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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE

May, 1876.

Vol. XVII, No. 101.




TABLE OF CONTENTS

  THE CENTURY--ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL.

    V.--MINOR STRUCTURES OF THE EXHIBITION. [Illustrated]

  GLIMPSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE by SHEILA HALE.

    TWO PAPERS.--I. [Illustrated]

  THE BALLAD OF THE BELL-TOWER by MARGARET J. PRESTON.

  BERLIN AND VIENNA by JAMES MORGAN HART.

  THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS.
    By MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF "PATRICIA KEMBALL."

    CHAPTER XXXIII. OUR MARRIAGE.

    CHAPTER XXXIV. IS THIS LOVE?

    CHAPTER XXXV. DUNASTON CASTLE.

    CHAPTER XXXVI. IN LETTERS OF FIRE.

  ROSE-MORALS by SIDNEY LANIER.

  AN OLD HOUSE AND ITS STORY by K. T. T.

  THE WATCH: AN OLD MAN'S STORY by IVAN TOURGUENEFF.

  TRANSLATIONS FROM HEINE by EMMA LAZARUS.

    I.--CHILDE HAROLD.

    II.--SPRING FESTIVAL.

  LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA by LADY BARKER.

  THE LIFE OF GEORGE TICKNOR by T. S. PERRY.

  OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

    A REMINISCENCE OF MACAULAY by E. Y.

    UNVEILING KEATS'S MEDALLION by T. A. T.

    GINO CAPPONI by T. A. T.

    A DINNER WITH ROSSI by L. H. H.

    "FOUNDERS DAY" AT RAINE'S HOSPITAL by B. M.

    NOTES.

  LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

    _Books Received._




ILLUSTRATIONS

  FOUNTAIN OF THE CATHOLIC TOTAL ABSTINENCE UNION.

  JUDGES' PAVILION.

  WOMEN'S PAVILION.

  UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT BUILDING.

  OHIO BUILDING.

  NEW JERSEY BUILDING.

  NEW YORK BUILDING.

  PENNSYLVANIA BUILDING.

  PLAN OF EXHIBITION GROUNDS.

  JAPANESE BUILDING.

  SWEDISH SCHOOL-HOUSE.

  SPANISH BUILDING.

  BRITISH BUILDINGS.

  GERMAN BUILDING.

  HORTICULTURAL HALL--INTERIOR.

  AMMALE.

  TURKISH LADY.

  THE SULTAN'S NEW PALACE ON THE BOSPHORUS.

  MARBLE STAIRCASE, PALACE OF BESKIK-TASCH.

  MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA.

  INTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA.

  HAREM SCENE.

  MOUNT PLEASANT.





LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.

MAY, 1876.




THE CENTURY--ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL.

V.--MINOR STRUCTURES OF THE EXHIBITION.


[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF THE CATHOLIC TOTAL ABSTINENCE UNION.]

Compress it as you may, this globe of ours remains quite a bulky
affair. The world in little is not reducible to a microscopic point.
The nations collected to show their riches, crude and wrought, bring
with them also their wants. For the display, for its comfort and good
order, not only space, but a carefully-planned organization and a
multiplicity of appliances are needed. Separate or assembled, men
demand a home, a government, workshops, show-rooms and restaurants.
For even so paternal and, within its especial domain, autocratic
a sway as that of the Centennial Commission to provide all these
directly would be impossible. A great deal is, as in the outer world,
necessarily left to private effort, combined or individual.

Having in our last paper sketched the provision made by the management
for sheltering and properly presenting to the eye the objects on
exhibition, we shall now turn from the strictly public buildings to
the more numerous ones which surround them, and descend, so to speak,
from the Capitol to the capital.

Our circuit brought us back to the neighborhood of the principal
entrance. Standing here, facing the interval between the Main Building
and Machinery Hall, our eyes and steps are conducted from great to
greater by a group of buildings which must bear their true name of
offices, belittling as a title suggestive of clerks and counting-rooms
is to dimensions and capacity exceeding those of most churches. Right
and left a brace of these modest but sightly and habitable-looking
foot-hills to the Alps of glass accommodate the executive and staff
departments of the exposition. They bring together, besides the
central administration, the post, police, custom-house, telegraph,
etc. A front, including the connecting verandah, of five hundred feet
indicates the scale on which this transitory government is organized.
Farther back, directly opposite the entrance, but beyond the north
line of the great halls, stands the Judges' Pavilion. In this
capacious "box," a hundred and fifty-two by a hundred and fifteen
feet, the grand and petit juries of the tribunal of industry and taste
have abundant elbow--room for deliberation and discussion. The same
enlightened policy which aimed at securing the utmost independence and
the highest qualifications of knowledge and intelligence in the two
hundred men who determine the awards, recognized also the advantage
of providing for their convenience. Their sessions here can be neither
cramped nor disturbed. So far as foresight can go, there is nothing
to prevent their deciding quietly, comfortably and soundly, after mute
argument from the vast array of objects submitted to their verdict, on
the merits of each. The main hall of this building, or high court as
it may be termed, is sixty by eighty feet, and forty-three feet high.
In the rear of it is a smaller hall. A number of other chambers
and committee-rooms are appropriated to the different branches as
classified. Accommodation is afforded, besides, to purposes of a less
arid nature--fêtes, receptions, conventions, international congresses
and the like. This cosmopolitan forum might fitly have been modeled
after

            the tower that builders vain,
  Presumptuous, piled on Shinar's plain.

Bricks from Birs Nimroud would have been a good material for the
walks. Perhaps, order being the great end, anything savoring of
confusion was thought out of place.

[Illustration: JUDGES' PAVILION.]

Fire is an invader of peace and property, defence against whose
destructive forays is one of the first and most constant cares of
American cities, old and new, great and small. Before the foundations
of the Main Building were laid the means of meeting the foe on the
threshold were planned. The Main Building alone contains seventy-five
fire-plugs, with pressure sufficient to throw water over its
highest point. Adjacent to it on the outside are thirty-three more.
Seventy-six others protect Machinery Hall, within which are
the head-quarters of the fire service. A large outfit of steam
fire-engines, hose, trucks, ladders, extinguishers and other
appliances of the kind make up a force powerful enough, one
would think, to put out that shining light in the records of
conflagration--Constantinople. Steam is kept up night and day in the
engines, which, with their appurtenances, are manned by about two
hundred picked men. The houses for their shelter, erected at a cost
of eight thousand dollars, complete, if we except some architectural
afterthoughts in the shape of annexes, the list of the buildings
erected by the commission.

[Illustration: WOMEN'S PAVILION.]

_Place aux dames!_ First among the independent structures we must note
the Women's Pavilion. After having well earned, by raising a large
contribution to the Centennial stock, the privilege of expending
thirty-five thousand dollars of their own on a separate receptacle of
products of the female head and hand, the ladies selected for that a
sufficiently modest site and design. To the trait of modesty we
cannot say that the building has failed to add that of grace. In this
respect, however, it does not strike us as coming up to the standard
attained by some of its neighbors. The low-arched roofs give it
somewhat the appearance of a union railway-depot; and one is apt to
look for the emergence from the main entrances rather of locomotives
than of ladies. The interior, however is more light and airy in effect
than the exterior. But "pretty is that pretty does" was a favorite
maxim of the Revolutionary dames; and the remarkable energy shown by
their fair descendants, under the presidency of Mrs. E. D. Gillespie,
in carrying through this undertaking will impart to it new force. The
rule is quite in harmony with it that mere frippery should be avoided
within and without, and the purely decorative architect excluded with
Miss McFlimsey. The ground-plan is very simple, blending the cross and
the square. Nave and transept are identical in dimensions, each being
sixty-four by one hundred and ninety-two feet. The four angles
formed by their intersection are nearly filled out by as many sheds
forty-eight feet square. A cupola springs from the centre to a height
of ninety feet. An area of thirty thousand square feet strikes us as a
modest allowance for the adequate display of female industry. For the
filling of the vast cubic space between floor and roof the managers
are fain to invoke the aid of an orchestra of the sterner sex to keep
it in a state of chronic saturation with music.

[Illustration: UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT BUILDING.]

Reciprocity, however, obtains here. The votaries of harmony naturally
seek the patronage of woman. Her territorial empire has accordingly
far overstepped the narrow bounds we have been viewing. The Women's
Centennial Music Hall on Broad street is designed for all the musical
performances connected with the exposition save those forming part of
the opening ceremonies. This is assuming for it a large office, and we
should have expected so bold a calculation to be backed by floor-room
for more than the forty-five hundred hearers the hall is able to seat.
A garden into which it opens will accommodate an additional number,
and may suggest souvenirs of _al-fresco_ concerts to European
travelers.

Nor does the sex extend traces of its sway in this direction alone. A
garden of quite another kind, meant for blossoms other than those of
melody, and still more dependent upon woman's nurture, finds a place
in the exposition grounds near the Pavilion. Of the divers species
of _Garten_--_Blumen-, Thier-, Bier_-, etc.--rife in Vaterland, the
_Kinder_- is the latest selected for acclimation in America. If
the mothers of our land take kindly to it, it will probably become
something of an institution among us. But that is an _If_ of
portentous size. The mothers aforesaid will have first to fully
comprehend the new system. It is not safe to say with any confidence
at first sight that we rightly understand any conception of a German
philosopher; but, so far as we can make it out, the Kindergarten
appears to be based on the idea of formulating the child's physical as
thoroughly as his intellectual training, and at the same time closely
consulting his idiosyncrasy in the application of both. His natural
disposition and endowments are to be sedulously watched, and guided
or wholly repressed as the case may demand. The budding artist
is supplied with pencil, the nascent musician with trumpet or
tuning-fork, the florist with tiny hoe and trowel, and so on. The
boy is never loosed, physically or metaphysically, quite out of
leading-strings. They are made, however, so elastic as scarce to
be felt, and yet so strong as never to break. Moral suasion,
perseveringly applied, predominates over Solomon's system. It is
a very nice theory, and we may all study here, at the point of the
lecture-rod wielded by fair fingers, its merits as a specific for
giving tone to the constitution of Young America.

At the side of the Kindergarten springs a more indigenous growth--the
Women's School-house. In this reminder of early days we may freshen
our jaded memories, and wonder if, escaped from the dame's school,
we have been really manumitted from the instructing hand of women, or
ever shall be in the world, or ought to be.

Is the "New England Log-house," devoted to the contrasting of the
cuisine of this and the Revolutionary period, strictly to be assigned
to the women's ward of the great extempore city? Is its proximity to
the buildings just noticed purely accidental, or meant to imply that
cookery is as much a female art and mystery as it was a century ago?
However this may be, the erection of this temple to the viands of
other days was a capital idea, and a blessed one should it aid in the
banishment of certain popular delicacies which afflict the digestive
apparatus of to-day. This kitchen of the forest epoch is naturally
of logs, and logs in their natural condition, with the bark on.
The planking of that period is represented by clap-boards or slabs.
Garnished with ropes of onions, dried apples, linsey-woolsey garments
and similar drapery, the aspect of the walls will remind us of
Lowell's lines:

  Crook-necks above the chimly hung,
     While in among 'em rusted
  The old Queen's-arm that Gran'ther Young
     Brought hack from Concord busted.

The log-house is not by any means an abandoned feature of antiquity.
It is still a thriving American "institution" North, West and South,
only not so conspicuous in the forefront of our civilization as it
once was. It turns out yet fair women and brave men, and more than
that--if it be not treason to use terms so unrepublican--the highest
product of this world, gentlemen and gentlewomen.

[Illustration: OHIO BUILDING.]

Uncle Sam confronts the ladies from over the way, a ferocious battery
of fifty-seven-ton Rodman guns and other monsters of the same family
frowning defiance to their smiles and wiles. His traditional dread of
masked batteries may have something to do with this demonstration. He
need not fear, however. His fair neighbors and nieces have their hands
full with their own concerns, and leave him undisturbed in his stately
bachelor's hall to "illustrate the functions and administrative
faculties of the government in time of peace and its resources as a
war-power." To do this properly, he has found two acres of ground none
too much. The building, business-like and capable-looking, was erected
in a style and with a degree of economy creditable to the officers
of the board, selected from the Departments of War, Agriculture, the
Treasury, Navy, Interior and Post-Office, and from the Smithsonian
Institution. Appended to it are smaller structures for the
illustration of hospital and laboratory work--a kill-and-cure
association that is but one of the odd contradictions of war.

The sentiments prevalent in this era of perfect peace, harmony and
balance of rights forbids the suspicion of any significance in
the fact that the lordly palace of the Federal government at once
overshadows and turns its back upon the humbler tenements of the
States. A line of these, drawn up in close order, shoulder to
shoulder, is ranged, hard by, against the tall fence that encloses
the grounds. The Keystone State, as beseems her, heads the line by
the left flank. Then come, in due order, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts and
Delaware. New Jersey and Kansas stand proudly apart, officer-like, on
the opposite side of the avenue; the regimental canteen, in the shape
of the Southern Restaurant, jostling them rather too closely. Somewhat
in keeping with the over-prominence of the latter adjunct is the
militia-like aspect of the array, wonderfully irregular as are its
members in stature and style. Pennsylvania's pavilion, costing forty
thousand dollars, or half as much as the United States building, plays
the leading grenadier well; but little Delaware, not content with the
obscure post of file-closer, swells at the opposite end of the line
into dimensions of ninety by seventy-five feet, with a cupola that, if
placed at Dover, would be visible from half her territory.

[Illustration: NEW JERSEY BUILDING.]

These buildings are all of wood, with the exception of that of Ohio,
which exhibits some of the fine varieties of stone furnished by the
quarries of that State, together with some crumbling red sandstone
which ought, in our opinion, to have been left at home. All have two
floors, save the Massachusetts cottage, a quaint affair modeled after
the homes of the past. Virginia ought to have placed by its side one
of her own old country-houses, long and low, with attic windows, the
roof spreading with unbroken line over a portico the full length of
the front, and a broad-bottomed chimney on the outside of each gable.
The State of New York plays orderly sergeant, and stands in front
of Delaware. She is very fortunate in the site assigned her, at
the junction of State Avenue with several broad promenades, and her
building is not unworthy so prominent a position.

From the Empire State we step into the domain of Old England. Three
of her rural homesteads rise before us, red-tiled, many-gabled,
lattice-windowed, and telling of a kindly winter with external
chimneys that care not for the hoarding of heat. It is a bit of the
island peopled by some of the islanders. They are colonized here, from
commissioner in charge down to private, in a cheek-by-jowl fashion
that shows their ability to unbend and republicanize on occasion.
Great Britain's head-quarters are made particularly attractive, not
more by the picturesqueness of the buildings than by the extent and
completeness of her exhibit. In her preparations for neither the
French nor the Austrian exposition did she manifest a stronger
determination to be thoroughly well represented. Col. H.B. Sanford, of
the Royal Artillery, heads her commission.

Japan is a common and close neighbor to the two competitors for her
commercial good-will, England and New York. Modern Anglo-Saxondom and
old Cathay touch eaves with each other. Hemlock and British oak rub
against bamboo, and dwellings which at first sight may impress one as
chiefly chimney stand in sharp contrast with one wholly devoid of that
feature. The difference is that of nails and bolts against dovetails
and wooden pins; of light and pervious walls with heavy sun-repelling
roof against close and dense sides and roofs whose chief warfare is
with the clouds; of saw and plane that work in Mongol and Caucasian
hands in directions precisely reversed. To the carpenters of both
England and Japan our winter climate, albeit far milder than usual,
was alike astonishing. With equal readiness, though not with equal
violence to the _outer man_, the craftsmen of the two nations
accommodated themselves to the new atmospheric conditions. The
moulting process, in point of dress, through which the _Japanese_
passed was not untypical of the change the _institutions_ of
their country have been undergoing in obedience to similarly stern
requirements. It did not begin at quite so rudimental a stage of
costume as that of the porters and wrestlers presented to us on fans,
admirably adapted as that style might be to our summer temperature.
In preparing for that oscillation of the thermometer the English are
called on for another change, whereas the Orientals may meet it by
simply reverting to first principles.

[Illustration: NEW YORK BUILDING.]

The delicacy of the Asiatic touch is exemplified in the wood-carving
upon the doorways and pediments of the Japanese dwelling. Arabesques
and reproductions of subjects from Nature are executed with a
clearness and precision such as we are accustomed to admire on the
lacquered-ware cabinets and bronzes of Japan. With us, wood has almost
completely disappeared as a glyptic material. The introduction of
mindless automatic machinery has starved out the chisel. Mouldings are
run out for us by the mile, like iron from the rolling-mill or tunes
from a musical-box, as cheap and as soulless. Forms innately beautiful
thus become almost hateful, because hackneyed. If all the women we
see were at once faultlessly beautiful and absolute duplicates of
each other in the minutest details of feature, complexion, dress and
figure, we should be in danger of conceiving an aversion to the sex.
So there is a certain pleasure in tracing in a carven object, even
though it be hideous, the patient, faithful, watchful work of the
human hand guided at every instant by the human eye. And this Japanese
tracery is by no means hideous. The plants and animals are well
studied from reality, and truer than the average of popular designs in
Europe a century ago, if not now. It is simple justice to add that for
workmanlike thoroughness this structure does not suffer in comparison
with those around it.

Besides this dwelling for its employés, the Japanese government has
in a more central situation, close to the Judges' Pavilion, another
building. The style of this is equally characteristic. Together, the
two structures will do what houses may toward making us acquainted
with the public and private ménage of Japan.

[Illustration: PENNSYLVANIA BUILDING.]

In the neat little Swedish School-house, of unpainted wood, that
stands next to the main Japanese building, we have another meeting of
antipodes. Northern Europe is proud to place close under the eye of
Eastern Asia a specimen of what she is doing for education. Sweden
has indeed distinguished herself by the interest she has shown in the
exposition. At the head of her commission was placed Mr. Dannfeldt,
who supervised her display at Vienna. His activity and judgment
have obviously not suffered from the lapse of three years.
This school-house is attractive for neatness and peculiarity of
construction. It was erected by Swedish carpenters. The descendants of
the hardy sea-rovers, convinced that their inherited vigor and
thrift could not be adequately illustrated by an exclusively in-doors
exhibition, sent their portable contributions in a fine steamer of
Swedish build, the largest ever sent to sea from the Venice of the
North, and not unworthy her namesake of the Adriatic. To compete in
two of its specialties with the cradle of the common school and the
steamship is a step that tells of the bold Scandinavian spirit.

The contemporaries and ancient foes of the Northmen, who overthrew the
Goths on land and checkmated the Vikings in the southern seas, have
a memorial in the beautiful Alhambra-like edifice of the Spanish
government. Spain has no architecture so distinctive as that of the
Moors, and the selection of their style for the present purpose was in
good taste. It lends itself well to this class of building, designed
especially for summer use; and many other examples of it will be found
upon the grounds. The Mohammedan arch is suited better to materials,
like wood and iron, which sustain themselves in part by cohesion, than
to stone, which depends upon gravitation alone. Although it stands
in stone in a long cordon of colonnades from the Ganges to the
Guadalquivir, the eye never quite reconciles itself to the suggestion
of untruth and feebleness in the recurved base of the arch. This
defect, however, is obtrusive only when the weight supported is great;
and the Moorish builders have generally avoided subjecting it to that
test.

[Illustration: PLAN OF EXHIBITION GROUNDS.]

Spain also has taken the liberty of widening the range of her
contributions. Soldiers, for instance, find no place in the official
classification of subjects for exhibition. She naturally thought it
worth while to show that the famous _infanteria_ of Alva, Gonsalvo,
and Cuesta "still lived." So she sends us specimens of the first, if
not just now the foremost, of all infantry. This microscopic invasion
of our soil by an armed force will be useful in reminding us of the
untiring tenacity which takes no note of time or of defeat, and which,
indifferent whether the struggle were of six, fifty, or seven hundred
years, wore down in succession the Saracens, the Flemings and the
French.

[Illustration: JAPANESE BUILDING.]

Samples in this particular walk of competition come likewise from the
battle-ground of Europe, Belgium sending a detachment of her troops
for police duty. We may add that the Centennial has brought back
the red-coats, a detachment of Royal Engineers, backed by part of
Inspector Bucket's men, doing duty in the British division.

After these first drops of the military shower one looks instinctively
for the gleam of the spiked helmet at the portals of the German
building, seated not far from that of Spain, and side by side with
that of Brazil. It does not appear, however. Possibly, Prince Bismarck
scorns to send his veterans anywhere by permission. Neither does he
indulge us, like Brazil, with the sight of an emperor, or even with
cæsarism in the dilute form of a crown prince. Such exotics do not
transplant well, even for temporary potting, in this republican soil.
It is impossible, at the same time, not to reflect what a capital card
for the treasury of the exposition would have been the catching of
some of them in full bloom, as at the openings of 1867 and 1873. A
week of Wilhelm would have caused "the soft German accent," with its
tender "hochs!" to drown all other sounds between Sandy Hook and the
Golden Gate.

Let us step over the Rhine, or rather, alas! over the Moselle, and
look up at the tricolor. It floats above a group of structures--one
for the general use of the French commission, another for the special
display of bronzes, and a third for another art-manufacture for which
France is becoming eminent--stained glass. This overflowing from her
great and closely-occupied area in Memorial Hall, hard by, indicates
the wealth of France in art. She is largely represented, moreover, in
another outlying province of the same domain--photography.

Photographic Hall, an offshoot from Memorial Hall, and lying between
it and the Main Building, is quite a solid structure, two hundred and
fifty-eight feet by one hundred and seven, with nineteen thousand
feet of wall-space. Conceding this liberally to foreign exhibitors, an
association of American photographers erected a hall of their own in
another direction, upon Belmont Avenue beyond the Judges' Pavilion.
This will serve to exhibit the art in operation under an American sun,
and enable our photographers to compare notes and processes with their
European fellows, who treat under different atmospheric conditions a
wider range of subjects. This is the largest studio the sun, in his
capacity of artist on paper, has ever set up, as the hall provided
for him by the exposition is the largest gallery he has ever filled.
Combined, they may reasonably be expected to bear some fruit in the
way of drawing from him the secret he still withholds--the addition
of color to light and shade in the fixed images of the camera. This
further step seems, when we view within the camera the image in
perfect panoply of all its hues, so very slight in comparison with
the original discovery of Daguerre, that we can hardly refer it to a
distant future.

Questions of finance naturally associate themselves with sitting for
one's portrait, even to the sun. A national bank becomes a necessity
to their readier solution, be they suggested by this or any other item
of expense. Such an institution has consequently a place in the outfit
of the Centennial. Here it stands within its own walls, under its own
roof and behind its own counter. The traditional cashier is at home in
his parlor, the traditional teller observes mankind from his rampart
of wire and glass, and the traditional clerk busy in the rear studies
over his shoulder the strange accent and the strange face. Over and
above the conveniences for exchange afforded by the bank, it
will introduce to foreigners the charms of one of our newest
inventions--the greenback. This humble but heterodox device, not
pleasant in the eyes of the old school of conservative financiers, is
yet unique and valuable as having accomplished the task of absolutely
equalizing the popular currency of so large a country as the Union.
That gap of twelve or thirteen per cent. between greenbacks and gold
is no doubt an _hiatus valde deflendus_--a gulf which has swallowed up
many an ardent and confident Curtius, and will swallow more before it
disappears; but the difference is uniform everywhere, and discounts
itself. Whatever the faults of our paper-money, it claims a prominent
place among the illustrations of the close of the century, for it is
the only currency save copper and Mr. Memminger's designs in blue
that a majority of American youth have ever seen. Should these young
inquirers wish to unearth the money of their fathers, they can find
the eagles among other medals of antiquity in the Mint department of
the United States Government Building.

[Illustration: SWEDISH SCHOOL-HOUSE.]

His fiscal affairs brought into comfortable shape, the tourist from
abroad may be desirous of seeing more of the United States than is
included in the view from the great Observatory. The landscape visible
from that point, as he will find after being wound to the top
by steam, is not flecked with buffaloes or even the smoke of the
infrequent wigwam, as the incautious reader of some Transatlantic
books of travel might expect. For the due exploration of at least a
portion of the broad territory that lies inside of the buffalo range
he needs a railway-ticket and information. These are at his command in
the "World's Ticket and Inquiry Office," the abundantly comprehensive
name of a building near the north-east corner of Machinery Hall. In a
central area sixty feet in diameter tickets to every known point are
offered to him by polyglot clerks. Here, too, a wholesome interchange
of ideas in regard to the merits of the various traveling regulations
of different countries may be expected. Baggage-checks or none,
compartment or saloon cars, ventilation or swelter in summer, freezing
or hot-water-pipes in winter, and other like differences of practice
will come under consideration with travelers in general council
assembled. Give and take will prevail between our voyagers and railway
officials and those of the Old World. Both sides may teach and learn.
Should the carriage of goods instead of persons be in question, the
American side of the materials for its discussion will be found in the
building of the Empire Transportation Company, where the economies
of system and "plant," which have for a series of years been steadily
reducing the expenses of railway-traffic until the cost of carrying
a ton one mile now falls within one cent, will be fully detailed. A
further reduction of this charge may result from the exposition if
exhibitors from Europe succeed in explaining to our engineers and
machinists how they manage to lighten their cars, and thereby avoid
carrying the excess of dead weight which contributes so much to the
annihilation of our tracks and dividends.

[Illustration: SPANISH BUILDING.]

The telegraph completes the mastery over space in the conveyance of
thought that the railway attains in that of persons and property. Its
facilities here are commensurable with its duty of placing thousands
of all countries in instantaneous communication with their homes.
Those from over-sea will find that, instead of dragging "at each
remove a lengthening chain," they are, on the exposition grounds, in
point of intercourse nearer home than they were when half a day out
from the port of embarkation, and ten days nearer than when they
approached our shores after a sail of three thousand miles. To get out
of call from the wire it is necessary to go to sea--and stay there.
Another hundred years, and even the seafarer will fail of seclusion.
Floating telegraph-offices will buoy the cable. Latitude 40° will
"call" the Equator, and warn Grand Banks that "Sargasso is passing
by." Not only will the march of Morse be _under_ the mountain-wave,
but his home will be on the deep.

[Illustration: BRITISH BUILDINGS.]

The submarine and terrestrial progress of the telegraph was in '67 and
'73 already an old story. At the Centennial it presents itself in
a new role--that of interpreter of the weather and general
storm-detector. This application of its powers is due to American
science. Indeed, the requisites for experiments were not elsewhere at
command. A vast expanse of unbroken territory comprising many climates
and belts of latitude and longitude, and penetrated throughout by the
wire under one and the same control, did not offer itself to European
investigators. These singular advantages have been well employed
by the United States Signal Service within the past five years. Its
efforts were materially aided by the antecedent researches of such men
as Espy and Maury, the latter of whom led European savants into the
recognition of correct theories of both air- and ocean-currents.
Daily observations at a hundred stations scattered over the continent,
exactly synchronized by telegraph, yielded deductions that steadily
grew more and more consistent and reliable, until at length those
particularly fickle instruments, the weather-vane, the thermometer,
the barometer and the magnetic fluid, have formed, in combination,
almost an "arm of precision." The predictions put forth in the "small
hours" each morning by the central office in Washington assume only
the modest title of "Probabilities." Some additional expenditure, with
a doubling of the number of stations, would within a few years make
that heading more of a misnomer. Meanwhile, the saving of life and
property on sea and land already effected is a solid certainty and
no mere "probability." At the station on the exposition grounds the
weather of each day, storm or shine, in most of the cities of the Old
and New Worlds will be bulletined. "Storm in Vlaenderlandt" will be as
surely announced to the Dutch stroller on Belmont Avenue as though he
were within hearing of his cathedral bell. Should such a "cautionary
signal" from beyond the ocean reach him, he may ascertain in what, if
any, danger of submergence his home stands, by stepping into one of
the branch telegraph-offices dispersed over the grounds. Or he may
satisfy all possible craving for news from that or any other quarter
in the Press Building. This metropolis of the fourth estate occupies
a romantic site on the south side of the avenue and the north bank of
the lake. Such a focus of the news and newspapers of all nations
was not paralleled at either of the preceding expositions. American
journalism will be additionally represented in the different State
buildings, where files of all the publications of each commonwealth
will be found, embracing in most cases a greater number of journals
than the entire continent boasted in 1776, and in each of the States
of Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania more than the extra-metropolitan
press of either France, Austria, Prussia or Russia can now boast.

[Illustration: GERMAN BUILDING.]

The commercial idea is so prominent in this, as in all expositions,
that it is difficult to draw the line between public and private
interest among its different features, and particularly among what
may be called its outgrowths, overflowings or addenda. Here is half
a square mile dotted with a picturesque assemblage of shops and
factories, among which everything may be found, from a soda-fountain
or a cigar-stand up to a monster brewery, all devoted at once to
the exemplification and the rendering immediately profitable of some
particular industry. In one ravine an ornate dairy, trim and Arcadian
in its appurtenances and ministers as that of Marie Antoinette and her
attendant Phillises at the Petit Trianon, offers a beverage presumably
about as genuine as that of '76, and much above the standard of
to-day. A Virginia tobacco-factory checkmates that innocent tipple
with "negrohead" and "navy twist." A bakery strikes the happy medium
between the liquid sustenance and the narcotic luxury by teaching
Cisatlantic victims of baking-powders and salæratus how to make Vienna
bread. Recurring to fluids, we find unconquered soda popping up, or
down, from innumerable fonts--how many, may be inferred from the fact
that a royalty of two dollars on each spigot is estimated to place
thirty-two thousand dollars in the strong box of the exposition. Nor
does this measure the whole tribute expected to be offered at these
dainty shrines of marble and silver. The two firms that bought the
monopoly of them pay in addition the round sum of twenty thousand
dollars. It speaks well for the condition of the temperance cause
that beer is the nearest rival of aerated water. An _octroi_ of three
dollars per barrel is estimated to yield fifty thousand dollars,
or two thousand dollars less than soda-water. Seventy-five thousand
dollars is the aggregate fee of the restaurants. Of these last-named
establishments, the French have two. The historic sign of the Trois
Frères Provençaux is assumed by a vast edifice in one of the most
conspicuous parts of the enclosure, sandwiched between the Press and
the Government. The "Sudreau" affects the fine arts and cultivates
with like intimacy the society of Memorial Hall. The German refectory,
Lauber's, a solid, beery sort of building, shows a fine bucolic
sense by choosing a hermitage in the grove between Agricultural
and Horticultural Halls. A number of others, of greater or less
pretensions, will enable the visitor to exclaim, with more or less
truth, toward the dusty evening, "Fate cannot harm me: I have dined
to-day."

"Dusty," did we say? The ceaseless sob of engines that rob the
Schuylkill daily of six millions of gallons to sprinkle over
asphaltum, gravel and greensward demands recantation of the word.
Everything has been foreseen and considered, even the dust of the
earth. George's Hill Reservoir can, on occasion, give the pumps
several days' holiday, and keep all fresh and dewy as the dawn.

Some industries meet us in the Centennial list that are not to be
detected in the United States census or any other return we are
acquainted with. What train of ideas, for example, is suggested to the
average reader by the Roll-Chair Company? The rolling-stock of this
association turns out, on inquiry, to be an in-door variety of the
conveyance wherein Mrs. Skewton was wont to take the air under the
escort of Major Bagstock. It is meant for the relief of those who wish
to see everything in the Main Building without trudging eleven miles.
Given an effective and economical motive-power, the roll-chair system
would seem to meet this want. The reader of _Dombey and Son_ will
recollect the pictorial effect, in print and etching, of the popping
up of the head of the propellent force when Mrs. S. called a halt, and
its sudden disappearance on her directing a resumption of movement.
The bobbing up and down of four hundred and fifty heads, like so
many seals, will impart a unique aspect to the vista from one of the
interior galleries of the great hall. The stipulated tax of forty
dollars on each of these vehicles will necessitate a tolerably active
undulation of polls if the company is to make both ends meet--granting
that a rotatory movement can have an end.

Another startling item is the pop-corn privilege. A business-man of
Dayton, Ohio, finds himself justified in venturing the heavy sum of
seven thousand dollars on this very light article. Parched corn was
well known in Ohio in 1776. The Miamis and Shawnees had, however, a
monopoly of it. It composed their commissariat for a campaign against
the whites. Such is the progress of the century.

This explosive cereal does not satiate the proverbially sweet tooth
of our people. Their craving for confectionery is laid under further
contribution by the financial managers of the exposition to the
tune, for instance, of five thousand dollars for the privilege of
manufacturing chocolate and candy. Dyspepsia insists on asserting its
position among the other acquisitions of the century. The treasures of
the American bonbonnière are said to be richer and more varied than in
any other country. Paris gets up her delicacies of this kind in more
tasteful and tempting style, but our consumers care little for
such superficial vanities. They look for solid qualities in
everything--even in their lollipops.

Another description of fuel, employed for the external and not the
internal feeding of the animal machine, and quite as evanescent as
candy, claims a factory to itself. This is a French invention called
the Loiseau Compressed Fuel. To bring it to Philadelphia, the mart of
the anthracite region, would seem to be carrying coals to Newcastle.
The relation between demand and supply in fuel is happily, for the
present, on too sound a basis to leave much room for artificial
substitutes. Our anthracite deposits are circumscribed, but bid
fair to last until the virtually untouched seams of bituminous and
semibituminous coal shall be made amply accessible to every point of
consumption. We are not yet in the slightest perceptible danger of the
coal-famine that threatens Great Britain.

In regard to the accommodations provided outside of the exhibition
buildings by individual enterprise for the display of various products
and processes of manufacture, it will here suffice to say that
they notably exceed the corresponding array at any of the European
expositions. Illustrations of the social and industrial life of
different races and nations are, on the other hand, inferior to what
was seen at Vienna and Paris. Mankind and their manners are more
homogeneous within an available circle around Philadelphia than around
either of those capitals. The rude populations of the lower Danube,
the Don, the Caucasus, the Steppes, Albania, Syria, Barbary, etc.
cannot be so fully represented here. That they should be, were it
practicable, would be more to their advantage than to ours perhaps,
the probability being slight that we should deem it desirable to adopt
many of their methods. Nor will the eating and drinking of the nations
be so variously illustrated as in the cordon of restaurants that so
largely contributed to the spectacular effect at Paris. The French
genius for the dramatic was quite at home in arranging that part of
the display; and they did not allow the full effect to suffer for want
of some artificial eking out. The kibaubs, pilau and sherbet that were
served up in fine Oriental style were not in all cases prepared by
Turks, Persians and Tunisians. The materials were abundant in Paris
for these and any other outlandish dainties that might be called for.
So were costumers. There was no reason, therefore, why imitations
should not be got up capable of serving every purpose, and of giving
more amusement than the genuine dishes and divans of Islam would have
done. The negro waiters in the American saloon doubtless outnumbered
all the other representatives of the dark or semi-civilized races that
appeared in a similar character. They proved a success, their genial
bearing and ever-ready smile pleasing the mass of the guests more than
did the _triste_ and impassive Moslem. The theatrical can just as well
be done here, and _quant. suff._ of Cossacks and Turks be manufactured
to order. Then we have John and Sambo in unadulterated profusion; the
former ready at the shortest notice and for very small compensation to
indoctrinate all comers in the art of plying the chopsticks, and the
latter notoriously in his element in the kitchen and the dining-room,
and able to aid the chasse-café with a song--lord alike of the
carving-knife, the cocktail and the castanets.

Water, the simplest, most healthful and most indispensable of all
refreshments, is provided without stint and without price. Foreigners
are struck with the immense consumption of water as a beverage in this
country. They do not realize the aridity of our summer climate, which
makes it sometimes as much of a luxury here as it is in the desert. A
rill of living water, let it issue from a mossy rift in the hillside
or the mouth of a bronze lion, comes to us often like the shadow of
a great rock in a weary land. We lead fevered lives, too, and this
is the natural relief. Fountains are among the first decorations that
show themselves in public or private grounds. They give an excuse and
a foothold for sculpture, and thus open the way for high art. In the
Centennial grounds and in all the buildings upon them, of whatever
character, the fountain, in more or less pretentious style, plays its
part. Led from the bosom of a thousand hills, drawn from under the
foot of the fawn and the breast of the summer-duck, it springs up
into the midst of this hurly-burly of human toil and pleasure, the
one unartificial thing there, pure and pellucid as when hidden in its
mother rock.

It is not remarkable, then, that the most ambitious effort of
monumental art upon the exposition grounds should have taken the shape
of a fountain. The erection is due to the energy and public spirit of
the Catholic Total Abstinence Union. The site chosen is at the extreme
western end of Machinery Hall. It looks along Fountain Avenue to the
Horticultural Building. Mated thus with that fine building, it becomes
a permanent feature of the Park. The central figure is Moses--not
the horned athlete we are apt to think of when we associate the
great lawgiver with marble, but staid and stately in full drapery. He
strikes the rock of Meribah, and water exudes from its crevices into
a marble basin. Outside the circular rim of this are equidistantly
arranged the rather incongruous effigies of Archbishop Carroll, his
relative the Signer, Commodore Barry and Father Mathew. Each of
these worthies presides over a small font designed for drinking
purposes--unless that of the old sea-dog be salt. The central basin
is additionally embellished with seven medallion heads of Catholics
prominent in the Revolution, the selections being La Fayette, his
wife, De Grasse, Pulaski, Colonel S. Moylan, Thomas Fitzsimmons and
Kosciusko. The artist is Hermann Kirn, a pupil of Steinhäuser, one of
the first of the modern romantic school of German sculptors. Kirn
is understood to have enjoyed his instructor's aid in completing the
statues in the Tyrol.

Another religious body ranges itself in the cause of art by the side
of one with which it does not habitually co-operate. Dr. Witherspoon,
the only clerical Signer, is its contribution in bronze. The Geneva
gown supplies the grand lines lacking in the secular costume of
the period, and indues the patriot with the silken cocoon of the
Calvinist. The good old divine had well-cut features, which take
kindly to the chisel. The pedestal is of granite.

Of other statues we shall take another occasion to speak. The tinkle
of fountains leads us on to Horticultural Hall, where they give life
and charm to the flowers. Painted thus in water-colors, the blossoms
and leaves of the tropics glow with a freshness quite wonderful in
view of the very short time the plants have been in place and the
exposure they unavoidably encountered in reaching it. From the
interior and exterior galleries of this exquisite structure one can
look down, on one side, upon the palms of the Equator and on the other
upon the beech and the fir, which interlock their topmost sprays at
his feet. Beyond and beneath the silvery beeches railway-trains whisk
back and forth, like hares athwart the covert--the tireless locomotive
another foil to the strangers from the land of languor and repose.

[Illustration: HORTICULTURAL HALL--INTERIOR.]

The manufacture of a torrid climate on so large a scale will strike
the visitor as one of the most curious triumphs of ingenuity in the
whole exposition. Moisture is an essential only second in importance
to heat. The two must be associated to create the normal atmosphere of
most of the vegetation of the central zone. Art, in securing that end,
reverses the process of Nature. The heat here is supplied from below
and moisture from above, thus transposing the sun and the swamp. In
summer, indeed, the sun of our locality, reinforced by glass, will as
a rule furnish an ample supply of warmth. Very frequently it will be
in excess, and allow the imprisoned strangers the luxury of all the
fresh air they can crave. Our summer climate is in this way more
favorable than that of Kew, which in turn has the advantage in winter.
The inferior amount of light throughout the year and the long nights
of winter in a high latitude again operate against the English
horticulturists, and leave, altogether, a balance in our favor which
ought to make the leading American conservatory the most successful in
the world.

Standing by the marble fountain in the great hall, with its attendant
vases and statuary, the visitor will not suspect that the pavement
beneath his feet is underlaid by four miles of iron pipe four inches
in diameter and weighing nearly three hundred tons. Through this
immense arterial and venous system circulates the life-blood of
the plants, hot water being the vehicle of warmth in winter. These
invisible streams will flow when the brooks at the foot of the hill
are sealed by frost and the plash of the open-air fountains is heard
no longer.

Another current, more conspicuous and abounding--that of hurrying
human feet--will make this magnificent conservatory the centre of one
of its principal eddies. A second will be the Japanese head-quarters,
and a third Memorial Hall. The outlandish and the beautiful in Nature
and in art take chief hold of our interest. It wanders elsewhere, but
reverts to what typifies the novel and the charming. From the Mongols
and the palms it will drift to the granite portals that are flanked by
the winged Viennese horses and the colossal figures of Minerva in
the act of bridling them. Pegasus is not very worthily represented
by these bronzes. The horses, however, are the better part of the
two groups; the goddesses being too tall in proportion and heavy and
ungraceful in build. The finer things which they sentinel, in bronze,
marble or canvas, do not belong to the scope of this article. Yet we
cannot postpone to the occasion of their notice in detail a tribute
to him to whose energy and judgment we owe the filling of the Art
Building with works fit to be there. For the accomplishment of this
task the principal credit is due to John Sartain of Philadelphia,
the Nestor of American engravers. But for Mr. Sartain's efforts, the
studios of the best artists of America, especially, would have been
much less adequately represented, while the walls would have been in
danger of defacement by a flood of inferior productions. To secure the
best, and the best only, of what artists and collectors could give,
committees were appointed to inspect the offerings of the principal
cities and select works of real merit. The difficulties in the way are
appreciable only by those familiar with the diversities of feeling and
opinion which are apt to make shipwreck of art-exhibitions. They
have been overcome, and American artists have united in the practical
measures needed to ensure them as fair a position by the side of
foreign competitors as their actual merits can sustain.

It could hardly have been a recognition of carriage-making as one of
the fine arts that caused the placing of an immense receptacle for
such vehicles in so prominent a position near Memorial Hall. This
structure stands opposite the western half of the Main Building.
Combined with the annex erected for a like purpose by the Bureau of
Agriculture, which covers three acres, it would seem to afford room
for specimens of every construction ever placed on wheels since
Pharaoh's war-chariots limbered up for the Red Sea campaign. These
collections have no trifling significance as a sign of progress.
They are the product of good roads, one of the surest traces of
civilization. A century ago, a really good road was almost an unknown
thing. So recently as half so long since one of the light equipages
now so familiar to us would have been a simple impossibility. What
words of ecstasy Dr. Johnson, who pronounced the height of bliss to be
a drive over a turnpike of his day in a cranky post-chaise, would have
applied to a "spin" in one of these wagons, no imagination can guess.

Let us not boast ourselves over the sages who had the misfortune of
living too soon. It would be falling into the same blunder Macaulay
ascribed to Johnson in alleging that the philosopher thought the
Athenian populace the inferiors of Black Frank his valet, because they
could not read and Frank could. Our heads are apt to be turned by
our success in throwing together iron, timber, stone and other dead
matter. Let us remember that we are still at school, with no near
prospect of graduating. Many of our contemporary nations, to say
nothing of those who are to come after us, claim the ability to teach
us, as their being here proves. The assumption speaks from the stiff
British chimneys, the pert gables of the Swedes and the laboriously
wrought porticoes of the Japanese. This is well. It would be a bad
thing for its own future and for that of general progress could any
one people pronounce itself satisfied with what it had accomplished
and ready to set the seal to its labors.




GLIMPSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

TWO PAPERS.--I.


We sailed from Trieste in the Venus, one of the Austrian Lloyds, with
a very agreeable captain, who had been all over the world and spoke
English perfectly. There were very few passengers--only one lady
besides myself, and she was a bride on her way to her new home in
Constantinople. She was a very pretty young Austrian, only seventeen,
but such an old "Turk of a husband" as she had! Her mother was a
Viennese, and her father a wealthy Englishman: what could have induced
them to marry their pretty young daughter to such a man? He was a
Greek by descent, but had always lived in Constantinople. Short,
stout, cross-eyed, with a most sinister expression of countenance,
old enough to be her father, the contrast was most striking. His wife
seemed very happy, however, and remarked in a complacent tone that her
husband was _quite_ European. So he was, except that he wore a red
fez cap, which was, to say the least, not "becoming" to his "style of
beauty."

[Illustration: AMMALE.]

We had a smooth passage to Corfu, where we touched for an hour or
two. N---- and I went on shore, climbed to the old citadel, and were
rewarded with a glorious view of the island and the harbor at our
feet. We picked a large bouquet of scarlet geraniums and other flowers
which grew wild on the rocks around the old fortress, took a short
walk through the town, and returned to our boat loaded with delicious
oranges fresh from the trees. Several fine English yachts lay in
the harbor. We passed close to one, and saw on the deck three ladies
sitting under an awning with their books and work. The youngest was a
very handsome girl, in a yacht-dress of dark-blue cloth and a jaunty
sailor hat. What a charming way to spend one's winter! After our taste
of the English climate in February, I should think all who could would
spend their winters elsewhere; and what greater enjoyment than,
with bright Italian skies above, to sail over the blue waters of the
Mediterranean, running frequently into port when one felt inclined
for society and sight-seeing, or when a storm came on! for the "blue
Mediterranean" does not always smile in the sunlight, as we found to
our sorrow after leaving Corfu.

Our state-room was on the main deck, with a good-sized window
admitting plenty of light and air, and the side of the ship was not
so high but we could see over and have a fine view of the high
rocky coast we were skirting--so much pleasanter than the under-deck
state-rooms, where at best you only get a breath of fresh air and a
one-eyed glimpse out of the little port-holes in fine weather, and
none at all in a storm. Imagine, therefore, my disgust when, on
returning from our trip on shore at Corfu, I found twilight pervading
our delightful state-room, caused by an awning being stretched from
the edge of the deck overhead to the side of the ship, and under
this tent, encamped beneath my window, the lesser wives, children and
slaves of an old Turk who was returning to Constantinople with his
extensive family! His two principal wives were in state-rooms down
below, and invisible. Well, if I had lost the view from my state-room
of the grand mountainous coast of Greece, I had an opportunity of
studying one phase of Oriental manners and costume at my leisure.
There were three pale, sallow-looking women of twenty or twenty-five
years of age, with fine black eyes--their only attraction; two old
shriveled hags; four fat, comfortable, coal-black slave-women; and
several children. They had their fingernails colored yellow, and all,
black and white, wore over their faces the indispensable _yashmak_,
and over their dress the _ferraja_, or cloak, without which no Turkish
woman stirs abroad. As it was cold, they wore under their ferrajas
quilted sacques of woolen and calico coming down below the knee, and
trousers that bagged over, nearly covering their feet, which were
cased in slippers, though one of the negresses rejoiced in gorgeous
yellow boots with pointed toes. The children had their hair cut close,
and wore their warm sacques down to their feet, made of the gayest
calico I ever saw--large figures or broad stripes of red, yellow and
green. The boys were distinguished by red fez caps, and the girls wore
a colored handkerchief as a turban. They covered the deck with beds
and thick comforters, and on these they constantly sat or reclined.
When it was absolutely necessary a negress would reluctantly rise and
perform some required act of service. They had their own food, which
seemed to consist of dark-looking bread, dried fish, black coffee
and a kind of confectionery which looked like congealed soapsuds with
raisins and almonds in it. Most of their waking hours were employed in
devouring oranges and smoking cigarettes.

We had rough weather for several days, and the ship rolled a good
deal. The captain made us comfortable in a snug corner on the
officers' private deck, where, under the shelter of the bridge, we
could enjoy the view. One amusement was to watch the officer of the
deck eat his dinner seated on a hatchway just in front of the wheel,
and waited on by a most obsequious seaman. The sailor, cap under his
arm, would present a plate of something: if the officer ate it the
man would retire behind him, and with the man at the wheel watch the
disappearance of the contents. If the officer left any or refused a
dish, the sailor would go down to the kitchen for the next course,
first slipping what was left or rejected behind the wheel, and after
presenting the next course to the officer would retire and devour with
great gusto the secreted dish; the helmsman sometimes taking a sly
bite when the officer was particularly engaged.

The Dardanelles were reached very early in the morning. The night
before I had declared my intention to go on deck at daylight and
view the Hellespont, but when I awoke and found it blowing a gale, I
concluded it would not "pay," and turned in for another nap. All that
day we were crossing the Sea of Marmora with the strong current and
wind against us, so it was dark before we reached Constantinople,
and our ship was obliged to anchor in the outer harbor till the next
morning. Seraglio Point rose just before us, and on the left the seven
towers were dimly visible in the starlight. We walked the deck and
watched the lights glimmer and stream out over the Sea of Marmora, and
listened to the incessant barking of the dogs.

