog—such was the tale revealed by his exterior. His history was simple. He was the son of a petty farmer in Normandy, and the foster-brother of the Baron de Villeneuve. He had been brought up with the young baron, an only child, and had been his companion in his studies as well as his sports. Every one noticed how refined his manner was, how noble his bearing; and yet his village friends never had reason to complain of any superciliousness in his deportment towards them. His mother, feeling that his superiority would be wasted if he remained in the groove in which it seemed his natural destiny to travel, earnestly wished for a different career for her favorite, and urged him to enter the priesthood. This he was too conscientious to do, feeling no call to so high an office; and his foster-brother, in his turn, warmly recommended the army. Napoleon was then in the full blaze of his military glory, and merit might win the metaphorical spurs of what remained as the substitute of knighthood, without the weary delays of official routine. But the young Norman was insensible to military glory. There was no fair damsel, with high cap and ancestral gold necklace, with spinning-wheel and a dowry of snowy, homespun linen, who had made his heart beat one second faster than it had in childhood. If his foster-brother had had a sister, Robert Maillard would have been the very man to have loved her as the knights of old loved the lady of their dreams, hoping for no reward save a knot of ribbon and a pitying glance of faint approval. He had read of such love, and of fairies, elves, and witches, of impossible quests, and of princely donations; but he felt that the world had changed, and that these things could never be again. Strong and brave as he was, he began life with a secret hopelessness, knowing that it could never give him the only things he longed for. One day, in the midst of his irresolution as to what work he should undertake, knowing all work to be but a passe-temps until eternity gave him the life he coveted, an old sea captain made his appearance in the inland village, and electrified the inhabitants by tales of discovery and adventure, of which curious proofs were not wanting in the shape of carved idols two inches long, mineral lumps of diminutive size, a string of wampum, etc., etc., and, above all, a tame monkey. Robert listened to the "ancient mariner" with delight, and, never having seen the ocean, was suddenly fired by a wild wish to try his fortune across the Atlantic. Here was a land as wild as the Armorican forests in the old tales of chivalry and legends of monasticism—a virgin land of practical freedom, where new empires might be carved by the strong and willing hand, and new mines of knowledge laid open by the daring intellect. It was not money that the simple Norman thought of; it was excitement, adventure, vague possibilities, limitless solitudes where hermits and hunters might live and dream. To leave Normandy was not exile to him; to leave all those he loved was not separation; but do not think he was heartless. He only lived in a shadow-world of high, heroic deeds, and the commonplaces of bucolic life palled upon him. Instinct bade him seek something beyond home, with its petty interests; and never slow to execute his resolutions, once they were formed, he bargained with the old sailor to take him to America as soon as he recrossed the ocean. From his father he received his portion of the scanty inheritance due to him, and left home as the prodigal—so said his weeping mother. His foster-brother loaded him with weapons of all kinds, and forced upon him clothes enough to last a lifetime in a country where fashion seldom changed. The first sight of the ocean was a poem to Robert. He thought of the galleys of the Crusaders, as they sailed to the Land of Promise; of Columbus and his unbelieving crew on their perilous way to the land of faith. The glorious western sunsets awoke a new feeling in the heart of the adventurer; he felt that this new "Ultima Thule" was the land of the poet as well as of the warrior, and that its majesty, its serene massiveness, should be, not the prey of murderous passion, but the field of a new-born art. Here was a land whose history, if it had any, had been blotted out, but whose immortal beauty was a picture of the lost Eden—the true home of enthusiasm, the virgin parchment on which to write a new hymn to the God whom its beauty revealed almost in a new light. Such were not the thoughts of most pilgrims to the New World; if they had been, people would have said that the millennium had come.

A Sir Galahad walks the earth but once in a century, and he has no compeers. Such was our Robert. Why does the world call those men dreamers whose ideal is the only true reality, while the life of the world around them is one long nightmare?

