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Title: Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI.

Author: Various

Release Date: October 5, 2004 [EBook #13636]

Language: English

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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.




FEBRUARY, 1873.

Vol. XI., No. 23.




TABLE OF CONTENTS


SEARCHING FOR THE QUININE-PLANT IN PERU.
  Concluding Paper.

A GLANCE AT THE SITE AND ANTIQUITIES OF ATHENS By J.L.T. PHILLIPS.

COMMONPLACE By CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.

PROBATIONER LEONHARD; OR, THREE NIGHTS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY
  By CAROLINE CHESEBRO.

  Chapter IV.--The Test--With Mental Reservations.

  Chapter V.--Sister Benigna.

  Chapter VI.--The Men Of Spenersberg.

  Chapter VII.--The Book.

  Chapter VIII.--Conference Meeting.

  Chapter IX.--Will The Architect Have Employment?

COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE IN ENGLAND By REGINALD WYNFORD.

THE FOREST OF ARDEN By ITA ANIOL PROKOP.

JACK, THE REGULAR By THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH.

OBSERVATIONS AND ADVENTURES IN SUBMARINE DIVING By WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

CONFIDENTIAL.

GLIMPSES OF JOHN CHINAMAN By PRENTICE MULFORD.

A WINTER REVERIE By MILLIE W. CARPENTER.

"PASSPORTS, GENTLEMEN!" By A.H.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

  The Cornwallis Family.

  Novelties In Ethnology.

  The Steam-whistle.

  Siamese News.

  Madison As A Temperance Man.

NOTES.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Books Received.




ILLUSTRATIONS

The Cones of Patabamba.

"Pepe Garcia, Who Marched Ahead, Announced the Print Of A South
  American Tiger."

"Napoleon-like, They Washed Their Dirty Linen in The Family"

"Aragon and his Men Fell Upon the Deserters Without Mercy."

"They Greeted These Indian Relics As Crusoe Did The Footprints of the
  Savages."

"Another Savage Had Found a Pair of Linen Pantaloons."

View of the Acropolis and The Columns Of The Temple Of Jupiter Olympus.

Theatre of Dionysus (Bacchus).

Victory Untying Her Sandals.

Temple of Victory.

The Parthenon.

Bas Relief of the Gods (Frieze Of The Parthenon).

Porch of the Caryatides.

Monument of Lysicrates.






SEARCHING FOR THE QUININE-PLANT IN PERU.

CONCLUDING PAPER.


Early on a brilliant morning, with baggage repacked, and the lessening
amount of provisions more firmly strapped on the shoulders of the
Indians, the explorers left their pleasant site on the banks of the
Maniri. The repose allowed to the bulk of the party during the absence
of their Bolivian companions had been wholesome and refreshing. The
success of the bark-hunters in their search for cinchonas had cheered
all hearts, and the luxurious supper of dried mutton and chuno
arranged for them on their return gave a reminiscence of splendor to
the thatched hut on the banks of the stream. This edifice, the last of
civilized construction they expected to see, had the effect of a home
in the wilderness. The bivouac there had been enjoyed with a sentiment
of tranquil carelessness. Little did the travelers think that savage
eyes had been peeping through the forest upon their fancied security,
and that the wild people of the valleys who were to work them all
kinds of mischief were upon their track from this station forth.

The enormous fire kindled for breakfast mingled with the stain of
sunrise to cast a glow upon their departure. Across the vale of the
Cconi, as though a pair of sturdy porters had arisen to celebrate
their leavetaking, the cones of Patabamba caught the first rays of
the sun and held them aloft like hospitable torches. These huge forms,
soldered together at the waist like Chang and Eng, and clothed with
shaggy woods up to the top, had been the guardian watchers over their
days in the ajoupa at Maniri. The sun just rising empurpled their
double cones, while the base and the surrounding landscape were washed
with the neutral tints of twilight.

After passing the narrow affluent after which the camping-ground of
Maniri was named, the party pursued the course of the Cconi through
a more level tract of country. The stones and precipices became more
rare, but in revenge the sandy banks soon began to reflect a heat that
was hardly bearable. As the implacable sun neared its zenith the party
walked with bent heads and blinded eyes, now dashing through great
plains of bamboos, now following the hatchets of the peons through
thickets of heated shrubbery.

Whenever the country became more wooded in its character, the
bark-hunters, whose quest obliged them to stray in short flights
around the wings of the column, redoubled their mazes. The careless
air of these Bolivian retrievers, their voluntary doublings through
the most difficult jungles, and their easy way of walking over
everything with their noses in the air, proved well their indifference
to the obstacles which were almost insurmountable to the rest.

[Illustration: THE CONES OF PATABAMBA.]

Nothing could be more singular and interesting than to see them
consulting one by one the indications scattered around them, and
deciding on their probabilities or promises. Where the height and
thickness of the foliage prevented them from seeing the sky, or
even the shade of the surrounding green, they walked bent toward the
ground, stirring up the rubbish, and choosing among the dead foliage
certain leaves, of which they carefully examined the two sides and the
stem. When by accident they found themselves near enough to speak to
each other--a rare chance, for each peon undertook a separate line of
search--they asked their friends, showing the leaves they had found,
whether their discoveries appertained to the neighboring trees or
whether the wind had brought the pieces from a distance. This kind
of investigation, pursued by men who had prowled through forests
all their lives, might seem slightly puerile if the reader does
not understand that it is often difficult, or even impossible, to
recognize the growing tree by its bark, covered as it is from base
to branches with parasitic vegetation of every sort. In those forests
whatever has a stout stem is used without scruple by the bignonias and
air-plants, which race over the trunk, plant their root-claws in the
cracks, leap over the whole tree at a single jet, or strangle it with
multiplied knots, all the while adorning it with a superb mantle of
leaves and blossoms. This is a difficulty which the most experienced
_cascarilleros_ are not able to overcome. As an instance, the history
is cited of a _practico_ or speculator who led an exploration for
these trees in the valley of Apolobamba. After having caused to be
felled, barked, measured, dried and trimmed all the cinchonas of one
of those natural thickets called _manchas_--an operation which had
occupied four months--he was about to abandon the spot and pursue
the exploration elsewhere, when accident led him to discover, in
the enormous trunk buried in creepers against which he had built his
cabin, a _Cinchona nitida_, the forefather of all the trees he had
stripped.

In this kind of search the caravan pursued the borders of the
river, sometimes on this side and sometimes on that, now passing the
two-headed mountain Camanti, now sighting the tufted peak of Basiri,
now crossing the torrent called the Garote. In the latter, where
the dam and hydraulic works of an old Spanish gold-hunter were still
visible in a state of ruin, the sacred golden thirst of Colonel Perez
once more attacked him. Two or three pins' heads of the insane metal
were actually unearthed by the colonel and displayed in a pie-dish;
but the business of the party was one which made even the finding of
gold insignificant, and they pursued their way.

The flanks of these mountains, however, were really of importance to
the botanical motive of the expedition. Along the side of the Camanti,
where the yellow Garote leaked downward in a rocky ravine, the
Bolivians were again successful. They brought to Marcoy specimens of
half a dozen cinchonas, for him to sketch, analyze and decorate with
Latin names. The colors of two or three of these barks promised
well, but the pearl of the collection was a specimen of the genuine
_Calisaya_, with its silver-gray envelope and leaf ribbed with
carmine. This proud discovery was a boon for science and for commerce.
It threw a new light upon the geographical locality of the most
precious species of cinchona. It was incontestably the plant, and
the Bolivians appeared amazed rather than pleased to have discovered
outside of their own country a kind of bark proper only to Bolivia,
and hardly known to overpass the northern extremity of the valley of
Apolobamba. This discovery would rehabilitate, in the European market,
the quinine-plants of Lower Peru, heretofore considered as inferior to
those of Upper Peru and Bolivia. The latter country has for some time
secured the most favorable reputation for its barks--a reputation
ably sustained by the efforts of the company De la Paz, to whom the
government has long granted a monopoly. This reputation is based on
the abundance in that country of two species, the _Cinchona calisaya_
and _Boliviana,_ the best known and most valued in the market. But
for two valuable cinchonas possessed by Bolivia, Peru can show twenty,
many of them excellent in quality, and awaiting only the enterprise of
the government and the natural exhaustion of the forests to the south.

This magnificent bit of luck, the finding of the calisaya, awakened
in the susceptible bosom of Mr. Marcoy an ardent desire to explore
for himself the site of its discovery. But Eusebio, the chief of the
cascarilleros, assuming a mysterious and warning expression, informed
the traveler that the place was quite inaccessible for a white man,
and that he had risked his own neck a score of times in descending the
ravine which separated the route from the hillside where the fortunate
plants were growing. He promised, however, to point out the locality
from afar, and to show, by a certain changeable gloss proper to the
leaf, the precise stratum of the calisaya amongst the belts of the
forest. This promise he forgot to execute more particularly, but it
appeared that the locality would never be excessively hard to find,
marked as it was by Nature with the gigantic finger-post of Mount
Camanti. Placing, then, in security these precious specimens among
their baggage, the explorers continued their advance along the valley.

The footing was level and easy. Rocks and precipices were left behind,
and were displaced by a soft, slippery sort of sand, where from space
to space were planted, like so many oases in a desert, clumps of giant
reeds. By a strange but natural caprice these beds of rustling verdure
were cut in an infinity of well-defined geometric forms. Seen from an
eminence and at a distance, this arrangement gave a singular effect.
In the midst of these native garden-beds were cut distinct and narrow
alleys, where the drifting sands were packed like artificial paths.
It is unnecessary to add that the soft footways, notwithstanding
their advertisement of verdure and shade, proved to be of African
temperature.

The last hours of daylight surprised the travelers among the
labyrinths of these strange gardens. A suitable spot was chosen for
the halt. As the porters were preparing to throw down their packs,
Pepe Garcia, who marched ahead, announced the print of a South
American tiger. The first care of the Indians, on hearing this news,
was to send forth a horrible cry and to throng around the marks. The
footprints disappeared at the thickest part of the jungle. After
an examination of the traces, which resembled a large trefoil, they
precipitated themselves on the interpreter-in-chief, representing
how impossible it was to camp out in the neighborhood of the dreaded
animal. But Pepe Garcia, accustomed as he was by profession to try his
strength with the ferocious bear and the wily boar, was not the man to
be afraid of a tiger, even of a genuine tiger from Bengal. To prove
to the porters how slight was the estimation he placed on the supposed
enemy, and also to drill them in the case of similar rencounters, he
pushed the whole troop pellmell into the thickest part of the reeds,
with the surly order to cut down the canes for sheds. Drawing his own
knife, he slashed right and left among the stems, which the Indians,
trembling with fear, were obliged to make into sheaves on the spot and
transport to the beach selected for the bivouac. Double rows of these
_arundos_, driven into the sand, formed the partitions of the cabins,
for which their interwoven leaves made an appropriate thatch. The
green halls with matted vaults were picturesque enough; each peon,
seeing how easily they were constructed, chose to have a house for
himself; and the Tiger's Beach quickly presented the appearance of a
camp disposed in a long straight line, of which the timorous Indians
occupied the extremity nearest the river.

No "tiger" appeared to justify the apprehensions of the porters; but
what was lacking to their fears from beasts with four feet was made
up to them by beasts with wings. The night closed in dry and serene.
Since leaving Maniri, whether because of the broadening of the valley,
the rarity of the water-courses or the decreasing altitude of the
hills, the adventurers had been little troubled with fogs at night.
The fauna of the region, too, had offered nothing of an alarming
complexion, except the footprints of the tiger in question: an
occasional tapir or peccary from the woods, and otters and fish from
the streams, had attracted the shots of the party, but merely as
welcome additions to their game-bags, not as food for their fears.
To-night, however, the veritable bugbear of the tropical forest paid
them a visit, and left a real souvenir of his presence. As the Indian
servants stretched themselves out in slumber under the bright stars
and in the partial shelter of their ajoupas, a bat of the vampire
species, attracted by the emanations of their bodies, came sailing
over them, and emboldened by the silence reigning everywhere, selected
a victim for attack. Hovering over the fellow's exposed foot, he bit
the great toe, and fanning his prey in the traditional yet inevitable
manner by the natural movement of his wings, he gorged himself with
blood without disturbing the mozo. The latter, on awakening in the
morning, observed a slight swelling in the perforated part, and on
examination discovered a round hole large enough to admit a pea.
Without rising, the man summoned his companions, who formed a group
around him for the purpose of furnishing a certain natural remedy in
the shape of a secretion which each one drew out of his ears. With
this the patient made himself a plaster for his wound, and appeared to
think but little of it. Questioned as to his sensations by the white
travelers, who found themselves a good deal more disturbed with the
idea of the vampire than they had been by any indications of tigers or
wild-boars, the fellow explained that he had felt no sensation, unless
it might have been an agreeable coolness of his sand-baked feet.
The incident seemed so disagreeable and so likely of recurrence
that Colonel Perez ever afterward slept with his feet rolled up in a
variety of fantastic draperies, while Mr. Marcoy for several nights
retained his boots.

[Illustration: "PEPE GARCIA, WHO MARCHED AHEAD, ANNOUNCED THE PRINT OF
A SOUTH AMERICAN TIGER."--P. 132.]

The path along the river-sands would have been voluntarily followed by
all the more irresponsible portion of the party, notwithstanding the
blinding heats, on account of its smoother footing. The cascarilleros,
however, objected that its tufts of canes and passifloras offered no
promise for their researches. A compromise was effected. The porters,
under the command of Juan of Aragon, were allowed to follow the shore,
and were armed with a supply of fish-hooks to induce them to add from
time to time to the alarmingly diminished supply of provisions. The
grandees of the party followed the Bolivians, whose specialty entitled
them to control practically the direction of the route, and plunged
into the woods to botanize, to explore and to search for game.
A system of conversation by means of shouts and pistol-shots was
established between the two divisions. The next night proved the
wisdom of this bifurcation. The united booty of earth, air and water,
under the form of a squirrel, a pair of toucans and a variety of fish,
afforded a meal which the porters described as _comida opipara_ or
a sumptuous festival. Lulled and comforted by the sensation which a
contented stomach wafts toward the brain, the explorers, after
washing their hands and rinsing their mouths at the riverside, betook
themselves to a cheerful repose _sub jove_, the locality offering no
reeds of the articulated species with which to construct a shelter.

The party, then, betook themselves to slumber with unusual
contentment, repeating the splendid supper in their dreams, with the
addition of every famous wine that Oporto and Rheims could dispense,
when they were awakened by a sudden and terrible storm. A waterspout
stooped over the forest and sucked up a mass of crackling branches.
The camp-fire hissed and went out in a fume of smoke. A continuity of
thunder, far off at first, but approaching nearer and nearer, kept up
a constant and increasing fusillade, to whose reports was soon added
the voice of the Cconi, lashed in its bed and bellowing like the sea.
The surprising tumult went on in a _crescendo_. The hardly-interrupted
charges of the lightning gave to the eye a strange vision of flying
woods and soaring branches. Startled, trembling and sitting bolt
upright, the adventurers asked if their last hour were come. The rain
undertook to answer in spinning down upon their heads drops that were
like bullets, and which for some time were taken for hail. Fearing to
be maimed or blinded as they sat, the party crowded together, placing
themselves back to back; and, unable to lay their heads under their
wings like the birds, sheltered them upon their knees under the
protection of their crossed arms. The fearful deluge of heated shot
lasted until morning. Then, as if in laughter, the sun came radiantly
out, the landscape readjusted its disheveled beauties, and the ground,
covered with boughs distributed by the whirlwind, greedily drank in
the waters from heaven. Soon there remained nothing of the memorable
tempest but the diamonds falling in measured cadence from the
refreshed and stiffened leaves.

Up to sunrise the unfortunates rested stoically silent, their knees in
their mouths, and receiving the visitation like a group of statuary.
The rain ceasing with the same promptitude with which it had risen,
they raised their heads and looked each other in the face, like the
enemies over the fire in Byron's _Dream_. Each countenance was blue,
and decorated with long flat locks of adhesive hair. The teeth of the
whole party were chattering like a concert of castanets. The sun, like
a practical joker, laughed ironically at the general picture.

The first hours of morning were consecrated to a general examination
of the stores, especially the precious specimens of cinchona. Bundles
were restrapped, the damp provisions laid out in the sun, and the
clothing of the party, even to the most intimate garment, was taken
down to the river to be refreshed and furbished up. A common disaster
had created a common cause amongst the whole troop, and with one
accord everybody--peons, mozos, interpreters, bark-strippers and
gentlemen--set in motion a grand cleaning-up day. Napoleon-like, they
washed their dirty linen in the family. Whoever had seen the strangers
coming and going from the beach to the woods, clothed in most
abbreviated fashion, and seeming as familiar to the uniform as if they
had always worn it under the charitable mantle of the woods, would
have taken them for a savage tribe in the midst of its encampment. It
is probable they were so seen.

Thanks to the intense heat of the sun-shine, the garments and baggage
of the expedition were quickly dried. The first were donned, the last
was loaded on the porters, and the line of march was taken up. Up to
noon the road lay along the blazing sands under a sun of fire. All the
members of the party felt fresh and hardy after the involuntary bath,
except one of the Indians, who was affected with a kind of ophthalmia.
This attack, which Mr. Marcoy attributed partly to the glare, partly
to the wet, and partly to a singular hobby peculiar to the individual
of sleeping with his eyes wide open, was of no long duration. The pain
which he complained of disappeared with a few hours of exercise and
with the determination he showed in staring straight at the god of
day, who, as if in memory of the worship formerly extended toward him
in the country, deigned to serve as oculist for the sufferer. A little
before sunset halt was made for the night-camp in the centre of a
beach protected by clumps of reeds in three quarters of the wind. The
Indian porters, despatched for fish and firewood, returned suddenly
with a frightened mien to say that they had fallen into the midst of
a camp of savages. The white men quickly rejoined them at the spot
indicated, where they found a single hut in ruins, made of reeds which
appeared to have been cut for the construction some fortnight before,
and strewn with fire-brands, banana skins and the tail of a large
fish. Pepe Garcia, consulted on these indications, explained that it
was in reality the camping-place of some of the savage Siriniris, but
that the narrowness of the hut seemed to indicate that not more than
two of the Indians, probably a man and woman, had resided there during
a short fishing-excursion.

This discovery cast a shade over the countenances of the porters.
After having collected the provisions necessary for a slender supper,
they drew apart, and, while cooking was going on, began to converse
with each other in a low voice. No notice was taken of their behavior,
however, though it would have required little imagination to guess
the subject of their parliament. The tired eyes of the explorers were
already closed, while their ears, more alert, could hear the confused
murmur proceeding from the Indians' quarter, where the disposition
seemed to be to prolong the watch indefinitely.

[Illustration: "NAPOLEON-LIKE, THEY WASHED THEIR DIRTY LINEN IN THE
FAMILY"--P. 135.]

The dark hours filed past, and jocund day, according to Shakespeare
and Romeo, stood tiptoe on the mountain-tops of Camanti and Basiri,
when the travelers were awakened by a fierce and terrible cry. Lifting
their heads in astonishment, they perceived the faithful Pepe Garcia,
his face disfigured with rage, and his fist shaking vigorously in the
direction of the Indians, who sat lowering and sullen in their places.
Aragon and the cascarilleros, collected around the chief interpreter,
far from trying to calm his anger, appeared to feed it by their
suggestions. An explanation of the scene was demanded. Eight of the
bearers, it appeared, had deserted, leaving to their comrades the
pleasure of watching over the packages of cinchona, but assuming for
their part the charge of a good fraction of the provisions, which
they had disappeared with for the relief of their fellow-porters.
This copious bleeding of the larder drew from Colonel Perez a terrible
oath, and occasioned a more vivid sentiment in the entrails of Marcoy
than the defection of the men. If the evil was grand, the remedy was
correspondingly difficult. Indolent or mercurial at pleasure, the
Indians had doubtless threaded the woods with winged feet, and were
now far away. Mr. Marcoy proposed therefore to continue the march
without them, but to set down a heavy account of bastinadoes to their
credit when they should turn up again at Marcapata. This proposition,
as it erred on the side of mercy, was unanimously rejected, and a
scouting-party was ordered in pursuit, consisting of the bark-hunters
and Juan of Aragon, to whom for the occasion Pepe Garcia confided his
remarkable fowling-piece.

[Illustration: "ARAGON AND HIS MEN FELL UPON THE DESERTERS WITHOUT
MERCY."--P. 138.]

In the afternoon the extemporized police reappeared. The fugitives had
been found tranquilly sitting on the banks of the river, distending
their abdomens with the stolen preserves and chocolate. Aragon and his
men fell upon the deserters without mercy. The former, battering away
at them with the stock of his gun, and the latter, exercising upon
their shoulders whatever they possessed in the way of lassoes,
axe-handles and sabre-blades, maintained the argument effectually for
some time in this way, and did not descend to questions until muscular
fatigue caused them to desist. The catechism subsequently put to the
porters elicited the reply, from the spokesman of the recusants,
that they were tired of being afraid of the wild Indians; that they
objected to marching into the dens of tigers; that, perceiving their
rations diminished from day to day, they had imagined the time not far
distant when the same would be withdrawn altogether. It was curious,
as it seemed to Marcoy when the argument was rehearsed to him
presently, that the fellows made no complaint of being footsore,
overcharged with burdens or conducted into paths too difficult for
them. A lurking admiration for the vigor with which, after all, they
played their crushing part of beasts of burden, procured them immunity
from further punishment after their return. Their bivouacs were simply
watched on the succeeding nights by Bolivian sentinels.

After a few minutes allowed the strayed sheep to rub their bruises,
the march was continued. The afternoon afforded a succession of the
same sandy riverbanks, dressed with reeds, false maize, calceolarias
and purple passion-flowers, and yielding for sole booty a brace of
wild black ducks, and an opossum holding in her pouch five saucy and
scolding little ones. The natural civet employed as a cosmetic by this
animal forbade the notion of using it for food, and it was thrown with
its family into the river, after being deprived of its glossy skin.

As evening approached, and as all eyes were exploring the banks for a
suitable camping-ground, a spacious and even beach was fixed upon as
offering all the requisite conveniences. It was agreed to halt there.
Attaining the locality, however, they were amazed to find all the
traces of a previous occupation. Several sheds, formed of bamboo
hurdles set up against the ground with sticks, like traps, were
grouped together. Under each was a hearth, a simple excavation,
two feet across and a few inches deep, and filled with ashes. A few
arrows, feathers and rude pieces of pottery were scattered around.
They greeted these Indian relics as Crusoe did the footprints of the
savages. Nor was it more reassuring to observe, among other callers
like themselves who had left their visiting-cards at the doors since
the departure of the proprietors, the sign-manual of jaguars and
tapirs, whose footprints were plainly visible on the gravel.

A close examination was made of every detail pertaining to the huts
and their accessories, and the interpreters were asked if it would be
prudent to encamp in a spot thus leased in advance. Pepe Garcia and
Aragon were of opinion that it would be better to pass the night
there, assuring their employers that there would be no danger in
sleeping among the teraphim of the savages, provided that nothing was
touched or displaced. Their motion was promptly adopted, to the great
discomfiture of the porters, who were poised on one foot ready for
flight. A salute of five shots was fired, with a vague intention
of giving any listeners the highest possible opinion of the white
explorers as a military power. An enormous fire was kindled, sentinels
were posted, and the party turned in, taking care, however, during the
whole night to close but one eye at a time.

[Illustration: "THEY GREETED THESE INDIAN RELICS AS CRUSOE DID THE
FOOTPRINTS OF THE SAVAGES."--P. 138.]

Day commenced to blush, when all ears were assaulted by a concerted
howl, proceeding from behind a bed of canes on the other side of the
river. "_Alerta! los Chunchos!_" cried the sentinel. The three words
produced a startling effect: the porters sprang up like frightened
deer; Mr. Marcoy grasped a sheaf of pencils and a box of water-colors
with a warlike air, and the colonel's lips were crisped into a
singular smile, indicative of lively emotions. Hardly were the
travelers clothed and armed when the reeds parted with a rattling
noise, and three nude Indians, sepia-colored and crowned with tufts of
hair like horses' tails, leaped out like jacks-in-the-box. At sight of
the party standing to receive them they redoubled their clamor, then,
flourishing their arms and legs and turning continually round, they
gradually revolved into the presence of the explorers. They selected
as chiefs and sachems of the party such as bore weapons, being the
colonel, Marcoy and the two interpreters. These they clasped in a
warm, fulsome embrace: they were smeared from head to foot with rocoa
(crude arnotta), and their passage through the river having dissolved
this pigment, they printed themselves off, in this act of amity, upon
the persons and clothing of their hosts. While the white men, with a
very bad grace, were cleaning off these tokens of natural affection,
the new-comers went on to present their civilities all around. Two of
the porters they recognized at once, with their eagle eyesight, from
having relieved them of their shirts while the latter were working
out some penalty at the governor's farm of Sausipata, and proceeded to
claim a warm acquaintance on that basis; but the bearers, with equally
lively memories of the affront, responded simply with a frown and the
epithet of _Sua-sua_--double thief.

Pepe Garcia undertook a colloquy, and Aragon, not to be behindhand,
flashed a few words across the conversation, right and left as it
were, his expressions appearing to be in a different tongue from those
used by the chief interpreter, and both utterly without perceptible
resemblance to the rolling consonants and gutturals of the savages.
Marcoy imbibed a strong impression that the only terms understood in
common were the words of Spanish with which the palaver was thickly
interlarded. This was the first time the interpreters were put on
their mettle in a strictly professional sense, and the test was not
altogether triumphant. However, by a careful raising of the voice
in all difficult passages, and a wild, expressive pantomime, an
understanding was arrived at.

The visitors belonged to the tribe of Siriniris, inhabiting the space
comprised between the valleys of Ocongate and Ollachea, and extending
eastwardly as far as the twelfth degree. They lived at peace with
their neighbors, the Huat-chipayris and the Pukiris. For several days
the reports of the Christian guns (_tasa-tasa_) had advertised them
of the presence of white men in the valley, and, curious to judge of
their numbers, they had approached. They had formed a cunning escort
to the party, always faithful but never seen, since the encampment
at Maniri: every camping-ground since that particular bivouac they
faithfully described. They were, of course, in particular and direful
need of _sirutas_ and _bambas_ (knives and hatchets), but their fears
of the _tasa-tasa_, or guns, was still stronger than their desires,
and their courage had not, until they saw the strangers domiciled as
guests in their own habitations, attained the firmness and consistency
necessary for a personal approach. The three dancing ambassadors were
ministers plenipotentiary on the part of their tribe, located in a
bamboo metropolis five miles off.

The white men could not well avoid laying down their _tasa-tasa_ and
disbursing _sirutas_ and _bambas_. The savages, after this triumph
of diplomacy, suddenly turned, and, thrusting their fingers in their
mouths, emitted a shrill note, which had the effect of enchanting the
forest of rushes across the river, and causing it to give birth to a
whole ballet of naked coryphei. Nine men, seven women and three dogs
composed the spectacle, of which the masculine part, the human and
the canine, proceeded to swim the stream and fraternize with the
strangers. The women rested on the bank like river-nymphs: their
costume was somewhat less prudish than that of the men, the coat of
rocoa being confined to their faces, which were further decorated with
joints of reed thrust through the nose and ears. A glance of curiosity
darted across the water by the colonel was surprised in its flight by
the ambassadors, who addressed a hasty word or two to their ladies:
the latter, with one quick and cat-like gesture, whipped off each a
branch of the nearest foliage, and were dressed in a single instant.

To reward all these vociferous mendicants with the invaluable cutlery
was hardly prudent. Seeing the hesitation of their visitors, the
savages adopted other tactics. Hurling themselves across the river,
they quickly reappeared, armed with all the temptations they could
think of to induce the strangers to barter. The scene of these savages
coming to market was a picturesque one. Entering the water, provided
with their objects of exchange, which they held high above their
heads, and swimming with the right arm only, they began to cut the
river diagonally. The lifting of the waves and the dash of spray
almost concealed the file of dusky heads. Nothing could be plainly
seen but the left arms, standing out of the water as stiff and
inflexible as so many bars of bronze, relieved against the silvery
brightness of the water. These advancing arms were adorned with the
material of traffic--bird-skins of variegated colors, bows and arrows,
and live tamed parrots standing upon perches of bamboo. The white
spectators could not but admire the native vigor, elegance and
promptitude of their motions as they rose from the water like Tritons,
and, throwing their treasures down in a heap, bounded forward to give
their visitors the conventional signals of friendship. A rapid
bargain was concluded, in which the sylvan booty of the wild men (not
forgetting the prudent exaction of their weapons) was entirely made
over to the custody of the explorers in exchange for a few Birmingham
knives worth fourpence each.

However curious and amicable might be their new relations with the
savages, the party were desirous to put an end to them as soon as
possible. Pepe Garcia announced that the pale chiefs, wishing to
resume their march, were about to separate from them. This decision
appeared to be unpleasant or distressful in their estimation, and
they tried to reverse it by all sorts of arguments. No answer being
volunteered, they shouted to their women to await them, and betook
themselves to walking with the party. One of the three ambassadors, a
graceful rogue of twenty-five, marked all over with rocoa and lote,
so as to earn for himself the nickname of "the Panther," gamboled
and caracoled in front of the procession as if to give it an
entertainment. His two comrades had garroted with their arms the neck
of the chief interpreter: another held Juan of Aragon by the skirt of
his blouse, and regulated his steps by those of the youth. This accord
of barbarism and civilization had in it something decidedly graceful,
and rather pathetic: if ever the language natural to man was found,
the medium in circulation before our sickly machinery of speech came
to be invented, it was in this concert of persuasive action and tender
cooing notes. The main body of the Siriniris marched pellmell along
with the porters, whom this vicinage made exceedingly uncomfortable,
and who were perspiring in great drops.

At the commencement of a wood the whites embraced the occasion to take
formal leave of their new acquaintances. As they endeavored to turn
their backs upon them they were at once surrounded by the whole band,
crying and gesticulating, and opposing their departure with a sort of
determined playfulness.

At the same time a word often repeated, the word _Huatinmio_, began to
enter largely into their conversation, and piqued the curiosity of
the historiographer. Marcoy begged the interpreter to procure him the
explanation of this perpetual shibboleth. Half by signs, half in the
polyglot jargon which he had been employing with the Siriniris, Garcia
managed to understand that the word in question was the name of their
village, situated at a small distance and in a direction which they
indicated. In this retreat, they said, no inhabitants remained but
women, children and old men, the rest of the braves being absent on
a chase. They proposed a visit to their capital, where the strangers,
they said, honored and cherished by the tribe, might pass many
enviable days.

The proposed excursion, which would cause a loss of considerable time
and a deflection from the intended route, was declined in courteous
terms by Marcoy through the interpretation of Pepe Garcia. Among
civilized folk this urbane refusal would have sufficed, but the
savages, taking such a reply as a challenge to verbal warfare,
returned to the charge with increased tenacity. It were hard to say
what natural logic they put in practice or what sylvan persuasions
they wrought by, but their peculiar mode of stroking the white men's
backs with their hands, and the softer and still softer inflections
which they introduced into their voices, would have melted hearts of
marble. In brief, the civilized portion adopted the more weakly part
and allowed themselves to be led by the savage portion.

The colonel and Pepe Garcia were still more easily persuaded than Mr.
Marcoy, and only awaited his adhesion. When it was finally announced
the Siriniris renewed their gambols and uttered shouts of delight.
They then took the head of the excursion. A singularity in their
guides, which quickly attracted the notice of the explorers, was the
perfect indifference with which they took either the clearings or the
thickets in their path. Where the strangers were afraid of tearing
their garments, these unprotected savages had no care whatever for
their skins. It is true that their ingenuity in gliding through the
labyrinth resembled magic. However the forest might bristle with
undergrowth, they never thought of breaking down obstacles or of
cutting them, as the equally practiced Bolivians did, with a knife.
They contented themselves with putting aside with one hand the tufts
of foliage as if they had been curtains or draperies, and that with an
easy decision of gesture and an elegance of attitude which are hardly
found outside of certain natural tribes.

The city of Huatinmio proved to be a group of seven large sheds
perched among plaintains and bananas, divided into stalls, and
affording shelter for a hundred individuals. The most sordid
destitution--if ignorance of comfort can be called
destitution--reigned everywhere around. The women were especially
hideous, and on receipt of presents of small bells and large needles
became additionally disagreeable in their antics of gratitude. The
bells were quickly inserted in their ears, and soon the whole village
was in tintinnabulation.

A night was passed in the hospitality of these barbarians, who vacated
their largest cabin for their guests. A repast was served, consisting
of stewed monkey: no salt was used in the cookery, but on the other
hand a dose of pimento was thrown in, which brought tears to the eyes
of the strangers and made them run to the water-jar as if to save
their lives. The evening was spent in a general conversation with the
Siriniris, who were completely mystified by the form and properties of
a candle which Mr. Marcoy drew from his baggage and ignited. The wild
men passed it from hand to hand, examining it, and singeing themselves
in turn. Still another marvel was the sheet of paper on which the
artist essayed a portrait of one of his hosts. The finished sketch
did not appear to attract them at all, or to raise in their minds
the faintest association with the human form, but the texture and
whiteness of the sheet excited their lively admiration, and they
passed it from one to another with many exclamations of wonder.
Meantime, a number of questions were suggested and proposed through
the interpreter.

The formality of marriage among the Siriniris was found to be quite
unknown; the most rudimentary idea of divine worship could not be
discovered; the treatment of the aged was shown to be contemptuous
and neglectful in the extreme; and the lines of demarcation with the
beasts seemed to be but feebly traced. Finally, Mr. Marcoy begged the
interpreter to propound the delicate inquiry whether, among the viands
with which they nourished or had formerly nourished themselves, human
flesh had found a place. Garcia hesitated, and at first declined
to push the interrogation, but after some persuasion consented. The
Siriniris were not in the least shocked at the question, and answered
that the flesh of man, especially in infancy, was a delicious food,
far better than the monkey, the tapir or the peccary; that their
nation, in the days of its power, frequently used it at the great
feasts; but that the difficulty of procuring such a rarity had
increased until they were now forced to strike it from their bill of
fare.

The night passed without disturbance, and the next day's parting was
accompanied by reiterated requests for a repetition of the visit. The
Panther, who since their arrival had oppressed the travelers with a
multitude of officious attentions, escorted them into the woods, and
there took leave of them with a gesture of his hand, relieving their
eyes of his slippery, snake-like robe of spots. A knife from their
stores, slung round his neck like a locket, smote his breast at each
step as he danced backward, and a couple of large fish-hooks glanced
in his ears.

With a feeling of relief and satisfied curiosity the exploring party
left behind them the traces of these children of Nature, and returned
toward the river. The cascarilleros, all for their business,
had regretted the waste of time, and now betook themselves to an
examination of the woods with all their energy. After several hours
of march their efforts were crowned with success. Eusebio presently
rejoined his employers, showing leaves and berries of the _Cinchona
scrobiculata_ and _pubescens_: the peons, on their side, had
discovered isolated specimens of the _Calisaya_, which, joined with
those found on Mount Camanti, indicated an extended belt of that
precious species. This was not the best. A veritable treasure which
they had unearthed, worth all the others put together, was a line of
those violet cinchonas which the native exporters call _Cascarilla
morada_, and the botanists _Cinchona Boliviana_. The trees of this
kind were grouped in threes and fours, and extended for half a mile.
This repeated proof that the most valuable of all the cinchonas,
together with nearly every one of the others, were to be discovered
in a small radius along the valley of the Cconi, filled the explorers
with triumph, and demonstrated beyond a doubt the sagacity of Don
Santo Domingo in organizing the expedition.

The purpose and intention of the journey was now abundantly fulfilled.
Had the travelers rested satisfied with the liberal indications they
had found, and consented to place themselves between the haunts of
the savages and the abodes of civilization, with a tendency and
determination toward the latter, they might have returned with safety
as with glory. The estimate made by Eusebio, however, of the trend or
direction of the calisaya groves, induced him to forsake the bed of
the Cconi, and strike south-eastwardly, so as to cross the Ollachea
and the Ayapata.

"But the mountains are disappearing," hazarded Mr. Marcoy. "Will not
the cinchonas disappear with them?"

"Oh," answered the majordomo, like a pedagogue to a confident
school-boy, "the señor knows better how to put ink or color on a sheet
of paper than how to judge of these things. The plain, the _campo
llano_, is far enough to the east. Before we should see the
disappearance of the mountains, we should have to cross as many hills
and ravines as we have left behind us."

"What do you think of doing, then?" naturally demanded Marcoy, who had
long since begun to feel that the expedition had but one chief, and
that was the sepia-colored cascarillero from Bolivia,

"Everything and nothing," answered Eusebio.

These enigmas always carry the day. The apparatus of march was
once more set in motion toward the adjacent water-sheds. After a
considerable journey--rewarded, it must be said, with a succession of
cinchona discoveries--they halted near a clearing in the forest, where
large heaps of stones and pebbles, arranged in semicircles, attracted
their attention. The cascarilleros explained this appearance as due
to former arrangements for gold-washing in an old river-bed, the San
Gavan or the Ayapata, that had now changed its locality.

While examining the unusual appearance an abominable clamor burst from
the woods around, and a band of Siriniris appeared, led by a lusty
ruffian crowned with oriole feathers, whom the travelers recognized as
having been among their previous acquaintances.

The encounter was very disagreeable, but the strangers determined to
make the best of it. The manner of this band of Indians was somewhat
different from that of the others. They brought nothing for barter,
and had an indescribably coarse and hardy style of behavior.

The travelers determined to buy a little information, if nothing
better, with their knives and fish-hooks. Garcia was accordingly
instructed to demand the meaning of the heaps and causeways of stones.
The savages laughed at first, but finally informed the visitors that
the constructions which puzzled them so had been made by people of
their own race many years ago, for the purpose of gathering gold from
the river which used to run along there, but which now flowed seven
miles off.

This information was dear to the historic instinct of Marcoy. He
spoke, by his usual proxy, to the Indian of the oriole, commanding him
not to begin every explanation by laughing, as he had been doing, but
to answer intelligently, promising a reward of several knives. The
savage exchanged a rapid glance with his fellows, and then he and they
stood up as stiff and mute as the trees. Marcoy then asked him if he
had never heard his father or his grandfather speak of the great city
of San Gavan, built hereabouts formerly by the Spanish chevaliers, and
which the Caranga and Suchimani Indians from the Inambari River had
destroyed by fire.

The evident recognition of this legend by the savages, and their
rapid exchange among themselves of the words _sacapa huayris Ipaños_,
induced Marcoy to ask if they could guide them to the site of the
former city. They answered that a day's march would be sufficient, and
pointed with their arms in the direction of north-north-west.

The temptation to see the place whose golden renown, after having made
the tour of the American continent, had reached Spain and the world at
large, was too strong to be resisted. Colonel Perez, besides the magic
attraction which the mention of gold had for him, felt his national
pride touched by the idea of a place where his compatriots had added
such magnificence to the Spanish name, and gained so many ingots of
gold by paddling in the streams. The cascarilleros were delighted to
extend their journey, in hopes of yet larger discoveries. As for the
porters, since the manifestations of the savages they clung to the
party with as much anxiety as they had ever shown to escape from it.

In 1767 the city of San Gavan, remaining intact amid the ruin of all
its neighbors, was the sole disburser of the riches of the Caravaya
Valley. The gold-dust, collected throughout the whole territory on a
government monopoly, was brought thither upon the backs of Indians,
melted into ingots, and distributed to Lima and the world at large.
On the night of the 15th and 16th of December in that year the
wealthy city was fired by the Carangas and the Suchimanis, and all the
inhabitants slain with arrows or clubs. The first lords of the soil
had resumed their rights.

When the news of the event was brought to Lima, the viceroy of
the period, Antonio Amat, swore on a piece of the true cross to
exterminate every Indian in Peru. It is to the persuasions of his
favorite, Mariquita Gallegas, that the preservation of the native
tribes from a bloody extirpation is due. This woman, _La Perichola_,
whose caricatured likeness we see in the most agreeable of Offenbach's
operas, and whose deeds of mercy and edifying end in a convent entitle
her to some charitable consideration, persuaded her royal lover to
operate on the natives with missionaries and teachers rather than with
fire and sword. Antonio Amat yielded, and the Indians have survived.

[Illustration: "ANOTHER SAVAGE HAD FOUND A PAIR OF LINEN
PANTALOONS."--P. 146.]

Let no traveler go to South America and cross the Andes with the idea
of unearthing a Nineveh or a Babylon on the site of San Gavan. The
emissaries of Don Santo Domingo were quickly standing, among the
grinning and amused Indians, on the locality of the Golden Depot of
San Gavan. But Nature had thoroughly reclaimed her own, and the place,
indicated again and again by the savages with absolute unanimity,
showed nothing but mounds of fern and moss under canopies of forest
trees.

A day's rest and a sketch or two were consecrated by Marcoy to this
historic spot, the grave of a civilization. It had been well if he
had restrained his feelings of romance, and betaken himself with his
companions to the homeward track.

As the explorers were breakfasting in the morning on a squirrel and
a couple of birds shot among the vanished streets of San Gavan, a
disagreeable incident supervened. The wild Indians had disappeared
over-night. But now, seemingly born instantaneously from the trees, a
throng of Siriniris burst upon the scene, rushing up to the travelers,
straining them repeatedly in a rude embrace, then leaving them, then
assaulting them again, and accompanying every contact with the eternal
cry, _Siruta inta menea_--"Give me a knife." Each member of the troop
had now six savages at his heels, and they were not those of the day
before, but a new and rougher band. The chiefs of the party rushed
together and brandished their muskets. This forced the savages
to retire, but gave to the rencounter that hostile air which, in
consideration of the disparity of numbers, ought at all hazards to
have been avoided. The wild men quickly formed a circle around the
artillery. The latter, fearing for their porters and the precious
baggage, leaped through this circle and joined their servants, making
believe to cock their fire-arms. Upon this the Indians, half afraid of
the guns, vanished into the woods, first picking up whatever clothing
and utensils they could lay their hands on. In an instant they were
showing these trophies to their rightful owners from a safe distance,
laughing as if they would split their sides. One of the naked rascals
had seized a flannel undershirt of the colonel's, which was drying
on a branch. His efforts to introduce his great feet into the
sleeves were excruciating. Another savage had found a pair of linen
pantaloons, which he was endeavoring to put on like a coat, appearing
much embarrassed with the posterior portion, which completely masked
his face. Aragon had seen a young reprobate of his own age make off
with a pair of socks of his property. Detecting the rogue half hidden
by a tree, the mozo made a sortie, seized the Indian, and by a
violent shake brought the property out of his mouth, where it had been
concealed as in a natural pocket.

The travelers immediately threw themselves into marching order and
took up their line of route. The savages followed. At the first
obstacle, a mass of matted trees, they easily rejoined the party of
whites.

Then, for the first time, the idea of their power seemed to strike
them, and they precipitated themselves upon the porters, who took to
flight, rolling from under their packs like animals of burden. In a
moment every article of baggage, every knife and weapon, was seized,
and the red-skins, singing and howling, were making off through the
woods. Among them was now seen the Siriniri with orioles' feathers,
who must have guided them to their prey.

The expedition was pillaged, and pillaged as a joke. The thieves were
heard laughing as they scampered off like deer through the woods.

It was hard to realize at once the gravity of the misfortune. No one
was hurt, no one was insulted. But provisions, clothing, articles of
exchange and weapons were all gone, except such arms and ammunition as
the travelers carried on their persons. A collection of cinchonas was
in possession of one of the Bolivians, though it represented but
a fraction of the species discovered. The besiegers, however, had
disappeared, and a westerly march was taken up. Good time was made
that day, and a heavy night's sleep was the consequence. With the
morning light came the well-remembered and hateful cry, and the little
army found itself surrounded by a throng of merry naked demons, among
whom were some who had not profited by the distribution of the spoils.
At the magic word _siruta_ all these new-comers rushed in a mass upon
the white men. Marcoy managed to slip his fine ivory-handled machete
within his trowser leg, but every other cutting tool disappeared as if
by magic from the possession of the explorers. The shooting-utensils
the savages, believing them haunted, would not touch. Then, half
irritated at the exhaustion of the booty, the amiable children of
Nature burst out into open derision. The artists of the tribe, filling
their palms with rocoa, and moistening the same with saliva, went up
to their late patrons and began to decorate their faces. The latter,
judging patience their best policy, sat in silence while the delicate
fancy of the savages expended itself in arabesques and flourishes.
Perez and Aragon had their eyes surrounded with red spectacles. The
face of Marcoy, covered with a heavy beard, only allowed room for
a "W" on the forehead, and Pepe Garcia was quit for a set of
interfacings like a checkerboard. Having thus signed their marks upon
their visitors, the aborigines retired, catching up here and there
a stray ball of cord or a strip of beef, saluting with the hand, and
vanishing into the woods with the repeated compliment, _Eminiki_--"I
am off."