Next morning, bright and early, we entered the Bosphorus, rounded
Seraglio Point and were soon anchored, with hundreds of other vessels,
at the mouth of the Golden Horn. Steam ferryboats of the English
kind were passing to and fro, and caïques flitted in and out with the
dexterity and swiftness of sea-gulls. Quite a deputation of fez caps
came on board to receive the bride and groom, and when we went ashore
they were still smoking cigarettes and sipping at what must have been
in the neighborhood of their twentieth cup of Turkish coffee. Madame
A---- was very cordial when we parted, saying she should call soon
upon me, and that I must visit her. We bade adieu to our captain with
regret. He was a very intelligent and entertaining man. The officers
of the Austrian Lloyd line ought certainly to be very capable seamen.
Educated in the government naval schools, they are obliged to serve as
mates a certain time, then command a sailing vessel for several years,
and finally pass a very strict examination before being licensed as
captains of steamers. Amongst other qualifications, every captain acts
as his own pilot in entering any port to which he may be ordered.
They sail under sealed orders, and our captain said that not until he
reached Constantinople would he know the ship's ultimate destination,
or whether he would retain command or be transferred to another
vessel. It is the policy of the company seldom to send the same
steamer or captain over the same route two successive trips. In time
of war both captains and ships are liable to naval duty. As we passed
the island of Lissa the captain pointed out the scene of a naval
engagement between the Austrians and Italians in 1866, in which he had
participated. The salary of these officers is only about a thousand
dollars a year.

[Illustration: TURKISH LADY.]

We embarked with our baggage in a caïque, which is much like an open
gondola, only lighter and narrower, and generally painted in light
colors, yellow being the favorite one, and were soon landed at the
custom-house. A franc satisfied the Turk in attendance that our
baggage was all right, and it was immediately transferred to the back
of an _ammale_, or carrier. These men take the places of horses and
carts with us. A sort of pack-saddle is fastened on their backs,
and the weights they carry are astonishing. Our ammale picked up a
medium-sized trunk as if it was a mere feather: on top of this was
put a hat-box, and with a bag in one hand he marched briskly off as
if only enjoying a morning constitutional. We made our way through
the dirty streets and narrow alleys to the Hôtel de Byzance in the
European quarter. This is a very comfortable hotel, kept in French
style, and most of the attendants speak French. Our chamber_maid_,
however, is a _man_, a most remarkable old specimen in a Turco-Greek
dress--long blue stockings and Turkish slippers, very baggy white
trousers, a blue jacket, white turban twisted around his fez cap and
a voluminous shawl about his waist. His long moustache is quite gray,
but his black eyes are keen as a hawk's, and as he moves quickly and
silently about my room, arranging and dusting, I fancy how he would
look in the same capacity in our house at home.

Our hotel stands in the Rue de Pera, the principal street of the
European quarter, and as it is narrow the lights from the shops make
it safe and agreeable to walk out in the evening. This is one of
the few streets accessible to carriages, though in some parts it is
difficult for two to pass each other. Most of the shops are French and
display Paris finery, but the most attractive are the fruit-shops with
their open fronts, so you take in their inviting contents at a glance.
Broad low counters occupy most of the floor, with a narrow passage
leading between from the street to the back part of the shop, and
counters and shelves are covered with tempting fruits and nuts. Orange
boughs with the fruit on decorate the front and ceiling of the shop,
and over all presides a venerable Turk. In the evening the shop is
lighted by a torch, which blazes and smokes and gives a still more
picturesque appearance to the proprietor and his surroundings. You
stand in the street and make your purchases, looking well to your
bargains, for the old fellow, with all his dignity, will not hesitate
to cheat a "dog of a Christian" if he can. From every dark alley as
we walked along several dogs would rush out, bark violently, and after
following us a little way slink back to their own quarter again. Each
alley and street of the city has its pack of dogs, and none venture on
the domain of their neighbors. During the day they sleep, lying about
the streets so stupid that they will hardly move; in fact, horses and
donkeys step over them, and pedestrians wisely let them alone. After
dark they prowl about, and are the only scavengers of the city,
all garbage being thrown into the streets. The dogs of Pera have
experienced, I suppose, the civilizing effects of constant contact
with Europeans, as they are not at all as fierce as those of Stamboul.
They soon learn to know the residents of their own streets and
vicinity, and bark only at strangers.

Quite a pretty English garden has been laid out in Pera, commanding
a fine view of the Bosphorus. There is a coffee-house in the centre,
with tables and chairs outside, where you can sip your coffee
and enjoy the view at the same time. The Turks make coffee quite
differently from us. The berry is carefully roasted and then reduced
to powder in a mortar. A brass cup, in shape like a dice-box with a
long handle, is filled with water and brought to a boil over a brasier
of coals: the coffee is placed in a similar brass dice-box and the
boiling water poured on it. This boils up once, and is then poured
into a delicate little china cup half the size of an after-dinner
coffee-cup, and for a saucer you have what resembles a miniature
bouquet-holder of silver or gilt filigree. If you take it in true
Turkish style, you will drink your coffee without sugar, grounds and
all; but a little sugar, minus the coffee-mud at the bottom, is much
nicer. Coffee seems to be drunk everywhere and all the time by the
Turks. The cafés are frequent, where they sit curled up on the divans
dreamily smoking and sipping their fragrant coffee or hearing stories
in the flowery style of the _Arabian Nights_. At the street corners
the coffee-vender squats before his little charcoal brasier and drives
a brisk business. If you are likely to prove a good customer at the
bazaar, you are invited to curl yourself up on the rug on the floor of
the booth, and are regaled with coffee. Do you make a call or visit
a harem, the same beverage is immediately offered. Even in the
government offices, while waiting for an interview with some grandee,
coffee is frequently passed round. Here it is particularly acceptable,
for without its sustaining qualities one could hardly survive the
slow movements of those most deliberate of all mortals, the Turkish
officials.

A few days after our arrival my friend of the steamer, Madame A----,
the pretty Austrian bride, invited me to breakfast, and sent her
husband's brother, a fine-looking young Greek, to escort me to
her house. He spoke only Greek and Italian--I neither: however, he
endeavored to beguile the way by conversing animatedly in Italian. As
he gazed up at the sun several times, inhaled with satisfaction the
exhilarating air and pointed to the sparkling waters of the Bosphorus
and the distant hills, I presumed he was dilating on the fine weather
and the glorious prospect. Not to be outdone in politeness, I smiled
a great deal and replied to the best of my ability in good square
English, to which he always assented, "Yes, oh yes!" which seemed to
be all the English he knew. Fortunately, our walk was not long, and
Madame A---- was our interpreter during the breakfast. Her husband was
absent.

[Illustration: SERAGLIO POINT. GOLDEN HORN.]

The breakfast was half German, half Turkish. Here is the bill of fare:
Oysters on the shell from the Bosphorus--the smallest variety I have
ever seen, very dark-looking, without much flavor; fried goldfish; a
sort of curry of rice and mutton, without which no Turkish meal
would be complete; cauliflower fritters seasoned with cheese; mutton
croquettes and salad; fruit, confectionery and coffee. With a young
housekeeper's pride, Madame A---- took me over her house, which was
furnished in European style, with an occasional touch of Orientalism.
In the centre of the reception-room was a low brass tripod on which
rested a covered brass dish about the size of a large punch-bowl.
In cold weather this is filled with charcoal to warm the room. "Cold
comfort," I should think, when the snow falls, as it sometimes does
in Constantinople, and the fierce, cold winds sweep down the Bosphorus
from the Black Sea and the Russian steppes. As in all the best houses
in Pera, there were bow-windows in the principal rooms of each
story. A large divan quite fills each window, and there the Greek and
Armenian ladies lean back on their cushions, smoke their cigarettes
and have a good view up and down the street. There was a pretty
music-room with cabinet piano and harp, and opening from that the
loveliest little winter garden. The bow-window was filled with plants,
and orange trees and other shrubs were arranged in large pots along
the side of the room. The wall at one end was made of rock-work, and
in the crevices were planted vines, ferns and mosses. Tiny jets of
water near the ceiling kept the top moist, and dripped and trickled
down over the rocks and plants till they reached the pebbly basin
below. The floor was paved with pebbles--white, gray, black and a
dark-red color--laid in cement in pretty patterns, and in the centre
was a fountain whose spray reached the glass roof overhead. There were
fish in the wide basin around the fountain, which was edged with a
broad border of lycopodium. A little balcony opening out of an upper
room was covered with vines, and close to the balustrade were boxes
filled with plants in full bloom.

[Illustration: THE SULTAN'S NEW PALACE ON THE BOSPHORUS.]

But the housetop was my especial admiration. It was flat, with a stone
floor and high parapet. On all four sides close to this were wide,
deep boxes where large plants and shrubs were growing luxuriantly.
Large vases filled with vines and exotics were placed at intervals
along the top of the parapet. Part of the roof was covered with a
light wooden awning, and a dumb-waiter connected with the kitchen, so
that on warm evenings dinner was easily served in the cool fresh air
of the roof. The view from here was magnificent--the Golden Horn,
Stamboul with its mosques and white minarets, and beyond the Sea of
Marmora. Where a woman's life is so much spent in the house, such a
place for air and exercise is much to be prized, but I fear my pretty
Austrian friend will sigh for the freedom of Vienna after the novelty
of the East has worn off.

[Illustration: MARBLE STAIRCASE, PALACE OF BESKIK-TASCH.]

Of course we paid a visit to Seraglio Point, whose palmy days,
however, have passed away. The great fire of 1865 burned the palace,
a large district on the Marmora, and swept around the walls of St.
Sophia, leaving the mosque unharmed, but surrounded by ruins. The
sultan never rebuilds: it is not considered lucky to do so. Indeed,
he is said to believe that if he were to stop building he would die.
Seraglio Point has been abandoned by the court, and the sultan lives
in a palace on the Bosphorus, and one of the loveliest spots on earth
is left to decay. We entered through the magnificent gate of the
Sublime Porte, passed the barracks, which are still occupied by
the soldiers, visited the arsenal and saw the wax figures of the
Janizaries and others in Turkish costume. The upper part of the
pleasure-grounds is in a neglected state, and those near the water are
entirely destroyed. In one of the buildings are the crown-jewels and a
valuable collection of other articles. There were elegant toilet sets
mounted in gold; the most exquisitely delicate china; daggers, swords
and guns of splendid workmanship and sparkling with jewels; Chinese
work and carving; golden dishes, cups and vases, and silver pitchers
thickly encrusted with precious stones; horse trappings and velvet
hangings worked stiff with pearls, gold and silver thread, bits
of coral, and jewels; three emeralds as large as small hen's eggs,
forming the handle of a dirk; and in a large glass case magnificent
ornaments for the turban. There must have been thousands of diamonds
in these head-pieces, besides some of the largest pearls I have ever
seen; a ruby three-quarters of an inch square; four emeralds nearly
two inches long; and a great variety of all kinds of precious stones.
The handle and sheath of one sword were entirely covered with diamonds
and rubies. There were rings and clasps, and antique bowls filled
with uncut stones, particularly emeralds. It recalled the tales of the
_Arabian Nights_. The collection is poorly arranged, and the jewels
dusty, so that you cannot examine closely or judge very well of the
quality. Those I have mentioned interested me most, but there were
many elegant articles of European manufacture which had been presented
to the sultan by various monarchs. Near the treasury is a very
handsome pavilion, built of white marble, one story high, with fine
large plate-glass windows. A broad hall runs through the centre,
with parlors on each side. The walls were frescoed, and on the
handsomely-inlaid and highly-polished floors were beautiful rugs. The
divans were gilt and heavy silk damask--one room crimson, one blue and
another a delicate buff. A few large vases and several inlaid Japanese
cabinets completed the furniture: the Koran does not allow pictures
or statuary. The view from the windows, and especially from the marble
terrace in front, is one of the finest I have ever seen. The pavilion
stands on the highest part of Seraglio Point, two hundred feet above
the water: below it are the ruins of the palace, and the gardens
running down to the shore. Just before you the Bosphorus empties
into the Marmora; in a deep bay on the Asiatic shore opposite are the
islands of Prinkipo, Prote and several others; and on the mainland the
view is bounded by the snow-capped mountains of Olympus. On the
right is the Sea of Marmora. To the left, as far as you can see, the
Bosphorus stretches away toward the Black Sea, its shores dotted with
towns, cemeteries and palaces; on the extreme left the Golden Horn
winds between the cities of Stamboul and Pera; while behind you is St.
Sophia and the city of Stamboul. It is a magnificent view, never to
be forgotten. There are several other pavilions near the one just
described. A small one in the Chinese style, with piazza around it has
the outer wall covered with blue and white tiles, and inside blinds
inlaid with mother of pearl. The floor was matted, and the divans
were of white silk embroidered with gilt thread and crimson and green
floss. A third pavilion was a library.

[Illustration: MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA.]

From the Seraglio we drove to St. Sophia. Stamboul can boast of one
fine street, and a few others that are wide enough for carriages. When
the government desires to widen a street a convenient fire generally
occurs. At the time they proposed to enlarge this, the principal
street, it is said the fire broke out simultaneously at many points
along the line. As the houses are generally of wood, they burn
quickly, and a fire is not easily extinguished by their inefficient
fire department. Then the government seizes the necessary ground and
widens the street, the owners never receiving any indemnification for
their losses. I need not attempt a minute description of St. Sophia.
We took the precaution to carry over-shoes, which we put on at the
door, instead of being obliged to take off our boots and put on
slippers. A firman from the sultan admitted us without difficulty.
We admired the one hundred and seventy columns of marble, granite and
porphyry, many of which were taken from ancient temples, and gazed up
at the lofty dome where the four Christian seraphim executed in mosaic
still remain, though the names of the four archangels of the Moslem
faith are inscribed underneath them. Behind where the high altar
once stood may still be faintly discerned the figure of our Saviour.
Several little Turks were studying their Korans, and sometimes
whispering and playing much like school-boys at home.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA.]

The mosques of Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan Achmed and Mohammed
II. were visited, but next to St. Sophia the mosque which interested
me most was one to which we could not gain admittance--a mosque some
distance up the Golden Horn, where the sultan is crowned and where
the friend of Mohammed and mother of a former sultan are buried. It is
considered so very sacred that Christian feet are not allowed to enter
even the outer court. As I looked through the grated gate a stout
negress passed me and went in. The women go to the mosques at
different hours from the men.

Not far from here is a remarkable well which enables a fortune-teller
to read the fates of those who consult her. Mr. R----, who has lived
for thirty years in Constantinople and speaks Turkish and Arabic as
fluently as his own language, told me he was once walking with an
effendi to whom he had some months before lent a very valuable Arabic
book. He did not like to ask to have it returned, and was wondering
how he should introduce the subject when they reached the well. Half
from curiosity and half for amusement, he proposed that they should
see what the well would reveal to them. The oracle was a wild-looking,
very old Nubian woman, and directing Mr. R---- to look steadily down
into the well, she gazed earnestly into his eyes to read the fate
there reflected. After some minutes she said, "What you are thinking
of is lost: it has passed from the one to whom you gave it, and will
be seen no more." The effendi asked what the oracle had said, and when
Mr. R---- told him he had been thinking of his book, and repeated what
the Nubian had uttered, the effendi confessed that he had lent the
book to a dervish and feared it was indeed lost. It was a lucky hit of
the old darkey's, at any rate.

An opportunity came at last to gratify a long-cherished wish by
visiting a harem. Madame L----, a French lady who has lived here
many years, visits in the harems of several pashas, and invited me
to accompany her. I donned the best my trunk afforded, and at eleven
o'clock we set out, each in a sedan chair. I had often wondered why
the ladies I saw riding in them sat so straight and looked so stiff,
but I wondered no longer when the stout Cretans stepped into the
shafts, one before and the other behind, and started off. The motion
is a peculiar shake, as if you went two steps forward and one back. It
struck me as so ludicrous, my sitting bolt upright like a doll in my
little house, that I drew the curtains and had a good laugh at my
own expense. Half an hour's ride brought us to the pasha's house in
Stamboul--a large wooden building with closely-latticed windows. We
were received at the door by a tall Ethiopian, who conducted us across
a court to the harem. Here a slave took our wraps, and we passed into
a little reception-room. A heavy rug of bright colors covered the
centre of the floor, and the only furniture was the divans around the
sides. The pasha's two wives, having been apprised of our intended
visit, were waiting to receive us. Madame L---- was an old friend and
warmly welcomed, and as she spoke Turkish the conversation was brisk.
She presented me, and we all curled ourselves up on the divans.
Servants brought tobacco in little embroidered bags and small sheets
of rice paper, and rolling up some cigarettes, soon all were
smoking. The pasha is an "old-style" Turk, and frowns on all European
innovations, and his large household is conducted on the old-fashioned
principles of his forefathers. His two wives were young and very
attractive women. One, with a pale clear complexion, dark hair and
eyes, quite came up to my idea of an Oriental beauty. Not content,
however, with her good looks, she had her eyebrows darkened, while a
delicate black line under her eyes and a little well-applied rouge
and powder (I regret to confess) made her at a little distance a still
more brilliant beauty. I doubt if any women understand the use of
cosmetics as well as these harem ladies. Her dress was a bright-cherry
silk, the waist cut low in front, the skirt reaching to her knees.
Trousers of the same and slippers to match completed her costume. The
other wife was equally attractive, with lovely blue eyes and soft wavy
hair. She was dressed in a white Brousa silk waist, richly embroidered
with crimson and gold braid, blue silk skirt, white trousers and
yellow slippers. They both had on a great deal of jewelry. Several
sets, I should think, were disposed about their persons with great
effect, though not in what we should consider very good taste. Being
only able to wear one pair of earrings, they had the extra pairs
fastened to their braids, which were elaborately arranged about their
heads and hung down behind. There were half a dozen slaves in the
room, who when not waiting on their mistresses squatted on the floor,
smoked, and listened to the conversation. Coffee was brought almost
immediately, the cups of lovely blue and white china in pretty silver
holders on a tray of gilt filigree.

After sitting here a while exchanging the compliments of the day, we
passed to the next room, a large saloon with windows and door opening
into the court. Here a fountain threw up a sparkling jet of water,
and several trees and flowering shrubs, with a profusion of ivy on the
walls, made it a very attractive place. The child of the eldest wife,
a bright-eyed little boy, was floating chips in the basin of the
fountain, laughing and clapping his hands when the falling water upset
them or wet his face. The floor was covered with large handsome rugs,
and around the sides of the room were luxurious divans: little
other furniture seems necessary in a Turkish house. We followed our
hostesses' example and seated ourselves on the divans, though not, as
they did, with our feet under us, and refreshments were served on a
large gilt salver, in the middle of which was a handsome covered dish
of Bohemian glass filled with sweetmeats, with vases on each side to
match, one holding queer-shaped little spoons with golden bowls. There
were also four glasses of water and four minute glasses of pale yellow
cordial. Fortunately, the tray was passed first to Madame L----; so
I watched her movements and learned what to do. She took a spoon from
one vase, dipped it in the sweetmeats, and after eating placed her
spoon in the empty vase. Then she took some water and drank a glass of
cordial. So we each did (it is polite to taste but once), and placed
the soiled spoon in the vase for that purpose. I did not need to
be told that the sweetmeats were rose-leaves, for the flavor was
perfectly preserved.

Madame L---- kindly repeated most of the conversation, which, on their
sides, was chiefly composed of questions concerning Madame L----'s
family: Was her husband as kind as ever? had he made her any presents
lately? Was I married? what was my husband's personal appearance?
did I love him? how old was I? where from? and where going? These and
similar questions, which are considered perfectly polite and proper,
they ask with the curiosity of children.

[Illustration: HAREM SCENE.]

Then we were invited into a third room, where we were served with
violet sherbet, cake and Turkish paste. After partaking of these the
ladies sent for their jewel-boxes and displayed their treasures, which
consisted of pins, earrings, necklaces, head and belt ornaments--some
very handsome, and all composed of precious stones of more or less
value, for a Turkish woman does not value an ornament that is not set
with precious stones. This was an agreeable change from the former
conversation, and when we had admired their jewels breakfast was
served. The servants brought a scarlet rug of soft shaggy stuff, which
was spread on the floor: a low round brass table, two feet high and
three feet in diameter, was placed in the centre of this rug, and we
four ladies seated ourselves around the table _à la Turque_. A servant
brought a brass basin, which was like an immense wash-bowl with a
cullender in it turned upside down: we washed our hands over this,
water being poured over them from a large coffee-pot (I should call
it) with an unusually long nose, and wiped our hands on handsome
towels embroidered at the ends with gold thread. A dish of fried fish
was placed on the table for the first course: each helped herself to
one, laying it on the table before her (we had no plates, knives or
forks), picking it to pieces and eating it with her fingers. When this
was ended the debris was thrown on the platter and removed, the table
wiped off, and a dish of rice and mutton brought: for this we had
spoons, but all ate from the dish. Then came an immense cauliflower
covered thick with strange-tasting cheese, and the Turkish ladies used
their thumbs and first two fingers in conveying it to their mouths.
I am very fond of cauliflower, but this was not inviting. The next
course was onions cooked in oil: I had to be excused from this also:
the sight of their dripping fingers was enough. Then we washed our
hands and ate oranges; washed again, and lighting fresh cigarettes
(they had smoked nearly all day), retired to our divans; sipped coffee
and listened to an old negress (the story-teller of the harem), who,
squatted before us, related marvelous stories in Eastern style. More
sweetmeats and confectionery were passed with coffee, and our visit
ended. A European woman could not support such a life--at home perfect
inactivity, eating, smoking, gossiping, an occasional visit to or
from a friend, a trip to the bazaar, and a drive--if they possess a
carriage--or a row in a caïque to the Sweet Waters on Sunday. This is
the life of a Turkish woman of rank.

A note from Madame B---- one morning informed me that the mother and
wives of a rich Turkish merchant were coming to visit her, and invited
me to be present. I reached her house about eleven, but the Turkish
ladies were before me. The appearance of a servant in the hall with
her arms full of yashmaks and ferrajas and several pairs of pattens
apprised me that I was too late to see their street-dresses. In the
reception-room were Madame B----, a lady who acted as interpreter, and
the three Turkish ladies. They were uncontaminated by European customs
or Paris finery. The mother was exceedingly ugly, as are most Turkish
women over forty. A pair of high red morocco boots encased her feet,
which were guiltless of stockings. White, full trousers were gathered
close at the knee and fell over nearly to her ankles. Her dress was
a short purple velvet skirt embroidered round the bottom and up the
front with gilt braid in a showy vine pattern; the same embroidery on
her black silk jacket, which was open in front, but without any lace;
and around her neck was a magnificent string of pearls. Her hair (what
there was of it) was drawn back from her face, braided, and the end of
the little "pig tail" fastened to her head with a diamond pin composed
of four fine diamonds in a clumsy gold setting. Long, pale amber
ear-drops completed her adornments, and she flourished--yes, she
really did--a large red and yellow bandana! The younger of the two
wives was quite pretty. She had brilliant black eyes, good features,
and was very attractive in her gay dress. She wore pink slippers, a
heavy sky-blue silk skirt with trousers to match, and a yellow velvet
sacque open in front, displaying a lace chemisette and a handsome
turquoise necklace. Large gold hoops pulled her pretty ears quite out
of shape, and her long black hair was braided in broad plaits and tied
with a gilt ribbon, which was also wound about her head several times.
Altogether, she was quite gorgeous, and rather threw the other wife
into the shade. Wife No. 2 was arrayed in a dark-green velvet skirt
and a pink silk jacket trimmed with silver braid. She had a garnet
necklace and pretty earrings of small pearls and diamonds. Not to be
outdone by her mother-in-law on the _mouchoir_ question, she displayed
a white muslin handkerchief thickly embroidered with gold thread--more
ornamental than useful.

They were all curled up on divans sipping coffee and smoking
cigarettes when I entered. Madame B---- presented me, and they
received me very graciously, asked my age, examined my clothes and
inquired if I had any jewels at home. I wore none, and suppose my
black silk walking-suit did not impress them greatly. Dress is of the
first importance in their eyes, and that and their husbands are the
chief topics of interest when they visit each other. Conversation was
not brisk, as the necessity of an interpreter is not favorable for
a rapid exchange of ideas. After sitting in this room for an hour,
Madame B---- informed me that Turkish etiquette required that she
should now invite her guests into another room and offer other
refreshments, then, after sitting there a while, to still another, and
so on through the whole suite of apartments, refreshments (generally
coffee, sweetmeats or sherbet) with cigarettes being offered in each.
As they would probably remain till four or five in the afternoon, I
excused myself, and reached the hotel in time to join a party going
to the bazaar, thankful that I did not reside in Constantinople, and
wondering how long Madame B---- would survive if she had to endure
such visits frequently.

We started for our first visit to the bazaar, crossing the Golden Horn
to Stamboul by the old bridge, which has sunk so in places that you
feel as if a _ground-swell_ had been somehow consolidated and was
doing service as a bridge; up through the narrow streets of Stamboul,
now standing aside to let a string of donkeys pass loaded with large
stones fastened by ropes to their pack-saddles, or stepping into a
doorway to let a dozen small horses go by with their loads of boards,
three or four planks being strapped on each side, one end sticking
out in front higher than their heads, and the other dragging on the
ground, scraping along and raising such a dust you are not at all sure
some neighboring lumber-yard has not taken it into its head to walk
off bodily. Fruit-venders scream their wares, Turkish officers on
magnificent Arab horses prance by, and the crowd of strange and
picturesque costumes bewilders you; and through all the noise and
confusion glide the silent, veiled women. One almost doubts one's own
identity. I was suddenly recalled to _my_ senses, however, by a
gentle thump on the elbow, and turning beheld the head of a diminutive
donkey. I supposed it to be a donkey: the head, tail and feet, which
were all I could see of it, led me to believe it was one of those
much-abused animals. The rest of its body was lost to sight in the
voluminous robes of a corpulent Turk; and, as if he were not load
enough for one donkey, behind him sat a small boy holding his "baba's"
robe very tight lest he should slide off over the donkey's tail. I
looked around for Bergh or some member of a humane society, but no one
except ourselves seemed to see anything unusual. I thought if I were a
Hindu and believed in the transmigration of souls, I would pray that,
whatever shape my spirit took when it left its present form, it might
not enter that of a much-abused and long-suffering donkey.

The bazaar! How shall I describe what so many travelers have
made familiar? Some one has called it "a monstrous hive of little
shops--thousands under one roof;" and so it is. Each street is devoted
to a peculiar kind of merchandise. It would take more than one letter
to tell all the beautiful things we saw--cashmere shawls, Brousa
silks, delicate gauzes, elegantly-embroidered jackets, dresses,
tablecloths, cushions, etc., of all textures and the most fashionable
Turkish styles. We looked at antiquities, saw superb precious stones,
the finest of them unset, admired the display of saddles and bridles
and the array of boots and slippers in all colors of morocco. A
Turkish woman never rushes round as we did from one shop to another,
but if she wishes to buy anything--a shawl, for instance--she sits
comfortably down on a rug, selects the one she likes best, and
spends the rest of the day bargaining for it; during which time many
cigarettes are smoked by both customer and merchant, much coffee
drunk, long intervals spent in profound reflection on the subject,
and at last the shawl is purchased for a tenth perhaps of the original
price asked, and they part, each well pleased. It takes several visits
to see the bazaar satisfactorily, and we felt as we left it that we
had but made a beginning.

SHEILA HALE.




THE BALLAD OF THE BELL-TOWER.

  "Five years ago I vowed to Heaven upon my falchion blade
  To build the tower; and to this hour my vow hath not been paid.

  "When from the eagle's nest I snatched my falcon-hearted dove,
  And in my breast shaped her a nest, safe and warm-lined with love,

  "Not all the bells in Christendom, if rung with fervent might,
  That happy day in janglings gay had told my joy aright.

  "As up the aisle my bride I led in that triumphant hour,
  I ached to hear some wedding-cheer clash from the minster tower.

  "Nor chime nor tower the minster had; so in my soul I sware,
  Come loss, come let, that I would set church-bells a-ringing there

  "Before a twelvemonth. But ye know what forays lamed the land,
  How seasons went, and wealth was spent, and all were weak of hand.

  "And then the yearly harvest failed ('twas when my boy was born);
  But could I build while vassals filled my ears with cries for corn?

  "Thereafter happed the heaviest woe, and none could help or save;
  Nor was there bell to toll a knell above my Hertha's grave.

  "Ah, had I held my vow supreme all hinderance to control,
  Maybe these woes--God knows! God knows!--had never crushed my soul.

  "Ev'n now ye beg that I give o'er: ye say the scant supply
  Of water fails in lowland vales, and mountain-springs are dry.

  "'Here be the quarried stones' (ye grant), 'skilled craftsmen
             come at call;
  But with no more of water-store how _can_ we build the wall?'

  "Nay, listen: Last year's vintage crowds our cellars, tun on tun:
  With wealth of wine for yours and mine, dare the work go undone?

  "Quick! bring them forth, these mighty butts: let none be elsewhere sold,
  And I will pay this very day their utmost worth in gold,

  "That so the mortar that cements each stone within the shrine,
  For her dear sake whom God did take, may all be mixed with wine."

         *       *       *       *       *

  'Twas thus the baron built his tower; and, as the story tells,
  A fragrance rare bewitched the air whene'er they rang the bells.

  A merrier music tinkled down when harvest-days were long:
  They seemed to chime at vintage-time a catch of vintage-song;

  And when the vats were foamed with must, if any loitered near
  The minster tower at vesper hour, above him he would hear

  Tinglings, as of subsiding trills, athwart the purple gloom,
  And every draught of air he quaffed would taste of vineyard bloom.

MARGARET J. PRESTON.




BERLIN AND VIENNA.


The pre-eminence of London and Paris in the European world is
unquestioned, and, so far as we can foresee, permanent. Although
England is withdrawing herself more and more from the affairs of
the Continent, and becoming a purely insular and quasi-Oriental
power--although France has lost the lead in war and politics, and does
not seem likely to regain it--yet the capitals of these two countries
hold their own. In the accumulation of wealth and population, in
science, letters and the arts, London and Paris seem to be out of
reach of competition. Other cities grow, and grow rapidly, but do
not gain upon them. Even Berlin and Vienna, which have become so
conspicuous of late years, will remain what they are--local centres
rather than world-centres. The most zealous friend of German and
Austrian progress can scarcely claim for Berlin and Vienna, as cities,
more than secondary interest. Nevertheless, these minor capitals are
not to be overlooked, especially at the present conjuncture. One of
them is the residence of the most powerful dynasty in Europe: the
other is the base of an aggressive movement which tends to free at
last the lower Danube from Mohammedanism. If, as is possible, the
courts of Berlin and Vienna should decide to act in concert, if the
surplus vitality and population of the German empire, instead of
finding its outlet in the Western hemisphere, should be reversed
and made to flow to the south-east, we should witness a strange
recuscitation of the past. We should behold the Germanic race,
after two thousand years of vicissitude, of migration, conquest,
subordination and triumph, reverting to its early home, reoccupying
the lands from which it started to overthrow Rome. The Eastern
question, as it is called, forces itself once more upon the attention
of Christendom, and craves an answer. Twenty years ago it was deferred
by the interference of France and England. France is now _hors de
combat_, and England has better work elsewhere. Berlin, Vienna and St.
Petersburg have the decision in their hands. It would be a waste of
time to speculate upon coming events. Even the negotiations plying to
and fro at this moment are veiled in the strictest secrecy. Possibly
no one of the trio, Bismarck, Andrassy and Gortschakoff, dares to look
beyond the hour. The question may be deferred again, but it must be
decided some day upon a lasting basis. Stripped of unessentials, it
is a question of race-supremacy. The downfall of European Turkey being
conceded as a foregone conclusion, which of the two races, the Slavic
or the Germanic, is to oversee and carry out the reconstruction of the
region of the lower Danube? Is Russia, already so immense, to place
herself at the head of Panslavism and extend her borders to the
Dardanelles? Or is Austria, backed by North Germany and aided by
the Hungarians and the Roumanians, to resume her mediæval office as
_marchia orientalis_ and complete the mission for which she was called
into being by Charlemagne? A question which even the most prophetic of
politicians would hesitate to answer. Yet, in any case, it is possible
that Vienna and Berlin may become the centres of a great Pangermanic
reflux not unlike the efflux that swept over Northern Gaul and England
in the fifth century. In view of such a possibility it behooves us to
study these two capitals more closely--to consider their origin and
growth, their influence and their civic character.

Their history exhibits in many respects a marked parallelism. Each was
founded as a frontier-city, as the outpost of aggressive civilization.
Each has shared to the full the vicissitudes of the dynasty to which
it was attached. Each has ended in becoming the centre and capital of
an extensive empire. On the other hand, the differences between them
are no less significant. Vienna is the older of the two. It can claim,
in fact, a faint reflex of the glory of the old Roman world, for it
was founded as a _castrum_ and military colony by Vespasian in
the first century of our era. This ancient _Vindobona_ was the
head-quarters of the thirteenth legion, which was replaced in the next
century by the more famous tenth, the _pia fidelis_. Until the fifth
century, Vindobona and the neighboring Carnuntum (not far from the
modern Pressburg) were the seats of Roman power along the middle
Danube. But when the empire fell, they fell with it. For centuries all
traces of Vienna are lost. The valley of the Danube was the highway
for Goth and Slave, Avar and Hun, who trampled down and ruined as
they advanced or receded. Not until the Carolingian era do we find
indications of a more stable order of things. The great Carl, having
consolidated all the resources of Western Europe under his autocratic
will, having crushed the Saracens and subdued the Saxons and
Bavarians, resolved to make the Danube as well as the Rhine his own.
The idea was stamped with genius, as all his ideas were, and the
execution was masterly. The Frankish _leudes_, with their Saxon and
Bavarian auxiliaries, routed the Avars in battle after battle, and
drove them back beyond the Raab and the Theiss. The "eastern marches"
became, and have remained to this day, the bulwark of Christendom.
Carl's successors in Germany, the Saxon and Franconian emperors,
continued the work. In the year 996 we find the word Ostar-rîch
(_OEsterreich_) appearing for the first time. From 976 to 1246 the
duchies were in the possession of the Babenberg family. In 1276
they were annexed by Rudolph of Habsburg. Ever since then they have
constituted the central possession of the house of which he was the
founder.

Prior to the middle of the twelfth century Vienna appears to have been
a town of little importance. In fact, the precise time when the
name _Wien_ first occurs is in dispute. Giesebrecht discovered it
in documents purporting to date from the beginning of the eleventh
century, but the genuineness of the documents is doubted by
most historians. The town is mentioned several times in the
_Nibelungenlied_, and described as existing in the times of Etzel
(Attila, king of the Huns). But this is undoubtedly the invention of
popular fancy. The _Nibelungenlied_ was put into its present shape
between the middle and the end of the twelfth century. The poet has
changed more than one feature of the original saga, has blended, not
unskillfully, primitive Teutonic myth with historic personages and
events of the early Middle Ages, and has interpolated sayings and
traditions of his own times. The Viennese of the twelfth century
sought, with pardonable vanity, to invest their town with the
sacredness of antiquity. But we can scarcely allow their claims. On
the contrary, we must deny all continuity between the Vindobona of
the fourth and the Wien of the twelfth century. The Roman castrum
disappeared, the Babenberg capital appeared, but between the two there
is an unexplored gulf. Yet this incipient Vienna, although only
the capital of a ducal family that had a hard fight at times for
existence, holds an honorable position in the annals of German
literature. The Babenberg dukes were generous patrons of the Muses.
Their court was frequented by minnesingers and knights-errant.
Their praises were sung by Walther von der Vogelweide, Ulrich von
Lichtenstein and others. Walther, in his ode to Duke Leopold, has
almost anticipated Shakespeare, when he sings--

  His largess, like the gentle rain,
    Refresheth land and folk.

Vienna and the memorable Wartburg in Thuringia were the acknowledged
centres of taste and good breeding. They were the courts of last
resort in all questions of style, grammar and versification.

It will not be necessary to follow the growth of Vienna in detail
during the last six hundred years. The dangers to which the city was
exposed from time to time were formidable. They came chiefly from two
quarters--from Bohemia and from Hungaro-Turkey. Charles IV. and Wenzel
favored the Bohemians at the expense of the Germans, and preferred
Prague to Vienna as a residence. The Czechish nation increased rapidly
in wealth and culture until, having embraced the doctrines of Huss, it
felt itself strong enough to assert a quasi-independence. The Hussite
wars which ensued in the fifteenth century ended in the downfall of
Bohemia. But the Austrian duchies, and even Bavaria and Saxony,
did not escape without cruel injuries. More than once the fanatic
Taborites laid the land waste up to the gates of Vienna. The
Reformation, a century later, did not take deep root in Austria. At
best it was only tolerated, and the Jesuit reaction, encouraged by
Rudolph II. and Matthias, made short work of it. The Thirty Years' war
gave Ferdinand II. an opportunity of restoring Bohemia to the Roman
Catholic communion. The victory of the White Hill (1620) prostrated
Bohemia at his feet: the Hussite preachers were executed or banished,
the estates of the nobility who had taken part in the rebellion were
confiscated, and the Catholic worship reinstated by force of arms. So
thoroughly was the work done that Bohemia at the present day is, next
to the Tyrol, the stronghold of Catholicism. But Ferdinand's success,
complete to outward appearance, was in reality a blunder. The Czechish
and the German nationalities were permanently estranged, and the
former, despoiled, degraded, incapacitated for joining the work of
reform upon which the latter has finally entered, now constitutes
an obstacle to progress. While the Austrian duchies are at present
extremely liberal in their religious and political tendencies, Bohemia
and Polish Galicia are confederated with the Tyrol in opposing every
measure that savors of liberalism. Bohemia has been surnamed the
Ireland of the Austrian crown.

The union of Hungary with the house of Habsburg has always been
personal rather than constitutional. The Hungarians claimed
independence in all municipal and purely administrative matters.
Moreover, during the Thirty Years' war, and even later, a large
portion of the land was in possession of the Turks and their allies,
the Transylvanians, with whom the Hungarians were in sympathy. The
first great siege of Vienna by the Turks was in 1529--the last, and
by far the most formidable, in 1683. The city escaped only through
the timely assistance of the Poles under Sobieski. Ten years later the
tide had changed. The Austrian armies, led by Prince Eugene, defeated
the Turks in a succession of decisive battles, and put an end for ever
to danger from that quarter. Hungary and Transylvania became permanent
Austrian possessions.

Amid such alternations of fortune the growth of Vienna was necessarily
slow. In 1714, after six centuries of existence, its population
amounted to only 130,000. The city retained all the characteristics
of a fortress and frontier-post. The old part, or core, now called
the "inner town," was a compact body of houses surrounded by massive
fortification-walls and a deep moat. Outside of this was a _rayon_ or
clear space six hundred feet in width, separating the city from
the suburbs. These suburbs, Leopoldstadt, Mariahilf, etc., now
incorporated with the inner city in one municipal government,
were then small detached villages. From time to time the rayon was
encroached upon by enterprising builders, with the connivance of the
emperor or the garrison commander. The disastrous wars with France
at the end of the last century and beginning of the present were in
reality a gain to Vienna. Napoleon's bombardment and capture of the
city in 1809, before the battle of Wagram, demonstrated conclusively
that the fortifications were unable to withstand modern artillery.
Accordingly, after the general European peace had been established
by the Congress of Vienna, the city was declared officially by the
emperor to be no longer a fortification. But the walls and ditch, so
far as they had not been injured by the French, were still suffered
to remain: they were substantially intact as late as 1848, and were
strong enough to enable the revolutionists who had possession of
the city to hold it for forty-eight hours against the army of Prince
Windischgrätz.

The final reconstruction of the city was not begun in earnest until
1857, and occupied ten years or more. The walls were leveled to
the ground, the moat was filled in, a broad girdle-street (the
Ringstrasse) laid out to encircle the inner city, and the adjacent
ground on either side was converted into building-lots. In this brief
space of time Vienna was changed from a quasi-mediæval town to a
modern capital of the most pronounced type. The Ringstrasse became a
promenade like that of the old Paris boulevards, but broader, grander
and lined with palatial edifices no whit inferior to the French. The
metamorphosis is so startling that a tourist revisiting the city after
an absence of twenty years would have difficulty in persuading himself
that he was indeed in the residence of Maria Theresa, Joseph II. and
Metternich. No American city can exhibit a like change in the same
time. Our cities, although expanding incessantly, have preserved their
original features. Even new Chicago, springing from the ashes of
the old, has not departed from the former ground-plan and style of
building. And no American city can point to a succession of buildings
like the Franz Joseph Barracks, the Cur Salon with its charming park,
the Grand Hôtel and the Hôtel Impérial, the Opera-house, the Votive
Church, the new Stock Exchange, and the Rudolf Barracks. When the
projected House of Deputies, the City Hall, and the University
building are completed, the Ring street will deserve to stand by the
side of the Rue de Rivoli and the Champs Élysées. The quondam suburbs
(_Vorstädte_), eight in number, are now one with the city proper.
Encircling them is the _mur d' octroi_, or barrier where municipal
tolls are levied upon articles of food and drink. Outside of this
barrier, again, are the suburbs of the future, the _Vororte_, such
as Favoriten, Fünfhaus, Hernals, etc. The growth of the population
is rapid and steady. In 1714 it was 130,000, in 1772 only 193,000.
A century later, in 1869, it had risen to 811,000 (including the
Vororte); at the present day it can scarcely fall short of 1,000,000.

Not in population and adornment alone has Vienna progressed. Much has
been done, or at least projected, for the comfort and health of the
residents and for the increase of trade. The entire city has been
repaved with Belgian pavement, the houses renumbered after the
Anglo-American fashion. The railroads centring in the city are
numerous, and the stations almost luxurious in their appointments. But
the two chief enterprises are the Semmering aqueduct and the Danube
Regulation. The former, begun in 1869 and completed in 1873, would do
honor to any city. It is about fifty miles in length, and has a much
greater capacity than the Croton aqueduct. The pure, cold Alpine water
brought from two celebrated springs near the Semmering Pass, flows
into the distributing reservoir on the South Hill, near the Belvedere
Palace, at an elevation of one hundred and fifty feet above the city.
The pressure is great enough to throw a jet nearly one hundred
feet high from the fountain in the Schwarzenberg Square. The Danube
Regulation, as its name implies, is an attempt to improve the
navigation of the river. The Danube, which in this part of its course
has a general flow from north-west to south-east, approaches within
a few miles of Vienna. Here, at Nussdorf, it breaks into two or three
shallow and tortuous channels, which meander directly away from the
city, as if in sheer willfulness, and reunite at the Lobau, as far
below the city as Nussdorf is above it. The "regulation" consists in
a new artificial channel, cut in a straight line from Nussdorf to
the Lobau. In length it is about nine miles, in breadth about twelve
hundred feet: the average depth of water will be not less than ten
feet. It was begun in 1869 and finished in April, 1875. This new
channel, which passes the Leopoldstadt suburb a short distance outside
the late exhibition grounds, will render unnecessary the transshipment
of goods and passengers at Nussdorf and the Lobau respectively, and
will also, it is hoped, prevent the inundations by which the low
region to the north of the river has been so often ravaged.

Berlin is inferior to Vienna in antiquity and in variety of incident
and association. The capital of the present German empire consisted
originally of two small rival towns, or rather villages, standing
almost side by side on opposite banks of the Spree. The elder, Cöln,
was incorporated as a municipality in 1232: the other, Berlin,
is mentioned for the first time in 1244. Both names are of Vendic
(Slavic) origin, and designated villages of the hunting and fishing
Vends, who were dispossessed by German colonists.

Cöln-Berlin, the marches of Brandenburg, East and West Prussia--in
fact, all the now Germanized lands to the east of the Elbe--owe their
Teutonic character to a great reflux, a reconquest so to speak, which
is barely mentioned in the usual textbooks of German history, yet
which is one of the most noteworthy phenomena in the development of
modern Europe. At the beginning of the fourth century German tribes
(German in the widest sense of the term) occupied the broad expanse
from the Rhine to the Dwina and the head-waters of the Dnieper. A
century later they had receded as far as the Vistula. Still another
century later, about 500, the German linguistic domain was bounded on
the east by the Ens, the Bohemian Hills, the upper Main, the Saal and
the Elbe. The downfall of the Thuringian kingdom was the occasion of
Slavic encroachments even on the left bank of the Elbe between Stendal
and Lüneburg. This German recession, which boded the Slavization not
only of Eastern but also of Central Europe, was due to various causes,
many of which are veiled in the impenetrable darkness which still
hangs over the early Middle Ages. The chief causes were undoubtedly
the Germanic migration over the Roman world and the settlement of the
Franks in Northern Gaul and the Saxons in England.

But with the Carolingian dynasty came a new era. Charles Martel,
Pepin and Charlemagne aspired to universal monarchy. Not content with
France, Northern Spain, Italy and Germany proper, Charlemagne, as we
have already seen, recaptured the middle Danube. His successors in
Germany, the Saxon, Franconian and Swabian emperors, continued the
impulse, but gave it in the main a different direction. Instead
of moving toward the south-east, where they would have encountered
stubborn opposition from the already compact Hungarian nationality,
they chose for their field of colonization (or recolonization) the
east and north-east. Throughout the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries we observe a strong and unremitting tide
of German peasants, burghers and knights flowing through and over
Brandenburg, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Silesia, the Prussian duchies,
and even into Lithuania, Curland, Livonia and Esthonia. We have here
an explanation of the want of interest taken by the Germans in the
Crusades. While the kings of England and France, the barons and counts
of Brabant and Italy, were wasting their substance and the blood of
their subjects in hopeless attempts to overthrow Mohammedanism on its
own ground, the Germans were laying the foundations--unconsciously, it
is true--of a new empire. The lands wrested from the Slaves were to
be the kingdom of Frederick the Great. The work was done thoroughly,
almost as thoroughly as the Saxon conquest of Britain. The Obotrites,
Wiltzi, Ukern, Prussians, Serbs and Vends were annihilated or
absorbed. The only traces of their existence now to be found are the
scattered remnants of dialects spoken in remote villages or small
districts, and the countless names of towns bequeathed by them
to their conquerors. These names are often recognizable by the
terminations _in_ and _itz_. The most conspicuous factor in this labor
of colonization was the Teutonic order of chivalry, transferred to
the Baltic from Palestine. Königsberg, Dantzic, Memel, Thorn and Revel
were the centres or the advanced posts of the movement. At the end
of the reign of the grand master Winrich von Kniprode (1382) the
Germanization of the region between the Elbe and the Niemen--the
Polish province of Posen perhaps excepted--may be regarded, for all
practical purposes, as finished. The acquisition of Brandenburg by the
Hohenzollerns only solidified the conquest and guaranteed its future.
It is safe to assume that even a large share, perhaps the greater
share, of Poland itself would have been overrun in like manner but for
the Hussite wars and the Thirty Years' war. The unfortunate Peace
of Thorn (1466), whereby the lands of the Teutonic order and of the
Brethren of the Sword became--in name at least--fiefs of the Polish
crown, was due to internal dissensions among the German colonists and
also to the distractions in Bohemia.

This apparent digression was necessary to a right understanding of the
character of Berlin and its neighborhood in comparison with Vienna.
Berlin was at the start a frontier post, but, unlike Vienna, it soon
ceased to be one. Colonization and conquest left it far to the rear as
an unimportant and thoroughly German town. The border-land of language
and race was advanced from the Spree to the Niemen and Vistula. The
language of these north-eastern districts is worthy of note. The
knights of the Teutonic order were chiefly from South Germany, the
inferior colonists from Low Germany of the Elbe, Weser and Rhine.
Hence the necessity for a _lingua communis_, a mode of expression that
should adapt itself to the needs of a mixed population. The dialect
which proved itself most available was one which stood midway between
High (South) and Low (North) German, and which itself might almost
be called a linguistic compromise--namely, the Thuringian, and more
especially in its Meissen form. This "Middle German,"[1] as it was
styled, became the official language of Prussia, Silesia and the
Baltic provinces. All very marked dialectic peculiarities were
discarded one by one, until the residuum became a very homogeneous,
uniform and correct mode of conventional speech. It will not surprise
us, then, to perceive that the Curlanders, Livonians and Prussians (of
the duchies) speak at the present day a more elegant German than the
Berlinese, whose vernacular is strongly tinged with _Plattdeutsch_
forms from the lower Elbe. A similar phenomenon is to be observed in
our own country. We Americans, taken as a nation, speak a more correct
English--i.e., an English freer from dialectic peculiarities--than the
English themselves. We have but one conventional form of expression
from Maine to California, and whatever lies outside of this may be bad
grammar or slang, but is certainly not dialect.