Robert's life, after he had landed in one of the old sea-coast cities, was a checkered one. He fled from the civilization that had stifled him at home, and which he saw with dismay roughly reproduced in the communities of the sea-board; he found few men whose talk did not jar upon him; even in the wilderness, when he came to a log-cabin, he heard the oaths of low city haunts; in pastoral settlements, he found no pastoral innocence; and even among the friendly Indians they asked him for spirits, when he would have spoken of God. Discouraged and oppressed, he persisted in setting his face ever westward, till at last he came to a river, as it seemed to him; a brook, as it would figure on the map. He wondered if man had ever been here before, but smiled to himself the moment after, knowing that the red man, the natural possessor of this princely inheritance, must have often breathed his prayer to the Great Spirit by the banks of this stream. He began to think how useless the discovery of this new continent had been, since hitherto the country had been but a new field for the white man's sins, a new theatre for the red man's sorrows. He fell to thinking of his own far-off ancestors, roaming morass and forest, like these sturdy men of bronze, hunting the deer, and wolf, and bear, like them, painting their bodies like them, worshipping bloody gods of war, rearing children indefatigable on sea and land—Scandinavian vikings, fair, and ruddy, and golden-haired, each man a chief in stature, and their chiefs giants. How like the race that still lorded it over these new realms! But God's messengers had come among the Norsemen and daunted their fierceness, turned their vices into virtues, and leavened, with a true and manly, a Christian, civilization, their hardy, freedom-loving tribes. Robert knew of the many efforts of the missionaries among the Indians; but he knew, also, that it was the evildoing of the whites that made these efforts so fruitless. It seemed as if wherever the human race set foot it must disturb God's working; and in sudden disgust at his kind, he vowed never willingly to enter again any community of whites. Commerce was imposition, respectability was hypocrisy, civilization was cruelty. "God and my dreams alone remain," he cried; "with them I will walk, and forget that any other building exists save a church; that there is any language save prayer; any human beings save God's worthy ministers!" Before long, the scent of the pines and cedars lulled him to sleep, and, happy in his isolation, he did not resist the drowsiness that, by the banks of Norman streamlets, had often preceded the sweetest moments of his life.

Soon the pines began to sing in the strong wind that rocked them, and the song shaped itself into a hymn of praise, the words seeming to echo the form of David's psalm: "Then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the face of the Lord, for he cometh.... Praise him, ye strong winds that fulfil his word; ... fruitful trees and all cedars."

A voice came out of the rocks, as if wafted over miles of space, and, mingling with the song of the pines, chanted with it, "The treasure-house of the Lord is in the stones of the earth; from my bosom flow the rivers of life-giving waters"; and gently the sound of tinkling rivulets was added to the deep song of praise. It seemed as if all creation, bent upon doing the task respectively allotted to each of its parts, had met in conclave round that obscure Western river, before the tribunal of a sleeping mortal. As the shadows grew darker, the howl of wild beasts was heard, inexplicably free from the impression of terror, and strangely fitting in with the hymn of inanimate nature. At twilight, a concert of sweet scents rose from the earth, and vaporous clouds bore up the prayer of the fruitful soil, a gentle sound, as of crystal bells, accompanying the sacrifice.

"Let your prayer arise before me as an evening offering," came faintly from somewhere, and the cry of myriads of insects rose to greet the echo. Nothing seemed discordant. Robert, as it were, heard the world-pulse beat, and yet was neither appalled nor astonished; it was the same voice, whose whispers he knew, which was speaking to him now, only it spoke aloud. A moaning sound, muffled and sad, but grave as the voice of a teacher, now rose above the others, and the sleeper knew that it was that of the ocean:

"The floods have lifted up their waves with the voices of many waters. Wonderful are the surges of the sea; wonderful is the Lord on high."