The victims rested motionless for fifteen minutes: then pellmell,
through the thickest of the brush and down the steepest of the hill,
blotted out under gigantic ferns and covered by umbrageous vines,
stealing along water-courses and skirting the sides of the mountains,
they rushed precipitately westward.

Two months after the priest of Marcapata had dismissed with his
benediction the party of confident and enthusiastic explorers, he
received again his strayed flock, but this time in rags, armed with
ammunitionless guns and one poor knife, wasted by hunger, baked by the
sun, and tattooed like Polynesians by the briers and insects. The
good man could not repress a tear. "Ah, my son," said he as he clasped
Marcoy's hand, "see what it costs to go hunting the cascarilla in the
land of the infidels!"

The explorations started by Don Juan Sanz de Santo Domingo came to
profitable result, but not to his advantage. Three weeks after the
pioneers arrived again in Cuzco, Don Juan started another expedition,
on a much larger scale, to accomplish the working of the cinchona
valleys, under charge of the same Bolivians, who could make like a bee
for every tree they had discovered. A detachment of soldiers was
to protect the party, and the working force was more than double.
Finally, the night before the intended start, the Bolivian
cascarilleros, with their examinador, disappeared together. It is
probable that Don Juan's scheme, nursed, according to custom, with too
much publicity, had attracted the attention of the merchants of Cuzco,
who had found it profitable to buy off the bark-searchers for their
own interest.

The crash of this immense enterprise was too much for Don Juan.
Threatened with creditors, Jews, _escribanos_ and the police, he
retired to a silver-mine he was opening in the province of Abancay.
This mine, in successful operation, he depended on for satisfying his
creditors. He found it choked up, destroyed with a blast of powder by
some enemy. Unable to bear the disappointment, Don Juan blew out his
brains in the office belonging to his mine. A month afterward, Don
Eugenic Mendoza y Jara, the bishop of Cuzco, sent a couple of Indians
for the body, with instructions to throw it into a ditch: the men
attached a rope to the feet and dragged it to a ravine, where dogs and
vultures disposed of the unhallowed remains.




A GLANCE AT THE SITE AND ANTIQUITIES OF ATHENS.


The day is a happy one to the student-traveler from the Western World
in which he first looks upon the lovely plain of Athens. Rounding the
point where Hymettus thrusts his huge length into the sea, the long,
featureless mountain-wall of Southern Attica suddenly breaks down, and
gives place to a broad expanse of fertile, and well-cultivated soil,
sloping gently back with ever-narrowing bounds until it reaches the
foot-hills of lofty Pentelicus. The wooded heights of Parnes enclose
it on the north, while bald Hymettus rears an impassable barrier along
the south. In front of the gently recurved shore stretch the smooth
waters of the Gulf of Salamis, while beyond rises range upon range of
lofty mountain-peaks with strikingly varied outline, terminating on
the one hand in the towering cone of Egina, and on the other in
the pyramidal, fir-clad summit of Cithaeron. Upon the plain, at the
distance of three or four miles from the sea, are several small rocky
hills of picturesque appearance, isolated and seemingly independent,
but really parts of a low range parallel to Hymettus. Upon one of the
most considerable of these, whose precipitous sides make it a natural
fortress, stood the Acropolis, and upon the group of lesser heights
around and in the valleys between clustered the dwellings of ancient
Athens.

[Illustration: VIEW OF THE ACROPOLIS AND THE COLUMNS OF THE TEMPLE OF
JUPITER OLYMPUS.]

It was a fitting site for the capital of a people keenly sensitive to
beauty, and destined to become the leaders of the world in matters
of taste, especially in the important department of the Fine Arts.
Nowhere are there more charming contrasts of mountain, sea and
plain--nowhere a more perfect harmony of picturesque effect. The sea
is not a dreary waste of waters without bounds, but a smiling gulf
mirroring its mountain-walls and winding about embosomed isles, yet
ever broadening as it recedes, and suggesting the mighty flood beyond
from which it springs. The plain is not an illimitable expanse over
which the weary eye ranges in vain in quest of some resting-place, but
is so small as to be embraced in its whole contour in a single view,
while its separate features--the broad, dense belt of olives which
marks the bed of its principal stream, the ancient Cephissus, the
vineyards, the grain-fields and the sunny hillside pastures--are made
to produce their full impression. The mountains are not near enough to
be obtrusive, much less oppressive; neither are they so distant as to
be indistinct or to seem insignificant. Seen through the clear air,
their naked summits are so sharply defined and so individual in
appearance as to seem almost like sculptured forms chiseled out of the
hard rock.

The city which rose upon this favored spot was worthy of its
surroundings. The home of a free and enterprising race endowed with
rare gifts of intellect and sensibility, and ever on the alert for
improvement, it became the nurse of letters and of arts, while the
luxury begotten of prosperity awakened a taste for adornment, and
the wealth acquired by an extended commerce furnished the means of
gratifying it. The age of Pericles was the period of the highest
national development. At that time were reared the celebrated
structures in honor of the virgin-goddess who was the patron of
Athens--the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheum--which crowned
the Acropolis, and were the glory of the city as they were the
masterpieces of Grecian architecture. During the preceding half
century many works of utility and of splendor had been constructed,
and the city now became renowned not only in Greece, but throughout
the ancient world, for the magnificence of its public buildings.
Thucydides, writing about this time, says that should Athens be
destroyed, posterity would infer from its ruins that the city had
been twice as populous as it actually was. Demosthenes speaks of
the strangers who came to visit its attractions. But the changes of
twenty-three centuries have passed upon this splendor--a sad story
of violence and neglect--and the queenly city has long been in the
condition of ruin imagined by Thucydides. Still, the spell of her
influence is not broken, and the charm which once drew so many
visitors to her shrines still acts powerfully on the hearts of
scholars in all lands, who, having looked up to her poets, orators
and philosophers as teachers and loved them as friends, long to visit
their haunts, to stand where they stood, to behold the scenes which
they were wont to view, and to gaze upon what may remain of the great
works of art upon which their admiration was bestowed.

So the student-pilgrim from the Western World with native ardor
strains his sight to catch the first glimpse of the Athenian plain and
city. He is fresh from his studies, and familiar with what books teach
of the geography of Greece and the topography of Athens. He needs
not to be informed which mountain-range is Parnes, and which
Pentelicus--which island is Salamis, and which Egina. Yet much of what
he sees is a revelation to him. The mountains are higher, more varied
and more beautiful than he had supposed, Lycabettus and the Acropolis
more imposing, Pentelicus farther away, and the plain larger, the gulf
narrower, and Egina nearer and more mountainous, than he had fancied.
He is astonished at the smallness of the harbor at Peiraeus, having
insensibly formed his conception of its size from the notices of the
mighty fleets which sailed from it in the palmy days when Athens was
mistress of the seas. He is not prepared to see the southern shore
of Salamis so near to the Peiraeus, though it explains the close
connection between that island and Athens, and throws some light upon
the great naval defeat of the Persians. In short, while every object
is recognized as it presents itself, yet a more correct conception is
formed of its relative position and aspect from a single glance of the
eye than had been acquired from books during years of study.

Arrived at the city, his experience is the same. He needs no guide to
conduct him to its antiquities, nor cicerone to explain in bad
French or worse English their names and history. Still, unexpected
appearances present themselves not unfrequently. Hastening toward the
Acropolis, he will first inspect the remains of the great theatre of
Dionysus, so familiar to him as the place where, in the presence
of all the people and many strangers, were acted the plays of his
favorite poets, Eschylus and Sophocles, and where they won many
prizes. Hurrying over the eastern brow of the hill, he comes suddenly
upon the spot, enters at the summit, as many an Athenian did in the
olden time, and is smitten with amazement at the first glance, and led
to question whether this be indeed the site of the ancient theatre. He
finds, it is true, the topmost seats cut in the solid rock, row above
row, stripped now of their marble lining and weather-worn, but yet the
genuine ancient seats of the upper tier. These he expected to find.
But whence are those fresh seats which fill the lower part of the
hollow, arranged as neatly as if intended for immediate use? and
whence the massive stage beyond? He bethinks himself that he has
heard of recent excavations under the patronage of the government, and
closer inspection shows that these are actually the lower seats of the
theatre in the time of the emperor Hadrian, whose favorite residence
was Athens, and who did so much to embellish the city. The front seats
consist of massive stone chairs, each inscribed with the name of its
occupant, generally the priestess of some one of the numerous gods
worshiped by that people so given to idolatry. In the centre of the
second row is an elevated throne inscribed with the name of Hadrian.
The stage is seen to be the ancient Greek stage enlarged to the
Roman size to suit the demands of a later style of theatrical
representation.

[Illustration: THEATRE OF DIONYSUS (BACCHUS).]

After looking in vain for the seat occupied by the priestess of the
Unknown God, our traveler passes on and enters with a beating heart
the charmed precincts of the Acropolis itself. The Propylaea, which he
has been accustomed to regard too exclusively as a mere entrance-gate
to the glories beyond, impresses him with its size and grandeur, and
the little temple of Victory by its side with its elegance.[A] But
the steepness of the ascent perplexes him. It seems impracticable for
horses, yet he knows by unexceptionable testimony that the Athenian
youth prided themselves upon driving their matched steeds in the great
Panathenaic procession which once every four years wound up the hill,
bearing the sacred peplus to the temple of the goddess. A closer
examination reveals the transverse creases of the pavement designed
to give a footing to the beasts, as well as the marks of the
chariot-wheels. Nevertheless, the ascent (and much more the descent)
must have been a perilous undertaking, unless the teams were better
broken than the various accounts of chariot-races furnished by the
poets would indicate. Entering beneath the great gate, a little
distance forward to the left may readily be found the site of the
colossal bronze statue of the warrior-goddess in complete armor,
formed by Phidias out of the spoils taken at Marathon. The square
base, partly sunk in the uneven rock, is as perfect as if just put in
readiness to receive the pedestal of that famous work. A road bending
to the right and slightly hollowed out of the rock leads to the
Parthenon. The outer platform which sustains this celebrated temple
is partly cut from the rock of the hill and partly built up of common
limestone. The inner one of three courses, as well as the whole
superstructure, is formed of Pentelic marble of a compact crystalline
structure and of dazzling whiteness. Long exposure has not availed to
destroy its lustre, but only to soften its tone. The visitor, planting
himself at the western front, is in a position to gain some adequate
idea of the perfection of the noble building. The interior and central
parts suffered the principal injury from the explosion of the Turkish
powder magazine in 1687. The western front remains nearly entire.
It has been despoiled, indeed, of its movable ornaments. The statues
which filled the pediment are gone, with the exception of a fragment
or two. The sculptured slabs have been removed from the spaces between
the triglyphs, and the gilded shields which hung beneath have been
taken down. Of the magnificent frieze, representing the procession
of the great quadrennial festival, only the portion surrounding the
western vestibule is still in place.[B]

[Footnote A: The latter contains, among other relics of a balustrade
which protected and adorned the platform of the temple, the
exquisitely graceful torso of Victory untying her sandals, of which
casts are to be seen in most of the museums of Europe.]

[Footnote B: Among the figures of this bas-relief, twelve are
recognized by their lofty stature and sitting posture as those of
divinities. One group is represented in the engraving.]

[Illustration: VICTORY UNTYING HER SANDALS.]

[Illustration: TEMPLE OF VICTORY]

[Illustration: THE PARTHENON.]

Still, as these were strictly decorations, and wholly subordinate to
the organic parts of the structure, their presence, while it would
doubtless greatly enhance the effect of the whole, is not felt to be
essential to its completeness. The whole Doric columns still bear
the massive entablature sheltered by the covering roof. The simple
greatness of the conception, the just proportion of the several parts,
together with the elaborate finishing of the whole work, invest it
with a charm such as the works of man seldom possess--the pure and
lasting pleasure which flows from apparent perfection Entering the
principal apartment of the building, traces are seen of the stucco and
pictures with which the walls were covered when it was fitted up as
a Christian church in the Byzantine period. Near the centre of the
marble pavement is a rectangular space laid with dark stone from the
Peirseus or from Eleusis. It marks the probable site of the colossal
precious statue of the goddess in gold and ivory--one of the most
celebrated works of Phidias. The smaller apartment beyond, accessible
only from the opposite front of the temple, was used by the state as
a place of deposit and safekeeping for bullion and other valuables in
the care of the state treasurer.

[Illustration: BAS RELIEF OF THE GODS (FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON).]

Having examined the great temple, and tested the curvature of
its seemingly horizontal lines by sighting along the unencumbered
platform, and having stopped at several points of the grand portico
to admire the fine views of the city and surrounding country, the
traveler picks his way northward, across a thick layer of fragments
of columns, statues and blocks of marble, toward the low-placed,
irregular but elegant Erechtheum, the temple of the most ancient
worship and statue of the patron-goddess of the city. This building
sits close by the northern as the Parthenon does by the southern wall
of the enclosure. It has suffered equally with the other from the
ravages of time, and its ruins, though less grand, are more beautiful.
Most of the graceful Ionic columns are still standing, but large
portions of the roof and entablature have fallen. Fragments of
decorated cornice strew the ground, some of them of considerable
length, and afford a near view of that delicate ornamentation and
exquisite finish so rare outside the limits of Greece. The elevated
porch of the Caryatides, lately restored by the substitution of a
new figure in place of the missing statue now in the British Museum,
attracts attention as a unique specimen of Greek art, and also as
showing how far a skillful treatment will overcome the inherent
difficulties of a subject. The row of fair maidens looking out toward
the Parthenon do not seem much oppressed by the burden which rests
upon them, while their graceful forms lend a pleasing variety to the
scene. Passing out by the northern wing of the Propylaea, a survey is
had of the numerous fragments of sculpture discovered among the ruins
upon the hill, and temporarily placed in the ancient Pinacotheca.
The eye rests upon sweet infant faces and upon rugged manly ones.
Sometimes a single feature only remains, which, touched by the finger
of genius, awakens admiration. A naked arm severed from the trunk, of
feminine cast, but with muscles tightly strained and hand clenched as
in agony, will arrest attention and dwell in the memory.

North-west of the Acropolis, across a narrow chasm, lies the low,
rocky height of the Areopagus, accessible at the southeast angle by
a narrow flight of sixteen rudely-cut steps, which lead to a small
rectangular excavation on the summit, which faces the Acropolis, and
is surrounded upon three sides by a double tier of benches hewn out
of the rock. Here undoubtedly the most venerable court of justice at
Athens had its seat and tried its cases in the open air. Here too,
without doubt, stood the great apostle when, with bold spirit and
weighty words, he declared unto the men of Athens that God of whom
they confessed their ignorance; who was not to be represented by gold
or silver or stone graven by art and man's device; who dwelt not in
temples made with hands, and needed not to be worshiped with men's
hands. In no other place can one feel so sure that he comes upon the
very footsteps of the apostle, and on no other spot can one better
appreciate his high gifts as an orator or the noble devotion of his
whole soul to the work of the Master. How poor in comparison with
his life-work appear the performances of the greatest of the Athenian
thinkers or doers!

A little more than a quarter of a mile west of the Acropolis is
another rocky hill--the Pnyx--celebrated as the place where the
assembly of all the citizens met to transact the business of the
state. A large semicircular area was formed, partly by excavation,
partly by building up from beneath, the bounds of which can be
distinctly traced. Considerable remains of the terrace-wall at the
foot of the slope exist--huge stones twelve or fourteen feet in length
by eight or ten in breadth. The chord of the semicircle is near the
top of the hill, formed by the perpendicular face of the excavated
rock, and is about four hundred feet in length by twenty in depth.
Projecting from it at the centre, and hewn out of the same rock, is
the bema or stone platform from which the great orators from the time
of Themistocles and Aristides, and perhaps of Solon, down to the
age of Demosthenes and the Attic Ten, addressed the mass of their
fellow-citizens. It is a massive cubic block, with a linear edge of
eleven feet, standing upon a graduated base of nearly equal height,
and is mounted on either side by a flight of nine stone steps.
From its connection with the most celebrated efforts of some of
the greatest orators our race has yet seen, it is one of the most
interesting relics in the world, and its solid structure will cause it
to endure as long as the world itself shall stand, unless, as there is
some reason to apprehend will be the case, it is knocked to pieces and
carried off in the carpet-bags of travelers. No traces of the Agora,
which occupied the shallow valley between the Pnyx and the Acropolis,
remain. It was the heart of the city, and was adorned with numerous
public buildings, porticoes, temples and statues. It was often
thronged with citizens gathered for purposes of trade, discussion, or
to hear and tell some new thing.

[Illustration: PORCH OF THE CARYATIDES.]

Half a mile or more to the south-east, on the banks of the Ilissus,
stood a magnificent structure dedicated to Olympian Zeus--one of
the four largest temples of Greece, ranking with that of Demeter at
Eleusis and that of Diana at Ephesus. Its foundations remain, and
sixteen of the huge Corinthian columns belonging to its majestic
triple colonnade. One of these is fallen. Breaking up into the
numerous disks of which it was composed--six and a half feet in
diameter by two or more in thickness--and stretching out to a length
of over sixty feet, it gives an impressive conception of the size of
these columns, said to be the largest standing in Europe. The level
area of the temple is now used as a training-ground for soldiers.
Close by, and almost in the bed of the stream, which is dry the larger
part of the year, issues from beneath a ledge of rock the copious
fountain of sweet waters known to the ancients as Calirrhoe. It
furnished the only good drinking-water of the city, and was used in
all the sacrifices to the gods. A little way above, on the opposite
bank of the Ilissus, is the site of the Panathenaic stadium, whose
shape is perfectly preserved in the smooth grass-grown hollow with
semicircular extremity which here lies at right angles to the stream,
between parallel ridges partly artificial.

Northward from the Acropolis, on a slight elevation, is the
best-preserved and one of the most ancient structures of Athens--the
temple of Theseus, built under the administration of Cimon by the
generation preceding Pericles and the Parthenon. It is of the Doric
order, and shaped like the Parthenon, but considerably inferior to
it in size as well as in execution. It has been roofed with wood in
modern times, and was long used as a church, but is now a place of
deposit for the numerous statues and sculptured stones of various
kinds--mostly sepulchral monuments--which have been recently
discovered in and about the city. They are for the most part
unimportant as works of art, though many are interesting from their
antiquity or historic associations. Among these is the stone which
once crowned the burial-mound on the plain of Marathon. It bears a
single figure, said to represent the messenger who brought the tidings
of victory to his countrymen.

Near the Theseium was the double gate (Dipylum) in the ancient wall
of the city whence issued the Sacred Way leading to Eleusis, and
bordered, like the Appian Way at Rome, with tombs, many of them
cenotaphs of persons who died in the public service and were deemed
worthy of a monument in the public burying-ground. Within a few years
an excavation has been made through an artificial mound of ashes,
pottery and other refuse emptied out of the city, and a section of a
few rods of this celebrated road has been laid bare. The sepulchral
monuments are ranged on one side rather thickly, and crowd somewhat
closely upon the narrow pavement. They are, for the most part, simple,
thick slabs of white marble, with a triangular or pediment-shaped top,
beneath which is sculptured in low relief the closing scene of the
person commemorated, followed by a short inscription. The work is done
in an artistic style worthy of the publicity its location gave it. On
one of these slabs you recognize the familiar full-length figure of
Demosthenes, standing with two companions and clasping in a parting
grasp the hand of a woman, who is reclining upon her deathbed. The
inscription is, _Collyrion, wife of Agathon_. On another stone of
larger size is a more imposing piece of sculpture. A horseman fully
armed is thrusting his spear into the body of his fallen foe--a
hoplite. The inscription relates that the unhappy foot-soldier fell at
Corinth _by reason of those five words of his_!--a record intelligible
enough, doubtless, to his contemporaries, but sufficiently obscure and
provocative of curiosity to later generations.

There are other noted structures at Athens, such as the Choragic
Monument of Lysicrates--the highest type of the Corinthian order of
architecture, as the Erechtheum is of the Ionic and the Parthenon of
the Doric--but want of space forbids any further description of them.
Let the American traveler visit Athens with the expectation of finding
a city occupying the most charming of sites, and containing by far
the most interesting and important monuments of antiquity, in their
original position, to be found in the whole world.

J.L.T. PHILLIPS.

[Illustration: MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES.]




COMMONPLACE.


            My little girl is commonplace, you say?
              Well, well, I grant it, as you use the phrase
            Concede the whole; although there was a day
              When I too questioned words, and from a maze
            Of hairsplit meanings, cut with close-drawn line,
            Sought to draw out a language superfine,
  Above the common, scarify with words and scintillate with pen;
  But that time's over--now I am content to stand with other men.

            It's the best place, fair youth. I see your smile--
              The scornful smile of that ambitious age
            That thinks it all things knows, and all the while
              It nothing knows. And yet those smiles presage
            Some future fame, because your aim is high;
            As when one tries to shoot into the sky,
  If his rash arrow at the moon he aims, a bolder flight we see,
  Though vain, than if with level poise it safely reached the nearest tree.

            A common proverb that! Does it disjoint
              Your graceful terms? One more you'll understand:
            Cut down a pencil to too fine a point,
              Lo, it breaks off, all useless, in your hand!
            The child is fitted for her present sphere:
            Let her live out her life, without the fear
  That comes when souls, daring the heights of dread infinity, are tost,
  Now up, now down, by the great winds, their little home for ever lost.

            My little girl seems to you commonplace
              Because she loves the daisies, common flowers;
            Because she finds in common pictures grace,
              And nothing knows of classic music's powers:
            She reads her romance, but the mystic's creed
            Is something far beyond her simple need.
  She goes to church, but the mixed doubts and theories that thinkers find
  In all religious truth can never enter her undoubting mind.

            A daisy's earth's own blossom--better far
              Than city gardener's costly hybrid prize:
            When you're found worthy of a higher star,
              'Twill then be time earth's daisies to despise;
            But not till then. And if the child can sing
              Sweet songs like "Robin Gray," why should I fling
  A cloud over her music's joy, and set for her the heavy task
  Of learning what Bach knew, or finding sense under mad Chopin's mask?

            Then as to pictures: if her taste prefers
              That common picture of the "Huguenots,"
            Where the girl's heart--a tender heart like hers--
              Strives to defeat earth's greatest powers' great plots
            With her poor little kerchief, shall I change
            The print for Turner's riddles wild and strange?
  Or take her stories--simple tales which her few leisure hours beguile--
  And give her Browning's _Sordello_, a Herbert Spencer, a Carlyle?

            Her creed, too, in your eyes is commonplace,
              Because she does not doubt the Bible's truth
            Because she does not doubt the saving grace
              Of fervent prayer, but from her rosy youth,
            So full of life, to gray old age's time,
            Prays on with faith half ignorant, half sublime.
  Yes, commonplace! But if I spoil this common faith, when all is done
  Can deist, pantheist or atheist invent a better one?

            Climb to the highest mountain's highest verge,
              Step off: you've lost the petty height you had;
            Up to the highest point poor reason urge,
              Step off: the sense is gone, the mind is mad.
            "Thus far, and yet no farther, shalt thou go,"
            Was said of old, and I have found it so:
  This planet's ours, 'tis all we have; here we belong, and those are wise
  Who make the best of it, nor vainly try above its plane to rise.

            Nay, nay: I know already your reply;
              I have been through the whole long years ago;
            I have soared up as far as soul can fly,
              I have dug down as far as mind can go;
            But always found, at certain depth or height,
            The bar that separates the infinite
  From finite powers, against whose strength immutable we beat in vain,
  Or circle round only to find ourselves at starting-point again.

            If you must for yourself find out this truth,
              I bid you go, proud heart, with blessings free:
            'Tis the old fruitless quest of ardent youth,
              And soon or late you will come back to me.
            You'll learn there's naught so common as the breath
            Of life, unless it be the calm of death:
  You'll learn that with the Lord Omnipotent there's nothing commonplace,
  And with such souls as that poor child's, humbled, abashed, you'll
        hide your face.

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.




PROBATIONER LEONHARD;

OR, THREE NIGHTS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.


CHAPTER IV.

THE TEST--WITH MENTAL RESERVATIONS.


Elise went out to gather willow-twigs, as her mother had said when her
father asked for her.

A little later in the afternoon, Mr. Albert Spener walked swiftly down
the street toward the house occupied by the Rev. Mr. Wenck. While
he was yet at a distance Elise saw him approaching, and possibly she
thought, "He has seen me and comes to meet me;" and many a pleasant
stroll on many an afternoon would have justified the thought.

But it was not until he had, as it were, stumbled upon Elise that he
noticed her. He carried in his hand a letter, and when suddenly he
stopped upon the sidewalk and looked at her, the changeful aspects of
his face were marvelous to behold.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I was going home," she answered, not a little surprised by the abrupt
and authoritative manner of his address.

"I want to talk with you," said he. "Is it to-day that I am to begin
to leave off loving you, Elise?"

"That you are--What do you say, Albert?" she asked.

"Have you not seen Brother Wenck's letter to your father, Elise?"

She shook her head.

"The lot--the lot--" he repeated, but his voice refused to help him
tell the tale.

"Albert, may I see the letter?" Father and Mother Loretz might have
rejoiced in their daughter could they have seen and heard her in those
trying moments. Her gentleness and her serene dignity said for her
that she would not be over-thrown by the storm which had burst upon
her in a moment, unlocked for as tempest and whirlwind out of a clear
sky.

Spener thrust into her hands the letter addressed to him that morning
by the minister. It contained an announcement of the decision rendered
by the lot, couched in terms more brief, perhaps, than those which
conveyed the same intelligence to the father of Elise.

She gave it back to him without a word.

"If Brother Wenck is going to stand by it," said he, "there'll be no
room for him in this place. I was just going to his house to tell him
so. Will you go with me? I should like to have a witness. I'll make
short work of it."

"No," said Elise, shrinking back amazed from her companion. "I will
not go with you to insult that good man."

"You will go with me--_not_ to his house, then! Come, Elise, we must
talk about this. You must help me untie this knot. I cannot imagine
how I ever permitted things to take their chance. I have never heard
of a sillier superstition than I seem to have encouraged. Talk about
faith! Let a man act up to light and take the consequences. I can see
clear enough now. _You_ never looked for this to happen, Elise?"

She shook her head. Indeed, she never had--no, not for a moment.

"To think I should have permitted it to go on!"

"But you did let it go on--and I--consented. Do not let me forget
that," she exclaimed. "I will go home, Albert."

"Ha, Elise! I wish I could feel more confidence in your teachers when
you get there."

"I need no one to tell me what my duty is just here," she answered.

"Have you ever loved me, child? _Child_! I am talking to a rock. You
do not yield to this?" He waved the letter aloft, and as if he would
dash it from him. Elise looked at him, and did not speak. "Sister
Benigna will of course feel called upon to bless the Lord," said he.
"But Wenck shall find a way out of this difficulty. Then we will have
done with them both, my own."

"Am I to have no voice in this matter?" she asked. "What if I say--"

Spener grasped her hand so suddenly that, as if in her surprise she
had forgotten what she was about to say, Elise added, "Sister Benigna
is my best friend. She knows nothing about the lot."

"Does not?"

"I told you, Albert, that it was to be so. And--you do not mean to
threaten Mr. Wenck?"

"I mean to have him find a way out of this difficulty. He ought to
have said to your father that this lot business belongs to a period
gone by. He did hint at it. I supposed, of course, that he would see
the thing came out right, since he let it go on."

"Did you then believe it was only a play or a trick?" exclaimed Elise
indignantly.

"Not quite, but I did not suppose that we were a company who would
stand by an adverse decision. You know, if you are the Elise I have
loved so long, that I must love you always--that I am not going to
give you up. Your father was bent on the test, but look at him and
tell me if he expected this turn. He is twenty years older than he
was yesterday. Folks used to resort to the lot in deciding about
marriages, and it was all well enough if they didn't care how it
turned out, or hadn't faith to believe in their own ability to choose.
A pretty way of doing business, though! Suppose I had tried it on this
place! I have always asked for God's blessing, and tried to act so
that I need not blush when I asked it; but a man must know his own
mind, he must act with decision. I say again, I don't like your
teachers, Elise. Between Sister Benigna and Mr. Wenck, now, what would
be my chances if I could submit to such a pair?"

"You and I have no quarrel," said Elise gently. "I suppose that you
acted in good faith. You know how much I care--how humiliated I shall
feel if you attack in any way a man so good as Mr. Wenck. You do not
understand Sister Benigna."

It was well that she had these to speak of, and that she need not
confine herself to the main thought before them, for Albert could do
anything he attempted. Had not her father always said, "Let Spener
alone for getting what he wants: he'll have it, but he's above-board
and honest;" and what hopes, heaven-cleaving, had spread wing the
instant her eyes met his!

"It is easy to say that I do not understand," said he. "One has only
to assume that another is so excellent and virtuous a character as to
be beyond your comprehension, and then your mouth is stopped."

"Ah, how bitter you are!" exclaimed Elise. Her voice was full of pain.

Spener silently reproached himself, and said, with a tenderness that
was irresistible, "You don't know what temptations beset a man in
business and everywhere, Elise. It would be easier far to lie down
and die, I have thought sometimes, than to stand up and meet the enemy
like a man. You will never convince me that my duty is to let you go,
to give you up. I can think of nothing so wicked."

These words, which had a joyful sound to which she could not seal her
ears, made Elise stop suddenly, afraid of Albert, afraid of herself.
"I think," she said after a moment, "we had best not walk together
any longer. There is nothing we can say that will satisfy ourselves or
ought to satisfy each other."

"Do you mean that you accept this decision?" said he.

"I promised, Albert. So did you."

"We will not talk about it. But we can at least walk together, Elise.
You need not speak. What you confessed just now is true--you cannot
say anything to the purpose."

So they walked on together. Silently, past all Spenersberg's
dwelling-places they walked, till they came to the cemetery, and
ascending the hill they strolled about that pleasant place among the
graves, and thought, perhaps, How blessed are the dead! and oh to be
lying there in a dreamless sleep beneath the blooming wild roses, and
where dirges were sounding through the cedars day and night! Elise
might have thought thus, but not her companion. He was the last man
to wish to pass from the scene of his successes merely because a great
failure threatened him. Looking upon the slight young figure beside
him and her grave sweet face, a wrathful contempt was aroused within
him that he should have allowed himself to be placed in a situation so
absurd. As they walked down the hill again, he startled his companion
by a merry outbreak. "Tell me you are not mine!" he said: "there never
was a joke like it!"




CHAPTER V.

SISTER BENIGNA.


On her return home Elise found Sister Benigna seated at the piano,
attuning herself, as she said, after her work among the restive
children of her school.

When she looked upon her friend and recalled the bitter words Albert
had spoken against her, Elise felt their injustice. It was true, as
she had told him, he did not understand Sister Benigna.

Sitting down beside the window, Elise began to busy herself over the
dainty basket she was elaborately decorating. After a few moments
Sister Benigna left the piano and stood looking at Elise and her work.
She had something to say, but how should she say it? how approach the
heart which had wrapped itself up in sorrow and surrounded itself with
the guards of silence?

Presently Elise looked at her, but not until she had so long resisted
the inclination to do so that there was something like violence in the
effort. When her eyes met the gaze of Sister Benigna the warm blood
rushed to her cheeks, and she looked quickly down again. Did Sister
Benigna know yet about the letter Mr. Wenck had written?

A sad smile appeared on Benigna's face. She shook her head. If she did
not know what had happened, she no doubt understood that some kind of
trouble had entered the house.

Drawing a roll of needlework from her pocket, she quietly occupied
herself with it until Elise, unable to endure the silence longer,
said, "Oh, Sister Benigna, is it not time we did something about the
Sisters' House? I have been reading about one: I forget where it is.
What a beautiful Home you and I could make for poor people, and sick
girls not able to work, and old women! We ought to have such a Home in
Spenersberg. I have been thinking all day it is what we must have, and
it is time we set about it."

"I do not agree with you," was the quiet answer. "There is no real
need for it here, and perhaps there never will be. Work that is so
unnecessary might better be avoided. In Spenersberg it is better that
the poor and the old and the sick should be cared for in their homes,
by their own households: there is no want here."

"Will you read what I have been reading?" said Elise, hesitating, not
willing yet to give up the project which looked so full of promise.

"I know all about Sisters' Houses, and they are excellent
institutions, but if you will go from house to house here you will
find that you would probably keep house by yourself a long time if you
opened such an establishment. No, no: you have your work all prepared
for you, and I certainly have mine. There is a good deal to be done
yet for the festival. Tomorrow, after five, come to the school-room and
we will practice a while. And we might do something here to-night. The
children surprise me: I seem to be surrounded by a little company of
angels while they sing."

"Oh, Sister Benigna," exclaimed Elise throwing down her work in
despair, "I don't in the least care about the festival. I should be
glad to know it was all given up. I cannot sing at it. I think I have
lost my voice: I do, indeed. I tried it this afternoon, and I croaked
worse than anything you ever heard."

"Croaked? We must see to that," said Sister Benigna; but, though her
voice was so cheerful, she closed her eyes as she spoke, and passed
her hands over them, and in spite of herself a look of pain was for an
instant visible on her always pale face. She rose quickly and walked
across the room, and crossed it twice before she came again to the
window.

"You don't understand me to-day," said Elise impetuously; "and I don't
want you to." But Elise would not have spoken at all had she looked at
Sister Benigna.

A silence of many seconds, which seemed much longer to Elise,
followed her words. She did not dare to go on. What was Sister Benigna
thinking? Would she never speak? Had she nothing to say? Elise was
about to rise also, because to sit still in that silence or to break
it by words had become equally impossible, when Sister Benigna,
approaching gently, laid her hand upon her and said, "Wait one moment:
I have something to tell you, Elise."

And so Elise sat down. She could not summon the strength to go with
that voice in her ear and the touch of that hand arresting her.

"I once had a friend as young as you are, of whom you often remind
me," said Benigna. "She had a lover, and their faith led them to
seek a knowledge of the Lord's will concerning their marriage. It
was inquired for them, and it was found against the union. You often
remind me of her, I said, but your fortunes are not at all like hers."

"Sister Benigna, why do you tell me this?" asked Elise quickly, in a
voice hardly audible. She was afraid to listen. She recalled Albert's
words. She did not know if she might trust the friendly voice that
spoke.

"Because I have always thought that some time it would be well for you
to hear it; but if you do not wish to hear it, I will go no farther."

Elise looked at Benigna--not trust her! "Please go on," she said.

"I knew the poor child very well. She had grown up in an unhappy
home, and had never known what it was to have comfort and peace in the
house, or even plenty to eat and to wear. She was expected to go out
and earn her living as soon as she had learned the use of her hands
and feet. Poor child! she felt her fortune was a hard one, but God
always cared for her. In one way and another she in time picked up
enough knowledge of music to teach beginners. The first real friend
she had was the friend who became so dear to her that--I need not try
to find words to tell you how dear he was.

"She was soon skilled enough to be able to take more intelligent and
advanced pupils, and in the church-music she had the leading parts.
By and by the music was put into her hands for festivals and the
great days, Christmas and Easter, as it has been put into mine here in
Spenersberg. One day _he_ said to her, 'It seems to us the best thing
in life to be near each other. Would it might be God's will that we
should never part!' She responded to that prayer from the depths of
her heart, and a great gulf seemed to open before her, for she thought
what would her life be worth if they were destined to part? Then he
said, 'Let us inquire the will of our Lord;' and she said, 'Let it
be so;' and they had faith that would enable them to abide by the
decision. The lot pronounced against them. I do not believe that it
had entered the heart of either of them to understand how necessary
they had become to each other, and when they saw that all was over it
was a sad awaking. For a little while it was with both as if they had
madly thrown a birthright away; for, though they had faith, they were
not yet perfect in it. Not soon did either see that this life had
a blessing for them every day--new every morning, fresh every
evening--and that from everlasting to everlasting are the mercies of
God. But at last he said, 'I am afraid, my darling'" (Elise started at
this word of endearment. It was like a revelation to think that there
had been lovers in the world before her time), "'it will go harder
with me than with you. I cannot stay here and go on with my work. I
must go among new people, and begin again.' And so he went away, and
at last, when by the grace of God they met again--surely, surely by no
seeking of their own--they were no less true friends because they had
for their lifetime been led into separate paths. Their faith saved
them."

Low though the voice was in which these last words were spoken, there
was a strength and inspiration in them which Elise felt. She looked
at Sister Benigna with steady, wondering eyes. Such a story from her
lips, and told so, and told now! And her countenance! what divine
beauty glowed in it! The moment had a vision that could never be
forgotten.

Elise did not speak, but neither, having heard this tale, did she now
rise to depart. She folded her hands and bowed her head upon them, and
so they sat silent until the first chords of the "Pastoral Symphony"
drew the souls of both away up into a realm which is entered only by
the pure in heart.

About this time it was that Leonhard Marten, while passing, heard that
recitative of a soprano voice which so amazed him. Dropping quickly
into the shade of the trees opposite Loretz's house, he listened to
the announcement, "There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping
watch over their flocks by night," and there remained until he saw two
men advancing toward the house, one of them evidently approaching his
home.

Through the sleepless night Elise's thoughts were constantly going
over the simple incidents of the story Sister Benigna had told her.
But they had not by morning yielded all the consolations which the
teller of the tale perceived among their possibilities, for the
reason, perhaps, that Elise's sympathies had been more powerfully
excited by the tale than her faith. It was not upon the final result
of the severance effected by the lot that her mind rested dismayed:
her heart was full of pain, thinking of that poor girl's early life,
and that at last, when all the recollection of it was put far from her
by the joy which shone upon her as the sun out of darkness, she
must look forward and by its light behold a future so dreary. "How
fearful!" she moaned once; and her closed eyes did not see the face
that turned toward her full of pain, full of love.

Of all doubts that could afflict the soul of Sister Benigna, none
more distracting than this was conceivable: Had she proved the best
instructor to this child of her spirit? Had she even been _capable_ of
teaching her truest truth? Was it the truth or herself to which Elise
was always deferring? Was obedience a duty when not impelled and
sanctified by faith? In what did the prime virtue of resignation
consist? Would not obedience without faith be merely a debasing
superstitious submission to the will of the believing? Her reflections
were not suggested by a shrewd guess. She knew that the lot had been
resorted to, and that the letters had been written to Elise and Albert
which acquainted them with the result; and the peace of her prayerful
soul was rent by the thought that a joyless surrender of human will
to a higher was, perhaps, no better than the poor helpless slave's
extorted sacrifice. The happiness of the household seemed to Benigna
in her keeping. If they had gone lightly seeking the oracle of God,
as they would have sought a fortune-teller, was not the Most High
dishonored? She could not say this to Elise, but could she say it to
Albert Spener? Ought she not to say it to him? There was no other to
whom it could be said. Had the coming day any duty so imperative as
this? She arose to perform it, but Spener, as we know, had gone away
the day before.




CHAPTER VI.

THE MEN OF SPENERSBERG.


This Spenersberg, about which Leonhard was not a little eager to know
more when he shut the door of the apartment into which his host had
ushered him--for he must remain all night--what was it?

A colony, or a brotherhood, or a community, six years old. Such a fact
does not lie ready for observation every day--such a place does not
lie in the hand of a man at his bidding. What, then, was its history?
We need not wait to find out until morning, when Leonhard will proceed
to discover. He is satisfied when he lies down upon the bed, which
awaited him, it seems, as he came hither on the way-train--quite
satisfied that Spener of Spenersberg must be a man worth seeing.
Breathing beings possessed of ideas and homes here must have been
handled with power by a master mind to have brought about this
community, if so it is to be called, in six short years, thinks
Leonhard. He recalls his own past six years, and turns uneasily on his
bed, and finds no rest until he reminds himself of the criticism
he has been enabled to pass on Miss Elise's rendering of "He is a
righteous Saviour," and the suggestion he made concerning the pitch
of "Ye shall find rest for your souls." The recollection acts upon him
somewhat as the advancing wave acts on the sand-line made by the wave
preceding. When he made the first suggestion, Sister Benigna stood
for a moment looking at him, surprised by his remark; but, less than a
second taken up with a thought of him, she had passed instantly on to
say, "Try it so, Elise: 'He is a righteous Saviour.' We will make it
a slower movement. Ah! how impressive! how beautiful! It is the
composer's very thought! Again--slow: it is perfect!"

Was this kind of praise worth the taking? a source of praise worth
the seeking? Leonhard had said ungrateful things about his
prize-credentials to Miss Marion Ayres, and I do believe that these
very prizes, awarded for his various drawings, were never so valued
by him as the look with which priestly Benigna seemed to admit him at
least so far as into the fellowship of the Gentiles' Court.

He would have fallen asleep just here with a pleasant thought but for
the recollection of Wilberforce's letter, which startled him hardly
less than the apparition of his friend in the moonlight streaming
through his half-curtained window would have done. Is it always so
pleasant a thought that for ever and ever a man shall bear his own
company?

But this Spenersberg? Seven years ago, on the day when he came of age,
Albert Spener, then a young clerk in a fancy-goods store, went to look
at the estate which his grandfather had bequeathed to him the year
preceding. Not ten years ago the old man made his will and gave the
property, on which he had not quite starved, to his only grandson, and
here was this worthless gorge which stretched between the fields more
productive than many a famous gold-mine.

The youth had seen at once that if he should deal with the land as
his predecessors had done, he would be able to draw no more from the
stingy acres than they. He had shown the bent of his mind and the
nature of his talent by the promptness with which he put things remote
together, and by the directness with which he reached his conclusions.

He had left his town-lodgings, having obtained of his employer leave
of absence for one week, and within twenty-four hours had come to
his conclusion and returned to his post. Of that estate which he had
inherited but a portion, and a very small portion, offered to the
cultivator the least encouragement. The land had long ago been
stripped of its forest trees, and, thus defrauded of its natural
fertilizers, lay now, after successive seasons of drain and waste, as
barren as a desert, with the exception of that narrow strip between
the hills which apparently bent low that inland might look upon river.

Along the banks of the stream, which flowed, a current of considerable
depth and swiftness, toward its outlet, the river, willows were
growing. Albert's employer was an importer to a small extent,
and fancy willow-ware formed a very considerable share of his
importations. The conclusion he had reached while surveying his land
was an answer to the question he had asked himself: Why should
not this land be made to bring forth the kind of willow used by
basket-weavers, and why should not basket-weavers be induced to gather
into a community of some sort, and so importers be beaten in the
market by domestic productions? The aim thus clearly defined Spener
had accomplished. His Moravians furnished him with a willow-ware
which was always quoted at a high figure, and the patriotic pride
the manufacturer felt in the enterprise was abundantly rewarded: no
foreign mark was ever found on his home-made goods.

But _his_ Moravians: where did these people come from, and how came
they to be known as his?

The question brings us to Frederick Loretz. In those days he was a
porter in the establishment where Spener was a clerk. He had filled
this situation only one month, however, when he was attacked with a
fever which was scourging the neighborhood, and taken to the hospital.
Albert followed him thither with kindly words and care, for the poor
fellow was a stranger in the town, and he had already told Spener his
dismal story. Afar from wife and child, among strangers and a pauper,
his doom, he believed, was to die. How he bemoaned his wasted life
then, and the husks which he had eaten!

In his delirium Loretz would have put an end to his life. Spener
talked him out of this horror of himself, and showed him that there
was always opportunity, while life lasted, for wanderers to seek again
the fold they had strayed from; for when the delirium passed the man's
conscience remained, and he confessed that he had lived away from
the brethren of his faith, and was an outcast. Oh, if he could but
be transported to Herrnhut and set down there a well man in that
sanctuary of Moravianism, how devoutly would he return to the faith
and practice of his fathers!