[Footnote 1: The word "Middle" is used here as a geographical term.
German philologists arrange the dialects into two main groups--High
(South) and Low (North), and prefix to each the terms Old, _Middle_
and New to distinguish epochs in the growth of each. According to this
nomenclature, Old = Early, _Middle_ = Late-Mediæval, New = Modern.
The word _Middle_ is unfortunate, as it may designate either age or
locality. It designates both locality and age in the text above--i.e.,
the late-mediæval form of Middle Germany. In full, it should be
"Middle-Middle." The Meissen dialect, it may be added, was the one
adopted by Luther, and is the basis of all modern book-German. (See
Rückert's _Gesch. der neuhochd. Sprache_, pp. 168-178.)]

The most important event in the history of the twin municipalities,
Cöln-Berlin, was a change of dynasty. In 1415-18, Frederick of
Hohenzollern, burgrave of Nuremberg, was invested with the margravate
of Brandenburg and the electoral dignity. The Hohenzollerns, a few
exceptions aside, have been a thrifty, energetic and successful
family. Slowly, but with the precision of destiny, their motto, "From
rock to sea"--once apparently an idle boast--has realized itself to
the full, until they now stand foremost in Europe. It would pertain
rather to a history of the Prussian monarchy than to a sketch like
the present to trace, even in outline, the steps by which Brandenburg
annexed one after another the Prussian duchies of the Teutonic order,
Pomerania, Silesia, the province of Saxony, Westphalia, and in our own
days Hanover and Hesse-Cassel. So far as Berlin is concerned, it will
suffice to state that its history is not rich in episode or in marked
characters. It long remained the obscure capital of a dynasty which
the Guelfs and Habsburgs were pleased to look down upon as parvenu.
During the Thirty Years' war, in which Brandenburg played such a
pitiable part, Berlin was on the verge of extinction. By 1640 its
population had been reduced to 6000. Even the great elector, passing
his life in warfare, could do but little for his capital. His
successor, Frederick I., the first _king_ of the Prussians, was
more fortunate. To him the city is indebted for most of its present
features. He was the originator of the Friederichsstadt, the
Friederichsstrasse, the Dorotheenstadt,[2] the continuation of the
Linden to the Thiergarten, the arsenal, and the final shaping of the
old castle. In 1712 the population was 61,000. The wars of Frederick
the Great, brought to a triumphal issue, made Berlin more and more a
centre of trade and industry. To all who could look beyond the clouds
of political controversy and prejudice it was evident that Berlin was
destined to become the leading city of North Germany and the worthy
rival of Vienna. Even the humiliation of Jena and the subsequent
occupation by Napoleon were only transitory. Berlin, not being a
fortified city, was spared at least the misery of a siege. After the
downfall of Napoleon, Prussia and its capital resumed their mission of
absorption and expansion. The "Customs Union" accelerated the pace. In
1862 the population was 480,000; in 1867, 702,437; in 1871, 826,341.
At present it is in excess of Vienna. The Austrian and French wars
have given to its growth an almost feverish impulse.

[Footnote 2: The Friederichsstadt and Dorotheenstadt are those parts
of the town with which the tourist is most familiar as places of
residence and shopping; Cöln is the island on which stand the castle
and the two museums; Old Berlin is the part beyond the Spree.]

A comparison of Berlin and Vienna in their present state will suggest
many reflections. We have seen that they resemble each other in
origin, rate of growth and actual size. In their composition, however,
they differ widely. The population of Berlin is homogeneous, devotedly
attached to the Hohenzollern dynasty, enterprising in trade and
manufactures, thrifty and economical. It spends far less than it
earns. For upward of half a century it has been subjected to the most
careful military and scientific training. Moreover, Berlin is the
geographical and political centre of a thoroughly homogeneous realm.
We cannot afford to encourage any delusions on this point. It has
become of late the fashion among certain French writers and their
imitators to sneer at the Prussians as semi-Slaves, to call them
Borussians, and contrast them with the so-called Germans proper of
Bavaria, Swabia and the Rhine; whereas the fact of ethnography is that
the Prussians are an amalgamation of the best--that is, the hardiest
and most enterprising--elements of all the German districts. The
purest blood and the most active brains of the old empire left their
homes on the Main and the Weser to colonize and conquer under the
leadership of the Teutonic order. The few drops of Slavic blood are
nothing in comparison. Slavic names of towns and villages do not prove
Slavic descent; else, by like reasoning, we should have to pronounce
"France" and "French" words implying German blood, and "Normandy" an
expression for Norse lineage. So far from being composite, Berlin is
ultra German. It is more national, in this sense, than Dresden, where
the Saxon court was for generations Polish in tastes and sympathies,
and where English and American residents constitute at this day
a perceptible element; more so than Bremen and Hamburg, which are
entrepôts for foreign commerce; more so than Frankfort, with its
French affiliations. The few Polish noblemen and workmen from Posen
only serve to relieve the otherwise monotonous German type of the
city. The French culture assumed by Frederick the Great and his
contemporaries was a mere surface varnish, a passing fashion that left
the underlying structure intact. Furthermore, Berlin is profoundly
Protestant. The Reformation was accepted here with enthusiasm, and its
adoption was more of a folk-movement than elsewhere, Thuringia alone
excepted. By virtue of its Protestantism, then, Berlin is accessible
to liberal ideas and capable of placing itself in the van of progress
without breaking abruptly with the past. Its liberalism, unlike that
of Catholic Paris, does not lead to radicalism or communism. Finally,
it is to be borne in mind that Berlin, having become the official
capital, must of necessity attract more and more the ablest men
from all quarters of the empire--the members of the imperial Diet,
politicians, lobbyists, bankers, speculators and their satellites.
Along with the good, it is true, comes much of the bad. Berlin is
unquestionably the present goal for needy and unscrupulous adventurers
of the worst sort. Not a few pessimists, native and foreign, have
made the fact a text for dismal prognostications of the city's future
degeneracy. Yet this is taking a shortsighted and unjust view of
things. The great mass of the population is still sound to the core.
The unsettled state of monetary and social relations cannot but be
transitory, and compulsory education and military service cannot but
operate in the future as they have done in the past. So long as the
_garde-corps_ remains what it is, the flower of the army, it will be
idle to speak of the degeneracy of Berlin. We must not forget that
only five years ago, at Mars la Tour, Brandenburg and Berlin regiments
fought the most remarkable battle, in many respects, of modern times.

On almost all the points above indicated Vienna is the direct opposite
of Berlin. It is not homogeneous in itself, neither is it the
centre of a homogeneous empire; its population is not thrifty nor
enterprising; it is Catholic, and not Protestant. The Hohenzollerns
have achieved their success by hard fighting. With the exception of
the original marches of Brandenburg there is scarcely a district in
the kingdom of Prussia that has not been wrested from some enemy
and held as the spoils of war. This policy of forcible annexation
or robbery, as the historian may be pleased to call it--while
inconsistent with principles of equity, has had nevertheless its
marked advantages. Perceiving that the sword alone could keep what the
sword had won, the Hohenzollerns have ever striven to identify their
dynastic interests with the well-being of their people, to make their
régime one of order and improvement, to repress the power of the
nobility without crushing its spirit, to adjust a satisfactory
compromise between centralization and local independence, and to stamp
their own uncompromising spirit upon each individual subject. Hence
their success in creating a nation out of provinces. Every Prussian
has always felt that he was a member of one indissoluble commonwealth.
The Habsburgs, on the contrary, have grown great through marriage.
Their policy is aptly expressed in the oft-quoted phrase, _Bella
gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube_. Regarding their sway as a matter
of hereditary succession and divine right, they have been content
to let each province or kingdom remain as it was when acquired,
an isolated Crown dependency. They have not put forth serious and
persistent efforts to weld the Tyrol, the Austrian duchies, Bohemia,
Galicia, much less Hungary, in one compact realm. They have done
even worse. They have committed repeatedly a blunder which the
Hohenzollerns, even in their darkest days, never so much as dreamed
of--namely, the blunder of hounding down one province or race by means
of another. They have used the Germans to crush the Bohemians, the
Poles to thwart the Germans, the Hungarians to check all the others,
and the Croats to defeat the Hungarians. From this has resulted a
deplorable conflict of races. The present emperor, Francis Joseph,
appears to the eye of the close observer a man bent beneath the
hopeless task of reconciliation. He is called upon to bear the
accumulated evils of centuries of misrule.

Vienna is a faithful reflex in miniature of Austria in general. The
heedless or untrained tourist, misled by names and language and the
outward forms of intercourse, may pronounce the city a most delightful
German capital: he may congratulate himself upon the opportunity it
gives him of reviving his reminiscences of the old German emperors and
contrasting their times with the present. But the tourist, were he
to go beneath the surface, would discover that he is treading
upon peculiar ground. We have only to scratch the Viennese to find
something that is not German. We shall discover beneath the surface
Hungarian, or Slavic, or Italian blood. A very large portion of the
population, perhaps even the greater portion, speaks two, three or
four languages with equal facility. New York excepted, no great city
will compare with Vienna for medley of speech and race. The truth is,
that the city still retains its early character as a frontier-post,
or, to speak more correctly, it is the focus where the currents from
North-eastern Italy, South-eastern Germany, Bohemia, Galicia and
Hungary converge without thoroughly intermingling. The conventional
German used by the middle and lower classes is interspersed with
terms borrowed from the other languages, with dialectic idioms,
provincialisms and peculiarities of pronunciation that cause it to
sound like an unfamiliar tongue.

In outward appearance the city is not less diversified than in
population. The gay bustle of the streets, the incessant roll of
fiacres, the style of dress, the crowded cafés remind one more
of Paris than of Germany. The cuisine and ways of living and the
architecture here and there have borrowed freely from Italy and
France. A certain fondness for gorgeous coloring and profuse
ornamentation is due to Hungarian influence. The bulbous cupolas
surmounted with sharply tapering spires, irreverently nicknamed
_Zwiebel-Thürme_ ("onion-towers"), are evidently stragglers from
Byzantium, and contrast sharply with the rich Gothic of St. Stephen's
and the new Votive Church. By the side of Vienna, Berlin is painfully
monotonous. Few of the public buildings can be called handsome, or
even picturesque. The plaster used for the outer coating of the houses
is apt to discolor or flake off, so that the general aspect is that
of premature age. Worthy of note is the new city hall, a successful
effort to make an imposing and elegant structure of brick. In the
neighborhood of the Thiergarten the private residences evince taste
and refinement. Taken all in all, Berlin has not yet shaken off its
provincialism, and is far behind Vienna in drainage, water-supply
and paving. The Berlinese have much to do and undo before they can
rightfully call their city a _Weltstadt_.

In the matter of economy, at least, they are worthy of all praise.
No other community spends less in proportion to its income. From the
emperor down, each person seems to count his pence. This self-denial,
which borders at times on parsimony, is the result of training and
circumstances. The soil in the eastern part of the kingdom, and
especially around Berlin, is not fertile. It yields its crops only to
the most careful tillage. Moreover, prolonged struggles for political
existence and supremacy, with the necessity of being on the watch for
sudden wars and formidable invasions, have sharpened the wits of the
Berlinese and taught them the advisability of laying by for a rainy
day. The Viennese, on the contrary, live rather for the passing hour.
Austria is favored with an agreeable climate and an extremely fertile
soil. The immediate vicinity of Vienna is highly picturesque and
invites to merrymaking excursions, while life in the city is a hunt
after pleasure. The court and the nobility, once proverbial for
wealth, set an example of profuse expenditure which is followed by the
middle and even the lower classes.

Were it possible, by passing a magic wand over the Austrian duchies
and Vienna, to transform them into a Brandenburg or a Silesia, the
Eastern question would be much simplified. The entire valley of the
lower Danube, Hungary not excepted, suffers from a want of laborers.
Agriculture, mining and manufactures are in a primitive state unworthy
of the Middle Ages. The exhibition from Roumania at Vienna in 1873,
although arrayed tastefully, was a lamentable confession of poverty
and backwardness. Even Hungary, anxious to display her autonomy to
the best advantage, could show little more than the beginnings of
a change. The actual condition of the lower Danube is a reproach to
European civilization. Everything seems to be lacking--good roads and
tolerable houses, kitchen and farming utensils, workshops of the most
rudimentary sort, clothing, popular education, the first conceptions
of science. Germany is the only source from which to expect assistance
in the spread of material comfort and spiritual enlightenment, for
Germany alone has population and education to spare. Yet that part
of Germany which is nearest at hand is not adequate of itself to
the task. The Austrians have not such a preponderancy of numbers
and influence within their own borders as would qualify them for
conducting successfully a great movement of colonization. Besides, it
must be admitted, with all due respect to the many good qualities of
the Austrians, that colonists should be of "sterner stuff"--should
have more self-denial, greater capacity for work and more talent
for self-government. In these particulars the North Germans are
unquestionably superior. The improved condition of Roumania (Moldavia
and Wallachia) under Prince Charles of Hohenzollern teaches us what
may be accomplished by an energetic administration. During the past
ten years the army has been drilled and equipped after the Prussian
fashion, the finances placed on a tolerable footing, and practical
independence of Turkey asserted. At the Vienna exhibition Roumania was
the only one of the nominally-vassal states that did not display
the star and crescent. Were the prince unrestrained by respect for
Austrian and Prussian diplomacy, and free to lead his well-disciplined
army of fifty thousand men into the field, he would give the signal
for a general uprising in Bosnia and Servia, and thus probably succeed
in severing all the Christian provinces from the Porte.

In one essential feature the Germanization of Prussia in the Middle
Ages differed necessarily from any like movement now possible along
the Danube. The Vends, Serbs and other Slaves were heathens, and their
overthrow and extermination was a crusade as well as a conquest. The
Church consecrated the sword, the monk labored side by side with the
knight. Such is not the case in the Danube Valley. Whatever value
we may set upon the Christianity of the Slovenes, Herzegovinians,
Bulgarians and Roumanians, we certainly cannot call them heathens.
They belong to the Roman Catholic, to the Greek, or to the Greek
United Church, although their worship and religious conceptions are
strongly tinged with reminiscences of Slavic paganism. Neither is a
conquest, in the military sense, possible. Public opinion in Europe
has learned to look with abhorrence on such violent measures, not to
speak of the mutual jealousies of Austria, Russia and Germany. The
question is rather one of peaceful colonization, of the introduction
of Germans in large numbers, and the gradual adoption of Western
improvements. Without some strong influx of the sort the mere
separation of the Danubian principalities from Turkey would be only a
halfway measure. It would put an end to the outrageous tyranny of the
Turkish governors, but it would not ensure industrial and intellectual
progress. And if Germany does not undertake the work, where else is
aid to be looked for? We see what the Germans have done for us in the
valleys of the upper Ohio and Mississippi. We have only to imagine a
like stream of population rolling for twenty years along the Danube.
Some of the conditions there are even more favorable than they have
been with us. The German colonist in America has been confronted from
the start by a civilization fully equal to his own. In the Danubian
principalities he would rise at once to a position of superiority.
The cessation of German immigration would be undoubtedly a loss to
America, but its diversion to the south-east would be a great gain
to Europe. It would settle, perhaps, for ever, the grave question
of race-supremacy--it would enable Austria to become a really German
power, and Vienna a really German city. Last, but not least, it would
reclaim from Mohammedanism and barbarism lands that were lost to
Christian culture only five centuries ago in a moment of shameful
weakness.

JAMES MORGAN HART.




THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS.

BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF "PATRICIA KEMBALL."


CHAPTER XXXIII.

OUR MARRIAGE.


Not the youngest or prettiest bride could have excited more interest
on her launch into the unknown shoals and quicksands of matrimony than
did many-fleshed, mature and freckled Josephine on the achievement of
her long-desired union with the twice-told widower. A marriage of one
of their own set was a rare event altogether to the North Astonians,
and the marriage of one of the Hill girls was above all a circumstance
that touched the heart of the place as nothing else could touch
it--one which even Carry Fairbairn on the day of her triumph over
willow-wearing and that faithless Frank had not come near. It was "our
marriage" and "our bride," and each member of the community took
a personal interest in the proceedings, and felt implicated in the
subsequent failure or success of the venture.

Of course they all confessed that it was a bold thing for Miss
Josephine to be the third wife of a man--some of the more prudish
pursed their lips and said they wondered how she could, and they
wondered yet more how Mrs. Harrowby ever allowed it, and why, if Mr.
Dundas must marry again (but they thought he might be quiet now), he
had not taken a stranger, instead of one who had been mixed up as it
were with his other wives--but seeing that her day was passed, the
majority, as has been said, held that she was in the right to take
what she could get, and to marry even as a third wife was better than
not to marry at all. And then the neighborhood knew Sebastian Dundas,
and knew that although he had been foolish and unfortunate in his
former affairs, there was no harm in him. If his second wife had died
mysteriously, North Aston was generous enough not to suppose that he
had poisoned her; and who could wonder at that dreadful Pepita having
a stroke, sitting in the sun as she did on such a hot day, and so fat
as she was? So that Mr. Dundas was exonerated from the suspicion
of murder in either case, if credited with an amount of folly and
misfortune next thing to criminal; and "our marriage" was received
with approbation, the families sending tribute and going to the church
as the duty they owed a Harrowby, and to show Sebastian that they
considered he had done wisely at last, and chosen as was fitting.

There was a little mild waggery about the future name of Ford
House, and the bolder spirits offered shilling bets that it would be
rechristened "Josephine Lodge" before the year was out. But save this
not very scorching satire, which also was not too well received by
the majority, as savoring of irreverence to consecrated powers, the
country looked on in supreme good-humor, and the day came in its
course, finding as much social serenity as it brought summer sunshine.

It was a pretty wedding, and everybody said that everybody looked very
nice; which is always comforting to those whose souls are stitched up
in their flounces, and whose happiness and self-respect rise or
fall according to the becomingness of their attire. The village
school-children lining the churchwalk strewed flowers for the bride's
material and symbolic path. Dressed in a mixture of white, scarlet
and blue, they made a brilliant show of color, and gave a curious
suggestion of so many tricolored flags set up along the path; but they
added to the general gayety of the scene, and they themselves thought
Miss Josephine's wedding surely as grand as the queen's.

There were five bridesmaids, including little Fina, whom kindly
Josephine had specially desired should bear her part in the pageant
which was to give her a mother and a friend. The remaining four
were the two Misses Harrowby, Adelaide Birkett, as her long-time
confidante, and that other step-daughter, more legitimate if less
satisfactory than Fina--Leam.

The first three of these four elder maids came naturally and of
course: the last was the difficulty. When first asked, Learn had
refused positively--for her quite vehemently--to have hand or part in
the wedding. It brought back too vividly the sin and the sorrow of the
former time; and she despised her father's inconstancy of heart too
much to care to assist at a service which was to her the service of
folly and wickedness in one.

She said, "No, no: I will not come. I, bridesmaid at papa's wedding!
bridesmaid to his third wife! No, I will not!" And she said it with
an insistance, an emphasis, that seemed immovable, and all the more so
because it was natural.

But Josephine pleaded with her so warmly--she was evidently so much in
earnest in her wish, she meant to be so good and kind to the girl,
to lift her from the shadows and place her in the sunshine of
happiness--that Leam was at last touched deeply enough to give way.
She had come now to recognize that fidelity to be faithful need not
be churlish; and perhaps she was influenced by Josephine's final
argument. For when she had said "No, I cannot come to the wedding,"
for about the fourth time, Josephine shot her last bolt in these
words: "Oh, dear Leam, do come. I am sure Edgar will be hurt and
displeased if you are not one of my bridesmaids. He will think you do
not like the connection, and you know what a proud man he is: he will
be so vexed with me."

On which Leam said gravely, "I would not like to hurt or displease
Major Harrowby; and I do not like or dislike the connection;" adding,
after a pause, and putting on her little royal manner, "I will come."

Josephine's honest heart swelled with the humble gratitude of the
self-abased. "Good Leam! dear girl!" she cried, kissing her with
tearful eyes and wet lips--poor Learn! who hated to be kissed, and who
had by no means intended that her grave caress on the day of betrothal
should be taken as a precedent and acted on unreservedly. And after
she had kissed her frequently she thanked her again effusively, as if
she had received some signal grace that could hardly be repaid.

Her excess chilled Leam of course, but she held to her promise; and
Josephine augured all manner of happy eventualities from the fact
that her future step-daughter had yielded so sweetly on the first
difference of desire between them, and had let herself be kissed with
becoming patience. It was a good omen for the beginning of things; and
all brides are superstitious--Josephine perhaps more so than most, in
that she was more loving and more in love than most.

Yes, it was a pretty wedding, as they all said. The bride in the
regulation white and pearls looked, if not girlish, yet comely and
suitable to the bridegroom with his gray hair and sunburnt skin. The
two senior maids had stipulated for a preponderance of warm rose-color
in the costumes, which suited every one. It threw a flush on their
faded elderliness which was not amiss, and did the best for them
that could be done in the circumstances; it brought out into lovely
contrast, the contrast of harmonies, Adelaide Birkett's delicate
complexion, fair flaxen braids and light-blue eyes; it burnt like
flame in Leam's dark hair, and made her large transcendent eyes glow
as if with fire; while the little one looked like a rose, the white
and crimson petals of which enclosed a laughing golden-headed fairy.

It was admirable all through, and did credit to the generalizing
powers of the Hill, which had thus contrived to harmonize the three
stages of womanhood and to offend none. Even Frank's fastidious taste
was satisfied. So was Mrs. Frank's, who knew how things ought to be
done. And as she was the rather elderly if very wealthy daughter of a
baronet, who considered that she had married decidedly beneath herself
in taking Frank Harrowby, the untitled young barrister not even yet in
silk, she had come down to the Hill prepared to criticise sharply;
so that her approbation carried weight and ensured a large amount
of satisfaction. Edgar, however, who was not so fastidious as his
brother, thought the whole thing a failure and that no one looked even
tolerable.

As he had his duty to do by his sister, being the father who gave her
away, he was fully occupied; but his eyes wandered more than once to
the younger two of the bridesmaids proper--those two irreconcilables
joined for the first time in a show of sisterhood and likeness--and
whom he examined and compared as so often before, with the same
inability to decide which.

He paid little or no attention to either. He might have been a
gray-headed old sage for the marvelous reticence of his demeanor,
devoting himself to his duties and the dowagers with a persistency
of good-breeding, to say the least of it, admirable. At the
breakfast-table he was naturally separated from both these fair
disturbers of his lordly peace, Leam having been told off to Alick,
and Adelaide handed over to Frank's fraternal care, with Mrs. Frank,
who claimed more than a fee-simple in her husband, watching them
jealously and interrupting them often.

That wind which never blows so ill that it brings no good to any one
had brought joy to Alick in this apportionment of partners, if the
sadness of boredom to poor Leam. The natural excitement of a wedding,
which stirs the coldest, had touched even the chastened pulses of the
pale, gaunt curate, and he caught himself more than once wondering if
he could ever win the young queen of his boyish fancy to return
the deep love of his manhood--love which was so true, so strong, so
illimitable, it seemed as if it must by the very nature of things
compel its answer.

That answer was evidently not in the course of preparation to-day, for
Leam had never been more laconic or more candidly disdainful than she
was now; and what sweetness the pomegranate flower might hold in its
heart was certainly not shaken abroad on the surrounding world.
She answered when she was spoken to, because even Leam felt the
constraining influences of society, but her eyes, like her manner,
said plainly enough, "You tire me: you are stupid."

Not that either her eyes or her manner repelled her uncomfortable
adorer. Alick was used to her disdain, and even liked it as her way,
as he would have liked anything else that had been her way. He was
content to be her footstool if it was her pleasure to put her foot
on him, and he would have knotted any thong of any lash that she had
chosen to use. Whatever gave her pleasure rejoiced him, and he had no
desire for himself that might be against her wishes. Nevertheless,
he yearned at times, when self would dominate obedience, that those
wishes of hers should coincide with his desires, and that before the
end came he might win her to return his love.

But what can be hoped from a girl, not a coquette, who is besieged
on the one side by an awkward and ungainly admirer, when directly
opposite to her is the handsome hero for whose love her secret heart,
unknown to herself, is crying, and who has withdrawn himself for
the time from smiles and benevolence? Leam somehow felt as if every
compliment paid to her by Alick was an offence to Edgar; and she
repelled him, blushing, writhing, uncomfortable, but adoring, with
a coldness that nothing could warm, a stony immobility that nothing
could soften, because it was the coldness of fidelity and the
immobility of love.

Edgar saw it all. It put him somewhat in better humor with himself,
but made him indignant with the Reverend Alexander, as he generally
called Alick when he spoke of him wishing to suggest disrespect. He
held him as a poacher beating up his preserves; and the gentlemen
of England have scant mercy for poachers, conscious or unconscious.
Meanwhile, nothing could be more delightfully smooth and successful
than the whole thing was on the outside. The women looked nice, the
men were gallant, the mature but comely bride was so happy that
she seemed to radiate happiness on all around her, and the elderly
bridegroom was marvelously vitalized for a man whose heart was broken,
and only at the best riveted. Edgar performed his duties, as has been
said, with heroic constancy; Mrs. Harrowby did not weep nor bemoan
herself as a victim because one of her daughters had at last left the
maternal wing for a penthouse of her own; Adelaide talked to Frank
with graceful discretion, mindful of his owner watching her property
jealously from the other side of the way; Leam was--Leam in her more
reserved mood if Alick was too manifestly adoring; and the families
admitted acted like a well-trained chorus, and carried on the main
thread to lower levels without a break. So time and events went
on till the moment came for that fearful infliction--the
wedding-breakfast toast prefaced by the wedding-breakfast speech.

This naturally fell to the lot of Mr. Birkett to propose and deliver,
and after a concerted signaling with Edgar he rose to his feet and
began his oration. He proposed "the health of the fair bride and her
gallant groom," both of whom, after the manner of such speeches, he
credited with all the virtues under heaven, and of whom each was the
sole proper complement of the other to be found within the four seas.
He was so far generous in that he did not allude to that fascinating
second whom Mr. Dundas had taken to his bosom nearly five years ago
now, and whose tragical death had cut him to the heart almost as much
as it had wounded Sebastian. At one time natural masculine malice had
made him compose a stinging little allusion that should carry poison,
as some flowers do, sheathed and sugared; but the gentleman's better
taste prevailed, and for Josephine's sake he brushed away the gloomy
shadow of the grave which he had thrown for his own satisfaction over
the orange-blossoms. He rose to the joyous height of the occasion, and
his speech was a splendid success and gave satisfaction to every one
alike. But what he did say was, that he supposed the master of the
Hill would soon be following the example of his brother-in-law, and
cause the place to be glad in the presence of a young Mrs. Harrowby,
who would do well if she had half the virtues of the lady who had so
long held the place of mistress there. And when he said this he looked
at Edgar with a paternal kind of roguishness that really sat very well
on his handsome old face, and that every one took to mean Adelaide.

Edgar laughed and showed his square white teeth while the rector
spoke, blushing like a girl, but in all save that strange, unusual
flush he bore himself as if it was a good joke of Mr. Birkett's own
imagining, and one with which he had personally nothing to do. More
than one pair of eyes watched to see if he would look at Adelaide as
the thong for the rector's buckle; and Adelaide watched on her own
account to see if he would look at Leam or at her. But Edgar kept his
eyes discreetly guided, and no one caught a wandering glance anywhere:
he merely laughed and put it by as a good joke, looking as if he had
devoted himself to celibacy for life, and that the Hill would never
receive another mistress than the one whom it had now.

"I wonder if the rector means Miss Birkett?" blundered Alick as his
commentary in a low voice to Leam.

Leam turned pale: then with an effort she answered coldly, "Why wonder
at what you cannot know? It is foolish."

And Alick was comforted, because if she had rebuked she had at the
least spoken to him.

The breakfast soon after this came to an end, and in due time the
guests were all assembled in the drawing-room, waiting for the
departure of the newly-married pair. Here Edgar might have made
some amends to the two bridesmaids whom he had neglected with such
impartiality of coldness, such an equal division of doubt, but he did
not. He still avoided both as if each had offended him, and made them
feel that he was displeased and had intentionally overlooked them.

Each girl bore his neglect in a manner characteristic of herself.
Adelaide showed nothing, unless indeed it was that her voice was
smoother and her speech sharper than usual, while her smiles were
more frequent if less real. But then it was heroic in her to speak
and smile at all when she was verily in torture. Nothing short of
the worship due to the great god Society could have made her control
herself so admirably; but Adelaide was a faithful worshiper of the
divine life of conventionality, and she had her reward. Leam showed
nothing, at least nothing directly overt. Perhaps her demeanor
was stiller, her laconism curter, her distaste to uninteresting
companionship and current small-talk more profound, than usual; but
no one seemed to see the deeper tinge of her ordinary color, and she
passed muster, for her creditably. In her heart she thought it all
weariness of the flesh and spirit alike, and wished that people would
marry without a wedding if they must marry at all.

She had not the slightest idea why she felt so miserable when every
one else was so full of the silliest laughter. It never occurred to
her that it was because Edgar had not spoken to her; but once she
confessed to herself that she wished she was away out of all this,
riding through the green lanes, with Major Harrowby riding fast to
join her. Even if her chestnut should prance and dance and make her
feel uncomfortable about the pommel and the reins, it would be better
than this. A heavy meal of meat and wine, and that horrible cake in
the middle of the day, were stupid, thought ascetic Leam. She had
never felt anything so dreary before. How glad she would be when her
father and Josephine went away, and she might go back to Ford House
and be alone! As for the evening, she did not know that she would show
herself then at all. There was to be a ball, and though it would be
pleasant to dance, she felt so dull and wretched now she half thought
she would send an excuse. But perhaps Major Harrowby would be more at
liberty in the evening than he was now, and would find it possible to
dance with her, at least once. He danced so well! Indeed, he was the
only partner whom she cared to have, and she hoped therefore that he
would dance with her if she came.

And thinking this, she resolved in her own mind that she would
come, and unconsciously raised her eyes to Edgar with a look of such
intensity, and as it seemed to him such reproach, that it startled him
as much as if she had called him by his name and asked him sadly, Why?




CHAPTER XXXIV.

IS THIS LOVE?


It seemed as if the evening was to bring no more satisfaction to the
three whom the morning had so greatly disturbed than had that morning
itself. Edgar avoided the two girls at the ball as much as he had
avoided them at the breakfast, dancing only once with each, and
not making even that one dance pleasant. Under cover of brotherly
familiarity he teased Adelaide till she had the greatest difficulty
in keeping her temper; while he was so preternaturally respectful to
Leam, whom he wished he had not been forced to respect at all, that it
seemed as if they had met to-night for the first time, and were not
quite so cordial as sympathetic strangers would have been.

It was only a quadrille that they were dancing, a stupid, silent,
uninteresting set of figures which people go through out of respect
for ancient usage, and for which no one cares. Leam would have refused
to take part in it at all had any one but Major Harrowby asked her.
But he was different from other men, she thought; and it became her to
say "Yes" when he said "Will you?" if only because he was the master
of the house.

Leam had made considerable progress in her estimate of the
proprieties. The unseen teacher who had informed her of late was
apparently even more potent than those who had first broken up the
fallow ground at Bayswater, and taught her that _las cosas de España_
were not the things of the universe, and that there was another life
and mode of action besides that taught by mamma.

But when Leam thoroughly understood the master's mood, and thus
made it clear to herself that the evening's formality was simply a
continuance of the morning's avoidance, after looking at him once
with one of those profound looks of hers which made him almost beside
himself, she set her head straight, turned her eyes to the floor, and
lapsed into a silence as unbroken as his own. She was too proud and
shy to attempt to conciliate him, but she wondered why he was so
changed to her. And then she wondered, as she had done this morning,
why she was so unhappy to-night. Was it because her father had married
Josephine Harrowby? Why should that make her sad? She did not think
now that her mother was crying in heaven because another woman was in
her place; and for herself it made no difference whether there was a
step-mother at home or no. She could not be more lonely than she
was; and with Josephine at the head of affairs she would have less
responsibility. No, it was not that which was making her unhappy; and
yet she was almost as miserable to-night as she had been when madame
was brought home as papa's wife, and her fancy gave her mamma's
beloved face weeping there among the stars--abandoned by all but
herself, forsaken even by the saints and the angels.

Everything to-night oppressed her. The lights dazzled her with
what seemed to her their hard and cruel shine; the passing dancers
radiantly clad and joyous made her giddy and contemptuous; the
flower-scents pouring through the room from the plants within and from
the gardens without gave her headache; the number of people at the
ball--people whom she did not know and who stared at her, people
whom she did know and who talked to her--all overwhelmed as well as
isolated her. She seemed to belong to no one, now that Edgar had let
her slip from his hands so coldly--not even to Mrs. Corfield, who had
brought her, nor yet to her faithful friend and guardian Alick, who
wandered round and round about her in circles like a dog, doing his
best to make her feel befriended and to clear her dear face of some of
its sadness. Doing his best too, with characteristic unselfishness,
to forget that he loved her if it displeased her, and to convince her
that he had only dreamed when he had said those rash words when the
lilacs were first budding in the garden at Steel's Corner.

It was quite early in the evening when Edgar danced this uninteresting
"square" with Leam, whom then he ceremoniously handed back to Mrs.
Corfield, as if this gathering of friends and neighbors in the country
had been a formal assemblage of strangers in a town.

"I hope you are not tired with this quadrille," he said as he took her
across the room, not looking at her.

"It was dull, but I am not tired," Learn answered, not looking at him.

"I am sorry I was such an uninteresting partner," was his rejoinder,
made with mock simplicity.

"A dumb man who does not even talk on his fingers cannot be very
amusing," returned Learn with real directness.

"You were dumb too: why did you not talk, if dull, on your fingers?"
he asked.

She drew herself up proudly, more like the Leam of Alick than of
Edgar. "I do not generally amuse gentlemen," she said.

"Then I am only in the majority?" with that forced smile which was his
way when he was most annoyed.

"You have been to-day," answered Leam, quitting his arm as they came
up to her sharp-featured chaperon, but looking straight at him as
she spoke with those heart-breaking eyes to which, Edgar thought,
everything must yield, and he himself at the last.

Not minded, however, to yield at this moment, fighting indeed
desperately with himself not to yield at all, Edgar kept away from his
sister's step-daughter still more, as if a quarrel had fallen between
them; and Adelaide gained in proportion, for suddenly that butterfly,
undecided fancy of his seemed to settle on the rector's daughter, to
whom he now paid more court than to the whole room beside--court so
excessive and so patent that it made the families laugh knowingly,
and say among themselves evidently the Hill would soon receive its new
mistress, and the rector knew which way things were going when he made
that wedding-speech this morning.

Only Adelaide herself was not deceived, but read between the lines and
made out the hidden words, which were not flattering to herself. And
to her it was manifest that Edgar's attentions, offered with such
excited publicity, were not so much to gratify her or to express
himself, as to pique Leam Dundas and work off his own unrest.

Meanwhile, Leam, sad and weary, took refuge in the embrasure of a
bow-window, where she sat hidden from the room by the heavy curtains
which fell before the sidelights, leaving the centre window leading
into the garden open and uncurtained. Here she was at rest. She was
not obliged to talk. She need not see Edgar always with her enemy,
both laughing so merrily--and as it seemed to her so cruelly, so
insolently--as they waltzed and danced square dances, looking really
as if made one for the other--so handsome as they both were; so well
set up, and so thoroughly English.

It made her so unhappy to watch them; for, as she said to herself,
Major Harrowby had always been so much her friend, and Adelaide
Birkett was so much her enemy, that she felt as if he had deserted her
and gone over to the other side. That was all. It was like losing him
altogether to see him so much with Adelaide. With any one else she
would not have had a pang. He might have danced all the evening, if
he had liked, with Susy Fairbairn or Rosy, or any of the strange girls
about, but she did not like that he should so entirely abandon her for
Adelaide. Wherefore she drew herself away out of sight altogether,
and sat behind the curtain looking into the garden and up to the dark,
quiet sky.

Presently Alick, who had been searching for her everywhere, spied her
out and came up to her. He too was one of those made wretched by the
circumstances of the evening. Indeed, he was always wretched, more
or less; but he was one of the kind which gets used to its own
unhappiness--even reconciled to it if others are happy.

"You are not dancing?" he said to Learn sitting behind the curtain.

"No," said Learn with her old disdain for self-evident propositions.
"I am sitting here."

"Don't you care for dancing?" he asked.

He knew that she did, but a certain temperament prefers foolish
questions to silence; and Alick Corfield was one who had that
temperament.

"Not to-night," she answered, looking into the garden,

"Why not to-night? and when you dance so beautifully too--just as
light as a fairy."

"Did you ever see a fairy dance?" was Leam's rejoinder, made quite
solemnly.

Alick blushed and shifted his long lean limbs uneasily. He knew that
when he said these silly things he should draw down on him Leam's
rebuke, but he never could refrain. He seemed impelled somehow to be
always foolish and tiresome when with her. "No, I cannot say I have
ever seen a fairy," he answered with a nervous little laugh.

"Then how can you say I dance like one?" she asked in perfect good
faith of reproach.

"One may imagine," apologized Alick.

"One cannot imagine what does not exist," she answered. "You should
not say such foolish things."

"No, you are right, I should not. I do say very foolish things
at times. You are right to be angry with me," he said humbly, and
writhing.

Leam turned her eyes from him in artistic reprobation of his
awkwardness and ungainly homage. She paused a moment: then, as if by
an effort, she looked at him straight in the face and kindly. "You
are too good to me," she said gently, "and I am too hard on you: it is
cruel."

"Don't say that," he cried, in real distress now. "You are perfect in
my eyes. Don't scold yourself. I like you to say sharp things to me,
and to tell me in your own beautiful way that I am stupid and foolish,
if really you trust me and respect me a little under it all. But I
should not know you, Leam, if you did not snub me. I should think you
were angry with me if you treated me with formal politeness."

He spoke with an honest heart, but an uncomfortable body; and Learn,
turning away her eyes once more, said with a heavy sigh--gravely,
sorrowfully, tenderly even, but as if impelled by respect for truth to
give her verdict as she thought it--"It is true if it is hard: you are
often stupid. You are stupid now, twisting yourself about like that
and making silly speeches. But I like you, for all that, and I respect
you. I would as soon expect the sun to go out as for you to do wrong.
But I wish you would keep still and not talk so much nonsense as you
do."

"Thank you!" cried the poor fellow fervently, his bare bone accepted
as gratefully as if it had been the sweetest fruit that love could
bestow. "You give me all I ask, and more than I deserve, if you say
that. And it is so kind of you to care whether I am awkward or not."

"I do not see the kindness," returned Learn gravely.

"Do you see those two spooning?" asked one of the Fairbairn girls,
pointing out Leam and Alick to Edgar, the curtain being now held back
by Leam to show the world that she was there, not caring to look as if
hiding away with Alick.

"They look very comfortable, and the lady picturesque," he answered
affectedly, but his brows suddenly contracted and his eyes shot
together, as they always did when angry. He had been jealous before
now of that shambling, awkward, ill-favored and true-hearted Alick,
that loyal knight and faithful watchdog whom he despised with such
high-hearted contempt; and he was not pleased to see him paying homage
to the young queen whom he himself had deserted.

"Poor Alick Corfield!" said Adelaide pityingly. "He has been a very
faithful adorer, I must say. I believe that he has been in love with
Leam all his life, while she has held him on and off, and made use of
him when she wanted him, and deserted him when she did not want him,
with the skill of a veteran."

"Do you think Miss Dundas a flirt?" asked Edgar as affectedly as
before.

"Certainly I do, but perhaps not more so than most girls of her kind
and age," was the quiet answer with its pretence of fairness.

"Including yourself?"

She smiled with unruffled amiability. "I am an exception," she said.
"I am neither of her kind nor, thank Goodness! of Tier country; and
I have never seen the man I cared to flirt with. I am more particular
than most people, and more exclusive. Besides," with the most
matter-of-fact air in the world, "I am an old maid by nature and
destiny. I am preparing for my _métier_ too steadily to interrupt it
by the vulgar amusement of flirting."

"You an old maid!--you! nonsense!" cried Edgar with an odd expression
in his eyes. "You will not be an old maid, Adelaide, I would marry you
myself rather."

She chose to take his impertinence simply. "Would you?" she asked.
"That would be generous!"

"And unpleasant?" he returned in a lower voice.

"To you? _chi sa?_ I should say yes." She spoke quite quietly, as if
nothing deeper than the question and answer of the moment lay under
this crossing of swords.

"No, not to me," he returned.

"To me, then? I will tell you that when the time comes," she said.
"Things are not always what they seem."

"You speak in riddles to-night, fair lady," said Edgar, who honestly
did not know what she meant him to infer--whether her present seeming
indifference was real, or the deeper feeling which she had so often
and for so long allowed him to believe.

"Do I?" She looked into his face serenely, but a little irritatingly.
"Then my spoken riddles match your acted ones," she said.

"This is the first time that I have been accused of enigmatic action.
Of all men I am the most straightforward, the least dubious."

Edgar said this rather angrily. By that curious law of self-deception
which makes cowards boast of their courage and hypocrites of their
sincerity, he did really believe himself to be as he said, notably
clear in his will and distinct in his action.

"Indeed! I should scarcely endorse that," answered Adelaide. "I have
so often known you enigmatic--a riddle of which, it seems to me, the
key is lost, or to which indeed there is no key at all--that I have
come to look on you as a puzzle never to be made out."

"You mean a puzzle not known to my fair friend Adelaide, which is not
quite the same thing as not known to any one," he said satirically,
his ill-humor with himself and everything about him overflowing beyond
his power to restrain. His knowledge that Miss Birkett was his proper
choice, his mad love for Leam--love only on the right hand, fitness,
society, family, every other claim on the left--his jealousy of
Alick, all irritated him beyond bearing, and made him forget even his
good-breeding in his irritation.

"Not known to my friend Edgar himself," was Adelaide's reply, her
color rising, ill-humor being contagious.

"Now, Adelaide, you are getting cross," he said.

"No, I am not in the least cross," she answered with her sweetest
smile. "I have a clear conscience--no self-reproaches to make me
vexed. It is only those who do wrong that lose their tempers. I know
nothing better for good-humor than a good conscience."

"What a pretty little sermon! almost as good as one of the Reverend
Alexander's, whose sport, by the way, I shall go and spoil."

"I never knew you cruel before," said Adelaide quietly. "Why should
you destroy the poor fellow's happiness, as well as Leam's chances,
for a mere passing whim? You surely are not going to repeat with the
daughter the father's original mistake with the mother?"

She spoke with the utmost contempt that she could manifest. At all
events, if Edgar married Leam Dundas, she would have her soul clear.
He should never be able to say that he had gone over the edge of the
precipice unwarned. She at least would be faithful, and would show him
how unworthy his choice was.

"Well, I don't know," he drawled. "Do you think she would have me if I
asked her?"

"Edgar!" cried Adelaide reproachfully. "You are untrue to yourself
when you speak in that manner to me--I, who am your best friend. You
have no one who cares so truly, so unselfishly, for your happiness and
honor as I do."

She began with reproach, but she ended with tenderness; and Edgar,
who was wax in the hands of a pretty woman, was touched. "Good, dear
Adelaide!" he said with fervor and quite naturally, "you are one of
the best girls in the world. But I _must_ go and speak to Miss Dundas,
I have neglected her so abominably all the evening."

On which, as if to prevent any reply, he turned away, and the next
moment was standing by Leam sitting in the window-seat half concealed
by the curtain, Alick paying awkward homage as his manner was.

Leam gave the faintest little start, that was more a shiver than a
start, as he came up. She turned her tragic eyes to him with dumb
reproach; but if she was sorrowful she was not craven, and though she
meant him to see that she disapproved of his neglect--which had indeed
been too evident to be ignored--she did not want him to think that she
was unhappy because of it.

"Are you not dancing, Miss Dundas?" asked Edgar as gravely as if he
was putting a _bonâ fide_ question.

"No," said Leam--thinking to herself, "Even he can ask silly
questions."

"Why not? Are you tired?"

"Yes," answered laconic Leam with a little sigh.

"I am afraid you are bored, and that you do not like balls," he said
with false sympathy, but real love, sorry to see the weariness of face
and spirit which he had not been sorry to cause.

"I am bored, and I do not like balls," she answered, her directness in
nowise softened out of regard for Edgar as the giver of the feast or
for Alick as her companion.

"Yet you like dancing; so come and shake off your boredom with me,"
said Edgar with a sudden flush. "They are just beginning to waltz: let
me have one turn with you."

"No. Why do you ask me? You do not like to dance with me," said Leam
proudly.

"No? Who told you such nonsense--such a falsehood as that?" hotly.

"Yourself," she answered.

Alick shifted his place uneasily. Something in Leam's manner to Edgar
struck him with an acute sense of distress, and seemed to tell him all
that he had hitherto failed to understand. But he felt indignant with
Edgar, even though his neglect, at which Leam had been so evidently
pained, might to another man have given hopes. He would rather have
known her loving, beloved, hence blessed, than wounded by this man's
coldness, by his indifference to what was to him, poor faithful and
idealizing Alick, such surpassing and supreme delightfulness.

"I?" cried Edgar, willfully misunderstanding her. "When did I tell you
I did not like to dance With you?"

"This evening," said Leam, not looking into his face.

"Oh, there is some mistake here. Come with me now. I will soon
convince you that I do not dislike to dance with you," cried Edgar,
excited, peremptory, eager.

Her accusation had touched him. It made him resolute to show her that
he did not dislike to dance with her--she, the most beautiful girl
in the room, the best dancer--she, Leam, that name which meant a
love-poem in itself to him.

"Come," he said again, offering his hand, not his arm.

Leam looked at him, meaning to refuse. What did she see in his face
that changed hers so wholly? The weariness swept off like clouds from
the sky; her mournful eyes brightened into joy; the pretty little
smile, which Edgar knew so well, stole round her mouth, timid,
fluttering, evanescent; and she laid her hand in his with an
indescribable expression of relief, like one suddenly free from pain.

"I am glad you do not dislike to dance with me," she said with a happy
sigh; and the next-moment his arm was round her waist and her light
form borne along into the dance.

As they went off Alick passed through the open window and stole away
into the garden. The pain lost by Leam had been found by him, and it
lay heavy on his soul.

Dancing was Leam's greatest pleasure and her best accomplishment. She
had inherited the national passion as well as the grace bequeathed by
her mother; and even Adelaide was forced to acknowledge that no one in
or about North Aston came near to her in this. Edgar, too, danced
in the best style of the best kind of English gentleman; and it was
really something for the rest to look at when these two "took the
floor." But never had Leam felt during a dance as she felt now--never
had she shone to such perfection. She was as if taken up into another
world, where she was some one else and not herself--some one radiant,
without care, light-hearted, and without memories. The rapid movement
intoxicated her; the lights no longer dazzled but excited her; she
was not oppressed by the many eyes that looked at her: she was elated,
made proud and glad, for was she not dancing as none of them could,
and with Edgar? Edgar, too, was not the Edgar of the dull, prosaic
every day, but was changed like all the rest. He was like some prince
of old-time romance, some knight of chivalry, some hero of history,
and the poetry, the passion, that seemed to inspire her with more than
ordinary life were reflected in him.

"My darling!" Edgar said below his breath, pressing her to him warmly,
"do you think now that it is no pleasure for me to dance with you?"

Leam, startled at the word, the tone, looked up half scared into
his face; then--she herself scarcely knowing what she did, but
instinctively answering what she saw--Edgar felt her little hand on
his shoulder lie there heavily, her figure yield to his arm as it had
never yielded before, while her head drooped like a flower faint with
the heavy sunlight till it nearly touched his breast.

"My Leam!" he whimpered again, "I love you! I love you! my Leam, my
love!"

Leam sighed dreamily. "This is like death--and heaven," she murmured
as he stopped by the window where she had sat with Alick, and carried
her half fainting into the garden.

The cool night-air revived her, and she opened her eyes, wondering
where she was and what had happened. Even now she could not take it
all in, but she knew that something had come to her of which she was
ashamed, and that she must not stay here alone with Major Harrowby.
With an attempt at her old pride she tried to draw herself away, not
looking at him, feeling abashed and humbled. "I will dance no more,"
she said faltering.