Robert thought how true and how grand was this remorseless servant of the Almighty will. It does its work though fleets brave its decrees, and science peers into its secrets like a child feebly grasping a two-edged sword. It obeys God, and its work, not its voice, is its hymn of praise. But there is another mighty angel at work in the heavens, and the trumpet-tones of his voice ring in the thunder behind those fast-coming clouds. Tawny gold and ashen gray, like the shroud of a fallen world, those clouds sweep up on the horizon; blades of light rend them for a moment, and a livid radiance darts into every crevice of the forest; the song of the pines is hushed, and the hymn of the storm peals out:

"Holy and terrible is thy name.... Fire shall go forth before thee; ... thy lightnings shine upon the world; ... for thou art fearfully magnified!"

A cathedral of ice seems to grow suddenly out of the pine forest; the trees are turned to crystal pinnacles, a world of untrodden snow lies all around, and within the silence of the grave. Rose-colored lights play on the fairy turrets, and turn the ice-pillars to amber and topaz. More sublime than any dream of mediæval enchantment, Robert gazes spellbound on this crowning marvel, and, though no articulate words strike his ear, he is conscious of a life permeating this realm of silence; of a link with all other creatures of God, which, if it spoke, would utter the words that well spontaneously from his own heart:

"Thy knowledge is become too wonderful for me.... Whither shall I go from thy spirit, and whither shall I flee from thy face?"

But he is no idle gazer, treating the world as a show; he is a disciple—the Dante of Nature, led by her to the song-halls of her everlasting concert, taught by her that all things have a voice to glorify God and a mission to execute for him. He may not stay in the heart of the pole, for other lessons are all around him, and the time to learn them is so short—never more than a hundred years, seldom even the third of that time!

The silent world melts from sight, and the earth seems to recede; the blue vault of heaven is nearer; a rushing sound, so awful that his humanity shudders at it, yet so beautiful that it deadens the remembrance of the gentle sounds of the pine-trees, the crystal flower-bells, the wind, and even the rolling of the sea, wraps his being into itself, and holds him in its mighty spell. Worlds of light flash by him; of their size he knows naught, of their qualities less; but their radiance seems to him the face of God, "which no man can look upon and live," while their voice is as that of a thousand cataracts, each ringing forth a separate and harmonious note. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaimeth the works of his hands." Did these words come out of the sound, or were they in his own heart, and did the sound draw them into itself, as the great ocean would draw back to its bosom some lonely fragment of its realm, stranded for a moment by the last wave that kissed the shore? Robert could not tell. He scarcely breathed. He would fain have kept this vision for ever; he trembled at the idea of leaving a world after which his own would look like a hive of bees, and whose sounds were so potent that all the sounds of earth, massed together in one, would barely seem a whisper in comparison. But his pilgrimage was not a reward, not even a trial; it was only an apprenticeship. Hardly a transition, save the coming of dawn and a consciousness of some void, and again Robert gazed upon familiar scenes of earth. The sun's forerunner was flushing the sky, and a wall of living water stood before him. He watched intently; no sound came to his ears. Yet he could see the coronal of rainbow-tinted foam rising at the feet of the cataract, and felt as if this must be the very passage through which God's people of old had come dry-shod in the bed of the sea. As he stood below, breathlessly waiting, the crown of the waterfall quivered with a new light, and the sun a crimson disk, rose slowly into sight. It seemed as though a bleeding Host were lifted up to heaven in a chalice of living jewels. A murmur began to rise from the clouds of spray; it grew louder and stronger, and Robert knew that the voice of the cataract had reached his ears at last. It was but a faint echo of that ineffable hymn of the spheres which rang yet in his memory, but it was none the less the sublimest sound he had heard on earth. Vaguely came to his understanding a fragment of its meaning:

"Glory to the Power whose breath has built us into a wall, and whose breath could hurl us like a flood over the corn-fields of man."