When Spener returned from his trip of investigation he hastened
immediately to the hospital, sought out poor half-dead Loretz, laid
his hand on his shoulder, and said, "Come, get up: I want you." And
he explained his project: "I will build a house for you, send for
your wife and child, put you all together, and start you in life. I
am going into the basket business, and I want you to look after
my willows. After they are pretty well grown you shall get in some
families--Simon-Pure Moravians, you know--and we will have a village
of our own. D'ye hear me?"

The poor fellow did hear: he struggled up in his bed, threw his arms
around Spener's neck, tried to kiss him, and fainted.

"This is a good beginning," said Spener to himself as he laid the
senseless head upon the pillow and felt for the beating heart. The
beating heart was there. In a few moments Loretz was looking, with
eyes that shone with loving gratitude and wondering admiration, on the
young man who had saved his life.

"I have no money," said this youth in further explanation of his
project--for he wanted his companion to understand his circumstances
from the outset--"but I shall borrow five thousand dollars. I can pay
the interest on that sum out of my salary. Perhaps I shall sell a few
lots on the river, if I can turn attention to the region. It will all
come out right, anyhow. Now, how soon can you be ready? I will write
to your wife to-day if you say so, and tell her to come on with the
little girl."

"Wait a week," said Loretz in a whisper; and all that night and the
following day his chances for this world and the next seemed about
equal.

But after that he rallied, and his recovery was certain. It was slow,
however, hastened though it was by the hope and expectation which
had opened to him when he had reached the lowest depth of despair and
covered himself with the ashes of repentance.

The letter for the wife and little girl was written, and money sent to
bring them from the place where Loretz had left them when he set
out in search of occupation, to find employment as a porter, and the
fever, and Albert Spener.

During the first year of co-working Loretz devoted himself to the
culture of the willow, and then, as time passed on and hands were
needed, he brought one family after another to the place--Moravians
all--until now there were at least five hundred inhabitants in
Spenersberg, a large factory and a church, whereof Spener himself was
a member "in good and regular standing."

Seven years of incessant labor, directed by a wise foresight, which
looked almost like inspiration and miracle, had resulted in all this
real prosperity. Loretz never stopped wondering at it, and yet he
could have told you every step of the process. All that had been
_done_ he had had a hand in, but the devising brain was Spener's;
and no wonder that, in spite of his familiarity with the details,
the sum-total of the activities put forth in that valley should have
seemed to Loretz marvelous, magical.

He had many things to rejoice over besides his own prosperity. His
daughter was in all respects a perfect being, to his thinking. For six
years now she had been under the instruction of Sister Benigna,
not only in music, but in all things that Sister Benigna, a
well-instructed woman, could teach. She sang, as Leonhard Marten would
have told you, "divinely," she was beautiful to look upon, and Albert
Spener desired to marry her.

Surely the Lord had blessed him, and remembered no more those years
of wanderings when, alienated from the brethren, he sought out his
own ways and came close upon destruction. What should he return to the
beneficent Giver for all these benefits?

Poor Loretz! In his prosperity he thought that he should never be
moved, but he would not basely use that conviction and forget the
source of all his satisfaction. He remembered that it was when he
repented of his misdeeds that Spener came to him and drew him from the
pit. He could never look upon Albert as other than a divine agent;
and when Spener joined himself to the Moravians, led partly by his
admiration of them, partly by religious impulse, and partly because
of his conviction that to be wholly successful he and his people must
form a unit, his joy was complete.

The proposal for Elise's hand had an effect upon her father which any
one who knew him well might have looked for and directed. The pride of
his life was satisfied. He remembered that he and his Anna, in seeking
to know the will of the Lord in respect to their marriage, had been
answered favorably by the lot. He desired the signal demonstration of
heavenly will in regard to the nuptials proposed. Not a shadow of
a doubt visited his mind as to the result, and the influence of his
faith upon Spener was such that he acquiesced in the measure, though
not without remonstrance and misgiving and mental reservation.

To find his way up into the region of faith, and quiet himself there
when the result of the seeking was known, was almost impossible for
Loretz. He could fear the Judge who had decreed, but could he trust in
Him? He began to grope back among his follies of the past, seeking a
crime he had not repented, as the cause of this domestic calamity. But
ah! to reap such a harvest as this for any youthful folly! Poor soul!
little he knew of vengeance and retribution. He was at his wit's end,
incapable alike of advancing, retreating or of peaceful surrender.

It was pleasant to him to think, in the night-watches, of the young
man who occupied the room next to his. He did not see--at least had
not yet seen--in Leonhard a messenger sent to the house, as did his
wife; but the presence of the young stranger spoke favorable things in
his behalf; and then, as there was really nothing to be _done_ about
this decision, anything that gave a diversion to sombre thoughts was
welcome. Sister Benigna had spoken very kindly to Leonhard in the
evening, and he had pointed out a place in one of Elise's solos where
by taking a higher key in a single passage a marvelous effect could be
produced. That showed knowledge; and he said that he had taught music.
Perhaps he would like to remain until after the congregation festival
had taken place.




CHAPTER VII.

THE BOOK.


In the morning the master of the house rapped on Leonhard's door and
said: "When you come down I have something to show you." The voice
of Mr. Loretz had almost its accustomed cheerfulness of tone, and he
ended his remark with a brief "Ha! ha!" peculiar to him, which not
only expressed his own good-humor, but also invited good-humored
response.

Leonhard answered cheerily, and in a few moments he had descended the
steep uncovered stair to the music-room.

"Now for the book," Loretz called out as Leonhard entered.

How handsome our young friend looked as he stood there shaking hands
with the elderly man, whose broad, florid face now actually shone with
hospitable feeling!

"Is father going to claim you as one of us, Mr. Marten?" asked the
wife of Loretz, who answered her husband's call by coming into the
room and bringing with her a large volume wrapped in chamois skin.

"What shall I be, then?" asked Leonhard. "A wiser and a better man, I
do not doubt."

"What! you do not know?" the good woman stayed to say. "Has nobody
told you where you are, my young friend?"

"I never before found myself in a place I should like to stay in
always; so what does the rest signify?" answered Leonhard. "What's in
a name?"

"Not much perhaps, yet something," said Loretz. "We are all Moravians
here. I was going to look in this book here for the names of your
ancestors. I thought perhaps you knew about Spenersberg."

"I am as new to it all as Christopher Columbus was to the West India
islands. If you find the names of my kinsmen down in your book, sir,
it--it will be a marvelous, happy sight for me," said Leonhard.

"I'll try my hand at it," said Loretz. "Ha! ha!" and he opened the
volume, which was bound in black leather, the leaves yellowed with
years. "This book," he continued, "is one hundred and fifty years
old. You will find recorded in it the names of all my grandfather's
friends, and all my father's. See, it is our way. There are all the
dates. Where they lived, see, and where they died. It is all down.
A man cannot feel himself cut off from his kind as long as he has a
volume like that in his library. I have added a few names of my own
friends, and their birthdays. Here, you see, is Sister Benigna's,
written with her own hand. A most remarkable woman, sir. True as
steel--always the same. But"--he paused a moment and looked at
Leonhard with his head inclined to one side, and an expression of
perplexity upon his face--"there's something out of the way here in
this country. I have not more than one name down to a dozen in my
father's record, and twenty in my grandfather's. We do not make
friends, and we do not keep them, as they did in old time. We don't
trust each other as men ought to. Half the time we find ourselves
wondering whether the folks we're dealing with are _honest_. Now think
of that!"

"Are men any worse than they were in the old time?" asked Leonhard,
evidently not entering into the conversation with the keenest
enjoyment.

"I do not know how it is," said Loretz with a sigh, continuing to turn
the leaves of the book as he spoke.

"Perhaps we have less imagination, and don't look at every new-comer
as a friend until we have tried him," suggested Leonhard. "We decide
that everybody shall be tested before we accept him. And isn't it the
best way? Better than to be disappointed, when we have set our heart
on a man--or a woman."

"I do not know--I cannot account for it," said Mr. Loretz. Then with a
sudden start he laid his right hand on the page before him, and with a
great pleased smile in his deep-set, small blue eyes he said: "Here is
your name. I felt sure I should find it: I felt certain it was down.
See here, on my grandfather's page--_Leonhard Marten, Herrnhut_, 1770.
How do you like that?"

"I like it well," said Leonhard, bending over the book and examining
the close-fisted autograph set down strongly in unfading ink. Had he
found an ancestor at last? What could have amazed him as much?

"What have you found?" asked Mrs. Loretz, who had heard these remarks
in the next room, where she was actively making preparations for the
breakfast, which already sent forth its odorous invitations.

"We have found the name," answered her husband. "Come and see. I have
read it, I dare say, a hundred times: that was what made me feel that
an old friend had come."

"That means," said the good woman, hastening in at her husband's call,
and reading the name with a pleased smile--"that means that you belong
to us. I thought you did. I am glad."

Were these folk so intent on securing a convert that in these various
ways they made the young stranger feel that he was not among strangers
in this unknown Spenersberg? Nothing was farther from their thought:
they only gave to their kindly feeling hearty utterance, and perhaps
spoke with a little extra emphasis because the constraint they
secretly felt in consequence of their household trouble made them
unanimous in the effort to put it out of sight--not out of this
stranger's sight, but out of their own.

"Perhaps you will stop with us a while, and maybe write your name on
my page before you go," said Loretz, afraid that his wife had gone a
little too far.

"Without a single test?" Leonhard answered. "Haven't we just agreed
that we wise men don't take each other on trust, as they did in our
grandfathers' day?"

"A man living in Herrnhut in 1770 would not have for a descendant a--a
man I could not trust," said Loretz, closing the book and placing it
in its chamois covering again. "Breakfast, mother, did you say?"

"Have you wanted ink?" asked Sister Benigna, entering at that instant.
"Are we writing in the sacred birthday book?"

"Not yet," said Leonhard hastily, the color rising to his face in a
way to suggest forked lightning somewhere beyond sight.

"You have wanted ink, and are too kind to let me know," she said. "I
emptied the bottle copying music for the children yesterday."

"The ink was put to a better use then than I could have found for it
this morning," said Leonhard.

And Mrs. Loretz, who looked into the room just then, said to herself,
as her eyes fell on him, "Poor soul! he is in trouble."

In fact, this thought was in Leonhard's mind as he went into breakfast
with the family: "A deuced good friend I have proved--to Wilberforce!
Isn't there anybody here clear-eyed enough to see that it would be
like forgery to write my name down in a book of friendship?"

The morning meal was enlivened by much more than the usual amount of
talk. Leonhard was curious to know about Herrnhut, that old home
of Moravianism, and the interest which he manifested in the history
Loretz was so eager to communicate made him in turn an object of
almost affectionate attention. That he had no facts of private
biography to communicate in turn did net attract notice, because,
however many such facts he might have ready to produce, by the time
Loretz had done talking it was necessary that the day's work should
begin.




CHAPTER VIII.

CONFERENCE MEETING.


The school-room was a large apartment in the basement of the factory
which had been used as a drying-room until it became necessary to
find for the increasing numbers of the little flock more spacious
accommodations. The basement was entered by a door at the end of the
building opposite that by which the operatives entered the factory,
and the hours were so timed that the children went and came without
disturbance to themselves or others. The path that led to the basement
door was neatly bordered with flowering plants and bushes, and
sunlight was always to be found there, if anywhere in the valley, from
eight o'clock till two.

Leonhard walked to the factory with Sister Benigna, to whose conduct
Loretz had consigned him when called away by the tower bell.

At the door of the basement Mr. Wenck was standing with a printed copy
of Handel's sacred oratorio of _The Messiah_ in his hand. Evidently he
was waiting for Sister Benigna.

But when she had said to Leonhard, "Pass on to the other end of the
building and you will find the entrance, and Mr. Spener's office in
the corner as you enter," and Leonhard had thanked her, and bowed and
passed on, and she turned to Mr. Wenck, it was very little indeed that
he said or had to say about the music which he held in his hand.

"I have no doubt that all the preparation necessary for to-morrow
evening is being made," he said. "You may need this book. But I
did not come to talk about it. Sister Benigna," he continued in a
different tone, and a voice not quite under his control, "is it not
unreasonable to have passed a sleepless night thinking of Albert and
Elise?"

"Very unreasonable." But he had not charged her, as she supposed, with
that folly, as his next words showed.

"It is, and yet I have done it--only because all this might have been
so easily avoided."

"And yet it was unavoidable," said she, looking toward the school-room
door as one who had no time to waste in idle talk.

"Not that I question the wisdom of the resort if all were of one
mind," said Mr. Wenck, who had the dreary all-day before him, and was
not in the least pressed for time. "But I can see that even on the
part of Brother Loretz the act was not a genuine act of faith."

Startled by the expression the minister was giving to her secret
thoughts, Benigna exclaimed, "And yet what can be done?"

"Nothing," he answered. "If Loretz should yield to Spener, and if I
should--do you not see he has had everything his own way here?--he
would feel that nothing could stand in opposition to him. If he were a
different man! And they are both so young!"

"I know that Elise has a conscience that will hold her fast to duty,"
said Benigna, but she did not speak hopefully: she spoke deliberately,
however, thinking that these words _conscience_ and _duty_ might
arrest the minister's attention, and that he would perhaps, by some
means, throw light upon questions which were constantly becoming more
perplexing to her. Was conscience an unfailing guide? Was one person's
duty to be pronounced upon by another without scruple, and defined
with unfaltering exactness? But the words had not arrested the
minister's attention.

"If they could only see that there is nothing to be done!" said he.
"Oh, they will, Benigna! Had they only the faith, Benigna!"

"Yet how vain their sacrifice, for they have it not!" said she. And
as if she would not prolong an interview which must be full of pain,
because no light could proceed from any words that would be given them
to speak, Sister Benigna turned abruptly toward the basement door when
she had said this, and entered it without bestowing a parting glance
even on the minister.

He walked away after an instant's hesitation: indeed there was nothing
further to be said, and she did well to go.

Going homeward by a path which led along the hillside above the
village street, he must pass the small house separated from all
others--the house which was the appointed resting-place of all who
lived in Spenersberg to die there--known as the Corpse-house. To it
the bodies of deceased persons were always taken after death, and
there they remained until the hour when they were carried forth for
burial.

As Mr. Wenck approached he saw that the door stood open: a few steps
farther, and this fact was accounted for. A bent and wrinkled old
woman stood there with a broom in her hand, which she had been using
in a plain, straight-forward manner.

"Ah, Mary," he said, "what does this mean, my good woman?"

"It is the minister," she answered in a low voice, curtseying. "I was
moved to come here this morning, sir, and see to things. It was time
to be brushing up a little, I thought. It is a month now since the
last."

"I will take down the old boughs then, and garnish the walls with new
ones. And have you looked at the lamp too, Mary?"

"It is trimmed, sir," said the woman; and the minister's readiness to
assist her drew forth the confession: "I was thinking on my bed in the
night-watches that it must be done. There will one be going home soon.
And it may be myself, sir. I could not have been easy if I had not
come up to tidy the house."

Having finished her task, which was a short one and easily performed,
the woman now waited to watch the minister as he selected cedar boughs
and wove them into wreaths, and suspended them from the walls and
rafters of the little room; and it comforted the simple soul when,
standing in the doorway, the good man lifted his eyes toward heaven
and said in the words of the church litany:

  From error and misunderstanding,
  From the loss of our glory in Thee,
  From self-complacency,
  From untimely projects,
  From needless perplexity,
  From the murdering spirit and devices of Satan,
  From the influence of the spirit of this world,
  From hypocrisy and fanaticism,
  From the deceitfulness of sin,
  From all sin,
  _Preserve us, gracious Lord and God_--

and devoutly she joined in with him in the solemn responsive cry.

It was very evident that the minister's work that day was not to be
performed in his silent home among his books.

On the brightest day let the sun become eclipsed, and how the earth
will pine! What melancholy will pervade the busy streets, the pleasant
fields and woods! How disconsolately the birds will seek their mates
and their nests!

The children came together, but many a half hour passed during
which the shadow of an Unknown seemed to come between them and their
teacher. The bright soul, was she too suffering from an eclipse? Does
it happen that all souls, even the most valiant, most loving, least
selfish, come in time to passes so difficult that, shrinking back,
they say, "Why should I struggle to gain the other side? What is
there worth seeking? Better to end all here. This life is not worth
enduring"? And yet, does it also come to pass as certainly that these
valiant, unselfish, loving ones will struggle, fight, climb, wade,
creep on, on while the breath of life remains in them, and never
surrender? It seemed as if Sister Benigna had arrived at a place where
her baffled spirit stood still and felt its helplessness. Could she
do nothing for Elise, the dear child for whose happiness she would
cheerfully give her life, and not think the price too dear?

By and by the children were aware that Sister Benigna had come again
among them: the humblest little flower lifted up its head, and the
smallest bird began to chirp and move about and smooth its wings.

Sister Benigna! what had she recollected?--that but a single day
perhaps was hers to live, and here were all these children! As she
turned with ardent zeal to her work--which indeed had not failed of
accustomed conduct so far as routine went--tell me what do you find in
those lovely eyes if not the heavenliest assurances? Let who will
call the scene of this life's operations a vale of tears, a world of
misery, a prison-house of the spirit, here is one who asks for herself
nothing of honors or riches or pleasures, and who can bless the
Lord God for the glory of the earth he has created, and for those
everlasting purposes of his which mortals can but trust in, and which
are past finding out. Children, let us do our best to-day, and wait
until to-morrow for to-morrow's gifts. This exhortation was in the
eyes, mien, conduct of the teacher, and so she led them on until, when
they came to practice their hymns for the festival, every little heart
and voice was in tune, and she praised them with voice so cheerful,
how should they guess that it had ever been choked by anguish or had
ever fainted in despair?

O young eyes saddening over what is to you a painful, insoluble
problem! yet a little while and you shall see the mists of morning
breaking everywhere, and the great conquering sun will enfold you too
in its warm embrace: the humble laurels of the mountain's side, even
as the great pines and cedars of the mountain's crest, have but to
receive and use what the sterile rock and the blinding cloud, the
wintry tempest and the rain and the summer's heat bestow, and lo! the
heights are alive with glory. But it is not in a day.




CHAPTER IX.

WILL THE ARCHITECT HAVE EMPLOYMENT?


On entering the factory, Leonhard met Loretz near the door talking
with Albert Spener. When he saw Leonhard, Loretz said, "I was just
saying to Mr. Spener that I expected you, sir, and how he might
recognize you; but you shall speak for yourself. If you will spend a
little time looking about, I shall be back soon: perhaps Mr. Spener--"

"Mr. Leonhard Marten, I believe," said Mr. Albert Spener with a little
exaggeration of his natural stiffness. Perhaps he did not suspect that
all the morning he had been manifesting considerable loftiness toward
Loretz, and that he spoke in a way that made Leonhard feel that his
departure from Spenersberg would probably take place within something
less than twenty-four hours.

Yet within half an hour the young men were walking up and down the
factory, examining machinery and work, and talking as freely as if
they had known each other six months. They were not in everything
as unlike as they were in person. Spener was a tall, spare man, who
conveyed an impression of mental strength and physical activity. He
could turn his hand to anything, and _attempt_ anything that was to be
done by skillful handicraft; and whether he could use his wits well
in shaping men, let Spenersberg answer. His square-shaped head was
covered with bright brown hair, which had a reddish tinge, and his
moustache was of no stinted growth: his black eyes penetrated and
flashed, and could glow and glare in a way to make weakness and
feebleness tremble. His quick speech did not spare: right and left he
used his swords of thought and will. Fall in! or, Out of the way! were
the commands laid down by him since the foundations of Spenersberg
were laid. In the fancy-goods line he might have made of himself a
spectacle, supposing he could have remained in the trade; but set
apart here in this vale, the centre of a sphere of his own creation,
where there was something at stake vast enough to justify the exercise
of energy and authority, he had a field for the fair play of all that
was within him--the worst and the best. The worst that he could be he
was--a tyrant; and the best that he could be he was--a lover. Hitherto
his tyrannies had brought about good results only, but it was well
that the girl he loved had not only spirit and courage enough to love
him, but also faith enough to remove mountains.

If Leonhard had determined that he would make a friend of Spener
before he entered the factory, he could not have proceeded more wisely
than he did. First, he was interested in the works, and intent on
being told about the manufacture of articles of furniture from a
product ostensibly of such small account as the willow; then he was
interested in the designs and surprised at the ingenious variety, and
curious to learn their source, and amazed to hear that Mr. Spener had
himself originated more than half of them. Then presently he began to
suggest designs, and at the end of an hour he found himself at a table
in Spener's office drawing shapes for baskets and chairs and tables
and ornamental devices, and making Spener laugh so at some remark as
to be heard all over the building.

"You say you are an architect," he said after Leonhard had covered a
sheet of paper with suggestions written and outlined for him, which he
looked at with swiftly-comprehending and satisfied eyes. "What do you
say to doing a job for me?"

"With all my heart," answered Leonhard, "if it can be done at once."

These words were in the highest degree satisfactory. Here was a man
who knew the worth of a minute. He was the man for Spener. "Come with
me," he said, "and I'll show you a building-site or two worth putting
money on;" and so they walked together out of the factory, crossed a
rustic foot-bridge to the opposite side, ascended a sunny half-cleared
slope and passed across a field; and there beneath them, far below,
rolled the grand river which had among its notable ports this little
Spenersberg.

"What do you think of a house on this site, sir?" asked Spener,
looking with no small degree of satisfaction around him and down the
rocky steep.

"I think I should like to be commissioned to build a castle with
towers and gates of this very granite which you could hew out by
the thousand cord from the quarry yonder. What a perfect gray for
building!"

"I have always thought I would use the material on the ground--the
best compliment I could pay this place which I have raised my fortune
out of," said Spener.

"There's no better material on the earth," said Leonhard.

"But I don't want a castle: I want a house with room enough in
it--high ceilings, wide halls, and a piazza fifteen or twenty feet
wide all around it."

"Must I give up the castle? There isn't a better site on the Rhine
than this."

"But I'm not a baron, and I live at peace with my neighbors--at least
with outsiders." That last remark was an unfortunate one, for it
brought the speaker back consciously to confront the images which were
constantly lurking round him--only hid when he commanded them out of
sight in the manfulness of a spirit that would not be interfered
with in its work. He sat looking at Leonhard opposite to him, who had
already taken a note-book and pencil from his pocket, and, planting
his left foot firmly against one of the great rocks of the cliff, he
said, "Loretz tells me you stayed all night at his house."

"Yes, he invited me in when I inquired my way to the inn."

"Sister Benigna was there?"

"She wasn't anywhere else," said Leonhard, looking up and smiling.
"Excuse the slang. If you are where she is, you may feel very certain
about her being there."

"Not at all," said Albert, evidently nettled into argument by the
theme he had introduced. "She is one of those persons who can be in
several places at the same time. You heard them sing, I suppose. They
are preparing for the congregation festival. It is six years since
we started here, but we only built our church last year: this year
we have the first celebration in the edifice, and of course there is
great preparation."

"I have been wondering how I could go away before it takes place ever
since I heard of it."

"If you wonder less how you can stay, remain of course," said Spener
with no great cordiality: he owed this stranger nothing, after all.

"It will only be to prove that I am really music-mad, as they have
been telling me ever since I was born. If that is the case, from the
evidences I have had since I came here I think I shall recover."

"What do you mean?" asked Spener.

"I mean that I see how little I really know about the science. I
never heard anything to equal the musical knowledge and execution of
Loretz's daughter and this Sister Benigna you speak of."

"Ah! I am not a musician. I tried the trombone, but lacked the
patience. I am satisfied to admire. And so you liked the singers?
Which best?"

"Both."

"Come, come--what was the difference?"

"The difference?" repeated Leonhard reflecting.

Spener also seemed to reflect on his question, and was so absorbed
in his thinking that he seemed to be startled when Leonhard, from his
studies of the square house with the wide halls and the large rooms
with high ceilings, turned to him and said, "The difference, sir, is
between two women."

"No difference at all, do you mean? Do you mean they are alike? They
are not alike."

"Not so alike that I have seen anything like either of them."

"Ah! neither have I. For that reason I shall marry one of them, while
the other I would not marry--no, not if she were the only woman on the
continent."

"You are a fortunate man," said Leonhard.

"I intend to prove that. Nothing more is necessary than the girl's
consent--is there?--if you have made up your mind that you must have
her."

"I should think you might say that, sir."

"But you don't hazard an opinion as to which, sir."

"Not I."

"Why not?"

"It might be Miss Elise, if--"

"If what?"

"I am not accustomed to see young ladies in their homes. I have only
fancied sometimes what a pretty girl might be in her father's house."

"Well, sir?" said Spener impatiently.

"A young lady like Miss Elise would have a great deal to say, I should
suppose."

"Is she dumb? I thought she could talk. I should have said so."

"I should have guessed, too, that she would always be singing about
the house."

"And if not--what then?"

"Something must be going wrong somewhere. So you see it can't be Miss
Elise, according to my judgment."

Spener laughed when this conclusion was reached.

"Come here again within a month and see if she can talk and sing,"
said he with eyes flashing. "Perhaps you have found that it is as easy
to frighten a bugbear out of the way as to be frightened by one. I
never found, sir, that I couldn't put a stumbling-block out of my
path. We have one little man here who is going to prove himself a
nuisance, I'm afraid. He is a good little fellow, too. I always liked
him until he undertook to manage my affairs. I don't propose to give
up the reins yet a while, and until I do, you see, he has no chance.
I am sorry about it, for I considered him quite like a friend; but a
friend, sir, with a flaw in him is worse than an enemy. I know where
to find my enemies, but I can't keep track of a man who pretends to be
a friend and serves me ill. But pshaw! let me see what you are doing."

Leonhard was glad when the man ceased from discoursing on
friendship--a favorite theme among Spenersbergers, he began to
think--and glad to break away from his work, for he held his pencil
less firmly than he should have done.

Spener studied the portion completed, and seemed surprised as well as
pleased. "You know your business," said he. "Be so good as to finish
the design."

Then returning the book to Leonhard, he looked at his watch. "It is
time I went to dinner," he said. "Come with me. Loretz knows you are
with me, and will expect you to be my guest to-day." So they walked
across the field, but did not descend by the path along which they had
ascended. They went farther to the east, and Spener led the way down
the rough hillside until he came to a point whence the descent was
less steep and difficult. There he paused. A beautiful view was spread
before them. Little Spenersberg lay on the slope opposite: between ran
the stream, which widened farther toward the east and narrowed toward
the west, where it emptied into the river. Eastward the valley also
widened, and there the willows grew, and looked like a great garden,
beautiful in every shade of green.

"I should not have the river from this point," said Spener, "but I
should have a great deal more, and be nearer the people: I do not
think it would be the thing to appear even to separate myself from
them. I have done a great deal not so agreeable to me, I assure you,
in order to bring myself near to them. One must make sacrifices to
obtain his ends: it is only to count the cost and then be ready to put
down the money. Suppose you plant a house just here."

"How could it be done?"

"You an architect and ask me!"

"Things can be planted anywhere," answered Leonhard, "but whether the
cost of production will not be greater than the fruit is worth, is
the question. You can have a platform built here as broad as that the
temple stood on if you are willing to pay for the foundations."

"That is the talk!" said Spener. "Take a square look, and let me know
what you can do toward a house on the hillside. You see there is no
end of raw material for building, and it is a perfect prospect. But
come now to dinner."

CAROLINE CHESEBRO.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]




COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE IN ENGLAND.


The love for country life is, if possible, stronger in England now
than at any previous period in her history. There is no other country
where this taste has prevailed to the same extent. It arose originally
from causes mainly political. In France a similar condition of things
existed down to the sixteenth century, and was mainly brought to an
end by the policy of ministers, who dreaded the increasing power of
petty princes in remote provinces becoming in combination formidable
to the central power. It was specially the object of Richelieu and
Mazarin to check this sort of baronial _imperium in imperio_, and
it became in the time of Louis XIV the keystone of that monarch's
domestic policy. This tended to encourage the "hanging on" of _grands
seigneurs_ about the court, where many of the chief of them, after
having exhausted their resources in gambling or riotous living, became
dependent for place or pension on the Crown, and were in fact the
creatures of the king and his minister. Of course this did not apply
to all. Here and there in the broad area of France were to be found
magnificent châteaux--a few of which, especially in Central France,
still survive--where the marquis or count reigned over his people an
almost absolute monarch.

There is a passage in one of Horace Walpole's letters in which that
virtuoso expresses his regret, after a visit to the ancestral "hôtels"
of Paris, whose contents had afforded him such intense gratification,
that the nobility of England, like that of France, had not
concentrated their treasures of art, etc. in London houses. Had he
lived a few years longer he would probably have altered his views,
which were such as his sagacious and manly father, who dearly loved
his Norfolk home, Houghton, would never have held.

In England, from the time that anything like social life, as we
understand the phrase, became known, the power of the Crown was so
well established that no necessity for resorting to a policy such as
Richelieu's for diminishing the influence of the noblesse existed.

In fact, a course distinctly the reverse came to be adopted from
the time of Elizabeth down to even a later period than the reign of
Charles II.

In the reign of Elizabeth an act was passed, which is to this hour
probably on the statute book, restricting building in or near the
metropolis. James I appears to have been in a chronic panic on this
subject, and never lost an opportunity of dilating upon it. In one of
his proclamations he refers to those swarms of gentry "who, through
the instigation of their wives, or to new model and fashion their
daughters who, if they were unmarried, marred their reputations,
and if married, lost them--did neglect their country hospitality and
cumber the city, a general nuisance to the kingdom." He desired the
Star Chamber "to regulate the exorbitancy of the new buildings about
the city, which were but a shelter for those who, when they had spent
their estates in coaches, lacqueys and fine clothes like Frenchmen,
lived miserably in their houses like Italians; but the honor of the
English nobility and gentry is to be hospitable among their tenants.

"Gentlemen resident on their estates," said he, very sensibly,
"were like ships in port: their value and magnitude were felt
and acknowledged; but when at a distance, as their size seemed
insignificant, so their worth and importance were not duly estimated."

Charles I., with characteristic arbitrariness, carried matters with
a still higher hand. His Star Chamber caused buildings to be actually
razed, and fined truants heavily. One case which is reported displays
the grim and costly humor of the illegal tribunal which dealt with
such cases. Poor Mr. Palmer of Sussex, a gay bachelor, being called
upon to show cause why he had been residing in London, pleaded in
extenuation that he had no house, his mansion having been destroyed by
fire two years before. This, however, was held rather an aggravation
of the offence, inasmuch as he had failed to rebuild it; and Mr.
Palmer paid a penalty of one thousand pounds--equivalent to at least
twenty thousand dollars now.

A document which especially serves to show the manner of life of the
ancient noblesse is the earl of Northumberland's "Household Book"
in the early part of the sixteenth century. By this we see the great
magnificence of the old nobility, who, seated in their castles, lived
in a state of splendor scarcely inferior to that of the court. As
the king had his privy council, so the earl of Northumberland had
his council, composed of his principal officers, by whose advice and
assistance he established his code of economic laws. As the king had
his lords and grooms of the chamber, who waited in their respective
turns, so the earl was attended by the constables of his several
castles, who entered into waiting in regular succession. Among other
instances of magnificence it may be remarked that not fewer than
eleven priests were kept in the household, presided over by a doctor
or bachelor of divinity as dean of the chapel.

An account of how the earl of Worcester lived at Ragland Castle before
the civil wars which began in 1641 also exhibits his manner of life
in great detail: "At eleven o'clock the Castle Gates were shut and the
tables laid: two in the dining-room; three in the hall; one in Mrs.
Watson's appartment, where the chaplains eat; two in the housekeeper's
room for my ladie's women. The Earl came into the Dining Room attended
by his gentlemen. As soon as he was seated, Sir Ralph Blackstone,
Steward of the House, retired. The Comptroller, Mr. Holland, attended
with his staff; as did the Sewer, Mr. Blackburn, and the daily waiters
with many gentlemen's sons, from two to seven hundred pounds a year,
bred up in the Castle; my ladie's Gentleman Usher, Mr. Harcourt; my
lord's Gentlemen of the Chamber, Mr. Morgan and Mr. Fox.

"At the first table sat the noble family and such of the nobility as
came there. At the second table in the Dining-room sat Knights and
honorable gentlemen attended by footmen.

"In the hall at the first table sat Sir R. Blackstone, Steward, the
Comptroller, Secretary, Master of the Horse, Master of the Fishponds,
my Lord Herbert's Preceptor, with such gentlemen as came there under
the degree of knight, attended by footmen and plentifully served with
wine.

"At the third table in the hall sate the Clerk of the Kitchen, with
the Yeomen, officers of the House, two Grooms of the Chamber, etc.

"Other officers of the Household were the Chief Auditor, Clerk of
Accounts, Purveyor of the Castle, Usher of the Hall, Closet Keeper,
Gentleman of the Chapel, Keeper of the Records, Master of the
Wardrobe, Master of the Armoury, Master Groom of the Stable for the 12
War-horses, Master of the Hounds, Master Falconer, Porter and his men,
two Butchers, two Keepers of the Home Park, two Keepers of the Red
Deer Park, Footmen, Grooms and other Menial Servants to the number of
150. Some of the footmen were Brewers and Bakers.

"_Out offices_.--Steward of Ragland, Governor of Chepstow Castle,
Housekeeper of Worcester House in London, thirteen Bailiffs, two
Counsel for the Bailiffs--who looked after the estate--to have
recourse to, and a Solicitor."

In a delicious old volume now rarely to be met with, called _The
Olio_, published eighty years ago, Francis Grose the antiquary thus
describes certain characters typical of the country life of the
earlier half of the seventeenth century: "When I was a young man there
existed in the families of most unmarried men or widowers of the rank
of gentlemen, resident in the country, a certain antiquated female,
either maiden or widow, commonly an aunt or cousin. Her dress I have
now before me: it consisted of a stiff-starched cap and hood, a little
hoop, a rich silk damask gown with large flowers. She leant on an
ivory-headed crutch-cane, and was followed by a fat phthisicky dog
of the pug kind, who commonly reposed on a cushion, and enjoyed the
privilege of snarling at the servants, and occasionally biting their
heels, with impunity. By the side of this old lady jingled a bunch of
keys, securing in different closets and corner-cupboards all sorts
of cordial waters, cherry and raspberry brandy, washes for the
complexion, Daffy's elixir, a rich seed-cake, a number of pots of
currant jelly and raspberry jam, with a range of gallipots and phials
and purges for the use of poorer neighbors. The daily business of this
good lady was to scold the maids, collect eggs, feed the turkeys and
assist at all lyings-in that happened within the parish. Alas! this
being is no more seen, and the race is, like that of her pug dog and
the black rat, totally extinct.

"Another character, now worn out and gone, was the country squire:
I mean the little, independent country gentleman of three hundred
pounds a year, who commonly appeared in a plain drab or plush coat,
large silver buttons, a jockey cap, and rarely without boots. His travels
never exceeded the distance to the county-town, and that only at
assize-and session-time, or to attend an election. Once a week
he commonly dined at the next market-town with the attorneys and
justices. This man went to church regularly, read the weekly journal,
settled the parochial disputes between the parish officers at the vestry,
and afterward adjourned to the neighboring ale-house, where he
usually got drunk for the good of his country. He never played at cards
but at Christmas, when a family pack was produced from the mantelpiece.
He was commonly followed by a couple of greyhounds and a pointer,
and announced his arrival at a friend's house by cracking his whip or
giving the view-halloo. His drink was generally ale, except on Christmas,
the Fifth of November or some other gala-day, when he would make
a bowl of strong brandy punch, garnished with a toast and nutmeg.
A journey to London was by one of these men reckoned as great an
undertaking as is at present a voyage to the East Indies, and
undertaken with scarcely less precaution and preparation. The mansion
of one of these squires was of plaster striped with timber, not unaptly
called calimanco-work, or of red brick; large casemented bow-windows,
a porch with seats in it, and over it a study, the eaves of the house well
inhabited by swallows, and the court set round with hollyhocks. The
hall was furnished with flitches of bacon, and the mantelpiece with guns
and fishing-rods of different dimensions, accompanied by the broadsword,
partisan and dagger borne by his ancestors in the Civil Wars. The
vacant spaces were occupied by stags' horns. Against the wall was
posted King Charles's _Golden Rules_, Vincent Wing's _Almanack_
and a portrait of the duke of Marlborough: in his window lay Baker's
_Chronicle_, Fox's _Book of Martyrs_, Glanvil on _Apparitions_,
Quincey's _Dispensatory_, the _Complete Justice_ and a _Book of
Farriery_. In the corner, by the fireside, stood a large wooden
two-armed chair with a cushion; and within the chimney-corner were
a couple of seats. Here, at Christmas, he entertained his tenants
assembled round a glowing fire made of the roots of trees and other
great logs, and told and heard the traditionary tales of the village
respecting ghosts and witches till fear made them afraid to move.
In the mean time the jorum of ale was in continual circulation.
The best parlor, which was never opened but on particular occasions,
was furnished with Turk-worked chairs, and hung round with portraits
of his ancestors--the men, some in the character of shepherds with
their crooks, dressed in full suits and huge full-bottomed perukes,
and others in complete armor or buff-coats; the females, likewise
as shepherdesses with the lamb and crook, all habited in high heads
and flowing robes. Alas! these men and these houses are no more!
The luxury of the times has obliged them to quit the country and
become humble dependants on great men, to solicit a place or
commission, to live in London, to rack their tenants and draw their
rents before due. The venerable mansion is in the mean time
suffered to tumble down or is partly upheld as a farm-house,
till after a few years the estate is conveyed to the steward of the
 neighboring lord, or else to some nabob, contractor or limb of the law."

It is unquestionably owing to the love of country life amongst the
higher classes that England so early attained in many respects what
may be termed an even civilization. In almost all other countries the
traveler beyond the confines of a few great cities finds himself in a
region of comparative semi-barbarism. But no one familiar with English
country life can say that this is the case in the rural districts
of England, whilst it is most unquestionably so in Ireland, simply
because she has through absenteeism been deprived of those influences
which have done so much for her wealthy sister. Go where you will
in England to-day, and you will find within five miles of you a good
turnpike road, leading to an inn hard by, where you may get a clean
and comfortable though simple dinner, good bread, good butter, and
a carriage--"fly" is the term now, as in the days of Mr. Jonathan
Oldbuck--to convey you where you will. And this was the case long
before railways came into vogue.

The influence of the great house has very wide ramifications, and
extends far beyond the radius of park, village and estate. It greatly
affects the prosperity of the country and county towns. Go into Exeter
or Shrewsbury on a market-day in the autumn months, and you will find
the streets crowded with carriages. If a local herald be with you, he
will tell you all about their owners by glancing at the liveries and
panels. They belong, half of them, to the old county gentry, who have
shopped here--always at the same shops, according as their proprietors
are Whigs or Tories--for generations. It may well be imagined what
a difference the custom of twenty gentlemen spending on an average
twenty-five thousand dollars a year makes to a grocer or draper.
Besides, this class of customer demands a first-rate article, and
consequently it is worth while to keep it in stock. The fishmonger
knows that twenty great houses within ten miles require their handsome
dish of fish for dinner as regularly as their bread and butter. It
becomes worth his while therefore to secure a steady supply. In this
way smaller people profit, and country life becomes pleasant to them
too, inasmuch as the demands of the rich contribute to the comfort of
those in moderate circumstances.

Let us pass to the daily routine of an affluent country home. The
breakfast hour is from nine to eleven, except where hunting-men or
enthusiasts in shooting are concerned. The former are often in the
saddle before six, and young partridge-slayers may, during the first
fortnight of September--after that their ardor abates a bit--be found
in the stubbles at any hour after sunrise.

A country-house breakfast in the house of a gentlemen with from three
thousand a year upward, when several guests are in the house, is a
very attractive meal. Of course its degree of excellence varies, but
we will take an average case in the house of a squire living on his
paternal acres with five thousand pounds a year and knowing how to
live.

It is 10 A.M. in October: family prayers, usual in nine country-houses
out of ten, which a guest can attend or not as he pleases, are over.
The company is gradually gathering in the breakfast-room. It is an
ample apartment, paneled with oak and hung with family pictures. If
you have any appreciation for fine plate--and you are to be pitied if
you have not--you will mark the charming shape and exquisite
chasing of the antique urn and other silver vessels, which shine as
brilliantly as on the day they left the silversmiths to Her Majesty,
Queen Anne. No "Brummagem" patterns will you find here.

On the table at equidistant points stand two tiny tables or
dumb-waiters, which are made to revolve. On these are placed sugar,
cream, butter, preserves, salt, pepper, mustard, etc., so that every
one can help himself without troubling others--a great desideratum,
for many people are of the same mind on this point as a well-known
English family, of whom it was once observed that they were very nice
people, but didn't like being bored to pass the mustard.

On the sideboard are three beautiful silver dishes with spirit-lamps
beneath them. Let us look under their covers. Broiled chicken, fresh
mushrooms on toast, and stewed kidney. On a larger dish is fish, and
ranged behind these hot viands are cold ham, tongue, pheasant and
game-pie. On huge platters of wood, with knives to correspond, are
farm-house brown bread and white bread, whilst on the breakfast-table
itself you will find hot rolls, toast--of which two or three fresh
relays are brought in during breakfast--buttered toast, muffins and
the freshest of eggs. The hot dishes at breakfast are varied almost
every morning, and where there is a good cook a variety of some twenty
dishes is made.

Marmalade (Marie Malade) of oranges--said to have been originally
prepared for Mary queen of Scots when ill, and introduced by her into
Scotland--and "jams" of apricot and other fruit always form a part
of an English or Scotch breakfast. The living is just as good--often
better--among the five-thousand-pounds-a-year gentry as among the
very wealthy: the only difference lies in the number of servants and
guests.

The luncheon-hour is from one to two. At luncheon there will be a
roast leg of mutton or some such _pièce de résistance_, and a
made dish, such as minced veal--a dish, by the way, not the least
understood in this country, where it is horribly mangled--two hot
dishes of meat and several cold, and various sorts of pastry. These,
with bread, butter, fruit, cheese, sherry, port, claret and beer,
complete the meal.

Few of the men of the party are present at this meal, and those who
are eat but little, reserving their forces until dinner. All is placed
on the table at once, and not, as at dinner, in courses. The servants
leave the room when they have placed everything on the table, and
people wait on themselves. Dumb-waiters with clean plates, glasses,
etc. stand at each corner of the table, so that there is very little
need to get up for what you want.

The afternoon is usually passed by the ladies alone or with only
one or two gentlemen who don't care to shoot, etc., and is spent in
riding, driving and walking. Englishwomen are great walkers. With
their skirts conveniently looped up, and boots well adapted to defy
the mud, they brave all sorts of weather. "Oh it rains! what a bore!
We can't go out," said a young lady, standing at the breakfast-room
window at a house in Ireland; to which her host rejoined, "If you
don't go out here when it rains, you don't go out at all;" which is
pretty much the truth.

About five o'clock, as you sit over your book in the library, you
hear a rapid firing off of guns, which apprises you that the men have
returned from shooting. They linger a while in the gun-room talking
over their sport and seeing the record of the killed entered in the
game-book. Then some, doffing the shooting-gear for a free-and-easy
but scrupulously neat attire, repair to the ladies' sitting-room or
the library for "kettledrum."

On a low table is placed the tea equipage, and tea in beautiful little
cups is being dispensed by fair hands. This is a very pleasant time
in many houses, and particularly favorable to fun and flirtation. In
houses where there are children, the cousins of the house and others
very intimate adjourn to the school-room, where, when the party is
further reinforced by three or four boys home for the holidays, a
scene of fun and frolic, which it requires all the energies of the
staid governess to prevent going too far, ensues.

So time speeds on until the dressing-bell rings at seven o'clock,
summoning all to prepare for the great event of the day--dinner. Every
one dons evening-attire for this meal; and so strong a feeling obtains
on this point that if, in case of his luggage going wrong or other
accident, a man is compelled to join the party in morning-clothes, he
feels painfully "fish-out-of-waterish." We know, indeed, of a case in
which a guest absurdly sensitive would not come down to dinner until
the arrival of his things, which did not make their appearance for a
week.