Edgar, who had her hands clasped in his, drew her gently to him again.
He held her hands up to his breast, both enclosed in one of his, his
other arm round her waist. "Will you leave me, my Leam?" he said in
his sweetest tones. "Do you not love me well enough to stay with me?"

"I must go in," said Leam faintly.

"Before you have said that you love me? Will you not say so, Leam?
I love you, my darling: no man ever loved as I love you, my sweetest
Leam, my angel, my delight! Tell me that you love me--tell me,
darling."

"Is this love?" said Leam turning away her head, her whole being
penetrated with a kind of blissful agony, where she did not know which
was strongest, the pleasure or the pain: perhaps it was the pain.

"Kiss me, and then I shall know," whispered Edgar.

"No," said Leam trembling and hiding her face, "I must not do that."

"Ah, you do not love me, and we shall never meet again," he cried in
the disappointed lover's well-feigned tone of despair, dropping her
hands and half turning away.

Leam stood for a moment as if she hesitated: then, with an
indescribable air of self-surrender, she went closer to him and laid
her hands very gently on his shoulders. "I will kiss you rather than
make you unhappy," she said in a soft voice, lifting up her face.

"My angel! now I know that you love me!" cried Edgar triumphantly,
holding her strained to his heart as he pressed her bashful, tremulous
little lips, Leam feeling that she had proved her love by the
sacrifice of all that she held most dear--by the sacrifice of herself
and modesty.

The first kiss for a girl whose love was as strong as fire and
as pure--for a girl who had not a weak or sensual fibre in her
nature--yes, it was a sacrifice the like of which men do not
understand; especially Edgar, loose-lipped, amorous Edgar, with his
easy loves, his wide experience, his consequent loss of sensitive
perception, and his holding all women as pretty much alike--creatures
rather than individuals, and created for man's pleasure: especially
he did not understand how much this little action, which was one so
entirely of course to him, cost her--how great the gift, how eloquent
of what it included. But Leam, burning with shame, thought that she
should never bear to see the sun again; and yet it was for Edgar, and
for Edgar she would have done even more than this. "Have you enjoyed
yourself, Leam, my dear?" asked Mrs. Corfield as they drove home in
the quiet moonlight.

"No--yes," answered Leam, who wished that the little woman would not
talk to her. How could she say that this fiery unrest was enjoyment?
The word was so trivial. But indeed what word could compass the
strange passion that possessed her?--that mingled bliss and anguish of
young love newly born, lately confessed.

"Have you enjoyed yourself, Alick, my boy?" asked the little woman
again.

She had had no love-affairs to disturb her with pleasure or with pain,
and she was full of the mechanism of the evening, and wanted to talk
it over.

"I never enjoy that kind of thing," answered Alick in a voice that was
full of tears.

He had witnessed the scene in the garden, and his heart was sore, both
for himself and for her.

"Oh," said Mrs. Corfield briskly, "it was a pretty sight, and I am
sure every one was happy."

Had she seen Adelaide Birkett sitting before her glass, her face
covered in her hands and shedding hot tears like rain--had she seen
Leam standing by her open window, letting the cool night-air blow upon
her, too feverish and disturbed to rest--she would not have said that
every one had been happy at the ball given in honor of Josephine's
marriage. Perhaps of all those immediately concerned Edgar was the
most content, for now that he had committed himself he had done with
the torment of indecision, and by putting himself finally under the
control of circumstances he seemed to have thrown off the strain of
responsibility.

So the night passed, and the next day came, bringing toil to the
weary, joy to the happy, wealth to the rich, and sorrow to the
sad--bringing Edgar to Leam, and Leam to the deeper consciousness and
confession of her love.




CHAPTER XXXV.

DUNASTON CASTLE.


It was not a bad idea to continue the wedding-gayeties of yesterday
evening by a picnic to-day. People are always more or less out of
sorts after a ball, and a day spent in the open air soothes the
feverish and braces up the limp. Wherefore the rectory gave a picnic
to blow away the lingering vapors of last evening at the Hill, and the
place of meeting chosen was Dunaston Castle.

Leam had of course been invited with the rest. Had she been a
different person, and more in accord with the general sentiments of
the neighborhood than she was, she would have been made the "first
young lady" for the moment, because of her connection with the
bridegroom; but being what she was--Leam--she was merely included with
the rest, and by Adelaide with reluctance.

The day wore on bright and clear. Already it was past two o'clock, but
Leam, irresolute what to do, sat in the garden under the shadow of the
cut-leaved hornbeam, from the branches of which Pepita used to swing
in her hammock, smoking cigarettes and striking her zambomba. One part
of her longed to go, the other held her back. The one was the strength
of love, the other its humiliation. How could she meet Major Harrowby
again? she thought. She had kissed him of her own free will last
night--she, Leam, had kissed him; she had leant against his breast,
he with his arms round her; she had said the sacred and irrevocable
words, "I love you." How could she meet him again without sinking to
the earth for shame? What a strange kind of shame!--not sin and yet
not innocence; something to blush for, but not to repent of; something
not to be repeated, but not to wish undone. And what a perplexed state
of feeling!--longing, fearing to see Edgar again--praying of each
moment as it came that he should not appear; grieved each moment as it
passed that he was still absent.

So she sat in all the turmoil of her new birth, distracted between
love and shame, and not knowing which was stronger--feeling as if in a
dream, but, every now and then waking to think of Dunaston, and should
she go or stay away--when, just as little Fina came running to her,
ready dressed and loud in her insistence that they should set off at
once, the lodge-gates swung back and Edgar Harrowby rode up to the
door. When she saw him dismount and walk across the lawn to where she
sat--though it was what she had been waiting for all the day, hoping
if fearing--yet now that it had come and he was really there, she
wished that the earth would open at her feet, or that she could flee
away and hide herself like a scared hind in her cover. But she could
not have risen had there been even any place of refuge for her.
Breathing with difficulty, and seeing nothing that was before her, she
was chained to her seat by a feeling that was half terror, half
joy--a feeling utterly inexplicable in its total destruction of her
self-possession to reticent Leam, who hitherto had held herself in
such proud restraint, and had kept her soul from all influence
from the world without. And now the citadel was stormed and she was
conquered and captive.

Meanwhile, the handsome officer walked over the sunny lawn with his
military step, well set up, lordly, smiling. He liked to see this
bashfulness in Leam. It was the sign of submission in one so unsubdued
that flattered his pride as men like it to be flattered. Now indeed he
was the man and the superior, and this trembling little girl, blushing
and downcast, was no longer his virgin nymph, self-contained and
unconfessed, but the slave of his love, like so many others before
her.

The child ran up to him joyfully. She and Edgar were "great friends,"
as he used to say. He lifted her in his arms, placed her on his
shoulder like a big blue forget-me-not gathered from the grass, then
deposited her by Leam on the seat beneath the cut-leaved hornbeam.
And Leam was grateful that the little one was there. It was somehow a
protection against herself.

"I came to take you to the castle," said; Edgar, looking down on the
drooping figure with a tender smile on his handsome face as he took
her hand in his; and held it. "Are you ready?"

Leam's lips moved, but at the first inaudibly. "No," she then said
with an effort.

"It is time," said Edgar, still holding her hand.

"I do not think I shall go," she faltered, not raising her eyes from
the ground.

Edgar, towering above her, always smiling--the child playing with his
beard as she stood on the seat breast-high with himself--still holding
that small burning hand in his, Leam not resisting, then said in
Spanish, "My soul! have pity on me."

The old familiar words thrilled the girl like a voice from the dead.
Had anything been wanting to rivet the chains in which love had
bound her, it was these words, "My soul," spoken by her lover in her
mother's tongue. She answered more freely, almost eagerly, in the same
language, "Would you be sorry?" and Edgar, whose Castilian was by no
means unlimited, replied in English "Yes" at a venture, and sat down
on the seat by her.

"Fina, go and ask Jones to tell you pretty stories about the bay," he
then said to the child.

"And may I ride him?" cried Fina, sure to take the ell when given the
inch.

"Ask Jones," he answered good-naturedly "I dare say he will put you
up."

Whereupon Fina ran off to the groom, whom she teased for the next half
hour to give her a ride on the bay.

But Jones was obdurate. The major's horse was not only three sticks
and a barrel, like some on 'em, he said, and too full of his beans for
a little miss like her to mount. The controversy, however, kept the
child engaged if it made her angry; and thus Edgar was left free to
break down more of that trembling defence-work within which Leam was
doing her best to entrench herself.

"Do you know, Leam, you have not looked at me once since I came?"
he said, after they had been sitting for some time, he talking on
indifferent subjects to give her time to recover herself, and she
replying in monosyllables, or perhaps not replying at all.

She was silent, but her eyes drooped a little lower.

"Will you not look at me, darling?" he asked in that mellifluous voice
of his which no woman had yet been found strong enough to withstand.

"Why?" said Leam, vainly trying after her old self, and doing her best
to speak as if the subject was indifferent to her, but failing, as how
should she not? The loud beatings of her heart rang in her ears, her
lips quivered so that she could not steady them, and her eyes were so
full of shame, their lids so weighted with consciousness, that truly
she could not have raised them had she tried.

"Why? Look at me and I will tell you," was his smiling answer.

She turned to him, and, as once before, bound by the spell of loving
obedience, lifted her heavy lids and raised her dewy eyes slowly till
they came to the level of his. Then they met his, and Edgar laughed--a
happy and abounding laugh which somehow Leam did not resent, though in
general a laugh the cause of which she did not fully understand was an
offence to her or a stupidity.

"Now I am satisfied," he said in his sweetest voice. "Now I know that
the morning has not destroyed the dream of the night, and that you
love me. Tell it me once more, Leam, sweet Leam! I must hear it in the
open sunshine as I heard it in the starlight: tell me again that you
love me."

Leam bent her pretty head to hide her crimson cheeks. How hard this
confession was to her, and yet how sweet! How difficult to make, and
yet how sorry she would be if anything came between them so that it
was left unmade!

"Tell me, my Leam, my darling!" said Edgar again, with that delicious
tyranny of love, that masterful insistence of manly tenderness, which
women prize and obey.

"I love you," half whispered Leam, feeling as if she had again
forfeited her pride and modesty, and for the second time had committed
that strange sweet sin against herself for which she blushed and of
which she did not repent.

"And I love you," he answered--"fervently, madly if you like. I never
knew what love was before I knew you, my darling. When you are all my
own I will make you confess that the love of an English gentleman is
worth living for."

"_You_ are worth living for," said Leam with timid fervor, defending
him against all possible rivalry of circumstance or person. "I do not
care about your English gentlemen. It is only you."

"That brute of a Jones!" muttered Edgar as he put his arm round her
waist and glanced toward the door.

"No," said Leam gravely, shrinking back, "you must not do that."

"What a shy wild bird it is!" he said lovingly, though he was
disappointed. And he did not like this kind of disappointment. "Will
you never be tamed, my Leam?"

"Not to that," said innocent Leam in the same grave way; and Edgar
smiled behind his golden beard, but not so that she could see the
smile.

"Ah, but you must obey me now--do as I tell you in everything," he
said with perfect seriousness of mien and accent. "You have given
yourself to me now, and if I ask you to kiss me you must, just as
readily as Fina, and let me caress and pet you as much as I like."

"Must I? but I do not like it," said Leam simply.

He laughed outright, and--Jones not looking--took her hand and carried
it to his lips. "Is this unpleasant?" he asked, looking up from under
his eyebrows.

Leam blushed, hesitated, trembled. "No," she then said in a low voice,
"not from you."

On which he kissed it again, and Leam had no wish to retract her
confession.

"Now go and make ready to come to the castle," he said after a
moment's pause. "I told you before that you must obey me, now that you
have promised to be my wife. Command is the husband's privilege, Leam,
and obedience the wife's happiness: don't you know? So come, darling!
They were all to assemble at two," looking at his watch, "and here we
are close on three! You do not wish not to go now, my pet?"

"No," said Leam, with her happy little fleeting smile: "I am glad to
go. I shall be with you, and you wish it."

"What an exquisite little creature! In a week she will come to my
hand like a tame bird," was Edgar's thought as he watched her slender,
graceful figure slowly crossing the lawn with that undulating step
of her mother's nation. "In a week's time I shall have tamed her," he
repeated with a difference; and he felt glad that he had bespoken Leam
Dundas betimes, and that fate and fortune had made him her prospective
proprietor. "She will make me happy," he said as his last thought:
he forgot to add either assurance or hope that he should make her the
same. That is not generally part of a man's matrimonial calculations.

The confidence of love soon grows. When Leam came back to the seat
under the cut-leaved hornbeam, where Edgar still waited for her
to have the pleasure of watching her approach, she was not so much
ashamed and oppressed as when he had first found her there. She did
not want to run away, and she was losing her fear of wrongdoing. She
was beginning instead to feel that delightful sense of dependence on a
strong man's love which--_pace_ the third sex born in these odd latter
times--is the most exquisite sensation that a woman can know. She was
no longer alone--no longer an alien imprisoned in family bonds, but,
though one of a family, always an alien and imprisoned, never homed
and united. Now she was Edgar's as she had been mamma's; and there
was dawning on her the consciousness of the same oneness, the same
intimate union of heart and life and love, as she had had with mamma.
She belonged to him. He loved her, and she--yes, she knew now that she
had always loved him, had always lived for him. He was the secret
god whom she had carried about with her in her soul from the
beginning--the predestined of her life, now for the first time
recognized--the only man whom she could have ever loved. To her
intense and single-hearted nature change or infidelity was an
unimaginable crime, something impossible to conceive. Had she not met
Edgar she would never have loved any one, she thought: having met him,
it was impossible that she should not have loved him, the ideal to her
as he was of all manly nobleness and grace, given to her to love by a
Power higher than that of chance.

She was dimly conscious of this deep sense of rest in her new-found
joy as she came across the lawn in her pretty summer dress of pearly
gray touched here and there with crimson--the loveliest creature to be
seen for miles around. Her usually mournful face was brightened with
an inner kind of bliss which, from the face of the Tragic Muse, made
it the face of a youthful seraph serene and blessed; her smile was
one of almost unearthly ecstasy, if it still retained that timid,
tremulous, fleeting expression which was so beautiful to Edgar; her
eyes, no longer sad and sorrowful, but dewy, tender, bashful, shone
with the purity, the confidence, the self-abandonment of a young
girl's first and happy love: every gesture, every line, seemed to have
gained a greater grace and richness since yesterday; and as she came
up to her lover, and laid her hand in his when he rose to meet her
and looked for one shy instant into his eyes, then dropped her own in
shame-faced tremor at what they had seen and told, he said again to
himself that he had done well. If even she should call the hounds at
a hunt-dinner _dogs_, and say that hunting was stupid and cruel, what
might not be forgiven to Such beauty, such love as hers?

Yes, he was satisfied with himself and with her; and with himself
because of her. He had done well, and she was eminently the right kind
of wife for him, let conventional cavilers say what they would. He
never felt more reconciled to fortune and himself than he did to-day
when he rode by the side of the carriage wherein Leam and Fina sat,
and looked through the coming years to the time when he should have a
little Fina of his own with her mother Leam's dark eyes and her mother
Leam's devoted heart.

The day was perfect, so was the place. Both were all that the day and
place of young love should be. The view from the castle heights, with
the river below, the woods around and the moor beyond, was always
beautiful, but to-day, in the full flush of the early summer, it was
at its best. The golden sunshine, alternating with purple shadows, was
lying in broad tracts on meadow and moor, and lighting up the forest
trees so that the delicate tints and foliage of bough and branch came
out in photographic clearness; the river, where it caught the sun
like a belt of silver, where it was under the shadow like a band of
lapis-lazuli, ran like a vein of life through the scene, and its
music could be heard here where they stood; close at hand the old gray
ivy-covered ruins, with their stories and memories of bygone times,
seemed to add to the vivid fervor of the moment by the force
of contrast--that past so drear and old, the present so full of
passionate hope and love; while the shadows of things that had once
been real trooped among the ruins and flitted in and out the desert
places, chased by laughing girls and merry children, as life chases
death, youth drives out age, and the summer rises from the grave of
winter. It was a day, a scene, to remember for life, even by those to
whom it brought nothing special: how much more, then, by those to whom
it symbolized the fresh fruition of the summer of the heart, the glad
glory of newly-confessed love!

This was Leam's day. Edgar devoted himself publicly to her--so
publicly that people gathered into shady corners to discuss what
it meant, and to ask each other if the tie already binding the two
families was to be supplemented and strengthened by another? It looked
like it, they said, in whispers, for it was to be supposed that Major
Harrowby was an honorable man and a gentleman, and would not play with
a child like Leam.

Dear Mrs. Birkett was manifestly distressed at what she saw. Though
Adelaide made her mother no more a confidante than if she had been
a stranger, yet she knew well enough where her daughter's wishes
pointed; and they pointed to where her own were set. She too thought
that Edgar and Adelaide were made for each other, and that Adelaide at
the Hill would be eminently matter in the right place. She would not
have grudged Leam the duke's son, could she have secured him, but she
did grudge her Edgar Harrowby. It would be such a nice match for Addy,
who was getting on now, and whose temper at home was trying; and she
had hoped fervently that this year would see the matter settled. It
was hanging fire a little longer than she quite liked: still, she
always hoped and believed until to-day, when Edgar appropriated Leam
in this strange manner before them all, seeming to present her to them
as his own, so that they should make no further mistake.

But if Mrs. Birkett looked distressed, Adelaide, who naturally
suffered more than did her mother, kept her own counsel so bravely
that no one could have told how hard she had been hit. If she
betrayed herself in any way, it was in being rather more attentive and
demonstrative to her guests than was usual with her; but she behaved
with the Spartan pride of the English gentlewoman, and deceived all
who were present but herself.

Even Edgar took her by outside seeming, and put his belief in her love
for him as a fallacy behind him. And it said something for a certain
goodness of heart, with all his faults and vanity, that he was more
relieved than mortified to think that he had been mistaken. Yet he
liked to be loved by women, and the character which he had chiefly
affected on the social side of him was that of the Irresistible.
Nevertheless, he was glad that he had been mistaken in Adelaide's
feelings, and relieved to think that she would not be unhappy because
he had chosen Leam and not herself.

Yes, this was Leam's day, her one spell of perfect happiness--the day
whereon there was no past and no future, only the glad sufficiency of
the present--a day which seemed as if it had been lent by Heaven, so
great was its exquisite delight, so pure its cloudless, shadowless
sunshine of love.

Leam neither knew nor noted how the neighbors looked. They had somehow
gone far off from her: when they spoke she answered them mechanically,
and if she passed them she took no more heed than if they had been so
many sheep or dogs lying about the grass. She only knew that she
was with Edgar--that she loved him and that he loved her. It was a
knowledge that made her strong to resist the whole world had the whole
world, opposed her, and that dwarfed the families into insignificant,
almost impersonal, adjuncts of the place, of no more consequence than
the ferns growing about the fallen stones. Not even Adelaide could jar
that rich melodious chord to which her whole being vibrated. It was
all peace, contentment, love; and for the first and only time in her
life Leam Dundas was absolutely happy.

The two lovers, always together and apart from the rest, wandered
about the ruins till evening and the time for dispersion and
reassembling at the rectory came. The sunset had been in accord with
the day, golden and glorious, but after the last rays had gone heavy
masses of purple clouds that boded ill for the morrow gathered with
strange suddenness on the horizon. Still the lovers lingered about
the ruins. The families had left them alone for the latter part of the
time, and they discussed now Leam's forwardness as they had discussed
before Edgar's intentions. But neither Edgar nor Leam took heed. They
were in love, and the world beyond themselves was simply a world of
shadows with which they had no concern.

It had been such a day of happiness to both that they were loath to
end it, so they lingered behind the rest, and tried, as lovers do, to
stop time by love. They were sitting now on one of the fallen blocks
of stone of the many scattered about, he talking to her in a low
voice, "I love you, I love you," the burden of his theme; she for the
most part listening to words which made the sweetest music discord,
but sometimes responding as a tender fainter echo. He did not see
the eyes that were watching him from behind the broken wall, nor the
jealous ears that were drinking in their own pain so greedily. He saw
only Leam, and was conscious only that he loved her and she him.

Presently he said, tempting her with the lover's affectation of
distrust, "I do not think you love me really, my Leam," bending over
her as if he would have folded her to his heart. Had she been any but
Leam he would. But the love-ways that came so easy to him were lessons
all unlearnt as yet by her, and he respected both her reticence and
her reluctance.

"Not love you!" she said with soft surprise--"I not love you!"

"Do you?" he asked.

She was silent for a moment. "I do love you," she said in her quiet,
intense way. "I do not talk--you know that--but if I could make you
happy by dying for you I would. I love you--oh, I cannot say how much!
I seem to love God and all the saints, the sun and the flowers, Spain,
our Holy Mother and mamma in you. You are life to me. I seem to have
loved you all my life under another name. When you are with me I have
no more pain or fear left. You are myself--more than myself to me."

"My darling! and you to me!" cried Edgar.

But his voice, though sweet and tender, had not the passionate ring of
hers, and his face, though full of the man's bolder love, had not
the intensity which made her so beautiful, so sublime. It was all the
difference between the experience which knew the whole thing by
heart, and which cared for itself more than for the beloved, and the
wholeness, the ecstasy, of the first and only love born of a nature
single, simple and concentrated.

Adelaide, watching and listening behind the broken wall, saw and heard
it all. Her head was on fire, her heart had sunk like lead; she could
not stay any longer assisting thus at the ruin of her life's great
hope; she had already stayed too long. As she stole noiselessly away,
her white dress passing a distant opening looked ghastly, seen through
the rising mist which the young moon faintly silvered,

"What is that?" cried Leam, a look of terror on her pale face as she
rapidly crossed herself. "It is the Evil Sign."

"No," laughed Edgar, profiting by the moment to take her in his
arms, judging that if she was frightened she would be willing to feel
sheltered. "It is only one of the ladies passing to go down. Perhaps
it is Adelaide Birkett: I think it was."

"And that would be an evil sign in itself," said Leam, still
shuddering. And yet how safe she felt with his arms about her like
this!

"Poor dear Addy! why should she be an ill omen to you, you dear little
fluttering, frightened dove?"

"She hates me--always has, so long as I can remember her," answered
Leam. "And you are her friend," she added.

"Her friend, yes, but not her lover, as I am yours--not her future
husband," said Edgar.

Leam's hand touched his softly, with a touch that was as fleeting and
subtle as her smile.

"A friend is not a wife, you know," he continued. "And you are to be
my wife, my own dear and beloved little wife--always with me, never
parted again."

"Never parted again! Ah, I shall never be unhappy then," she murmured.

A flash of summer lightning broke through the pale faint moonlight and
lighted up the old gray towers with a lurid glow.

Leam was not usually frightened at lightning, but now, perhaps because
her whole being was overwrought and strung, she started and crouched
down with a sense of awe strangely unlike her usual self.

"Come, we are going to have a storm," said Edgar, whom every
manifestation of weakness claiming his superior protection infinitely
pleased and seemed to endear her yet more to him. "We must be going,
my darling, else I shall have you caught in the rain. We shall just
have time to get to the rectory before it comes on, and they are
waiting for us."

"I would rather not go to the rectory to-night," said Leam with a
sudden return to her old shy self.

"No? Why, my sweet?" he said lovingly. "How can I live through the
evening without you?"

"Can you not? Do you really wish me to go?" she answered seriously.

"Of course I wish it: how should I not? But tell me why you raise an
objection. Why would you rather not go?"

"I would rather be alone and think of you than only see you at the
rectory with all those people," she answered simply.

"But we have had all the people about here, and yet we have been
pretty much alone," he said.

"We could not be together at the rectory, and"--she blushed, but her
eyes were full of more than love as she raised them to his face--"I
could not bear that any one should come between us to-day. Better be
alone at home, where I can think of you with no one to interrupt me."

"It is a disappointment, but who could refuse such a plea and made in
such a voice?" said Edgar, who felt that perhaps she was right in
her instinct, and who at all events knew that he should be spared
something that would be a slight effort in Adelaide's own house. "I
shall spoil you, I know, but I cannot refuse you anything when you
look like that. Very well: you shall go home if you wish it, my
beloved, and I will make your excuses."

"Thank you," said Leam, with the sweetest little air of humbleness and
patience.

"How could that fool Sebastian Dundas say she was difficult to manage?
and how can Adelaide see in her the possibility of anything like
wickedness? She is the most loving and tractable little angel in the
world. She will give me no kind of trouble, and I shall be able to
mould her from the first and do what I like with her."

These were Edgar's thoughts as he took Leam's hand on his arm, holding
it there tenderly pressed beneath his other hand, while he said aloud,
"My darling! my delight! if I had had to create my ideal I should have
made _you_. You are everything I most love;" and again he said, as so
often before, "the only woman I have ever loved or ever could love."

And Learn believed him.

Adelaide accepted Major Harrowby's excuses for Miss Dundas's sudden
headache and fatigue gallantly, as she had accepted her position
through the day: she showed nothing, expressed nothing, bin: bore
herself with consummate ease and self-possession. She won Edgar's
admiration for her tact and discretion, for the beautiful results of
good-breeding. He congratulated himself on having such a friend as
Adelaide Birkett. She would be of infinite advantage to Learn when his
wife, and when he had persuaded that sweet doubter to believe in her
and accept her as she was, and as he wished her to be accepted. As
it was in the calendar of his wishes at this moment that Adelaide had
never loved him, never wished to marry him, he dismissed the belief
which he had cherished so long as if it had never been, and decided
that it had been a mistake throughout. She was just his friend--no
more, and never had been more. He was not singular in his
determination to find events as his desires ruled them. It is a
pleasant way of shuffling off self-reproach and of excusing one's own
fickleness.

Edgar just now believed as he wished to believe, and shut out all the
rest. As he lit his last cigar, sitting on the terrace at the Hill
and watching the sheet-lightning on the horizon, he thought with
satisfaction on the success of his life. Specially he congratulated
himself on his final choice. Leam would make the sweetest little
wife in the world, and he loved her passionately. But "spooning" was
exhausting work: he would cut it short and marry her as soon as he
could get things together. Then his thoughts wandered away to some
other of his personal matters; and while Leam was living over the
day hour by hour, word by word, he had settled the terms for Farmer
Mason's new lease, had decided to rebuild the north lodge, which was
ugly and incommodious; and on this, something catching the end of that
inexplicable association of ideas, he wondered how some one whom he
had left in India was going on, and what had become of Violet Cray.




CHAPTER XXXVI.

IN LETTERS OF FIRE.


THE storm which had threatened to break last night still held off,
but the spirit of the weather had changed. It was no longer bright and
clear, but sunless, airless, heated, silent--the stillness which seems
to presage as much sorrow to man as it heralds tumult to Nature. Leam,
however--interpenetrated by her love, which gave what it felt and
saw what it brought--always remembered this early day as the ideal of
peace and softness, where was no prophecy of coming evil, no shadow of
the avenging hand stretched out to punish and destroy--only peace and
softness, love, joy and rest.

The gray background of the heavy sky, which to others was heavy and
gloomy, was to her the loveliest expression of repose, and the absence
of sunlight was as grateful as a veil drawn against the glare. If
not beautiful in itself, it added beauty to other things: witness
the passionate splendor given by it to the flowers, which seemed
by contrast to gain a force and vitality of color, a richness and
significance, they never had before. She specially remembered in days
to come a bed of scarlet poppies that glowed like so many cups of
flame against the dark masses of evergreens behind them; and the
scarlet geraniums, the bold bosses of the blood-red peonies, the fiery
spathes of salvia and gladiolus the low-lying verbenas like rubies
cast on the green leaves and brown earth, the red gold, flame-color
streaked with lines of blood, of the nasturtiums festooning the
bordering wires of the centre beds, all seemed to come out like spires
of flame or rosettes dyed in blood, till the garden was filled with
only those two colors--the one of fire and the other of blood.

But though Leam remembered this in after-days as the weird prophecy
of what was to come, at the time those burning beds of flowers
simply pleased her with their brilliant coloring; and she sat in her
accustomed place on the garden-chair, under the cut-leaved hornbeam,
and looked at the garden stretching before her with the fresh,
surprised kind of admiration of one who had never seen it before--as
if it told her something different to-day from what it had in times
past; as indeed it did.

Presently Edgar came down from the Hill. He had not told his people
yet of the double bond which he designed to make between the two
houses. He thought it was only fitting to wait until Sebastian had
returned and he had gained the paternal consent in the orthodox way.
And the false air of secrecy which this temporary reticence gave his
engagement gave it also a false air of romance which exactly suited
his temperament in the matter of love. Perhaps for the woman
destined to be his wife he would have preferred to dispense with
this characteristic of his dealings with those other women, her
predecessors, not destined to be his wives. All the same, it was
delightful, as things were, to come down to Ford House on this sultry
day and sit under the shadow of the hornbeam, with Leam looking her
loveliest by his side, and butterfly-like Fina running in and out in
the joyous way of a lively child fond of movement and not afflicted
with shyness; delightful to feel that he was enacting a little poem
unknown to all the world beside--that he was the magician who had
first wakened this young soul into life and taught it the sweet
suffering of love; and delightful to know that he was king and
supreme, the only man concerned, with not even a father to share, just
yet, his domain.

Edgar, at all times charming, because at all times good-humored and
not inconveniently in earnest, when specially pleased with himself was
one of the most delightful companions to be found. He had seen much,
and he talked pleasantly on what he had seen, whipping up the surface
of things dexterously and not forcing his hearers to digest the
substance. Hence he was never a bore, nor did he disturb the placid
shallows of ignorance by an unwelcome influx of information. He
had just so much of the histrionic element, born of vanity and
self-consciousness, as is compatible with the impassive quietude
prescribed by good-breeding, whereby his manner had a color that was
an excellent substitute for sincerity, and his speech a pictorial
glow that did duty for enthusiasm when he thought fit to simulate
enthusiasm. He had, too, that sensitive tact which seems to feel weak
places as if by instinct; and when he was at his best his good-nature
led him to avoid giving pain and to affect a sympathetic air, which
was no more true than his earnestness. But it took with the uncritical
and the affectionate, and Major Harrowby was quoted by many as an
eminently kind and tender-hearted man.

To women he had that manner of subtle deference and flattering
admiration characteristic of men who make love to all women--even to
children in the bud and to matrons more than full-blown--and who are
consequently idolized by the sex all round. And when this natural
adorer of many laid himself out to make special love to one he was,
as we know, irresistible. He was irresistible to-day. He was really in
love with Leam; and if his love had not the intensity, the tenacity of
hers, yet it was true of its kind, and for him very true.

But he was not so much in love as to be unconscious of the most
graceful way of making it; consequently, he knew exactly what he was
doing and how he looked and what he said, while Leam, sitting there by
his side, drinking in his words as if they were heavenly utterances,
forgot all about herself, and lived only in her speechless, her
unfathomable adoration of the man she loved. Her life at this moment
was one pulse of voiceless happiness: it was one strain of sensation,
emotion, passion, love; but it was not conscious thought nor yet
perception of outward things by her senses.

If yesterday at Dunaston had been a day of blessedness, this was its
twin sister, and the better favored of the two. There was a certain
flavor of domesticity in these quiet hours passed together in the
garden, interrupted only by the child as she ran hither and thither
breaking in on them, sometimes not unpleasantly when speech was
growing embarrassed because emotion was growing too strong, that
seemed to Leam the sweetest experience which life could give her were
she to live for ever; and the sunless stillness of the day suited her
nature even better than the gayer glory of yesterday. To-day, too,
it was still more peace in her inner being and still less unrest. The
more accustomed she was becoming to the strange fact of loving and
being loved by a man not a Spaniard, and one whom mamma would neither
have chosen nor approved of, the more she was at ease both in heart
and manner, and the more exquisite and profound her blessedness. And
who does not know what happiness can do for a girl of strong emotions,
naturally reserved, by circumstances friendless, by habit joyless,
and how the soul of such a one seems to throw off its husk like the
enchanted victim of a fairy-tale when the true being that has been
hidden is released by love? It is a transformation as entire as any
wrought by magic word or wand; and it was the transformation wrought
with Leam to-day. She was Leam Dundas truly in all the essential
qualities of identity, but Leam Dundas with another soul, an added
faculty, an awakened consciousness--Leam set free from the darkness of
the bondage in which she had hitherto lived.

"You look like another being: you have looked like this ever since you
told me you loved me," said Edgar, drawing himself a little back and
gazing at her with the critical tenderness of a man's pride and love.
"You are like Psyche wakened out of her sleep, and for the first time
using your wings and living in the upper air."

The metaphor was a little confused, but that did not signify. The
whole image was essentially Greek to Leam, and she only knew that it
sounded well and did somehow apply to her--that she had just awakened
out of sleep, and was for the first time using her wings and living in
the upper air.

"I have not really lived till now," she answered. "And now things seem
different."

"In what way?" asked Edgar, smiling.

He knew what she meant, but he wanted to hear her reveal herself.

She smiled too. "More beautiful," she said, a little vaguely.

"As what? I like to be precise, and I want to know exactly what my
darling thinks and means."

He said this with his most bewitching smile and in his tenderest
voice. It was so pleasant to him to receive these first shy, confused
confessions.

"The flowers and the sky," said Leam, raising her eyes and looking
through the garden and on to the gray and narrowed horizon. "I
remember when flowers were weeds and one day was like another. I did
not know if the sun shone or not. But this year seems now to have been
always summer and sunshine. The very weeds are more lovely than the
flowers used to be."

"Flowers and sunshine since you knew me, my darling?"

"Yes," she answered shyly.

Edgar glanced at the heavy clouds hanging over head, but he did not
say that he found this gray day singularly gloomy and oppressive, and
that even love could not set a fairy sun in the sky. He took up the
second clause of her loving speech: "And I am your flower? What
a precious little compliment! I hope I shall be your amaranth, my
Leam--your everlasting flower--if a rough soldier may have such
a pretty comparison made in his favor. Do you think I shall be
everlasting to you?"

"When God dies my love will die, and not before," said Leam, with her
grave fervor, her voice of concentrated passion.

Her voice and manner thrilled Edgar. Her words, too, in their very
boldness were more exciting than the most refined commonplaces of
other women. It was this union of more than ordinary womanly reticence
with almost savage passion and directness that had always been Leam's
charm to Edgar; nevertheless, he hesitated for a few minutes, thinking
whether he should correct her manner of speech or not, and while
loving chasten her. Finally, he decided that he would not. She was
only his lover as yet: when she should be his wife it would then
be time enough to teach her the subdued conventionalism of English
feeling as interpreted by the English tongue used commonly by
gentlemen and ladies. Meanwhile, he must give her her head, as he
inwardly phrased it, so as not frighten her in the beginning and thus
make the end more difficult.

"You love me too much," he said in a low voice, half oppressed, half
excited by her words, for men are difficult to content. The love of
women given in excess of their demand embarrasses and maybe chills
them; and Edgar had a sudden misgiving, discomposing if quite natural,
which appeared, as it were, to check him like a horse in mid-career
and throw him back on himself disagreeably. He asked himself
doubtfully, Should he be able to answer this intense love so as
to make the balance even between them? He loved her dearly,
passionately--better than he had ever loved any woman of the many
before--but he did not love her like this: he knew that well enough.

"I cannot love you too much," said Leam. "You are my life, and you are
so great."

"And you will never tire of me?"

She looked into his face, her beautiful eyes worshiping him. "Do we
tire of the sun?" she answered.

"Where did you get all your pretty fancies from, my darling?" he
cried. "You have developed into a poet as well as a Psyche."

"Have I? If I have developed into anything, it is because I love you,"
she answered, with her sweet pathetic smile.

"But, my Leam, sweetheart--"

"Ah," she interrupted him with a look of passionate delight, "how I
like to hear you call me that! Mamma used to call me her heart. No one
else has since--I would not let any one if they had wanted--till now
you."

"And you _are_ my heart," he answered fervently--"the heart of my
heart, my very life!"

"Am I?" she smiled. "And you are mine."

"But, sweetheart, tell me if, when you know me better, you do not
find me all you think me now, what then? Will you hate me for very
disappointment?"

He asked the question, but as if he believed in himself and the
impossibility of her hatred or disappointment while he asked it.

She looked at him with naïve incredulity and surprise. It would have
been a challenge to be kissed from any other woman, but Leam, with her
fire and passion and personal reticence all in one, had no thought
of offering such a challenge, still less of submitting to its
consequences.

"Find you all I think?" she repeated slowly. "When I know the saints
in heaven, will not they be all I think? Was not Columbus?"

"But I am neither a saint nor a hero," said Edgar, drawing a sprig of
lemon-plant which he held in his hand lightly across her face.

"You are both," answered Leam as positively as she used to answer
Alick about the ugliness of England and the want of flowers in the
woods and hedges, and with as much conviction of her case.

"And you are an angel," he returned.

"No," said Leam quietly, "I am only the woman who loves you."

"Ah, but you must not depreciate yourself for my sake," he said. "My
choice, my love, my wife, must be perfect for my own honor. You must
respect me in respecting yourself, and if you were to say yes indeed
you were an angel, that would only be what is due to me. Don't you
see?" pleasantly.

"Yes," she answered. "And only an angel would be good enough for you."

"My sweetest, your flattery is too delicious. It will make me vain and
all sorts of bad things," said Edgar with a happy smile, finding this
innocent worship one of the most charming tributes ever brought to the
shrine of his lordly manhood by woman.

"It is not flattery: you deserve more," said Leam. Then lapsing into
her old manner of checked utterance, she added, "I cannot talk, but
you should be told."

Edgar thought he had been told pretty often by women the virtues which
they had seen in him. Whether they saw what was or what they imagined
was not to the point. If love creates, so does vanity, and of the two
the latter has the more permanence.

After this there was a long pause. It was as if one chapter had been
finished, one cup emptied. Then said Edgar suddenly, "And you will
be happy at the Hill?" lightly touching her face again with the
lemon-plant.

"With you anywhere," she answered.

"And my mother? Do you remember when you said one day you would not
like to be my mother's daughter? Ah, little puss, you did not know
what you were saying; and now tell me, do you object to be my mother's
daughter?"

Leam looked grave. "I had not thought of that," she said, a certain
shadow of distress crossing her face.

"Does the idea displease you?" he asked, in his turn grave.

"No," she answered after a short silence. "But I only thought of you.
Shall I be Mrs. Harrowby's daughter?"

"Of course. How should you not?" he laughed.

"And Miss Josephine's too--two mothers?--mother and daughter both my
mothers? I cannot understand," said poor Leam, a little hopelessly.

"Never mind the intricacies now. You are to be my wife: that is all we
need remember. Is it not?" bending toward her tenderly.

"Yes," echoed Leam with a sigh of relief. "That is all we need
remember."

So the day passed in these broken episodes, these delightful little
scenes of the fooling and flattery of love, till the evening came,
when Edgar was obliged to go up to the seven-o'clock dinner at the
Hill. He might sit with Leam, as he had done, for nearly six hours in
the garden, without more comment than that which servants naturally
make among themselves, but if he remained through the evening he would
publish more than he cared to publish at the present moment. So he had
arranged to go back to the family dinner at seven, and thus keep his
mother and sisters hoodwinked for a few hours longer.

As the time of parting drew nearer and nearer Leam became strangely
sad and silent. Little caressing as she was by nature or habit, of her
own accord she had laid her small dry feverish hand in Edgar's, and
had gathered herself so much nearer to him that her slight shoulder
touched his broad and powerful arm. It was a very faint caress for an
engaged girl to offer, but it was an immense concession for Leam to
make; and Edgar understood it in its meaning more than its extent.
With the former he was delighted enough: the latter would scarcely
have contented a man with loose moist lips and the royal habit of
taking and having all for which he had a fancy. Nothing that Leam had
said or done through the day had told him so plainly as did this quiet
and by no means fervent familiarity how much she loved him, and how
the power of that love was breaking up her natural reserve.

"It is as if I should never see you again," she said sadly when,
looking at his watch, he had exclaimed, "Time's up, my darling! I must
be off in five minutes from this. But I shall see you to-morrow," he
answered tenderly. "I shall come down in the morning, as I have done
to-day, and perhaps you will ride with me. We will go over some of the
old ground, where we used to go when I loved you and you did not think
you would ever love me. Ah, fairy that you are, how you have bewitched
me!"

"That will be good," said Learn, who did not resent it in him that she
was compared to a thing that did not exist, but adding with a piteous
look, "it is taking my life from me when you go."

"You lovely little darling! I don't like to see you look unhappy, but
I do delight to see how much you love me," said Edgar. "But you will
not have to part with me for very long now. I shall see you every day
till the time comes when we shall never be separated--never, never."

"Ah, that time!" she sighed. "It is far off."

He smiled, as his manner was, behind his beard, so that she did not
see it. "It shall not be far off," he said gravely. "And now," looking
again at his watch and then at the sky, "I must go."

The storm that had been threatening through the day was now gathering
to a head, and even as Edgar spoke the first flash came, the first
distant peal of thunder sounded, the first heavy raindrops fell. There
was evidently going to be a fearful tempest, and Edgar must leave now
at once if he would not be in the thick of it before he reached home.

"Yes," said Leam, noting the change in the sky, and unselfish always,
"you must go."

They rose and turned toward the house. Hand in hand they walked slowly
across the lawn and entered the drawing-room by the way of the window,
by the way by which she had entered twice before--once when she had
disclaimed madame, and once when she had welcomed Josephine.

Tears were in her eyes: her heart had failed her.

"It is like losing you for ever," she said again.

"No, not for ever--only till to-morrow," he answered.

"To-morrow! to-morrow!" she replied. "There will be no to-morrow."

"Yes, yes: in a very few hours we shall have come to that blessed
day," he said cheerfully. "Kiss me, darling, that I may carry away
your sweetest memory till I see you again. You will kiss me, Leam,
of your own free will to-night, will you not?" He said this a little
tremulously, his arms round her.

"Yes," she answered, "I will kiss you to-night."

She turned her face to him and put her hands round his neck frankly:
then with an uncontrollable impulse she flung herself against his
breast and, clasping her arms tight, bent his head down to her
level and kissed him on the forehead with the passionate sorrow,
the reluctant despair of an eternal farewell. It was something that
irresistibly suggested death.

Edgar was distressed at her manner, distressed to have to leave her;
but he must. Life is made up of petty duties, paltry obligations.
Great events come but rarely and are seldom uninterrupted. A shower
of rain and the dinner-hour are parts of the mosaic and help in the
catastrophe which looks as if it had been the offspring of the
moment. And just now the supreme exigencies to be attended to were the
dinner-hour at the Hill and the rain that was beginning to fall.

Saddened, surprised, yet gratified too by her emotion, Edgar answered
it in his own way. He kissed her again and again, smoothed her hair,
passed his hand over her soft fresh cheeks, held her to him tightly
clasped; and Leam did not refuse his caresses. She seemed to have
suddenly abandoned all the characteristics of her former self:
the mask had fallen finally, and her soul, released from its long
imprisonment, was receiving its gift, not of tongues, but of fire--not
of healing, but of suffering.

"My darling," he half whispered, "I shall see you to-morrow. Come,
do not be so cast down: it is not reasonable, my heart. And tears in
those sweet eyes? My Leam, dry them: they are too beautiful for tears.
Look up, my darling. Give me one happy little smile, and remember
to-morrow and for all our lives after."

But Learn could not smile. Her face was set to its old mask of tragedy
and sorrow. Something, she knew not what, had passed out of her life,
and something had come into it--something that Edgar for the moment
could neither restore nor yet banish. He pressed her to him for the
last time, kissed her passive face again and again, caught the scent
of the lemon-plant in her hair where he had placed it, and left her.
As he passed through the gate the storm burst in all its fury, and
Leam went up into her own room in a voiceless, tearless grief that
made the whole earth a desert and all life desolation.

She did know herself this evening, nor understand what it was that
ailed her. She had only consciously loved for two days, and this was
the anguish to which she had been brought. No, not even when mamma
died had she suffered as she was suffering now. She felt as if she had
lost him even as she had lost her. She did not believe in to-morrow:
it would never come. She would never be with him again as she had been
to-day. No self-reasoning, feebly aimed at, could calm her or convince
her of the folly of her fears. He had gone, she was left, and they
were parted for ever.

She sat by the window desolate, deserted, more alone than she had ever
been before, because she had lost more than she had ever either held
or lost before. The storm that was raging in the sky grew gradually
stronger and came still nearer, but she scarcely noticed it: it was
only as the symphony sounding in sad harmony with her unspoken wail.
Flash followed flash, swifter, nearer, more vivid; the thunder crashed
and roared as if it would have beaten the house to the ground and rent
the very earth whereon it stood; the rain fell in torrents that broke
the flowers like hail and ran in turbulent rivulets along the paths.
Never had there been such a furious tempest as this at North Aston
since the days of tradition. It made the people in the village below
quail and cry out that the day of judgment had come upon them: it made
Leam at last forget her sorrow and quail in her solitude as if her day
of judgment too had come upon her.

Then there came one awful flash that seemed to set the whole room on
fire; and as Leam started up, thinking that the place was indeed in
flames, her eyes fell on the Tables of the Ten Commandments given
her by madame; and there, in letters of blood that seemed to cry out
against her like a voice, she saw by the light of that accusing flash
those words of terrible significance to her:

THOU SHALT DO NO MURDER!

[TO BE CONTINUED.]




ROSE-MORALS.


I.--RED.

  Would that my songs might be
    What roses make by day and night---
  Distillments of my clod of misery
          Into delight.

  Soul! could'st thou bare thy breast
    As yon red rose, and dare the day,
  All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest?
          Say yea--say yea!

  Ah, dear my Rose! good-bye!
    The wind is up; so drift away.
  That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly,
          I strive, I pray.


  II.--WHITE.

  Soul! get thee to the heart
    Of yonder tuberose: hide thee there--
  There breathe the meditations of thine art
          Suffused with prayer.

  Of spirit grave but light,
    How fervent fragrances uprise
  Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white
          Virginities!

  Mulched with unsavory death,
    Grow, Soul! unto such white estate,
  Strong art and virginal prayer shall be thy breath,
          Thy work, thy fate.

SIDNEY LANIER.




AN OLD HOUSE AND ITS STORY.

[Illustration: MOUNT PLEASANT.]

It is pleasant, on a warm, sunny afternoon in the spring-time (or,
indeed, at any season of the year, but I love the spring-time
best), to take the broad, well-shaded avenue on the east bank of the
Schuylkill at Fairmount Park, and, passing the pretty little club
boat-houses already green with their thick overhanging vines, to
saunter slowly along the narrow roadway on the water's edge to the
great Girard Avenue Bridge, and so on through the cool dark tunnel,
coming out on the steep railed path that winds up and away from the
river to bury itself for a while in rich deep woodlands, only to bring
you presently to the water-side again, where stands the fine old Mount
Pleasant mansion, the country-seat of Benedict Arnold nearly a hundred
years ago, and bestowed by him as a marriage-gift upon his new-made
bride in April, 1779. A sweet, cool air blows up to you from the
river, purple and white violets, buttercups and Quaker ladies are set
thickly about your feet, the newly-arrived orioles are piping their
pert little tunes nigh at hand, and you can spend a meditative hour or
two sitting in the shifting specks of yellow sunshine filtered
through the tender young leaves overhead, undisturbed by the shades of
departed revelers that may be wandering behind the close shutters of
the silent old house you have come so far to see. There is a curious
and distinct flavor of antiquity about the place; for the woodwork
around the doors and windows, which has so bravely withstood the
corroding tooth of Time and the wearing rain-drip from the great
tree-branches creaking above the roof, is of a quaint but excellent
pattern, of which we see too little in these days of hideous sawed
scrollery and gimcrack ornament--the masonry of such an honest
solidity as may well cause the dweller in modern brick and sandy
mortar to sigh enviously for the "good old times." Although the house
appears to be extremely large, it contains very few rooms, and none
of these are so spacious as might be reasonably expected from the
outside. The staircases are singularly ill-contrived, the landings
upon the upper floors occupying a space quite sufficient for
goodly-sized chambers. The ceilings and a chimney-panel or two are set
out bravely with the usual stucco imitation of wood-carving we almost
invariably find (and sigh over) in old American houses--a piteous
attempt on the part of our honest ancestors to reproduce in some sort
the rare wood-sculpture of their own old English manor-houses: it is
a satisfaction, too, to note what little progress we have contrived
to make in this unworthy branch of decorative art in the lapse of a
century.