When Adam disobeyed God in Eden, this cataract was already thousands of years old, and for ages had done God's bidding, calm as eternity, regular as the course of the planets. Robert pondered on this sublime obedience of all strong things to the law of the Creator, while man, the weakest of creation, thought it a shame to follow any will but his own. But even as he stood thinking, the earth seemed to tremble beneath him, and he sank gently into its heaving bosom. A darkness that bred more awe than terror encompassed him, and he felt that he was in the presence of one of God's most dreaded ministers. Strange thunders echoed around him, and a bewildered consciousness of some mysterious agency being about him came to his wondering spirit. Out of the darkness grew a twilight, in which objects began to be distinguishable; precious ore glistened on the face of the rocks; metals and jewels, heaped in confusion, met his eye; silver daggers hung within reach of his hand, like bosses from a Gothic roof; columns of sparkling minerals shot up like enchanted trees by his side; while the plashing of fountains, the rushing of lava-rivers, and the dull, perpetual thunder of ascending flames reached his ear—a dusky kingdom, awful in the force it suggested, but hushed and chained by a power greater still; a silent kingdom, the workshop of nature, where our dreamer feared but to tread, lest a volcano might be set in motion on the earth, or an earthquake overwhelm a score of cities. But not before hearing the credo of this mighty world could he leave its regions; it smote upon him from out the roar of a furnace, whence a stream of blinding light ran slowly into a rocky channel. Molten iron flowed at his feet, and a voice sang in his ear:

"The earth is the Lord's; the compass of the world, and all that dwell therein."

Like hammer-blows came the dread words; no spirit in living shape was near, yet a living presence seemed to glow in each fiery stream or glittering rock: the guidance of a will that, millions of ages ago, spoke one creative word, was enough to lead the revolutions and point the unerring road of this grim realm till time should be no more.

Slowly the walls of darkness dissolved, and the hard floor of metals turned to a fine white powder, soft yet firm; trees grew up, but they were white as with hoar-frost; and a marvellous vegetation sprang into being, the mosses swaying to and fro, the flowers moving from rock to rock, the fields of greenest grass swaying as if with animal life. Jewels hung from the fairy rocks, but they closed a strong grip on the finger that touched them; pearls lay scattered on the sandy floor, and back and forth fled swift creatures all lace and film, like animated cobwebs. Robert felt, by instinct, that as he had visited the bowels of the earth, so now he was roaming the garden of the ocean. In reverent wonder he paused, looking upward as if to the sky; and in the liquid firmament wandering stars of fitful radiance shone out upon him. They came now singly, now in strings like the milky way, or again in fields, as if a flag had been studded with glow-worms. As he could not tell why in the heart of volcanic fires he had been neither stifled nor consumed, so now he knew not why he was not drowned; but with the water veiling everything around, dripping in the coral caves, beating against the rocks, stirring the living petals of millions of sea-flowers, he stood upright, waiting for the voice that must swell the everlasting song. It rose at first, as though muffled by the water, grew stronger and clearer, till, in a tone of triumph, it gave forth its glad pæan:

"Bless the Lord, all ye seas and floods; ... all that move in the waters; ... ye dragons of the deep."

"Is man, then, the only rebel in creation," Robert thought sadly, "the only ungrateful one, who thinks it a loss of time to sing the praises of God?" And an answer seemed to knock at his heart, saying:

"Work is prayer, work is song."

Again the sea-walls broke, the jewel-flowers disappeared, and a change came over the dreamer. Snowy mountains; fleecy peaks, purple-shadowed where the sunset light caught their sides; level horizons of gold, suggesting far lands of miraculous radiance; banks of crimson by dun oceans, seeming the grave of a thousand worlds; a solitude oppressive and sublime; a silence which not even the riving asunder of the gray mountain or dissolving of the tawny shore into the ocean of blue can break—such was the new scene on which Robert gazed. Entranced with its beauty, he told himself that this was lovelier than even the ice-cathedral amid the soundless world of snow; and here would he fain build him a home, and wander out his pilgrimage; for "this is the threshold of heaven." Now the sun came from behind the translucent masses, and left streaks of opal and amethyst where his footprints had pressed the fleecy snow; and the dreamer started as the device of this world of amazing beauty and absolute obedience flashed into his eyes from out the great, golden heart of the sun. Here there was no voice, as elsewhere; but the words were burned into Robert's mind as he gazed at the mighty orb:

"He has set his tabernacle in the sun; hereafter ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven."