Ladies' dress in country-houses depends altogether upon the occasion.
If it be a quiet party of intimate friends, their attire is of the
simplest, but in many fashionable houses the amount of dressing is
fully as great as in London. English ladies do not dress nearly as
expensively or with so much taste as Americans, but, on the other
hand, they have the subject much less in their thoughts; which is
perhaps even more desirable.

There is a degree of pomp and ceremony, which, however, is far from
being unpleasant, at dinner in a large country-house. The party is
frequently joined by the rector and his wife, a neighboring squire
or two, and a stray parson, so that it frequently reaches twenty. Of
course in this case the pleasantness of the prandial period depends
largely upon whom you have the luck to get next to; but there's this
advantage in the situation over a similar one in London--that you
have, at all events, a something of local topics in common, having
picked up a little knowledge of places and people during your stay, or
if you are quite a new-comer, you can easily set your neighbor a-going
by questions about surroundings. Generally there is some acquaintance
between most of the people staying in a house, as hosts make up their
parties with the view of accommodating persons wishing to meet others
whom they like. Young men will thus frequently get a good-natured
hostess to ask some young lady whose society they especially affect,
and thus country-houses become proverbially adapted for match-making.

There are few houses now-a-days in which the gentlemen linger in
the dining-room long after the ladies have left it. Habits of hard
drinking are now almost entirely confined to young men in the army
and the lower classes. The evenings are spent chiefly in conversation:
sometimes a rubber of whist is made up, or, if there are a number of
young people, there is dancing.

A rather surprising step which occasioned something of a scandalous
sensation in the social world was resorted to some years ago at a
country-house in Devonshire. Two or three fast young ladies, finding
the evening somewhat heavy, and lamenting a dearth of dancing men,
rang the bell, and in five minutes the lady of the house, who was
in another room, was aghast at seeing them whirling round in
their Jeames's arms. It was understood that the ringleader in this
enterprise, the daughter of an Irish earl, was not likely to be asked
to repeat her visit.

About eleven wine and water and biscuits are brought into the
drawing-room, and a few minutes later the ladies retire. The wine and
water, with the addition of other stimulants, are then transferred
to the billiard- and smoking-rooms, to which the gentlemen adjourn
so soon as they have changed their black coats for dressing-gowns or
lounging suits, in which great latitude is given to the caprice of
individual fancy.

The sittings in these apartments are protracted until any hour, as the
servants usually go to bed when they have provided every one with
his flat candle-stick--that emblem of gentility which always so
prominently recurred to the mind of Mrs. Micawber when recalling the
happy days when she "lived at home with papa and mamma." In some fast
houses pretty high play takes place at such times.

It not unfrequently happens that the master of the house takes but
a very limited share in the recreations of his guests, being much
engrossed by the various avocations which fall to the lot of a
country proprietor. After breakfast in the morning he will make it his
business to see that each gentleman is provided with such recreation
as he likes for the day. This man will shoot, that one will fish;
Brown will like to have a horse and go over to see some London friends
who are staying ten miles off; Jones has heaps of letters which
must be written in the morning, but will ride with the ladies in the
afternoon; and when all these arrangements are completed the squire
will drive off with his old confidential groom in the dog-cart, with
that fast-trotting bay, to attend the county meeting in the nearest
cathedral town or dispense justice from the bench at Pottleton;
and when eight o'clock brings all together at dinner an agreeable
diversity is given to conversation by each man's varied experiences
during the day.

Of course some houses are desperately dull, whilst others are always
agreeable. Haddo House, during the lifetime of Lord Aberdeen, the
prime minister, had an exceptional reputation for the former quality.
It was said to be the most silent house in England; and silence in
this instance was regarded as quite the reverse of golden. The family
scarcely ever spoke, and the guest, finding that his efforts brought
no response, became alarmed at the echoes of his own voice. Lord
Aberdeen and his son, Lord Haddo--an amiable but weak and eccentric
man, father of the young earl who dropped his title and was drowned
whilst working as mate of a merchantman--did not get on well together,
and saw very little of each other for some years. At length a
reconciliation was effected, and the son was invited to Haddo. Anxious
to be pleasant and conciliatory, he faltered out admiringly, "The
place looks nice, the trees are very green." "Did you expect to see
'em blue, then?" was the encouraging paternal rejoinder.

The degree of luxury in many of these great houses is less remarkable
than its completeness. Everything is in keeping, thus presenting a
remarkable contrast to most of our rich men's attempts at the same.
The dinner, cooked by a _cordon bleu_ of the cuisine [A]--whose
resources in the way of "hot plates" and other accessories for
furnishing a superlative dinner are unrivaled--is often served on
glittering plate, or china almost equally valuable, by men six
feet high, of splendid figure, and dressed with the most scrupulous
neatness and cleanliness. Gloves are never worn by servants in
first-rate English houses, but they carry a tiny napkin in their hands
which they place between their fingers and the plates. Nearly all
country gentlemen are hospitable, and it very rarely happens that
guests are not staying in the house. A county ball or some other such
gathering fills it from garret to cellar.

[Footnote A: Frenchmen say that the best English dinners are now the
best in the world, because they combine the finest French _entrées_
and _entremets_ with _pièces de résistance_ of unrivaled excellence.]

The best guest-rooms are always reserved for the married: bachelors
are stowed away comparatively "anywhere." In winter fires are always
lit in the bedrooms about five o'clock, so that they may be warm at
dressing-time; and shortly before the dressing-bell rings the servant
deputed to attend upon a guest who does not bring a valet with him
goes to his room, lays out his evening-toilette, puts shirt, socks,
etc. to air before the fire, places a capacious pitcher of boiling
water on the washing-stand, and having lit the candles, drawn the
easy-chair to the fire, just ready on provocation to burst into a
blaze, lights the wax candles on the dressing-table and withdraws.

In winter the guest is asked whether he likes a fire to get up by,
and in that event a housemaid enters early with as little noise as
possible and lights it. On rising in the morning you find all your
clothes carefully brushed and put in order, and every appliance for
ample ablutions at hand.

A guest gives the servant who attends him a tip of from a dollar and
a quarter to five dollars, according to the length of his stay. If he
shoots, a couple of sovereigns for a week's sport is a usual fee to a
keeper. Some people give absurdly large sums, but the habit of giving
them has long been on the decline. The keeper supplies powder and
shot, and sends in an account for them. Immense expense is involved
in these shooting establishments. The late Sir Richard Sutton, a
great celebrity in the sporting world, who had the finest shooting in
England, and therefore probably in the world, used to say that every
pheasant he killed cost him a guinea. On some estates the sale of the
game is in some degree a set-off to the cost of maintaining it, just
as the sale of the fruit decreases the cost of pineries, etc. Nothing
but the fact that the possession of land becomes more and more vested
in those who regard it as luxury could have enabled this sacrifice of
farming to sport to continue so long. It is the source of continual
complaint and resentment on the part of the farmers, who are only
pacified by allowance being made to them out of their rent for damage
done by game.

The expense of keeping up large places becomes heavier every year,
owing to the constantly-increasing rates of wages, etc., and in
some cases imposes a grievous burden, eating heavily into income
and leaving men with thousands of acres very poor balances at their
bankers to meet the Christmas bills. Those who have large families
to provide for, and get seriously behindhand, usually shut up or let
their places--which latter is easily done if they be near London or
in a good shooting country--and recoup on the Continent; but of
late years prices there have risen so enormously that this plan of
restoring the equilibrium between income and expenditure is far less
satisfactory than it was forty years ago. The encumbrances on many
estates are very heavy. A nobleman who twenty years ago succeeded to
an entailed estate, with a house almost gutted, through having had
an execution put in it, and a heavy debt--some of which, though not
legally bound to liquidate, he thought it his duty to settle--acted
in a very spirited manner which few of his order have the courage to
imitate. He dropped his title, went abroad and lived for some years
on about three thousand dollars a year. He has now paid off all
his encumbrances, and has a clear income, steadily increasing, of
a hundred thousand dollars a year. In another case a gentleman
accomplished a similar feat by living in a corner of his vast mansion
and maintaining only a couple of servants.

In Ireland, owing to the lower rates of wages and far greater--in the
remoter parts--cheapness of provisions, large places can be maintained
at considerably less cost, but they are usually far less well kept,
partly owing to their being on an absurdly large scale as compared
with the means of the proprietors, and partly from the slovenly habits
of the country. And in some cases people who could afford it will not
spend the money. There are, however, notable exceptions. Powerscourt
in Wicklow, the seat of Viscount Powerscourt, and Woodstock in
Kilkenny, the beautiful demesne of Mr. Tighe, are probably in as
perfect order as any seats in England. A countryman was sent over to
the latter one day with a message from another county. "Well, Jerry,"
said the master on his return, "what did you think of Woodstock?"
"Shure, your honor," was the reply, "I niver seed such a power of
girls a-swaping up the leaves."

Country-house life in Ireland and Scotland is almost identical with
that in England, except that, in the former especially, there is
generally less money. Scotland has of late years become so much the
fashion, land has risen so enormously in value, and properties are
so very large, that some of the establishments, such as those at
Drumlanrig, Dunrobin, Gordon Castle and Floors, the seats respectively
of the dukes of Buccleuch, Sutherland, Richmond and Roxburghe, are on
a princely scale. The number of wealthy squires is far fewer than
in England. It is a curious feature in the Scottish character that
notwithstanding the radical politics of the country--for scarcely
a Conservative is returned by it--the people cling fondly to
primogeniture and their great lords, who, probably to a far greater
extent than in England, hold the soil. The duke of Sutherland
possesses nearly the whole of the county from which he derives his
title, whilst the duke of Buccleuch owns the greater part of four.

Horses are such a very expensive item that a large stable is seldom
found unless there is a very large income, for otherwise the rest
of the establishment must be cut down to a low figure. Hunting
millionaires keep from ten to twenty, or even thirty, hacks and
hunters, besides four or five carriage-horses. Three or four
riding-horses, three carriage-horses and a pony or two is about the
usual number in the stable of a country gentleman with from five to
six thousand pounds a year. The stable-staff would be coachman, groom
and two helpers. The number of servants in country-houses varies from
seven or eight to eighty, but probably there are not ten houses in the
country where it reaches so high a figure as the last: from fifteen to
twenty would be a common number.

There are many popular bachelors and old maids who live about half the
year in the country-houses of their friends. A gentleman of this sort
will have his chambers in London and his valet, whilst the lady will
have her lodgings and maid. In London they will live cheaply and
comfortably, he at his club and dining out with rich friends, she in
her snug little room and passing half her time in friends' houses.
There is not the slightest surrender of independence about these
people. They would not stay a day in a house which they did not like,
but their pleasant manners and company make them acceptable, and
friends are charmed to have them.

One of the special recommendations of a great country-house is that
you need not see too much of any one. There is no necessary meeting
except at meals--in many houses then even only at dinner--and in the
evening. Many sit a great deal in their own rooms if they have writing
or work to do; some will be in the billiard-room, others in the
library, others in the drawing-room: the host's great friend will be
with him in his own private room, whilst the hostess's will pass most
of the time in that lady's boudoir.[A]

[Footnote A: Perhaps the most charming idea of a country-house was
that conceived by Mr. Mathew of Thomastown--a huge mansion still
extant, now the property of the count de Jarnac, to whom it descended.
This gentleman, who was an ancestor of the celebrated Temperance
leader, probably had as much claret drunk in his house as any one in
his country; which is saying a good deal.

He had an income which would be equivalent to one hundred and
twenty-five thousand dollars a year in our money, and for several
years traveled abroad and spent very little. On his return with an
ample sum of ready money, he carried into execution a long-cherished
scheme of country life.

He arranged his immense mansion after the fashion of an inn. The
guests arrived, were shown to their rooms, and treated as though they
were in the most perfectly-appointed hotel. They ordered dinner when
they pleased, dined together or alone as suited them, hunted, shot,
played billiards, cards, etc. at will, and kept their own horses.
There was a regular bar, where drinks of the finest quality were
always served. The host never appeared in that character: he was just
like any other gentleman in the house.

The only difference from a hotel lay in the choice character of the
company, and the fact that not a farthing might be disbursed. The
servants were all paid extra, with the strict understanding that they
did not accept a farthing, and that any dereliction from this rule
would be punished by instant dismissal.

Unlike most Irish establishments, especially at that date (about the
middle of the last century), this was managed with the greatest order,
method and economy.

Among the notable guests was Dean Swift, whose astonishment at the
magnitude of the place, with the lights in hundreds of windows at
night, is mentioned by Dr. Sheridan.

It is pleasant to add in this connection that the count and countess
de Jarnac worthily sustain the high character earned a century
since by their remarkable ancestor, who was one of the best and most
benevolent men of his day.]

In some respects railroads have had a very injurious effect on the
sociability of English country life. They have rendered people in
great houses too apt to draw their supplies of society exclusively
from town. English trains run so fast that this can even be done in
places quite remote from London. The journey from London to Rugby,
for instance, eighty miles, is almost invariably accomplished in two
hours. Leaving at five in the afternoon, a man reaches that station at
7.10: his friend's well-appointed dog-cart is there to meet him, and
that exquisitely neat young groom, with his immaculate buckskins and
boots in which you may see yourself, will make the thoroughbred do the
four miles to the hall in time to enable you to dress for dinner
by 7.45. Returning on Tuesday morning--and all the lines are most
accommodating about return tickets--the barrister, guardsman,
government clerk can easily be at his post in town by eleven o'clock.
Thus the actual "country people" get to be held rather cheap, and come
off badly, because Londoners, being more in the way of hearing,
seeing and observing what is going on in society, are naturally more
congenial to fine people in country-houses who live in the metropolis
half the year.

It is evident from the following amusing squib, which appeared in one
of the Annuals for 1832, how far more dependent the country gentleman
was upon his country neighbors in those days, when only idle men could
run down from town:

"Mr. J., having frequently witnessed with regret country gentlemen,
in their country-houses, reduced to the dullness of a domestic circle,
and nearly led to commit suicide in the month of November, or, what is
more melancholy, to invite the ancient and neighboring families of
the Tags, the Rags and the Bobtails, has opened an office in Spring
Gardens for the purpose of furnishing country gentlemen in their
country-houses with company and guests on the most moderate terms. It
will appear from the catalogue that Mr. J. has a choice and elegant
assortment of six hundred and seventeen guests, ready to start at a
moment's warning to any country gentleman at any house. Among them
will be found three Scotch peers, several ditto Irish, fifteen decayed
baronets, eight yellow admirals, forty-seven major-generals on half
pay (who narrate the whole Peninsular War), twenty-seven dowagers,
one hundred and eighty-seven old maids on small annuities, and several
unbeneficed clergymen, who play a little on the fiddle. All the above
play at cards, and usually with success if partners. No objection to
cards on Sunday evenings or rainy mornings. The country gentleman to
allow the guests four feeds a day, and to produce claret if a Scotch
or Irish peer be present."

A country village very often has no inhabitants except the parson
holding the rank of gentry. The majority of ladies in moderate or
narrow circumstances live in county-towns, such as Exeter, Salisbury,
etc., or in watering-places, which abound and are of all degrees of
fashion and expense. County-town and watering-place society is a thing
_per se_, and has very little to do with "county" society, which
means that of the landed gentry living in their country-houses.
Thus, noblemen and gentlemen within a radius of five miles of such
watering-places as Bath, Tonbridge Wells and Weymouth would not have a
dozen visiting acquaintances resident in those towns.

To get into "county" society is by no means easy to persons without
advantages of position or connection, even with ample means, and to
the wealthy manufacturer or merchant is often a business of years. The
upper class of Englishmen, and more especially women, are accustomed
to find throughout their acquaintance an almost identical style and
set of manners. Anything which differs from this they are apt to
regard as "ungentlemanlike or unladylike," and shun accordingly. The
dislike to traders and manufacturers, which is very strong in those
counties, such as Cheshire and Warwickshire, which environ great
commercial centres, arises not from the folly of thinking commerce a
low occupation, but because the county gentry have different tastes,
habits and modes of thought from men who have worked their way up from
the counting-room, and do not, as the phrase goes, "get on" with
them, any more than a Wall street broker ordinarily gets on with a
well-read, accomplished member of the Bar.

A result of this is that a large number of wealthy commercial men, in
despair of ever entering the charmed circle of county society, take up
their abode in or near the fashionable watering-places, where,
after the manner of those at our own Newport, they build palaces in
paddocks, have acres of glass, rear the most marvelous of pines and
peaches, and have model farms which cost them thousands of pounds
a year. To this class is owing in a great degree the extraordinary
increase of Leamington, Torquay, Tonbridge Wells, etc.--places which
have made the fortunes of the lucky people who chanced to own them.

English ladies, as a rule, take a great deal of interest in the poor
around them, and really know a great deal of them. The village near
the hall is almost always well attended to, but it unfortunately
happens that outlying properties sometimes come off far less well. The
classes which see nothing of each other in English rural life are the
wives and daughters of the gentry and those of the wealthier farmers
and tradesmen: between these sections a huge gulf intervenes, which
has not as yet been in the least degree bridged over. In former days
very great people used to have once or twice in the year what were
called "public days," when it was open house for all who chose to
come, with a sort of tacit understanding that none below the class
of substantial yeomen or tradesmen would make their appearance. This
custom has now fallen into disuse, but was maintained to the last by
the Hon. Doctor Vernon-Harcourt, who was for more than half a century
archbishop of York, and is yet retained by Earl Fitzwilliam at
Wentworth House, his princely seat in Yorkshire. There, once or twice
a year, a great gathering takes place. Dinner is provided for hundreds
of guests, and care is taken to place a member of the family at every
table to do his or her part toward dispensing hospitality to high and
low.

During the summer and early autumn croquet and archery offer good
excuses for bringing young people together, and reunions of this kind
palliate the miseries of those who cannot afford to partake of the
expensive gayeties of the London season. The archery meetings are
often exceedingly pretty fêtes. Somtimes they are held in grounds
specially devoted to the purpose, as is the case at St. Leonard's,
near Hastings, where the archery-ground will well repay a visit. The
shooting takes place in a deep and vast excavation covered with the
smoothest turf, and from the high ground above is a glorious view of
the old castle of Hastings and the ocean. In Devonshire these meetings
have an exceptional interest from the fact that they are held in the
park of Powderham Castle, the ancestral seat of the celebrated family
of Courtenay. All the county flocks to them, some persons coming fifty
miles for this purpose. Apropos of one of these meetings, we shall
venture to interpolate an anecdote which deserves to be recorded for
the sublimity of impudence which it displays. The railway from London
to Plymouth skirts the park of Powderham, running so close beside
it that each train sends a herd of deer scampering down the velvety
glades. One afternoon a bouncing young lady, who belonged to a family
which had lately emerged from the class of yeoman into that of gentry,
and whose "manners had not the repose which stamps the caste of Vere
de Vere," found herself in a carriage with two fashionably-attired
persons of her own sex. As the train ran by the park, one of these
latter exclaimed to her companion, "Oh look, there's Powderham! Don't
you remember that archery-party we went to there two years ago?" "To
be sure," was the rejoinder. "I'm not likely to forget it, there were
some such queer people. Who were those vulgarians whom we thought so
particularly objectionable? I can't remember." "Oh, H----: H----
of P----! That was the name." Upon this the other young lady in the
carriage bounced to her feet with the words, "Allow me to tell you,
madam, that I am Miss H---- of P----!" Neither of those she addressed
deigned to utter a word in reply to this announcement, nor did it
appear in the least to disconcert them. One slowly drew out a gold
double eye-glass, leisurely surveyed Miss H---- of P---- from head to
foot, and then proceeded to talk to her companion in French. Perhaps
the best part of the joke was that Miss H---- made a round of visits
in the course of the week, and detailed the disgusting treatment to
which she had been subjected to a numerous acquaintance, who, it
is needless to say, appeared during the narration as indignant and
sympathetic as she could have wished, but who are declared by some
ill-natured persons to have been precisely those who in secret
chuckled over the insult with the greatest glee.

English gentlemen experience an almost painful sensation as they
journey through our land and observe the utter indifference of its
wealthier classes to the charms of such a magnificent country. "Pearls
before swine," they say in their hearts. "God made the country and man
made the town." "Yes, and how obviously the American prefers the work
of man to the work of the Almighty!" These and similar reflections
no doubt fill the minds of many a thoughtful English traveler as the
train speeds over hill and dale, field and forest. What sites are
here! he thinks. What a perfect park might be made out of that wild
ground! what cover-shooting there ought to be in that woodland! what
fishing and boating on that lake! And then he groans in spirit as the
cars enter a forest where tree leans against tree, and neglect reigns
on all sides, and he thinks of the glorious oaks and beeches so
carefully cared for in his own country, where trees and flowery are
loved and petted as much as dogs and horses. And if anything can
increase the contempt he feels for those who "don't care a rap" for
country and country life, it is a visit to such resorts as Newport and
Saratoga. There he finds men whose only notion of country life is what
he would hold to be utterly destitute of all its ingredients. They
build palaces in paddocks, take actually no exercise, play at cards
for three hours in the forenoon, dine, and then drive out "just like
ladies," we heard a young Oxonian exclaim--"got up" in the style that
an Englishman adopts only in Hyde Park or Piccadilly.

When an American went to stay with Lord Palmerston at Broadlands, the
great minister ordered horses for a ride in the delicious glades of
the New Forest. When they came to the door his guest was obliged to
confess himself no horseman. The premier, with ready courtesy, said,
"Oh, then, we'll walk: it's all the same to me;" but it wasn't quite
the same. The incident was just one of those which separate the
Englishman of a certain rank from the American.

There is of course a certain class of Americans, more especially among
the _jeunesse dorée_ of New York, who greatly affect sport: they
"run" horses and shoot pigeons, but these are not persons who commend
themselves to real gentlemen, English or American. They belong to
the bad style of "fast men," and are as thoroughly distasteful to
a Devonshire or Cheshire squire as to one who merits "the grand old
name"--which they conspicuously defame--in their own country.

The English country-loving gentleman to whom we have been referring
is, for the most part, of a widely different mould--a man of
first-rate education, frequently of high attainments, and often one
whose ends and aims in life are for far higher things than pleasure,
even of the most innocent kind, but who, when he takes it, derives it
chiefly from the country. Many of this kind will instantly occur to
those acquainted with English worthies: to mention two--John Evelyn
and Sir Fowell Buxton.

REGINALD WYNFORD.




THE FOREST OF ARDEN.


A girl of seventeen--a girl with a "missish" name, with a "missish"
face as well, soft skin, bright eyes, dark hair, medium height and a
certain amount of coquetry in her attire. This completes the "visible"
of Nellie Archer. And the invisible? With an exterior such as this,
what thoughts or ideas are possible within? Surely none worth the
trouble of searching after. It is a case of the rind being the better
part of the fruit, the shell excelling the kernel; and with a slight
effort we can imagine her acquirements. Some scraps of geography,
mixed up with the topography of an embroidery pattern; some grammar,
of much use in parsing the imperfect phrases of celebrated authors,
to the neglect of her own; some romanticism, finding expression in the
arrangement of a spray of artificial flowers on a spring bonnet; some
idea of duty, resulting in the manufacture of sweet cake or "seeing
after" the dessert for dinner; and a conception of "woman's mission"
gained from Tennyson--

  Oh teach the orphan-boy to read,
  Or teach the orphan-girl to sew.

No! no! no! not so fast, please. In spite of Nellie's name, of her
face, of her attire, that little head is filled quite otherwise. It is
not her fault that this is so: is it her misfortune? But to give the
history of this being entire, it is necessary to begin seventeen years
back, at the very beginning of her life, for in our human nature, as
in the inanimate world, a phenomenon is better understood when we know
its producing causes.

Nellie's father was a business-man of a type common in America--one
whose affairs led him here, there and everywhere. Never quiet while
awake, and scarcely at rest during slumber, he resembled Bedreddin
Hassan in frequently going to sleep in one town, to awake in another
far distant, but without the benighted Oriental's surprise at the
transfer, the afrit who performed this prodigy being a steam-engine,
and the magician it obeyed the human mind.

In these rapid peregrinations it would not have been easy for Mr.
Archer to carry an infant with him; so, when his wife died and left
Nellie to his sole care at six months old, he speedily cast about in
his mind to rid himself of the encumbrance.

Having heard that country air is good for children, he sent the little
one to the interior, and quite admired himself for giving her such an
advantage: then, too, the house in the city could be sold.

But to whom did he entrust his child? For a while this had been the
great difficulty. In vain he thought over the years he had lived, to
find a friend: he had been too busy to make friends. For an honest
person he had traversed the world too hurriedly to perceive the
deeper, better part of mankind; he had floated on the surface with the
scum and froth, and could recall no one whom he could trust. At last,
away back in the years of his childhood, he saw a face--that of a
young but motherly Irishwoman, who had lived in his father's family as
a faithful servant, and had been a fond partisan of his in his fickle
troubles when a boy.

He sought and found her in his need. She had married, borne children
and grown old: her offspring, after much struggling and little help
from the parent birds, had learned to fly alone, and had left the
home-nest to try their own fortunes. It was not hard for Mr. Archer
to persuade Nurse Bridget and her husband to inhabit his house in the
country and take charge of the baby. In a short time the arrangements
were complete, and the three were installed in comfort, for the busy
man did not grudge money.

If in the long years that followed a thought of the neglected little
one did at times reproach him, he dismissed it with the resolution of
doing something for her when she should be grown up; but at what date
this event was to take place, or what it was that he intended to do,
he did not definitely settle.

The mansion in the country was an old rambling house, in which
there were enough deserted rooms to furnish half a dozen ghosts with
desirable lodgings, without inconvenience to the living dwellers. The
front approach was through an avenue of hemlocks, dark and untrimmed.
Under the closed windows lay a tangled garden, where flowers grew
rank, shadowed by high ash and leafy oak, outposts of the forest
behind--a forest jealous of cultivation, stealthily drawing nearer
each year, and threatening to reconquer its own.

There was an unused well in a corner that looked like the habitation
of a fairy--of a good fairy, I am sure, because the grass grew
greenest and best about the worn curb, and the tender mosses and
little plants that could not support the heat in summer found a refuge
within its cool circle and flourished there.

On the other side of the house, and dividing it from level fields,
were the kitchen-garden and orchard. In springtime you might have
imagined the latter to be a grove of singing trees, bearing song
for fruit: in autumn, had you seen it when the sun was low, glinting
through leaves and gilding apples and stem, you would have been
reminded of the garden of the Hesperides.

Below the fields lay a broad river--in summer, languid and clear;
in winter, turbid and full. The child often wondered (as soon as
she could wonder) if, when it was lying so tranquil under the summer
clouds, it was thinking of the frolic it would have with the great
blocks of ice in the winter; whether it loved best the rush and
struggle of the floods or the quiet of low water; and, above all,
whither it was going.

The homely faces and bent, ungainly forms of the old nurse and her
husband harmonized well with the mellow gloom about them; and the
infant Nellie completed the scene, like the spot of sunlight in the
foreground of a picture by Rembrandt.

Now, Nellie inherited her father's active disposition, and, left to
her own amusement, her occupations were many and various. At three
years of age she was turned loose in the orchard, with three blind
puppies in lieu of toys. Day by day she augmented her store, until she
had two kittens, one little white pig with a curly tail, half a dozen
soft piepies, one kid, and many inanimate articles, such as broken
bottles, dishes, looking-glass and gay bits of calico. When the little
thing became sleepy she would toddle through the long grass to a
corner, whence the river could be heard fretting against its banks,
and lie there: she said the water sang to her. Finding that this was
her favorite spot, the old nurse placed there a bright quilt for her
to rest on, and in case she should awake hungry there stood a tin
of milk hard by. This was all the attention she received, unless the
fairy of the well took her under her protection, but for that I cannot
vouch. Sometimes the puppies drank her milk before she awoke; then she
went contentedly and ate green apples or ripe cherries. Thus she lived
and grew.

By the time Nellie was seven she had seen whole generations of pets
pass away. It was wonderful what knowledge she gained in this golden
orchard. She knew that piepies became chickens--that they were killed
and eaten; so death came into her world. She knew that the kid grew
into a big goat, and became very wicked, for he ran at her one day,
throwing her to the ground and hurting her severely; so sin came into
her world. She saw innate depravity exemplified in the conduct of her
innocent white pig, that would take to puddles and filth in spite of
her gentle endeavors to restrain its wayward impulses. Her puppies
too bit each other, would quarrel over a bone, growl and get generally
unmanageable. None of her animals fulfilled the promise of their
youth, and her care was returned with base ingratitude. Even
the little wrens bickered with the blue-birds, and showed their
selfishness and jealousy in chasing them from the crumbs she
impartially spread for all in common.

So at seven she was a wise little woman, and said to her nurse one
day, "I do not care for pets any more: they all grow up nasty."

Was Solomon's "All is vanity" truer?

With so much experience Nellie felt old, for life is not counted by
years alone: it is the loss of hope, the mistrust of appearance, the
vanishing of illusion, that brings age. A hopeful heart is young at
seventy, and youth is past when hope is dead. But, in spite of all,
hope was not dead in the heart of the little maid, and though deceived
she was quite ready to be deceived a second time, as was Solomon, and
as we are all.

It was now that the girl began to be fond of flowers. She made
herself a bed for them in a sunny corner of the kitchen-garden, and
transplanted daisy roots and spring-beauties, with other wood- and
field-plants as they blossomed. She watched the ferns unroll their
worm-like fronds, made plays with the nodding violets, and ornamented
her head with dandelion curls. This was indeed a happy summer.
Her rambles were unlimited, and each day she was rewarded by new
discoveries and delightful secrets--how the May-apple is good to eat,
that sassafras root makes tea, that birch bark is very like candy,
though not so sweet, and slippery elm a feast.

Her new playmates were as lovely and perfect as she could desire.
_They_ did not "grow up nasty," but in the autumn, alas! they died.

One day at the end of the Indian summer, after having wandered for
hours searching for her favorites, she found them all withered. The
trees also looked forlorn, shivering in the chill air, with scarce a
leaf to cover them: the wind moaned, and the sky was gray instead
of the bright summer blue. The little one, tired and disappointed,
touched by this mighty lesson of decay, threw herself on a friendly
bank and wept.

It is true the beautiful face of Nature had grown sad each winter, and
her flowers and lovely things had yearly passed away, but Nellie had
not then loved them.

Here she was found by a boy rosy-cheeked and bright, who all his life
had been loved and caressed to the same extent that Nellie had been
neglected. He lived beyond the forest, and had come this afternoon
to look for walnuts. Seeing the girl unhappy, he essayed some of the
blandishing arts his mother had often lavished on him, speaking to her
in a kindly tone and asking her why she cried.

The child looked up at the sound of this new voice, and her
astonishment stopped her tears. After gazing at him for some time with
her eyes wide open, she remarked, wonderingly, "You are little, like
me."

"I am not very small," replied the boy, straightening himself.

"Oh, but you _are_ young and little," she insisted.

"I am young, but not little. Come stand up beside me. See! you don't
more than reach my shoulder."

"Shall you ever get bigger?"

"Of course I shall."

"Shall you grow up nasty?" she continued, trying to bring her stock of
experience to bear on this new phenomenon.

"No, I sha'n't!" he answered very decidedly.

"Shall you die?"

"No, not until I am old, old, old."

"I am very glad: I will take you for a pet, All my little animals get
nasty, and my flowers have died, but I don't care, now that you have
come: I think I shall like you best."

"But I won't be your pet," said the boy, offended.

"Why not?" she asked, looking at him beseechingly. "I should be very
good to you;" and she smoothed his sleeve with her brown hand as if it
were the fur of one of her late darlings.

"Who are you?" he demanded inquisitively.

"I am myself," she innocently replied.

"What is your name?"

"I am Nellie. Have you a name?" she eagerly went on. "If you haven't,
I'll give you a pretty one. Let me see: I will call you--"

"You need not trouble yourself, thank you: I have a name of my own,
Miss Nellie. I am Danby Overbeck."

"Dan--by--o--ver--beck!" she repeated slowly. "Why, you have an awful
long name, Beck, for such a little fellow."

"I am not little, and I will not have you call me Beck: that is no
name."

"I forgot all but the last. Don't get nasty, please;" and she patted
his arm soothingly. "What does your nurse call you?"

"I am no baby to have a nurse," he said disdainfully.

"You have no nurse? Poor thing! What do you do? who feeds you?"

"I feed myself."

"Where do you live," she asked, looking about curiously, as if she
thought he had some kind of a nest near at hand.

"Oh, far away--at the other side of the woods."

"Won't you come and live with me? Do!"

"No indeed, gypsy: I must go home. See, the sun is almost down. You
had better go too: your mother will be anxious."

"I have no mother, and my flowers are all dead. I wish you would be my
pet--I wish you would come with me;" and her lip trembled.

"My gracious, child! what would the old lady at home say? Why, there
would be an awful row."

"Never mind, come," she answered coaxingly, rubbing her head against
his sleeve like a kitten. "Come, I will love you so much."

"You go home," he said, patting her head, "and I will come again some
day, and will bring you flowers."

"The flowers are all dead," she replied, shaking her head.

"I can make some grow. Go now, run away: let me see you off."

She looked for a moment at this superior being, who could make flowers
grow and could live without the care of a nurse, and then, obeying the
stronger intelligence, she trotted off toward home.

And now life contained new pleasure for Nellie, for the boy was
large-hearted and kind, coming almost daily to take her with him on
his excursions. Indeed, he was as lonely as the child, companions
being difficult to find in that out-of-the-way neighborhood, and the
odd little thing amused him. She would trudge bravely by his side
when he went to fish, or carry his bag when he went gunning; and his
promise of flowers was redeemed with gifts from the conservatory,
which enhanced her opinion of this divinity, seeing that they were
even more beautiful than those of her own fields. Often, when tired of
sport, Danby would read to her, sitting in the shade of forest trees,
stories of pirates and robbers or of wonderful adventures: these were
the afternoons she enjoyed the most.

One day, seeing her lips grow bright and her eyes dark from her
intense interest in the story, he offered her the book as he was
preparing to go, saying, "Take it home, Nellie, and read it."

She took the volume in her hand eagerly, looked at the page a little
while, a puzzled expression gradually passing over her face, until
finally she turned to him open-eyed and disappointed, saying simply,
"I can't."

"Oh try!"

"How shall I try?"

"It begins _there_: now go on, it is easy. _There_" he repeated,
pointing to the word, "go on," he added impatiently.

"Where shall I go?"

"Why read, Stupid! Look at it."

She bent over and gazed earnestly where the end of his finger touched
the book. "I look and look," she said, shaking her head, "but I do
not see the pretty stories that you do. They seem quite gone away, and
nothing is left but little crooked marks."

"I do believe you can't read."

"I do believe it too," said Nellie.

"But you must try; such a big girl as you are getting to be!"

"I try and I look, but it don't come to me."

"You must learn."

"Yes."

"Do you intend to do it?"

"Why should I? You can read to me."

"You will never know anything," exclaimed the boy severely. "How do
you spend your time in the morning, when I am not here?"

"I do nothing."

"Nothing?"

"That is, I wait until you come," in an explanatory tone.

"What do you do while you are waiting?"

"I think about you, and wonder how soon you will be here; and I walk
about, or lie on the grass and look at the clouds."

"Well, did I ever hear of such an idle girl? I shall not come again
if you don't learn to read." Nellie was not much given to laughter
or tears. She had lived too much alone for such outward appeals for
sympathy. Why laugh when there is no one near to smile in return? Why
weep when there is no one to give comfort? She only regarded him with
a world of reproach in her large eyes.

"Nellie," he said, in reply to her eyes, "you ought to learn to read,
and you _must_. Did no one ever try to teach you?"

She shook her head.

"Have you no books?"

Again a negative shake.

"Just come along with me to the house. I'll see about this thing: it
must be stopped." And Danby rose and walked off with a determined air,
while the girl, abashed and wondering, followed him. When they arrived
he plunged into the subject at once: "Nurse Bridget, can you read?"

"An' I raly don't know, as I niver tried."

"Fiddlesticks! Of course Maurice is too blind, and very likely he
never tried either. Are there no books in the house?"

"An' there is, then--a whole room full of them, Master Danby. We are
not people of no larnin' here, I can tell you. There is big books,
an' little books, an' some awful purty books, an' some," she added
doubtfully, "as is not so purty."

"You know a great deal about books!" said the boy sarcastically.

"An' sure I do. Haven't I dusted them once ivery year since I came to
this blessed place? And tired enough they made me, too. I ain't likely
to forgit them."

"Well, let us see them."

"Sure they're locked."

"Open them," said the impatient boy.

"Do open them," added Nellie timidly.

But it required much coaxing to accomplish their design, and after
nurse did consent time was lost in looking for the keys, which were at
last found under a china bowl in the cupboard. Then the old woman led
the way with much importance, opening door after door of the unused
part of the house, until she came to the library. It was a large,
sober-looking room, with worn furniture and carpet, but rich in
literature, and even art, for several fine pictures hung on the
walls. The ancestor from whom the house had descended must have been
a learned man in his day, and a wise, for he had gathered about him
treasures. Danby shouted with delight, and Nellie's eyes sparkled as
she saw his pleasure.

"Open all the windows, nurse, please, and then leave us. Why, Nellie,
there is enough learning here to make you the most wonderful woman in
the world! Do you think you can get all these books into your head?"
he asked mischievously, "because that is what I expect of you. We will
take a big one to begin with." The girl looked on while he, with mock
ceremony, took down the largest volume within reach and laid it open
on a reading-desk near. "Now sit;" and he drew a chair for her before
the open book, and another for himself. "It is nice big print. Do you
see this word?" and he pointed to one of the first at the top of the
page.

She nodded her head gravely.

"It is _love_: say it."

She repeated the word after him.

"Now find it all over the page whereever it occurs."

With some mistakes she finally succeeded in recognizing the word
again.

"Don't you forget it."

"Yes."

"No, you must _not_."

"I mean I won't."

"All right! Here is another: it is called _the_. Now find it."

Many times she went through the same process. In his pride of teaching
Danby did not let his pupil flag. When he was going she asked timidly,
"Shall you come again?"

"Of course I shall, Ignoramus, but don't you forget your lesson."

"No, no," she answered brightening. "I will think of it all the time I
am asleep."

"That is a good girl," he said patronizingly, and bade her good-bye.

It was thus she learned to read, not remarkably well, but well enough
to content Danby, which was sufficient to content Nellie also; and the
ambitious boy was not satisfied until she could write as well.

An end came to this peaceful life when the youth left home for
college. The girl's eyes seemed to grow larger from intense gazing at
him during the last few weeks that preceded his departure, but that
was her only expression of feeling. The morning after he left, the
nurse, not finding her appear at her usual time, went to her chamber
to look for her. She lay on the bed, as she had been lying all the
night, sleepless, with pale face and red lips. Nurse asked her what
was the matter.

"Nothing," was the reply.

"Come get up, Beauty," coaxed the nurse.

But Nellie turned her face to the wall and did not answer. She lay
thus for a week, scarcely eating or sleeping, sick in mind and body,
struggling with a grief that she hardly knew was grief. At the end
of that time she tottered from the bed, and, clothing herself with
difficulty, crept to the library.

The instinct that sends a sick animal to the plant that will cure
it seemed to teach Nellie where to find comfort. Danby was gone, but
memory remained, and the place where he had been was to her made
holy and possessed healing power, as does the shrine of a saint for a
believer. Her shrine was the reading-desk, and the chair on which he
had sat during those happy lessons. To make all complete, she lifted
the heavy book from the shelf and opened it at the page from which she
had first learned. She put herself in his chair and caressed the words
with her thin hand, her fingers trembling over the place that his had
touched, then dropping her head on the desk where his arm had lain,
she smiling slept.

She awoke with the nurse looking down on her, saying, "Beauty, you are
better."

And so she was: she drank the broth and ate the bread and grapes that
had been brought her, and from that day grew stronger. But the shadow
in her eyes was deeper now, and the veins in her temples were bluer,
as if the blood had throbbed and pained there. Every morning found
her at her post: she had no need to roam the woods and fields now--her
world lay within her. It was sad for one so young to live on memory.

For many days her page and these few words were sufficient to content
her, and to recall them one after another, as Danby had taught, was
her only occupation. But by and by the words themselves began to
interest her, then the context, and finally the sense dawned upon
her--dawned not less surely that it came slowly, and that she was now
and then compelled to stop and think out a word.

And what did she learn? Near the top of the large page the first
word, "love." It ended a sentence and stood conspicuous, which was the
reason it had caught the eye of the eager boy when he began to teach.
What did it mean? What went before? What after? It was a long time
before she asked herself these questions, for her understanding had
not formed the habit of being curious. Previously her eyes alone had
sight, now her intellect commenced seeing. What was the web of which
this word was the woof, knitting together, underlying, now appearing,
now hidden, but always there? She turned the leaves and counted where
it recurred again and again, like a bird repeating one sweet note, of
which it never tires. Then the larger type in the middle of each page
drew her attention: she read, _As You Like It_. "What do I like? This
story is perhaps as I like it. I wonder what it is about? I don't care
now for pirates and robbers: I liked them when _he_ read to me, but
not now." Her thoughts then wandered off to Danby, and she read no
more that day.

However, Nellie had plenty of time before her, and when her thinking
was ended she would return to her text. I do not know how long a time
it required for her to connect the sentence that followed the word
"love;" but it became clear to her finally, just as a difficult puzzle
will sometimes resolve itself as you are idly regarding it. And this
is what she saw: "Love! But it cannot be sounded: my affection hath an
unknown bottom, like the bay of Portugal." The phrase struck her as
if it was her own, and for the first time in her life she blushed.
She did not know much about the bay of Portugal, it is true, but she
understood the rest. From that time forth the book possessed a strange
interest for her. Much that she did not comprehend she passed by.
Often for several days she would not find a passage that pleased her,
but when such a one was discovered her slow perusal of it and long
dwelling on it gave a beauty and power to the sentiment that more
expert students might have lost. I cannot describe the almost feverish
effect upon her of that poetical quartette beginning with--

  Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love.

How she hung over it, smiled at it, brightening into delight at the
echo of her own feelings! In the raillery of Rosalind her heart found
words to speak; and her sense and wit were awakened by the sarcasm of
the same character. "Pray you, no more of this: 'tis like the howling
of Irish wolves against the moon," came like a healthy tonic after a
week of ecstasy spent over the preceding lines.

Her mind grew in such companionship. She lived no more alone: she
had found friends who sympathized with her. Smiles and tears became
frequent on her face, making it more beautiful. _As You Like It_ was
just as she liked it. The forest of Arden was her forest. Rosalind's
banished father was her father: that busy man she had never seen. With
the book for interpreter she fell in love with her world over again.
Sunset and dawn possessed new charms; the little flowers seemed
dignified; moonlight and fairy-land unveiled their mysteries; nothing
was forgotten. It appeared as if all the knowledge of the world was
contained in those magic pages, and the master-key to this treasure,
the dominant of this harmony, was _love_--the word that Danby
had taught her. The word? The feeling as well, and with the
feeling--_all_.

Circling from this passion as from a pole-star, all those great
constellations of thought revolved. With Lear's madness was Cordelia's
affection; with the inhumanity of Shylock was Jessica's trust; with
the Moor's jealousy was Desdemona's devotion. The sweet and bitter
of life, religion, poetry and philosophy, ambition, revenge and
superstition, controlled, created or destroyed by that little word.
And _how_ they loved--Perdita, Juliet, Miranda--quickly and entirely,
without shame, as she had loved Danby--as buds bloom and birds warble.
Oh it was sweet, sweet, sweet! Amid friends like these she became gay,
moved briskly, grew rosy and sang. This was her favorite song, to a
melody she had caught from the river:

      Under the greenwood tree
      Who loves to lie with me,
      And turn his merry note
      Unto the sweet bird's throat,
  Come hither, come hither, come hither:
          Here shall he see
          No enemy
  But winter and rough weather.

Four years passed by--not all spent with one book, however. Nellie's
desire for study grew with what it fed on. This book opened the way
for many. Reading led to reflection; reflection, to observation;
observation, to Nature; and thus in an endless round.