In two of the rooms are queer corner fireplaces, where, doubtless,
many pairs of dainty high-heeled slippers and great military
jack-boots have been toasted at the huge hickory fires, long since
extinguished. In one of the upper chambers is an odd sort of closet,
the shelves of which are furnished with low railings, presumably a
protection for the handsome and valuable china that women have always
loved to store up--a check upon the ravages of careless housemaids. It
is quite worth while to climb the breakneck garret-stairs, which must
have bruised many a shin in their day, and the short flight leading
to the roof, in order to get the glorious view of the Park stretching
away down to the city of Philadelphia, and of the beautiful Schuylkill
River winding in and out among the trees and flashing so silvery white
in the afternoon sunshine.

In the cellarage, where we disturb many busy spiders and stealthy
centipedes, is a large, solidly-floored apartment, where possibly the
house-servants were used to congregate in the old slave days. There is
no chimney-place in this room, nor, indeed, is there any convenience
whatever for cooking purposes in the main building, which omission
inclines me to the opinion that one of the detached wings was used
for the kitchen offices, there being large fireplaces in both of them,
very suitable for the getting up of good dinners.[3] The grounds about
the house have been much altered of late years--the gardens long
since destroyed. A smug, close-shaven turf replaces the old-fashioned
flower-beds and shrubbery, amid which I love to fancy sweet Peggy
Arnold trailing her French brocades and flowered chintzes, her rosy
ear attuned to the high-flown compliments of the men of fashion whom
her beauty and her husband's lavish hospitality drew about her--her
husband the traitor who a few months afterward was flying, a detected
felon, from justice, leaving his fair young wife, with her babe in her
arms, to face the awful wrath of Washington.

[Footnote 3: A proposition has been recently made to the Fairmount
Park Commissioners by Colonel Frank W. Etting, a Philadelphia lawyer
of well-known taste and culture, to fit up the Mount Pleasant
mansion in the fashion of Colonial times, he having at his command a
sufficient quantity of furniture, pictures, china, etc. for the proper
representation of a house of the best sort in those days. It is to
be hoped that this generous offer may meet with the attention it
deserves, as such a memorial could scarcely fail to prove a great
attraction to our Centennial visitors. Mount Pleasant is fortunately
associated with the memories of better men than Benedict Arnold. The
brave Major Macpherson built the house for his own occupancy before
the Revolutionary war, and General Baron Von Steuben passed a part
of his honorable retirement there, dating his letters humorously from
"Belisarius Hall, on the Schuylkill."]

Doubtless, many a stately minuet and frolicsome country-dance has been
trod in those now dark and empty rooms by the Philadelphia belles
and beaux of 1780, when, the rich furniture all set back against the
walls, the general's blacks were had up from the negro quarters with
blaring horns and shrill fiddles to play for the quality. Alas! the
horns and fiddles sound no more, the merry, grinning players are but
a pinch of dust like their betters, their haughty master but a scorned
memory where once he reigned so royally, while the modish guests who
frisked it so gayly in satin and velvet have long, long ago shaken the
powder out of their locks, tied up their jaws and packed themselves
away in their scant winding-sheets, resigned to the mournful company
of the worm.

Brief tenure held the fair châtelaine of this castle: a year and
a half after the date inscribed upon her title-deeds the republic
claimed the traitor's possessions, and pretty Peggy was driven forth
by the Executive Council to find a home with strangers, but fourteen
days being granted her in which to prepare for her doleful journey.
Our excellent forefathers were made of stern stuff to suit the humor
of those trying times, and doubtless they did but their duty in
ridding their country of the "traitor's brood;" but for my part I can
scarcely think, even at this late day, without a pang of indignant
pity, of this innocent and forlorn young creature hounded forth from
her father's peaceful home in Philadelphia, with her child in her
arms--driven almost to the protection of the man whose crime she
abhorred, and from whom in her first frenzied grief she was even
willing to be for ever separated. There have not been wanting certain
persons, headed by that noble patriot and veracious gentleman, Colonel
Aaron Burr, who from time to time have busied themselves in putting
stray hints together with the intent to make Arnold's wife an
accomplice, if not the direct instigator, of his infamous design;
but there is not in existence, so far as I have been able to learn,
a particle of evidence sufficient to justify the casting of ever so
small a stone at the memory of this most unfortunate lady, whose name
is so pitilessly linked with that of the traitor.

She must have been extremely beautiful. I have had the good fortune to
see her portrait, painted about 1795 at Bath, England, by Sir Thomas
Lawrence, and now in the possession of her grand-niece, a lady to
whom I am indebted for much that I have been able to gather of the
character of Mrs. Arnold. The picture is taken in crayons, and the
colors are wonderfully fresh and lovely after eighty years and a
voyage across the sea, the delicate flesh-tints being especially well
preserved. Besides real beauty of feature, there is an enchanting
softness in the character of the face that seems to belong only to
temperaments the most feminine and refined. A pale pink gown falls
back from her gracious neck and shoulders, liberally and innocently
displayed according to the fashion of the time, and is tied about
her waist with a broad sky-blue ribbon: her hair, lightly dashed with
powder and rolled away from her face, strays in rich curls about her
throat. A child of two or three years leans upon her knee, and pulls
at one of her ringlets with a roguish smile upon his chubby face.

The century that has nearly elapsed since Arnold's defection has not
served to lighten in any degree the load of obloquy that rests
upon his name. In the whole world no man has been found willing
to undertake his defence; yet a believer in the dark old Calvinist
doctrine might urge in the traitor's favor the thousand invisible
influences which from the very birth of the wretched man seem to have
goaded him on in the downward path that led to his final disgrace and
ruin. His home-training, if such it might be called, was of the
very worst. His mother an ignorant, uncultured woman, his father a
defaulter in middle life, in his age a sot, the boy was left to follow
the promptings of his own will, naturally strong and turbulent. His
youth was stormy and insubordinate, his young manhood not without the
reproach of dishonorable mercantile dealings, and even the splendor of
his military achievements in the service of his country could scarcely
blind the judgment of his warmest admirers to the suspicious
stains upon his moral character. That the last link in the chain
of influences might not be wanting, Arnold, while in command of
Philadelphia in 1778, fell deeply in love with and married the
youngest daughter of Mr. Edward Shippen (afterward chief-justice), a
distinguished lawyer of well-known Tory proclivities, although he
was entirely acquitted of any share in the treasonable design of
his son-in-law. It does not appear that there was any very serious
objection made in the Shippen household to the rebel general's suit
for the hand of the lovely Peggy. Arnold was at this time about
thirty-eight years of age, in the vigorous prime of a life whose
declining years were destined to be passed in a sort of contemptuous
tolerance among those with whom he had been at bargain and sale for
the liberties of his country. Covered with well-earned glory from
his brilliant feats of bravery at the battles of Bemis Heights and
Stillwater, and slightly lame from a severe wound in the leg received
at Quebec, he was at last accorded his full rank in the army,
and entered upon the military command of Philadelphia with every
conceivable circumstance in his favor. The stories of his courage and
daring which had preceded him, aided by his handsome person and fine
military bearing, combined to ensure his success in society, and he
was at once given the entrée to the best city families, from one of
which he soon singled out the lady who became his wife. Her father
writes to Colonel Burd in January, 1779, that "General Arnold, a fine
gentleman, lays close siege to Peggy," and goes on to hint that a
wedding may soon be expected. If the traitor's tongue was only half
as persuasive as his pen, small wonder that the damsel capitulated.[4]
"Dear Peggy," sighs the ardent lover upon paper, "suffer that
heavenly bosom (which cannot know itself the cause of pain without a
sympathetic pang) to expand with a sensation more soft, more tender
than friendship.... I have presumed to write to your papa, and have
requested his sanction to my addresses. Consult your own happiness,
and, if incompatible, forget there is so unhappy a wretch. May I
perish before I would give you one moment's inquietude to procure the
greatest possible felicity to myself! Whatever my fate may be, my most
ardent wish is for your happiness, and my latest breath will be to
implore the blessing of Heaven on the idol and only wish of my soul."
And yet the writer of these fine sentiments presently sells her
peace and happiness and his own honor for a sum of money almost too
pitifully small to be named! They were married in April, 1779. By this
union with the daughter of a loyalist, however professing neutrality,
Arnold must have been thrown much into the society of the enemies of
his country's cause--men whose principles were entirely at variance
with his own--and doubtless his defection may be indirectly laid to
the subtle influence of Tory companionship: certainly, his reckless
intimacy with well-known if not openly-avowed foes of American
independence caused his military superiors to look askance at his
movements, and more than justified the caution of a Congress jealous
of the least shadow that menaced the struggling cause of liberty.

[Footnote 4: See _Letters and Papers relating to the Provincial
History of Pennsylvania_, by Mr. Thomas Balch.]

The newly-wedded pair set up their household in the old Penn mansion
(long since torn down) on a scale of magnificence in no way warranted
by Arnold's means. Their great coach-and-four was seen thundering back
and forth through the streets of the quiet little town, and a motley
throng of guests, Whig and Tory, were entertained at a table where
nothing was thought too choice and costly for their delectation.
Matters were carried with such extravagance that debt soon pressed
upon the thoughtless pair, and prudent people began to inquire
curiously into Arnold's administration of public affairs. Whispers
soon grew into loud complaints, and a court-martial was presently
convened to investigate certain charges brought against him by the
Executive Council, comprising peculation, misappropriation of public
funds, etc. During the tedious deliberation of this body of his
fellow-officers, and in the almost certain event of the day going
against him, Arnold laid his plan for the grand coup, which, if
successful, would at once gratify his deep longing for revenge and
place him, as he fondly hoped, at the very summit of his ambition--the
equal of the proudest noble, the lauded servant of a grateful prince.
It seems almost incredible that he should have persevered in his
design after the very lenient decision of his judges, who acquitted
him of all save the most trifling of the charges against him,
and decreed that he should merely receive a reprimand from the
commander-in-chief. Every one knows the encouraging and beautiful
advice with which this slight censure was tempered, and must recognize
the fine manly spirit that prompted it: it should have sunk deeply
into the culprit's heart and made of him the grateful friend of
Washington for ever. It did indeed sink deeply, but it was into a
traitor's heart, and it rankled there.

It is very possible that here, in this lovely retreat on the banks
of the Schuylkill, in the long summer days of 1780, was matured the
slowly-ripening plot, which but for its timely discovery must have
seriously imperiled, if not altogether lost to us, the glorious
inheritance we have held these hundred years. One can fancy the
martial figure of the brave, bad man pacing back and forth beneath
these very trees perhaps, absorbed in bitter reflections on his real
and fancied wrongs--the rapid promotion of men younger than himself
both in years and services, whilst his own bold deeds had met with but
tardy acknowledgment from a cold and cautious Congress; the long array
of debts which arose like spectres to harass him even in this peaceful
Eden; and, worst of all, the humiliating remembrance of Washington's
rebuke. It cannot be denied that the temptation to free himself from
the toils in which his own dishonest course had entangled him must
have beset the unhappy man with almost resistless power. With his
hopelessly impaired character, and weighed down by debts he had
no means of discharging--for he could scarcely hope for an early
settlement of his accounts from a Congress already impoverished by an
expensive war--to remain in the army was, to a man of Arnold's proud,
selfish nature, almost out of the question. By going over to the
enemy he could at once shake off associations which were now become
intolerable to him, gain perpetual immunity from his liabilities, and
secure for himself a life of distinction and luxury. He grasped at the
delusive vision and was lost for ever.

In August of this year he received the coveted appointment to the
command of West Point, and Philadelphia saw him no more. He took up
his residence in Beverley Robinson's lately-vacated house on the
east bank of the Hudson and nearly opposite the entrenchments at West
Point. The story of the discovered plot and Major André's detention
is too well known to be more than glanced at here: everything was in
readiness for the surrender of the post into the hands of Sir Henry
Clinton when the unfortunate young adjutant was taken, and the papers
criminating Arnold found upon his person. No one, I am sure, can read
unmoved Dr. Thacher's eye-witness account of the execution of this
officer, lost through Arnold's cowardly blundering. The gravity of his
offence against a flag of truce need not prevent our admiration of his
soldierly conduct after his arrest, the perfect truthfulness to which
he adhered during his examination, and the noble resignation with
which he met his dreadful fate. Arnold had here a fine opportunity to
retrieve in some degree the bitter mischief of which he had been the
occasion. Had he but come forth and suffered in André's place, the
blackness of his crime would have almost disappeared in the brilliancy
of his atonement; but he chose a living death instead, and his hapless
victim went to his doom accompanied by the pity of every honest
American heart. His manly figure affords a fine contrast to that of
the traitor skulking down the lane (still shown as "Arnold's Path")
at the back of the Robinson House in his flight to the British frigate
moored out in the stream fifteen miles below the fort. A few hasty
words had put his innocent wife in possession of the horrid story,
and she had fallen, as if struck by his hand, in a swoon to the floor,
where he left her unconscious of his frantic farewell. In her sad
interview with Washington next day she manifested such frenzied grief
and horror at her husband's guilt, such tender concern for the future
of her helpless babe, that the stern commander was melted to the
heart's core, and left her entirely convinced of her innocence. He
gave orders that her comfort should be fully attended to, and offered
her an escort to protect her from insult on the journey to her
father's house in Philadelphia. Further, he sent her word in a day or
two that, however sorely he must regret the escape of a traitor, he
was glad to be able to assure her of her husband's safety with the
British. Then came the mournful pilgrimage to the loving home in
Philadelphia. She set out at the time when poor André was making his
preparations for the still longer journey whence he was nevermore to
return--the brilliant young officer with whom she had danced at the
great fête, the "Mischianza," given by the British army to Sir William
Howe only two years before in Philadelphia--the gay man of fashion who
had written versicles in her honor, and whose graceful pen-portrait
of the fair girl is still in the possession of the Shippen family--her
thickly-powdered hair drawn up into a tower above her forehead and
bedecked with ribbons and strings of pearls in the fashion then newly
imported out of France, the last modish freak of Marie Antoinette
before she laid her own stately head under the axe of the guillotine.

One can easily picture the terror and anguish she bore with her to
her old home; the uncertainty regarding her own fate and that of her
child; the haunting thought of young André's approaching doom, and,
more piteous than all else, the ever--recurring temptation that sorely
beset her to see no more the author of her undoing, the still beloved
father of her babe. It is difficult to imagine a more awful situation,
and one can almost forgive her first hasty sentence against the man
who had wrought her such ill. She forgot for a while that she had
taken upon her those sacred vows "for better, for worse:" the worst
indeed had come, and for my part I own I am glad that she chose the
nobler part. He was a traitor, but she, alas! was the traitor's wife.
She accompanied him to England, where her dignity and sweetness helped
to sustain her husband in the doubtful position he held in society.
Her letters to her family bear witness to his unfailing love for her
and anxious care of her welfare, but breathe a spirit of resignation
incompatible with perfect happiness. Once only did she return to
America. After peace was proclaimed she visited her beloved old home,
but meeting with much unkindness from her former friends, soon left
for England again. She died in 1804, surviving Arnold but three years.

A lady of this city, the granddaughter of our first republican
governor, told me that two of Arnold's grandsons came to America some
years ago, and to their great surprise found themselves unable to
make any figure in Philadelphia society, where they were quietly but
persistently ignored, so strong was the public prejudice against their
name.

Arnold died in London in the winter of 1801. We shrink away almost
appalled from the awful picture of that death-bed--the neglected,
despised old man, with the gloom closing in about him and left to face
it almost alone. The great people to whom he had sold his honor had
long ago paid him his price, and, washing their hands of him, had
passed over to the other side of the way with averted faces; the stout
old king who had protected him from insult as long as he could was
already in the clutch of the fatal malady which was soon to consign
his intellect to eternal night; and it is said that but one creature
stood beside the dying traitor in that supreme hour--the fond woman
who had so lightened the burden of shame he had borne for twenty long
years of splendor and misery, and whose own deliverance was so nigh at
hand.

A singular story is told of Arnold's last moments, which if true (and
pray God it may be!) should be linked with the memory of his crime for
ever. It is said that he ordered to be brought from the garret of his
house the old Continental uniform and sword he had worn for the
last time on the memorable day of his escape from West Point. With
trembling hands he unfolded the coat, and, drawing it painfully over
his shoulders, sat lost in long and deep reflection: then, rousing
himself with a sigh, he drew the sword from its scabbard, and
clenching one hand upon the rich hilt, passed the other absently along
the blade; then with a wild look of regret in his fast-glazing eyes he
let the weapon drop from his grasp, his head sank upon his breast and
he remained motionless until he died, drawing each breath longer and
longer until all were spent. I love to think that he died with the
Continental coat upon his shoulders, nor was it again dishonored by
the contact: it even seems to have lent a ray of its own untarnished
lustre to brighten the last dark, remorseful hours of a ruined life.

K.T.T.




THE WATCH: AN OLD MAN'S STORY.

BY IVAN TOURGUENEFF.


I.


I will tell you my story about the watch. A singular story! The whole
thing at the very beginning of the century, in the year 1801. I was
just sixteen. I lived at Riasan with my father, aunt and cousin, in
a little wooden house not far from the banks of the Oka. I don't
remember my mother: she died when she had been only three years
married, and my father had no child but me. My father's name was
Porphyr Petrovitch: he was a quiet man with feeble health, who
occupied himself with managing law-business, and--in other ways. In
old times they used to call such people sowers of discord: he called
himself an attorney. His sister, my aunt, kept the house. She was an
old maid of fifty: my father had already left his fortieth year behind
him. She was a very pious woman. In fact, to tell the truth, she was a
great hypocrite, gossiping and meddlesome, and she did not have a kind
heart like my father. We were not poor, but we had no more than we
really needed. My father had also a brother, named Gregory, but he had
been accused of seditious actions and Jacobinical sentiments (so it
ran in the _ukase_), and he had been sent to Siberia in 1797.

Gregory's son David, my cousin, was left on my father's hands, and he
lived with us. He was only a year older than I, but I gave way to him
and obeyed him as if he had been a most important personage. He was a
bright boy of a good deal of character, sturdy and broad-shouldered,
with a square, freckled face, red hair, small gray eyes, thick lips, a
short nose and short fingers, and of a strength far beyond his years.
My aunt could not endure him, and my father was afraid of him, or
perhaps had a consciousness of guilt before him. There had been a
rumor that if my father had not told too much and left his brother in
the lurch, David's father would not have been sent to Siberia. We
were both in the same class in the gymnasium, and we both made good
progress--I somewhat better than David. My memory was stronger than
his, but boys, as every one knows, do not appreciate that advantage:
they are not proud of it; and in spite of it I always looked up to
David.




II.


My name, as you know, is Alexis. I was born on the seventh of March,
and celebrate my birthday on the seventeenth. They gave me, according
to the old custom, the name of one of those saints whose anniversary
fell ten days after my birth. My godfather was a certain Anastasius
Anistasiovitch Putschkow, or Nastasa Nastasaitch, as he was always
called. He was a fearful liar and slanderer and cheat--a thoroughly
bad man: he had been turned out of a government office, and had been
brought before the court more than once; but my father needed him:
they "worked" together. In appearance he was stout and bloated, with a
face like a fox, a nose as sharp as a needle, little dark, glistening
eyes, like a fox's eyes, and he kept them always moving from side to
side; and he moved his nose too, as if he were sniffing something in
the air. He wore high-heeled shoes, and he powdered his hair every
day, which was considered strange conduct in the provinces in
those days. He assured people he could not do otherwise, as he was
acquainted with so many generals and generals' wives. And my birthday
came, and Nastasa Nastasaitch appeared at our house and said, "I have
never yet given you anything, but see what I have brought you to-day."
And he took from his pocket an old-fashioned silver watch, with a rose
painted on the face, and a bronze chain.

I stood motionless with joy, and my aunt screamed out, "Kiss his hand,
kiss his hand, stu--, boy!"

I kissed my godfather's hand, but my aunt added, "Oh, Nastasa, why do
you spoil him so? What should he want of a watch? He will be sure to
lose it or break it."

My father came in, looked at the watch, and having thanked Nastasa
somewhat coolly, called him into his office. I heard my father say, as
if he were talking to himself, "If you hope to get off in that way--"
But I could not wait a moment longer: I stuck the watch in my pocket
and rushed off to show it to David.




III.


David took the watch, opened it and examined it carefully. He had
a great talent for mechanics: he could work in iron, copper and all
kinds of metals. He had got himself several kinds of tools, and he
could easily repair or make anew a screw, a key, and so on. David
turned the watch about in his hands, and muttered between his
teeth--he was not talkative--"Old--poor," and asked, "Where did you
get it?"

I told him my godfather gave it to me.

"Nastasa?"

"Yes, Nastasa Nastasaitch."

David set the watch down on the table and walked off without a word.

"You don't like it?" I asked.

"No: that's not it; but in your place I would not have taken any
present from Nastasa."

"Why not?"

"Because he is a contemptible creature, and I would not be under any
obligations to him, or have to thank him for anything if I could help
it. You kissed his hand, I suppose?"

"Yes: my aunt made me."

David smiled with a singular expression. That was his way. He never
laughed aloud: he considered it a sign of weakness. David's words and
his quiet smile pained me much. "He is blaming me in his heart," I
thought. "In his eyes I am contemptible. He would never have lowered
himself in that way: he would never accept a present from Nastasa. But
what shall I do now?"

To give back the watch was impossible.

I tried to talk it over with David and get his advice, but he answered
that he never gave any one advice, and that I must do what I thought
best. I remember I could not sleep all that night, so great was my
anxiety. It was hard to part with the watch. I put it on the table at
my bedside, and it ticked so pleasantly! But then to feel that David
despised me--and there was no doubt that he did--was unendurable. By
morning I had come to a determination. It made me cry, but I went to
sleep as soon as I had made it, and when I awoke I put on my clothes
quickly and ran out in the street. I had determined to give my watch
to the first poor person I met.




IV.


I had not gone far from the house when I met what I wanted. A boy
about ten years old ran across my path--a ragged, barefooted little
fellow, who was often idling in front of our windows. I sprang toward
him, and without giving him or myself time for reflection I offered
him my watch. The boy stared at me, and raised one hand to his mouth
as if he was afraid of burning his fingers, while he held out the
other.

"Take it, take it!" I murmured: "it's mine--I give it to you. You
can sell it and get something with the money, whatever you want.
Good-bye!"

I thrust the watch into his hand, and ran quickly home. I stood for a
minute behind the door of our common bedroom, and when I had recovered
my breath I went up to David, who had nearly dressed himself and was
combing his hair. "Do you know, David," I began with as calm a voice
as I could muster, "I have given Nastasa's watch away?"

David looked at me and went on arranging his hair.

"Yes," I added in the same business-like tone, "I have given it away.
There's a little boy very poor and miserable, and I've given it to
him."

David put the brush down on the washstand.

"For the money he will get for it he can buy himself something useful.
He will certainly get something for it." I was silent.

"Well, that's good," said David at last; and he went into our study, I
following him.

"And if they ask you what you have done with it?" he suggested.

"I shall say I have lost it," I answered, as if that did not trouble
me a bit. We spoke no more about the watch that day, but it seemed to
me that David not only approved of what I had done, but that he really
admired it to some extent. I was sure he did.




V.


Two days went by. It happened that no one in the house thought about
the watch. My father had some trouble with his clients, and did not
concern himself with me or my watch. I, on the contrary, was thinking
of it all the time. Even the supposed approval of David comforted me
but little. He had not openly expressed it; only he had said once when
we were talking together that he would not have expected it of me.
Decidedly, my sacrifice was of but little use, since the satisfaction
of my vanity did not compensate me for it. As luck would have it,
there came a schoolmate of ours, the son of the city physician, who
kept bragging of not even a silver, but of a pinchbeck watch his
grandmother had given him. At last I could bear it no longer, and one
day I slunk quietly out of the house, determined to find the boy to
whom I had given my watch. I soon came across him: he was playing
jackstones with some other boys in the church-porch. I called him
aside, and, hardly waiting to take breath, I stammered out that my
parents were very angry with me for giving the watch away, and that if
he was willing to give it back to me I would gladly pay him for it. I
had brought an Elizabeth ruble with me, which was all my savings.

"But I haven't got your watch," answered the boy with a tearful voice.
"My father saw me have it and took it away from me: he did, and he
wanted to whip me too. He said I must have stolen it somewhere. He
said, 'Who would be such a fool as to give you a watch?'"

"And who is your father?"

"My father? Trofimytsch."

"But what is he? what's his business?"

"He is a discharged soldier, a sergeant, and he has no business. He
mends and soles old shoes. That's all the business he has. He supports
himself by that, too."

"Where does he live? Take me to him."

"Yes, I'll show you the way. You'll tell him you gave me the watch,
won't you? He keeps calling me names about it, and my mother keeps
asking, 'Who do you take after, that you're such a scamp?'"

The boy and I went together to his house. It was merely a rickety
hut built in the back yard of a factory that had been burned down and
never built up again. We found Trofimytsch and his wife at home. The
discharged sergeant was a tall old man, straight and strong, with
grayish-yellow whiskers, unshaven chin, a network of wrinkles on his
forehead and cheeks. His wife looked older than he: her eyes shone
dimly from the midst of a somewhat swollen face, into which they
seemed to have been driven. Both wore dirty rags for clothes. I
explained to Trofimytsch what I wanted and why I had come. He listened
in silence, without even winking or turning his dull, attentive,
soldierlike glance away from me.

"How foolish!" he said at last with a rough, toothless bass voice.
"Do fine young men behave like that? If Petka did not steal the watch,
that is one thing; but if he did, then I'll give it to him with the
stick, as they used to do in the regiment. What is that? 'What a
pity!' The stick, that's all. Pshaw!" Trofimytsch uttered these
incoherent exclamations in falsetto: he had apparently understood
nothing.

"If you will give me back the watch," I explained--I did not venture
to say "thou" to him, although he was but a common soldier--"I'll
willingly give you a ruble for it. I don't think it's worth more."

"Humph!" muttered Trofimytsch, who still did not understand, but
continued to gaze at me attentively as if I were his superior officer.
"So that's the way the matter stands? Well, then, take it.--Be still,
Uliana!" he screamed angrily at his wife, who opened her mouth as if
she were about to speak.--"There is the watch," he continued, opening
a drawer: "if it's yours, be kind enough to take it, but why should I
take the ruble?"

"Take the ruble, Trofimytsch, you fool!" sobbed his wife. "Have you
gone crazy, old man? Not a single farthing have we left in our pockets
if we were to turn them inside out, and here you are putting on airs!
They've cut off your pigtail, but you're an old woman still. How can
you act so? Take the money! Would you give the watch away?"

"Be still, you chatterbox!" repeated Trofimytsch. "When did one ever
see such a sight? A woman reasoning! ha! Her husband is the head, and
she--disputes!--Petka, don't mutter, or I'll kill you.--There's the
watch." Trofimytsch held out the watch toward me, but would not let go
of it. He considered for a moment: then he lowered his eyes and fixed
that dull, straightforward glance upon me, and then suddenly screamed
as loud as he could, "Where is it? where is the ruble?"

"Here, here!" I said hastily, and pulled the money out of my pocket.
He did not take it, however, but continued to stare at me. I put the
ruble on the table. He pushed it with one shove into the table-drawer,
threw the watch to me, turned to the right about, and hissed at his
wife and boy, "Away with you! get out!"

Uliana tried to stammer out a few words, but I was already outside the
door on the street. I dropped the watch into the bottom of my pocket,
held it tight with my hand and hastened homeward.




VI.


I was again in possession of my watch, and yet it gave me no pleasure.
I could not wear it, and above everything I had to hide from David
what I had done. What would he have thought of me and of my lack of
character? I could not even put my watch in the drawer, for we kept
all our things there in common. I had to hide it--at one time on the
top of the wardrobe, at another under the mattress, again behind the
stove; and yet I did not succeed in deceiving David.

Once I had taken the watch from under the planks of our floor, and was
trying to polish its silver case with an old leather glove. David
had gone somewhere down town, and I did not think he was back when
suddenly there he stood in the doorway! I was so confused that I
almost let the watch drop, and, my face hot with blushes, I felt
despairingly for my waistcoat pocket to put my watch into it. David
looked at me and smiled in his silent way. "What are you after?" he
said at last. "Did you think I didn't know you'd got the watch again?
I saw it the first day you brought it back."

"I assure you--" I began with tears.

David shrugged his shoulders: "The watch is yours: you can do what you
please with it."

When he had said those hard words he went out. I was overcome with
mortification. This time there was no doubt that David despised me.
That could not be borne. "I will show him," I said to myself, setting
my teeth hard. With a firm step I walked into the next room, where our
servant Juschka was, and gave him the watch. At first Juschka would
not take it, but I declared to him that if he would not take the watch
I would break it into pieces, trample it to powder, crush it to atoms.
He thought for a moment, and finally consented to take it. When I came
back to our room I found David reading a book. I told him what I
had done. He did not lift his eyes from the page he was reading, but
shrugged his shoulders again and said, "The watch is yours to do what
you like with it." But it seemed to me as if he despised me a little
less. I was fully determined not again to lay myself open to the
charge of having no character, for this watch, this hateful present
of my hateful godfather, had become so detestable that I could not
understand how I could ever have been sorry to lose it, how I could
have brought myself to begging it from a man like Trofimytsch, and
give him the right to believe that he had behaved generously to me in
regard to it.

Some days passed by. I remember that on one of them there came a great
piece of news: the emperor Paul was dead, and his son Alexander, of
whose generosity and humanity much had been said, had ascended the
throne. This news greatly excited David, and awoke in him the hope
of again seeing his father, and of seeing him soon. My father too was
very glad. "All the exiles will now be allowed to return from Siberia,
and they won't forget my brother Jegor," he repeated, rubbing his
hands, but with a somewhat anxious expression. David I and I
stopped working, and we did not even make a pretence of going to the
gymnasium; indeed, we did not even go out to walk, but we used to hang
about the house and conjecture and reckon in how many months, how many
weeks, how many days "brother Jegor" would return--where we should
write to him, how we would receive him, and how we should live then.
"Brother Jegor" was an architect, and we both decided that he should
move to Moscow and build there great schools for the poor, and
we should be his assistants. The watch meanwhile we had entirely
forgotten, but it was determined to recall itself to our memory.




VII.


One morning, just after breakfast, I was sitting alone in the window
thinking of my uncle's return. The April thaw was dripping and
sparkling without, when my aunt, Pulcheria Petrovna, rushed suddenly
into the room. She was always very excitable and complaining, and she
always spoke with a shrill voice, gesticulating a great deal; but this
time she pounced upon me. "Come, come, go to your father this minute,
young sir," she sputtered out. "What tricks you've been up to, you
shameless boy! But you'll catch it, both of you. Nastasa Nastasaitch
has discovered all your goings on. Go! Your father has sent for you:
go this moment."

I mechanically followed my aunt, without in the least understanding
what it was all about, and as I crossed the thresh-hold I saw my
father with his hair on end walking up and down the room with long
strides. Juschka was in tears near the door, and my godfather was
sitting on a stool in the corner with a very malicious expression in
his open nostrils and wandering eyes. My father flew at me as soon as
I entered the room: "Did you give Juschka the watch? What?"

I looked at Juschka.

"Tell me," repeated my father, stamping with his feet.

"Yes," I answered, and immediately received a violent box on the ear,
which gave my aunt a great deal of satisfaction. I heard her smack
her lips with pleasure, as if she had just taken a good swallow of hot
tea. My father rushed from me to Juschka. "You rascal! you ought not
to have taken the watch," he cried, seizing him by the hair; "and you
sold it to the watchmaker, you good-for-nothing fellow!"

Juschka, in fact, as I afterward learned, had in the simplicity of his
heart sold my watch to a neighboring watchmaker. The watchmaker had
hung it up in his window, where Nastasa had seen it. He bought it and
brought it back to us. Juschka and I were not detained long: my father
got out of breath and began to cough, and besides it was not his way
to be cross.

"Brother," said my aunt, who noticed with regret that he was getting
over his wrath, "don't trouble yourself any more about this matter:
it's not worth dirtying your hands about. And listen to my proposal:
if Nastasa consents, in view of your son's great ingratitude, I
will take charge of the watch myself, and since he has shown by his
behavior that he is no longer worthy of wearing it, I will give it in
your name to a person who will know how to value your kindness as it
deserves."

"Who is that?" asked my father.

"Christian Lukitsch," answered my aunt with a little hesitation.

"Christian?" asked my father; and then added with a wave of the hand,
"It's all the same to me: you may throw it into the fire, for all I
care."

He buttoned his waistcoat, which had come undone, and went out,
doubled up with coughing.

"And you, cousin, do you agree?" said my aunt, turning to Nastasa.

"Entirely," he answered. During the whole scene he had not stirred
from his stool, but there he sat, breathing audibly, rubbing the tips
of his fingers together, and turning his fox eyes by turns on me, my
father and Juschka. We gave him a great deal of amusement.

My aunt's proposal stirred me to the depths of my soul. I did not care
for the watch, but I had a great dislike for the person to whom she
proposed giving it. This Christian Lukitsch, whose family name was
Trankwillitatin, a lanky blockhead of a student, had the habit of
coming to see us, the deuce knows why. To see about the children's
education, my aunt used to say; but he could not do anything of the
sort, because he was very ignorant and as stupid as a horse. He was
like a horse, too, in other ways: he used to stamp his feet like
hoofs, he neighed rather than laughed, and opened his jaws when he did
so till you could see down his throat; and he had a long face with
a curved nose and large, flat check-bones: he wore a rough coat and
smelt of raw meat. My aunt called him a respectable man, a cavalier,
and even a grenadier. He had a way of tapping children on the forehead
with the hard nails of his long fingers (he used to do it to me when
I was younger) and saying, "Hear how empty your head sounds," and then
laughing at his own wit. And this idiot was to have my watch? Never!
was what I determined as I rushed from the room and flung myself at
full length on my bed, my cheeks burning with the box on the ear I had
just received. But in my heart was burning the bitterness of outraged
dignity and thirst for revenge. Never would I let him triumph over
me--wear the watch, hang the chain over his waistcoat, and neigh with
joy. That was all very well, but how prevent it? I determined to steal
the watch from my aunt.




VIII.


Fortunately, Trankwillitatin was just at this time out of town. He
could not come to see us before the next day: advantage must be
taken of the intervening night. My aunt did not sleep with her door
locked--indeed, throughout the house we had no keys in the doors--but
where did she hide the watch? Until evening she carried it about in
her pocket, and so ensured its safety, but at night where will she put
it? Well, that's just what I must find out, I thought, and clenched my
fist. I was glowing with audacity and fear and joy at the idea of the
crime I was about to commit. I kept nodding my head, I wrinkled my
forehead, I whispered to myself, "Just wait!" I kept threatening every
one: I was cross, I was dangerous; and I even avoided David. No one,
and particularly not he, should have any suspicion of what I was about
to do. I would act alone, and bear the whole responsibility. Slowly
the day crept by, then the evening: at last night came. I did nothing:
I scarcely moved. One thought filled my head. At supper my father,
whose anger never lasted very long, and who was already a little
sorry for his violence, tried to bring me back to my good-humor, but I
repelled his advances--not, as he thought, because I could not conquer
my wrath, but simply because I feared becoming sentimental. I must
preserve undiminished the whole glow of my indignation, the whole
vigor of an unalterable determination. I went to bed early, but you
may well believe I did not close my eyes. I kept them wide open,
although I had pulled the bed-clothes over my head. I had not thought
over beforehand what I should do: I had no fixed plan. I was only
waiting for the house to get quiet. The only precaution I took was
to keep on my stockings. My aunt's chamber was in the second story. I
should have to go through the dining-room, the ante-room, up a flight
of stairs, along an entry, and on the right was the door. It was not
necessary to take a candle or lantern: I knew that in the corner of my
aunt's chamber there was a shrine with a light always burning before
it, so I should be able to see well enough. I lay with my eyes wide
open, my mouth open and dry: the blood throbbing in my temples, my
ears, throat, back, throughout my whole body. I waited, but it seemed
to me as if a demon were tormenting me. Time went by, but the house
did not get quiet.




IX.


Never, it seemed to me, had David been so long in going to sleep:
David, the taciturn David, even talked to me. Never did the people in
the house clatter and walk about and talk so late. And what are they
talking about now? thought I. Haven't they had time enough since
morning? Outdoors, too, the noise kept up very late. A dog would bark
with long-protracted howls; then a drunken man would go by with a
racket; then a rattling wagon would seem as if it took for ever to
get past the house. But these outdoor noises did not vex me: on the
contrary, I was glad to hear them. They would make the people in the
house indifferent to sounds. But at last it seems as if everything
were quiet. Only the pendulum of an old clock ticks loudly and
solemnly in the dining-room: one can hear the heavy, long-drawn, even
breathing of the sleepers. I am just going to get up when something
buzzes in my ears: suddenly there is a creaking sound, and something
soft falls, and the sound spreads itself in waves along the walls of
the room. Or was it nothing, after all, but fancy? At last it has all
died away, and the darkness and churchyard stillness of night descend.
Now is the time! Cold with anticipation, I throw off the bed-clothes,
let my feet glide down to the floor, stand up: one step--a second--I
creep along; the soles of my feet don't seem to belong to me; they are
heavy and my steps are weak and uncertain. Stop! what is that noise?
Is it some one filing, scraping or snoring? I listen with a feeling as
if ants were running over my cheeks, my eyes filling with cold tears.
It is nothing. I creep along again. It is dark, but I know the way.
Suddenly I hit against a chair. What a racket! and how it hurts! I hit
just on my knee-pan. I shall die here. Now will they wake up? Well,
let them! Boldness and crossness come to my aid. Forward! Now I have
passed through the dining-room: I reach the door and shove it open,
but the confounded hinge creaks. Never mind! Now I'm going up the
stairs--one! two! one! two! One step creaks beneath my tread: I look
down angrily, as if I could see it. Now the second door! I seize the
handle: it does not rattle. It swings softly open. Thank Heaven! I'm
in the entry at last. In the upper entry is a little window beneath
the roof. The faint light of the night-sky shines through the dim
panes, and by the uncertain light I make out our maid-servant lying on
a fur robe on the floor, her tangled head supported by both hands. She
sleeps soundly, with light, quick breathing, and just behind her head
is the fatal door. I step over the robe, over the girl. Who was it
opened the door? I don't know, but I am in my aunt's room. There
is the lamp in one corner and the bed in the other, and my aunt in
night-gown and cap in bed with her face toward me. She is asleep; she
does not stir; even her breathing is inaudible. The flame of the lamp
wavers slightly with the fresh draught, and the shadows dance through
the whole room and on my aunt's yellow, waxen hair.

And there is the watch! It is hanging behind the bed in an embroidered
watch-pocket on the wall. That's lucky! I hesitate, but there is no
use in delaying. But what are these--soft, quick footsteps behind me?
Oh no, it is only my heart beating. I take a step forward. Heavens!
Something round and quite large touches me just below the knee once
and then again. I am on the point of crying out: I am near sinking to
the ground with terror. A striped cat, our cat, stands before me
with her back curved and her tail in the air. Now she jumps on the
bed--heavily but softly--turns round and sits without purring, looking
at me with her yellow eyes as grave as a judge. "Puss! puss!" I
whisper hardly above my breath, and leaning over her and over my aunt,
I take hold of the watch. Suddenly my aunt raises herself, and opens
her eyes wide. Heavens! what is going to happen now? But the lids
quiver and close, and with a gentle murmur her head sinks back on the
cushion. Another moment and I am back in my own room, in bed, with the
watch in my hand. I come back lighter than a feather. I am a man; I am
a thief; I am a hero. I am breathless with joy; I glow with pride;
I am happy, and I will wake up David and tell him all about it; and
then, strange to say, I fall asleep and sleep like the dead. At last
I open my eyes; it is light in my room; the sun has already risen.
Fortunately, no one is yet awake. I spring up as if I were shot: I
wake David and confide the whole story to him. He listens and smiles.

"Do you know what we'll do?" he said at last: "we'll bury this stupid
watch in the ground, so that there shall be nothing left of it."

I consider this an admirable plan, and in a few minutes we dress
ourselves, run into the orchard behind the house, and when we have dug
a deep hole in the soft earth with David's knife, we bury beneath an
old apple tree my godfather's hated present, which now will never fall
into the hands of the disagreeable Trankwillitatin. We throw back the
earth, sprinkle rubbish over the spot, and, proud and happy, without
being seen, we return to the house, go back to bed, and enjoy for
another hour a light, happy sleep.



X.


You can imagine what a row there was the next morning when my aunt
woke up and missed the watch. To this day her piercing cry resounds in
my ears. "Help! robbers!" she shrieked, and alarmed the whole house.
But David and I only smiled quietly to ourselves, and our smiles were
sweet. "Every one must be punished," screamed my aunt. "The watch
has been taken from beneath my head--from beneath my pillow!" We
were prepared for everything, for the worst, but, contrary to our
expectations, it all blew over.

At first my father was very angry: he even spoke of the police, but
the trial of the day before must have tired him a good deal, and
suddenly, to my aunt's indescribable astonishment, he vented his wrath
on her instead of us. "You have given me enough trouble already
about the watch, Pulcheria Petrovna," he cried: "I don't want to hear
anything more about it. It did not take itself off by magic, and what
do I care if it did? They stole it from you? That was your lookout.
'What will Nastasa say?' Confound Nastasa! He does nothing but cheat
and practice dirty tricks. Don't dare to bother me any more with this:
do you hear?"

My father then went to his room, slamming the door behind him. David
and I did not at first understand what his last words referred to:
we found out later that my father was at that time much vexed with
Nastasa, who had snapped up some paying piece of business which had
belonged to him. So my aunt had to withdraw with a long face. She was
nearly bursting with rage, but there was nothing to do, and she was
obliged to content herself with whispering hoarsely, "Rascal! rascal!
jailbird! thief!" whenever she passed me. My aunt's reproaches were a
great delight to me, and it was also very pleasant whenever we went by
the garden fence to throw an apparently indifferent glance at the spot
beneath the apple tree where the watch rested, and also, if David was
by, to exchange with him a knowing wink.

My aunt first tried to set Trankwillitatin against me, but I made
David help me. He spoke up to the tall student, and told him he'd cut
him open with a knife if he didn't leave me alone. Trankwillitatin
was frightened, for, although my aunt called him a grenadier and a
cavalier, he was not remarkable for bravery.

But you don't suppose I have come to the end of my story yet? No, it's
not yet finished; only, in order to continue it, I must introduce a
new person, and to introduce this new person I must go back a little.




XI.


My father was for a long time on very friendly and even intimate terms
with a former official, named Latkin, a poor man, slightly lame, with
shy, queer manners--one of those beings of whom people say the hand of
God is upon them. He had the same business as my father and Nastasa:
he was also a private "agent" and commissioner, but as he had neither
an imposing exterior nor a fluent tongue, nor much self-confidence,
he could not make up his mind to act independently, and so formed a
partnership with my father. His handwriting was wonderful, he had a
thorough knowledge of law, and was perfectly at home in all the ins
and outs of lawsuits and office-practice. He was connected with my
father in several business operations, and they shared their gains and
losses, so that it seemed as if nothing could impair their friendship.
But one day it was brought to an abrupt conclusion once for all: my
father quarreled irreconcilably with his former associate. If Latkin
had snapped a profitable bit of my father's business, as Nastasa did
afterward, he would have been no more angry with him than he was with
Nastasa, perhaps even less. But Latkin, under the influence of some
unexplained, incomprehensible feeling of envy or greed, and perhaps
also moved by a momentary feeling of honesty, had played him false in
exposing him to their patron, a rich young merchant, by opening the
careless young man's eyes to some sharp practice by which my father
expected to make a very pretty sum. It was not the loss of the
money, however much it may have been--no, it was the treachery--which
embittered and enraged my father. He could not forgive swindling.

"See there! we have discovered a new saint," said he, trembling with
rage and his teeth chattering as if he had a chill. (I happened to be
in the room, a witness of this painful scene.) "Very well, from this
day forth all is over between us. The heavens are above us, and there
is the door. I have nothing more to do with you, nor you with me. You
are too honest for me, sir: how could we get along together? But you
sha'n't have a bit of ground to stand on, nor a roof over your head."

In vain did Latkin beg for mercy and fling himself on the ground
before him: in vain did he try to explain what had filled his own soul
with painful astonishment. "Just consider, Porphyr Petrovitch," he
stammered forth. "I did it without any hope of gain: I cut my own
throat."

My father was immovable, and Latkin never more set foot in the house.
It seemed as if fate had determined to fulfill my father's last evil
wishes. Soon after the breach between them, which took place about two
years before my story began, Latkin's wife died: it is true, however,
that she had for a long time been ill. His second daughter, a child of
three years, became deaf and dumb one day from fright: a swarm of bees
lit on her head. Latkin himself had a stroke of paralysis and fell
into the most extreme misery. How he managed to scrape along at all,
what he lived on, it was hard to imagine. He dwelt in a tumbledown
hovel but a short distance from our house. His eldest daughter,
Raissa, lived with him and managed for him as well as she could. This
very Raissa is the new person whom I must introduce into my story.




XII.


So long as her father was on friendly terms with mine we used to see
her continually: she would sometimes spend whole days at our house,
sewing or knitting with her swift, delicate fingers. She was a tall,
somewhat slender girl, with thoughtful gray eyes in a pale oval face.
She spoke little, but what she said was sensible, and she uttered
it in a low, clear voice, without opening her mouth much and without
showing her teeth: when she laughed--which was seldom--she showed them
all suddenly, large and white as almonds. I also remember her walk,
which was light and elastic, with a little spring in every step: it
seemed to me always as if she were going up stairs, even when she was
on level ground. She held herself erect, with her hands folded, and
whatever she did, whatever she undertook--if she only threaded a
needle or smoothed her dress--was well and gracefully done. You will
hardly believe it, but there was something touching in her way of
doing things. Her baptismal name was Raissa, but we called her "Little
Black-Lip," for she had a little mole, like a berry-stain, on her
upper lip, but this did not disfigure her; indeed, it had the contrary
effect. She was just a year older than David. I had for her a feeling
akin to reverence, but she had very little to do with me. Between her
and David, on the other hand, there existed a friendship--a childish
but warm if somewhat strange friendship. They suited one another well:
sometimes for hours they would not exchange a word, but every one felt
that they were enjoying themselves merely because they were together.
I have really never met another girl like her. There was in her
something questioning, yet decided--something honest, and sad,
and dear. I never heard her say anything clever, and also nothing
commonplace, and I have never seen anything more intelligent than her
eyes. When the breach between her family and mine came I began to see
her seldom. My father positively forbade my seeing the Latkins, and
she never appeared at our house; but I used to meet her in the street,
at church, and Little Black-Lip used to inspire me with the same
feeling--esteem, and even a sort of admiration, rather than pity.
She bore her misfortunes well. "The girl is a stone," the coarse
Trankwillitatin once said of her. But in truth one could not help
sympathizing with her. Her face wore a troubled, wearied expression,
and her eyes grew deeper: a burden beyond her strength was laid on
her young shoulders. David used to see her much oftener than I did.
My father troubled himself very little about him: he knew that David
never listened to him. And Raissa used to appear from time to time at
the gate between our garden and the street, and meet David there. She
did not chatter with David, but merely told him of some new loss or
misfortune that had happened to them, and begged for his advice.

The after-consequences of Latkin's paralysis were very strange: his
hands and feet became weak, but still he could use them. Even his
brain worked normally, but his tongue was confused and used to utter
one word in the place of another: you had to guess at what he really
meant to say. "Choo, choo, choo," he would with difficulty stammer
forth--he always began with "Choo, choo, choo"--"the scissors, the
scissors," but the scissors meant "bread." He hated my father with
all the strength that was left him: he ascribed his sufferings to my
father's curses, and called him sometimes "the butcher," and sometimes
the "jeweler." "Choo, choo, don't you dare to go to the butcher,
Wassilievna:" by this name he called his daughter. Every day he
grew more exacting: his needs increased; and how should his needs be
satisfied? where get the money? Sorrows soon make people old, but
it was painful to hear these questions from the lips of a
sixteen-year-old girl.




XIII.


I remember I happened to be present at her conversation with David by
the hedge on the day her mother died.

"Mother died this morning," first letting her dark, expressive eyes
wander around and then fall on the ground. "The cook has undertaken
to buy a cheap coffin, but she is not to be trusted: she may spend the
money in drink. You must come and look after her, David: she is afraid
of you."

"I will come," answered David: "I will see to it. And your father?"