No sooner had the dreamer gathered this new verse of the world-song into his memory, than the mountains and plains, the valleys and the sea, began to dissolve in mist. He stretched out his hands imploringly, as if to stay the wondrous vision in its flight; but he struck at empty air, and sank gently towards the earth. An echo from afar wafted him an answer, which seemed a promise that the cloud-land would receive him once more at some distant day, but the words were rather a command than an encouragement:

"Work is prayer, work is song."

And now a scene broke upon his sight, which made him think he was back among the apple-orchards and smiling farms of Normandy—a fair and tranquil scene: wide meadows, with flocks of kine grazing, fields of corn ripe for the sickle, and orchards, round which girls and boys were frolicking in holiday costume. Beyond that was a village of white huts and a church all of wood, its porch hung with evergreens, and a wedding-party grouped beneath; and through the landscape the same river on whose banks Robert thought he had fallen asleep once years ago, when it flowed through the heart of the primeval forest. Higher up in the distance were still the old pine-woods; but there was much timber felled, and great rafts were paddled down the stream, laden with the wealth of the forest. Robert knew that civilization had come to this spot with a cross in its hand instead of a sword, and baptismal dews instead of "fire-water." He saw the bronzed, athletic men of the New World working like brothers side by side with the stalwart, golden-haired pilgrims from the Old; and he looked around to see who had thus brought about that which his former experience had sadly told him was an impossibility. Just then there rose a chant from the village church:

"Sing to the Lord a new song. Offer up the sacrifice of justice and hope in the Lord, ... who showeth us good things.... By the fruit of their corn, and wine, and oil are they multiplied"; while from the fields where the red man and the white toiled together rose an answering chorus: "Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." Then from the church came a long file of dark-robed men, with cowls of ancient make, like those that the Norman boy had seen carved on the monuments of the abbots in his own land—nay, his own village (for Villeneuve had once belonged to the Benedictines)—and they marched in slow procession to a spot of ground a mile beyond the gathering of white huts.

Here a large area was marked out in the shape of a cross, the outline being drawn in wreaths of gaily-colored autumn leaves. Many Indians stood round the enclosure, and one old chief kept in his hands a quantity of wampum belts. Opposite him was a man of athletic build, nearly seventy years old, in whom Robert thought he saw a great likeness to himself as he might become in a happy and prosperous old age. The chief of the dark-robed men lifted up his voice, and addressed this figure:

"Robert Maillard"—and the dreamer started to hear his own name—"this day you end a noble work; you crown a life worthy to be held in remembrance for ever. You came to this spot a wanderer without an aim, at war with man, almost despairing of God. You stand here, after half a century has gone over your head, the father of your people, the benefactor of two races, the founder, so to speak, of a new kingdom. You crown the sacrifice of a lifetime used in God's service by a free gift of your choicest possession to his everlasting majesty. To all ages will a school of holy discipline and of sacred song plead for you at the throne of God, and the laus perennis of holy lives shall represent the ceaseless hymn of inanimate creation to its Lord."

Then the old man turned to the Indian chief, and called him. "My brother," he said, "I have only given to God what you gave me; without a fair title to your land, I durst not have offered it to the God whose eldest child on this side of the sea is the red man; and half the blessing which this reverend minister of our Lord has promised me falls to your share."

"My pale-faced brother speaks words of justice and of wisdom," answered the chief; "his God shall be my God, and his people my people, because his faith has taught him truth and honesty towards his red brother. The black-robe hath spoken well, and Great Eagle is glad to hear him praise the friend of his people, and he who hath taught the Indian maidens to sing the song of the stars and the clouds."