About this time her busy father remembered he possessed a "baby," laid
away somewhere, like an old parchment, and he concluded he would "look
her up." His surprise was great when he saw the child a woman--still
greater when he observed her self-possession, her intelligence, and a
certain quaint way she had of expressing herself that was charming in
connection with her fresh young face. She was neither diffident nor
awkward, knowing too little of the world to fear, and having naturally
that simplicity of manner which touches nearly upon high breeding.
But Mr. Archer being one of those men who think that "beauty should
go beautifully," her toilette shocked him. Under the influence of her
presence he felt that he had neglected her. The whole house reproached
him: the few rooms that had been furnished were dilapidated and worn.

"I did not know things looked so badly down here," he said
apologetically. "I am sure I must have had everything properly
arranged when Nurse Bridget came. Your cradle was comfortable, was it
not?"

"I scarcely remember," answered his daughter demurely.

"Oh! ah! yes! It is some time ago, I believe?"

"Seventeen years."

"Y-e-s: I had forgotten."

He had an idea, this man of a hundred schemes, that his "baby"
was laughing at him, and, singularly enough, it raised her in his
estimation. He even asked her to come and live with him in the city,
but she refused, and he did not insist.

Then he set about making a change, which was soon accomplished. He
sent for furniture and carpets, and cleared the rubbish from without
and within. Under his decided orders a complete outfit "suitable for
his daughter" soon arrived, and with it a maid. Nellie, whose ideas
of maids were taken from Lucetta, was much disappointed in the actual
being, and the modern Lucetta was also disappointed when she saw
the "howling wilderness" to which she had been inveigled; so the two
parted speedily. But Mr. Archer remained: he was one of those men
who do things thoroughly which they have once undertaken. When he
was satisfied with Nellie's appearance he took her to call on all the
neighboring families within reach.

Among others, they went to see Mrs. Overbeck, Danby's mother, whom
Mr. Archer had known in his youth. Nellie wore her brave trappings
bravely, and acted her part nicely until Mrs. Overbeck gave her a
motherly kiss at parting, when she grew pale and trembled. Why should
she? Her hostess thought it was from the heat, and insisted on her
taking a glass of wine.

In the autumn of this year Danby graduated and returned home. Nellie
had not seen him during all this interval: he had spent his vacations
abroad, and had become quite a traveled man. While she retained her
affection for him unchanged, he scarcely remembered the funny little
girl who had been so devoted to him in the years gone by. A few days
after he arrived, his mother, in giving him the local news, mentioned
the charming acquaintance she had made of a young lady who lived in
the neighborhood. On hearing her name the young man exclaimed, "Why,
that must be Nellie!"

"Do you know her?" asked his mother in surprise.

"Of course I do, and many a jolly time I have had with her. Odd little
thing, ain't she?"

"I should not call her odd," remarked his mother.

"You do not know her as I do."

"Perhaps not. I suppose you will go with me when I return her visit."

"Certainly I will--just in for that sort of thing. A man feels the
need of some relaxation after a four years' bore, and there is nothing
like the society of the weaker sex to give the mind repose."

"Shocking boy!" said the fond mother with a smile.

In a short time the projected call was made.

"You will frighten her with all that finery, my handsome mother,"
remarked Danby as they walked to the carriage.

"I think she will survive it, but I shall not answer for the effect of
those brilliant kids of yours."

"The feminine eye is caught by display," said her son sententiously.

They chatted as they drove rapidly through the forest to the old
house, entered the front gate and rolled up the broad avenue.

"I had no idea the place looked so well," remarked Danby, _en
connaisseur_, as they approached. "I always entered by the back way;"
and he gave his moustache a final twirl.

After a loud knock from a vigorous hand the door was opened by a small
servant, much resembling Nellie some four years before. Danby was
going to speak to her, but recalling the time that had elapsed, he
knew it could not be she. All within was altered. Three rooms
_en suite_, the last of which was the library, had been carefully
refurnished. He looked about him. Could this be the place in which he
had passed so many days? But he forgot all in the figure that advanced
to receive them. With a pretty grace she gave her hand to his mother
and welcomed "Mr. Overbeck." How she talked--talked like a babbling
brook! It was now his turn to open big eyes and be silent. He tried
to recall the girl he had left. Vain endeavor! This bright creature,
grave and gay, silent but ready, respectful yet confident, how could
he follow her? The visit came to an end, but was repeated again and
again by Danby, and each time with new astonishment, new delight. She
had the coquetry of a dozen women, yet her eyes looked so true. She
was a perfect elf for pranks and jokes, yet demure as a nun. When he
tried to awe her with his learning, she was saucy; if he was serious,
she was gay; if he wished to teach, she rebelled. She was self-willed
as a changeling, refractory yet gentle, seditious but just,--only
waiting to strike her colors and proclaim him conqueror; but this he
did not know, for she kept well hid in her heart what "woman's fear"
she had. She was all her favorite heroines in turn, with herself added
to the galaxy.

One day he penetrated into the library, notwithstanding some very
serious efforts on her part to prevent him: by this time he would
occasionally assert himself. The furniture there was not much altered.
A few worn things had been replaced, but the room looked so much the
same that the scene of that first reading-lesson came vividly to his
mind. He turned to the side where the desk had stood. It was still
there, with the two chairs before it, and on it was the book. She
would not for the world have had it moved, but it was, as it were,
glorified. Mr. Archer had wished "these old things cleared away," but
Nellie had besought him so earnestly that he allowed them to stay,
stipulating, however, that they should be upholstered anew. To this
she assented, saying, "Send me the best of everything and _I_ will
cover them--the very best, mind;" and her father, willing to please
her, did as she desired.

So the old desk became smart in brocade and gold-lace, the book
received a cushion all bullion and embroidery, and the chairs emulated
the splendor. It required a poet or a girl in love to clothe a fancy
so beautifully, and Nellie was both. It was her shrine: why should she
not adorn it?

I cannot follow the process of thought in Danby's mind as he looked
at this and at Nellie--Nellie blushing with the sudden guiltiness that
even the discovery of a harmless action will bring when we wish to
conceal it. Sometimes a moment reveals much.

"Nellie"--it was the first time he had called her so since his
return--"I must give you a reading-lesson: come, sit here."

Mechanically she obeyed him, all the rebel fading away: she looked
like the Nellie of other days. She felt she had laid bare her soul,
but in proportion as her confusion overcame her did he become decided.
It is the slaves that make tyrants, it is said.

Under the impulse of his hand the book opened at the well-worn page.

"Read!"

For a little while she sat with downcast eyes. Well she knew the
passage to which he was pointing: "Love! But it cannot be sounded: my
affection hath an unknown bottom, like the bay of Portugal."

The sentence seemed to dance and grow till it covered the page--grow
till in her sight it assumed the size of a placard, and then it took
life and became her accuser--told in big letters the story of her
devotion to the mocking boy beside her.

"There is good advice on the preceding page," he whispered smiling.
"Orlando says he would kiss before he spoke: may I?"

She started up and looked at his triumphant face a moment, her mouth
quivering, her eyes full of tears. "How can you--" she began.

But before she could finish he was by her side: "Because I love
you--love you, all that the book says, and a thousand times more.
Because if you love me we will live our own romance, and I doubt if we
cannot make our old woods as romantic as the forest of Arden. Will you
not say," he asked tenderly, "that there will be at least one pair of
true lovers there?"

I could not hear Nellie's answer: her head was so near his--on his
shoulder, in fact--that she whispered it in his ear. But a moment
after, pushing him from her with the old mischief sparkling from her
eyes, she said, "'Til frown and be perverse, and say thee nay, so thou
wilt woo,'" and looked a saucy challenge in his face.

"Naughty sprite!" he exclaimed, catching her in his arms and shutting
her mouth with kisses.

It was not long after, perhaps a year, that a happy bride and groom
might have been seen walking up the hemlock avenue arm in arm.

"Do you remember," she asked, smiling thoughtfully--"do you remember
the time I begged you to come home with me and be my pet?"

The young husband leaned down and said something the narrator did
not catch, but from the expression of his face it must have been very
spoony: with a bride such as that charming Nellie, how could he help
it?

Yes, she had brought him home. Mr. Archer had given the house with its
broad acres as a dowry to his daughter, and Nellie had desired that
the honeymoon should be spent in her "forest of Arden."

ITA ANIOL PROKOP.




JACK, THE REGULAR.


  In the Bergen winter night, when the hickory fire is roaring,
  Flickering streams of ruddy light on the folk before it pouring--
  When the apples pass around, and the cider follows after,
  And the well-worn jest is crowned by the hearers' hearty laughter--
  When the cat is purring there, and the dog beside her dozing,
  And within his easy-chair sits the grandsire old, reposing,--
  Then they tell the story true to the children, hushed and eager,
  How the two Van Valens slew, on a time, the Tory leaguer,
                          Jack, the Regular.

  Near a hundred years ago, when the maddest of the Georges
  Sent his troops to scatter woe on our hills and in our gorges,
  Less we hated, less we feared, those he sent here to invade us
  Than the neighbors with us reared who opposed us or betrayed us;
  And amid those loyal knaves who rejoiced in our disasters,
  As became the willing slaves of the worst of royal masters,
  Stood John Berry, and he said that a regular commission
  Set him at his comrades' head; so we called him, in derision,
                          "Jack, the Regular."

  When he heard it--"Let them fling! Let the traitors make them merry
  With the fact my gracious king deigns to make me Captain Berry.
  I will scourge them for the sneer, for the venom that they carry;
  I will shake their hearts with fear as the land around I harry:
  They shall find the midnight raid waking them from fitful slumbers;
  They shall find the ball and blade daily thinning out their numbers:
  Barn in ashes, cattle slain, hearth on which there glows no ember,
  Neatless plough and horseless wain; thus the rebels shall remember
                          Jack, the Regular!"

  Well he kept his promise then with a fierce, relentless daring,
  Fire to rooftrees, death to men, through the Bergen valleys bearing:
  In the midnight deep and dark came his vengeance darker, deeper--
  At the watch-dog's sudden bark woke in terror every sleeper;
  Till at length the farmers brown, wasting time no more on tillage,
  Swore those ruffians of the Crown, fiends of murder, fire and pillage,
  Should be chased by every path to the dens where they had banded,
  And no prayers should soften wrath when they caught the bloody-handed
                          Jack, the Regular.

  One by one they slew his men: still the chief their chase evaded.
  He had vanished from their ken, by the Fiend or Fortune aided--
  Either fled to Powles Hoek, where the Briton yet commanded,
  Or his stamping-ground forsook, waiting till the hunt disbanded;
  So they checked pursuit at length, and returned to toil securely:
  It was useless wasting strength on a purpose baffled surely.
  But the two Van Valens swore, in a patriotic rapture,
  _They_ would never give it o'er till they'd either kill or capture
                          Jack, the Regular.

  Long they hunted through the wood, long they slept upon the hillside;
  In the forest sought their food, drank when thirsty at the rill-side;
  No exposure counted hard--theirs was hunting border-fashion:
  They grew bearded like the pard, and their chase became a passion:
  Even friends esteemed them mad, said their minds were out of balance,
  Mourned the cruel fate and sad fallen on the poor Van Valens;
  But they answered to it all, "Only wait our loud view-holloa
  When the prey shall to us fall, for to death we mean to follow
                          Jack, the Regular."

  Hunted they from Tenavlieon to where the Hudson presses
  To the base of traprocks high; through Moonachie's damp recesses;
  Down as far as Bergen Hill; by the Ramapo and Drochy,
  Overproek and Pellum Kill--meadows flat and hilltops rocky--
  Till at last the brothers stood where the road from New Barbadoes,
  At the English Neighborhood, slants toward the Palisadoes;
  Still to find the prey they sought left no sign for hunter eager:
  Followed steady, not yet caught, was the skulking, fox-like leaguer
                          Jack, the Regular.

  Who are they that yonder creep by those bleak rocks in the distance,
  Like the figures born in sleep, called by slumber to existence?--
  Tories doubtless from below, from the Hoek, sent out for spying.
  "No! the foremost is our foe--he so long before us flying!
  Now he spies us! see him start! wave his kerchief like a banner!
  Lay his left hand on his heart in a proud, insulting manner.
  Well he knows that distant spot's past our ball, his low scorn flinging.
  If you cannot feel the shot, you shall hear the firelock's ringing,
                          Jack, the Regular!"

  Ha! he falls! An ambuscade? 'Twas impossible to strike him!
  Are there Tories in the glade? Such a trick is very like him.
  See! his comrade by him kneels, turning him in terror over,
  Then takes nimbly to his heels. Have they really slain the rover?
  It is worth some risk to know; so, with firelocks poised and ready,
  Up the sloping hills they go, with a quick lookout and steady.
  Dead! The random shot had struck, to the heart had pierced the Tory--
  Vengeance seconded by luck! Lies there, cold and stiff and gory,
                          Jack, the Regular.

  "Jack, the Regular, is dead! Honor to the man who slew him!"
  So the Bergen farmers said as they crowded round to view him;
  For the wretch that lay there slain had with wickedness unbending
  To their roofs brought fiery rain, to their kinsfolk woeful ending.
  Not a mother but had prest, in a sudden pang of fearing,
  Sobbing darlings to her breast when his name had smote her hearing;
  Not a wife that did not feel terror when the words were uttered;
  Not a man but chilled to steel when the hated sounds he muttered--
                          Jack, the Regular.

  Bloody in his work was he, in his purpose iron-hearted--
  Gentle pity could not be when the pitiless had parted.
  So, the corse in wagon thrown, with no decent cover o'er it--
  Jeers its funeral rites alone--into Hackensack they bore it,
  'Mid the clanging of the bells in the old Brick Church's steeple,
  And the hooting and the yells of the gladdened, maddened people.
  Some they rode and some they ran by the wagon where it rumbled,
  Scoffing at the lifeless man, all elate that death had humbled
                          Jack, the Regular.

  Thus within the winter night, when the hickory fire is roaring,
  Flickering streams of ruddy light on the folk before it pouring--
  When the apples pass around, and the cider follows after,
  And the well-worn jest is crowned by the hearers' hearty laughter--
  When the cat is purring there, and the dog beside her dozing,
  And within his easy-chair sits the grandsire old, reposing,--
  Then they tell the story true to the children, hushed and eager,
  the two Van Valens slew, on a time, the Tory leaguer,
                          Jack, the Regular.

THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH.




OBSERVATIONS AND ADVENTURES IN SUBMARINE DIVING.


  [Greek:                   --liphon
  eponumon te reuma kai petraerephae
  autoktit' antra.]--AESCHYLUS: _Prometheus Bound_.

Did you ever pause before a calm, bright little pool in the woods, and
look steadily at the picture it presents, without feeling as if you
had peeped into another world? Every outline is preserved, every tint
is freshened and purified, in the cool, glimmering reflection. There
is a grace and a softness in the prismatic lymph that give a new form
and color to the common and familiar objects it has printed in its
still, pellucid depths. Every little basin of clear water by the
roadside is a magic mirror, and transforms all that it encloses. There
is a vastness of depth, too, in that concave hemisphere, through
which the vision sinks like a falling star, that excites and fills the
imagination. What it shows is only a shadow, but all things seen are
mere shadows painted on the retina, and you have, at such times,
a realistic sense of the beautiful and bold imagery which calls a
favorite fountain of the East the Eye of the Desert.

The alluring softness of this mimic world increases to sublimity when,
instead of some rocky basin, dripping with mossy emeralds and coral
berries, you look upon the deep crystalline sea. Each mates to its
kind. This does not gather its imagery from gray, mossy rock or
pendent leaf or flower, but draws into its enfolding arms the wide
vault of the cerulean sky. The richness of the majestic azure is
deepened by that magnificent marriage. The pale blue is darkened to
violet. Far through the ever-varying surface of the curious gelatinous
liquid breaks the phosphorescence, sprinkled into innumerable lights
and cross-lights. As you look upon those endless pastures thought is
quickened with the conception of their innumerable phases of vitality.
The floating weed, whose meshes measure the spaces of continents and
archipelagoes, is everywhere instinct with animal and vegetable life.
The builder coral, glimmering in its softer parts with delicate hues
and tints, throws up its stony barrier through a thousand miles of
length and a third as much in breadth, fringing the continents with
bays and sounds and atoll islands like fairy rings of the sea.
Animate flowers--sea-nettles, sea anemones, plumularia, campanularia,
hydropores, confervae, oscillatoria, bryozoa--people the great waters.
Sea-urchins, star-fish, sea-eggs, combative gymnoti, polypes, struggle
and thrive with ever-renewing change of color; gelatinous worms
that shine like stars cling to every weed; glimmering animalcules,
phosphorescent medusae, the very deep itself is vivid with sparkle
and corruscation of electric fire. So through every scale, from the
zoophyte to the warm-blooded whale, the sea teems with life, out of
which fewer links have been dropped than from sub-aërial life. It is a
matter for curious speculation that the missing species belong not to
the lower subsidiary genera, as in terrene animals, but to the
highest types of marine life. In the quarries of Lyme Regis, among the
accumulations of a sea of the Liassic period, lay the huge skeleton of
the Ichthyosaurus, a warm-blooded marine existence, with huge saucer
eyes of singular telescopic power, that gleamed radiant "with the
eyelids of the morning," "by whose neesings alight doth shine"--the
true leviathan of Job. In the same extinct sea is found the skeleton
of the Plesiosaurus, a marine lizard of equal size, and warm-blooded,
whose swan-like neck and body graced the serene seas of the
pre-adamite world. Another was that of the Pterodactyl, the antique
aragon, a winged fish. The task of sustaining these existences was too
great for old Ocean, and the monsters dropped from the upper end of
the chain into the encrusting mud, the petrified symbols of failure.
So one day man may drop into the limbo of vanities, among the
abandoned tools in the Creator's workshop.

But, however high or low the degree in the scale, one distinguishing
feature marks the vital creation in vegetable or animal--an
intelligence capable of adjusting itself to the elements about it, and
electing its food. The sunflower, even, does not follow the sun by a
mechanical law, but, growing by a fair, bright sheet of water, looks
as constantly at that shining surface for the beloved light as
ever did the fabled Greek boy at his own image in the fountain.
The tendrils of the vine seek and choose their own support, and the
thirsty spongioles of the root find the nourishing veins of water.
Growth, says a naturalist, is the conscious motion of vegetable life.
But this theory of kinship, imperfect in the plant, becomes plain
and distinct in the animate creation. However far removed, the wild
dolphin at play and the painted bird in the air are cousins of man,
with a responsive chord of sympathy connecting them.

It is this feeling that sends an exhilarating thrill through the
submarine explorer when a school of porpoises frisk by with undulating
grace, the marine type of a group of frolicking children. It is the
instinctive perception that it is a pure enjoyment to the fish, the
healthy glow and laugh of submarine existence. But for that sense of
sympathetic nature the flying-fish, reeling porpoise and dolphin would
be no more to him than the skipping shuttle in a weaver's loom, the
dull impetus of senseless machinery. Self-generated motion is the
outward and visible sign of vitality--its wanton exercise the symbol
and expression of enjoyment. The poor philosopher who distinguished
humanity as singular in the exhibition of humor had surely never heard
a mocking-bird sing, watched a roguish crow or admired a school of
fish.

This keen appreciation of a kindred life in the sea has thrown its
charm over the poetry and religion of all races. Ocean us leaves the
o'erarching floods and rocky grottoes at the call of bound Prometheus;
Cyrene, with her nymphs, sits in the cool Peneus, where comes
Aristaeus mourning for his stolen bees; the Druid washed his
hedge-hyssop in the sacred water, and priestesses lived on coral reefs
visited by remote lovers in their sundown seas; Schiller's diver
goes into the purpling deep and sees the Sea-Horror reaching out its
hundred arms; the beautiful Undine is the vivid poetry of the sea.
Every fountain has its guardian saint or nymph, and to this day not
only the German peasant and benighted English boor thrill at the sight
of some nymph-guarded well, but the New Mexican Indian offers his rude
pottery in propitiation of the animate existence, the deity of the
purling spring.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Der Taucher," for all the rhythm and music that clothes his luckless
plunge, was but a caitiff knight to some of our submarine adventurers.
A diver during the bay-fight in Mobile harbor had reason to apprehend
a more desperate encounter. A huge cuttle-fish, the marine monster of
Pliny and Victor Hugo, had been seen in the water. His tough,
sinuous, spidery arms, five fathoms long, wavered visibly in the blue
transparent gulf,

  Und schaudernd dacht ich's--da kroch's heran,
  Regte hundert Gelenke zugleich,
  Will schnappen nach mir.

A harpoon was driven into the leathery, pulpy body of the monster, but
with no other effect than the sudden snapping of the inch line like
thread. It was subsequent to this that, as the diver stayed his steps
in the unsteady current, his staff was seized below. The water was
murky with the river-silt above the salt brine, and he could see
nothing, but after an effort the staff was rescued or released.
Curious to know what it was, he probed again, and the stick was
wrenched from his hand. With a thrill he recognized in such power the
monster of the sea, the devil-fish. He returned anxious, doubtful, but
resolute. Few like to be driven from a duty by brute force. He armed
himself, and descended to renew the hazardous encounter in the gloomy
solitude of the sea-bottom. I would I had the wit to describe that
tournament beneath the sea; the stab, thrust, curvet, plunge--the
conquest and capture of the unknown combatant. A special chance
preserves the mediaeval character of the contest, saving it from the
sulphurous associations of modern warfare that might be suggested by
the name of devil-fish. No: the antagonist wore a coat-of-mail and
arms of proof, as became a good knight of the sea, and was besides
succulent, digestible--a veritable prize for the conqueror. It was a
monstrous crab.

The constant encounter of strange and unforeseen perils enables the
professional diver to meet them with the same coolness with which
ordinary and familiar dangers are confronted on land. On one occasion
a party of such men were driven out into the Gulf by a fierce
"norther," were tossed about like chips for three days in the vexed
element, scant of food, their compass out of order, and the horizon
darkened with prevailing storm. At another time a party wandered out
in the shallows of one of the keys that fringe the Gulf coast. They
amused themselves with wading into the water, broken into dazzling
brilliance. A few sharks were seen occasionally, which gradually and
unobserved increased to, a squadron. The waders meanwhile continued
their sport until the evening waned away. Far over the dusk violet
Night spread her vaporous shadows:

  The blinding mist came up and hid the land,
  And round and round the land,
  And o'er and o'er the land,
    As far as eye could see.

At last they turned their steps homeward, crossing the little sandy
key, between which and the beach lay a channel shoulder-deep, its
translucent waves now glimmering with phosphorescence. But here
they were met by an unexpected obstacle. The fleet of sharks, with
a strategical cunning worthy of admiration, had flanked the little
island, and now in the deeper water formed in ranks and squadrons,
and, with their great goggle eyes like port-fires burning, lay ready
to dispute the passage. Armed with such weapons as they could clutch,
the men dashed into the water with paeans and shouts and the broken
pitchers of fallen Jericho. The violet phosphorescence lighted them on
their way, and tracked with luminous curve and star every move of the
enemy. The gashed water at every stroke of club or swish of tail or
fin bled in blue and red fire, as if the very sea was wounded. The
enemy's line of battle was broken and scattered, but not until more
than one of the assailants had looked point-blank into the angry eyes
of a shark and beaten it off with actual blows. It was the Thermopylae
of sharkdom, with numbers reversed--a Red Sea passage resonant with
psalms of victory.

There are novel difficulties as well as dangers to be encountered. The
native courage of the man must be tempered, ground and polished. On
land it is the massing of numbers that accomplishes the result--the
accumulation of vital forces and intelligence upon the objective
point. The innumerable threads of individual enterprise, like the
twist of a Manton barrel, give the toughest tensile power. Under the
sea, however, it is often the strength of the single thread, the
wit of the individual pitted against the solid impregnability of the
elements, the _vis inertiae_ of the sea. It looks as if uneducated
Nature built her rude fastnesses and rocky battlements with a special
view to resistance, making the fickle and unstable her strongest
barricade. An example of the skill and address necessary to conquer
obstacles of the latter kind was illustrated in Mobile Bay. There lay
about a sunken vessel an impenetrable mail of quicksand. It became
necessary to sink piles into this material. The obstacle does not
lie in its fickle, unstable character, but its elastic tension. It
swallows a nail or a beam by slow, serpent-like deglutition. It is
hungry, insatiable, impenetrable. Try to force it, to drive down
a pile by direct force: it resists. The mallet is struck back by
reverberating elasticity with an equal force, and the huge pointed
stake rebounds. Brute force beats and beats in vain. The fickle sand
will not be driven--no, not an inch.

Wit comes in where weight breaks down. A force-pump, a common
old-style fire-engine, was rigged up, the nozzle and hose bound to a
huge pile,

          to equal which the tallest pine
  Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
  Of some great ammiral, were but a wand.

The pump was set to work. The water tore through the nostril-pipe,
boring a hole with such rapidity that the tall beam dropped into the
socket with startling suddenness. Still breathing torrents, the pipe
was withdrawn: the clutching sand seized, grappled the stake. It is
cemented in.

  You may break, you may shatter the _stake_, if you will,

but--you can never pull it out.

Perhaps the most singular and venturesome exploit ever performed in
submarine diving was that of searching the sunken monitor Milwaukee
during the bay-fight in Mobile harbor. This sea-going fortress was a
huge double-turreted monitor, with a ponderous, crushing projectile
force in her. Her battery of four fifteen-inch guns, and the tough,
insensible solidity of her huge wrought-iron turrets and heavy plated
hulk, burdened the sleepy waters of the bay. Upon a time she braced
her iron jacket about her, girded her huge sides with fifteen-inch
pistolry, and went rolling her clumsy volume down the bay to mash Fort
Taylor to rubbish and débacle. The sea staggered under her ponderous
gliding and groaned about her massive bulk as she wended her awkward
course toward the bay-shore over against the fort. She sighted her
blunderbusses, and, rolling, grunting, wheezing in her revolving
towers like a Falstaff ill at ease, spat her gobbets of flame and
death. The poor little water-spaniel fort ran down to the shore and
barked at her of course. _Cui bono_ or _malo?_ Why, like Job's mates,
fill its poor belly with the east wind, or try to draw out leviathan
with a hook, or his tongue with a cord thou lettest down? Yet who
treads of the fight between invulnerable Achilles and heroic Hector,
and admires Achilles? The admiral of the American fleet, sick of the
premature pother, signaled the lazy solidity to return. The loathly
monster, slowly, like a bull-dog wrenched from his victim, rolled
snarling, lazily, leisurely down the bay, not obeying and yet not
disobeying the signal.

All along the sunny coast, like flowers springing up in a
battle-field, were rows of little white cottages, tenanted by women
and children--love, life and peace in the midst of ruin and sudden
death. At the offending spectacle of homely peace among its enemies
the unglutted monster eased its huge wrath. Tumbling and bursting
among the poor little pasteboard shells of cottages, where children
played and women gossiped of the war, and prayed for its end, no
matter how, fell the huge globes and cones of murder. Shrieks and
cries, slain babes and wounded women on shore; surly, half-mutinous
officers and crew on that iron hulk, shocked at the fell work they
were set to do; and the glimmer and wash of the bay-water below--that
sweet, tranquil, half-transparent liquid, with idle weeds and chips
upon it, empty crates and boxes of dead merchandise, sacked of their
life and substance by the war, as one might swallow an oyster; the
soft veils of shadowy ships and the distant city spires; umbrageous
fires and slips of shining sand all mirrored in the soft and quiet
sea, while this devilish pother went on. There is a buoy adrift! No,
it is a sodden cask, perhaps of spoiling meat, while the people in the
town yonder are starving; and still the huge iron, gluttonous monster
bursts its foam of blood and death, while the surly crew curse and
think of mothers and babes at home. Better to look at the bay, the
idle, pleasing summer water, with chips and corks and weeds upon it;
better to look at the bubbling cask yonder--much better, captain,
if you only knew it! But the reluctant, heavy iron turret groans and
wheezes on its pivotal round, and it will be a minute or half a minute
before the throated hell speaks again. But it _will_ speak: machinery
is fatally accurate to time and place. Can nothing stay it, or
stop the trembling of those bursting iron spheres among yon pretty
print-like homes? No: look at the buoy, wish-wash, rolling lazily,
bobbing in the water, a lazy, idle cask, with nothing in the world
to do on this day of busy mischief. What hands coopered it in the new
West? what farmer filled it? There is the grunting of swine, lowing of
cattle, in the look of the staves. But the turret groans and wheezes
and goes around, whether you look at it or not. What cottage this
time? The soft lap-lap of the water goes on, and the tedious cask gets
nearer: it will slide by the counter. You have a curious interest in
that. No: it grates under the bow; it--Thunder and wreck and ruin!
Has the bay burst open and swallowed us? The huge, invulnerable iron
monster--not invulnerable after all--has met its master in the idle
cask. It is blind, imprisoned Samson pulling down the pillars of the
temple. The tough iron plates at the bow are rent and torn and twisted
like wet paper. A terrible hole is gashed in the hull. The monster
wobbles, rolls, gasps, and drinks huge gulps of water like a wounded
man--desperately wounded, and dying in his thirsty veins and arteries.
The swallowed torrent rushes aft, hissing and quenching the fires;
beats against the stern, and comes forward with the rush of that
repulse to meet the incoming wave. Into the boats, the water--anywhere
but here. She reels again and groans; and then, as a desperate hero
dies, she slopes her huge warlike beak at the hostile water and rushes
to her own ruin with a surge and convulsion. The victorious sea sweeps
over it and hides it, laughing at her work. She will keep it safely.
That is the unsung epic of the Milwaukee, without which I should have
little to say of the submarine diving during the bay-fight.

The harbor of Mobile is shaped like a rude Innuit boot. At the top,
Tensaw and Mobile Rivers, in their deltas, make, respectively, two
and three looplike bands, like the straps. The toe is Bonsecour
Bay, pointing east. The heel rests on Dauphin Island, while the main
channel flows into the hollow of the foot between Fort Morgan and
Dauphin Island. In the north-west angle, obscured by the foliage,
lay the devoted city, suffering no less from artificial famine, made
unnecessarily, than the ligatures that stopped the vital current of
trade. Tons of meat were found putrefying while the citizens, and
even the garrison, had been starving on scanty rations. Food could
be purchased, but at exorbitant rates, and the medium of exchange,
Confederate notes, all gone to water and waste paper. The true story
of the Lost Cause has yet to be written. North of Mobile, in the
Trans-Mississippi department, thousands whose every throb was devoted
to the enterprise, welcomed the Northern invaders, not as destroyers
of a hope already dead by the act of a few entrusted with its defence,
but as something better than the anarchy that was not Southern
independence or anything else human.

Such were the condition, period and place--the people crushed
between the upper and nether millstones of two hostile and contending
civilizations--when native thrift evoked a new element, that set
in sharp contrast the heroism of life and the heroism of death, the
courage that incurs danger to save against the courage that
accepts danger to destroy. The work was the saving of the valuable
arms--costing the government thirty thousand dollars per gun--and the
machinery of the sunken Milwaukee.[A] By a curious circumstance this
party of divers was composed partly, if not principally or entirely,
of mechanics and engineers who were exempt from military service
under the economic laws of the Confederacy, yet who in heart and soul
sympathized with the rebellion. They had worked to save for the South:
now they were to work and save for the North. It was a service of
superadded danger. All the peril incurred from missile weapons
was increased by the hidden danger of the secret under-sea and the
presence of the terrible torpedoes. These floated everywhere, in all
innocent, unsuspicious shapes. One monster, made of boiler iron, a
huge cross, is popularly believed to be still hidden in the bay. The
person possessing the chart wherein the masked battery's place was set
down is said to have destroyed it and fled. Let us hope, however, that
this is an error.

[Footnote A: The Milwaukee was sunk nearly due east of the city: the
Osage, Tecumseh, several despatch-boats and steamers, besides the
three monitors, were sunk by torpedoes in the bay.]

Keep in mind, in reading this account, the contrasted picture of peace
in Nature and war in man--the calm blue sky; the soft hazy outlines
of woods and bay-shore dropping their soft veils in the water; the
cottages, suggesting industry and love; the distant city; the delicate
and graceful spars of the Hartford; the busy despatch-steamers plying
to and fro; the bursting forts and huge ugly monitors; the starry
arches of flying shells by night and flying cloud by day; the soft lap
of the water; the sensuous, sweet beauty of that latitude of eternal
spring; and the soft dark violet of the outer sea, glassing itself in
calm or broken into millioned frets of blue, red and starry fire; the
danger above and the danger below; the dark mysterious caverns of the
sea, rich with coral grots and grove and abounding marine life; the
impenetrable gloom of the ship's hold, whose unimaginable darkness and
labyrinthine intricacy of machinery set obstacles at every turn and
move and step; the darkness; the fury; the hues and shape, all that
art can make or Nature fashion, gild or color wrought into one grand
tablature of splendor and magnificence. War and peaceful industry met
there in novel rivalry, and each claimed its privileges. The captain
of the Search said to the officers, while crowding his men behind the
turret, with sly, dry humor, "Come, you are all _paid_ to be shot at:
my men are not."

More than once the accuracy of the enemy's fire drove the little party
to shelter. Though the diver was shielded by the impenetrable fickle
element that gave Achilles invulnerability, the air-pump above was
exposed, and thus the diver might be slain by indirection. There
lay Achilles' heel, the exposed vulnerable part that Mother Thetis's
baptism neglected.

The work below was arduous: the hulk crowded with the entangling
machinery of sixteen engines, cuddies, ports, spars, levers, hatches,
stancheons, floating trunks, bibulous boxes heavy with drink, and the
awful, mysterious gloom of the water, which is not night or darkness,
but the absence of any ray to touch the sensitive optic nerve. The
sense of touch the only reliance, and the life-line his guide.

But the peril incurred can be better understood through an
illustrative example of a perilous adventure and a poor return.
Officers and men of the unfortunate monitor asked for the rescue of
their property, allowing a stipulated sum in lieu of salvage. Among
these was a petty officer, anxious for the recovery of his chest.
It involved peculiar hazards, since it carried the diver below
the familiar turret-chamber, through the _inextricabilis error_ of
entangling machinery in the engine-room, groping among floating and
sunken objects, into a remote state-room, the Acheron of the cavernous
hold. He was to find by touch a seaman's chest; handle it in that
thickening gloom; carry it, push it, move it through that labyrinthine
obscurity to a point from which it could be raised. To add
immeasurably to the intricacy of this undertaking, there was the need
of carrying his life-line and air-hose through all that entanglement
and obscurity. Three times in that horror of thick darkness like wool
the line tangled in the web of machinery, and three times he had, by
tedious endeavor, to follow it up, find the knot and release it. Then
the door of the little state-room, the throat of exit, was shut to,
and around and around the dense chamber he groped as if in a dream,
and could find no vent. All was alike--a smooth, slimy wall, glutinous
with that gelatinous liquid, the sea-water. The tangled line became a
blind guide and fruitful source of error; the hours were ebbing away,
drowning life and vital air in that horrible watery pit;

  Aut hoc inclusi ligno occultantur Achivi,

or, a worse enemy than the subtle Greek's, death from the suspended
air-current. Speed, nimbleness, strength and activity were worthless:
with tedious fingers he must follow the life-line, find its
entanglements and slowly loosen them, carefully taking up the slack,
and so follow the straightened cord to the door. Then the chest: he
must not forget that. Slowly he heaves and pushes, now at this, now
at the life-line hitching on knob, handle, lever or projecting peg--on
anything or nothing in that maze of machinery; by involution and
evolution, like the unknown quantity in a cubic equation, through all
the twists, turns, assumptions and substitutions, and always with that
unmanageable, indivisible coefficient the box, until he reaches the
upper air.

In Aesop's fable, when the crane claimed the reward of the wolf for
using his long neck and bill as a forceps in extracting a bone from
the latter's oesophagus, Lupus suggests that for the crane to have had
his head down in the lupine throat and _not_ get it snapped off
was reward enough for any reasonable fowl. The petty officer was
sufficiently learned in the Lyceum to administer a like return. The
stipulated salvage was never paid or offered.[A]

[Footnote A: It was a warrant-officer of the Milwaukee: I do not wish
to be more definite; but the money (fifty dollars) may be sent to the
editor of this Magazine, who will forward it to the diver.]

The monitors had small square hatches or man-ports let into the deck,
admitting one person conveniently.

  Hinc via, Tartanii quae fert Acherontis ad undas.

A swinging ladder, whose foot was clear of the floor, led down
into the recesses. A diver, having completed his task, ascended the
treacherous staircase to escape, and found the hatch blocked up.
A floating chest or box had drifted into the opening, and, fitting
closely, had firmly corked the man up in that dungeon, tight as a fly
in a bottle. From his doubtful perch on the ladder he endeavored to
push the obstacle from its insertion. Two or more equal difficulties
made this impossible. The box had no handle, and it was slippery with
the ooze and mucus of the sea. The leverage of pushing only wedged
it faster in the orifice. The inconstant ladder swayed from it as
a fulcrum. Again and again by art and endeavor and angle of push he
essayed, and the ladder made sport of it. It was deadly sport, that
swing and seesaw on the slippery rungs in the immeasurable loneliness
of the silent, shrouded cabin. It was no rush of air, sending life
tingling in the blood made brilliant with carmine of oxidation, but
the dense, mephitic sough of the thick wool of water. He descended
and sat upon the floor to think. Feasible methods had failed, and the
sands of his life were running out like the old physician's. Now to
try the impracticable. There are heaps of wisdom in the wrong way
sometimes, which, I suppose, is the reason some of us like it. The
box was out of his reach, choked in the gullet of that life-hole. No
spring or leap from floor or ladder could reach its slippery side
or bear it from its fixture. The sea had caught him prowling in its
mysteries, and blocked him up, as cruel lords of ancient days walled
up the intruder on their domestic privacy. Wit after brute force:
man and Nature were pitted against each other in the uncongenial
gloom--life the stake.

He groped about his prison, glutinous with infusoriae and the oily
consistence of the sea. Here a nail, there a block or lever, shaped
out mentally by the touch, theorized, studied upon and thrown down.
Now a hatchet, monkey-wrench, monkey's-tail, or gliding fish or
wriggling eel, companions of his imprisonment. At last the cold
touch of iron: the hand encloses and lifts it; its weight betrays its
length; he feels it to the end--blunt, square, useless. He tries the
other end--an edge or spike. That will do. Standing under the hatch,
guided by the ladder to the position, and with a strong swinging,
upward blow, the new tool is driven into the soft, fibrous and
adhesive pine bottom of the box. On the principle on which your
butler's practiced elbow draws the twisted screw sunk into the
cobwebbed seal of your '48 port, he uncorks himself. The box pulled
out of the hatch, the sea-gods threw up the sponge, that zoophyte
being handy.

These few incidents, strung together at random, and embracing only
limited experiences out of many in one enterprise, are illustrative,
in their variety and character, of this hardy pursuit, and the
fascination of danger which is the school of native hardihood.
But they give the reader a very imperfect idea of the nature and
appearance of the new element into which man has pushed his industry.
The havoc and spoil, the continued danger and contention, darken the
gloom of the submarine world as a flash of lightning leaves blacker
the shadow of the night and storm.

The first invention to promote subaqueous search was the diving-bell,
a clumsy vessel which isolates the diver. It is embarrassing, if not
dangerous, where there is a strong current or if it rests upon a slant
deck. It limits the vision, and in one instance it is supposed the
wretched diver was taken from the bell by a shark. It permits an
assistant, however, and a bold diver will plunge from the deck above
and ascend in the vessel, to the invariable surprise of his companion.
An example of one of its perils, settling in the mud, occurred, I
think, in the port of New York. A party of amateurs, supported by
champagne flasks and a reporter, went down. The bell settled and stuck
like a boy's sucker. One of the party proposed shaking or rocking the
bell, and doing so, the water was forced under and the bell lifted
from the ooze.

But a descent in submarine armor is the true way to visit the world
under water. The first sensation in descending is the sudden bursting
roar of furious, Niagarac cascades in the ears. It thunders and booms
upon the startled nerve with the rush and storm of an avalanche. The
sense quivers with it. But it is not air shaken by reflected blows: it
is the cascades driven into the enclosing helmet by the force-pump.
As the flexile hose has to be stiffly distended to bear an aqueous
gravity of twenty-five to fifty pounds to the square inch, the force
of the current can be estimated. The tympanum of the ear yields to
the fierce external pressure. The brain feels and multiplies the
intolerable tension as if the interior was clamped in a vice, and
that tumultuous, thunderous torrent pours on. Involuntarily the mouth
opens: the air rushes in the Eustachian tube, and with sudden velocity
strikes the intruded tension of the drum, which snaps back to its
normal state with a sharp, pistol-like crack. The strain is momently
relieved to be renewed again, and again relieved by the same attending
salutes.

In your curious dress you must appear monstrous, even to that marine
world, familiar with abnormal creations. The whale looks from eyes on
the top of his head; the flat-fish, sole, halibut have both eyes on
the same side; and certain Crustacea place the organ on a foot-stalk,
as if one were to hold up his eye in his hand to include a wider
horizon. But the monster which the fish now sees differs from all
these. It has four great goggle eyes arranged symmetrically around
its head. Peering through these plate-glass optics, the diver sees
the curious, strange beauty of the world around him, not as the bather
sees it, blurred and indistinct, but in the calm splendor of its own
thallassphere. The first thought is one of unspeakable admiration of
the miraculous beauty of everything around him--a glory and a splendor
of refraction, interference and reflection that puts to shame the
Arabian story of the kingdom of the Blue Fish. Above him is that pure
golden canopy with its rare glimmering lustrousness--something like
the soft, dewy effulgence that comes with sun-breaks through showery
afternoons. The soft delicacy of that pure straw-yellow that prevails
everywhere is crossed and lighted by tints and glimmering hues of
accidental and complementary color indescribably elegant. The floor of
the sea rises like a golden carpet in gentle incline to the surface;
but this incline, experience soon teaches, is an ocular deception,
the effect of refraction, such as a tumbler of water and a spoon can
exhibit in petty. It is perhaps the first observable warning that you
are in a new medium, and that your familiar friend, the light, comes
to you altered in its nature; and it is as well to remember this and
"make a note on it."

Raising your eyes to the horizontal and looking straight forward,
a new and beautiful wealth of color is developed. It is at first a
delicate blue, as if an accidental color of the prevailing yellow.
But soon it deepens into a rich violet. You feel as if you had never
before appreciated the loveliness of that rich tint. As your eye
dwells upon it the rich lustrous violet darkens to indigo, and sinking
into deeper hues becomes a majestic threat of color. It is ominous,
vivid blue-black--solid, adamantine, a crystal wall of amethyst. It is
all around you. You are cased, dungeoned in the solid masonry of the
waters. It is beauty indeed, but the sombre and awful beauty of the
night and storm. The eye turns for relief and reassurance to the
paly-golden lustrous roof, and watches that tender penciling which
brightens every object it touches. The hull of the sunken ship,
lying slant and open to the sun, has been long enough submerged to
be crusted with barnacles, hydropores, crustacea and the labored
constructions of the microscopic existences and vegetation that fill
the sea. The song of Ariel becomes vivid and realistic in its rich
word-power:

  Full fathom five thy father lies;
    Of his bones are coral made;
  Those are pearls that were his eyes:
    Nothing of him that doth fade
  But doth suffer a sea-change
  Into something rich and strange.

The transfiguration of familiar objects is indeed curious and
wonderful. The hulk, once gaudy with paint and gilding, has come under
the skill of the lapidary and sea-artist. It is crusted with emerald
and flossy mosses, and glimmers with diamond, jacinth, ruby, topaz,
sapphire and gold. Every jewel-shape in leaf, spore, coral or plume,
lying on a greenish crystalline ground, is fringed with a soft
radiance of silver fire, and every point is tipped in minute ciliate
flames of faint steely purple. It is spotted with soft velvety black
wherever a shadow falls, that mingles and varies the wonderful display
of color. It is brilliant, vivid, changeable with the interferences
of light from the fluctuating surface above, which transmogrifies
everything--touches the coarsest objects with its pencil, and they
become radiant and spiritual. A pile of brick, dumped carelessly
on the deck, has become a huge hill of crystal jewelry, lively with
brilliant prismatic radiance. Where the light falls on the steps of
the staircase it shows a ladder of silver crusted with emeralds. The
round-house, spars, masts, every spot where a peak or angle catches
the light, have flushed into liquid, jeweled beauty; and each point, a
prism and mirror, catches, multiplies and reflects the other splendor.
A rainbow, a fleecy mist over the lake, made prismal by the sunlight,
a bunch of sub-aqueous moss, a soap-bubble, are all examples in our
daily experience of that transforming power of water in the display of
color. The prevailing tone is that soft, golden effulgence which,
like the grace of a cheerful and loving heart, blends all into one
harmonious whole.