"He cries and says, 'You'll spoil me, too!'--he means bury him. Now
he has gone to sleep." Raissa suddenly drew a deep sigh: "Oh, David!
David!" She drew her half-closed hand across her brow and eyes, a
gesture graceful and sad, like all her movements.

"But you must take care of yourself," said David. "You can't have
slept at all; and why cry? It won't help matters."

"I have no time to cry," answered Raissa.

"The rich can indulge themselves in the luxury of crying," said David.

Raissa started to go, but she turned back: "We are thinking of
selling the yellow shawl: you know the one that belonged to mother's
trousseau. We have been offered twelve rubles for it. I think that is
too little."

"Yes, indeed, much too little."

"We wouldn't sell it," said Raissa after a short pause, "if we didn't
need money for the funeral."

"Yes, of course, but you mustn't throw money away. These priests--it's
a shame! But wait: I'll be there. Are you going? I'll be there soon.
Good-bye, little dove!"

"Good-bye, brother, dear heart!"

"And don't cry."

"Cry? Cook or cry, one of the two."

"What! does she do the cooking?" I asked of David when Raissa had
gone. "Does she do the cooking herself?"

"You heard what she said: the cook has gone out to buy the coffin."

She cooks, I thought to myself, and she always has such clean hands
and dresses so neatly! I should like to see her in the kitchen. She's
a strange girl.

I remember another conversation by the hedge. This time Raissa had
her little deaf-and-dumb sister with her. She was a pretty child,
with great, startled eyes, and a wilderness of short, dark hair on her
little head: Raissa had also dark, lustreless hair. It was soon after
Latkin's attack of paralysis.

"I don't know what to do," began Raissa: "the doctor has prescribed
something for father, and I must go to the apothecary's'; and our
serf" (Latkin had still one serf left) "has brought us some wood from
the village, and also a goose. But the landlord has taken it away.
'You are in my debt,' he said."

"Did he take the goose?" asked David.

"No, he did not take the goose. 'It's too old,' he said, 'and it's
worth nothing: that's the reason the man brought it to you.'"

"But he had no right to it," cried David.

"He had no right to it, but he took it all the same. I went into the
garret--we have an old chest there--and I hunted through it; and see
what I found." She took out from under her shawl a great spy-glass,
finished in copper and yellow morocco.

David, as an amateur and connoisseur of every kind of instrument,
seized it at once. "An English glass," he said, holding it first at
one eye and then at the other--"a marine telescope."

"And the glasses are whole," continued Raissa. "I showed it to father,
and he said, 'Take it to the jeweler.' What do you think? Will they
give me money for it? Of what use is a telescope to us? If we could
see in the glass how beautiful we are! but we have no looking-glass,
unfortunately."

And when she had said these words she suddenly laughed aloud. Her
little sister could not have heard her, but probably she felt the
shaking of her body: she had hold of Raissa's hand, and raising her
great eyes, she made up a frightened face and began to cry.

"She's always like that," said Raissa: "she doesn't like to have
people laugh.--Here, then, darling, I won't," she added, stooping
down to the child and running, her fingers through its hair. "Do you
see?"

The laughter died away from Raissa's face, and her lips, with the
corners prettily turned up, again became immovable: the child was
quiet.

Raissa stood up: "Here, David, take care of the telescope: it's too
bad about the wood, and the goose, if it is too old."

"We shall certainly get ten rubles for it," said David, turning the
telescope over. "I will buy it of you; and here are fifteen kopecks
for the apothecary: is it enough?"

"I will borrow them of you," whispered Raissa, taking the fifteen
kopecks.

"Yes, indeed; with interest, perhaps? I have a pledge--a very heavy
one. These English are a great people."

"And yet people say we are going to war with them."

"No," answered David: "now we are threatening the French."

"Well, you know best. Don't forget. Good-bye!"




XIV.


One more conversation which I heard at the hedge. Raissa seemed more
than usually troubled. "Five kopecks for the very smallest head of
cabbage!" she said, supporting her head on her hand. "Oh, how dear!
and I have no money from my sewing!"

"Who owes you any?" asked David.

"The shopkeeper's wife, who lives behind the city wall."

"That fat woman who always wears a green sontag?"

"Yes."

"How fat she is!--too fat to breathe. She lights plenty of candles in
church, but she won't pay her debts."

"Oh, she'll pay them--but when? And then, David, I have other
troubles. My father has begun to narrate his dreams; and you know
what trouble he had with his tongue--how he tried to say one word and
uttered another. About his food and things around the house we have
got used to understanding him, but even ordinary people's dreams can't
be understood; and you may judge what his are. He said, 'I am very
glad. I was walking to-day with the white birds, and the Lord
handed me a bouquet, and in the bouquet was Andruscha with a little
knife.'--He always calls my little sister Andruscha.--'Now we shall
both get well: we only need a little knife, and just one cut. That's
the way.' And he pointed to his own throat. I didn't understand
him, but I said, 'All right, father!' but he grew angry and tried to
explain what he meant. At last he burst into tears."

"Yes, but you ought to have made up something--told him some trifling
lie," I interrupted.

"I can't lie," answered Raissa, raising her hands.

True, thought I to myself, _she_ cannot lie.

"There's no need of lying," said David, "nor is there any need of your
killing yourself in this way. Do you suppose any one will thank you
for it?"

Raissa looked at him: "What I wanted to ask you, David, was how do you
spell _should_?"

"What?--_should_?"

"Yes, for instance, 'Should you like to live?'"

"Oh!---_s-h-o-u-d_?"

"No," I interrupted again, "that's not right: not _o-u-d_, but
_o-u-l-d_"

"Well, it's all the same," said David: "spell it with an _l_. The most
important thing is that you should live yourself."

"I wish I knew how to spell and write properly," said Raissa, blushing
slightly.

When she blushed she became at once amazingly pretty.

"It may be of use. Father in his time wrote a beautiful hand: he
taught me it, too. Now he can hardly scrawl the letters."

"You must live for me," answered David, lowering his voice and gazing
at her steadily. Raissa looked up quickly and blushed more deeply.
"Live and spell as you please.--The devil! here's that old witch
coming." (By the witch David meant my aunt.) "What brings her this
way? Run off, my dear."

With one more look at David, Raissa hastened away.

It was only seldom and with great reluctance that David used to talk
with me about Raissa and her family, especially since he had begun to
expect his father's return. He could think of nothing but him, and how
we should then live. He remembered him clearly, and used to describe
him to me with great satisfaction: "Tall, strong: with one hand he
could lift two hundred pounds. If he called, 'I say, boy!' the whole
house could hear him. And such a man as he is--good and brave! I don't
believe there's anything he's afraid of. We lived pleasantly until our
misfortunes came upon us. They say his hair is become perfectly gray,
but it used to be light red like mine. He's a powerful man."

David would never agree that we were going to live in Riasan.

"You'll go away," I used to say, "but I shall stay here."

"Nonsense! we'll take you with us."

"And what'll become of my father?"

"You'll leave him. If you don't, it will be the worse for you."

"How so?"

David merely frowned and made no answer.

"See here: if we go with my father," he resumed, "he will get some
good position: I shall marry--"

"Not so soon as that?" I interrupted.

"Why not? I shall marry soon."

"You?"

"Yes, I; and why not?"

"Have you chosen your wife yet?"

"Of course."

"And who is it?"

David smiled: "How stupid you are! Who but Raissa?"

"Raissa?" I repeated in my amazement. "You're joking."

"I never make jokes: I don't know how to."

"But she's a year older than you?"

"What difference does that make? But we won't talk any more about it."

"Just one question," I persisted. "Does she know that you want to
marry her?"

"Probably."

"But you haven't told her?"

"What is there to tell her? When the time comes I'll tell her. Now,
that's enough." David rose and left the room.

When I was alone I thought it over, and, at last came to the
conclusion that David was acting like a wise and practical man, and I
felt a glow of pride at being the friend of such a practical man.
And Raissa in her eternal black woolen dress suddenly seemed to me
charming and deserving of the most devoted affection.




XV.


But still David's father neither came nor wrote. The year advanced; we
were well into the summer; it was near the end of June. We grew tired
of waiting. Meanwhile, rumors grew thick that Latkin was growing
worse, and that his family, as might have been expected, were
starving, and that their hovel might at anytime fall to pieces and
bury them all in its ruins. David's expression altered, and grew so
fierce and gloomy that every one kept away from him. He also began to
go out more frequently. I no longer met Raissa. At times I saw her in
the distance, hastily walking in the street with light, graceful step,
straight as an arrow, her hands folded, with a sad, thoughtful look in
her eyes, and an expression on her pale face--that was all. My aunt,
with Trankwillitatin for an ally, still kept tormenting me, and
perpetually whispered tauntingly in my ear, "Thief! thief!" But I paid
no attention to her, and my father was very busy and kept traveling in
every direction, without knowing what was going on at home.

Once, as I was going by the well-known apple tree, and more from habit
than intentionally happened to glance at the familiar spot, it seemed
to me suddenly as if the surface of the earth above our treasure
looked different from usual I--as if there were a mound where there
had been a hollow, and as if the place had been disturbed. "What's
the meaning of this?" thought I to myself. "Has any one discovered our
secret and taken the watch?"

I wanted to make sure with my own eyes. I did not care for the watch,
which was rusting in the damp earth, but I didn't want any one else to
have it. So the next day I got up early, went into the garden equipped
with a knife, found the place beneath the apple tree, and began to
dig. I dug a hole almost a yard deep, when I was convinced that the
watch was gone--that some one had found it, taken it, stolen it.

But who could have taken it except David? Who else knew where it was?

I put back the earth and went into the house. I felt aggrieved.
Supposing, I thought, David needs the watch to save his future wife or
her father from starvation--for, say what you will, the watch has some
value--ought he not to have come to me and said, "Brother" (in David's
place I should have certainly said "Brother")--"Brother, I'm in need
of money: you have none, I know, but give me leave to make use of the
watch which we both hid beneath the old apple tree. It's of no use to
any one. I shall be so grateful to you, brother," how gladly I should
have agreed! But to act in this secret, treacherous way, to have no
confidence in one's friend--no passion, no necessity could excuse it.

I repeat it, I was aggrieved. I began to show a coolness, to sulk; but
David was not one to notice anything of that sort and be disturbed
by it. I began to make references to it, but David did not seem to
understand them. I said in his presence, "How contemptible in my
eyes is the human being who has a friend, and who comprehends all
the significance of that sacred feeling, friendship, and yet is not
magnanimous enough to hold himself aloof from slyness! As if anything
could be hidden!" As I said these last words I smiled contemptuously.
But David paid no attention. At last I asked him directly whether our
watch had run long after we buried it, or whether it had stopped at
once. He answered, "How the deuce should I know? Shall I think the
matter over?"

I did not know what to think. David doubtless had something on his
mind, but not the theft of the watch. An unexpected incident convinced
me of his innocence.




XVI.


I was once coming home through a narrow little street which I
generally avoided, because on it was the wing of; a building in which
my enemy Trankwillitatin lived, but this time Fate led me that way. As
I was passing beneath the open window of a drinking-house I suddenly
heard the voice of our servant Wassily, a young, careless fellow, a
big good-for-nothing and a rascal, as my father used to call him, but
also a great conqueror of female hearts, which he attacked by his wit,
his skill in dancing and his music.

"Just hear what they planned between them!" said Wassily, whom I
could not see, though I heard him distinctly: he was probably sitting
drinking tea with a friend close by the window, and, as people in
a closed room often do, spoke loud, without thinking that every
passer-by could hear each word. "What did they plan? They buried it in
the earth."

"You lie!" said the other voice.

"I tell you, that's the sort of boy they are, especially that David.
He's a sharp one. At daybreak I rose and went to the window, and I saw
our two little doves go into the garden, carrying the watch, and under
the apple tree they dug a hole, and there they laid it like a baby;
and then they smoothed the earth, the crazy fellows!"

"The deuce take 'em!" said Wassily's comrade. "Well, what else? You
dug up the watch?"

"Of course I dug it up: I have it now. Only, I can't show it to you.
There was a dreadful row about it. David had taken it that very night
from his aunt's bed. I tell you, he's a great fellow. So I can't show
it to you. But stop: the officers will soon be back. I'll sell it to
one of them, and lose the money at cards."

I listened no longer: at full speed I rushed home and went straight
to David. "Brother," I began--"Brother, forgive me! I have done you
a wrong. I have suspected you: I have blamed you. You see how moved I
am: forgive me."

"What's the matter with you?" asked David: "explain yourself."

"I suspected that you had dug up our watch from under the apple tree."

"That watch again! Isn't it there?"

"It is not there. I thought you'd taken it to help your friends, and
it was that Wassily."

I told David what I had heard beneath the window. But how describe
my astonishment? I thought David would be vexed, but I could not have
expected what really happened, I had hardly finished my story when
he burst into the most ungovernable rage. David, who held this whole
miserable affair, as he called it, of the watch in utter contempt--the
same David who had assured me more than once that it was not worth an
empty egg-shell--he suddenly sprang up, his face aflame, grinding
his teeth and clenching his fist. "That can't be allowed," he said at
last. "How does he dare to take another's property? I'll give him a
lesson. Only wait: I never forgive a rascal."

To this day I don't see what made David so angry. Was he already full
of wrath, and had Wassily's conduct only thrown oil on the flame? Was
he vexed at my suspecting him? I cannot say, but I never saw him so
aroused. I stood before him open-mouthed, and only wondered why he
breathed so hard and heavily.

"What have you decided to do?" I asked finally.

"You'll see after dinner. I'll find that fellow and I'll have a talk
with him."

"Well," thought I, "I should not like to be in that fellow's shoes.
What in the world is going to happen?"

The following happened. As soon as that sleepy, heavy quiet came which
even now falls like a hot feather comforter on a Russian house after
dinner, David went, I following him with a beating heart, into the
servants' hall and called Wassily out. At first he did not want to
come, but finally he concluded to obey and to follow us into the
garden. David stood squarely before him: Wassily was a whole head the
taller.

"Wassily Tarentiev," began my comrade with a firm voice, "six weeks
ago you took from under this apple tree a watch which we had placed
there. You had no right to do that: it was not yours. Give it to me at
once."

Wassily was somewhat amazed, but he soon collected himself: "What
watch? What are you talking about? God knows I haven't any watch."

"I know what I'm saying: don't lie. You have the watch: give it to
me."

"No. I haven't got your watch."

"And in the drinking-house you--" I began, but David held me back.

"Wassily Tarentiev," he said in a low, threatening voice, "we know for
certain that you have the watch. I am in earnest. Give me the watch,
and if you don't give it to me--"

Wassily sniffed insolently: "And what will you do with me, then?"

"What? We will both fight with you until you beat us or we beat you."

Wassily laughed: "Fight? It's not the thing for young gentlemen to
fight with a servant."

David quickly took hold of Wassily's waistcoat. "True, we are not
going to fight with our fists," he said, grinding his teeth. "Listen!
I shall give you a knife and take one myself, and we shall see
who--Alexis!" he called to me, "go and bring me my large knife: you
know--the one with the bone handle: it is lying on the table. I have
the other in my pocket."

Wassily nearly fell to the ground. David still held him by the
waistcoat. "Have mercy on me, David," he stammered forth, the tears
coming into his eyes. "What does this mean? What are you doing? Oh,
let me go!"

"I sha'n't let you go, and you need not expect any mercy. If you're
afraid to-day, we'll try again to-morrow.--Alexis, where's the knife?"

"David," roared Wassily, "don't commit a murder. What do you mean? And
the watch! Well, I was joking. I--I'll fetch it this minute. What a
fellow you are! First you want to cut open Chrisauf Lukitsch; then me.
Leave me, David. Be good enough to take the watch; only say nothing
about it."

David let go of Wassily's waistcoat. I looked at his face. Really,
any one would have been frightened, he looked so fierce and cold and
angry. Wassily ran into the house, and at once returned, bringing the
watch. Without a word he gave it to David, and only when he had got
back again to the house he shouted out from the threshold, "Fie!
what a row!" David shook his head and went into our chamber. I still
followed him. "Suwarow, just like Suwarow," I thought to myself. At
that time, in the year 1801, Suwarow was our first national hero.




XVIII.


David closed the door behind him, laid the watch down on the table,
folded his hands, and, strange to say, burst out laughing. I looked at
him and laughed too. "It's a most extraordinary thing," he began: "we
can't get rid of this watch in any way. It's really bewitched. And why
did I suddenly get so angry?"

"Yes, why?" I repeated. "If you'd left it with Wassily---"

"No, no," interrupted David: "that would have been foolish. But what
shall we do with it now?"

"Yes, what shall we?"

We both looked at the watch and considered, Adorned with a blue string
of pearls (the unhappy Wassily in his terror had not been able to
remove this decoration, which belonged to him), it was going quietly.
It ticked--to be sure somewhat unevenly--and the minute-hand was
slowly advancing.

"Shall we bury it again, or throw it into the river?" I asked at last.
"Or shall we not give it to Latkin?"

"No," answered David, "none of those things. But do you know? At
the governor's office there is a committee to receive gifts for the
benefit of those who were burnt out at Kassimow. They say that the
town of Kassimow, with all its churches, has been burned to the
ground; and I hear they receive everything--not merely bread and
money, but all sorts of things. We'll give the watch, eh?"

"Yes, indeed," I assented. "A capital idea! But I thought since your
friend's family was in need---"

"No, no--to the committee! The Latkins will pull through without that.
To the committee!"

"Well, to the committee--yes, to the committee. Only, I suppose we
must write a line to the governor."

David looked at me: "You suppose?"

"Yes, of course we must write something. Just a few words."

"For example?"

"Well, for example, we might begin, 'Sympathizing,' or, 'Moved by'---"

"'Moved by' will do very well."

"And we must add, 'this mite of ours.'"

"'Mite' is good, too. Now take your pen and sit down and write."

"First a rough draft," I suggested.

"Well, first a rough draft; only write. Meanwhile, I'll polish it up a
little with chalk."

I took a sheet of paper, cut a pen, but had not yet written at the
head of the page, "To his Excellency, to his Highness Prince" (Prince
X---- was the governor of our district), when I started, alarmed by a
strange uproar which suddenly arose in the house. David also noticed
the noise and started, holding the watch in his left hand and the rag
covered with chalk in his right. What was that shrill shriek? It was
my aunt screaming. And that? That is my father's voice, hoarse
with anger. "The watch! the watch!" some one cries, probably
Trankwillitatin. The stamping of feet, the creaking of the stairs, the
rush of the crowd, are all coming straight toward us. I am nearly dead
with fright, and even David is as pale as a sheet, but his eye is as
bold as an eagle's. "That wretched Wassily has betrayed us," he
hisses between his teeth. The door opens wide, and my father in
his dressing-gown, without a cravat, my aunt in a dressing-sack,
Trankwillitatin, Wassily, Juschka, another young fellow, Agapit the
cook, all hustle into the room.

"You fiends!" cries my father almost breathless, "at last we have
found you out!" And, catching a glimpse of the watch in David's hand,
he cries out, "Give me the watch--give it to me!"

But David without a word springs to the open window, from that into
the yard, and thence into the street. Since I always, in everything I
do, follow my model, also jump from the window and run after David.

"Stop them! hold them!" confused voices cry after us.

But we tear along the street, bareheaded, David in front, I a few
steps behind, and in the distance we hear the clatter of their feet
and their cries.




XIX.


Many years have passed since this happened, and I have often thought
it over, and to this day I cannot comprehend the fury which possessed
my father, who not long before had forbidden any one's speaking about
the watch because it bored him, any more than I can David's wrath when
he heard that Wassily had taken it. I can't help thinking it had some
mysterious power. Wassily had not told about us, as David supposed--he
did not want to do that, he had been too badly frightened--but one
of the servant-girls had seen the watch in his hands and had told my
aunt. Then all the fat was in the fire.

So we ran along the street in the carriage-way. The people who met us
stood still or got out of our way, without knowing what was going
on. I remember an old retired major, who was a great hunter, suddenly
appeared at his window, and, his face crimson, leaning halfway out, he
cried aloud, "Tally ho!" as if he were at a chase. "Stop them!" they
kept crying behind us. David ran, swinging the watch over his head,
only seldom jumping: I also jumped at the same places.

"Where?" I cried to David, seeing him turn from the street into a
little lane, into which I also turned.

"To the Oka," he answered. "Into the water with it! into the river!"
"Stop! stop!" they roared behind us. But we were already running along
the lane. A puff of cool air meets us, and there is the river, and the
dirty steep bank, and the wooden bridge with a long train of wagons,
and the sentinel armed with a pike stands at the toll-gate. In those
days the soldiers used to carry pikes. David is already on the bridge:
he dashes by the sentinel, who tries to trip him up with his pike,
and instead hits a calf coming the other way. David jumps on the rail,
utters a great cry, and something white and something blue flash and
sparkle through the air: they are the silver watch and Wassily's
row of pearls flying into the water. But then something incredible
happens. After the watch fly David's feet and his whole body, head
downward, hands foremost: his coat, flying in the air, describes a
curve through the air--in hot days frightened frogs jump just that way
from a height into the water--and disappears over the railing of the
bridge, and then, flash! and a great shower of water is dashed up from
below. What I did I am sure I do not know. I was only a few steps from
David when he sprang from the railing, but I can't remember whether
I cried out. I don't think I was even frightened: it was as if I had
been struck by lightning. I lost all consciousness: my hands and feet
were powerless. People ran and pushed by me: some of them it seemed as
if I knew. Suddenly Trofimytsch appeared. The sentinel ran off to one
side: the horses walked hastily over the bridge, their heads in the
air. Then everything grew green, and some one was beating my neck
and down my back. I had fainted. I remember that I rose, and when
I noticed that no one was paying any attention to me, I went to the
railing, but not on the side from which David had jumped--to go there
seemed to me terrible--but to the other side, and looked down into the
blue, swollen stream. I remember noticing by the shore, not far from
the bridge, a boat was lying, and in the boat were some people, and
one of them, all wet and glistening in the sun, leaned over the side
of the boat and pulled something out of the water--something not very
large--a long, dark thing, which I at first took for a trunk or a
basket; but on looking more carefully I made out that this thing was
David. Then I began to tremble: I cried out as loud as I could, and
ran toward the boat, forcing my way through the crowd. But as I came
near I lost my courage and began to look behind me. Among the people
standing about I recognized Trankwillitatin, the cook Agapit with a
boot in his hand, Juschka, Wassily. The wet man was lifting David out
of the boat. Both of David's hands were raised as high as his face, as
if he wanted to protect himself from strangers' eyes. He was laid on
his back in the mud on the shore. He did not move. Perfectly straight,
like a soldier on parade, with his heels together and his chest out.
His face had a greenish hue, his eyes were closed, and the water was
dripping from his hair. The man who had pulled him out was, judging
from his dress, a mill-hand: shivering with cold and perpetually
brushing his hair from his brow, he began to tell us how he had
succeeded. He spoke slowly and clearly: "You see, gentlemen, how it
was. As this young man falls from the bridge, well, I run down stream,
for I know if he has fallen into the current it will carry him under
the bridge; and then I see something--what is it?--something like a
rough cap is floating down: it's his head. Well, I jump into the water
and take hold of him: there's nothing remarkable in that."

I could hear scattered remarks of the crowd. "You must warm yourself:
we'll take something hot together," said some one.

Then some one forces his way to the front--it is Wassily. "What are
you all doing here?" he cries piteously. "We must bring him to life.
He's our young master."

"Bring him to life! bring him to life!" is heard in the ever-growing
crowd.

"We must hold him up by the feet."

"Hold him up by the feet! That's the best thing."

"And roll him up and down on a barrel until---Here, take hold of him."

"Don't touch him," the sentinel interrupts: "he must go to the
guard-house."

"Nonsense!" is heard in Trofimytsch's deep bass, no one knows whence.

"But he's alive!" I cried suddenly, almost alarmed.

I had put my face near his. I was thinking, "That's the way drowned
people look," and my heart was near breaking, when all at once I saw
David's lips quiver and some water flowing from them. Immediately I
was shoved away and everybody crowded about him. "Swing him I swing
him!" some cry.

"No, no, don't!" cried Wassily: "take him home."

"Take him home," even Trankwillitatin cried.

"He'll be there in a moment: then he'll be better," continued Wassily.
(I loved him from that day.) "Friends, is there no mat there? If not,
I'll take him by the head and some one else by the heels."

"Hold on! here's a mat: lay him on it. All right: it's as comfortable
as a carriage."

And a few minutes later, David, lying on a litter, made his entrance
into the house.




XX.


He was undressed and put into bed. Already, while carried through the
street, he had given signs of life, sighing and moving his hands: in
his chamber he came to full consciousness. But as soon as he was out
of danger and was no longer in need of their care, dissatisfaction
asserted itself. Every one withdrew from him as from a leper. "May
Heaven punish him, the red-headed devil!" roared my aunt through the
whole house. "Send him away somewhere, Porphyr Petrovitch, or he'll be
the ruin of you yet."

"He is indeed a viper, and the devil is in him," added Trankwillitatin
sympathetically.

"And such viciousness!" shouted my aunt, passing close by our door, so
that David could not help hearing her. "First he stole the watch, and
then into the water with it, so that no one should have it. Yes, yes,
redhead!"

"David," asked I as soon as we were alone, "why did you do that?"

"And you too!" he answered, still with a feeble voice. His lips were
blue, and he looked all puffed up. "What did I do?"

"Why did you jump into the water?"

"Jump? I couldn't stand on the railing, that's all. If I had known how
to swim--if I had jumped on purpose--I shall learn at once. But the
watch is gone."

But my father entered the room with a solemn step. "As for you, my
young sir," he said to me, "you can expect a sound thrashing, even if
you are too big for me to take you across my knee." Then he walked up
to the bed on which David lay, "In Siberia," he began in an earnest
and serious tone--"in Siberia, in the house of correction, in the
mines, live and die people who are less guilty, who are less criminal,
than you. Are you a suicide, or only a thief, or a perfect fool? Just
tell me that, if you please."

"I am neither a suicide nor a thief," answered David, "but what is
true is true: in Siberia there are good people, better than you and I.
Who knows that better than you do?"

My father uttered a little cry, took a step back, looked at David,
spat on the floor, crossed himself and went out.

"Didn't you like that?" asked David, sticking out his tongue. Then he
tried to rise, but he was still too weak. "I must have hit something,"
he said, groaning and frowning. "I remember the current carried me
against a pier.--Have you seen Raissa?" he asked suddenly.

"No I have not seen her. Stop! I remember now. Wasn't she standing on
the shore near the bridge? Yes--a black dress, a yellow handkerchief
on her head--that was she."

"Well, you did see her?"

"I don't know. After that--I--you jumped in then."

David became restless: "Alexis, my dear friend, go to her at once:
tell her I'm well--that there's nothing the matter. To-morrow I'll go
and see hen Go at once, please, to oblige me." He stretched out
both arms toward me. His red hair had dried into all sorts of funny
ringlets, but his look of entreaty was only the more genuine. I took
my hat and left the house, trying to avoid my father's eye lest I
should remind him of his promise.




XXI.


And indeed I thought on my way to the Latkins how it was possible that
I did not notice Raissa. Where had she disappeared to? She must have
seen--Suddenly I remembered that at the very moment David was falling
a heartrending shriek had sounded in my ears. Was it not she? But
in that case why did I not see her? Before the hovel in which Latkin
lived was an empty space covered with nettles and surrounded by a
broken, tottering fence. I had hardly got over this fence--for there
was no gate or entrance--before my eyes were greeted with this sight:
On the lowest step in front of the house sat Raissa, her elbows on
her knees and holding her chin in her folded hands: she was looking
straight out into vacancy. Near her stood her little dumb sister,
playing quietly with a whip, and before the steps, with his back to
me, was Latkin in a shabby, torn jacket, his feet in felt slippers,
bending over her and brandishing his elbows and stalking about. When
he heard my steps he turned round, leant down on the tips of his toes,
and then suddenly sprang at me and began to speak with unusual speed
in a quivering voice and with an incessant "Choo, choo, choo!" I was
amazed. It was long since I had seen him, and I should scarcely
have known him if I had met him anywhere else. This wrinkled, red,
toothless face, these small, round, dull eyes, this tangled gray hair,
these contortions and motions, this senseless, wandering talk,--what
does it all mean? What cruel suffering torments this unhappy being?
What a dance of death is this!

"Choo, choo, choo," he muttered, bending over continually: "see them,
the Wassilievna--she's just come, with a trou--a trough on the roof"
(he struck his head with his hand), "and she sits there like a shovel,
and cross, cross as Andruscha, the cross Wassilievna" (he meant,
probably, "mute"). "Choo; my cross Wassilievna! Now they are both on
one last--just see her! I have only these two doctors."

Latkin was evidently aware that he was not saying what he meant, and
he made every effort to explain matters to me. Raissa, apparently, did
not hear what he was saying, and her little sister went on snapping
her whip. My head grew confused. "What does it all mean?" I asked of
an old woman who was looking out of the window of the house.

"What does it mean, sir?" answered she in a sing-song voice. "They say
some one--Heaven knows who it was--tried to drown himself, and she saw
him. That frightened her, but she managed to get home: no one noticed
anything strange, and she sat down there on the threshold, and since
then she's sat there like an image, whether one speaks to her or not.
It's as if she had no tongue."

"Good-bye! good-bye!" repeated Latkin, still with the same gestures.

I walked to Raissa and stood just before her. "Raissa," I cried, "what
is the matter?"

She made no answer: it was as if she had not heard me. Her face was no
paler, nor in any way different, except that it had a stony look and
an expression of slight fatigue.

"She is cross too," Latkin whispered to me.

I took Raissa by the hand. "David is alive." I cried louder than
before--"alive and unhurt. David is alive: do you understand? They
have taken him out of the water, he is now at home, and he has sent
word that he will come to-morrow to see you. He is alive."

Raissa turned her eyes toward me slowly, as if it hurt her: she winked
them two or three times, opened them wider: then she turned her head
to one side, flushed suddenly, parted her lips, drew a full breath,
frowned as if from pain and with great effort, bringing out the words,
"Da--Dav--is--al--alive," and rose hastily from the steps and rushed
away.

"Where are you going?" I inquired.

But, laughing gently, she flew over the ground. I of course hastened
after her, while behind us was a sound of voices--the aged one that
of Latkin, and the childish cry that of the deaf mute. Raissa went
straight to our house.

"What a day this has been!" I thought to myself as I tried to keep up
with the black dress that flew along in front of me.

Raissa ran past Wassily, my aunt, and even Trankwilhtatin, into the
room in which David was lying, and threw herself on his breast. "Oh,
oh, David!" came her voice forth from under her loosened hair.
And raising his arms he embraced her and let his head rest on her
shoulder.

"Forgive me, dear," I heard him say, and both nearly died with joy.

"But why did you go home, Raissa? Why didn't you wait?" I asked. She
still did not raise her head. "You might have seen that he was saved."

"Oh, I don't know, I don't know: don't ask me. I don't know: I can't
recall how I got home. I only remember I was looking into the air, and
a blow hit me; but that was--"

"A blow?" repeated David, and we all three burst out laughing, for we
were very happy.

"But what's going on here?" roared a threatening voice behind us,
the voice of my father. He was standing in the doorway. "Will these
monkey-tricks come to an end or not? Where are we living? In the
Russian empire or in the French republic?" He came into the room. "Let
any one who is turbulent and vicious begone to France.--And how do
you dare to enter here?" he asked of Raissa, who, rising a little
and turning her face toward him, was evidently alarmed, although she
continued to smile gently. "The daughter of my sworn enemy! How have
you dared? And to embrace him too! Away with you at once, or--"

"Uncle," said David, raising himself in bed, "don't insult Raissa: she
will go, but don't insult her."

"Will you order me about? I am not insulting her, I'm not _insulting_
her: I merely order her out of the house. I shall yet call you to
account. You have made away with another's property: you have laid
violent hands upon yourself; you have damaged--"

"What have I damaged?" interrupted David.

"What have you damaged? You have ruined your clothes: do you consider
that nothing? I had to give money to the people who brought you here.
You frightened the whole family, and you still put on your airs. And
this girl, who has lost all sense of shame and honor--"

David tried to spring from the bed: "Don't you insult her, I tell
you."

"Silence!"

"Don't you dare--"

"Silence!"


"Don't you dare to insult the woman I am going to marry, my future
wife," cried David with all his might.

"Going to marry! your wife!" repeated my father, his eyes rolling.
"Your wife! ho! ho! ho!" ("Ha! ha! ha!" echoed my aunt outside the
door.) "How old are you? A year less one week has he been in this
world--he's hardly weaned yet--and he wants to get married! I shall--"

"Let me go! let me go!" whispered Raissa, turning to the door.

"I shall not ask your permission," shouted David, supporting himself
on his hands, "but my own father's, who will be back to-day or
to-morrow. He can command me, not you; and as for my age, both Raissa
and I can wait. You can say what you please: we shall wait."

"David, think a moment," interrupted my father: "take care what you
say. You are beside yourself: you have forgotten all respect."

David grasped his shirt where it lay across his breast. "Whatever you
may say," he repeated.

"Stop his mouth, Porphyr Petrovitch--silence him!" hissed my aunt from
the door; "and as for this baggage, this--"

But something strange cut my aunt's eloquence short: her voice became
suddenly silent, and in its place was heard another, weak and hoarse
from age. "Brother!" exclaimed this weak voice--"Christian souls!"




XXIII.


We all turned round. Before us, in the same dress in which I had just
seen him, stood Latkin, looking like a ghost, thin, haggard and sad.
"God," he said in a somewhat childish way, raising his trembling, bent
figure and gazing feebly at my father--"God has punished, and I have
come for Wa--for Ra--yes, yes, for Raissa. What--choo--what ails
me? Soon I shall be laid--what do you call that thing? a
staff--straight--and that other thing?--a prop. That's all I need, and
you, brother jeweler, see: I too am a man."

Raissa crossed the room without a word, and while she supported her
father she buttoned his jacket.

"Let us go, Wassilievna," he said. "All here are saints: don't go near
them; and he who lies there in a case," pointing to David, "is also
a saint. But we, brother, you and I, are sinners. Choo, gentlemen:
excuse an old, broken-down man. We have stolen together," he cried
suddenly--"stolen together, stolen together," he repeated with evident
joy: at last he had control of his tongue.

All of us in the room were silent. "But where is your picture of the
saints?" he inquired, gazing about: "we must cleanse ourselves."

In one corner he began to pray, crossing himself humbly, so that he
touched first one shoulder, then another. "Have mercy, Lord! on my,
on my--" My father, who had watched closely without speaking a word,
suddenly started, came near him, and began to cross himself. Then he
turned and bowed so low that his hand nearly touched the floor, and
said, "Do you also forgive me, Martinian Gavrilitsch," and he kissed
his shoulder. Latkin answered by kissing in the air and winking his
eyes: he evidently hardly knew what he was doing. Then my father
turned to all who were in the room--to David, Raissa and me. "Do what
you please, do whatever you think you may," he said in a low, sad
voice, and he left the room, completely broken down.

"Lord my! Lord my! have mercy on me!" repeated Latkin. "I am a man."

"Good-bye, David," said Raissa, leaving the room with her father.

"I'll be with you to-morrow," shouted David after her; and turning his
face to the wall he muttered, "I am very tired: I should like to go to
sleep;" and he became quiet.

For a long time I lingered there. I could not forget my father's
threat. But my fears proved groundless. He met me, but he uttered no
word. He too seemed uncomfortable. Besides, it soon was night and all
in the house went to rest.




XXIV.


The next day David got up as if nothing had happened, and not long
afterward, on one and the same day, two important events took place:
in the morning died the old Latkin, Raissa's father, and in the
evening Jegor, David's father, arrived. Since he had not sent any
letter or told any one, he took us all by surprise. My father exerted
himself actively to give him a warm reception. He flew about as if he
were crazy, and was as attentive as if he owed him money. But all his
brother's efforts seemed to leave my uncle cold: he kept saying, "Why
do you do that?" or, "I don't need anything." He was even cooler with
my aunt; besides, he paid very little attention to her. In her eyes
he was an atheist, a heretic, a Voltairian (in fact, he had learned
French in order to read Voltaire in the original). I found Uncle Jegor
as David had described him. He was a large, heavy man, with a broad,
pock-marked face, grave and serious. He always wore a hat with a
feather in it, frills and ruffles, and a tobacco-colored jacket, with
a steel sword by his side. David took a great deal of pleasure in him:
he even grew more cheerful and better-looking, and his eyes changed:
they became merry, quick and brilliant. But he always tried to
moderate his joy and not to give it expression: he was afraid of
appearing weak. The first evening after my uncle's return they two,
father and son, shut themselves! up in a separate room and talked
together in a low voice for a long time. The next morning I noticed
that my uncle looked at David with great confidence and affection: he
appeared very well pleased with him. David carried; him to Latkin's
funeral services at the church. I also went: my father made no
objection, but he remained at home. Raissa's calm surprised me: she
had grown pale and thin, but she shed no tears, and her words and
actions were very simple. In everything she did I noticed, strangely
enough, a certain majesty--the majesty of grief, which forgets itself.
At the entrance of the church Uncle Jegor was introduced to her. It
was evident from his manner that David had spoken to him of her. She
pleased him as much as did his son. I could see that in David's face
when I next looked at it. I remember how it glowed when his father
said of her in his presence, "She's an intelligent girl: she will be
a good housewife." At Latkin's house they told me that the old man
had gone quietly, like a burned-out taper, and that so long as he had
strength and consciousness he had stroked his daughter's hair,
had said something unintelligible, but not sad, and had smiled
continually. At the burial my father went to the church and to the
graveyard.

Even Trankwillitatin sang in the choir. At the grave' Raissa burst
suddenly into sobs and threw herself, face downward, on the ground,
but she rose immediately. Her little sister, the deaf mute, looked at
everything with great, bright, somewhat dull eyes: from time to time
she drew near Raissa, but she did not seem at all afraid. The second
day after the funeral, Uncle Jegor, who, apparently, had not come back
from Siberia empty-handed (he had paid all the funeral expenses and
given David's preserver a generous reward)--who had said nothing of
his life there nor of his plans for the future--Uncle Jegor, I say,
said to my father that he had determined not to stay in Riasan, but
to go with his son to Moscow. My father politely expressed his regret,
and even tried, though very gently, to alter my uncle's decision, but
in the depths of his soul I fancy he was very glad. The presence
of his brother--with whom he had too little in common, who had not
honored him with even a single reproach, who did not even despise him,
who simply took no pleasure in him--was wearisome to him, and parting
from David gave him no especial uneasiness. This separation, of
course, nearly broke my heart: at first I was really bereaved, and I
felt as if I had lost every comfort and joy in life.

So my uncle went off and took with him not only David, but, to our
great surprise, and even to the great dissatisfaction of our street,
Raissa and her little sister. When my aunt heard of this she called
him a Turk, and a Turk she called him till her death.

And I was left alone, alone, but it makes no difference about me.




XXV.


That is the end of my story about the watch. What shall I add to it?
Five years later David married "Little Black-lip," and in the year
1812 he died, a lieutenant in the artillery, the death of a hero at
the battle of Borodino, defending the redoubt of Schewardino. Since
then a great deal of water has run into the sea, and I have had many
watches: I have even been so magnificent as to have a real Breguet
repeater with second-hand and the day of the month. But in the secret
drawer of my desk lies an old silver watch with a rose on the case: I
bought it of a Jew peddler, struck by its resemblance to the watch my
godfather gave me. From time to time, when I am alone and expect no
visitor, I take it out of its case, and when I look at it I think
of my youth and the companions of those days which are gone never to
return.




TRANSLATIONS FROM HEINE.


  I.--CHILDE HAROLD.

  Lo, a large, black-shrouded barge
    Sadly moves with sails outspread,
  And mute creatures' muffled features
    Hold grim watch above the dead.

  Calm below it lies the poet,
    With his fair face bare and white,
  Still with yearning ever turning
    Azure eyes toward heaven's light.

  As he saileth, sadly waileth
    Some bereaven Undine bride:
  O'er the springing waves outringing,
    Hark! a dirge floats far and wide.


  II.--SPRING FESTIVAL.

  This is the springtide's mournful feast:
    The frantic troops of blooming girls
    Are rushing hither with flying curls:
  Moaning they smite their bare white breast,
          Adonis! Adonis!

  The night hath come. By the torches' gleams
    They search the forest on every side,
    That echoes with anguish far and wide,
  With tears, mad laughter, and sobs and screams,
          Adonis! Adonis!

  The mortal youth, so strangely fair,
    Lies on the cold turf pale and dead:
    His heart's blood staineth the flowers red,
  And a wild lament fulfills the air,
          Adonis! Adonis!

EMMA LAZARUS.




LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA.

BY LADY BARKER.


D'URBAN, January 3, 1876.

I must certainly begin this letter by setting aside every other
topic for the moment and telling you of our grand event, our national
celebration, our historical New Year's Day. We have "turned the first
sod" of our first inland railway, and, if I am correctly informed, at
least a dozen sods more, but you must remember, if you please, that
our navvies are Kafirs, and that they do _not_ understand what Mr.
Carlyle calls the beauty and dignity of labor in the least. It is
all very well for you conceited dwellers in the Old and New Worlds to
laugh at us for making such a fuss about a projected hundred miles of
railway--you whose countries are made into dissected maps by the magic
iron lines--but for poor us, who have to drag every pound of sugar and
reel of sewing-cotton over some sixty miles of vile road between this
and Maritzburg, such a line, if it be ever finished, will be a boon
and a blessing indeed.

I think I can better make you understand _how_ great a blessing if
I describe my journeys up and down--journeys made, too, under
exceptionally favorable circumstances. The first thing which had to
be done, some three weeks before the day of our departure, was to
pack and send down by wagon a couple of portmanteaus with our smart
clothes. I may as well mention here that the cost of the transit
came to fourteen shillings each way for three or four small, light
packages, and that on each occasion we were separated from our
possessions for a fortnight or more. The next step to be taken was to
secure places in the daily post-cart, and it required as much mingled
firmness and persuasion to do this as though it had reference to
a political crisis. But then there were some hundreds of us
Maritzburgians all wanting to be taken down to D'Urban within the
space of a few days, and there was nothing to take us except the open
post-cart, which occupied six hours on the journey, and an omnibus,
which took ten hours, but afforded more shelter from possible rain and
probable sun. Within the two vehicles some twenty people might, at a
pinch, find places, and at least a hundred wanted to go every day of
that last week of the old year. I don't know how the others managed:
they must have got down somehow, for there they were in great force
when the eventful day had arrived.

This first journey was prosperous, deceitfully prosperous, as though
it would fain try to persuade us that after all there was a great deal
to be said in favor of a mode of traveling which reminded one of the
legends of the glories of the old coaching days. No dust--for there
had been heavy rain a few days before--a perfect summer's day, hot
enough in the sun, but not disagreeably hot as we bowled along, fast
as four horses could go, in the face of a soft, balmy summer breeze.
We were packed as tightly as we could fit--two of us on the coach-box,
with the mail-bags under our feet and the driver's elbows in our ribs.
The ordinary light dog-cart which daily runs between Maritzburg and
D'Urban was exchanged for a sort of open break, strong indeed, but
very heavy, one would fancy, for the poor horses, who had to scamper
along up and down veldt and berg, over bog and spruit, with this
lumbering conveyance at their heels. Not for long, though: every seven
miles, or even less, we pulled up--sometimes at a tidy inn, where a
long table would be set in the open verandah laden with eatables
(for driving fast through the air sharpens even the sturdy colonial
appetite), sometimes at a lonely shanty by the roadside, from whence
a couple of Kafir lads emerged tugging at the bridles of the fresh
horses. But I am bound to say that although each of these teams did
a stage twice a day, although they were ill-favored and ill-groomed,
their harness shabby beyond description, and their general appearance
most forlorn, they were one and all in good condition and did their
work in first-rate style. The wheelers were generally large, gaunt and
most hideous animals, but the leaders often were ponies who, one could
imagine, under happier circumstances might be handsome little horses
enough, staunch and willing to the last degree. They knew their
driver's cheery voice as well as possible, and answered to every cry
and shout of encouragement he gave them as we scampered along. Of
course, each horse had its name, and equally of course "Sir Garnet"
was there in a team with "Lord Gifford" and "Lord Carnarvon" for
leaders. Did we come to a steep hillside, up which any respectable
English horse would certainly expect to walk in a leisurely, sober
fashion, then our driver shook out his reins, blew a ringing blast
on his bugle, and cried, "Walk along, Lord Gifford! think as you've
another Victoriar Cross to get top o' this hill! Walk along, Lord
Carnarvon! you ain't sitting in a cab'net council _here_, you know.
Don't leave Sir Garnet do all the work, you know. Forward, my lucky
lads! creep up it!" and by the time he had shrieked out this and a
lot more patter, behold! we were at the top of the hill, and a fresh,
lovely landscape was lying smiling in the sunshine below us. It was
a beautiful country we passed through, but, except for a scattered
homestead here and there by the roadside, not a sign of a human
dwelling on all its green and fertile slopes. How the railway is to
drag itself up and round all those thousand and one spurs running into
each other, with no distinct valley or flat between, is best known to
the engineers and surveyors, who have declared it practicable. To the
non-professional eye it seems not only difficult, but impossible. But
oh how it is wanted! All along the road shrill bugle-blasts warned the
slow, trailing ox-wagons, with their naked "forelooper" at their head,
to creep aside out of our way, I counted one hundred and twenty wagons
that day on fifty miles of road. Now, if one considers that each of
these wagons is drawn by a span of some thirty or forty oxen, one has
some faint idea of how such a method of transport must waste and use
up the material of the country. Something like ten thousand oxen toil
over this one road summer and winter, and what wonder is it not only
that merchandise costs more to fetch up from D'Urban to Maritzburg
than it does to bring it out from England, but that beef is dear and
bad! As transport pays better than farming, we hear on all sides of
farms thrown out of cultivation, and as a necessary consequence milk,
butter, and so forth are scarce and poor, and in the neighborhood of
Maritzburg, at least, it is esteemed a favor to let you have either at
exorbitant prices and of most inferior quality. When one looks round
at these countless acres of splendid grazing-land, making a sort of
natural park on either hand, it seems like a bad dream to know that we
have constantly to use preserved milk and potted meat as being cheaper
and easier to procure than fresh.

No one was in any mood, however, to discuss political economy that
beautiful day, and we laughed and chatted, and ate a great many
luncheons, chiefly of tea and peaches, all the way along. Our driver
enlivened the route by pointing out various spots where frightful
accidents had occurred to the post-cart on former occasions: "You see
that big stone? Well, it war jest there that Langabilile and Colenso,
they takes the bits in their teeth, those 'osses do, and they sets off
their own pace and their own way. Jim Stanway, he puts his brake down
hard and his foot upon the reins, but, Lord love you! them beasts
would ha' pulled his arms and legs both off afore they'd give in. So
they runs poor Jim's near wheel right up agin that bank and upsets the
whole concern, as neat as needs be, over agin that bit o' bog. Anybody
hurt? Well, yes: they was all what you might call shook. Mr. Bell, he
had his arm broke, and a foreign chap from the diamond-fields, he gets
killed outright, and Jim himself had his head cut open. It was a bad
business, you bet, and rough upon Jim. Ja!"

All the driver's conversation is interlarded with "Ja," but he never
says a worse word than that, and he drinks nothing but tea. As for
a pipe, or a cigar even, when it is offered to him he screws up his
queer face into a droll grimace and says, "No--thanks. I want all
my nerves, I do, on this bit of road.--Walk along, Lady Barker: I'm
ashamed of you, I am, hanging your head like that at a bit of a hill!"
It was rather startling to hear this apostrophe all of a sudden, but
as my namesake was a very hard-working little brown mare, I could only
laugh and declare myself much flattered.