So saying, he laid at the priest's feet a wampum belt; and as each ceremony of the laying of a first stone was completed, he laid down another, as if ratifying the compact after the manner of his people. The dreamer stood apart in silent wonder; the dark-robed choir intoned the psalm Lauda Jerusalem:

"Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem! Praise thy God, O Sion!"

"For he hath strengthened the bars of thy gates; he hath blessed thy children within thee.

"He hath made peace within thy borders, and filleth thee with the fatness of corn."

At last the procession turned back towards the white church, and all the people, Indians as well as white men, joined its ranks. Robert followed last of all, and an echo to the song of joy and praise rose from his enlightened heart, whispering:

"Work is prayer, work is song."

He looked around; he knew the spot well; a little higher up the stream was the place where he had rested at noontide, before his eyes were opened to the true mission allotted him in life. He knew that this was the warning, which, if he neglected it, would make of him no longer an innocent dreamer, but a useless vagabond, a rebellious creature of God. If poetry and beauty, truth and honesty, were things of the past, it was at least the duty of every Christian to do what he could to make them once more things of the present. No man who owed allegiance to the great Maker of all things could go idly through life, a vain mourner over an impossible ideal; he must bear his share of work, and do his utmost to build up anew the spiritual temple of truth. And he, above all, who had been led through the secret treasure-houses of nature, and had listened to the ceaseless hymn of praise which the creatures of God sang as they followed the immutable laws set down for them by their Lord—he, above all, dared not stand still nor refuse the tribute of his voice. He would not be an alien among his brethren, the children of God. With these thoughts, he slowly followed the crowd as it filled the little church, and broke out again into strains of solemn gladness, singing:

"Now dost thou dismiss thy servant in peace, O Lord, according to thy word; for my eyes have seen thy salvation."

The song grew fainter, and the multitude seemed to dissolve before his eyes, as Robert, standing up, gazed around him. Everywhere the primeval forest hemmed him in; the river flowed at his feet, clogged with mossy boulders, and fringed with delicate fern; the squirrels rattled in the trees with a sound like castanets; and the silvery disk of the moon was just visible over the tree-tops. The young wanderer knew that he had slept for many hours; but he awoke a new being. Reverently he gazed upon the silent landscape, to which a fellowship beyond the expression of human tongues now bound him; and, as he repeated slowly the prayers that he had said at his mother's knee in the old Norman homestead, he felt that at last his life's work had been pointed out to him. He had read the pages of a book more wonderful than the romances of troubadours, the tales of the Minnesingers, and even the chronicles of olden abbeys; he had heard how the world was bound by a chain of song, never ceasing, never wearying; and henceforth his frail human life must not mar this awe-inspiring harmony; his heart must throb with the world's heart, his voice sing in unison with the great voice of creation. Night passed, and he scarcely slept; morning came, and found him still in his holy rapture. Before long, an Indian approached him—a tall and stately son of the forest, one still uncorrupted by the thinly veiled heathenism of the white "children of the sun." He had never seen a white man, though he had often heard of them. Robert knew a little of some of the Indian tongues, but not that of the new-comer. What with signs and a few words akin to those which the Indian spoke, they gradually made friends; but the red man still gazed upon Robert with an awe not unmixed with terror. He handled his weapons and his garments, touched reverentially his fair and tangled locks, and at intervals drew long breaths of astonishment and admiration. He then led him to the assembly of his tribe, and Robert soon learnt enough of their language to be able to speak fluently with them. He told them how he came there, and spoke to them of the true God; and, though at first they listened quietly, they soon grew grave. They had heard of the cruelty and treachery of white men, who all professed to believe in this true God, and they dared not trust to this teaching.

