Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 422 | Page 5

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why you shouldn't get on some way or other for forty more. Therefore,
so far as you are concerned, my mind is easy. But, then, you girls--you
poor little inexperienced poppets, who know nothing of the world.
There's Jane; but then she's pretty--really beautiful. Why, her face is a
fortune: she will of course captivate a rich man; and what more can a
father wish? As for Emily--I fear Emily, my dear, you're rather plain
than otherwise; but what, I would ask, is beauty?--fleeting, transitory,
skin-deep. The happiest marriages are those of mutual affection--not
one-sided admiration: so, on the whole, I should say that my mind is
easier about Emily than Jane. As for Maria, she's so clever, she can't
but get on. As a musician, an artist, an authoress, what bright careers
are open for her! While as for you, stupid little Clara, who never could
be taught anything--I very much doubt whether the dunces of this
world are not the very happiest people in it--Yes, Clara; leave to others
the vain and empty distinctions of literary renown, which is but a
bubble, and be happy in the homely path of obscure but virtuous duty!'
Happy Jack ceased. There was a pause. 'And now,' he said, 'having
provided for my family, I will go to sleep, with a clear conscience and a
tranquil mind.'
I said that I always distrusted this legend. I am happy to say, that even
as I write I have proof positive that it is purely a fiction. I have just had
a card put into my hand requesting my presence at a private exhibition
of the celebrated Bloomer Family, while an accompanying private note
from Jack himself informs me that the 'celebrated and charming
Bloomer group--universally allowed to be the most perfect and
interesting representatives of the new _régime_ in costume'--are no
other than the Happy Jacks _redivivi_--Mrs J. and the girls donning the
transatlantic attire, and Happy Jack himself delivering a lecture upon
the vagaries of fashion and the inconsistencies of dress, in a new
garment invented by himself, and combining the Roman toga with the
Highland kilt.

THE DESERT HOME.[1]

Robinson Crusoe is the parent of a line of fictions, all more or less
entertaining; but those of our own day, as might be expected, share
largely in the practical spirit of the time, making amusement in some
degree the mere menstruum of information. Following the Swiss
Family Robinson, we have here an English Family Robinson, which
might as well be called an American Family Robinson; and although
ostensibly meant for the holiday recreation of youth, it proves to be a
production equally well suited for children of six feet and upwards. The
author is personally familiar with the scenes he describes, and is thus
able to give them a verisimilitude which in other circumstances can be
attained only by the rarest genius; and notwithstanding the associations,
of his last book, the _Scalp-hunters_, there is only one bloody conflict
in the present one fought by animals of the genus Homo.
The local habitation of the lost family is a nook in the Great American
Desert--a nook in a desert twenty-five times the size of England! But
this wilderness of about a million square miles is not all sand or all
barren earth: it contains numerous other features of interest besides
mountains and oases; it includes the country of New Mexico, with its
towns and cities; the country round the Great Salt and Utah Lakes,
where the germ of a Mormon nation is expanding on all sides; and it is
traversed in its whole breadth by the Rocky Mountains. An English
family, after being ruined in St Louis, and reduced to their last hundred
pounds, are persuaded by a Scottish miner to accompany him across
this desert to New Mexico. 'They are a wonderful people,' says the
story-teller, 'these same Scotch. They are but a small nation, yet their
influence is felt everywhere upon the globe. Go where you will, you
will find them in positions of trust and importance--always prospering,
yet, in the midst of prosperity, still remembering, with strong feelings
of attachment, the land of their birth. They manage the marts of London,
the commerce of India, the fur-trade of America, and the mines of
Mexico. Over all the American wilderness you will meet them, side by
side with the backwoods-pioneer himself, and even pushing him from
his own ground. From the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Sea, they have
impressed with their Gaelic names rock, river, and mountain; and many
an Indian tribe owns a Scotchman for its chief.'

The adventurers join a caravan, which is attacked by Indians, and the
family of the destined Robinson find themselves alone in the
wilderness, 800 miles from the American frontier on the