Here we are at last, amid the tropical vegetation which makes a green
and tangled girdle around D'Urban for a dozen miles inland: yonder is
the white and foaming line of breakers which marks where the strong
current, sweeping down the east coast, brings along with it all the
sand and silt it can collect, especially from the mouth of the Umgeni
River close by, and so forms the dreaded bar, which divides the
outer from the inner harbor. Beyond this crisp and sparkling line of
heaving, tossing snow stretches the deep indigo-blue of the Indian
Ocean, whilst over all wonderful sunset tints of opal and flame-color
are hovering and changing with the changing, wind-driven clouds.
Beneath our wheels are many inches of thick white sand, but the
streets are gay and busy, with picturesque coolies in their bright
cotton draperies and swiftly-passing Cape carts and vehicles of all
sorts. We are in D'Urban indeed--D'Urban in unwonted holiday dress and
on the tippest tiptoe of expectation and excitement. A Cape cart, with
a Chinese coolie driver, and four horses apparently put in harness
together for the first time, was waiting for us and our luggage at the
post-office. We got into it, and straight-way began to plunge through
the sandy streets once more, turning off the high-road and beginning
almost immediately to climb with pain and difficulty the red sandy
slopes of the Berea, a beautiful wooded upland dotted with villas. The
road is terrible for man and beast, and we had to stop every few yards
to breathe the horses. At last our destination is reached, through
fields of sugar-cane and plantations of coffee, past luxuriant fruit
trees, rustling, broad-leafed bananas and encroaching greenery of
all sorts, to a clearing where a really handsome house stands, with
hospitable, wide-open doors, awaiting us. Yes, a good big bath first,
then a cup of tea, and now we are ready for a saunter in the twilight
on the wide level terrace (called by the ugly Dutch name "stoop")
which runs round three sides of the house. How green and fragrant and
still it all is! Straight-way the glare of the long sunny day, the
rattle and jolting of the post-cart, the toil through the sand, all
slip away from mind and memory, and the tranquil delicious present,
"with its-odors of rest and of love," slips in to soothe and calm our
jaded senses. Certainly, it is hotter here than in Maritzburg--that
assertion we are prepared to die in defence of--but we acknowledge
that the heat at this hour is _not_ oppressive, and the tropical
luxuriance of leaf and flower all around is worth a few extra degrees
of temperature. Of course, our talk is of to-morrow, and we look
anxiously at the purpling clouds to the west.

"A fine day," says our host; and so it ought to be with five thousand
people come from far and wide to see the sight. Why, that is more
than a quarter of the entire white population of Natal! Bed and sleep
become very attractive suggestions, though made indecently soon after
dinner, and it is somewhere about ten o'clock when they are carried
out, and, like Lord Houghton's famous "fair little girl," we

  Know nothing more till again it is day.

A fine day, too, is this same New Year's Day of 1876--a glorious
day--sunny of course, but with a delicious breeze stealing among the
flowers and shrubs in capricious puffs, and snatching a differing
scent from each heavy cluster of blossom it visits. By mid-day F----
has got himself into his gold-laced coat and has lined the inside of
his cocked hat with plaintain-leaves.

He has also groaned much at the idea of substituting this futile
head-gear for his hideous but convenient pith helmet. I too have
donned my best gown, and am horrified to find how much a smart bonnet
(the first time I have needed to wear one since I left England) sets
off and brings out the shades of tan in a sun-browned face; and for
a moment I too entertain the idea of retreating once more to the
protecting depths of my old shady hat. But a strong conviction of the
duty one owes to a "first sod," and the consoling reflection that,
after all, everybody will be equally brown (a fallacy, by the way:
the D'Urban beauties looked very blanched by this summer weather),
supported me, and I followed F---- and his cocked hat into the waiting
carriage.

No need to ask, "Where are we to go?" All roads lead to the first
sod to-day. We are just a moment late: F---- has to get out of the
carriage and plunge into the sand, madly rushing off to find and fall
into his place in the procession, and we turn off to secure our seats
in the grand stand. But before we take them I must go and look at
the wheelbarrow and spade, and above all at the "first sod." For some
weeks past it has been a favorite chaff with us Maritzburgians to
offer to bring a nice fresh, lively sod down with us, but we were
assured D'Urban could furnish one. Here it is exactly under the
triumphal arch, looking very faded and depressed, with a little
sunburned grass growing feebly on it, but still a genuine sod and no
mistake. The wheelbarrow was really beautiful, made of native woods
with their astounding names. All three specimens of the hardest and
handsomest yellow woods were there, and they were described to me as,
"stink-wood, breeze-wood and sneeze-wood." The rich yellow of the wood
is veined by handsome dark streaks, with "1876" inlaid in large black
figures in the centre. The spade was just a common spade, and could
not by any possibility be called anything else. But there is no time
to linger and laugh any longer beneath all these fluttering streamers
and waving boughs, for here are the Natal Carbineers, a plucky little
handful of light horse clad in blue and silver, who have marched, at
their own charges, all the way down from Maritzburg to help keep the
ground this fine New Year's Day. Next come a strong body of Kafir
police, trudging along through the dust with odd shuffling gait,
bended knees, bare legs, bodies leaning forward, and keeping step and
time by means of a queer sort of barbaric hum and grunt. Policemen
are no more necessary than my best bonnet: they are only there for the
same reason--for the honor and glory of the thing. The crowd is kept
in order by somebody here and there with a ribboned wand, for it is
the most orderly and respectable crowd you ever saw. In fact, such
a crowd would be an impossibility in England or any highly-civilized
country. There are no dodging vagrants, no slatternly women, no
squalid, starving babies. In fact, our civilization has not yet
mounted to effervescence, so we have no dregs. Every white person on
the ground was well clad, well fed, and apparently well-to-do. The
"lower orders" were represented by a bright fringe of coolies and
Kafirs, sleek, grinning and as fat as ortolans, especially the babies.
Most of the Kafirs were dressed in snow-white knickerbockers and
shirts bordered by gay bands of color, with fillets of scarlet ribbon
tied round their heads, while as for the coolies, they shone out like
a shifting bed of tulips, so bright were the women's _chuddahs_ and
the men's jackets. All looked smiling, healthy and happy, and the
public enthusiasm rose to its height when to the sound of a vigorous
band (it is early yet in the day, remember, O flute and trombone!) a
perfect liliputian mob of toddling children came on the ground. These
little people were all in their cleanest white frocks and prettiest
hats: they clung to each other and to their garlands and staves of
flowers until the tangled mob reminded one of a May-Day fete. Not that
any English May Day of my acquaintance could produce such a lavish
profusion of roses and buds and blossoms of every hue and tint, to
say nothing of such a sun and sky. The children's corner was literally
like a garden, and nothing could be prettier than the effect of their
little voices shrilling up through the summer air, as, obedient to a
lifted wand, they burst into the chorus of the national anthem when
the governor and mayor drove up. Cheers from white throats; gruff,
loud shouts all together of _Bayete!_ (the royal salute) and _Inkosi!_
("chieftain") from black throats; yells, expressive of excitement and
general good-fellowship, from throats of all colors. Then a moment's
solemn pause, a hushed silence, bared heads, and the loud, clear tones
of a very old pastor in the land were heard imploring the blessing of
Almighty God on this our undertaking, Again the sweet childish trebles
rose into the sunshine in a chanted Amen, and then there were salutes
from cannon, feux-de-joie from carbines, and more shoutings, and all
the cocked hats were to be seen bowing; and then one more tremendous
burst of cheering told that _the_ sod was cut and turned and trundled,
and finally pitched out of the new barrow back again upon the dusty
soil--all in the most artistic and satisfactory fashion. "There are
the Kafir navvies: they are _really_ going to work now." (This latter
with great surprise, for a Kafir _really_ working, now or ever,
would indeed have been the raree-show of the day.) But this natural
phenomenon was left to develop itself in solitude, for the crowd began
to reassemble into processions, and generally to find its way under
shelter from sun and dust. The five hundred children were heralded
and marched off to the tune of one of their own pretty hymns to where
unlimited buns and tea awaited them, and we elders betook ourselves to
the grateful shade and coolness of the flower-decked new market-hall,
open to-day for the first time, and turned by flags and ferns and
lavish wealth of what in England are costliest hot-house flowers into
a charming banqueting-hall. All these exquisite ferns and blossoms
cost far less than the string and nails which fastened them against
the walls, and their fresh fragrance and greenery struck gratefully on
our sun-baked eyes as we found our way into the big room.

Nothing could be more creditable to a young colony than the way
everything was arranged, for the difficulties in one's culinary path
in Natal are hardly to be appreciated by English housekeepers. At one
time there threatened to be almost a famine in D'Urban, for besides
the pressure of all these extra mouths of visitors to feed, there was
this enormous luncheon, with some five hundred hungry people to be
provided for. It seems so strange that with every facility for rearing
poultry all around it should be scarce and dear, and when brought to
market as thin as possible. The same may be said of vegetables: they
need no culture beyond being put in the ground, and yet unless you
have a garden of your own it is very difficult to get anything like a
proper supply. I heard nothing but wails from distracted housekeepers
about the price and scarcity of food that week. However, _the_
luncheon showed no sign of scarcity, and I was much amused at the
substantial and homely character of the _menu_, which included cold
baked sucking pig among its delicacies. A favorite specimen of the
confectioner's art that day consisted of a sort of solid brick of plum
pudding, with, for legend, "The First Sod" tastefully picked out in
white almonds on its dark surface. But it was a capital luncheon, and
so soon as the mayor had succeeded in impressing on the band that they
were not expected to play all the time the speeches were being made,
everything went on very well. Some of the speeches were short, but oh!
far, far too many were long, terribly long, and the whole affair was
not over before five o'clock. The only real want of the entertainment
was ice. It seems so hard not to have it in a climate which
can produce such burning days, for those tiresome cheap little
ice-machines with crystals are of no use whatever. I got one which
made ice (under pressure of much turning) in the ship, but it has
never made any here, and my experience is that of everybody else. Why
there should not be an ice-making or an ice-importing company no one
knows, except that there is so little energy or enterprise here that
everything is dawdly and uncomfortable because it seems too much
trouble to take pains to supply wants. It is the same everywhere
throughout the colony: sandy roads with plenty of excellent materials
for hardening them close by; no fish to be bought because no one will
take the trouble of going out to catch them. But I had better stop
scribbling, for I am evidently getting tired after my long day of
unwonted festivity. It is partly the oppression of my best bonnet,
and partly the length of the speeches, which have wearied me out so
thoroughly.


MARITZBURG, January 6.

Nothing could afford a greater contrast than our return journey. It
was the other extreme of discomfort and misery, and must surely have
been sent to make us appreciate and long for the completion of this
very railway. We waited a day beyond that fixed for our return, in
order to give the effects of a most terrific thunderstorm time to pass
away, but it was succeeded by a perfect deluge of rain. Rain is not
supposed to last long at this season of the year, but all I can say is
that this rain did last. When the third day came and brought no sign
of clearing up with it, and very little down to speak of, we agreed to
delay no longer; besides which our places in the post-cart could not
be again exchanged, as had previously been done, for the stream of
returning visitors was setting strongly toward Maritzburg, and
we might be detained for a week longer if we did not go at once.
Accordingly, we presented ourselves at the D'Urban post-office a few
minutes before noon and took our places in the post-cart. My seat was
on the box, and as I flattered myself that I was well wrapped up, I
did not feel at all alarmed at the prospect of a cold, wet drive. Who
would believe that twenty-four hours ago one could hardly endure a
white muslin dressing-gown? Who would believe that twenty-four hours
ago a lace shawl was an oppressive wrap, and that the serious object
of my envy and admiration all these hot days on the Berea has been a
fat Abyssinian baby, as black as a coal, and the strongest and
biggest child one ever saw. That sleek and grinning infant's toilette
consisted of a string of blue beads round its neck, and in this cool
and airy costume it used to pervade the house, walking about on all
fours exactly like a monkey, for of course it could not stand. Yet,
how cold that baby must be to-day! But if it is, its mother has
probably tied it behind her in an old shawl, and it is nestling close
to her fat broad back fast asleep.

But the baby is certainly a most unwarrantable digression, and we
must return to our post-cart. The discouraging part of it was that
the vehicle itself had been in all the storm and rain of yesterday. Of
course no one had dreamed of washing or wiping it out in any fashion,
so we had to sit upon wet cushions and put our feet into a pool of red
mud and water. Now, if I must confess the truth, I, an old traveler,
had done a very stupid thing. I had been lured by the deceitful beauty
of the weather when we started into leaving behind me everything
except the thinnest and coolest garments I possessed, and I therefore
had to set out on this journey in the teeth of a cold wind and driving
rain clad in a white gown. It is true, I had my beloved and most
useful ulster, but it was a light waterproof one, and just about
half enough in the way of warmth. Still, as I had another wrap, a big
Scotch plaid, I should have got along very well if it had not been for
the still greater stupidity of the only other female fellow-passenger,
who calmly took her place in the open post-cart behind me in a brown
holland gown, without scarf or wrap or anything whatever to shelter
her from the weather, except a white calico sunshade. She was a
Frenchwoman too, and looked so piteous and forlorn in her neat
toilette, already drenched through, that of course I could do nothing
less than lend her my Scotch shawl, and trust to the driver's friendly
promises of empty corn-bags at some future stage. By the time the bags
came--or rather by the time we got to the bags--I was indeed wet and
cold. The ulster, did its best, and all that could be expected of it,
but no garment manufactured in a London shop could possibly cope with
such wild weather, tropical in the vehemence of its pouring rain,
wintry in its cutting blasts. The wind seemed to blow from every
quarter of the heavens at once, the rain came down in sheets, but
I minded the mud more than either wind or rain: it was more
demoralizing. On the box-seat I got my full share and more, but yet
I was better off there than inside, where twelve people were squeezed
into the places of eight. The horses' feet got balled with the stiff
red clay exactly as though it had been snow, and from time to time as
they galloped along, six fresh ones at every stage, I received a good
lump of clay, as big and nearly as solid as a croquet-ball, full in my
face. It was bitterly cold, and the night was closing in when we drove
up to the door of the best hotel in Maritzburg, at long past eight
instead of six o'clock. It was impossible to get out to our own place
that night, so there was nothing for it but to stay where we were, and
get what food and rest could be coaxed out of an indifferent bill
of fare and a bed of stony hardness, to say nothing of the bites of
numerous mosquitoes. The morning light revealed the melancholy state
of my unhappy white gown in its full horror. All the rivers of Natal
will never make it white again, I fear. Certainly there is much to
be said in favor of railway-traveling, after all, especially in wet
weather.


JANUARY 10.

Surely, I have been doing something else lately besides turning this
first sod? Well, not much. You see, no one can undertake anything in
the way of expeditions or excursions, or even sight-seeing, in
summer, partly on account of the heat, and partly because of the
thunderstorms. We have had a few very severe ones lately, but we hail
them with joy on account of the cool clear atmosphere which succeeds
to a display of electrical vehemence. We walked home from church a few
evenings ago on a very wild and threatening night, and I never shall
forget the weird beauty of the scene. We had started to go to church
about six o'clock: the walk was only two miles, and the afternoon was
calm and cloudless. The day had been oppressively hot, but there were
no immediate signs of a storm. While we were in church, however, a
fresh breeze sprang up and drove the clouds rapidly before it. The
glare of the lightning made every corner of the church as bright
as day, and the crash of the thunder shook the wooden roof over our
heads. But there was no rain yet, and when we came out--in fear and
trembling, I confess, as to how we were to get home--we could see that
the violence of the storm had either passed over or not yet reached
the valley in which Maritzburg nestles, and was expending itself
somewhere else. So F---- decided that we might venture. As for
vehicles to be hired in the streets, there are no such things, and
by the time we could have persuaded one to turn out for us--a very
doubtful contingency, and only to be procured at the cost of a
sovereign or so--the full fury of the storm would probably be upon us.
There was nothing for it, therefore, but to walk, and so we set out
as soon as possible to climb our very steep hill. Instead of the
soft, balmy twilight on which we had counted, the sky was of an inky
blackness, but for all that we had light enough and to spare. I never
saw such lightning. The flashes came literally every second, and lit
up the whole heavens and earth with a blinding glare far brighter than
any sunshine. So great was the contrast, and so much more intense
the darkness after each flash of dazzling light, that we could only
venture to walk on _during_ the flashes, though one's instinct was
rather to stand still, awestricken and mute. The thunder growled and
cracked incessantly, but far away, toward the Inchanga Valley. If the
wind had shifted ever so little and brought the storm back again, our
plight would have been poor indeed; and with this dread upon us we
trudged bravely on and breasted the hillside with what haste and
courage we could. During the rare momentary intervals of darkness we
could perceive that the whole place was ablaze with fireflies. Every
blade of grass held a tiny sparkle of its own, but when the lightning
shone out with its yellow and violet glare the modest light of the
poor little fireflies seemed to be quite extinguished. As for the
frogs, the clamorous noise they kept up sounded absolutely deafening,
and so did the shrill, incessant cry of the cicalas. We reached home
safely and before the rain fell, but found all our servants in the
verandah in the last stage of dismay and uncertainty what to do for
the best. They had collected waterproofs, umbrellas and lanterns; but
as it was not actually raining yet, and we certainly did not require
light on our path--for they said that each flash showed them our
climbing, trudging figures as plainly as possible--it was difficult
to know what to do, especially as the Kafirs have, very naturally, an
intense horror and dislike to going out in a thunderstorm. This storm
was not really overhead at all, and scarcely deserves mention except
as the precursor of a severe one of which our valley got the full
benefit. It was quite curious to see the numbers of dead butterflies
on the garden-paths after that second storm. Their beautiful plumage
was not dimmed or smirched nor their wings broken: they would have
been in perfect order for a naturalist's collection; yet they were
quite dead and stiff. The natives declare it is the lightning which
kills them thus.

My own private dread--to return to that walk home for a moment--was of
stepping on a snake, as there are a great many about, and one especial
variety, a small poisonous brown adder, is of so torpid and lazy a
nature that it will not glide out of your way, as other snakes do,
but lets you tread on it and then bites you. It is very marvelous,
considering how many snakes there are, that one hears of so few bad
accidents. G---- is always poking about in likely places for them, as
his supreme ambition is to see one. I fully expect a catastrophe some
day, and keep stores of ammonia and brandy handy. Never was such
a fearless little monkey. He is always scampering about on his old
Basuto pony, and of course tumbles off now and then; but he does not
mind it in the least. When he is not trying to break his neck in this
fashion he is down by himself at the river fishing, or he is climbing
trees, or down a well which is being dug here, or in some piece of
mischief or other. The sun and the fruit are my _bêtes noires_, but
neither seems to hurt him, though I really don't believe that any
other child in the world has ever eaten so many apricots at one time
as he has been doing lately. This temptation has just been removed,
however, for during our short absence at D'Urban every fruit tree
has been stripped to the bark--every peach and plum, every apple and
apricot, clean gone. Of course, no one has done it, but it is very
provoking all the same, for it used to be so nice to take the baby out
very early, and pick up the fallen apricots for breakfast. The
peaches are nearly all pale and rather tasteless, but the apricots are
excellent in flavor, of a large size and in extraordinary abundance.
There was also a large and promising crop of apples, but they have
all been taken in their unripe state. As a rule, the Kafirs are
scrupulously honest, and we left plate and jewelry in the house under
Charlie's care whilst we were away, without the least risk, for such
things they would never touch; but fruit or mealies they cannot be
brought to regard as personal property, and they gather the former
and waste the latter without scruple. It is a great objection to the
imported coolies, who make very clean and capital servants, that they
have inveterate habits of pilfering and are hopelessly dishonest about
trifles. For this reason they are sure to get on badly with Kafir
fellow-servants, who are generally quite above any temptation of that
kind.


JANUARY 14.

A few days ago we took G---- to see the annual swimming sports in the
small river which runs through the park. It was a beautiful afternoon,
for a wonder, with no lowering thunder-clouds over the hills, so
the banks of the river were thronged for half a mile and more with
spectators. It made a very pretty picture, the large willow trees
drooping into the water on either shore, the gay concourse of people,
the bright patch of color made by the red coats of the band of the
regiment stationed across the stream, the tents for the competitors to
change in, the dark wondering faces of Kafirs and coolies, who cannot
comprehend _why_ white people should take so much trouble and run so
much risk to amuse themselves. We certainly must appear to them to
be possessed by a restless demon of energy, both in our work and our
play, and never more so than on this hot afternoon, when, amid
much shouting and laughing, the various water-races came off. The
steeplechase amused us a great deal, where the competitors had to swim
over and under various barriers across the river; and so did the race
for very little boys, which was a full and excellent one. The monkeys
took to the water as naturally as fishes, and evidently enjoyed the
fun more than any one. Indeed, the difficulty was to get them out of
the water and into the tents to change their swimming costume after
the race was over. But the most interesting event was one meant to
teach volunteers how to swim rivers in case of field service, and
the palm lay between the Natal Carbineers and a smart body of mounted
police. At a given signal they all plunged on horseback into the muddy
water, and from a very difficult part of the bank too, and swam, fully
accoutred and carrying their carbines, across the river. It was very
interesting to watch how clever the horses were, and how some of their
riders slipped off their backs the moment they had fairly entered the
stream and swam side by side with their steeds until the opposite bank
was reached; and then how the horses paused to allow their dripping
masters to mount again--no easy task in heavy boots and saturated
clothes, with a carbine in the left hand which had to be kept dry at
all risks and hazards. When I asked little G---- which part he liked
best, he answered without hesitation, "The assidents" (angliçè,
accidents), and I am not sure that he was not right; for, as no one
was hurt, the crowd mightily enjoyed seeing some stalwart citizen
in his best clothes suddenly topple from his place of vantage on the
deceitfully secure-looking but rotten branch of a tree and take an
involuntary bath in his own despite. When that citizen further chanced
to be clad in a suit of bright-colored velveteen the effect was
much enhanced. It is my private opinion that G---- was longing to
distinguish himself in a similar fashion, for I constantly saw him
"lying out" on most frail branches, but try as he might, he could not
accomplish a tumble.


JANUARY 17.

I have had an opportunity lately of attending a Kafir _lit de
justice_, and I can only say that if we civilized people managed our
legal difficulties in the same way it would be an uncommonly good
thing for everybody except the lawyers. Cows are at the bottom of
nearly all the native disputes, and the Kafirs always take their
grievance soberly to the nearest magistrate, who arbitrates to
the best of his ability between the disputants. They are generally
satisfied with his award, but if the case is an intricate one, or they
consider that the question is not really solved, then they have the
right of appeal, and it is this court of appeal which I have been
attending lately. It is held in the newly-built office of the minister
for native affairs--the prettiest and most respectable-looking
public office which I have seen in Maritzburg, by the way. Before the
erection of this modest but comfortable building the court used to be
held out in the open air under the shade of some large trees--a
more picturesque method of doing business, certainly, but subject to
inconveniences on account of the weather. It is altogether the most
primitive and patriarchal style of business one ever saw, but all the
more delightful on that account.

It is inexpressibly touching to see with one's own eyes the
wonderfully deep personal devotion and affection of the Kafirs for the
kindly English gentleman who for thirty years and more has been their
real ruler and their wise and judicious friend. Not a friend to pamper
their vices and give way to their great fault of idleness, but a true
friend to protect their interests, and yet to labor incessantly for
their social advancement and for their admission into the great field
of civilized workers. The Kafirs know little and care less for all
the imposing and elaborate machinery of British rule; the queen on
her throne is but a fair and distant dream-woman to them; Sir Garnet
himself, that great inkosi, was as nobody in their eyes compared to
their own chieftain, their king of hearts, the one white man to whom
of their own free will and accord they give the royal salute whenever
they see him. I have stood in magnificent halls and seen king and
kaiser pass through crowds of bowing courtiers, but I never saw
anything which impressed me so strongly as the simultaneous springing
to the feet, the loud shout of _Bayete!_ given with the right hand
upraised (a higher form of salutation than _Inkosi!_ and only accorded
to Kafir royalty), the look, of love and rapture and satisfied
expectation in all those keen black faces, as the minister, quite
unattended, without pomp or circumstance of any sort or kind, quietly
walked into the large room and sat himself down at his desk with some
papers before him. There was no clerk, no official of any sort: no
one stood between the people and the fountain of justice. The
extraordinary simplicity of the trial which commenced was only to be
equaled by the decorum and dignity with which it was conducted. First
of all, everybody sat down upon the floor, the plaintiff and defendant
amicably side by side opposite to the minister's desk, and the other
natives, about a hundred in number, squatted in various groups. Then,
as there was evidently a slight feeling of surprise at my sitting
myself down in the only other chair--they probably considered me a
new--fashioned clerk--the minister explained that I was the wife of
another inkosi, and that I wanted to see and hear how Kafirmen
stated their case when anything went wrong with their affairs. This
explanation was perfectly satisfactory to all parties, and they
regarded me no more, but immediately set to work on the subject in
hand. A sort of _prècis_ of each case had been previously prepared
from the magistrate's report for Mr. S----'s information by his clerk,
and these documents greatly helped me to understand what was going on.
No language can be more beautiful to listen to than either the Kafir
or Zulu tongue: it is soft and liquid as Italian, with just the same
gentle accentuation on the penultimate and antepenultimate syllables.
The clicks which are made with the tongue every now and then, and
are part of the language, give it a very quaint sound, and the proper
names are excessively harmonious.

In the first cause which was taken the plaintiff, as I said before,
was not quite satisfied with the decision of his own local magistrate,
and had therefore come here to restate his case. The story was
slightly complicated by the plaintiff having two distinct names by
which he had been known at different times of his life. "Tevula," he
averred, was the name of his boyhood, and the other, "Mazumba," the
name of his manhood. The natives have an unconquerable aversion
to giving their real names, and will offer half a dozen different
aliases, making it very difficult to trace them if they are "wanted,"
and still more difficult to get at the rights of any story they may
have to tell. However, if they are ever frank and open to anybody, it
is to their own minister, who speaks their language as well as they
do themselves, and who fully understands their mode of reasoning and
their habits of mind.

Tevula told his story extremely well, I must say--quietly, but
earnestly, and with, the most perfectly respectful though manly
bearing. He sometimes used graceful and natural gesticulation, but not
a bit more than was needed to give emphasis to his oratory. He was a
strongly-built, tall man, about thirty-five years of age, dressed in
a soldier's great-coat--for it was a damp and drizzling day--had bare
legs and feet, and wore nothing on his head except the curious ring
into which the men weave their hair. So soon as a youth is considered
old enough to assume the duties and responsibilities of manhood
he begins to weave his short crisp hair over a ring of grass which
exactly fits the head, keeping the woolly hair in its place by means
of wax. In time the hair grows perfectly smooth and shining and
regular over this firm foundation, and the effect is as though it were
a ring of jet or polished ebony worn round the brows. Different tribes
slightly vary the size and form of the ring; and in this case it was
easy to see that the defendant belonged to a different tribe, for
his ring was half the size, and worn at the summit of a cone of
combed-back hair which was as thick and close as a cap, and indeed
looked very like a grizzled fez. Anybody in court may ask any
questions he pleases, and in fact what we should call "cross-examine"
a witness, but no one did so whilst I was present. Every one listened
attentively, giving a grunt of interest whenever Tevula made a point;
and this manifestation and sympathy always seemed to gratify him
immensely. But it was plain that, whatever might be the decision of
the minister, who listened closely to every word, asking now and then
a short question--which evidently hit some logical nail right on the
head--they would abide by it, and be satisfied that it was the fairest
and most equitable solution of the subject.

Here is a _résumé_ of the first case, and it is a fair sample of the
intricacies of a Kafir lawsuit: Our friend Tevula possesses an aged
relative, a certain aunt, called Mamusa, who at the present time
appears to be in her dotage, and consequently her evidence is of very
little value. But once upon a time--long, long ago--Mamusa was young
and generous: Mamusa had cows, and she _gave_ or _lent_--there was the
difficulty--a couple of heifers to the defendant, whose name I can't
possibly spell on account of the clicks. Nobody denies that of her
own free will these heifers had been bestowed by Mamusa on the
withered-looking little old man squatting opposite, but the question
is, Were they a loan or a gift? For many years nothing was done about
these heifers, but one fine day Tevula gets wind of the story, is
immediately seized with a fit of affection for his aged relative, and
takes her to live in his kraal, proclaiming himself her protector and
heir. So far so good: all this was in accordance with Kafir custom,
and the narration of this part of the story was received with grunts
of asseveration and approval by the audience. Indeed, Kafirs are as
a rule to be depended upon, and their minds, though full of odd
prejudices and quirks, have a natural bias toward truth. Two or three
years ago Tevula began by claiming, as heir-at-law, though the old
woman still lives, twenty cows from the defendant as the increase of
these heifers: _now_ he demands between thirty and forty. When asked
why he only claimed twenty, as nobody denies that the produce of the
heifers has increased to double that number, he says naively, but
without hesitation, that there is a fee to be paid of a shilling
a head on such a claim if established, and that he only had twenty
shillings in the world; so, as he remarked with a knowing twinkle in
his eye, "What was the use of my claiming more cows than I had money
to pay the fee for?" But times have improved with Tevula since then,
and he is now in a position to claim the poor defendant's whole herd,
though he generously says he will not insist on his refunding those
cows which do not resemble the original heifers, and are not, as they
were, dun and red and white. This sounded magnanimous, and met
with grunts of approval until the blear-eyed defendant remarked,
hopelessly, "They are all of those colors," which changed the
sympathies of the audience once more. Tevula saw this at a glance, and
hastened to improve his position by narrating an anecdote. No words
of mine could reproduce the dramatic talent that man displayed in his
narration. I did not understand a syllable of his language, and yet I
could gather from his gestures, his intonation, and above all from
the expression of his hearers' faces, the sort of story he was telling
them. After he had finished, Mr. S---- turned to me and briefly
translated the episode with which Tevula had sought to rivet the
attention and sympathy of the court. Tevula's tale, much condensed,
was this: Years ago, when his attention had first been directed to
the matter, he went with the defendant out on the veldt to look at the
herd. No sooner did the cattle see them approaching than a beautiful
little dun-colored heifer, the exact counterpart of her grandmother
(Mamusa's cow), left the others and ran up to him, Tevula, lowing and
rubbing her head against his shoulder, and following him all about
like a dog. In vain did her reputed owner try to drive her away: she
persisted in following Tevula all the way back to his kraal, right up
to the entrance of his hut. "I was her master, and the inkomokazi knew
it," cried Tevula triumphantly, looking round at the defendant with a
knowing nod, as much as to say, "Beat that, if you can!" Not knowing
what answer to make, the defendant took his snuff-box out of his left
ear and solaced himself with three or four huge pinches. I started the
hypothesis that Mamusa might once have had a _tendresse_ for the old
gentleman, and might have bestowed these cows upon him as a love-gift;
but this idea was scouted, even by the defendant, who said gravely,
"Kafir women don't buy lovers or husbands: we buy the wife we want."
A Kafir girl is exceedingly proud of being bought, and the more she
costs the prouder she is. She pities English women, whose bride-grooms
expect to receive money instead of paying it, and considers a dowry as
a most humiliating arrangement.

I wish I could tell you how Mamusa's cows have finally been disposed
of, but, although it has occupied three days, the case is by no
means over yet. I envy and admire Mr. S----'s untiring patience and
unfailing good-temper, but it is just these qualities which make
his Kafir subjects (for they really consider him as their ruler) so
certain that their affairs will not be neglected or their interests
suffer in his hands.

Whilst I was listening to Tevula's oratory my eyes and my mind
sometimes wandered to the eager and silent audience, and I amused
myself by studying their strange head-dresses. In most instances the
men wore their hair in the woven rings to which I have alluded, but
there were several young men present who indulged in purely fancy
head-dresses. One stalwart youth had got hold of the round cardboard
lid of a collar-box, to which he had affixed two bits of string, and
tied it firmly but jauntily on one side of his head. Another lad had
invented a most extraordinary decoration for his wool-covered pate,
and one which it is exceedingly difficult to describe in delicate
language. He had procured the intestines of some small animal, a lamb
or a kid, and had cleaned and scraped them and tied them tightly, at
intervals of an inch or two, with string. This series of small clear
bladders he had then inflated, and arranged them in a sort of bouquet
on the top of his head, skewering tufts of his crisp hair between, so
that the effect resembled a bunch of bubbles, if there could be such
a thing. Another very favorite adornment for the head consisted of a
strip of gay cloth or ribbon, or of even a few bright threads,
bound tightly like a fillet across the brows and confining a tuft of
feathers over one ear; but I suspect all these fanciful arrangements
were only worn by the gilded youth of a lower class, because I noticed
that the chieftains and _indunas_, or headmen of the villages, never
wore such frivolities. They wore indeed numerous slender rings
of brass or silver wire on their straight, shapely legs, and also
necklaces of lions' or tigers' claws and teeth round their throats,
but these were trophies of the chase as well as personal ornaments.




THE LIFE OF GEORGE TICKNOR.[5]


[Footnote 5: _Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor._ Boston:
James R. Osgood & Co.]

It is a long time since a more interesting biography has been
published than this of Mr. Ticknor. No American book of the same kind
can be compared with it, and very few have appeared in England that
give the reader as varied glimpses of society and as many details in
regard to interesting people as may be found in these two entertaining
volumes. Its fullness in this respect is what makes the charm of the
book. Mr. Ticknor's life was a long one: from his youth he saw a great
deal of the best society both of this country and of Europe, and he
always had the custom of recording the impressions made upon him by
the people he met. Hence this _Life_, which is for the most part
made up of extracts from his letters and journals, is almost an
autobiography, but an autobiography, one might almost say, without a
hero, in which the writer keeps himself in the background and gives
his main attention to other people. The editors have, however, given a
full account of those parts of his life of which his own record is but
brief.

He was born in Boston in 1791. His father, to judge from his letters,
which are full of sensible advice, was a man of more than common
ability, and he very carefully trained his son to put his talents to
their best use. He had no stubborn material for his hands, for even in
his youth Mr. Ticknor showed many of those traits which most clearly
marked him in after life; among others, an intelligent, unimaginative,
but also unmalicious observation of his kind for his relaxation, and
for his work in life warm devotion to the study of letters. How scanty
were the opportunities in this way at that period may be seen from his
difficulties in getting any knowledge of German after his graduation
from Dartmouth College, and when he had just given up his brief
practice of the law. His teacher was an Alsatian, who knew his own
pronunciation was bad; he was able to borrow a grammar from Mr.
Everett, but he had to send to New Hampshire for a dictionary; and
the only book he had to read was a copy of _Werther_ belonging to
John Quincy Adams, then in Europe, which he managed to borrow from the
gentleman who had Mr. Adams's books under his care at the Athenæeum.
This was in 1814, and already he had made up his mind to go to Germany
and profit by the advantages offered by the universities of that
country. With regard to the education he had already acquired, it is
evident that he had learned more by private study than by following
the courses of the college which had given him a degree. But before
visiting other countries he determined to make himself familiar with
his own, and for that purpose he made a journey to Washington and
Virginia, seeing on his way, at New York, one of the earliest ships of
war moved by steam, and in Philadelphia meeting John Randolph, whom he
describes carefully in one of his letters to his father. At Washington
he dined with President Madison, who was in considerable anxiety at
the time (January 21, 1815) about the fate of New Orleans. He gives
a dreary picture of the state festivities. The President, he says,
"sometimes laughed, and I was glad to hear it, but his face was always
grave. He talked of religious sects and parties, and was curious to
know how the cause of liberal Christianity stood with us, and if the
Athanasian creed was well received by our Episcopalians.... He talked
of education and its prospects, of the progress of improvement among
us, and once or twice he gave it a political aspect, though with great
caution." In Virginia he visited Thomas Jefferson at Monticello,
and this eminent man seems to have taken a great fancy to his young
visitor, who gave his father a full account of his host and his ways.
The details are too long to quote, but those who turn to the book
will find that Mr. Ticknor began early to observe people, and
that, although his descriptions, even in his youth, show a lack of
imagination, they are yet made lifelike by his patient, unwearying
elaboration of details. How full, for instance, is his account of Lord
Jeffrey, written to one of his friends in 1814. Such letters have gone
out of fashion now, when it is more frequent to sum up the characters
of our visitors in epigrams than in long essays, as Mr. Ticknor
has here done. This first star, who in comparison with many of Mr.
Ticknor's later acquaintances was one of very modest magnitude, made
his unexpected, comet-like appearance in Boston on his way to New York
to marry an American woman. It is easy to believe what Mr. Ticknor
says in his long account of him, that "while he flatters by his
civility those who are little accustomed to attention from his
superiors, he disappoints the reasonable expectations of those who
have received the homage of all around them until it has become a part
of their just expectations and claims."

In April, 1815, Mr. Ticknor set sail for England in company with his
friend Edward Everett, and at the end of four weeks they arrived at
Liverpool, just in time to hear of Napoleon's escape from Elba. There
was at least one man in England who was pleased with that turn of
fate, and that was Dr. Parr, whom Mr. Ticknor stopped to see on his
way to London, and who told his young guest, "I should not think I
had done my duty if I went to bed any night without praying for the
success of Napoleon Bonaparte." Lord Byron, it should be added, on
hearing the news of Waterloo, said, "I am d----d sorry for it.... I
didn't know but I might live to see Lord Castlereagh's head on a pole.
But I suppose I sha'n't now." Of this last-named admirer of Bonaparte,
Mr. Ticknor saw a good deal during his stay in England. Byron was then
a newly-married man, and on better terms with the world at large than
he was at other times of his life. His American visitor recorded that
he "found his manners affable and gentle, the tones of his voice low
and conciliating, his conversation gay, pleasant and interesting in an
uncommon degree."

Of the older men, he saw Dr. Rees, editor of the _Encyclopædia_, who
had dined with Dr. Johnson and John Wilkes at Dilly's--not at the
first dinner probably, for Boswell gives a list of the guests which
does not include his name, but doubtless at the second, in 1781. Dr.
Rees said that Wilkes won his way to Johnson's heart not, as Boswell
reports, by his wit, but by the grossest flattery; and he added that
Johnson always courted Boswell more than any one else, that he might
be exhibited to posterity in a favorable light. A mere list of the
names of the people he saw during this short stay in England will show
how full of interest this part of his diary is. Campbell, Gifford,
West, Sir Humphry Davy he saw most frequently, but no one so often as
he did Byron. His penchant for "lions" always led him to prefer the
lordliest among them.

It was a great change from the excitement and succession of novelties
of London to the monotonous routine of Göttingen, where he arrived,
after a journey of about five weeks, early in August, 1815. Göttingen
at that time was the seat of the leading German university. It has
never been full of distracting temptations: indeed, it is a town which
seems to have been so arranged that the student should find in
study alone relief from its manifold discomforts. The advantages it
possessed were very great, and they were fully appreciated by the
young American, who came from what in comparison was almost an
intellectual wilderness to the rich stores of learning this university
contained. It was at this time that he fairly began serious literary
study and laid the foundation of his extensive knowledge of books.
In one of his vacations he made a little tour in Germany, visiting
Goethe, who made a characteristic speech about Byron's recent
separation from his wife--namely, that in its circumstances and the
mystery involving it it was so poetical that if Byron had invented it
he could hardly have found a more fortunate subject for his genius.

After another winter in Göttingen he set out for Paris, which city he
reached early in April, 1817. One of the first things he did was to
go to the theatre, where he saw Talma and Mademoiselle Mars play
together. But stronger tastes drew him more frequently into the best
society that capital afforded him. One of the persons he was most
anxious to meet was Madame de Staël, but although he presented his
letters, her illness prevented her seeing him for some time, and her
daughter, the Duchesse de Broglie, received him in her mother's stead.
It was there that he met Humboldt, of whom he has recorded that he
"sleeps only when he is weary and has leisure, and if he wakes at
midnight he rises and begins his work as he would in the morning. He
eats when he is hungry, and if he is invited to dine at six o'clock,
this does not prevent him from going at five to a restaurant, because
he considers a great dinner only as a party of pleasure and amusement.
But all the rest of the time, when he is not in society, he locks his
door and gives himself up to study, rarely receiving visits but those
which have been announced the day previous, and never, I believe,
refusing these." These habits are not commonly supposed to promote
longevity. Before he left Paris Madame de Staël was able to see him,
and with her he had an interesting conversation in which she said of
America, "_Vous êtes l'avant garde du genre humain, vous êtes l'avenir
du monde_," and made two or three brilliant speeches, at which
he noticed her glow of animation. At the same place he also met
Chateaubriand and Madame Récamier, between whom he sat at dinner. The
romantic reader will be disappointed with his meagre statements here,
which hardly bring these two people more distinctly before us than are
Solomon and the queen of Sheba. We read that Madame Récamier's figure
was fine, her mild eyes full of expression, and her arm and hand
beautiful, her complexion fair, her expression cheerful and her
conversation vivacious; of Chateaubriand, that he was a short man with
a dark complexion, black hair and eyes, and a marked countenance;
but exacter details of their characteristics or mutual relations are
wholly wanting. While it is to be remembered that we who read Mr.
Ticknor's diary and letters have also read a great many other letters
that have given us much more knowledge about Madame Récamier than her
companion at that dinner could have had, it is yet fair to say that
in general the book contains no traces of acute observation or quick
social sensibility, but is rather marked by the faithfulness of his
report of the more obvious incidents that occurred when he met these
interesting people. This does not diminish the value of the book: it
should only prepare the reader to find the anecdotes constituting
the really important part of it, with but little sign of any study
of character, and of little sympathetic insight into the feelings of
others.

He remained in Paris until September, working hard at the languages
and literatures of France and Italy, and neglecting no opportunity
to improve himself. At that date he started for Geneva on his way to
Italy, crossing the Alps by the Simplon. At Venice he again saw
Byron, who was busy, or professed to be, with a plan of visiting this
country. Thence he made his way south to Rome and Naples, spending
most of the winter in the former city among very interesting people,
such as Bunsen, Niebuhr and Madame de Humboldt. In the spring of
1818 he went to Spain, and it is interesting to notice how much more
vivacious his journal becomes with his entrance into that country. It
seems to have been with real enjoyment that he changed the ease of his
earlier journeyings for the hardships of traveling in this comfortless
land; and although the inns were miserable, the fare uncertain and
meagre at the best, and there were many other afflictions to vex the
tourist, he evidently enjoyed this expedition to the full. On his way
from Barcelona to Madrid he had for companions a painter of repute and
two officers, and to these he used to read aloud _Don Quixote_, and,
he says, "I assure you this was a pleasure to me such as I have seldom
enjoyed, to witness the effect this extraordinary book produces on the
people from whose very blood and character it is drawn.... All of
them used to beg me to read it to them every time we got into our
cart--like children for toys and sugar-plums." In Madrid he studied
carefully the language and literature, his tastes and opportunities
leading him to lay the solid foundation of what was to be the main
work of his life. The society that he met here was mainly that of the
foreign diplomatists, but, agreeable as it was, it did not distract
him from his studies or from his observation of the people among whom
he was placed. In a letter to this country he said, "What seems mere
fiction and romance in other countries is matter of observation
here, and in all that relates to manners Cervantes and Le Sage are
historians; for when you have crossed the Pyrenees you have not only
passed from one country and climate to another, but you have gone back
a couple of centuries in your chronology, and find the people still
in that kind of poetical existence which we have not only long since
lost, but which we have long since ceased to credit on the reports of
our ancestors."

Although it would be interesting to linger over the passages dealing
with Spain, it is perhaps better to turn to his account of leaving it,
which he did under the most singular circumstances--namely, as one
of a band of contrabandistas. Not that he wore a mask and filled his
purse by robbing unoffending travelers; instead, he joined this
party of accomplished smugglers, who used to carry on the business of
smuggling dollars from Seville to Lisbon and bring back English goods
in the same way. For eight days he was in their company, and he says,
"I have seldom passed eight more interesting days, for by the very
novelty and strangeness of everything--sleeping out every night but
one, and then in the house of the chief of our band; dining
under trees at noon; living on a footing of perfect equality and
good-fellowship with people who are liable every day to be shot or
hanged by the laws of their country; indeed, leading for a week as
much of a vagabond life as if I were an Arab or a Mameluke,--I came
soon to have some of the gay recklessness that marked the character of
my companions." This certainly would be a curious episode in the
life of any law-abiding citizen, and in Mr. Ticknor's case it was
peculiarly astonishing, for his life, this week excepted, could
certainly never be called, with any show of justice, "vagabond."

Before returning to America he revisited London and Paris, in this
last-named city seeing Talleyrand, of whom an interesting anecdote is
recorded. In London he met Sydney Smith, Brougham, Frere; in Scotland,
where he made a short tour, he visited Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford;
on his way back to London he visited Southey and Wordsworth; and
once again in that city he saw Hazlitt, living in Milton's house, and
Godwin, who, he said, "is as far removed from everything feverish
and exciting as if his head had never been filled with anything but
geometry,... When I looked at [him], and saw with what cool obstinacy
he adhered to everything he had once assumed, and what a cold
selfishness lay at the bottom of his character, I felt a satisfaction
in the thought that he had a wife who must sometimes give a start to
his blood and a stir to his nervous system." The feeling which betrays
itself in this passage makes a still bolder and more amusing exhibit
in one that follows: "The true way to see these people was to meet
them all together, as I did once at dinner at Godwin's, and once at
a convocation or 'Saturday Night Club' at Hunt's, when they felt
themselves bound to show off and produce an effect; for there Lamb's
gentle humor, Hunt's passion and Curran's volubility, Hazlitt's
sharpness and point and Godwin's great head full of cold brains, all
coming into contact and agreeing in nothing but their common hatred
of everything that has been more successful than their own works, made
one of the most curious and amusing _olla podridas_ I ever met. The
contrast between these persons ... and the class I was at the same
time in the habit of meeting at Sir Joseph Banks's on Sunday evening,
at Gifford's, at Murray's Literary Exchange, and especially at Lord
Holland's, was striking enough." In regard to the last statement we
can feel no doubt, nor is it surprising that Mr. Ticknor found
the society of Gifford and his friends more congenial than that of
"persons" like Lamb and Hunt.

He reached home June 6, 1819, after an absence of four years, during
which time he had seen many "cities and manners," had accomplished
himself in the modern languages and literatures, and become well
fitted for the position which was awaiting him--that of professor of
the French and Spanish languages and of the belles-lettres at Harvard
College. These chairs were held by Mr. Ticknor until 1835, during the
most active years of his mature life, and the record of what he did is
not without importance in the history of education in this country. He
had himself profited by the liberal system of the German universities,
and he was naturally anxious to introduce such changes into the rather
narrow curriculum of Harvard College as should give its students real
zeal in their work and greater opportunities for improvement. At
the beginning he found himself much hampered by old traditions and
a general lack of sympathy with new methods; but he devoted himself
earnestly to the task of introducing a course of instruction which
should take the place of the dull routine of recitation. To accomplish
this he set the example of giving a series of lectures on the
literatures and literary histories of France and Spain, and he
struggled hard to drive away the old routine from the rest of the
college. He wrote a pamphlet containing most urgent and powerful
arguments in defence of these amendments, which he proved to be
possible by the example of his own success; but he was opposed by the
most stubborn conservatism, and his efforts remained almost without
apparent result. What he wanted was the abolition of the system of
classes; the division of the college into _departments_; the election
of studies by the students; the separation of the students into
divisions according to their proficiency; and the opening of the
college to those who cared to follow only certain courses without
applying for a degree. The first of these changes he forebore
to press, but all the others he urged most warmly. He was so far
successful that the experiment was tried, but it was considered
impracticable for the classes to be divided into sections, and by
a vote of the faculty it was determined that the law requiring
such division should be repealed: permission was given Mr. Ticknor,
however, to continue in the new method if he cared so to do.
Naturally, he persisted in his plan, and in his own department he was
perfectly successful. When he left the college, although he had not
accomplished all he had hoped when he accepted his professorship, he
was able to look back upon an honorable and gratifying record so far
as the management of his own department was concerned.

After resigning his position in Cambridge he again went abroad in
1835, accompanied by his wife and family. It would take many pages to
give the reader an exact account, in however brief a form, of all
the interest of this journey. A few notes taken almost at random must
suffice. Of Southey, Mr. Ticknor notes: "His conversation was very
various, sometimes quite remarkable, but never rich or copious like
Wordsworth's, and never humorous or witty. It was rather abundant in
matters of fact, and often in that way quite striking and effective."
The first winter he spent in Dresden, meeting Tieck frequently, and
enjoying the agreeable and highly-cultivated society of the court.
The next summer, during a visit to Vienna, he had some interesting
conversations with Prince Metternich, which are given in full.
The winter of 1836-37 he passed in Rome, finding there Bunsen and
Thorwaldsen, whom he had seen on his first visit. The next winter
found him in Paris, where he saw Thierry, Lamartine, Thiers, Mignet,
Guizot and others. Of Lamartine he says: "Only two things struck
me--his complete ignorance of the present English literature, and the
strong expression of his poetical faith that the recent improvements
in material life, like steam and railroads, have their poetical sides,
and will be used for poetical purposes with success." In the spring
he crossed to England, where he roamed from one interesting spot to
another, seeing every one of whom one cares to hear, and putting down
in his journal faithful accounts of all that he saw and heard.