Then Robert had a happy inspiration. He told them of his dream, and they brightened up at once; this was language such as they loved to hear; these were parables such as they instinctively understood. He told them of his life in Normandy, of his journey across the great salt water, of his longings after a beautiful land of brotherly love, such as had been shown to him in his dream. He asked them to help him in his work for God.

We cannot dwell longer on the details of the story of this settlement in the wilderness, but some things must be briefly touched upon. In due time, the Indian tribe gave Robert a grant of many miles of land, and he, in return, promised them protection, justice, equality, and peace. One priest at first, then gradually others, came to preach the Gospel; and the path of truth was exceptionally smooth in this strange oasis. Robert called his settlement by a name which few at first could understand—Perpetual Praise. Parts of the forest were cleared; a thriving lumber trade was established; cottages sprang up; many emigrants from fair Normandy flocked in, yet settlers of other lands were all welcomed as brothers; a civilization that was rather that of the monastery than of the factory sprang up, and Indians and whites worshipped God side by side in joy and peace.

As years went by, Robert took an Indian wife, and loved her as faithfully as though she had been the princess of some chivalric romance: he had found his ideal at last. Sometimes—it was impossible that it should be otherwise—there would be a ripple of adversity over the smooth waters of this pastoral life; crime might throw a shadow on the settlement; but peace was promptly restored, and Robert became known as the justest and most merciful judge for hundreds of miles around. He was the arbiter and referee of every feud, the father of his colony, the terror of evil-doers. Over his house-door—a wide, open-armed porch where his Indian sons, with locks of bronze, played the games of infant Samsons at his feet—was carved in crimson letters this brave motto:

"Work is prayer, work is song."

As his years advanced, he grew more thoughtful yet. One idea remained unrealized; and now that the settlement had had a life almost as long as the third of a century, he felt that it was time to begin the new and crowning work. He negotiated with the Benedictine abbeys of France, and held out hopes to them of the free gift of at least five hundred acres of land for the foundation of a priory of their order, together with a school of missionaries for the Indians, and for the revival of sacred chant—a study Robert had greatly at heart. He received very favorable answers and, before he died, he saw the wish of his heart in a fair way to be accomplished.

The day of the arrival of the first Benedictine monks was a festival throughout the settlement. Indian and European decorations vied with each other; beads, feathers, flags, lanterns of painted birch-bark, flowers strewn on the paths, wreaths hung from tree to tree, all represented but poorly the heartfelt enthusiasm of the people. In a few months, the old chant of the church in the early ages echoed through the woods and corn-fields of the New World; the Divine Office was sung in the intervals of agricultural labor; seven times a day did the bells utter their summons to prayer, yet the fields and flocks thrived none the less for this continuous intercession. The boys of red and white race mingled their locks of black and gold, poring over the books of church psalmody; the maidens and matrons joined in from their seats in the body of the church. The wilderness became populous, great artists came to sketch the stately figures of the monks and the innocent faces of the choristers as they moved from choir to ploughed field, from school to pasture; curious folks came to visit the little spot of land where a great experiment had been tried and had not failed; musicians came to seek rest for their minds and inspiration for their art; poets came to describe the new Arcadia, and holy men to praise God in the temple where such great graces had been conferred.

Robert Maillard began to fear that such publicity would endanger the very perfection which was the theme of admiration, and with redoubled fervor did he pray for his beloved work. As last came a day when he knew that his earthly task was over; like a patriarch among his people, he gathered the heads of the little community around him, and blessed them, exhorting them to persevere in the happy and innocent life of "Perpetual Praise." His wife knelt at his feet, his sons stood around him, and one of them led by the hand a young child, whose eyes were Indian eyes, but whose skin was nearly as fair as that of her grandfather.

The Benedictine monks stood around Robert's bedside, chanting the Divine Office; but suddenly the dying man raised his hands to heaven, and, mingling his voice with the song of Compline, called out clearly and joyously, as if in answer to some interior voice: "I come, O Lord! Work has been prayer; be it now song."