TH

I-HAVE AND O-HAD-I.

HERE are two little songsters, well known in the land,
Their names are I-Have and O-Had-I;

I-Have will come tamely and perch on your hand,
But O-Had-I will mock you most sadly.

I-Have, at first sight, is less fair to the eye,
But his worth is by far more enduring
Than a thousand O-Had-I's, that sit far and high,
On roofs and on trees so alluring.

Full many a golden egg this bird will lay,
And sing you "Be cheery! be cheery !"
Oh, merrily then will the day glide away,
And sweet shall your sleep be when weary.

But let an O-Had-I just once take your eye,
And a longing to catch him once seize you,
He'll give you no comfort nor rest till you die-
Life-long he'll torment you and tease you.

He'll keep you all day running up and down hill,
Now racing, now panting and creeping,
While far overland, this sweet bird at his will,
With his golden plumage is sweeping.

Then every wise man who attends to my song
Will count his I-Have a choice treasure;
And where'er an O-Had-I comes flying along,
Will just let him fly at his pleasure.

- From the German.

THE

TOM CORDERY.*

HERE are certain things and persons that look as if they could never die; things of such vigour and hardiness that they seem constituted for an interminable duration, a sort of immortality. An old pollard-oak of my acquaintance used to give me that impression. Never was tree so gnarled, so knotted, so full of crooked life. Garlanded with ivy and woodbine, almost bending under the weight of its own rich leaves and acorns, tough, vigorous, lusty, concentrating as it were the very spirit of vitality into its own curtailed proportions! Could that tree ever die? I have asked myself twenty times, as I stood looking on the deep water over which it hung, and in which it seemed to live again. Would that strong dwarf ever fall? Alas! the question is answered. Walking by that spot to-day,—this very day, -there it lay prostrate, the ivy still clinging about it, the twigs swelling with sap, and putting forth already the early buds. There it lay, a victim to the taste and skill of some admirer of British woods, who, with the tact of Ugo Foscolo, that prince of amateurs, has discovered in the knots and gnarls of the exterior coat the leopard-like beauty which is concealed within the trunk. There it lies, a type of sylvan instability, fallen like an emperor. Another piece of strong nature in human form used to convey to me exactly the same feeling. And he is gone too! Tom Cordery dead! The words seem almost a contradiction. One is tempted to send for the sexton and the undertaker to undig the grave, to force open the coffin-lid, there must be some mistake. But, alas! it is too true; the typhus fever, that axe which levels the strong as the weak, has hewed him down at a blow. Cordery!

Poor Tom

This human oak grew in the wild North-of-Hampshire country, of which I have before made honourable mention, a country of heath, and hill, and forest, partly reclaimed, enclosed, and planted by some of the greater proprietors, but for the most part uncultivated and uncivilised, a

*From "Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery" (edit. London, 1824-26.)

C

proper refuge for wild animals of every species. Of these the most notable was my friend Tom Cordery, who presented in his own person no unfit emblem of the district in which he lived,—the gentlest of savages, the wildest of civilised men. He was by calling a rat-catcher, hare-finder, and broom-maker, a triad of trades which he had substituted for the one grand profession of poaching, which he had followed in his younger days with unrivalled talent and success, and would, undoubtedly, have pursued till his death, had not the bursting of an overloaded gun unluckily shot off his left hand. As it was, he still continued to mingle a little of his old occupation with his honest callings; was a reference of high authority amongst the young aspirants, an adviser of undoubted honour and secrecy, -suspected, and more than suspected, as being one "who, though he played no more, o'erlooked the cards." Yet he kept to windward of the law, and, indeed, continued to be on such terms of social, and even friendly, intercourse with the guardians of the game on the common, as may be said to prevail between reputed thieves and the myrmidons of justice in the neighbourhood of Bow Street. Indeed, his especial crony, the head-keeper, used sometimes to hint, when Tom, elevated by ale, had provoked him by overcrowing, "that a stump was no bad shield, and that to shoot off a hand and a bit of an arm for a blind, would be nothing to so daring a chap as Tom Cordery." This conjecture, never broached till the keeper was warm with wrath and liquor, and Tom fairly out of hearing, seemed always to me a little super-subtle; but it is certain that Tom's new professions did bear rather a suspicious analogy to the old, and the ferrets, and terriers, and mongrels by whom he was surrounded, "did really look," as the worthy keeper observed, "fitter to find Christian hares and pheasants, than rats and such vermin." So, in good truth, did Tom himself, Never did any human being look more like that sort of sportsman commonly called a poacher. He was a tall, finely-built man, with a prodigious stride, that cleared the ground like a horse, and a power of continuing his slow and steady speed, that seemed nothing less than miraculous. Neither man, nor horse, nor dog, could out-tire him. He had a bold undaunted presence, and an evident strength and power of bone and muscle. You might see by looking at him that he did not know what fear meant. In his youth he had fought more battles than He was as if born without nerves, totally insen

any man in the forest.