All who come to the funeral are welcome to sit down to this meal, or to help themselves to liquor, which, in imitation of the sideboards of 'big houses,' was set out on a shelf, each man rinsing the glass after he took his drink, and tossing the rinsings out of the window.

The nine cavalry men who composed the Horse Shoe Run Invincibles punctually arrived; so did the negroes who made up the band. The musicians outnumbered the warriors, the band being a dozen strong.

One of the company, however, had come on an old mule; and when they formed in line he excited the wrath of Steinburgher.

'Couldn't do no better, Capt'in,' was the excuse offered. Our ole mare's got the botts. I was up giving her drench after drench of whiskey all the holl night. Couldn' git no other horse to

come on!'

'Right wheel!' the Captain shouted. After a little confusion between right and left, eight of the company got their horses round, but the mule planted her feet firmly on the earth and shook her All she would let her rider do was to pull her head round. In vain her master kicked her ribs, and thumped her on her flanks with his steel scabbard.

ears.

'Hi, darkies!—you! Some of you behind there! Give her a rap on the rump, and keep on at it every time I give the word of command,” shouted the Captain to the bystanders.

A negro with an umbrella, under whose shade he meditated a display of lemonade and cakes, obeyed the order. In a moment he was outspread on his back behind the creature's heels, whilst her rider lay sprawled out on his face before the company. The mule, like a graven image, returned to her position.

Great Scott! What thick-headed nigger did that?' cried the dismounted warrior, scrambling to his legs again. 'Don't you suppose I know how to manage my own mule without a umbrella? If it's a free nigger, I'll break his neck for him; if he belongs to any man, I'll fight his master!'

Here ensued a rough and tumble chase after the offender, that was not ended till a waggon, drawn by two more mules, with a horse in the lead, made its way slowly to the farmhouse door.

Mourners, male and female, all on horseback, had been flocking in since daylight. The women of each party went into the house; the men hitched their horses at the fence and gossipped together. Some sort of a religious service was after a while reported to be taking place inside, and the men removed their hats, nor did they put them on again till the Dunkard minister took his seat beside the driver of the team, and the coffin, muffled in turkey red, white cotton, and blue jeans, was borne by the men of the old soldier's family to the waggon, passing with difficulty through the cabin door.

'Crash up, band!' cried the Captain, and all the various instru

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ments blared Hail, Columbia!' As they did so, the Captain, who combined the duties of a cornet with those of a commander, unfurled the star-spangled banner. The elder horses stood it all with tolerable composure, the colts grew restive, backed and plunged. At last two broke out of the ranks and tried to run away. The rider of

one of them, passing too near the mule, got a taste of her hind shoes in his mouth, which obliged him to live for the following week upon spoon victuals.

The mule and her rider were voted out; the company closed up, now only eight strong, and dashed after the band and waggon. The Captain, with his sword drawn in his right hand, his bridle and the flag of his country in his left, marshalled the civilians.

Male and female, two and two, they rode, except in cases where one horse or mule carried two riders. This irregularity had to be ignored by the Master of Ceremonies. The relations of the deceased being on foot, were not provided for in the procession. They trailed after it among the negroes. The procession made a circuit of about three miles, returning almost to the spot whence it had started. Then the coffin was lowered into the grave prepared for it. The red curtain, the blue jeans, and the belt of muslin were carefully withdrawn and handed over to Miss Molly.

'Now, boys,' cried out Captain Steinburgher, 'ride up close around the grave. Give him his last salute. Are you all ready? Steady then! Take aim. Fire!'

A rattle of musket-balls fell into the grave, and split to kindling wood the newly made coffin.

'You fools, I didn't say load up with ball cartridge!' called out the Captain, in what might be termed a roaring whisper. 'All of you fling down your guns, jump down out of your saddles, and shovel the dirt in quick with your hands. Be quick, I tell you! Do you suppose,' he added in a fierce aside, 'I want old man McGinnis' folks to know that we buried him with seven bullet holes through his body like as if he was a horse-thief? And if any of you here present makes any such a blunder when you come to fire a salute over me at my funeral, hang me but my spook shall come back and have it out with you! Now mount, and let the darkies finish it,' he cried aloud, when the grave was about half full. 'Band, give us something lively! Knock the dirt off your knees, men, and look as if you was proud of burying a soldier who fought the British Army.'

Assuming an air to match his word of command, and waving sword and flag to left and right, 'Richard was himself again.'

We now took leave of the McGinnis family. Miss Molly indignantly refused compensation for our night's lodging; but I laid the money where I hoped it would be found.

As we passed the Horse Shoe Run Invincibles, drawn up again in line, we saluted Captain Steinburgher, whose wrath had again

effervesced in the face of the mule rider, who had rejoined his comrades.

'Say, stranger,' he called after me, ' ain't it one of Queen Vic-tory's articles of war to court-martial any man who comes to muster riding a mule?'

'We have very few mules in England,' I shouted back to him.