But observation warns the spectator of the delusive character of all
that splendor of color. He lifts a box from the ooze: he appears
to have uncorked the world. The hold is a bottomless chasm. Every
indentation, every acclivity that casts a shadow, gives the impression
of that soundless depth. The bottom of the sea seems loopholed with
cavities that pierce the solid globe and the dark abysses of space
beyond. The diver is surrounded by pitfalls, real and imaginary. There
is no graduation. The shallow concave of a hand-basin is as the shadow
of the bottomless well.

If the exploration takes place in the delta of a great river, the
light is affected by the various densities of the double refracting
media. At the proper depth one can see clearly the line where these
two meet, clean cut and as sharply defined as the bottom of a green
glass tumbler through the pure water it contains. The salt brine or
gelatinous sea-water sinks weighted to the bottom, and over it flows
the fresh river-water. If the latter is darkened with sediment, it
obscures the silent depths with a heavy, gloomy cloud. In seasons of
freshet this becomes a total darkness.

But even on a bright, sunshiny day, under clear water, the shadow of
any object in the sea is unlike any shade in the upper atmosphere. It
draws a black curtain over everything under it, completely obscuring
it. Nor is this peculiarity lost when the explorer enters the shadow;
but, as one looking into a tunnel from without can see nothing
therein, though the open country beyond is plainly visible, so,
standing in that submarine shadow, all around is dark, though beyond
the sable curtain of the shadow the view is clear. Apply this optical
fact to the ghastly story of a diver's alleged experience in the
cabin of a sunken ship. It is narrated that there was revealed to
his appalled sight the spectacle of the drowned passengers in various
attitudes of alarm or devotion when the dreadful suffocation came.
The story is told with great effect and power, but unless a voltaic
lantern is included in the stage furniture, the ghastly tableaux must
sink into the limbo of incredibilities.

The cabin of a sunken vessel is dark beyond any supernal conception of
darkness. Even a cabin window does not alter this law, though it
may be itself visible, with objects on its surface, as in a child's
magic-lantern. As the rays of light pass through an object flatwise,
like the blade of a knife through the leaves of a book, and may be
admitted through another of like character in the plane of the first,
so a ray of light can penetrate with deflection through air and water.
But becoming polarized, the interposition of a third medium ordinarily
transparent will stop it altogether. Hence the plate-glass window
under water admits no light into the interior of a cabin. The distrust
of sight grows with the diver's experience. The eye brings its habit
of estimating proportion and distance from an attenuated atmosphere
into another and denser medium, and the seer is continually deceived
by the change. He hesitates, halts, and is observant of the pitfalls
about him. A gang-plank slightly above the surface of the deck is
bordered, where its shadow falls, by dismal trenches. There is a range
of hills crossing the deck before him. As he approaches he estimates
the difficulty of the ascent. At its apparent foot he reaches to
clamber the steep sides, and the sierra is still a step beyond his
reach. Drawing still nearer, he prepares to crawl up; his hand touches
the top; it is less than shoulder-high.

But perhaps the strongest illustration of the differing densities
of these two media is furnished by an attempt to drive a nail
under water. By an absolute law such an effort, if guided by sight
independent of calculation, must fail. Habit and experience, tested
in atmospheric light, will control the muscles, and direct the blow
at the very point where the nail-head is not. For this reason the
ingenious expedient of a voltaic lantern under water has proved to
be impracticable. It is not the light alone which is wanted, but that
sweet familiar atmosphere through which we are habituated to look. The
submarine diver learns to rely wholly on the truer sense of touch, and
guided by that he engages in tasks requiring labor and skill with the
easy assurance of a blind man in the crowded street.

The conveyance of sound through the inelastic medium of water is so
difficult that it has been called the world of silence. This is only
comparatively true. The fish has an auditory cavity, which, though
simple in itself, certifies the ordinary conviction of sound, but it
is dull and imperfect; and perhaps all marine creatures have other
means of communication. There is an instance, however, of musical
sounds produced by marine animals, which seems to show an appreciation
of harmony. In one of the lakes of Ceylon, Sir Emerson Tennent heard
soft musical sounds, like the first faint notes of the aeolian harp
or the faint vibrations of a wineglass when its rim is rubbed by a wet
finger. This curious harmony is supposed to be produced by a species
of testaceous mollusk. A similar intonation is heard at times along
the Florida coast.

Interesting as this may be, as indicating an appreciation of that
systematic order in arrangement which in music is harmony, it does not
alter the fact that to the ears of the diver, save the cascade of the
air through the life-hose, it is a sea of silence. No shout or spoken
word reaches him. Even a cannon-shot comes to him dull and muffled,
or if distant it is unheard. But a sharp, quick sound, that appears to
break the air, like ice, into sharp radii, can be heard, especially if
struck against anything on the water. The sound of driving a nail on
the ship above, for example, or a sharp tap on the diving-bell below,
is distinctly and reciprocally audible. Conversation below the surface
by ordinary methods is out of the question, but it can be sustained
by placing the metal helmets of the interlocutors together, thus
providing a medium of conveyance.

The effort to clothe with intelligence subaqueous life must have been
greatly strengthened among primitive nations by the musical sounds
to which I have referred. Those mysterious breathings were associated
with a human will, and gave forebodings from their very sweetness.
Everywhere they are associated with a passionate or pathetic mystery,
and the widely-spread area over which their island home is portrayed
as existing strengthens the conclusion that the strange music of the
sea belongs not to Ceylon or Florida or the Mediterranean alone. It
affords us another instance, by that common enjoyment of sweet sounds,
of the chain of sympathy between all intelligent creatures, and better
prepares us for familiar acquaintance with the beings which people the
sea. We have prejudices and preconceived ideas to get rid of, whose
strength has crystallized into aphorisms. "Cold as a fish" and
"fish-eyed" are ordinary expressions. Then the touch of a fish, cold,
slippery, serpent-like, causes an involuntary shrinking.

But the submarine diver has a new revelation of piscine character and
beauty, and perhaps can better understand the enticings of a siren or
fantastic Lurlei than the classical scholar. In the flush of aureal
light tinging their pearly glimmering armor are the radiant, graceful,
frolicsome inhabitants of the sea. The glutinous or oily exudation
that covers them is a brilliant varnish. Their lustrous colors,
variety of crystalline tints and beautiful markings and spots, attract
the eye of the artist even in the fish-market; but when glowing with
full life, lively, nimble, playful, surely the most graceful living
creatures of earth, air or sea, the soul must be blind indeed that can
look upon them unmoved.

The dull optic seen glazing in the death-throes upon the market-stall,
with coarse vulgar surroundings, becomes, in its native element,
full of intelligence and light. In even the smaller fry the round orb
glitters like a diamond star. One cannot see the fish without seeing
its eye. It is positive, persistent, prevalent, the whole animate
existence expressed in it. As far as the fish can be seen its eye is
visible. The glimmer of scales, the grace of perfect motion, the rare
golden pavilion with its jeweled floor and heavy violet curtains,
complete a scene whose harmony of color, radiance and animal life is
perfect. The minnow and sun-perch are the pages of the tourney on the
cloth of gold. There is a fearless familiarity in these playful
little things, a social, frank intimacy with their novel visitor, that
astonishes while it pleases. They crowd about him, curiously touch
him, and regard all his movements with a frank, lively interest.
Nor are the larger fish shy. The sheeps-head, red and black groper,
sea-trout and other, familiar fish of the sportsman, receive him with
frank bonhommie or fearless curiosity. In their large round beautiful
eyes the diver reads evidence of intelligence and curious wonder that
sometimes startles him with its entirely human expression. There is
a look of interest mixed with curiosity, leading to the irresistible
conclusion of a kindred nature. No faithful hound or pet doe could
express a franker interest in its eyes. Curiosity, which I take to
be expressly destructive of the now-exploded theory of instinct, is
expressed not only by the eye, but by the movements. As in man there
is an eager passion to handle that which is novel, so these curious
denizens of the sea are persistent in their efforts to touch the
diver. An instance of this occurred, attended with disagreeable
results to one of the parties, and that not the fish. The Eve of this
investigation was a large catfish. These fish are the true rovers of
the water. They have a large round black eye, full of intelligence
and fire: their warlike spines and gaff-topsails give them the true
buccaneer build. One of these, while the diver was engaged, incited by
its fearless curiosity, slipped up and touched him with its cold nose.
The man involuntarily threw back his hand, and the soft palm striking
the sharp gaff, it was driven into the flesh. There was an instant's
struggle before the fish wrenched itself loose from the bleeding
member, and then it only swung off a little, staring with its bold
black eyes at the intruder, as if it wished to stay for further
question. It is hard to translate the expression of that look of
curious wonder and surprise without appearing to exaggerate, but the
impression produced was that if the fish did not speak to him, it was
from no lack of intelligent emotions to be expressed in language.

A prolonged stay in one place gave a diver an opportunity to test this
intelligence further, and to observe the trustful familiarity of this
variety of marine life. He was continually surrounded at his work by
a school of gropers, averaging a foot in length. An accident having
identified one of them, he observed it was a daily visitor. After the
first curiosity the gropers apparently settled into the belief that
the novel monster was harmless and clumsy, but useful in assisting
them to their food. The species feed on Crustacea and marine
worms, which shelter under rocks, mosses and sunken objects at the
sea-bottom. In raising anything out of the ooze a dozen of these fish
would thrust their heads into the hollow for their food before the
diver's hand was removed. They would follow him about, eyeing his
motions, dashing in advance or around in sport, and evidently with
a liking for their new-found friend. Pleased with such an unexpected
familiarity, the man would bring them food and feed them from his
hand, as one feeds a flock of chickens. The resemblance, in their
familiarity and some of their ways, to poultry was, in fact, very
striking. As a little chick will sometimes seize a large crumb and
scurry off, followed by the flock, so a fish would sometimes snatch a
morsel and fly, followed by the school. If he dropped it or stopped to
enjoy his _bonne bouche_, his mates would be upon him. Sometimes two
would get the same morsel, and there would be a trial of strength,
accompanied with much flash and glitter of shining scales. But no
matter how called off, their interest and curiosity remained with the
diver. They would return, pushing their noses about him, caressingly
in appearance if not intent, and bob into the treasures of worm and
shellfish his labor exposed. He became convinced that they were
sportive, indulging in dash and play for the fun of it, rather than
for any grosser object to be attained.

This curious intimacy was continued for weeks: the fish, unless driven
away by some rover of prey of their kind, were in regular attendance
during his hours of work. Perhaps the solitude and silence of that
curious submarine world strengthened the impression of recognition
and intimacy, but by every criterion we usually accept in terrestrial
creation these little creatures had an interest and a friendly feeling
for one who furnished them food, and who was always careful to avoid
injuring them or giving them any unnecessary alarm. He could not,
of course, take up a fish in his hand, any more than a chicken will
submit to handling; but as to the comparative tameness of the two,
the fish is more approachable than the chicken. That they knew and
expected the diver at the usual hour was a conclusion impossible
to deny, as also that they grew into familiarity with him, and were
actuated by an intelligent recognition of his service to them. It
would be hard to convince this gentleman that a school of fish cannot
be as readily and completely tamed as a flock of chickens.

Why not? The fear of man is no instinctive feeling in the invertebrate
creation. The pioneer who penetrates into the uninhabited wilds of
our Western frontier finds bird and beast fearless and familiar. Man's
cruelty is a lesson of experience. The timid and fearful of the lower
creation belong to creatures of prey. The shark, for example, is as
cowardly as the wolf.

I thought to speak of other marine creations with which the diver
grows acquainted, finding in them only a repetition of the same degree
of life he has seen in the upper world. But let it be enough to state
the conclusion--as yet only an impression, and perhaps never to be
more--that in marine existence there is to be found the counterpart
always of some animate existence on earth, invertebrate or radiate,
in corresponding animals or insects, between whose habits and modes
of existence strong analogies are found. The shrimps that hang in
clusters on your hand under the water are but winged insects of the
air in another frame that have annoyed you on the land.

Let me dismiss the subject with the brief account of a diver caught in
a trap.

In the passion of blind destruction that followed and attended the
breaking out of hostilities between the North and the South, as a
child breaks his rival's playthings, the barbarism of war destroyed
the useful improvements of civilization. Among the things destroyed by
this iconoclastic fury was the valuable dry-dock in Pensacola Bay. It
was burned to the water's edge, and sunk. A company was subsequently
organized to rescue the wreck, and in the course of the submarine
labor occurred the incident to which I refer.

The dry-dock was built in compartments, to ensure it against sinking,
but the ingenuity which was to keep it above water now served
effectually to keep it down. Each one of these small water-tight
compartments held the vessel fast to the bottom, as Gulliver was bound
by innumerable threads to the ground of Lilliput. It was necessary
to break severally into the lower side of each of these chambers, and
allow the water to flow evenly in all. The interior of the hull was
checkered by these boxes. Huge beams and cross-ties intersected
each other at right angles, forming the frame for this honeycombed
interior, pigeon-holed like a merchant's desk. It was necessary to
tear off the skin and penetrate from one to the other in order to
effect this.

It was a difficult and tedious job under water. The net of
intersecting beams lay so close together that the passage between was
exceedingly narrow and compressed, barely admitting the diver's
body. The pens, so framed by intersecting beams, were narrowed and
straitened, embarrassing attempts at labor in them, which the cold,
slippery, serpent-like touch of the sea-water was not likely to make
pleasanter. It folded the shuddering body in its coils, and a most
ancient and fish-like smell did not improve the situation. The toil
was multiplied by the innumerable pigeon-holes, as if they fitted
into one another like a Chinese puzzle, with the unlucky diver in the
middle box. It was a nightmare of the sea, the furniture of a dream
solidified in woody fibre.

Into one of these crowding holes the diver crawled. There was the
tedious work of tearing off the casing to occupy an hour or more, and
when it was accomplished he endeavored to back out of his situation.
He was stopped fast and tight in his regression. The arrangement of
the armor about the head and shoulders, making a cone whose apex was
the helmet, prevented his exit. It was like the barb of a harpoon,
and caught him fast in the wood. Such a danger is not sudden in its
revelation. There is at first only a feeling of impatience at the
embarrassment, a disposition to "tear things." In vain attempts at
doubling and other gymnastic feats the diver wasted several hours,
until his companions above became alarmed at the delay. They renewed
and increased their labors at the force-pump, and the impetuous
torrent came surging about the diver's ears. It served to complete
his danger. It sprung the trap in which he lay enclosed. The inflated
armor swelled and filled up the crowded spaces. It stiffened out the
casing of the helmet to equal the burden of fifty pounds to the square
inch, and made it as hard as iron. He was caught like the gluttonous
fox. The bulky volume of included air made exit impossible. It was no
longer a labyrinth as before, where freedom of motion incited courage:
he was in the fetters of wind and water, bound fast to the floor of
his dungeon den. He signaled for the pump to stop. It was the only
alternative. He might die without that life-giving air, but he would
certainly die if its volume was not reduced. The cock at the back
of the helmet for discharging the vessel was out of his reach. The
invention never contemplated a case in which the diver would perish
from the presence of air.

As the armor worn was made tight at the sleeves with elastic
wristbands, his remedy was to insert his fingers under it, and slowly
and tediously allow the bubbling air to escape. In this he persevered
steadily, encouraged by the prospect of escape. The way was long and
difficult, but release certain with the reduction of that huge bulk.

But a new and subtler danger attacked him--the very wit of Nature
brought to bear upon his force and ingenuity. It was as if the
mysterious sirens of the sea saw in that intellectual force the real
strength of their prisoner, and sought to steal it from him while they
lulled him to indifference. Inhaling and reinhaling the reduced volume
of air, it became carbonized and foul, not with the warning of sudden
oppression, but

  Sly as April melts to May,
  And May slips into June.

The senses, intoxicated by the new companion sent them by the lungs,
began to sport with it, as ignorant children with a loaded shell,
forgetful of duty and the critical condition of the man. They began to
wander in vagaries and delusions. A soft chime of distant bells rang
in his ears with the sweet sleepy service of a Sabbath afternoon; the
sound of hymns and the organ mingled with the melody and the chant of
the sirens of the sea.

  There is sweet music here that softer falls
    Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
  Or night-dew on still waters, between walls
    Of shadowy granite in a gleaming pass--
  Music that gentler on the spirit lies
  Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.
  Here are cool mosses deep,
  And through the moss the ivies creep,
  And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
  And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

The sensuous beauty, the infinite luxury of repose sung by the poet,
filled and steeped his senses. The desire to sleep was intoxicating,
delicious, irresistible; and with it ran delicious, restful thrills
through all his limbs, the narcotism of the blood. It was partly,
no doubt, the effect of inhaling that pernicious air; partly
that hibernation of the bear which in the freezing man precedes
dissolution; and possibly more than that, something more than any mere
physical cause--life perhaps preparing to lay this tired body down,
its future usefulness destroyed.

This delicious enervation had to be constantly resisted and dominated
by a superior will. One more strenuous effort to relieve that
straitened garrison, to release that imprisoned and fettered body,
and then, if that failed, an unconditional surrender to the armies of
eternal steep. But it did not fail. That constant, persevering tugging
of the fingers at the wristbands, pursued mechanically in that strange
condition of pleasing stupor, had reduced the exaggerated distensions
of the bulbous head-gear. A stout, energetic push set the diver free,
and he was drawn to the surface dazed, drowsy, and only half conscious
of the peril undergone. But with the rush of fresh, untainted air to
the lungs came an emotion of gratitude to the Giver of life and the
full consciousness of escape.

And this sums up my sketch illustrative of the peculiar character of
marine life, and the hazards of submarine adventure, hitherto known to
few, for--well, for _divers_ reasons.

WILL WALLACE HARNEY.




CONFIDENTIAL.


My ear has ever been considered public property for private usage. I
cannot call to mind the time when I was not somebody's confidante,
the business beginning as far back as the winter I ran down to Aunt
Rally's to receive my birthday-party of sweet or bitter sixteen, as
will appear.

Ralph Romer was the first to spread the news of my arrival in the
village among the girls of my own age. Ralph Romer it was who had
braved the dangers of "brier and brake" to find the bright holly
berries with which Aunt Hally had decorated the cheery little parlor
for the occasion; and it was with Ralph Romer I danced the oftenest on
that famous night.

"Wouldn't I just step out on the porch a short little minute," he
whispered as he came around in the rear of Aunt Hally to bid me
good-night, ending the whisper, according to the style of all
boy-lovers, "I've got something to tell you."

The door stood open and conveniently near, and I suppose I wanted to
see how high the snow had drifted since dark; and, a better reason
still, I couldn't afford to let Ralph take my hand off with him; and
so I had to go out on the porch just long enough to get it back,
while he said: "Ettie Moore says she loves me, and we are going to
correspond when I go back to college; and as you know all lovers
and their sweethearts must have a confidante to smuggle letters and
valentines across the lines, we have both chosen you for ours. Oh, I
was so afraid you wouldn't come!"

I found the snow had drifted--well, I don't believe I knew how many
inches.

I have not promised a recital of all my auricular experiences. Enough
to say, that in time I settled down into the conviction that it was
my special mission to be the receptacle of other people's secrets; and
they seemed determined to convince me that they thought so too.

So, when Mr. Tennent Tremont happened along and became a candidate for
auricular favors, like a tradesman who has gained the self-sustaining
ground which has made him indifferent as to custom-seeking, I could
afford to be entirely independent about giving a previous promise to
keep his secrets for him; and so, dear reader, they are as much yours
as mine.

When my brother introduced him into our family circle we took him
to be a Northern college-chum, met with during his
just-returned-from-trip to Washington; for it was in those days when
Southern hospitality was as much appreciated as it was liberally
bestowed. It was a good time for a modest stranger to come among new
faces. We were in the flutter and bustle which a wedding in the family
makes, and it gave him an opportunity to get used to us, and left us
none to observe him unpleasantly much.

But when the wedding was over, and I had made up my week of lost
sleep, and he and my brother had kept themselves out of the way on a
camp-hunt, for my mother to do up her week of house-cleaning,--it is
here that our story proper begins.

As we were leaving the breakfast-table one morning my brother caught
my dress-sleeve, and, dropping in the rear of Mr. Tennent Tremont,
allowed him to find the verandah: "Really, sis, I don't think you are
doing the clever thing, quite."

"How?"

"Why, in not helping me to entertain my friend."

"Getting tired of him?"

"No, he isn't one of that kind; but, to tell the truth, I am too busy
just now to give him the whole of my time."

"Too busy turning your own cakes. Yes, I see."

"Which is no more than my sister is doing; which reminds me to say
that J.B. will call this morning, he desired me to inform you. But,
dear sis, we must not be so absorbed in our own love-matters as to
give my friend only a moiety of our attention, for, poor fellow! he
has one of his own."

"So I am to bore him for the sake of relieving you? Is that my role?"

"Now stop! He simply wants a lady confidante."

I broke away from my brother's hold, and ran up to my room to see if
all was right for my expected caller, giving my right ear a pull, by
way of saying to that victimized organ, "You are needed."

And what think you I did next? Got out my embroidery-material bag, and
put it in order for action at a moment's warning. I was prepared for a
reasonable amount of martyrdom pertaining to my profession, but I was
always an economist of time, and not another unemployed hour would I
yield to the selfish demands of my forthcoming job.

The next day was one of November drizzle, the house confinement of
which, my adroit brother declared, could only be mitigated by my
presence in the sitting-room until the improved state of the weather
allowed their escape from it.

I was in the habit of appropriating such weather to my piano, and I
had not touched it for a month. Whether Mr. Tennent Tremont's nerves
were in a sound state or not, I was determined to practice until
twelve. But when he came in from the library and assisted me in
opening the instrument, I was obliged to ask him what he would have.
They were my first direct words to him, our three weeks' guest.

"Oh, 'Summer Night' is a favorite," he said.

I gave him the song, and then executed the long variations; then,
dropping my tired hands in my lap, inquired whether he liked vocal or
instrumental best.

"Not any more of either, just now, thanking you kindly for what you
have given me," he said. "Have you ever been a confidante, Miss ----?"

"That is my vocation, Mr. Tremont," I replied, grasping my bag.

"Which? your embroidery or--"

"Both combined," I tried to say pleasantly, "as on this occasion. I am
at Mr. Tremont's service;" and I threaded my tapestry-needle.

Without a prefatory word he began: "Years before your young heart was
awakened to 'the sweetest joy, the wildest woe,' I loved."

"And single yet!" I exclaimed as I let my hands drop and glanced up
at his brown hair, to see if all those years had left their silver
footprints there.

"And single yet," he repeated slowly, "and still worshiping at the
same shrine; and to no other will I ever bow until this head is
silvered o'er, and this strong arm palsied with the infirmities of
age--if a long life is indeed to be mine."

His ardor startled me, but I managed to stitch away composedly, and he
went on:

"I know it is in the highest degree selfish to inflict on you a
recital of what may not interest you; but I have tried to keep my
secret buried from human eyes, from all but _hers_, and you are now
the only being on earth to whom I have ever _said_, 'I love.' As
intimate as I have been with your brother, if he knows it, it is by
his penetration, for no word of acknowledgment has ever passed my lips
before. May I go on?" he asked.

"Oh yes," I answered, taken by surprise. "I suppose so. It is a relief
to talk, and to listen, I have told you, is my vocation."

"How long can you listen?" he questioned in delighted eagerness.

I fancied he would have to be allowanced, and I held up my paper
pattern before me: "This bouquet of flowers is to be transferred.
I will give you all the time it will take to do it. Remember, the
catastrophe must be reached by that time. Some one else will probably
want my ear."

"But," said he, "listening is not the only duty of a confidante: you
must aid me by your counsel. Only a woman may say how a woman may be
won."

"You have my sympathies, Mr. Tremont, on the score of your being a
very dear brother's friend. I know nothing of her--next to nothing of
you. I can neither counsel nor aid you."

"That brother is familiar with every page of my outward life-history.
It was in our family he spent his vacation, while you and your father
were traveling in Europe."

"Well, then, that will do about yourself. Now about her?"

The door-bell was rung: the waiter announced--well, my obliging
brother has already given enough of his name--"Mr. J.B." My confessor
withdrew.

The next morning, as I was bringing the freshened flower-vases into
the sitting-room, he brought me my bag, saying, "Now about her."

I opened the piano, repeated his favorite, kept my seat and cultivated
my roses vigorously.

"Miss ----," he began, "I would not knowingly give pain to a human
creature. Yesterday, when your visitor found me by your side, I
observed a frown on his face. I detest obtrusiveness, but if there is
anything in the relation in which you stand to each other which will
make my attentions objectionable to either of you, they shall cease
this moment. You are at perfect liberty to repeat to him every word I
have said to you."

"I thank you sincerely for your considerateness," I said. "I am under
no obligations of the kind to him or any other gentleman."

He introduced his topic by saying: "I am glad that I shall have to
say little more of myself. Oh, what a strange joy it is to be able to
speak unreservedly of her, and of the long pent-up hopes and fears
of the past years! And now, if you will assist me in interpreting
her conduct toward me--if you will inspire me with even faint hope
of success--if you will advise me as you would a brother how to
proceed,--gratitude will be too weak a word for my feeling toward you
for the remainder of my life."

"I have not yet sufficient light on her part of the affair to aid you
by advice," I answered. "In these slowly-developing love-affairs
there is usually but one great hindering cause. Do you know," I said,
laughing as much as I dared, looking into his woebegone face, "that
you have not told me what has passed between you?"

His moment or two of death silence made me almost regret my last
words.

"In the first of our acquaintance I was ever tortured by her
indifference. My first attentions were quietly received, never
encouraged. Then came the still more torturing fear--agony let me call
it--lest she was pre-engaged. Thank God! that burden was lifted from
my poor heart, but only, it seemed, to make room for the very one of
all in the catalogue of causes by which a lover's hope dies beyond the
possibility of a resurrection. It is the rock--no, I fear the
placid waters of friendship into which my freighted bark is now
drifting--which may lie between it and the bright isle of love, the
safe harbor" (he shuddered), "not the blissful possession."

Reader, the roses were not growing under my needle: my sympathies were
at last fully enlisted.

"You have well said," I answered. "Friendship is the 'nine notch'
in which a lover makes 'no count' in the game of hearts. But steer
bravely past these dark gulfs of despair. Have you ever had recourse
to jealousy in your desperation?" I queried.

"I scorn such a base ally. Your brother can tell you I am here partly
because I would avoid increasing an affection in another which I
cannot return."

"Does she know of that?" I asked, not at all prepared in my own mind
to yield the potency of the ally in my sincere desire to aid him by
this test of a woman's affection.

"Yes: I have no reason, however, for thinking that the fact has raised
her estimate of the article," he said, making a poor attempt to smile.

I felt ashamed of my suggestion, and said quickly, "You correspond,
of course: how are her letters?" Now I was sure of my safest clue in
finding her out.

"It was through the medium of her letters that I first obtained my
knowledge of her mind, her temperament, her disposition, her admirable
domestic virtues; for they were written without reserve. They excited
my highest admiration; they stimulated my desire to know more of her;
but they contain no word of love for me."

His want of boldness almost excited my contempt. My skill was baffled
on every side, and, not caring much to conceal my impatience, I said,
"You have asked me to advise you as I would my brother. She is cold
and selfish: give her up."

"Give her up!" he said with measured and emphatic slowness--"give
her up, when I have sought her beneath every clime on which the sun
shines--not for months, but for years? Give her up, when her presence
gives me all I have ever known of happiness? Give her up!" and he
leaned his head on the back of his chair and closed his eyes.

I had imagined him gifted with wonderful self-control, but when I
looked up from my work all color had faded from his cheeks, the lips
seemed ready to yield the little blood left there by the clinch of the
white-teeth upon them, while every muscle of the face quivered with
spasmodic effort to control emotion. When the eyes were opened and
fixed on the ceiling, I saw no trace in them of anger, revenge, or
even of wounded pride. They were full of tears, ready to gush in one
last flood-tide of feeling over a subdued, chastened, but breaking
heart.

It was very evident that my treatment was not adding much comfort to
my patient, however salutary it might prove in the end. I knew of his
intention to leave the next day: there was little time left me to aid
him, and I had come to regard the unknown woman's mysterious nature or
strategic warfare as pitted against my superior penetration. That
he might be victorious she must be vanquished. _She_ was, then, my
antagonist.

The deepening twilight was producing chilliness. I flooded the room
with brilliant light, stirred the grate into glowing warmth, and
invited him to a seat near the fire.

"You will not leave me, will you? This may be--_it will be_--my last
demand on you as a confidante. How is the bouquet progressing?" he
asked.

"See," I said, holding my embroidery up before me: "we must hurry. I
have but one more tendril to add."

"Tendrils are clinging things, like hope, are they not?" he said
pensively.

But sentimentalizing was not the business of the hour, and I intimated
as much to him. "Yes," I replied, "but hope must now give place to
effort. I see you are not going to take my 'give-her-up' advice."

"No--only from her who has the right to give it."

I now considered my patient out of danger.

"Then why do you torture yourself longer with doubts? Perhaps your
irresolution has caused a want of confidence in the strength of
your affection. At least give her an opportunity to define her true
position toward you. Beard the lions of indifference and friendship in
their dens, and do not yield to unmanly cowardice. Strange that I have
given you the counsel last which should have been given first! But do
not, I beseech you, lose any time in seeking her. Assure her of your
long and unwavering devotion. Constancy is the most valued word in a
true woman's vocabulary. You have staked too much happiness to lose:
you _must_ win."

"And if I lose," he said--holding up something before him which I
took to be a picture, though it was in the shape of a heart--"and if
I lose, then perish all of earth to me. But leave me only this, and
should I hold you thus, and gaze on what I have first and last and
only loved until this perishable material on which I have placed you
turn to dust, still will you be graven on a heart whose deathless love
can know no death; for a thing so holy as the love I bear you was not
made to die."

My work--now my completed work--dropped beneath my fingers, for the
last stitch was taken.

If I could not prevent his self-torture, he should not, at least,
torture me longer; and snatching the thing from his grasp, I exclaimed
as I closed my hands over it, "Now, before I return it, you must, you
_shall_, promise me that you will take the last advice I gave you; or
will you allow me to look at it, and then unseal the silent lips
and give you the prophetic little 'yes' or 'no' which a professed
physiognomist like your confidante can always read in the eye?"

"I would rather you did the last," he said; and I rose, leaned my
elbow on the corner of the mantel nearest the gaslight, rested my head
on my empty hand, so as to shade my eyes from the intensity of the
brilliant burner near me, and with the awe creeping over me with
which the old astrologers read the horoscope of the midnight stars,
I looked, and saw--only a wonderfully faithful copy of the portrait
hanging just over me, of which Mr. Tennent Tremont's confidante was
the original. I threw it from me, and burst into tears. He stood quite
near me. I thought I hated him, but my obtuse, blundering, idiotic
self more than him. I waved my hand in token either of his silence or
withdrawal, for in all my life long I, with a whole dictionary in
my mind of abusive epithets, was never more at a loss for a word. My
token was unheeded.

He only murmured softly,

  I had never seen thee weeping:
  I cannot leave thee now.

When you snatched my picture from me a moment ago I saw a glistening
tear of sympathy in your eye; but what are these?"

"So cruel! so ungenerous! so unfair!" I said, still pressing my hands
tightly over my eyes. "How can I ever forgive you?"

With softer murmur than the last he repeated the words,

  "'Tis sweet to let the pardoned in."

"Astounding presumption that!" I said, now giving him the benefit of
my full gaze--"to speak of pardon before making a confession of
your guilt! But before I give you time even for that, the remaining
mysteries which still hang around your tale of woe shall be cleared
up. Please to inform the court how the original of your purloined
sketch could have been the object of years of devotion, when it has
been only four weeks to-day since you laid your mortal eyes on her?"

"Ah! you may well say mortal; but you know the soul too has its visual
organs. I saw and loved and worshiped my ideal in those years, and
sought her too--how unceasingly!--and I said,

  Only for the real will I with the ideal part:
  Another shall not even tempt my heart.

When I saw her just four weeks since, I knew her,

  And my heart responded as, with unseen wings,
  An angel touched its unswept strings,
      And whispers in its song,
      Where hast thou strayed so long?"

But the avenging demon of curiosity was not to be exorcised by
sentimental evasion: "Those letters, sir, of which you spoke, _they_
must have been of a real, tangible form--not a part of the mythical
phantasmagoria of your idealistic vision."

He laughed as a light-hearted child would, but knitted his brow with
a perplexed air as he said, "Why don't the British government send
a woman to find the source of the Nile? I must thank your
unsophisticated brother's pride in his sister's epistolary
accomplishments for my privilege of perusal. What next?"

I thought a moment. Before, I had fifty other queries to propound, but
now as I looked into the glowing anthracite before me which gave us
those pleasant Reveries, they very naturally all resolved themselves
into explained mysteries without his aid.

He insists that the "prophetic little yes or no" never came.

Upon my honor, dear reader, as a confidante, I still think it the
most unfair procedure which ever "disgraced the annals of civilized
warfare;" but I shall have abundant opportunity for revenge, for we
are to make the journey of life together.




GLIMPSES OF JOHN CHINAMAN.


When John Marshall picked up the first golden nugget in California,
a call was sounded for the gathering of an immense gold-seeking
army made up of many nationalities; and among the rest China sent a
battalion some fifty thousand strong.

John Chinaman has remained with us ever since, despised and abused,
being neither a co-worshiper nor a co-sympathizer in aught save
the getting of gold. In dress, custom and language his is still a
nationality as distinct from ours as are the waters of the Gulf Stream
from those of the ocean.

It is possible that this may be but the second migration of Tartars to
the American shore. It is possible that the North American Indian and
the Chinaman may be identical in origin and race. Close observers find
among the aboriginal tribes resident far up on the north-west American
coast peculiar habits and customs, having closely-allied types among
the Chinese. The features of the Aleuts, the natives of the Aleutian
Islands, are said to approximate closely to those of the Mongolians.
The unvarying long black hair, variously-shaded brown skin, beardless
face and shaven head are points, natural and artificial, common to
the Indian and Mongolian. There is a hint of common custom between the
Indian scalplock and Chinese cue.

"John" has been a thorough gleaner of the mines. The "superior race"
allowed him to make no valuable discoveries. He could buy their
half-worked-out placers. The "river-bed" they sold him when its
chances of yielding were deemed desperate. When the golden fruitage
of the banks was reduced to a dollar per day, they became "China
diggings." But wherever "John" settled he worked steadily, patiently
and systematically, no matter whether his ten or twelve hours' labor
brought fifty cents or fifty dollars; for his industry is of an
untiring mechanical character. In the earlier and flusher days of
California's gold-harvest the white man worked spasmodically. He
was ever leaving the five-dollar diggings in hand for the fifty- or
hundred-dollar-per-day claims afar off in some imaginary bush. These
golden rumors were always on the wing. The country was but half
explored, and many localities were rich in mystery. The white vanguard
pushed north, south and east, frequently enduring privation and
suffering. "John," in comparative comfort, trotted patiently after,
carrying his snugly made-up bundle of provisions and blankets at one
end of a bamboo pole, his pick, shovel, pan and rocker at the other,
to work over the leavings. The leavings sometimes turned out more gold
than "new ground," much to the chagrin of the impatient Caucasian. But
John, according to his own testimony, never owned a rich claim. Ask
him how much it yielded per day, and he would tell you, "sometimes
four, sometimes six bittee" (four or six shillings). He had many
inducements for prevarication. Nearly every white man's hand was
against him. If he found a bit of rich ground, "jumpers" were ready to
drive him from it: Mexicans waylaid him and robbed him of his dust. In
remote localities he enclosed his camp by strong stockades: even these
were sometimes forced and carried at night by bands of desperadoes.
Lastly came the foreign miner's tax-collector, with his demand of four
dollars monthly per man for the privilege of digging gold. There
were hundreds and thousands of other foreign laborers in the
mines--English, German, French, Italian and Portuguese--but they paid
little or none of this tax, for they might soon be entitled to a vote,
and the tax-collector was appointed by the sheriff of the county, and
the sheriff, like other officials, craved a re-election. But John was
never to be a voter, and so he shouldered the whole of this load, and
when he could not pay, the official beat him and took away his tools.
John often fought this persecutor by strategy. In localities where no
white men would betray him he signalized his coming from afar. From
the crags of Red Mountain on the Tuolumne River I have often seen the
white flag waved as the dreaded collector came down the steep trail
to collect his monthly dues. That signal or a puff of smoke told the
Chinese for miles along the river-valley to conceal themselves from
the "license-man." Rockers, picks and shovels were hastily thrust into
clumps of chapparal, and their owners clambered up the hillsides
into artificial caves or leafy coverts. Out of companies of fifty
the collector finds but twenty men at work. These pay their tax, the
official rides on down the river, the hidden thirty Mongolians emerge
from cover; and more than once has a keen collector "doubled on them"
by coming back unexpectedly and detecting the entire gang on their
claim.

John has been invaluable to the California demagogue, furnishing
for him a sop of hatred and prejudice to throw before "enlightened
constituencies." It needs but to mention the "filthy Chinaman" to
provoke an angry roar from the mass-meeting. Yet the Chinaman is
not entirely filthy. He washes his entire person every day when
practicable; he loves clean clothes; his kitchen-utensils will bear
inspection. When the smallpox raged so severely in San Francisco a few
years since, there were very few deaths among his race. But John
_is_ not nice about his house. He seems to have none of our ideas
concerning home comfort. Smoke has no terror for him; soap he keeps
entirely for his clothes and person; floor-and wall-washing are things
never hinted at; and the refuse of his table is scarcely thrown out
of doors. Privacy is not one of his luxuries--he wants a house full:
where there is room for a bunk, there is room for a man. An anthill,
a beehive, a rabbit-warren are his models of domestic comfort: what is
stinted room for two Americans is spaciousness for a dozen Chinese.
Go into one of their cabins at night, and you are in an oven full of
opium- and lamp-smoke. Recumbent forms are dimly seen lying on bunks
above and below. The chattering is incessant. Stay there ten minutes,
and as your eye becomes accustomed to the smoke you will dimly see
blue bundles lying on shelves aloft. Anon the bundles stir, talk and
puff smoke. Above is a loft six feet square: a ladder brings it in
communication with the ground floor. Mongolians are ever coming down,
but the gabble of tongues above shows that a host is still left. Like
an omnibus, a Chinese house is never full. Nor is it ever quiet. At
all hours of the night may be heard their talk and the clatter of
their wooden shoes. A Chinaman does not retire like an American,
intending to make a serious business of his night's sleeping. He
merely "lops down" half dressed, and is ready to arise at the least
call of business or pleasure.

While at work in his claim his fire is always kindled near by, and
over it a tea-pot. This is his beverage every half hour. His tea must
be hot, strong and without milk or sugar. He also consumes a terrible
mixture sold him by white traders, called indiscriminately brandy, gin
or whisky, yet an intoxicated Chinaman is the rarest of rare sights.
Rice he can cook elegantly, every grain being steamed to its utmost
degree of distension. Soup he makes of no other meat than pork. The
poorest among his hordes must have a chicken or duck for his holiday.
He eats it merely parboiled. He will eat dog also, providing it is not
long past maturity.

The Chinese grocery-stores are museums to the American. There are
strange dried roots, strange dried fish, strange dried land and marine
plants, ducks and chickens, split, pressed thin and smoked; dried
shellfish; cakes newly made, yellow, glutinous and fatty, stamped with
tea-box characters; and great earthen jars filled with rottenness. I
speak correctly if perhaps too forcibly, for when those imposing jars
are opened to serve a customer with some manner of vegetable cut in
long strips, the native-born American finds it expedient to hold
his nose. American storekeepers in the mines deal largely in Chinese
goods. They know the Mongolian names of the articles inquired for,
but of their character, their composition, how they are cooked or
how eaten, they can give no information. It is heathenish "truck," by
whose sale they make a profit. Only that and nothing more.

A Chinese miner's house is generally a conglomeration of old boards,
mats, brush, canvas and stones. Rusty sheets of tin sometimes help to
form the edifice. Anything lying about loose in the neighborhood is
certain in time to form a part of the Mongolian mansion.

When the white man abandons mining-ground he often leaves behind very
serviceable frame houses. John comes along to glean the gold left by
the Caucasian. He builds a cluster of shapeless huts. The deserted
white man's house gradually disappears. A clapboard is gone, and then
another, and finally all. The skeleton of the frame remains: months
pass away; piece by piece the joists disappear; some morning they are
found tumbled in a heap, and at last nothing is left save the cellar
and chimneys. Meantime, John's clusters of huts swell their rude
proportions, but you must examine them narrowly to detect any traces
of your vanished house, for he revels in smoke, and everything about
him is soon colored to a hue much resembling his own brownish-yellow
countenance. Thus he picks the domiciliary skeleton bare, and then
carries off the bones. He is a quiet but skillful plunderer. John No.
1 on his way home from his mining-claim rips off a board; John No.
2 next day drags it a few yards from the house. John No. 3 a week
afterward drags it home. In this manner the dissolution of your
house is protracted for months. In this manner he distributes the
responsibility of the theft over his entire community. I have seen a
large boarding-house disappear in this way, and when the owner, after
a year's absence, revisited the spot to look after his property, he
found his real estate reduced to a cellar.

John himself is a sort of museum in his character and habits. We must
be pardoned for giving details of these, mingled promiscuously,
rather after the museum style. His New Year comes in February. For
the Chinaman of limited means it lasts a week, for the wealthy it may
endure three. His consumption of fire-crackers during that period is
immense. He burns strings a yard in length suspended from poles over
his balconies. The uproar and sputtering consequent on this festivity
in the Chinese quarter at San Francisco is tremendous. The city
authorities limit this Celestial Pandemonium to a week.

He does not forsake the amusement of kite-flying even when arrived at
maturity. His artistic imitations of birds and dragons float over
our housetops. To these are often affixed contrivances for producing
hollow, mournful, buzzing sounds, mystifying whole neighborhoods.
His game of shuttlecock is to keep a cork, one end being stuck with
feathers, flying in the air as long as possible, the impelling member
being the foot, the players standing in a circle and numbering from
four to twenty. Some show great dexterity in kicking with the heel.
His vocal music to our ears seems a monotonous caterwaul. His violin
has but one string: his execution is merely a modified species of
saw-filing.

He loves to gamble, especially in lotteries. He is a diligent student
of his own comfort. Traveling on foot during a hot day, he protects
himself with an umbrella and refreshes himself with a fan. In place of
prosaic signs on his store-fronts, he often inscribes quotations from
his favorite authors.

He is a lover of flowers. His balconies and window-sills are often
thickly packed with shrubs and creepers in pots. He is not a speedy
and taciturn eater. His tea-table talks are full of noisy jollity, and
are often prolonged far into the night.

He is a lover of the drama. A single play sometimes requires months
for representation, being, like a serial story, "continued" night
after night. He never dances. There is no melody in the Mongolian
foot. Dancing he regards as a species of Caucasian insanity.

To make an oath binding he must swear by the head of a cock cut off
before him in open court. Chinese testimony is not admissible in
American courts. It is a legal California axiom that a Chinaman
cannot speak the truth. But cases have occurred wherein, he being an
eye-witness, the desire to hear what he _might_ tell as to what he had
seen has proved stronger than the prejudice against him; and the more
effectually to clinch the chances of his telling the truth, the above,
his national form of oath, has been resorted to. He has among us some
secret government of his own. Before his secret tribunals more than
one Mongolian has been hurried in Star-Chamber fashion, and never
seen afterward. The nature of the offences thus visited by secret and
bloody punishment is scarcely known to Americans. He has two chief
deities--a god and a devil. Most of his prayers are offered to his
devil. His god, he says, being good and well-disposed, it is not
necessary to propitiate him. But his devil is ugly, and must be won
over by offering and petition. Once a year, wherever collected in any
number, he builds a flimsy sort of temple, decorates it with ornaments
of tinsel, lays piles of fruit, meats and sugared delicacies on an
altar, keeps up night and day a steady crash of gongs, and installs
therein some great, uncouth wooden idols. When this period of worship
is over the "josh-house" disappears, and the idols are unceremoniously
stowed away among other useless lumber.

