rewarded to her satisfaction: "Malcolm Melville! how easily it runs from my pen; how sweetly it sounds to my ear; how musically it falls upon my heart. Malcolm Melville! Methinks I see him in his plaided kilts, with his soft blue eyes, & his long flaxen curls. How I long to press him to my heart. There! I can write no more. The last proof sheets are through. Mardi's a book." Augusta concludes with a quotation from Mardi: " "Oh my own Kagtanza, child of my prayers. Oro's blessing on thee!'"

In her search of the Genealogical Tree, Augusta had contemptuously brushed by all female branches: she had determined that Melville's first child should be a son-and a son with blue eyes and blond hair-and in her choice of a name for the unborn infant, she contemptuously ignored the possibility of the child turning out to be a girl. On February 16, 1849, was born in Boston, to Melville and his wife, their first child. There was potency in Augusta's prayers. It was a boy.

On April 14, 1849, Mardi appeared, published, as was Omoo, by Harper and Brothers in America, by Richard Bentley in London. Redburn appeared on August 18 of the same year. By February 22, 1850 (the date of Melville's fifth royalty account from Harper and Brothers), 2,154 copies of Mardi, and 4,011 copies of Redburn had been sold. On February 1, 1848, Melville had overdrawn his account with Harper's to the extent of $256.03. On December 5, 1848, Harper's advanced Melville $500; on April 28, 1848, $300; on July 2, 1849, $300; on September 14, 1849, $500. Though Mardi and Redburn had had a fairly generous sale, the deduction of his royalties on February 22, 1850, left him in debt to Harper's $733.69. The outlook was not bright for the responsibilities of fatherhood.

On April 23, Melville sent to his father-in-law a note "conveying the intelligence of Lizzie's improving strength, and Malcolm's precocious growth. Both are well." Melville went on to say that Samuel, the brother-in-law for whom he felt not the most enthusiastic affection, was expected by all "to honour us with his presence during the approaching vacation:

and I have no doubt he will not find it difficult to spend his time pleasantly with so many companions." Does Melville here imply that for himself, as a sensible man, he would prefer more solitude? In conclusion, Melville says: "I see that Mardi has been cut into by the London Atheneum, and also burnt by the common hangman by the Boston Post. However, the London Examiner & Literary Gazette & other papers this side of the water have done differently. These attacks are matters of course, and are essential to the building up of any permanent reputation-if such should ever prove to be mine-There's nothing in it!' cried the dunce when he threw down the 47th problem of the 1st Book of Euclid'There's nothing in it!'-Thus with the posed critic. Time, which is the solver of all riddles, will solve Mardi." The riddle of Mardi goes near to the heart of the riddle of Melville's life. "Not long ago," Melville says in the preface to Mardi, "having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific, which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure, and publishing it as such; to see whether the fiction might not, possibly, be received for a verity in some degree the reverse of my previous experience. This thought was the germ of others, which have resulted in Mardi."

But

Mardi, as Moby-Dick, starts off firmly footed in reality. The hero, discontented on board a whaler, hits upon the wild scheme of surreptitiously cutting loose one of the whale boats, and trusting to the chances of the open Pacific. It is sometimes the case that an old mariner will conceive a very strong attachment for some young sailor, his shipmate-a FidusAchates-ship, a league of offence and defence, a copartnership of chests and toilets, a bond of love and good-feeling. Such a relationship existed between the hero of Mardi and his Viking shipmate Jarl. Jarl was an old Norseman to behold: his hands as brawny as the paws of a bear; his voice as hoarse as a storm roaring round the peak of Mull; his long yellow hair waving about his head like a sunset. In the crow's-nest of the ship the project of escape was confided to Jarl. Jarl advised

with elderly prudence, but seeing his chummy's resolution immovable, he changed his wrestling to a sympathetic hug, and bluntly swore he would follow through thick and thin. The escape was successfully made, and for days the two men drifted at sea and it was an eventful if solitary drifting. After sixteen days in their open boat, "as the expanded sun touched the horizon's rim, a ship's uppermost spars were observed, traced like a spider's web against its crimson disk. It looked like a far-off craft on fire." Bent upon shunning a meeting-though Jarl "kept looking wistfully over his shouler; doubtlessly praying Heaven that we might not escape"-they lowered sail. As the ship bore down towards them, they saw her to be no whaler -as they had feared-but a small, two-masted craft in unaccountable disarray. They lay on their oars, and watched her in the starlight. They hailed her loudly. No return. Again. But all was silent. So, armed with a harpoon, they eventually boarded the strange craft. The ship was in a complete litter; the deserted tiller they found lashed. Though it was a nervous sort of business, they explored her interior. Many were the puzzling sights they saw; but except for a supernatural sneeze from the riggings, there was no evidence of life aboard. At dawn, however, they discovered, in the maintop, a pair of South Sea Islanders: Samoa, and Annatoo. "To be short, Annatoo was a Tartar, a regular Calmuc; and Samoa— Heaven help him-her husband." Upon this pair, Melville has lavished chapter after chapter of the most finished and competent comedy. Annatoo is as perfect, in her way, as is Zuleika Dobson. And Samoa-well, Samoa, on occasion, thinks it discreet to amputate his wounded arm.

"Among savages, severe personal injuries are, for the most part, accounted but trifles. When a European would be taking to his couch in despair, the savage would disdain to recline.

"More yet. In Polynesia, every man is his own barber and surgeon, cutting off his beard or arm, as occasion demands. No unusual thing, for the warriors of Varvoo to saw off their own limbs, desperately wounded in battle. But owing to the clumsiness of the instrument employed-a flinty, serrated shell -the operation has been known to last several days. Nor