'Good for you then! I never heern much as I liked about the old country, nor never thought her great for good sense nother, but she's got herself set right on one point if she ain't for employin' no mules!'

These were the last words that lingered on our ears as we turned the corner of a bluff, and went on our way through savage woods, following the crooked windings of the Savage River.

SHAKSPERE TALKS WITH UNCRITICAL READERS.

XXXVI.-MACBETH.*

Supposed date 1605-6; published 1623.

IN opening Macbeth after any of the plays of Italian story, or even Measure for Measure, we find ourselves in a totally different region of Shakspere's kingdom. He leaves the representation of the life of his own day, with its virtues and vices, and goes back into an older world and a simpler form of society, where, indeed, the characters may be strangely complicated, but their histories are plain and straightforward. The mere story of Macbeth might be condensed into two sentences, and there is no doubt as to the point and intention of each scene in it which Shakspere wrote, however much fulness of meaning he put into passage after passage, and this distinctness may be part of the secret of the undying power of the play. If Hamlet is the best known of the plays as a whole, we may fairly say that Macbeth is the best known as a story. The two principal figures have laid hold of the world's imagination, and are recognised types of character even with people who would be puzzled to quote more than a single line of the play. The good folks who inform you that 'King Lear is a tragedy, you know,' have yet, as a general thing, some notion about Lady Macbeth. This knowledge does not come, in our time at least, from frequently seeing it acted, for it seems far more difficult to represent adequately than most of the Shakspere plays which appear on our modern stage. A very slight study of it shows that it requires very unusual physical and mental powers to fill either of the leading parts satisfactorily, and anything less would be intolerable. It is very possible that traditions of Mrs. Siddons unconsciously affect our idea of what Lady Macbeth should be, and probably they have also helped to fix the character so firmly in the popular mind. It is very unpleasant that we cannot go straight into the play without the tiresome question instantly jumping up as to whether Shakspere wrote it all, and if not, how much did he write? A critic of the present day who is much given to 'taking care of the sounds, and letting the sense take care of itself,' has described Macbeth as a 'mutilated fragment,' or words to that effect. It is not bad for a 'mutilated fragment' to succeed in fascinating the attention of the world, even if some inferior work is mixed up with it; but if we give up all the disputed passages, such as the second scene, for instance, and allow that perhaps another hand wrote part of the witches' scenes, we should

*We must apologise to our readers for a second paper on Macbeth, but it came in the regular course of 'Shakspere Readings,' and may still interest the students.

still have a very substantial play left, and it is far from certain that we need abandon as much as this. Some critics, again, stick out for every word of the play as it stands! For his story Shakspere went again to his old storehouse, Holinshed's Chronicle, where he found the necessary outline in one of the versions of King Macbeth's history (for accounts differ as to that personage), and also many details which he worked up in his own fashion, without minding whether they belonged together originally. For instance, most of the minor incidents connected with Duncan's murder are taken from the account of another king altogether. As in the other plays for which Shakspere consulted Holinshed, he freely made use of the Chronicle's vigorous and picturesque phrases whenever they happened to suit him. It may be fanciful, but there seems to be a difference where Shakspere elaborated some slight hint or transformed some foolish novel into a play, instead of, as in Macbeth, finding his outlines boldly, if roughly marked out for him by a kindred spirit, so that he could march on freely, not vexing his soul by needless trouble. It is easy to fancy how Macbeth's story, with the strong dash of the supernatural element in it, the dramatic turn of the incidents, the suggestion of the woman's character, would appeal to his imagination, as affording him a splendid field for the use of most of his powers. Not all of them, of course. The lighter and softer side of his genius hardly comes into play here, he seems not in the humour for it, and there is not room for this among the strong, fierce passions of the play, except in brief hints, which nevertheless suggest a world of concentrated meaning.

At the very outset of the play we find ourselves brought into an entirely new world, where facts and fancies change their shapes as the witches change and vanish into air. One point alone is certain about the witch scenes, whether Shakspere wrote them all or not, somehow they are different from witch scenes in other people's plays. Other writers, Middleton for example, brought on witches with caldrons, spirits, and all the rest of it; but they represent merely the commonplace conceptions of the time, wicked old women with magical powers. Now Macbeth's witches are wicked and malignant enough, but they have a vague mysteriousness about them which shows they belong to another region. It would be very interesting to know exactly what Shakspere thought about witches, or indeed about most things; but a poet is always at liberty to make use of the picturesque features of any popular belief, without being supposed to pledge himself to it. Yet we should like to know what was conveyed to his mind by the very suggestive sentence in Holinshed, which states that the common opinion was that the women who met Macbeth and Banquo, and prophesied to them, 'were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say) the goddesses of destinie, or else some Nimphes or Fairies endued with knowledge of prophesie by their nicromanticall science.' There is a delightful comprehensiveness about this which sets us recalling all sorts of irreconcilable VOL. 20.

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PART 119.