He shaves with an instrument resembling a butcher's cleaver in
miniature. Nature generally denies him beard, so he shaves what a
sailor would term the fore and after part of his head. He reaps his
hirsute crop dry, using no lather. His cue is pieced out by silken
braid, so interwoven as gradually to taper into a slim tassel,
something like a Missouri mule-driver's "black snake" whip-lash. To
lose this cue is to lose caste and standing among his fellows. No
misfortune for him can be greater.

Coarse cowhide boots are the only articles of American wear that he
favors. He inclines to buy the largest sizes, thinking he thereby gets
the most for his money, and when his No. 7 feet wobble and chafe in
No. 12 boots he complains that they "fit too much."

He cultivates the vegetables of his native land in California. They
are curiosities like himself. One resembles our string-bean, but is
circular in shape and from two to three feet in length. It is not
in the least stringy, breaks off short and crisp, boils tender very
quickly and affords excellent eating. He is a very careful cultivator,
and will spend hours picking off dead leaves and insects from the
young plants. When he finds a dead cat, rat, dog or chicken, he throws
it into a small vat of water, allows it to decompose, and sprinkles
the liquid fertilizer thus obtained over his plantation. Watermelon
and pumpkin seeds are for him dessert delicacies. He consumes his
garden products about half cooked in an American culinary point of
view, merely wilting them by an immersion in boiling water.

There are about fifteen English words to be learned by a Chinaman on
arriving in California, and no more. With these he expresses all his
wants, and with this limited stock you must learn to convey all that
is needful to him. The practice thus forced upon one in employing
a Chinese servant is useful in preventing a circumlocutory habit of
speech. Many of our letters the Mongolian mouth has no capacity for
sounding. _R_ he invariably sounds like _l_, so that the word "rice"
he pronounces "lice"--a bit of information which may prevent an
unpleasant apprehension when you come to employ a Chinese cook. He
rejects the English personal pronoun I, and uses the possessive "my"
in its place; thus, "My go home," in place of "I go home."

When he buries a countryman he throws from the hearse into the
air handfuls of brown tissue-paper slips, punctured with Chinese
characters. Sometimes, at his burial-processions, he gives a small
piece of money to every person met on the road. Over the grave he
beats gongs and sets off packs of fire-crackers. On it he leaves
cooked meats, drink, delicacies and lighted wax tapers. Eventually the
bones are disinterred and shipped to his native land. In the remotest
mining-districts of California are found Chinese graves thus opened
and emptied of their inmates. I have in one instance seen him, so
far as he was permitted, render some of these funeral honors to an
American. The deceased had gained this honor by treating the Chinese
as though they were partners in our common humanity. "Missa Tom," as
he was termed by them, they knew they could trust. He acquired among
them a reputation as the one righteous American in their California
Gomorrah. Chinamen would come to him from distant localities, that
he might overlook their bills of sale and other documents used in
business intercourse with the white man. Their need of such, an honest
adviser was great. The descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers often took
advantage of their ignorance of the English language, written or
spoken. "Missa Tom" suddenly died. I had occasion to visit his farm a
few days after his death, and on the first night of my stay there saw
the array of meats, fruit, wine and burning tapers on a table in front
of the house, which his Chinese friends told me was intended as an
offering to "Missa Tom's" spirit.

We will dive for a moment into a Chinese wash-cellar. "John" does
three-fourths of the washing of California. His lavatories are on
every street. "Hip Tee, Washing and Ironing," says the sign, evidently
the first production of an amateur in lettering. Two doors above is
the establishment of Tong Wash--two below, that of Hi Sing. Hip Tee
and five assistants are busy ironing. The odor is a trinity of steam,
damp clothes and opium. More Mongolian tongues are heard from smoky
recesses in the rear. As we enter, Hip Tee is blowing a shower of
moisture from his mouth, "very like a whale." This is his method
of dampening the linen preparatory to ironing. It is a skilled
performance. The fluid leaves his lips as fine as mist. If we are on
business we leave our bundles, and in return receive a ticket covered
with hieroglyphics. These indicate the kind and number of the garments
left to be cleansed, and some distinguishing mark (supposing this
to be our first patronage of Hip Tee) by which we may be again
identified. It may be by a pug nose, a hare lip, red hair, no hair or
squint eyes. They never ask one's name, for they can neither pronounce
nor write it when it is given. The ticket is an unintelligible tracery
of lines, curves, dots and dashes, made by a brush dipped in India
ink on a shred of flimsy Chinese paper. It may teem with abuse and
ridicule, but you must pocket all that, and produce it on calling
again, or your shirts and collars go into the Chinese Circumlocution
Wash-house Office. It is very difficult getting one's clothes back if
the ticket be lost--very. Hip Tee now dabs a duplicate of your ticket
in a long book, and all is over. You will call on Saturday night for
your linen. You do so. There is apparently the same cellar, the same
smell of steam, damp clothes and opium, the same sputter of sprinkling
water, and apparently the same Hip Tee and assistants with brown
shaven foreheads and long cues hanging straight down behind or coiled
in snake-like fashion about their craniums. You present your ticket.
Hip Tee examines it and shakes his head. "No good--oder man," he says,
and points up the street. You are now perplexed and somewhat alarmed.
You say: "John, I want my clothes. I left them here last Monday. You
gave me that ticket." "No," replies Hip Tee very decidedly, "oder
man;" and again he waves his arm upward. Then you are wroth. You
abuse, expostulate, entreat, and talk a great deal of English, and
some of it very strong English, which Hip Tee does not understand;
and Hip Tee talks a great deal of Chinese, and perhaps strong Chinese,
which you do not understand. You commence sentences in broken Chinese
and terminate them in unbroken English. Hip Tee commences sentences
in broken English and terminates them in pure Chinese, from a like
inability to express his indignation in a foreign tongue. "What for
you no go oder man? No my ticket--tung sung lung, ya hip kee--_ping!"_
he cries; and all this time the assistants are industriously ironing
and spouting mist, and leisurely making remarks in their sing-song
unintelligibility which you feel have uncomplimentary reference to
yourself. Suddenly a light breaks upon you. This is not Hip Tee's
cellar, this is not Hip Tee. It is the establishment of Hi Sing. This
is Hi Sing himself who for the last half hour has been endeavoring
with his stock of fifteen English words to make you understand that
you are in the wrong house. But these Chinese, as to faces and their
wash-houses, and all the paraphernalia of their wash-houses, are so
much alike that this is an easy mistake to make. You find the lavatory
of Hip Tee, who pronounces the hieroglyphics all correct, and delivers
you your lost and found shirts clean, with half the buttons broken,
and the bosoms pounded, scrubbed and frayed into an irregular sort of
embroidery.

"He can only dig, cook and wash," said the American miner
contemptuously years ago: "he can't work rock." To work rock in mining
parlance is to be skillful in boring Earth's stony husk after mineral.
It is to be proficient in sledging, drilling and blasting. The
Chinaman seemed to have no aptitude for this labor. He was content to
use his pick and shovel in the gravel-banks: metallic veins of gold,
silver or copper he left entirely to the white man.

Yet it was a great mistake to suppose he could not "work rock," or
do anything else required of him. John is a most apt and intelligent
labor-machine. Show him once your tactics in any operation, and ever
after he imitates them as accurately as does the parrot its memorized
sentences. So when the Pacific Railroad was being bored through the
hard granite of the Sierras it was John who handled the drill and
sledge as well as the white laborer. He was hurled by thousands on
that immense work, and it was the tawny hand of China that hewed out
hundreds of miles for the transcontinental pathway. Nor is this
all. He is crowding into one avenue of employment after another in
California. He fills our woolen- and silk-mills; he makes slippers and
binds shoes; he is skilled in the use of the sewing-machine; cellar
after cellar in San Francisco is filled with these Celestial brownies
rolling cigars; his fishing-nets are in every bay and inlet; he is
employed in scores of the lesser establishments for preserving fruit,
grinding salt, making matches, etc. He would quickly jump into the
places of the carpenter, mason and blacksmith were he allowed, for
there are numbers of them whose knowledge of these and other trades is
sufficient at least to render them useful as assistants. He is handy
on shipboard: the Panama steamers carry Chinese foremast hands. He is
preferred as a house-servant: the Chinese boy of fourteen or sixteen
learns quickly to cook and wash in American fashion. He is neat
in person, can be easily ruled, does not set up an independent
sovereignty in the kitchen, has no followers, will not outshine
his mistress in attire; and, although not perfect, yet affords a
refreshing change from our Milesian tyrants of the roast and wash-tub.
But when you catch this Celestial domestic treasure, be sure that the
first culinary operations performed for his instruction are correctly
manipulated, for his imitativeness is of a cast-iron rigidity. Once
in the mould, it can only with great difficulty be altered. Burn your
toast or your pudding, and he is apt to regard the accident as the
rule.

The young Chinese, especially in San Francisco, are anxious to acquire
an English education. They may not attend the public schools. A few
years since certain Chinese mission-schools were established by the
joint efforts of several religious denominations. Young ladies and
gentlemen volunteered their services on Sunday to teach these Chinese
children to read. They make eager, apt and docile pupils. Great is
their pride on mastering a few lines of English text. They become much
attached to their teachers, and it is possible, if the vote of the
latter were taken, it would evidence more liking for their yellow,
long-cued pupils than for any class of white children. But while so
assiduous to learn, it is rather doubtful whether much real religious
impression is made upon them. It is possible that their home-training
negatives that.

We have spoken entirely of the Chinaman. What of the Chinawoman in
America? In California the word "Chinawoman" is synonymous with what
is most vile and disgusting. Few, very few, of a respectable class
are in the State. The slums of London and New York are as respectable
thoroughfares compared with the rows of "China alleys" in the heart of
San Francisco. These can hardly be termed "abandoned women." They
have had no sense of virtue, propriety or decency to abandon. They are
ignorant of the disgrace of their calling: if the term may be allowed,
they pursue it innocently. Many are scarcely more than children. They
are mere commodities, being by their own countrymen bought in China,
shipped and consigned to factors in California, and there sold for a
term of years.

The Chinaman has bitter enemies in San Francisco: they thirst to
annihilate him. He is accustomed to blows and brickbats; he is
legitimate game for rowdies, both grown and juvenile; and children
supposed to be better trained can scarce resist the temptation of
snatching at his pig-tail as he passes through their groups in front
of the public schools. Even on Sundays nice little boys coming from
Sabbath-school, with their catechisms tucked under their jackets,
and texts enjoining mercy and gentleness fresh upon their lips, will
sometimes salute the benighted heathen as he passes by with a volley
of stones. If he turns on his small assailants, he is apt to meet
larger ones. Men are not wanting, ready and panting, to take up the
quarrel thus wantonly commenced by the offspring of the "superior
race." There are hundreds of families, who came over the sea to seek
in America the comfort and prosperity denied them in the land of their
birth, whose children from earliest infancy are inculcated with the
sentiment that the Chinaman is a dog, a pest and a curse. On the
occasion of William H. Seward's visit to a San Francisco theatre, two
Chinese merchants were hissed and hooted by the gallery mob from a
box which they had ventured to occupy. This assumption of style and
exclusiveness proved very offensive to the shirt-sleeved, upper-tier
representatives of the "superior race," who had assembled in large
numbers to catch a glimpse of one of the black man's great champions.
Ethiopia could have sat in that box in perfect safety, but China in
such a place was the red rag rousing the ire of the Democratic bull.
John has a story of his own to carry back home from a Christian land.

For this prejudice and hostility there are provocative causes,
although they may not be urged in extenuation. The Chinaman is a
dangerous competitor for the white laborer; and when the latter, with
other and smaller mouths to feed, once gets the idea implanted in
his mind that the bread is being taken from them by what he deems a
semi-human heathen, whose beliefs, habits, appearance and customs are
distasteful to him, there are all the conditions ready for a state
of mind toward the almond-eyed Oriental which leans far away from
brotherly love.

Brotherly love sometimes depends on circumstances. "Am I not a man and
brother?" cries John from his native shore. "Certainly," we respond.
Pass round the hat--let us take up a contribution for the conversion
of the poor heathen. The coins clink thickly in the bottom of the
charitable chapeau. We return home, feeling ourselves raised an inch
higher heavenward.

"Am I not a man and brother?" cries John in our midst, digging our
gold, setting up opposition laundries and wheeling sand at half a
dollar per day less wages. "No. Get out, ye long-tailed baste! An' wad
ye put me on a livil with that--that baboon?" Pass round the hat.
The coins mass themselves more thickly than ever. For what? To buy
muskets, powder and ball. Wherefore? Wait! More than once has the
demagogue cried, "Drive them into the sea!"

PRENTICE MULFORD.




A WINTER REVERIE.


  We stood amid the rustling gloom alone
    That night, while from the blue plains overhead,
  With golden kisses thickly overblown,
    A shooting star into the darkness sped.
    "'Twas like Persephone, who ran," we said,
  "Away from Love." The grass sprang round our feet,
  The purple lilacs in the dusk smelled sweet,
  And the black demon of the train sped by,
  Rousing the still air with his long, loud cry.

  The slender rim of a young rising moon
    Hung in the west as you leaned on the bar
  And spun a thread of some sweet April tune,
    And wished a wish and named the falling star.
    We heard a brook trill in the fields afar;
  The air wrapped round us that entrancing fold
  Of vanishing sweet stuff that mortal hold
  Can never grasp--the mist of dreams--as down
  The street we went in that fair foreign town.

  I might have whispered of my love that night,
    But something wrapped you as a shield around,
  And held me back: your quiver of affright,
    Your startled movement at some sudden sound--
    A night-bird rustling on the leafy ground--
  Your hushed and tremulous whisper of alarm,
  Your beating heart pressed close against my arm,--
  All, all were sweet; and yet _my_ heart beat true,
  Nor shrined one wish I might not breathe to you.

  So when we parted little had been said:
    I left you standing just within the door,
  With the dim moonlight streaming on your head
    And rippling softly on the checkered floor.
    I can remember even the dress you wore--
  Some dainty white Swiss stuff that floated round
  Your supple form and trailed upon the ground,
  While bands of coral bound each slender wrist,
  Studded with one great purple amethyst.

       *       *       *       *       *

  My story is not much--is it?--to tell:
    It seems a wandering line of music, faint,
  Whose sweet pathetic measures rise and swell,
    Then, strangled, fall with curious restraint.
    'Tis like the pictures that the artists paint,
  With shadows forward thrown into the light
  From the real figures hidden out of sight.
  And is not life crossed in this strange, sad way
  With dreams whose shadows lengthen day by day?

  But you, dear heart--sweet heart loved all these years--
    Will recognize the passion of the strain:
  Who eats the lotos-flower of Love with tears,
    Will know the rapture of that numb, vague pain
    Which thrills the heart and stirs the languid brain.
  All day amid the toiling throng we strive,
  While in our heart these sacred, sweet loves thrive,
  And in choice hours we show them, white and cool
  Like lilies floating on a troubled pool.

MILLIE W. CARPENTER.




"PASSPORTS, GENTLEMEN!"


The close of July, 1870, found our party tarrying for a few days at
Geneva. We had left home with the intention of "doing" Europe in less
than four months. June and July were already gone, but in that time,
traveling as only Americans can, Great Britain, Belgium, the Rhine
country and portions of Switzerland had been visited and admired. We
were now pausing for a few days to take breath and prepare for yet
wider flights. Our proposed route from Geneva would lead us through
Northern Germany, returning by way of Paris to London and Liverpool.

We had intentionally left Paris for the last, hoping that the
Communist disturbances would be completely quieted before September.
At this time their forces had been recently routed, and the Versailles
troops were occupying the capital. The leaders of the Commune were
scattered in every direction, and, if newspaper accounts were to be
believed, were being captured in every city of France. Especially was
this true of the custom-house upon the Swiss frontier, where report
said that more than one leading Communist had been stopped by the
lynx-eyed officials, who would accept no substitute for the signed and
countersigned passport, and hold no parley until such a passport had
been presented.

In view of these facts, the American minister in Paris had issued a
circular letter to citizens of the United States traveling abroad,
requesting them to see that their passports had the official visé
before attempting to enter France, thus saving themselves and friends
a large amount of unnecessary trouble and delay. Nothing was said
of those who might think proper to attempt an entrance _without_ a
passport, such temerity being in official eyes beyond all advice or
protection. Influenced by this letter and several facts which had come
under our notice proving the uncertainty of all things, and especially
of travel in France, we saw that our passports were made officially
correct.

While at Geneva our party separated for a few days. My friends
proposed making an expedition up the lake, while I arranged to spend
a day and night at Aix-les-Bains, a small town in the south of France.
My object in visiting it was not to enjoy the sulphur-baths for which
it is famous, but to see some friends who were spending the summer
there. I had written, telling them to expect me by the five o'clock
train on Wednesday afternoon. As my stay was to be so brief, I left
my valise at the hotel in Geneva, and found myself now, for the first
time, separated from that trusty sable friend which had until this
hour been my constant companion by day and night.

The train was just leaving the station when a lady sitting opposite to
me, with her back to the locomotive, asked, in French, if I would be
willing to change seats. Catching her meaning rather by her gestures
than words, I inquired in English if she would like my seat, and found
by her reply that I was traveling with an English lady.

I should here explain that although I had studied the French language
as part of my education, I found it impossible to speak French with
any fluency or understand it when spoken. My newly-made friend,
however (for friend she proved herself), spoke French and English with
equal fluency.

In the process of comparing notes (so familiar to all travelers)
mention was made of the recent war and the unwonted strictness and
severity of the custom-house officials. In an instant my hand was upon
my pocket-book, only to find that I had neglected to take my passport
from my valise.

The embarrassment of the situation flashed upon me, and my troubled
countenance revealed to my companion that something unusual had
occurred. I answered her inquiring look by saying that I had left my
passport in Geneva. Her immediate sympathy was only equaled by her
evident alarm. She said there was but one thing to be done--return
instantly for it. I fully agreed with her, but found, to my dismay,
upon consulting a guide-book, that our train was an express, which did
not stop before reaching Belgarde, the frontier-town.

I would willingly have pulled the bell-rope had there been any, and
stopped the train at any cost, but it was impossible, and nothing
remained but to sit quietly while I was relentlessly hurried into the
very jaws of the French officials. The misery of the situation was
aggravated by the fact that I could not command enough French to
explain how I came to be traveling without a passport. As a last
resort, I applied to my friend, begging her to explain to the officer
at the custom-house that I was a citizen of the United States, and had
left my passport in Geneva. This she readily promised to do, although
I could see that she had but little faith in the result. After a ride
of an hour, during which my reflections were none of the pleasantest,
we arrived at Belgarde. Here the doors of the railway carriages were
thrown open, and we were politely requested to alight. We stepped
out upon a platform swarming with fierce gendarmes, whom I regarded
attentively, wondering which of them was destined to become my
protector. From the platform we were ushered into a large room
communicating by a narrow passage with a second room, into which our
baggage was being carried. One by one my fellow-passengers approached
the narrow and (to me) gloomy passage and presented their passports.
These were closely scanned by the officer in charge, handed to an
assistant to be countersigned, and the holder, all being right, was
passed into the second room. Our turn soon came, and, accompanied by
the English lady, I approached my fate.

Her passport was declared to be official, and handing it back
the officer looked inquiringly at me. My friend then began her
explanation. As I stood attentively regarding the officer's face, I
could see his puzzled look change into one of comprehension, and
then of amusement. To her inquiry he replied that there would be
no objection under the circumstances to my returning to Geneva and
procuring my passport. Encouraged by the favorable turn my fortunes
had taken, I asked, through my friend, if it would be possible for me
to go on without a passport. An instantaneous change passed over his
countenance, and, shrugging his shoulders, he replied that it was
impossible: there was a second custom-house at Culoz, where I should
certainly be stopped, forced to explain how I had passed Belgarde, and
severely punished for attempting to enter without a passport. I did
not, however, wait for him to finish his angry harangue, but passed on
to the second room, where I was soon joined by my interpreting friend,
who explained to me in full what I had already learned from the
officer's countenance and gesture. She thought that I was fortunate in
escaping so easily, and advised an immediate return to Geneva. I again
consulted my guide-book, and found that there was no return train for
several hours, and consequently that I should arrive in Geneva too
late to start for Aix-les-Bains that night. This would necessitate
waiting until Thursday, and perhaps force me to give up the trip, for
our seats were engaged in the Chamouni coach for Friday morning. I
imagined my friends in vain awaiting my arrival at Aix, and the smiles
of our party when they found me in Geneva upon their return from the
lake. But, more than all, the possibility of not reaching Aix at all
troubled me, for I was very anxious to see my friends there, and had
written home that I intended to see them.

I found by my guide-book that our train reached Culoz before the
Geneva return train; so on the instant I formed the desperate resolve
of running the blockade at Belgarde, and if I found it impossible to
pass the custom-house at Culoz, _there_ to take the return train for
Geneva. I walked to the platform as if merely accompanying my friend,
stood for a moment at the door of the carriage conversing with her,
and then, as the train started for Culoz, quickly stepped in and shut
the door. Her dismay was really pitiable: had I not been somewhat
troubled in mind myself, I should have laughed outright. She saw
nothing before me but certain destruction, and I am free to confess
that the prospect of a telegram flashing over the wires at that moment
from Belgarde to Culoz was not reassuring. The die, however, had
been cast, and now nothing remained but to endure in silence the
interminable hour which must elapse ere we should reach Culoz. There
we were to change cars, the Geneva train going on to Paris, while
we took the train on the opposite platform for Aix-les-Bains. This
necessitated passing through the dépôt, and passing through the dépôt
was passing through the custom-house. As our train stopped in front of
the fatal door, and one by one the passengers filed into it and were
lost to sight, I seemed to see written above the door, "All hope
abandon, ye who enter here!" It was simply rushing into the jaws of
fate: there was not the slightest possibility of my being able to pass
through that dépôt unchallenged. I should be carried on to Paris if
I remained in the train; I should be arrested if I remained on the
platform; I was discovered if I entered the custom-house. Eagerly I
glanced around for some means of escape. Every instant the number of
passengers on the platform was decreasing, the danger of discovery
rapidly increasing.

I had feared lest some benevolent French officer, anxious for my
safety, would be found waiting to assist me in alighting: I was
thankful to find that I should be allowed to assist myself, and
that no one paid any particular attention to me. As I stood there
hesitating what course to pursue, and feeling how much easier my mind
at this moment would be were I waiting on the Belgarde platform, I
noticed a door standing open a few steps to the left. Without any
further hesitation I walked directly in, to find myself in a railroad
restaurant. It proved to be a tower of refuge.

No one had noticed me. There were other passengers in the room,
waiting for the Paris train; so, joining myself to them, I remained
there until the custom-house doors were closed and the guards had left
the platform. The question now arose, How should I reach the opposite
platform? The train might start at any moment: the only legitimate
passage was closed. I knew that the attempt would be fraught with
danger, yet I felt that it was now too late to draw back. If I
remained any length of time in the restaurant, I should be suspected
and discovered; and as I thought of that moment a terrific scene arose
before my mind in which an excited French official thundered at me
in his choicest French, while I stood silent, unable to explain who
I was, how I came there, whither I was going; I imagined myself being
searched for treasonable documents and none being found; I seemed to
see my captors consulting how they could best compel me to tell what
I knew. These scenes and others of like nature entertained me while
I waited for the coast--or rather platform--to be cleared. When at
length all the immediate guards were gone, I started out to find
my way, if possible, to the train for Aix. I have read of travelers
cutting their way through trackless forests, of ice-bound mariners
anxiously seeking the North-west passage, and, worse than all, of
luckless countrymen wandering bewildered through the streets of
Boston; but I am confident that no traveler, mariner or countryman
ever sought his way with more circumspection and diligence than I in
my search for a passage between those two platforms.

As I glanced cautiously up and down I saw a door standing open at
some little distance. Around that door all my hopes were immediately
centred. It might lead directly to the custom-house; it might be the
entrance to the barracks of the guards; it might be--I knew not what;
but it might afford a passage to the other platform.

I walked quickly to the door, glanced in, saw no one and entered. The
room was a baggage-room, and at that moment unoccupied. It instantly
occurred to me that a baggage-room _ought_ to open on both platforms.
I felt as though I could have shouted "Eureka!" and I am confident
that the joy of Archimedes as he rushed through the streets of
Syracuse was no greater than mine as I felt that I had so unexpectedly
discovered the passage I was seeking. Passing through this room, I
found myself in a second, like the former unoccupied. It had occurred
to me that all the doors might be closed, and the thought had
considerably abated my rejoicing; but no! I saw a door which stood
invitingly open.

No guards were stationed on the platform; so I stepped out, and before
me stood the train for Aix, into which my fellow-passengers were
entering, some of them still holding their passports in their hands.
Taking my seat in one of the carriages, in a few moments the train
started and I was on my way to Aix. The relief was unspeakably great.
An instant before it seemed as if nothing short of a miracle
could save me from a French guard-house, and now, by the simplest
combination of circumstances, in which a restaurant and baggage-room
bore an important part, I had passed unchallenged. I remember that I
enjoyed the scenery and views along the route from Culoz to Aix more
than while passing from Belgarde to Culoz.

My friends were found expecting me upon my arrival, and joined in
congratulating me upon my happy escape. A night and day were passed
very pleasantly, and then arose the question of return.

I suggested telegraphing to Geneva for my passport, but that
was vetoed, and it was decided that I should return as I had
come--passportless. I confess that the attempt seemed somewhat
hazardous. If it was dangerous to attempt an entrance into France,
how much more so to attempt an exit, especially when the custom-house
force had been doubled with the sole object that all possibility of
escape might be precluded, and that any one passing Culoz might be
stopped at Belgarde! It was urged, however, that our seats had been
engaged in the diligence for Friday morning, and to send for the
passport would consume considerable time--would certainly delay the
party until Saturday, and perhaps until Monday, which delay would
seriously affect all their plans, time being so limited and so many
places remaining to be visited. I had passed once, why not again?
Influenced by these facts, and thinking what a triumph it would be
once more to baffle French vigilance, I determined to attempt the
return. There was a train leaving Aix about eight P.M., reaching
Geneva at eleven: it was decided that I should take this train. I had
arranged a vague plan of action, although I expected to depend rather
upon the suggestion of the moment.

It was quite dark when we reached Culoz. As the train arrived at the
platform, and we were obliged again to change cars, I thought of the
friendly restaurant; but no! the restaurant was closed, and moreover
a company of gendarmes was present to see that every one entered the
door leading to the custom-house. There was no room for hesitation or
delay. I entered under protest, but still I entered.

In a moment I perceived the desperate situation. The room had two
doors--one opening upon the platform from which we had just come, and
now guarded by an officer; the other leading to the opposite platform,
and there stood the custom-house officer receiving and inspecting the
passports. It was indeed Scylla and Charybdis. If I attempted to pass
the officer without a passport, I was undone; if I remained until all
the other passengers had passed out, I was undone. For an instant I
felt as if I had better give up the unequal contest. The forces of the
enemy were too many for me. I saw that I had been captured: why fight
against Fate? A moment's reflection, however, restored my courage. It
was evident that one thing alone remained to be done: that was to find
my way out of the door by which I had just entered, as speedily as
possible. But there stood the guard.

The train by which we had come was still before the platform: an idea
suggested itself. Acting as if I had left some article in the train, I
stepped hurriedly up to the guard, who, catching my meaning, made way
for me without a word. Once upon the platform, I resolved never again
to enter that door except as a prisoner. The guard followed me with
his eyes for a moment, and then, seeing me open one of the carriage
doors, turned back to his post. As soon as I perceived that I was
no longer watched I glided off in the opposite direction under the
shadows of the platform. I was looking for a certain door which I
remembered well as a friend in need. I knew not in which direction it
lay, nor could I have recognized it if shut; but hardly had I gone ten
steps when the same door stood open before me. It was the act of an
instant to spring through it, out of sight of the guard. Why this door
and baggage-room should have been left thus open and unguarded when
such evident and scrutinizing care was taken in every other quarter, I
have to this day been unable to understand. But for that fact I should
have found it utterly impossible to pass that custom-house going or
coming.

Once in the baggage-room, the way was familiar, and, passing into the
second room, I found the door open as on the day previous, and in
a moment stood undiscovered upon the platform. Entering the waiting
train, I was soon on the way to Belgarde.

My only thought during the ride was, What shall I do when we arrive at
Belgarde? I expected to see the doors thrown open as before, and hear
again the polite invitation to enter the custom-house. Was it not
certain detection to refuse? was it not equally dangerous to obey? The
officer at Belgarde had seen me the day before, and warned me not to
go to Culoz. What reception would he give me when he saw me attempting
to return? Or it might be he would not remember me, and then in
the darkness and confusion I should surely be taken for an escaping
Communist. That I had passed Culoz was no comfort when I remembered
that this would only aggravate my guilt in their eyes.

The case did indeed seem desperate. Willingly would I have jumped out
and walked the entire distance to Geneva, if I might only thus
escape that terrible custom-house, which every moment loomed up more
terrifically. At length this troubled hour was passed: we had arrived
at Belgarde, and the moment for action had come. I had determined to
avoid the custom-house at all hazards. When the doors were thrown
open I expected to alight, but not to enter. My plan was to find some
sheltering door, or even corner, where I could remain until the others
had presented their passports and were beginning to return, then join
them and take my seat as before. The dépôt at Belgarde was brilliantly
lighted, and the gendarmes pacing to and fro in the gaslight seemed
not only to have increased in numbers, but to have acquired an
additional ferocity since the day previous.

As I looked but my spirit sank within me. I could only brace myself
for the coming crisis. For several moments nothing was said or done.
The doors remained shut, and no one seemed at all concerned about
our presence. Each minute appeared an hour as I sat there awaiting
my fate. The suspense was becoming too great: I felt that my stock of
self-possession was entirely deserting me. At length I began to hope
that they were satisfied with the examination at Culoz, and would
allow us to pass unchallenged. Just at that moment, as hope was
dawning into certainty, the door opened and the custom-house officer
entered with a polite bow, while a body of gendarmes drew up behind
him upon the platform. He uttered two French words, and I needed no
interpreter to tell me that they were "Passports, gentlemen!"

I shuddered as I saw him standing so near, within reach of my arm.
There were six persons besides myself in the carriage, and I was
occupying a seat beside the door farthest from the platform. Any one
who has seen a European railway-carriage will understand me when I say
that I sat next to the right-hand door, while he had entered by the
left. One by one the passports were handed up to him until he held six
in his hand.

With the rest of the passengers I had taken out my pocket-book and
searched as if for my passport, but had handed none to him, and now I
sat awaiting developments. I saw that he would read the six passports,
and then turn to me for the seventh.

The desperate thought flashed upon me of opening the door and escaping
into the darkness. The carriage itself was so dimly lighted that I
could barely see the face of my opposite neighbor, and I therefore
hoped to be able to slip out without any one perceiving it. The
attempt was desperate, but so was the situation. The officer was
buried in the passports, holding them near his face to catch the dim
light. The door was fastened upon the outside, and so, watching him,
I leaned far out of the window until I was able to reach the catch
and unfasten the door. A slight push, and it swung noiselessly open. I
glanced at the officer: he was intently reading the _last_ passport. I
had placed one foot upon the outside step, and was about to glide out
into the darkness, when he laid the paper down and looked directly at
me.

It would have been madness to attempt an escape with his eyes upon me;
so, assuming as nonchalant a look as my present feelings would allow,
I answered his inquiring glance with one of confident assurance.

He saw my nonchalant expression. He saw the open pocket-book in my
hand. He had _not_ counted the number of passports. All the passengers
were settling themselves to sleep. It must be all right; so, with
a polite "Bon soir, messieurs!" he bowed and left the carriage. My
sensation of relief may be better imagined than described. Hardly had
he left our carriage when we heard the sound of voices and hurrying
feet upon the platform, and looking out saw some unfortunate
individual carried off under guard. I trembled as I thought how
narrowly I had escaped his fate. In a few moments, however, we were
safely on our way to Geneva, and as we sped on into the darkness,
while congratulating myself upon my fortunate escape, I firmly
resolved to be better prepared for the emergency the next time I
should hear those memorable words, "Passports, gentlemen!"

A.H.




OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE CORNWALLIS FAMILY.


The death was lately announced of two of the last survivors--only
one of the name is now left--of a family whose chief played a very
conspicuous, and for himself unfortunate, part in this country a
century ago--the marquis Cornwallis. His only son, who married a
daughter of the celebrated match-making duchess of Gordon, left no
male issue, but five daughters. Two of them, the countess of St.
Germans--wife of the earl who accompanied the prince of Wales on his
visit here--and Lady Braybrook, died some years ago; and recently
Lady Mary Ross, whose husband edited the correspondence of the first
marquis, and Lady Louisa, who never married, have also gone to their
graves.

The family of Cornwallis is very ancient, and can point to many
distinguished members. Its ancestral seat is at Brome, in Suffolk.
This is a fine old mansion, and the hall, which is very lofty and open
to the roof, is an excellent specimen of the work of other days. The
chapel contains capital oak carving. In the village church there are
monuments worth notice of the family.

Following the fate of so many other places, Brome passed after the
death of the second marquis to a _novus homo_, one Matthias Kerrison,
who, having begun life as a carpenter, contrived in various ways to
acquire a colossal fortune. His son rose to distinction in the army,
obtained a seat in Parliament, which he held for thirty years, and was
created a baronet.

He left at his death a son and three daughters. The former, long
married, is childless. The sisters are respectively the wives of Earl
Stanhope, the well-known historian; Lord Henniker, a wealthy Suffolk
proprietor; and Lord Bateman. It is understood that under the late
baronet's will the son of the last will, in the event of the present
baronet dying childless, succeed to the property. It will thus be
observed that Brome, after having been for four centuries in one
family, is destined to change hands repeatedly in a few years.

When the second Marquis Cornwallis died sonless, the marquisate became
extinct, but the earldom passed to his first cousin. This nobleman,
by no means an able or admirable person, married twice. By his first
marriage he had a daughter, who married Charles Wykeham-Martin, Esq.,
M.P., whose father, by a concatenation of chances, became the owner
of Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, in Kent--a splendid moated baronial
pile, dating from the thirteenth century, but added to and improved
in admirable taste. Leeds was formerly the property of the Fairfax
family, whose chief, the present lord, resides near Washington. It
came to them from the once famous family of Colepepper.

Earl Cornwallis married a second time late in life, and had an only
daughter, Lady Julia. From that time his one idea seemed to be to
accumulate for this child, and accordingly at his death she was
the greatest heiress in England, her long minority serving to add
immensely to her father's hoards. Of course, when the time approached
for her entering society under the chaperonage of her cousins, the
marquis's daughters, speculation was very rife in the London world as
to whom she would marry, and many a mamma of high degree cast sheep's
eyes at the heiress, and thought how charmingly her accumulations
would serve to clear the encumbrances on certain acres. But they were
not kept long in suspense. One night during the London season, when
the ladies Cornwallis gave a grand ball, a damper was cast over the
proceedings, so far at least as aspirants to the heiress's money-bags
were concerned, by the announcement of her engagement. Said a lady to
a gentleman in the course of that evening, "Most extraordinary! There
seem to be no men in the room to-night." "Why, of course not," was the
rejoinder, "after this fatal news." Lady Julia's choice fell upon a
young officer in the Guards, Viscount Holmesdale, eldest son of Earl
Amherst. Lord Holmesdale was unexceptionable in point of position,
but his pecuniary position was such as to make one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars a year a very agreeable addition to his income. It
may, however, be a satisfaction to those less richly endowed with this
world's goods than Lady Holmesdale to reflect that being an heiress
generally proves rather the reverse of a passport to matrimonial
bliss; and by all accounts she is no exception to the usual fate in
this respect. We can't have everything in this world.

Lady Holmesdale's property was tied up by her old father (whose whole
thoughts were given to this end, and who was in the habit of carrying
his will on his person) to such a degree that in the event of her
death her husband can only derive a very slight benefit from his
wife's property beyond the insurances which may have been effected
on her life. She is childless, and has very precarious health. Her
principal seat is Linton Park, near Maidstone, Kent, in which county
she is the largest landowner. In the event of her dying without issue,
her estates pass to the son of Major Fiennes Cornwallis, who was
second son of the late Mr. Wykeham-Martin by Lady Holmesdale's elder
half-sister.

A cousin of Lady Holmesdale, Miss Cornwallis, the last representative
of a third branch, died some years ago. This lady, who possessed rare
literary and social acquirements, bequeathed her property to Major
Wykeham-Martin, who thereupon changed his name to Cornwallis. The
major, a gallant officer, one of those of whom Tennyson says,

  Into the jaws of death
  Rode the six hundred,

only survived the Balaklava charge to die a few years later through
an accident in the hunting-field. "A fine, modest young officer," was
Thackeray's verdict about him, when, after dinner at "Tom Phinn's," a
noted bachelor barrister of eminence whose little dinners were not
the least agreeable in London, the story of that famous ride had been
coaxed out of the young _militaire_, who, if left to himself, would
never have let you have a notion that he had seen such splendid
service. The only Cornwallis now left is Lady Elizabeth, granddaughter
of the first marquis.




NOVELTIES IN ETHNOLOGY.


Two savants of high reputation have lately undertaken to seek out the
origin of that German race which has just put itself at the head of
military Europe. One is Wilhelm Obermüller, a German ethnologist,
member of the Vienna Geographical Society, whose startling theory
nevertheless is that the Germans are the direct descendants of Cain!
The other scholar, M. Quatrefages, a man of still greater reputation,
devotes himself to a proposition almost as extraordinary--namely, that
the Prussian pedigree is Finn and Slav, with only a small pinch of
Teuton, and hence, in an ethnographical view, is anti-German!

That M. Quatrefages should maintain such a postulate, his patriotism
if not his scientific reputation might lead us to expect; but that
Obermüller should be so eager to trace German origin back to the first
murderer is rather more suprising. Obermüller's work embraces in
its general scope the origin of all European nations, but the most
striking part is that relating to Germany. He holds that, from
the remotest era, the Celto-Aryan race, starting from the plain
of Tartary, the probable cradle of mankind, split into two great
branches--one the Oriental Aryans, and the other the Western Aryans,
or Celts. The former--who, as he proceeds to show, were no other than
the descendants of Cain--betook themselves to China, which land they
found inhabited by the Mongolians, another great primordial race; and
we are told that the Mongolians are indicated when mention is made in
Scripture of Cain's marriage in the land of Nod. The intermixture of
Cainists and Mongolians produced the Turks, while the pure Cainist
tribes formed the German people, under the name of Swabians (Chinese,
_Siampi_), Goths (_Yeuten_ in Chinese) and Ases (_Sachsons_). Such, in
brief, is the curious theory of Obermüller.

The question next arises, How is it that we find the Germans
transplanted from the Hoang-Ho to the Rhine? We are told that, being
driven out of China by the Turks, they poured into the European
countries which the Celts or Western Aryans had already occupied.
These latter had in the mean time gone out from the Asiatic cradle
of the race, and following the course of the Indus to Hindostan and
Persia, had, under the name of Chaldeans, overrun Armenia, Syria,
Arabia, Egypt and North Africa, which latter they found inhabited by
certain negro races, whereas in Egypt they discovered red-skins or
Atlantides; which latter, by the way, form also our own aborigines.
The intermixture of the Celts with these primitive races just named
produced the Jews and Semitic people. At the time of the Celtic
invasion Western Europe and Northern Africa were occupied by the race
of the Atlantides, while the Mongolians, including also the Lapps,
Finns and Huns, peopled the north of Europe and of Asia. The Celts
pushed in between these two races, and only very much later the German
people, driven out of China by the Turks, as we have said, arrived in
Europe.

When, therefore, did these Cainist invasions of Germany take place?
Obermüller says that the date must have been toward the epoch of
the Roman conquests. Gallia was then inhabited in the south by the
primitive Atlantid race of Ligurians and by the Greek colony of
Massilia; in the centre by the Gaelags (Celts) or Gauls, who, pouring
northward from Spain, had conquered it fifteen hundred years before
the Christian era; and in the north by the Belgic Cimbrians, who had
come from Germany, and who were designated under the name of Germans
(_Ghermann_) or border-men, and who, though called _Germani_ by Caesar
and Tacitus, were yet not of the Cainist stock, but Celts. However,
these Germans, whom the Romans encountered to their cost on the Rhine
and Danube, were of the genuine Oriental Cainist stock, and these,
after centuries of fierce struggle, they failed to conquer, though the
Celts of Britain, Gaul and Spain, as well as all the old empires of
the East, had fallen an easy prey to their victorious eagles.

It only remains to add that this invasion of Germany by Cain's progeny
was accomplished in three streams. The Ases (Sachsons) directed
themselves to the Elbe and Danube, and thence to the north; the Suevi,
or Swabians, chose the centre and south of Germany; while the Goths
did not rest till they had overrun Italy, Southern France and Spain.
But each of these three main streams was composed of many tribes,
whom the old writers catalogue without system, mixing both Celtic and
Teutonic tribes under the general name of Germans; and it is only in
modern days that the careless enumeration of the classic writers has
been rejected, and a more scientific method substituted. It will
be seen, in fine, that in the main Obermüller does not differ from
accepted theories in German ethnology, which have long carefully
dissevered the Celts from the Teutons, and assigned to each tribe with
approximate accuracy its earliest fixed abode in Europe. It is the
tracing back of the German race proper to the first-born of Adam,
according to scriptural genealogy, which makes this theory curious and
amusing.

To the work of M. Quatrefages we have only space to devote a
paragraph. Originally contributed to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
it bears the marks in its inferences, if not in its facts, of being
composed for an audience of sympathizing countrymen, rather than for
the world of science at large. M. Quatrefages says that the first
dwellers in Prussia were Finns, who founded the stock, and were in
turn overpowered by the Slavs, who imposed their language and customs
on the whole of the Baltic region. The consequent mixture of Finns and
Slavs created a population wholly un-German; and what dash of genuine
Germanism Prussia now has was subsequently acquired in the persons of
sundry traders from Bremen, followed by a class of roving nobility,
who entered the half-civilized country with their retainers in quest
of spoils. Besides these elements, Prussia, like England and America,
received in modern times an influx of French Huguenots; which M.
Quatrefages naturally considers a piece of great good fortune for
Prussia. Briefly, then, the French savant regards Prussia as German
only in her nobility and upper-middle classes, while the substratum
of population is a composition of Slav and Finn, and hence thoroughly
anti-German. As, according to the old saying, if you scratch a Russian
you will find a Tartar beneath, so, according to M. Ouatrefages,
we may suppose that scraping a Prussian would disclose a Finn. The
political inferences which he draws are very fanciful. He traces
shadowy analogies between the tactics of Von Moltke's veterans and
the warlike customs of the ancient Slavs, and suggests that the basic
origin of the Prussian population may lead it to cultivate a Russian
alliance rather than an Austrian, forgetting, apparently, that by
his own admission the ruling-classes of Prussia are German in origin,
ideas and sympathies.

L.S.




THE STEAM-WHISTLE.


While Mr. Ruskin was lately bewailing the bell-ringing propensity of
mankind, the English Parliament and several American legislatures,
city or State, were assaulting the greater nuisance of the
steam-whistle, and trying to substitute bell-ringing for it. Mr.
Ruskin's particular grievance was, that his own nerves were _crispé_
by the incessant ding-dong of the church-bells of Florence summoning
the devout to prayer, but he generalized his wrath. Possibly, he
would have been less sensitive and fastidious regarding the musical
carillons of the Italian city were he wont to dwell within ear-shot of
an American factory or railroad-station. Not that Mr. Ruskin fails to
appreciate--or, rather, to depreciate--railways in their connection
with Italian landscapes; for, besides his series of complaints
regarding the Florence bells, he denounces the railway from Rome to
Naples, and the railway-tunnels under Monts Cenis and St. Gothard, and
the railway-bridge leading into Venice, as enemies of the beautiful
and picturesque in Nature. But it is the locomotive, independent of
the shriek, that is his abomination; whereas a man less sensitive to
sights, and (if possible) more sensitive to sounds, might pardon the
cutting up of the landscape were his ear-drum spared from splitting.

Emerson asks, "What is so odious as noise?" But a _Saturday Reviewer_
once devoted an elaborate essay to the eulogy of unmitigated noise, or
rather to the keen enjoyment of it by children. People with enviable
nerves and unenviable tastes often enjoy sounds in the ratio of their
lack of melody--say, such everyday thoroughfare music as the slap and
bang of coach-wheels on the cobble-stones; the creaking of street-cars
round a sharp curve, like Milton's infernal doors "grating harsh
thunder;" the squeaking falsettos of the cries by old-clothes' men,
itinerant glaziers, fishmongers, fruiterers, tinkers and what not; the
yells of rival coachmen at the railway-stations, giving one an idea
of Bedlam; the street-fiddlers and violinists with horribly untuned
instruments; the Italian open-air singers hoarsely shouting,
"Shoo Fly" or "Viva Garibaldi! viva l'Italia!" the gongs beaten on
steamboats and by hotel-runners at stations on the arrival of trains;
the unearthly squeals and shrieks of new "musical instruments" sold
cheap by street-peddlers; the horrible noise-producers which boys
invent for the torture of nervous people--such, for example, as this
present season's, which is happily styled "the devil's fiddle," or
"the chicken-box," whose simplest form is an emptied tomato-can, with
a string passed through the end and pulled with the rosined fingers.
Now, that a man may be pleased with a rattle, even if it be only a
car-rattle, is conceivable, but it is hard to understand how he can
retain a relish for the squeal of a locomotive-whistle. The practice
of summoning workmen to factories by this shrill monitor, of using
it to announce the dinner-hour, the hour of resuming work after the
nooning, and the hour of quitting work for the night, ought to be
abolished everywhere. There is not the faintest excuse for it, because
clocks and bells will do the same work exactly as well. On the other
hand, the whistle causes perpetual irritation to the nervous, feeble
and sick, and frequent cases of horses running away with fright at the
sudden shriek, smashing property or destroying life.

Let us give moral aid and comfort to the campaign, Cisatlantic and
Transatlantic, against the steam-whistle. In the local councils of
Philadelphia, Camden and other cities it has been well opened in our
country; in the House of Commons has been introduced a bill providing
that "no person shall use or employ in any manufactory or any other
place any steam-whistle or steam-trumpet for the purpose of summoning
or dismissing workmen or persons employed, without the sanction of the
sanitary authorities." They call this whistle, by the way, it
would seem, the "American devil," for the Manchester _Examiner_
congratulates its readers that the "American devil" has been taken by
the throat, and ere long his yells will be heard no more.

John Leech, it is said, was actually driven from house to house in
a vain effort to escape the nuisance of organ-grinders, whom he has
immortalized in Punch by many exquisite sketches, showing that they
know "the vally of peace and quietness." Some of his friends declare
that this nuisance so worked on his nerves that he may be said to
have died of organ-grinders. Holmes has immortalized the same guild of
wandering minstrels as a sort of "crusaders sent from infernal clime
to dock the ears of melody and break the legs of time." And yet the
hand-organ, so often the subject of municipal legislation, is dulcet
music compared with the steam-whistle, even when the latter instrument
takes its most ambitiously artistic form of the "Calliope."




SIAMESE NEWS.


Letters recently received from Bangkok, Siam, bearing date July 25,
1872, give the following interesting items.

His Majesty has just appointed an English tutor to his royal brothers,
associating with them some of the sons of the higher nobles to the
number of twenty. This certainly indicates progress in liberal and
enlarged views in a land where hitherto no noble, however exalted his
rank or worthy his character, was considered a fit associate for the
princes of the royal family, who have always been trained to hold
themselves entirely aloof from those about them. The young king now on
the throne has changed all this, and says he wishes not only that his
brothers shall have the advantage of studying with others of their own
age, but that they should thus learn to know their people better, and
by mingling with them freely in their studies and sports acquire more
liberal views of men and things than their ancestors had. He insists
that his young brothers and their classmates shall stand on precisely
the same footing, and each be treated by the teacher according to his
merits. The king intends to appoint yet other teachers in his family
for both boys and girls; and though perhaps the time may not yet have
come, it is certainly not far distant, when Siam will sustain high
schools and colleges, both literary and scientific.

The religious aspect of the nation is somewhat less promising. Though
the royal edict gives protection to all religions, and permits every
man to choose for himself in matters of conscience, it can scarcely be
said that the two kings take any real interest in Christianity. They
think less of Booddhism, its mystic creed and imposing ceremonies, and
have made very many changes in the form of worship; but, apparently,
they are no more Christians than were their respective fathers, the
late first and second kings. They treat Christianity with outward
respect, because they esteem it decorous to do so; and the same is
true of the regent and prime minister; but none of them even profess
any real regard for the worship of the true God. The concessions made
thus far indicate progress in civilization, not in piety; and while
the kings and their subjects are assuredly loosing their grasp on
Booddhism, they are not reaching out to lay hold on Christianity. It
seems rather as if the whole nation were swaying off into the frigid
regions of skepticism, and, influenced by the example of many unworthy
representatives of Christian countries, they live only for the
luxuries and laxities of the present life. Priestly robes are much
less frequently seen on the river and in the streets than formerly;
and many of the clergy no longer reside at the temples, but with their
families in their own houses; thus relinquishing even the pretence of
celibacy, which has hitherto been one of the very strongest points
of Booddhism, giving it an appearance of sanctity and a hold on
the affections of the people that nothing else can do. With this
rapidly-increasing renunciation of priestly celibacy and the
daily-diminishing ranks of the clergy, Booddhism, the mammoth religion
of the world, seems tottering to ruin, and even the present generation
may see its utter demolition, at least so far as Siam is concerned.
Services at the temples are now held in imitation of English morning
and evening prayers; a moral essay is read, at which the body-guards
of the kings and the government officers are generally required to
be present, and the remainder of the day they are excused from duty,
instead of being kept, as formerly, Sundays and week-days, in almost
perpetual attendance on His Majesty.

The supreme king is now in his twentieth year, and will take the
reins of government this year. He is tall and slight in person,
gentlemanlike in manners, perfectly well bred, and always courteous to
strangers, though even more modest and unassuming than was his father,
the priest-king, whose praises are still fresh in every heart. His
Majesty speaks English quite creditably, wears the English dress most
of the time, and keeps himself well informed as to matters and things
generally. His reign, thus far, promises well for himself and his
kingdom.

The second king, still called King _George Washington_, is now about
thirty, and a most noble specimen of the courtly Oriental gentleman.
His tall, compact figure is admirably developed both for strength and
beauty, his face is full and pleasing, and his head finely formed.
He is affable in manner, converses readily in English, and is fond
of Europeans and their customs. He keeps his father's palace and
steamboats in excellent condition, and his body-guard under thorough
drill. On a recent visit of the American steamer Moreton he came out
on the battlements of his palace, and after watching her progress for
some time, he signaled her to lay to, which she did just opposite his
palace. He immediately went aboard, and remained for an hour or so,
chatting merrily with both ladies and gentlemen, while the steamer
puffed up the river a few miles, and then returned for His Majesty to
disembark at his own palace. King George occasionally wears the _full_
English dress, either civil or military, but generally only the
hat, coat, linen and shoes, with the Siamese _pàh-nûng_ in lieu of
pantaloons. The regent, the minister of foreign affairs and many of
the princes and nobles have adopted this mongrel costume, and, to a
greater or less extent, our language, manner of living and forms
of etiquette. Visitors to the kings now sit on chairs, instead of
crouching on cushions before the throne, as formerly; while native
princes and ministers of state no longer prostrate themselves with
their faces in the dust in the royal presence, but stand at the foot
of the throne while holding an audience with their Majesties, each
being allowed full opportunity to state his case or present any
petition he may desire. The sovereigns are no longer unknown,
mysterious personages, whose features their people have never been
permitted to look upon; but they may be seen any fine day taking their
drives in their own coaches or phaetons, and lifting their hats to
passing friends. Nor do they on ordinary occasions deem it necessary
to be surrounded by armed soldiers for protection, but go where they
list, with only their liveried coachmen and footmen, and perhaps a
single companion or secretary inside.

The city itself has correspondingly improved. Within the walls have
just been completed two new streets, meeting at right angles near
the mayor's office, where is a public park of circular form very
handsomely laid out. The streets radiating from this centre are broad,
and lined with new brick houses of two stories and tiled roofs. These
are mostly private dwellings, uniformly built; and with their broad
sidewalks and shade trees of luxuriant tropical growth present a
very picturesque appearance. One wide street, commencing at the royal
palace, extends six or seven miles through the city, reaching
the river near a little village called Pak-lat-bon. This is the
fashionable _drive_, where may be seen not only their Majesties, the
regent, the prime minister and other high dignitaries lounging in
stately equipages drawn by two or four prancing steeds, but many
private citizens of different nations in their light pony-carriages,
palanquins, etc., instead of the invariable barges and _sampans_ of a
few years ago, when the river was the "Broadway" of the city and the
canals its cross-streets. Steamers of various dimensions now
busily ply the river: the kings own several, which they use for
pleasure-boats; eight or ten are fitted up as war-steamers, and others
are packets to Singapore, China and elsewhere, carrying passengers and
merchandise.

The regent, _Pra-Nai-Wai,_ is a sedate, dignified, courteous gentleman
of sixty-five, who walks erect with firm step and manly form, and with
mental and physical powers still unimpaired. His half-brother, who
filled the post of minister of foreign affairs at the commencement
of the present reign, died blind some little time back, after twice
paying ten thousand dollars to a Dutch oculist from Batavia to operate
on his eyes for cataract. His successor, the present minister, is one
of the finest specimens of a Siamese gentleman in the country. He
was first a provincial governor; then went on a special embassy to
England; last year attended the supreme king on his visit to Singapore
and Batavia; and recently accompanied him again to India, whence the
royal party have but just returned. The regal convoy consisted of five
or six war-steamers, and His Majesty, besides his own officers, was
escorted also by the English consul at Bangkok, the harbor-master and
several European officers in the Siamese service. The royal tourist
visited Rangoon, Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Allahabad and Ceylon;
and entered with great gusto into the spirit of his travels, seeing
everything, asking questions and taking notes as he passed from point
to point. The regent, in conjunction with the second king, held the
reins of government during the absence of the first king; and in truth
the regent has for the most part governed the country since the death
of the late king, in 1868, the young heir being then but fifteen years
of age. The regent is decidedly a favorite with both kings and people,
and his rule has been popular and prosperous.




MADISON AS A TEMPERANCE MAN.


Many years ago, when the temperance movement began in Virginia,
ex-President Madison lent the weight of his influence to the
cause. Case-bottles and decanters disappeared from the sideboard at
Montpelier--wine was no longer dispensed to the many visitors at that
hospitable mansion. Nor was this all. Harvest began, but the customary
barrel of whisky was not purchased, and the song of the scythemen in
the wheatfield languished. In lieu of whisky, there was a beverage
most innocuous, unstimulating and unpalatable to the army of dusky
laborers.

The following morning, Mr. Madison called in his head-man to make the
usual inquiry, "Nelson, how comes on the crop?"

"Po'ly, Mars' Jeems--monsus po'ly."

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Things is seyus."

"What do you mean by serious?"

"We gwine los' dat crap."

"Lose the crop! Why should we lose it?"

"'Cause dat ar crap ar heap too big a crap to be gethered 'thout
whisky. 'Lasses-and-water nuver gethered no crap sence de woil' war'
made, ner 'taint gwine to."

Mr. Madison succumbed: the whisky was procured, the "crap" was
"gethered," case-bottles and decanters reappeared, and the ancient
order was restored at Montpelier, never again to be disturbed.




NOTES.


Amidst the recent hurly-burly of politics in France, involving the
fate of the Thiers government, if not of the republic itself, a minor
grievance of the artists has probably been little noticed by the
general public. Yet a grievance it was, and one which caused men of
taste and sentiment to cry out loudly. The threatened act of vandalism
against which they protested was a proposal to fell part of the Forest
of Fontainebleau. The castle and forest have long belonged to the
state, but why the woods should now be cut down by the government is
not clear. The motive is probably to turn the fine timber into
cash, though a Paris wit, in pretended despair of other explanation,
jokingly alleged, at the time of Prince Napoleon's late expulsion from
France, that the government was afraid the prince, taking refuge in
its dense recesses, might there conceal himself (_à la_ Charles II.,
we presume) in one of its venerable oaks. At any rate, it was arranged
to level a part of the timber, and on hearing of this threatened
mutilation of a favorite resort the French artists rallied to beg M.
Thiers, like the character in General Morris's ballad, to "spare those
trees." And well may they petition, for the forest contains nearly
thirty-five thousand acres, abounding in beautiful and picturesque
scenery. It can boast finer trees than any other French forest, while
its meadows, lawns and cliffs furnish specimens of almost every plant
and flower to be found in France. Now, when we add that its views are
exceedingly varied, its rocks, ravines, plateaus and thickets
each offering some entirely different and admirable study to the
landscape-painters who frequent it in great numbers during the spring
and autumn months (for it is only fourteen or fifteen leagues out of
Paris, on the high road to Lyons), we have shown reason enough for the
consentaneous action on the part of the men and women of the brush and
pencil.

The traveled reader will hardly need to be told that good judges
consider the forest and castle to compose the finest domain in France.
But there are also numberless historic reminiscences intertwined with
Fontainebleau. And, by the way, it was originally known as the
Forêt de Bierre, until some thirsty huntsmen, who found its spring
deliciously refreshing, rebaptized it as Fontaine Belle Eau. Such, at
least, is the old story. The first founding of a royal residence there
dates at least as far back as the twelfth century, and possibly much
farther, while the present château was begun by Francis I. in the
sixteenth. So many famous historic events, indeed, have taken place
within the precincts of the forest that the committee of "Protection
Artistique" is pardonable in claiming that "Fontainebleau Forest ought
to be ranked with those national historic monuments which must at all
hazards be preserved for the admiration of artists and tourists," as
well as of patriotic Frenchmen. What illustrations shall we select
from among the events connected with it, about which a thousand
volumes of history, poetry, art, science and romance have been
composed? At Fontainebleau, Charles V. was royally feasted by Francis;
there the Edict of Nantes was revoked; there Condé died; there the
decree of divorce between Napoleon and Josephine was pronounced; and
there the emperor afterward signed his own abdication. It is true
that nobody proposes to demolish the castle, and that is the historic
centre; but the petitioners claim that it is difficult and dangerous
to attempt to divide the domain into historic and non-historic,
artistic and non-artistic parts, with a view to its mutilation. There
is ground for hoping that a favorable response will be given to the
eloquent appeal of the artists and amateurs.

The vanity of Victor Hugo, though always "Olympian," perhaps never
mounted to a sublimer height than in the reply he sent to M. Catulle
Mendes on receiving from him the news of Gautier's death. It contained
but half a dozen lines, yet found space to declare, "Of the men of
1830, _I alone am left_. It is now my turn." The profound egotism of
"_il ne reste plus que moi_" could not escape being vigorously lashed
by V. Hugo's old comrades of the quill, dating back with him to 1830,
and now so loftily ignored. "See, even in his epistles of condolence,"
they cry, "the omnipresent _moi_ of Hugo must appear, to overshadow
everything else!" One indignant writer declares the poet to be a mere
walking personal pronoun. Another humorously pities those still extant
contemporaries of 1830 who, after having for forty years dedicated
their songs and romances and dramas to Hugo, now learn from the
selfsame maw which has greedily gulped their praises that they
themselves do not exist, never did exist. One man of genius
slyly writes: "Some of us veterans will find ourselves
embarrassed--Michelet, G. Sand, Janin, Sandeau _et un pen moi_. Is it
possible that we died a long time ago, one after the other, without
knowing it? Was it a delusion on our part to fancy ourselves existing,
or was our existence only a bad dream?" But to Victor Hugo even these
complaints will perhaps seem to smoke like fresh incense on the altar
of self-adulation which this great genius keeps ever lighted.

The reader may remember the story of that non-committal editor who
during the late canvass, desiring to propitiate all his subscribers of
both parties, hoisted the ticket of "Gr---- and ----n" at the top
of his column, thus giving those who took the paper their choice of
interpretations between "Grant and Wilson" and "Greeley and Brown."
A story turning on the same style of point (and probably quite as
apocryphal, though the author labels it "_historique_") is told of an
army officers' mess in France. A brother-soldier from a neighboring
detachment having come in, and a _champenoise_ having been uncorked in
his honor, "Gentlemen," said the guest, raising his glass, "I am about
to propose a toast at once patriotic and political." A chorus of hasty
ejaculations and of murmurs at once greeted him. "Yes, gentlemen,"
coolly proceeded the orator, "I drink to a thing which--an object
that--Bah! I will out with it at once. It begins with an _R_ and ends
with an _e_."

"Capital!" whispers a young lieutenant of Bordeaux promotion. "He
proposes the _Republique_, without offending the old fogies by saying
the word."

"Nonsense! He means the _Radicale_," replies the other, an old captain
from Cassel.

"Upon my word," says a third as he lifts his glass, "our friend must
mean _la Royaute_."

"I see!" cries a one-legged veteran of Froschweiler: "we drink to _la
Revanche_."

In fact, the whole party drank the toast heartily, each interpreting
it to his liking.

In the hands of a Swift even so trivial an incident might be made
to point a moral on the facility with which alike in theology
and politics--from Athanasian Creed to Cincinnati or Philadelphia
Platform--men comfortably interpret to their own diverse likings some
doctrine that "begins with an _R_ and ends with an _e_," and swallow
it with great unanimity and enthusiasm.

Possibly the death of Mr. Greeley, after a prolonged delirium induced
in part by political excitement, may add for Americans some fresh
interest to the theory of a paper which just previous to that pathetic
event M. Lunier had read before the Paris Academy of Medicine. The
author confessed his statistics to be incomplete, but regarded them
as ample for the decisive formulation of the proposition that great
political crises tend to increase the number of cases of mental
alienation. The leading point of his elaborate argument appears to
be the classification of fresh cases of insanity developed since the
beginning of the late French war. The strongest comparison is one
indicating an excess of seven per cent, in the number of such cases,
proportioned to the population in the departments conquered and
occupied by the Germans, over those which they did not invade.
Finally, M. Lunier reckons the cases of mental alienation induced
by the late political and military events in France at from
twelve hundred to fifteen hundred. Politics without war may, it is
considered, produce the same results--results not at all surprising,
of course, except as to their extent. As to this last, if M. Lunier's
figures and deductions be correct, the mental strain of exciting
politics is even more destructive than has been generally supposed.




LITERATURE OF THE DAY.


Gareth and Lynette. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet-Laureate. Boston:
J.R. Osgood & Co.

"With this poem the author concludes the Idyls of the King." The
occasion is a tempting one to review the long series of Arthurian lays
written by Tennyson, from the _Mort d' Arthur_, and the pretty song
about Lancelot and Guinevere, and the first casting of "Elaine's"
legend in the form of _The Lady of Shallot_, down to the present tale,
flung like a capricious field flower into a wreath complete enough
without it. The poet's first adventure into the subject--the
mysterious, shadowy and elevated performance called the _Mort d'
Arthur_--will probably be always thought the best. Tennyson, when
he wrote it, was just trying the peculiarities of his style: he was
testing the quality of his cadences, the ring of his long sententious
lines repeated continually as refrains, and the trustworthiness of his
artful, much-sacrificing simplicity. He put as it were a spot or two
of pigment on the end of his painting-knife, and held it up into the
air of the vaporous traditions of the Round Table. It stood the test,
it had the color; but the artist, uncertain of his style, his public
and his own liking, made a number of other tentatives before he
could decide to go on in the manner he commenced with. He tried the
_Guinevere_, laughing and galloping in its ballad-movement; he tried
the _Shallot_, with a triple rhyme and a short positive refrain, like
a bell rung in an incantation, and brought up every minute by a finger
pressed upon the edge. Either of these three--although the metre of
the first was the only one endurable by the ear in the case of a long
series of poems--either of these had, it may be positively said, a
general tone more suitable to the ancient feeling, and more consistent
with the duty of a modern poet arranging for new ears the legends
collected by Sir Thomas Malory, than the general tone of the present
Idyls. Those first experiments, charged like a full sponge with the
essence and volume of primitive legend, went to their purpose without
retrospection or vacillation: each short tale, whether it laughed or
moaned, promulgated itself like an oracle. The teller seemed to have
been listening to the voice of Fate, and whether, Guinevere swayed the
bridle-rein, or Elaine's web flew out and floated wide, or Lancelot
sang tirra-lirra by the river, it was asserted with the positiveness
of a Hebrew chronicle, which we do not question because it is history.
But we hardly have such an illusion in reading the late Idyls. We
seem to be in the presence of a constructor who arranges things, of a
moralist turning ancient stories with a latent purpose of decorum, of
an official Englishman looking about for old confirmations of modern
sociology, of a salaried laureate inventing a prototype of Prince
Albert. The singleness of a story-teller who has convinced himself
that he tells a true story is gone. That this diversion into the
region of didactics is accompanied, on our poet's part, with every
ingenuity of ornament, and every grace of a style which people have
learned to like and which he has made his own, need not be said.
The Tennysonian beauties are all there. The work takes its place
in literature, obscuring the Arthurian work of Dryden, as Milton's
achievement of _Paradise Lost_ obscured the Italian work on the same
subject which preceded it. The story is told, and the things of the
Round Table can hardly be related again in English, any more than the
tale of Troy could be sung again in Greek after the poem of Homer.
But beauties do not necessarily compose into perfect Beauty, and
the achievement of a task neatly done does not prevent the eye from
wandering over the work to see if the material has been used to the
best advantage. So, the reader who has allowed himself to rest long
in the simple magic evoked by Malory or in the Celtic air of
Villemarque's legends, will be fain to ask whether a man of Tennyson's
force could not have given to his century a recasting which would have
satisfied primitive credulity as well as modern subtility. There is
an antique bronze at Naples that has been cleaned and set up in a
splendid museum, and perhaps looks more graceful than ever; but the
pipe that used to lead to the lips, and the passage that used to
communicate with the priest-chamber, are gone, and nothing can
compensate for them: it used to be a form and a voice, and now it is
nothing but a form.

We have just observed that in our opinion the first essays made by the
Laureate with his Arthurian material had the best ring, or at least
had some excellences lost to the later work. _Gareth and Lynette_,
however, by its fluency and simplicity, and by not being overcharged
with meaning, seems to part company with some of this overweighted
later performance, and to attempt a recovery of the directness and
spring of the start. It is, however, far behind all of them in a
momentous particular; for in narrating _them_, the poet, while able to
keep up his immediate connection with the source of tradition, and to
narrate with the directness of belief, had still some undercurrent of
thought which he meant to convey, and which he succeeded in keeping
track of: Arthur and Guinevere, in the little song, ride along like
primeval beings of the world--the situation seems the type of all
seduction; the Lady of Shallot is not alone the recluse who sees life
in a mirror, she is the cloistered Middle Age itself, and when her
mirror breaks we feel that a thousand glasses are bursting, a thousand
webs are parting, and that the times are coming eye to eye with the
actual. In those younger days, Tennyson, possessed with a subject, and
as it were floating in it, could pour out a legend with the credulity
of a child and the clear convincing insight of a teacher: when he came
in mature life to apply himself to the rounded work, he had more of a
disposition to teach, and less of that imaginative reach which is
like belief; and _now_ he is telling a story again for the sake of
the story, but without the deeper meaning. Lynette is a supercilious
damsel who asks redress of the knights of the Round Table: Gareth,
a male Cinderella, starts from the kitchen to defend her, and after
conquering her prejudices by his bravery, assumes his place as a
disguised prince. It is a plain little comedy, not much in Tennyson's
line: there are places where he tries to imitate the artless
disconnected speech of youth; and here, as with the little nun's
babble in _Guinevere_, and with some other passages of factitious
simplicity, the poet makes rather queer work:

  Gold? said I gold?--ay then, why he, or she,
  Or whosoe'er it was, or half the world,
  Had ventured--_had_ the thing I spake of been
  Mere gold--but this was all of that true steel
  Whereof they forged the brand Excalibur,
  And lightnings played about it in the storm, etc.

It may be questioned whether hap-hazard talk ever, in any age of human
speech, took a form like that, though it is just like Tennyson in many
a weary part of his poetry. The blank verse, for its part, is broken
with all the old skill, and there are lines of beautiful license, like
this:

  Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces,

or strengthened with the extra quantity, like this:

  Stay, felon knight, I avenge me for my friend!

or imitating the motion described, as these:

  The hoof of his horse slept in the stream, the stream
  Descended, and the Sun was washed away;

but occasionally the effort to give variety leads into mere puzzles
and disagreeable fractures of metre, such as the following quatrain:

  Courteous or bestial from the moment,
  Such as have nor law nor king; and three of these
  Proud in their fantasy, call themselves the Day,
  Morning-Star, and Noon-Sun, and Evening-Star.

The first line in this quotation, if it be not a misprint of the
American edition, can only be brought to any kind of rule by accenting
each polysyllable on the last, and is not, when even that is done, a
pleasant piece of caprice. There are plenty of phrases that shock
the attention sufficiently to keep it from stagnating on the smooth
surface of the verse; such are--"ever-highering eagle-circles," "there
were none but few goodlier than he," "tipt with trenchant steel," and
the expression, already famous, of "tip-tilted" for Lynette's nose; to
which may be added the object of Gareth's attention, mentioned in the
third line of the poem, when he "stared at the _spate_." But in the
matter of descriptive power we do not know that the Laureate
has succeeded better for a long time past in his touches of
landscape-painting: the pictures of halls, castles, rivers and
woods are all felicitous. For example, this in five lines, where the
travelers saw

  Bowl-shaped, through tops of many thousand pines,
  A gloomy-gladed hollow slowly sink
  To westward; in the deeps whereof a mere,
  Round as the red eye of an eagle-owl,
  Under the half-dead sunset glared; and cries
  Ascended.

Or this simple and beautiful sketch of crescent moonlight:

                  Silent the silent field
  They traversed. Arthur's harp tho' summer-wan,
  In counter motion to the clouds, allured
  The glance of Gareth dreaming on his liege.
  A star shot.

It is still, perfect, and utterly simple sketches like these, thrown
off in the repose of power, that form the best setting for a heroic
or poetical action: what better device was ever invented, even by
Tennyson himself, for striking just the right note in the reader's
mind while thinking of a noble primitive knight, than that in another
Idyl, where Lancelot went along, looking at a star, "_and wondered
what it was"?_ Of a more imaginative kind of beauty are the
descriptions of the walls of rock near Castle Dangerous, decked by the
hermit with tinted bas-reliefs, and the fine one of Camelot, looking
as if "built by fairy kings," with its city gate surmounted by the
figures of the three mystic queens, "the friends of Arthur," and
decked upon the keystone with the image of the Lady, whose form is
set in ripples of stone and crossed by mystic fish, while her drapery
weeps from her sides as water flowing away. The most charming part of
the character-painting is where the shrewish Lynette, as her estimate
of the scullion-knight gradually rises in view of his mighty deeds,
evinces her kindlier mood, not directly in speech, but by catches of
love-songs breaking out of the midst of her scornful gibes: this is
a very subtle and suitable and poetical way of eliciting the
under-workings of the damsel's mind, and it is continued through five
or six pages in an interrupted carol, until at last the maiden, wholly
won, bids him ride by her side, and finishes her lay:

  O trefoil, sparkling on the rainy plain,
  O rainbow, with three colors after rain,
  Shine sweetly: thrice my love hath smiled on me.

The allegory by which Gareth's four opponents are made to form a sort
of stumbling succession representing Morn, Noon, Evening, and Night or
Death, is hardly worth the introduction, but it is not insisted
upon: the last of these knights, besieging Castle Perilous in a skull
helmet, and clamoring for marriage with Lynette's sister Lyonors,
turns out to be a large-sized, fresh-faced and foolish boy, who issues
from the skull "as a flower new blown," and fatuously explains that
his brothers have dressed him out in burlesque and deposited him as a
bugbear at the gate. This is not very salutary allegorizing, but it
is soon over, and the poem closed, leaving a pleasant perfume in the
reader's mind of chivalry, errantry and the delicious days before the
invention of civilization.



Handbook of the History of Philosophy. By Dr. Albert Schwegler.
Translated arid annotated by James Hutchison Stirling, LL.D. New York:
Putnam.

Spinoza teaches that "substance is God;" but, says Mr. Matthew Arnold,
"propositions about substance pass by mankind at large like the idle
wind, which mankind at large regards not: it will not even listen to
a word about these propositions, unless it first learns what their
author was driving at with them, and finds that this object of his
is one with which it sympathizes." There is no way of getting the
multitude to listen to Spinoza's _Ethics_ or Plato's _Dialectics_ but
something is gained when a man of science like Dr. Schwegler happens
to possess the gift of fluent and easy statement, and can pour into a
work like the present, which is the expansion of a hasty encyclopaedia
article, the vivacity of current speech, and the impulse which gives
unity to a long history while it excludes crabbed digressions. It
happens that the American world received the first translation of
Schwegler's _History_ _of Philosophy_; and it may be asked, What need
have Americans of a subsequent version by a Scotch doctor of laws? The
answer is, that Mr. Seelye's earlier rendering was taken from a first
edition, and that the present one includes the variations made in five
editions which have now been issued. Even on British ground the work
thus translated has reached three editions, and the multitude of
"mankind at large," hearing of these repeated editions in Edinburgh
and of twenty thousand copies sold in Germany, may begin to prick
up its ears, and to think that this is one of the easily-read
philosophies of modern times, of which Taine and Michelet have the
secret. It is not so: abstractions stated with scientific precision in
their elliptic slang or technicality are not and cannot be made easy
reading: the strong hands of condensation which Schwegler pressed down
upon the material he controlled so perfectly have not left it lighter
or more digestible. The reader of this manual, for instance, will be
invited to consider the Eleatic argumentation that nothing exists but
Identity, "which is the beënt, and that Difference, the non-beënt,
does not exist; and therefore that he must not only not go on talking
about difference, but that he must not allude to difference as being
anything but the non-beënt; for if he casts about for a synonym, and
arrives at the notion that he may say non-existent for non-beënt, he
is abjectly wrong, for beënt does not mean existent, and non-beënt
non-existent, but it must be considered that the beënt is strictly the
non-existent, and the existent the non-beënt." Such are the amenities
of expression into which an eloquent metaphysician, trying his best
to speak popularly, is led. Yet the book is readable to that orderly
application of the mind which such studies exact, and is the firmest
and strictest guide now speaking our English tongue. Its steady
attention to the business in hand, from the pre-Socratic philosphies
down through the great age of the Greek revival, to Germany and Hegel
at last, is most sustained and admirable. Indeed, few thinkers of
Anglo-Saxon birth are able even to praise such a book as it deserves.
The only real impediment to its acceptance by scholars of our race is
that its attention to modern philosophy is rather partial, the French
and the Germans getting most of the story, and English philosophers
like Locke and Hume receiving scant attention, while Paley is not
recognized. This class of omissions is attended to by the Scotch
translator in a mass of annotations which lead him into a broad and
interesting view of British philosophy, in the course of which he has
some severe reflections on the ignorance of Mr. Lewes and Mr. Mill. On
account of these valuable notes, and also for the alterations made
by Schwegler himself, we feel that we must invite American scholars
possessing the Seelye translation to replace it or accompany it by
this present version, which is a cheap and compassable volume.



Joseph Noirel's Revenge. By Victor Cherbuliez. Translated from the
French by Wm. F. West, A.M. New York: Holt & Williams.

M. Victor Cherbuliez belongs to a Genevese family long and honorably
connected with literature in the capacity of publishers both at Paris
and Geneva. It is in the latter town and the adjacent region that the
scene of the present story--the first, we believe, of the author's
works which has found its way into English--is laid; and much of
its charm is derived from the local coloring with which many of the
characters and incidents are invested. Even the quiet home-life of
so beautiful and renowned a place cannot but be tinted by reflections
from the incomparable beauties of its surroundings, and from the
grand and vivid passages of its singularly picturesque history. The
subordinate figures on the canvas have accordingly an interest greater
than what arises from their commonplace individualities and their
meagre part in the action--like barndoor fowls pecking and clucking
beside larger bipeds in a walled yard steeped in sunlight. But the
sunlight which gives a delicious warmth and brightness to the earlier
chapters of the novel is soon succeeded by gloom and tempest. The
interest is more and more concentrated on the few principal persons;
and the action, which at the outset promised to be light and amusing,
with merely so much of tenderness and pathos as may belong to the
higher comedy, becomes by degrees deeply tragical, and ends in a
catastrophe which is saved from being horrible and revolting only by
the shadows that forecast and the softening strains that attend it. In
point of construction and skillful handling the story is as effective
as French art alone could have made it, while it has an under-meaning
rendered all the more suggestive by being left to find its way into
the reader's reflections without any obvious prompting. The heroine,
sole child of a prosperous bourgeois couple, stands between two
lovers--one the last relic of a noble Burgundian family; the other a
workman with socialist tendencies. Marguerite Mirion is invested with
all the fascination which beauty of face, simplicity of mind, purity
of soul, sweetness of disposition and joyousness of spirit can impart.
Yet she is, and feels herself to be, entirely _bourgeoise,_ longing
for no ideal heights, worldly or spiritual, ready for all ordinary
duties, content with simple and innocent pleasures, rinding in the
life, the thoughts, the occupations and enjoyments of her class all
that is needed to make the current of her life run smoothly and to
satisfy the cravings of her bright but gentle nature. It is in simple
obedience to the will of her parents that she marries Count Roger
d'Ornis, and is carried from her happy home at Mon-Plaisir to a
dilapidated castle in the Jura, where there are no smiling faces or
loving hearts to make her welcome--where, on the contrary, she meets
only with haughty, spiteful or morose looks and a chilling and gloomy
atmosphere. It is from sheer necessity that she accepts the aid
of Joseph Noirel, her father's head-workman, whose ardent spirit,
quickened by the consciousness of talent, but rendered morbid by the
slights which his birth and position have entailed, has been plunged
into blackest night by the loss of the single star that had illumined
its firmament. Count Roger is not wholly devoid of honor and
generosity; but he has no true appreciation of his wife, and will
sacrifice her without remorse to save his own reputation. Joseph, on
the other hand, is ready to dare all things to protect her from
harm; but he cannot forego the reward which entails upon her a deeper
misery. It is Marguerite alone who, in the terrible struggle of fate
and of clashing interests and desires, rises to the height of absolute
self-abnegation; and this not through any sudden development of
qualities or intuitions foreign to her previous modes of thought,
but by the simple application of these to the hard and complicated
problems which have suddenly confronted her. Herein lies the novelty
of the conception and the lesson which the author has apparently
intended to convey. See, he seems to say, how the bourgeois nature,
equally scorned by the classes above and below it as the embodiment of
vulgar ease and selfishness, contains precisely the elements of true
heroism which are wanting alike in those who set conventional rules
above moral laws and in those who revolt against all restrictions. The
book is thus an apology for a class which is no favorite with poets
or romancers; but, as we have said, the design is only to be inferred
from the story, and may easily pass unnoticed, at least with American
readers. The character of Noirel is powerfully drawn, but it is less
original than that of the heroine, belonging, for example, to the
same type as the hero of _Le Rouge et le Noir_--"ce Robespierre de
village," as Sainte-Beuve, we believe, calls him.



Homes and Hospitals; or, Two Phases of Woman's Work, as exhibited in
the Labors of Amy Button and Agnes E. Jones. Boston: American Tract
Society; New York: Hurd & Houghton.

Doubtless we should not, though most of us do, feel a tenderness for
the Dorcas who proves to be a lady of culture and distinction, rather
different from the careless respect we accord to the Dorcas who has
large feet and hands, and mismanages her _h_'s. In this elegant little
book "Amy" is the descendant of influential patrons and patronesses,
and "Agnes" is the lovely saint whom Miss Nightingale calls "Una,"
though her high-bred purity and lowly self-dedication rather recall
the character of Elizabeth of Hungary. Agnes, in Crook lane and
Abbot's street, encounters old paupers who have already enjoyed the
bounty of her ancestress's (Dame Dutton) legacy. When she becomes
interested in the old Indian campaigner, Miles, she is able to procure
his admission to Chelsea through the influence of "my brother, Colonel
Dutton." She lightens her watches by reading Manzoni's novel,
_I Promessi Sposi,_ she quotes Lord Bacon, and compares the
hospital-nurses to the witches in _Macbeth_. These mental and
social graces do not, perhaps, assist the practical part of her
ministrations, but they undoubtedly chasten the influence of
her ministrations on her own character. It is as a purist and an
aristocrat of the best kind that Miss Dutton forms within her own mind
this resolution: "If the details of evil are unavoidably brought under
your eye, let not your thoughts rest upon them a moment longer than is
absolutely needful. Dismiss them with a vigorous effort as soon as you
have done your best to apply a remedy: commit the matter into higher
Hands, then turn to your book, your music, your wood-carving, your pet
recreation, whatever it is. This is one way, at least, of keeping the
mind elastic and pure." And with the discretion of rare breeding she
carries into the haunts of vice and miserable intrigue the Italian
byword: _Orecchie spalancate, e bocca stretta_. A similar elevation,
but also a sense that responsibility to her caste requires the most
tender humility, may be found in "Una." When about to associate with
coarse hired London nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital, she asks herself,
"Are you more above those with whom you will have to mix than our
Saviour was in every thought and sensitive refinement?" It was by
such self-teaching that these high-spirited girls made their life-toil
redound to their own purification, as it did to the cause of humanity.
The purpose served by binding in one volume the district experiences
of Miss Dutton and the hospital record of Miss Jones is that of
indicating to the average young lady of our period a diversity of ways
in which she may serve our Master and His poor. With "Amy" she may
retain her connection with society, and adorn her home and her circle,
all the while that she reads the Litany with the decayed governess or
_Golden Deeds_ to the dying burglar. With "Agnes" she may plunge into
more heroic self-abnegation. Leaving the fair attractions of the world
as utterly as the diver leaves the foam and surface of the sea, she
may grope for moral pearls in the workhouse of Liverpool or train
for her sombre avocation in the asylum at Kaiserwerth. Such absolute
dedication will probably have some effect on her "tone" as a lady. She
can no longer keep up with the current interests of society. Instead
of Shakespeare and Italian literature, which we have seen coloring
the career of the district visitor, her life will take on a sort of
submarine pallor. The sordid surroundings will press too close for any
gleam from the outer world to penetrate. The things of interest will
be the wretched things of pauperdom and hospital service--the slight
improvement of Gaffer, the spiritual needs of Gammer, the harsh
tyranny of upper nurses. "To-day when out walking," says the brave
young lady, as superintendent of a boys' hospital, "I could only keep
from crying by running races with my boys." The effect of a training
so rigid--training which sometimes includes stove-blacking and
floor-washing--is to try the pure metal, to eject the merely
ornamental young lady whose nature is dross, and to consolidate
the valuable nature that is sterling. Miss Agnes, plunged in hard
practical work, and unconsciously acquiring a little workmen's slang,
gives the final judgment on the utility of such discipline: "Without
a regular hard London training I should have been nowhere." Both the
saints of the century are now dead, and these memoirs conserve the
perfume of their lives.



Songs from the Old Dramatists. Collected and Edited by Abby Sage
Richardson, New York: Hurd & Houghton.

Any anthology of old English lyrics is a treasure if one can depend
upon the correctness of printing and punctuating. Mrs. Richardson has
found a quantity of rather recondite ones, and most of the favorites
are given too. Only to read her long index of first lines is to catch
a succession of dainty fancies and of exquisite rhythms, arranged when
the language was crystallizing into beauty under the fanning wings of
song. That some of our pet jewels are omitted was to be expected.
The compiler does not find space for Rochester's most sincere-seeming
stanzas, beginning, "I cannot change as others do"--among the sweetest
and most lyrical utterances which could set the stay-imprisoned hearts
of Charles II.'s beauties to bounding with a touch of emotion. Perhaps
Rochester was not exactly a dramatist, though that point is wisely
strained in other cases. We do not get the "Nay, dearest, think me
not unkind," nor do we get the "To all you ladies now on land," though
sailors' lyrics, among the finest legacies of the time when gallant
England ruled the waves, are not wanting. We have Sir Charles Sedley's

  "Love still hath something of the sea
    From which his mother rose,"

and the siren's song, fit for the loveliest of Parthenopes, from
Browne's _Masque of the Inner Temple_, beginning,

  "Steer, hither steer your winged pines,
    All beaten mariners!"--

songs which severally repeat the fatigue of the sea or that daring
energy of its Elizabethan followers which by a false etymology we term
chivalrous. We do not find the superb lunacy of "Mad Tom of Bedlam" in
the catch beginning, "I know more than Apollo," but we have something
almost as spirited, where John Ford sings, in _The Sun's Darling_,

  "The dogs have the stag in chase!
    'Tis a sport to content a king.
    So-ho! ho! through the skies
    How the proud bird flies,
  And swooping, kills with a grace!
    Now the deer falls! hark! how they ring."

For what is pensive and retrospective in tone we are given a song
of "The Aged Courtier," which once in a pageant touched the finer
consciousness of Queen Elizabeth. The unemployed warrior, whose
"helmet now shall make a hive for bees," treats the virgin sovereign
as his saint and divinity, promising,

  "And when he saddest sits in holy cell,
    He'll teach his swains this carol for a song:
  Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well!
    Cursed be the souls that think her any wrong!
  Goddess! allow this aged man his right
  To be your beadsman now, that was your knight."

The feudal feeling can hardly be more beautifully expressed.

From the devotion that was low and lifelong we may turn to the
devotion that was loud and fleeting. The love-songs are many and well
picked: one is the madrigal from Thomas Lodge's _Eitphues' Golden
Legacy,_ which "he wrote," he says, "on the ocean, when every line
was wet with a surge, and every humorous passion counterchecked with
a storm;" and which (the madrigal) had the good fortune to suggest and
name Shakespeare's archest character, Rosalind. We cannot dwell
upon this perfumed chaplet of love-ditties. Mrs. Richardson is here
doubtless in her element, but she does not always lighten counsel
with the wisdom of her words; for instance, when, in Beaumont and
Fletcher's "Beauty clear and fair," she makes an attempted emendation
in the lines--

  "Where to live near,
    And planted there,
  Is still to live and still live new;
    Where to gain a favor is
    More than light perpetual bliss;
  Oh make me live by serving you."

On this the editress says: "I have always been inclined to believe
that this line should read: 'More than _life_, perpetual bliss.'" The
image here, where the whole figure is taken from flowers, is of being
planted and growing in the glow of the mistress's beauty, whose favor
is more fructifying than the sun, and to which he immediately begs
to be recalled, "back again, to this _light_." To say that living
anywhere is "more than life" is a forced bombastic notion not in
the way of Beaumont and Fletcher, but coming later, and rather
characteristic of Poe, with his rant about

          "that infinity with which my wife
  Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life."

Mrs. Richardson's notes, in fact, contradict the impression of
thoroughness which her selecting, we are glad to say, leaves on the
mind. She is aware that the "Ode to Melancholy" in _The Nice Valour_
begins in the same way as Milton's "Pensieroso," but she does not seem
to know that the latter is also closely imitated from Burton's poem in
his _Anatomy of Melancholy_. And she quotes John Still's "Jolly Good
Ale and Old" as a "panegyric on old sack," sack being sweet wine.

The publishers have done their part, and made of these drops of oozed
gold what is called "an elegant trifle" for the holidays. Mr. John La
Farge, a very "advanced" sort of artist and illustrator, has furnished
some embellishments which will be better liked by people of broad
culture, and especially by enthusiasts for Japanese art, than they
will be by ordinary Christmas-shoppers, though the frontispiece to
"Songs of Fairies," representing Psyche floating among water-lilies,
is beautiful enough and obvious enough for anybody.





_Books Received._


A Concordance to the Constitution of the United States of America. By
Charles W. Stearns, M.D. New York: Mason, Baker & Pratt.

The Standard: A Collection of Sacred and Secular Music. By L.O.
Emerson and H. R. Palmer. Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co.

Gems of Strauss: A Collection of Dance Music for the Piano. By Johann
Strauss. Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co.

The Greeks of To-Day. By Charles K. Tuckerman. New York: G.P. Putnam &
Sons.

The Eustace Diamonds. By Anthony Trollope. New York: Harper &
Brothers.

How to Paint. By F.B. Gardner. New York: Samuel R. Wells.







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