He returned to this country in June, 1838, and began at once to
occupy himself busily with the preparation of his _History of Spanish
Literature_. After this book had been published he began to busy
himself with a very important scheme--namely, preparing the Public
Library of his native city. As soon as Mr. Bates had made his generous
gift, which secured the establishment of the library, Mr. Ticknor,
with the aid of experts in the different professions, prepared a list
of forty thousand books which were needed as the foundation. He was
absent in Europe for fifteen months in 1856-57 busy with choosing and
buying books for this institution. The debt which the city of Boston
owes him is a great one: thanks to his care and energy, the Public
Library already has become a most valuable aid to study, and perhaps
the best library in the country, besides promising to be one of the
few great ones of the world. During his lifetime Mr. Ticknor gave many
valuable collections to the library, and in his will he left it his
own unique Spanish library and a generous bequest for the further
purchase of books. From the first he was quite as generous with his
time and knowledge. The diary he kept during his last stay abroad is
full of references to his interest in the library and to the constant
attention he gave to its affairs. He returned to Boston in September,
1857. The remaining years of his life he spent at home, enjoying
the company of his friends, corresponding with those abroad, and
encouraging interest in letters in every way. He died in the full
possession of his faculties, in his eightieth year, January 26, 1871.

The editors of these memoirs appear to have performed their task with
great discretion and good taste. It has probably not been a difficult
one, consisting mainly in selecting from abundant and well-ordered
material, while suppressing what was too private or too trivial for
publication. What they have had to say of Mr. Ticknor's character
is expressed with a proper warmth of feeling, but without any
extravagance of eulogy. His life, as they justly remark, was
distinguished by "an unusual consistency in the framework of mind and
character" and "an unusually steady development of certain elements
and principles." What he from the first set himself to attain lay
within the compass of his capacity as well as of his means and
opportunities. Thus he had no external hinderances to contend against,
and no inward misgivings to struggle with. No man, we imagine, was
ever less troubled with self-dissatisfaction. He felt the limits of
his faculties and qualities, if he felt them at all, only as useful
and secure defences. Within them there was all the completeness that
could be gained by persevering exercise and culture. There is not a
page of his journals and letters that does not bear testimony to his
earnest, careful and profitable study of men and books, while we doubt
if a remark can be found in them that shows either sympathetic insight
or subtle discrimination. His intellect had all its resources at
command, but it had more of rigor than of vigor, more of formal
precision in its methods than of well-directed force in its
performances. Hence the semblance exceeded the reality, and it might
have been said of him, as it was said of Guizot, "Il impose et il en
impose." This biography of him makes, consequently, no appeal to the
deeper feelings and awakens no train of higher thought. But it has an
interest which, though of an ordinary kind, is scarcely surpassed in
degree by that of any similar work; and it forms a worthy memorial
of a man whose wide attainments, strict integrity and warm affections
endeared him to his intimates and made him respected by all.

T.S. PERRY.




OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A REMINISCENCE OF MACAULAY.


It was in June, 1857, that I had the good fortune to meet Macaulay
at dinner at the house of my dear friend, the Rev. Derwent Coleridge,
then principal of St. Mark's College, Chelsea. The brilliant career
of the great talker and essayist was drawing to its close, and it is
partly on this account that I make now what record I can of my single
meeting with him. He was beginning to give up society, so that only at
the houses of his oldest friends was there any chance of seeing him.
Besides the especial attraction of Macaulay's presence it was an
interesting company that was gathered that evening around my friend's
hospitable board. One felt that the English dinner, that choicest of
all opportunities for exchange of thought, was here to be enjoyed
in high perfection. Among the guests were Mr. Blore, an elderly
gentleman, one of whose distinctions was that he had been a friend
of Sir Walter Scott and the architect of Abbotsford; Mr. Helmore, the
well-known writer on choral music; Mr. Tremenheere, who had traveled
in America and had written on the subject of education in our country;
and Mr. Herbert Coleridge, the gifted son of Sara Coleridge--young man
of the highest promise, who had taken a double first-class at Oxford.
Alas! that his mother, herself of such brilliant powers, had not
lived to know of this high achievement of her son!--she whose love and
thought for her children, and unwearied efforts for their intellectual
advancement, are so abundantly shown in the _Memoir and Letters_ which
her daughter has lately published! Alas! too, that the son for whom
such high hopes had been cherished, and whose opening manhood was of
such promise, was himself cut off three years after the time of which
I now write! Miss Edith Coleridge, the other child of Sara Coleridge,
was also present. She was even then meditating the memoir of
her mother, that work of filial duty which three years ago she
accomplished with a grace and propriety beyond all praise.

Of my host, Mr. Derwent Coleridge, and of Mrs. Coleridge, my dear and
honored friends of so many years, I must not permit myself to speak. I
may note only the brilliant conversational power of Mr. Coleridge, and
the fact that as I listen to him I perfectly understand the marvelous
gifts in this way of his father, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Again and
again I have been held as if under a spell by the flowing stream
of his delightful monologue. He had been the friend in boyhood of
Macaulay, and almost the first published words of the afterward famous
writer had appeared in conjunction with a like youthful effort of
Derwent Coleridge. Mr. Coleridge has been the biographer of Winthrop
Praed and the editor of his poems, and only a year ago he published
a touching tribute to John Moultrie. These two poets were also the
companions in youth of Macaulay, and each was in a way a stimulus to
the others in their first intellectual efforts. My place at the table
was just opposite to Macaulay, and I need not say with what keen
interest I looked at him and watched his countenance as he became
animated in conversation. His face was round, and his complexion was
colorless, one might almost say pallid: his hair, which appeared to
have been of a brownish hue, had become almost white. He was no doubt
then beginning to break in health, and perhaps this, which could only
be called a premature decay, was the penalty he was at length paying
for the years he had spent in India. His neck was short, and his
figure was short and ungainly. His eye had a quick flash, and his
change of expression was rapid; his head, too, had a quick movement;
and altogether there was a look of vivacity which showed that his
intellect was as keen as ever. He was always ready to speak, whatever
the subject, but he showed no disposition to take all the talk. There
was no moment of pause in the flowing after-dinner discussions, for
our host, as well as several of his guests, was abundantly able to
hold his own with this marvelous and every way delightful talker--this
prince in the domain of London social life.

There was some conversation about Nollekens the sculptor, whose
inordinate love of money was such a curious blemish in his character.
Macaulay told one or two stories illustrating his parsimony. Then he
came to speak of art in general, and said he did not think the faculty
for it a high gift of mind. This opinion was strongly combated by Mr.
Blore the architect and others, but I remember Macaulay gave, as
in some sort an illustration of his theory, a story of Grant the
portrait-painter, then of chief eminence in London. Cornewall Lewis
was to sit to him, and Grant, knowing he had written books, desired to
get at least a smattering of them before the sittings began. But some
one, perhaps mischievously, told him Lewis was the author of _The
Monk_, and this book he accordingly read. He took an early opportunity
to refer to it to his sitter, who to his no small discomfiture
disclaimed it. As conclusive proof of the truth of this denial, Lewis
stated further that the book was written before he was born. Everybody
was amused that Cornewall Lewis, so famous for abstruse learning,
should have deemed it necessary to appeal thus to dates to show he was
not the author of a novel.

Macaulay persisted in his theory that artistic power was not an
intellectual faculty, but I could not quite determine whether he was
not putting it forth as mere paradox. One could fancy the paroxysm of
rage into which Haydon would have been thrown had such a theory
been advanced in his presence; or Fuseli, who, as Haydon reports,
exclaimed, on first seeing the Elgin Marbles, with his strange accent,
"Those Greeks, they were _godes_." But the thought of Michel Angelo
and of Lionardo was a sufficient answer to the theory.

Macaulay, in further support of his general proposition, maintained
that a man might be a great musical composer and yet not in the true
sense a man of genius. He instanced Mozart, who, he said, was not
claimed to have been of high intellectual ability. Mr. Herbert
Coleridge said he thought this a mistake, but he urged that full
details were wanting in regard to his mental capacity as shown in
other ways than in music. Macaulay replied that Mozart was the Raphael
of music, and was both a composer and a wonderful performer at the age
of six. "Now," said he, "we cannot conceive of any one being a great
poet at the age of six: we hear nothing of Shakespeare or Milton at
the age of six."

The conversation turned to Homer and the question whether the Homeric
poems were the product of one mind. Macaulay maintained they were. It
was inconceivable, he said, that there could have been at the Homeric
period five or six poets equal to the production of the _Iliad_ and
the _Odyssey_. Great poets appeared at long intervals. As he reckoned
them, there had been but six given to the world--Homer, Shakespeare,
Dante, Milton, Sophocles and Æschylus. With the exception of the last
two, there had been great spaces of time between these. Could it be
supposed that at the very dawn of history there was a group, as it
were, of men each in the highest degree gifted with "the vision and
the faculty divine"? Then as to the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ being both
the production of Homer: if we admitted one to be, that the other was
would follow as a matter of course. It was the old test of Paley over
again--the finding the watch, and the presumption from it of a maker;
and in this case there was the watchmaker's shop close by. He urged,
too, that Homer was the only great poet who did not in narrating past
events use the present tense--speak of them as if happening at the
moment. He quoted long passages from _Paradise Lost_ to show how
Milton would fall into the present tense, though he might have begun
in the past. The fact that throughout the many thousand lines of Homer
no instance of the sort could be found seemed to make it clear that
but one mind produced them. It was very interesting to hear Macaulay
recite Milton, for whom he had such passionate admiration. He made
quotations also from Burns and from old ballads in illustration of
some theory which I do not recall, but showing his wonderful memory.
He had, indeed, an altogether marvelous facility in producing
passages as he might need them for whatever subject he was discussing.
Greville, writing of him in 1836, says that he displayed feats of
memory unequaled by any other human being, and that he could repeat
all Milton and all Demosthenes and a great part of the Bible. "But
his great _forte_," Greville adds, "is history, especially English
history. Here his superhuman memory, which appears to have the faculty
of digesting and arranging, as well as of retaining, has converted
his mind into a mighty magazine of knowledge, from which, with the
precision and correctness of a kind of intellectual machine, he pours
forth stores of learning, information, precept, example, anecdote and
illustration with a familiarity and facility not less astonishing than
delightful."

Our evening was all too short. The talk had never flagged, and so the
time had gone quickly by. I may note that in the discussions about
Homer, Mr. Herbert Coleridge had shown the utmost familiarity with
the subject, making him seem in this respect quite on a level with
Macaulay.

The time came for us to join the ladies in the drawing-room, but
Macaulay's carriage was announced, and he declined going up stairs
again, saying that his shortness of breath warned him it was dangerous
to do so. This symptom was doubtless due to that affection of the
heart which two years and a half later ended his life. As I have
said, he was beginning to give up dining out on account of his failing
health. But his delight was as great as ever in the society of his
near friends among men of letters, and these he continued to gather at
the breakfasts he had long been in the habit of giving--Dean Milman,
Lord Stanhope, the bishop of St. Davids (Thirlwall), our host, Mr.
Coleridge, and others. Occasionally he gave dinners to two persons.
His apartments were in Piccadilly, at what is known as the Albany.
His emoluments from his Indian appointment were ten thousand pounds a
year, and though he held the position little more than three years,
it was understood that his savings from it gave him an income of a
thousand pounds. This was before his English _History_ brought him in
its great returns. His Parliamentary life, Mr. Coleridge said, had not
been a success: he did good to neither party--indeed, was dangerous to
both. I may note a characteristic remark of his which was mentioned to
me by Mr. Coleridge: it was to the effect that what troubled us most
in life were the lesser worries and vexations: great perplexities and
calamities we somehow nerved ourselves to contend with. "If a thousand
megatheriums were let loose upon the world, in twenty-four hours they
would all be in museums."

E.Y.




UNVEILING KEATS'S MEDALLION.


I have just returned from a little ceremony of which I think that
the readers of these pages will be pleased to have some permanent
record--the uncovering of the medallion portrait of Keats, which Mr.
Warrington Wood, the well-known sculptor, has generously given for the
purpose of adorning his tomb. I have recorded in a previous number
of this Magazine the steps which were taken last year for putting the
poet's celebrated grave and gravestone in a proper state of repair,
and the singular circumstances that showed how on both sides of the
Atlantic a similar thought had with truly curious simultaneousness
occurred to the lovers of the poet's memory. The very striking scene
which took place to-day marked the completion of the purposes which
were then inaugurated.

A printed notice had invited all English and Americans in Rome,
interested in the subject, to attend at the English cemetery at
three o'clock, the day having been fixed by the fact that it was the
anniversary of the day of Keats's death. It was also, as it happened,
the second day of our boisterous and rollicking Carnival, and those
who attended had to absent themselves from the attractions of the
Corso. Nevertheless, the gathering was a large one, and the contrast
between the scene passing in that remote and quiet corner of old Rome
under the cypresses and in the shade of the pyramid of Caius Cestius,
and that which was at the same time being enacted in the Corso, was
about as great as can well be conceived. We had it all to ourselves.
With the exception of the coachmen, who remained lazily dozing on the
boxes of the carriages which had brought us from the living Rome of
to-day to this far-away spot, there was not a soul on the ground save
English and Americans.

It must be quite needless to remind those who have ever seen it of
the features of that most poetically suggestive spot, and I can hardly
hope to enable any who have not seen it to form an adequate idea of
its exceeding beauty. It is just within the city wall, niched in an
angle of it, in the immediate vicinity of the Porta San Sebastiano,
but it is difficult to imagine that one is within the limits of a
great city; and it was especially so when the noise and racket of a
city in Carnival time had just been left behind one. But the fact is,
that large tracts of space, utterly uninhabited and unoccupied save
by scattered masses of the ruins of ancient Rome, lie between the
inhabited parts of the modern city and this far corner. The most
marked characteristic of the spot is its perfect quietude. The
ivy-grown city-wall, a group of fine cypresses, a few stone-pines
with their lovely velvet-like verdure, the gray old pyramid of
Caius Cestius immediately behind the cemetery, and a glimpse of the
dreamy-looking Alban Hills on the farther side of the Campagna, make
up a landscape which no artistic eye can rest on without being deeply
penetrated by the charm of it. February as it was, the day might have
been deemed a summer day anywhere to the northward of the Alps. It was
the very perfection of weather--warm, genial, still, and breathing the
sweet breath of a thousand wild flowers. The violets which abundantly
covered the grave were in full blossom, even as they had bloomed
beneath those old walls when the sight of them there had induced the
poet, prescient of his coming end, to wish that he might sleep his
long sleep beneath them.

When we had all taken our places, and a eucalyptus plant, sent for the
purpose by Mr. Marsh, the American minister, had been planted on the
turf just behind the grave, the sheet which covered the medallion was
withdrawn, and a murmur of pleasure and admiration ran through
the crowd as they looked on the strikingly characteristic and
individualized presentment of the young poet's very remarkable and
striking features. I had seen the medallion before, and was therefore
at liberty to watch the effect which it produced on others; and I was
struck by the evidences in the faces of those around me that it spoke
very clearly to the hearts and imaginations of the spectators.

General Sir Vincent Eyre, who had chiefly undertaken the trouble
of directing all that had been done for putting the gravestone into
perfect repair, adorning it with flowers and plants, and putting up
the medallion, was on the ground together with Miss Clarke, who had
been entrusted with a similar labor of love from America, and who had
co-operated "heart and hand," as Sir Vincent said, with him throughout
the whole business. As soon as the pleased murmur of the crowd had
subsided he stepped in front of the persons assembled and gave
a succinct account of what had been done, and a narrative of the
singular coincidence which had led to our co-heirs in the legacy
bequeathed to us by the poet being co-operators in the work. He
concluded a very neat and appropriate address by stating that the
subscriptions sent in for the restoration of the grave had left a sum
of about sixty pounds sterling in his hands, and that he proposed that
this should be augmented by about as much more, which would suffice to
place a bust of the poet in Westminster Abbey. The proposal met with
the warm approval of the assembly, and it was determined that Dr.
Stanley, the dean of Westminster, should at once be communicated with
on the subject.

An interesting and affecting letter from Mr. Severn, the loving and
faithful friend of Keats, was read by Sir Vincent Eyre with much
feeling. It contained a few simple words to the effect that the writer
would much have wished to be present on the occasion of the unveiling
of the medallion, but that he feared to be overcome by the pathos of
the circumstances, strong emotions not being easily borne at the age
of eighty-two years. There were many moistened eyes in the assembly
as Sir Vincent read the communication from the poet's venerable friend
and survivor.

T.A.T.




GINO CAPPONI.


GINO CAPPONI, whose death, on the 3d of February last, has been
noticed in all the principal journals of Europe and America, belonged
to a family that has been honored in Florence for more than five
hundred years, and whose name occurs on almost every page of its
history. He was born in that city on the 14th of September, 1792. His
name in full was Gino Alessandro Giuseppe Gaspero, but no one ever
heard of him save as Gino. At seven years of age he shared the
exile of his parents, who followed their sovereign, the grand duke
Ferdinand, when he was driven from his dominions by the victorious
arms of France. He was little more than twenty when he went as a
member of the embassy sent to Napoleon I. immediately after the
battle of Leipsic, on which occasion he is recorded to have had a long
conversation with the emperor. After the restoration of the Tuscan
sovereign at the fall of Napoleon he traveled extensively in England,
Germany and France. Returning to his country, he was continually eager
in using his large hereditary wealth for the promotion of education
among all classes of his countrymen. He was one of the principal
founders and supporters of the celebrated periodical, the _Antologia_,
which played so large and conspicuous a part in preparing the public
mind for the awakening which finally issued in that resuscitation of
Italy which we have all witnessed.

In 1841 he mainly contributed to the foundation of the _Archivio
Storico Italiano_, the fruitful parent of various other publications
of the same kind which have within the last thirty years done
infinitely more for students of Italian history than all the three
centuries which preceded them. The famous bookseller Vieusseux, who
himself did much and suffered much in the cause of the nascent Italian
liberties, undertook the material portion of this enterprise, which
was rewarded by a large measure of literary success, and by the fear
and enmity of the oppressors of Italy throughout the Peninsula.

Capponi, however, would fain have avoided _revolution_ could it have
been avoided without sacrificing liberty. In July, 1847, when the
general state of Europe was bringing home to the minds of rulers the
cogent necessity of becoming reformers or of vanishing, Capponi was
made a councillor of state, and at the close of that year was employed
by the grand duke to draw up a scheme of representative institutions
for Tuscany. To give anything approaching to a complete account of
Capponi's activity during the troubled period which followed would
be to write the history of Tuscany during that period. The general
progress of affairs was precisely that which history has had so often
to recount. The sovereign, frightened, obstinate, and little able to
appreciate the forces opposed to him, was wavering, fickle, timid,
yet stubborn, and, above all, untrustworthy. The people were bent on
pushing matters to extremes to which those who had so far been their
leaders were unwilling to go, and, as usual, the best of those leaders
were shunted from the road, happy if they were able, as Capponi was,
to retire in safety to the tranquil seclusion of studious life.
When, after the flight of the grand duke from his dominions and his
subsequent restoration by Austrian bayonets, a regular government was
once more established in Florence, Capponi was constant, though wholly
unconnected with public life officially, in tendering counsel to the
grand duke which, had it been listened to, might have saved his throne
and changed all the future of Italy. But he was disregarded, and even
suspected; and, as we all know, the end came in the memorable 1859.
After the union of Italy under Victor Emmanuel, Capponi was at once
named a senator and decorated with all the honors the sovereign had
to bestow. But, alas! they were bestowed on a blind old man, whose
misfortune incapacitated him from taking any part in public life. From
the time when the Italian revolution was consummated the life of Gino
Capponi was that of a retired and laborious student. The loss of his
sight by no means involved in his case the abandonment of literary
labor; and his last great work, published but a year or two ago,
the _History of the Republic of Florence_, is the _second_ great
historical work which in our own time has been produced by an author
deprived of eyesight.

Capponi began his literary life at twenty by the publication in 1812
of _Observations on a Critical Examination of Amerigo Vespucci's
First Voyage to the New World_: he ended it, as has been said, by the
publication at eighty of his Florentine _History_. To give even the
titles of all the works he published in the interim would occupy more
than two of these columns. He has left in manuscript a _History of the
Church during the First Centuries_ and _Records of the Years_ 1814-16,
1821, 1831, 1847-49. It is to be hoped that the latter of these
works will see the light: Capponi's account of the memorable years in
question would be no small boon to the historian.

It is needless to say that the funeral, and obsequies of this great
citizen were surrounded by every observance that could help to mark
the nation's sense of the greatness of the loss it had sustained. It
would be hardly possible to name a corner of Italy that has not by
deputation or special official message sought to associate itself with
the task of doing him honor.

T.A.T.




A DINNER WITH ROSSI.


"Come and dine with us next Thursday," said an American literary lady
now residing in Paris to a friend or two recently. "We expect Rossi on
that day, and I think you would like to meet him."

The company was but a small one, the intention of the hostess being
not to show off her distinguished guest, but to bring together a few
congenial spirits to pass a pleasant hour in his society. Punctual to
the minute, the hero of the occasion entered, his superb physique
and majestic presence showing to even greater advantage in the
irreproachable evening garb of a finished gentleman than in the velvet
and tinsel of his stage attire. As is the case with almost all really
handsome actors or actresses, Rossi is finer-looking off the stage
than on it. The simplicity and refinement of his manners, totally
free from anything like affectation or posing for effect, are very
noticeable. His head is noble, both in form and carriage, and he has
a way, when eager in conversation, of pushing back the masses of his
profuse chestnut hair which gives a sort of leonine look to the broad
massive brow and intelligent features.

Once seated at table, the conversation naturally turned upon the
dramatic art and upon Shakespeare. Every person present except the
king of the feast was an American, and a Shakespeare fanatic as well.
Rather to the surprise of even his most ardent admirers, the great
tragedian proved to be a keen and intelligent Shakespearian scholar,
not only of the roles that he has made his own, but also of the whole
of the works of the world's greatest dramatist.

"I date my love for Shakespeare," said Rossi, "from the time that
I was a little child. My grandfather possessed a set of his plays
translated into Italian, and whenever I was restless and unable to go
to sleep he would take me into his arms and lull me to rest with tales
from these treasured volumes.

"It was I who first introduced Shakespeare in his veritable form on
the Italian stage. Up to that time the classic form had been alone
considered admissible for tragedy. The first play that I produced was
_Othello_. When in the first scene Brabantio came to the window,
the audience began to laugh. 'Is this a tragedy?' they cried--'a man
talking out of a window!' They laughed all through the first acts.
But," continued Rossi, looking round with a sudden flash from his
expressive eyes, "when the scene with Iago came they ceased to laugh;
and henceforward they laughed no more. At the present time Shakespeare
is thoroughly appreciated in Italy. Our audiences would not endure
the altered and garbled versions of the French stage. Rouvière once
undertook to play in Italy the version of _Hamlet_ constructed by the
elder Dumas and M. V----. When, in the last act, the Ghost appeared
to tell Hamlet _Tu vivras_, the audience rose _en masse_ and fairly
shouted and jeered the performers off the stage. It is in Germany,
however, that Shakespeare is best known and understood. The very
bootblacks in the street know all about him and his greatest works."

The fact now came out that Rossi is an accomplished linguist. He reads
and understands both English and German, though he speaks neither
language. French he speaks as fluently as he does Italian, and he
is also versed in Spanish. He spoke rapturously of the German
_Shakespeare_ (Schlegel's translation), declaring that he considered
it nearly equal to the original.

"Next to Shakespeare, but at a great distance below him, I would rank
Moliere," said Rossi in answer to a query from one of the guests.
"Moliere has given us real types of character and real humor. But he
was the man of his epoch, not for all time. He has painted for us
the men and manners of his day and generation: he did not take all
humanity for a study. Therefore, his works appear old-fashioned on the
modern stage, while those of Shakespeare will never seem faded or out
of date."

"What a wonder, what a marvel was Shakespeare! He was an Englishman
born and bred, yet he turns to Italy and paints for us a picture of
Italian life and love such as no Italian hand has ever drawn. His
heart throbs, his imagination glows, with all the fire and fervor of
the South. He depicts for us a Moor, an African, and the sun of Africa
scorches his brain and inflames his passions."

"And Hamlet," I remarked, "is thoroughly of the North--a German even,
rather than Englishman."

"To me," answered Rossi, "Hamlet represents no nationality and no one
type of character. He is the image of humanity. Hamlet is to me not a
man, but Man. The sufferings, the doubts, the vague mysteries of life
are incarnate in his person. He is ever checked by the Unknown. He is
tortured by the phantasm of Doubt. Is the spectre indeed his father's
shade? has it spoken truth? is it well to live? is it best to
die?--such are the problems that perplex his brain."

"To be or not to be--that is the question; but it is only one of the
questions that haunt his soul."

"A distinguished English actor who had come to Paris to see me act
once asked me why, in the first scene with the Ghost, I betray no
terror, while in the scene with the Queen I crouch in affright behind
a chair, wild with alarm, the moment the phantom appears. I answered
that in the first scene the Ghost comes before Hamlet as the image of
a beloved and lamented parent, while in the second-named instance he
appears as an embodiment of conscience. For Hamlet has disobeyed
the mandate of the spectre: he has dared to threaten and upbraid his
mother.

"The reason why the Ghost is visible to Marcellus, Bernardo and
Horatio In the first act, and not to the Queen in the third, has
always appeared to me very simple. The phantom appears only to those
who loved and mourned the dead king. Not to his false wife, not to her
who, if not cognizant of his murder, is yet wedded to his murderer,
will the pale Shape appear.

"_Hamlet_, above all tragedies, is independent of the accessories
of scenery and costume. With a slight change of surroundings the
character might be performed in modern dress without injury to its
marvelous individuality."

Rossi was much surprised when he learned that most of the
stage-business in _Hamlet_ which he had studied out for himself formed
part and parcel of the traditions of the play on the American and
English boards. Among the points that he specified as having been thus
thought out was the reference to the two miniatures in the scene with
the Queen--

  Look here, upon this picture, and on this;

and he strongly deprecated the idea of two life-sized portraits
hanging against the wall, as is sometimes the usage.

Mention was made of Bulwer's _Richelieu_ by one of the guests as a
part peculiarly fitted to the powers of the great tragedian, and he
was asked if he knew the play.

"No," answered Rossi, "and I should scarcely care to add it to
my repertoire, which is already rather an extensive one. I have
personated in my time over four hundred characters, including all the
prominent personages of Alfieri, Molière and Goldoni."

"Then you play comedy as well as tragedy? Have you ever appeared as
Shakespeare's Benedick?"

"Never, but I may perhaps study the character for my approaching tour
in the United States. My other Shakespearian characters, besides those
in which I have already appeared in Paris, are Coriolanus, Shylock,
and Timon of Athens. Once I began to study Richard III., but chancing
to see Bogumil Dawison in that character, I was so delighted with
his personation that I gave up all thoughts of performing the part
myself."

At this juncture our host attempted to fill Rossi's glass with some
peculiarly choice wine, but the tragedian stopped him with a smile. "I
am very temperate in my habits," he said, "and drink nothing but light
claret. I am not one of those that think that an actor can never play
with proper fire unless he is half drunk, like Kean in _Désordre et
Genie_. I may have very little genius--"

But here a universal outcry interrupted the speaker. That proposition
was evidently wholly untenable, in that company at least.

"Well, then," added Rossi laughing, "whatever genius I may possess, I
do not believe in disorder."

This little incident turned the conversation on the modern French
drama, whereof Rossi spoke rather slightingly, stigmatizing it as
mechanical, being composed of plays written to be performed and not
to live. "In Victor Hugo's dramas," he remarked, "there are some fine
lines and noble passages, but the characters are always Victor Hugo
in a mask: they are never real personages. It is always the author
who speaks--never a new individuality. As to the classic dramatists of
France, they are intolerable. Corneille is perhaps a shade better than
Racine, but both are stiff, pompous and unnatural: their characters
are a set of wooden puppets that are pulled by wires and work in a
certain fixed manner, from which they never deviate.

"It was Voltaire that taught the French to despise Shakespeare. He
called him a barbarian, and the French believe that saying true to
the present time. Yet he did not hesitate to steal _Othello_ when he
wanted to write _Zaïre_, or, rather, he went out on the boulevards,
picked out the first good-looking barber he could find, dressed him
up in Eastern garments, and then fancied that he had created a French
Othello."

"I saw Mounet-Sully at one of the performances of your _Othello_" I
remarked. "I wonder what he thought of his own personation of Orosmane
when he witnessed the real tragedy?"

"Had Mounet-Sully been able to appreciate _Othello_" answered Rossi,
"he never could have brought himself to personate Orosmane."

Some one then asked Rossi what he thought of the Comédie Frarçaise.

"The Comédie Française," said Rossi, "like every school of acting that
is founded on art, and not on Nature, is falling into decadence. It
is ruled by tradition, not by the realities of life and passion. One
incident that I beheld at a rehearsal at that theatre in 1855 revealed
the usual process by which their great performers study their art. I
was then fulfilling an engagement in Paris with Ristori, and, though
only twenty-two years of age, I was her leading man and stage-manager
as well. The Italian troupe was requested to perform at the Comédie
Française on the occasion of the benefit of which I have spoken, and
we were to give one act of _Maria Stuart_, When we arrived at the
theatre to commence our rehearsal the company was in the act of
rehearsing a scene from _Tartuffe_ which was to form part of the
programme on the same occasion. M. Bressant was the Tartuffe, and
Madeleine Brohan was to personate Elmire. They came to the point where
Tartuffe lays his hand on the knee of Elmire. Thereupon, Mademoiselle
Brohan turned to the stage-manager and asked, 'What am I to do now?'
'Well,' said that functionary, 'Madame X---- used to bite her lips and
look sideways at the offending hand; Madame Z---- used to blush
and frown, etc.' But neither of them said, What would a woman like
Elmire--a virtuous woman--do if so insulted by a sneaking hypocrite?
They took counsel of tradition, not of Nature. In fact, the French
stage is given over to sensation dramas and the opéra bouffe, and such
theatres as the Comédie Française and the Odéon have but a forced and
artificial existence."

"Not a word against the opéra bouffe!" remarked one of the
lady-guests, laughing. "Did I not see you enjoying yourself immensely
at the second representation of _La Boulangère a des Écus?_"

Whereupon Rossi assumed an air of conscious guilt most comical to see.

Some one then asked him at what age and in what character he had
made his début. His reply was: "I was just fourteen, and I played the
soubrette characters in an amateur company--a line that I could hardly
assume with any degree of vraisemblance now." And he put his head on
one side, thrust his hands into a pair of imaginary apron-pockets and
looked around with a pert, chambermaid-like air so absurdly unsuited
to his noble features and intellectual brow--to say nothing of his
stalwart physique--that all present shrieked with laughter.

The evening was now drawing to a close, and the guests began to take
their departure. When Rossi came to say farewell his hostess asked him
if he would do her the favor of writing his autograph in her copy of
Shakespeare. He assented at once, and taking up the pen, he wrote in
Italian these lines: "O Master! would that I could comprehend thee
even as I love thee!" and then appended his name.

A peculiar brightness and geniality of temperament, a childlike
simplicity of manner, united to a keen and cultivated intellect and
to a thorough knowledge of social conventionalities,--such was the
impression left by Signor Rossi on the minds of those present. There
was a total absence of conceit or of self-assertion that was very
remarkable in a member of his profession, and one, too, of such
wide-spread celebrity. The general verdict of Europe is that he is as
great an actor as Salvini, while his répertoire is far more important
and varied: it remains to be seen whether the United States will
endorse the verdict of Italy and of Paris.

L.H.H.




"FOUNDER'S DAY" AT RAINE'S HOSPITAL.


MAY DAY in London would not seem at first sight to realize the
traditionary associations connected with its name, but in a certain
parish of the city a more solid interest attaches to this day, and
young girls look forward to the ceremony which marks it with more
anxiety than ever did village-lass to her expected royalty of a
day. Twice a year (the Fifth of November being the other occasion)
a wedding-portion of one hundred pounds is given by lot to one girl
among the many whose antecedents, as prescribed by the founder's will,
entitle them to become candidates. This endowment is connected
with what is known as Raine's Asylum in the parish of St.
George's-in-the-East, London. The parish is populous and
unfashionable, and proportionately poor and interesting. Among its
members in the last century was Henry Raine, a brewer, who in 1719
founded two schools for the free education of fifty girls and fifty
boys, respectively. In 1736 he founded and endowed a new school,
called the Asylum, for teaching, clothing and training forty girls to
domestic service, the girls to be chosen from among the children of
the lower school. In this latter school each girl stays four years,
and the system has worked so well that the scholars are greatly sought
after as servants. At the age of twenty-two any girl, educated there,
who can produce good testimonials while in service, may become a
candidate for a marriage-portion of one hundred pounds. Six girls draw
for it on May Day, and six on the Fifth of November, the unsuccessful
ones being entitled to draw again from time to time until they get it.
The drawing is preceded by a special service in the parish church,
the boys and girls from the lower schools being present, and going
in procession from the school to the church arrayed in quaint,
old-fashioned costume. The former wear a half-nautical costume, the
neighborhood being in many ways connected with sea-pursuits:
the latter are dressed in blue stuff gowns, a white apron and a
handkerchief folded over the breast, and a small white cap bound
round with a Blue ribbon. Every one, from the gorgeous beadle to the
youngest child, has also a bouquet of flowers on this occasion. The
beadle is an "institution" that has disappeared in America, but which
still looms in awful official grandeur before the mind's eye of every
London-bred child. On these occasions he is in all his glory: his
military costume and silver-headed staff are the very embodiment of
dignity, and to the less awed spectator of riper years he fills in a
niche of old-time conventionality very picturesquely. The service is
followed by the wedding of the successful candidate of the previous
occasion, so that each of the two memorable days becomes a double
festival. The bells strike a merry peal, and the procession forms once
more and goes back to the Asylum, where, in a curious apartment, the
walls of which are covered with the names of donors to the charity,
the drawing takes place. The girls of the Asylum enter the room and
begin by singing a short hymn, accompanied by an old-fashioned
organ. The treasurer of the Asylum Fund, in exact compliance with the
explicit directions of the founder's charter, takes a half sheet of
white paper and writes the words "One Hundred Pounds" on it, then five
other blank half sheets, and wraps each tight round a little roller of
wood tied with a narrow green ribbon. The knot of each is then firmly
sealed with red sealing-wax, and all the rolls formally deposited in
a large canister placed on a small table in the middle of the
room. There is nothing else on the table except a candle in a small
candlestick, to be used in sealing the rolls. The treasurer stands by
as each candidate draws, and when all the rolls are drawn the girls go
up to the chairwoman (generally the rector's wife), at the upper end
of the room. She then cuts the ribbon of each and returns the roll to
its owner. It is not long before the fortunate one is recognized. The
scene is full of interest even to a stranger, and was evidently one of
great pleasure to the founder himself, as appears from the wording of
his will, in which he exhorts his nephews to buy four thousand pounds
of stock for the permanent provision of these portions. "I doubt not,"
he says, "but my nephews would cheerfully purchase the said stock if
they had seen, as I have, six poor innocent maidens come trembling to
draw the prize, and the fortunate maiden that got it burst into tears
with excess of joy." It is likely that even before he had founded
and endowed the Asylum, Henry Raine had often given away portions to
deserving young girls. That drawn on May Day is not given until after
the wedding on November 5, and that drawn in November is given in May.
The dowry consists of gold pieces in an old-fashioned silk purse,
and is formally presented to the young couple at the committee
dinner which takes place after the drawing. Of course, the husband's
character is quite as strictly inquired into as that of the bride,
and unless this is perfectly satisfactory to the rector, treasurer
and trustees the portion is withheld--a wise provision against
fortune-hunting. A wedding-repast is also provided for the bridal
party at the same time, but in a separate room, and to neither of
these banquets are the public admitted: a few personal friends of the
trustees are sometimes asked. The dinner is a pretty sight, the girls
of the lower school waiting on the committee. The treasurer, the
rector and a few others accompany the presentation of the portion with
kind and congratulatory speeches, and the girls sing appropriate hymns
in the intervals.

The building called Raine's Asylum (or sometimes Hospital) is a
plain, ugly, square mass, as all specimens of the so-called Georgian
"architecture" are apt to be. The London atmosphere has rather
blackened than mellowed its crude tone of red brick and white
stone till the whole is of the uniform color of India ink. Over the
projecting portico stands the bust of the founder in wig and bands,
looking more like a scholar or a divine than a brewer, and leaving the
impression of a good, truthful, thoughtful face, with a long slender
nose, thin mouth and broad and massive forehead. Behind the Asylum
stretches a garden--not a small one for such a locality--and, though
London gardens are not apt to be cheery places, this one has at
least the merit of standing as evidence of the kind-hearted founder's
intention to bestow as much fresh air as possible on his _protégées_.

B.M.




NOTES.


TURKEY is the _pièce de résistance_ of European politics. It has
lasted through the sitting of a century. At intervals the assembled
gourmands would simultaneously bend their eyes upon it; and an
energetic sharpening of carving-knives and poising of forks would
spring up with a synchronous shuffling of plates. Slashing would
sometimes follow, and slices were served round with more or less
impartiality and contentment. But the choice cuts remain, and never
was the interest or anxiety of the guests more highly strung than at
present. The excitement, pleasurable in itself, has become more so
from habit. Were the dish to be finally cleared, how sadly it would be
missed! "What shall we do with it?" would have lost its perplexities
in favor of "What shall we do without it?" It may be well doubted if
the latter question will soon become troublesome. Empires are, like
the Merry Monarch, an unconsciously long time in dying. Atrophy
appears to spin out their existence. The process lasted with the
Turk's predecessor at Byzantium six or eight centuries. For barely
two, if we date from Sobieski instead of Don John of Austria, has
it been going on with him. He bids fair to live long enough to see a
great deal of change disturb, if not prostrate, his physicians before
it comes in its final shape to him.

       *       *       *       *       *

This land of law, lawyers and lawmakers is badly in want of a jurist
or two. Advocates, special pleaders, log-rollers, and codes that
are recodified every twelvemonth are poor substitutes for a few men
capable of perceiving the principles of equity, systematizing their
expression and making them simple, uniform and absolute in practice.
When a judge in one of the largest and most enlightened States of the
Union grants a writ of error to a convict whom he has twice sentenced
to be hanged, it is plain to the dullest unprofessional eye that
something is radically and mischievously wrong with bench, bar,
or legislature, or with all three. It makes the administration of
justice, in its best aspect, a lottery; the goddess blindfolded, it
may be, but only for drawing from the wheel. In the worst aspect it
makes of it a hideous mockery. With the proverbial uncertainty of the
law we have been long familiar. It is measurably curable. We are now
confronted by its proverbial certainty to go wrong. Whether the cause
lie in the mode of election and tenure of judges, a tendency of the
bar to limit its responsibility by the title and the ethics of the
attorney, or the endless tinkering of forty legislatures, or in all
of these combined with other influences that might be suggested, it is
evident that we are ripe for law reform, and that our Romilly cannot
appear too soon.




LITERATURE OF THE DAY.


    Sonnets, Songs and Stories. By Cora Kennedy Aitken. London:
    Hodder & Stoughton.

This little book is one of that numerous class which is the despair of
the critic. Its spirit is so much better than its letter that one is
left in doubt whether its author is incapable of more careful finish,
or is simply disdainful of it. Mrs. Aitken is apparently a lesser
Mrs. Browning, cast in a Scotch mould. She is fond of writing upon
patriotic or historic themes, and through all her poems runs a current
of strong religious feeling. Without being in any sense an imitator of
Mrs. Browning, there is a certain trick of phrase here and there which
recalls her style, while the choice of subjects continually reminds
one of Mrs. Browning's favorite themes. One of her sonnets, called
"Unless" (an awkward title enough, by the by) begins thus:

  Sweetheart, I tell thee, I, a woman born
  To live by music, and to soar and sing,
  As stars for shining, flowers for blossoming,
  Could never sit beneath the stars and mourn
  With missing aught from such high destinies.

That is very suggestive of Mrs. Browning's style, and it were easy to
multiply instances; such as this, for example, from the poem called
"In York:"

  The broad vaulted aisles are so still we can hear
  The silences bend thro' the loneliness, listening
  To the eloquent brasses that burn at our feet,
  With holy signs glistening.

This is the worst form of Browningese. Exactly what Mrs. Aitken meant
by it she probably knows as little as any of us; but we would humbly
suggest to her that one does not _hear_ anything bend, unless it be
of a creaking nature, like an old tree, and that is rather opposed
to one's idea of "silences," vague as our notions of that plural
noun are. Why one "silence" could not serve her turn is one of those
Dundrearyan conundrums that no fellow can find out. And, while we are
about it, we should like to know whether it is the silences or the
loneliness or "we" that listen to the eloquent brasses, and to inquire
mildly why the poet threw away the opportunity to say the "brazen
eloquences," which would have been novel and striking, and quite
in the vein of her great original. If Mrs. Browning can talk about
"broken sentiency" and "elemental strategies," why should not Mrs.
Aitken aspire to hear the silences bend? To do her justice, she does
not use such expressions very often--her style is usually simple and
comprehensible--but she does sometimes make the mistake of confounding
incomprehensibility and power. She has some pretty descriptions of
Nature here and there, and one or two of her ballads are very good,
especially that called "A Story of Tours;" but her sonnets are none
of them constructed after the genuine Italian model, and generally
end with a couplet. Her blank verse is the worst of all. The most
ambitious poem in the book is that called "A Day in the Life of Mary
Stuart," a dramatic poem in three scenes, dated the last of January,
1567. It contains a scene between the queen and her maidens, a scene
with the Presbyterian deputies, and a scene with Bothwell, wherein she
incites him to the murder of Darnley. It is unfortunate that the poem
should have appeared in the same year with Swinburne's _Bothwell_,
that magnificent study of the character of Mary Stuart. The characters
in Mrs. Aitken's sketch are weak and thin, and the verse intolerable.
She divides the most inseparable phrases to make out her measure,
and constantly ends the lines with a preposition. No torturing of the
voice can make verse of such sentences as these:

                            He bids
  Your grace deny Lord Bothwell's wish to be
  Made member of the council, and if so
  Be you delay, he--

In the scene with Bothwell the queen declares her love to him thus:

  Wait you for love? 'Tis worth the waiting for.
  God put a power of closer tenderness
  In mine than in most women's souls. Who thrills
  The senses, holds the heart, in all inspiring
  Ways sweetens and magnifies to good
  Love's life, conceiving colder estimate
  Of love? So will I love you, without stint.

Compare this feeble and disjointed utterance with the corresponding
speech in Swinburne's play. Mary says:

                      O my fair lord!
  How fairer is this warrior face, and eyes
  With the iron light of battle in them, left
  As the after-fire of sunset left in heaven
  When the sun sinks, than any fool's face made
  Of smiles and courtly color! Now I feel
  As I were man too, and had part myself
  In your great strength; being one with you as I,
  How should I not be strong?


    Cartoons. By Margaret J. Preston. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

If Mrs, Aitken's poems suggest Mrs. Browning's, these _Cartoons_ of
Mrs. Preston's have a slight flavor of Robert Browning's _Men and
Women_ in their subjects and in their mode of thought. A cartoon is
usually supposed to be a design for tapestry or mosaic, but we suppose
that Mrs. Preston has taken the significance given the word by our
illustrated papers, where it is held to mean a large outline sketch.
The title is not a very happy one, but the poems, are much better than
the title. They are strong, simple and well-written, and the subjects
are usually very well chosen. They are divided into "Cartoons from the
Life of the Old Masters," "Cartoons from the Life of the Legends" and
"Cartoons from the Life of To-day." Of these, the second division is
perhaps the weakest, the first the most interesting, while the third
makes up in religious sentiment what it lacks in poetic strength and
beauty. It contains more commonplace verses and ideas than either
of the other two. Of the stories of the old masters, "Mona Lisa's
Picture," "The Duke's Commission" and "Woman's Art" are perhaps the
best, and the last poem especially is very spirited and terse.
Mrs. Preston's style has the rare merit in these days of uniting
conciseness and directness to grace and beauty of expression. Her
greatest failing is a lack of the sense of climax. There are several
of these poems, like the two on the Venerable Bede and that called
"Bacharach Wine," that rather disappoint one by the insignificance
of their closing stanzas or the gradual dwindling of their interest
toward the end. There is a great deal of art in knowing when to stop,
and there are many stories, like some of those in this book, that are
very impressive told in a few words, but elaborated into a long poem
lose all their power to move us. At the same time, we realize that it
is not from any poverty of ideas that Mrs. Preston sometimes dwells
too long upon a subject: her poetry is not diluted with a mere
harmonious jingle of words, as destitute of any meaning as the silver
chime of sleigh-bells. "The Legend of the Woodpecker" is remarkable
for its simplicity and terseness: it is one of the best of all the
poems; only we wish that in the last verse but one she had not thought
it necessary to use the word "chode" for "chided." So in the fine
ballad called "The Reapers of Landisfarne" it is a pity to mar a good
stanza by using the queer participle "strawed" as a rhyme to _sod_ and
_abroad_, especially as the latter words do not rhyme either, save in
New England parlance. But such blemishes as these in Mrs. Preston's
work are rare, and therefore it is worth while to point them out.
Poems of so much vigor as these give fair promise for the future, and
deserve something more than merely general commendation.


    Among my Books. (Second Series.) By James Russell Lowell.
    Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

The essays in this volume have an advantage over the former series
published under the same title in the greater homogeneousness of the
subjects. These are all poets, and with one exception English poets.
They are poets, too, so to speak, of one family, unequal in rank, but
having that resemblance of character which marks the higher and lower
peaks of the same mountain-chain. All are epic and lyric, none in a
proper sense dramatic. All are poets _de pur sang_, endowed by nature
with the special qualities which cannot be confounded with those of a
different order, and which forbid all doubt as to a true "vocation."
Dante, Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, differing as they do
in intellectual greatness and imaginative power, have all, as a
distinguishing characteristic, that magic mastery over the harmonies
of language which renders them responsive to subtle thoughts and
ethereal conceptions. We find, however, no intimation that it is from
any view of this kind that these essays have been collected, in a
single group. It seems indeed more probable that they have simply been
reprinted, in the order in which they first appeared, on being found
of sufficient bulk to fill a volume of the desired size. Nor is it to
be supposed that they indicate a particular course of study pursued
with reference to their production. Though the author has had the
works on which he comments beside him while he wrote, his long and
close familiarity with them, as well as with the range of literature
to which they belong, and with the principles and necessary details
which help to illustrate them, is apparent throughout. Seldom, indeed,
except in the case of a specialist devoting himself to some single
field, has a critical panoply been more complete than that with which
Mr. Lowell has armed himself. He discusses with equal learning and
enthusiasm the profoundest and the minutest questions, mysteries of
consciousness and niceties of metre and accent. Yet this laboriousness
is curiously conjoined with something of a sybaritic tone, as of a
taste cultivated to hyper-fastidiousness and courting a languorous
enjoyment of flavors rather than the satisfaction of a keen appetite.
There are in this book some passages in which the thought is so
attenuated in the process of elaboration and figurative adornment that
we are tempted to regard the whole as a mere effort of fancy, not as
the expression of a serious conviction. It might have been appropriate
and suggestive to characterize the poetry of Spenser by some allusions
to the splendors and bizarreries of Venetian art; but when it is
asserted as a proposition logically formulated and supported that "he
makes one think always of Venice; for not only is his style Venetian,
but as the gallery there is housed in the shell of an abandoned
convent, so his in that of a deserted allegory; and again, as at
Venice you swim in a gondola from Gian Bellini to Titian, and from
Titian to Tintoret, so in him, where other cheer is wanting, the
gentle sway of his measure, like the rhythmical impulse of the oar,
floats you lullingly along from picture to picture,"--we are rather
reminded of Venetian filigree than struck by the force and truth
of the analogy. The statement that Spenser's style is Venetian is a
puzzling one, and we are not much helped by the explanation given in
a foot note, where Mr. Lowell, citing from the _Muiopotmos_ a
description of the rape of Europa, asks, "Was not this picture painted
by Paul Veronese, for example?" and then adds, "Spenser begins a
complimentary sonnet prefixed to the 'Commonwealth and Government of
Venice' (1599) with this beautiful verse,

  Fair Venice, flower of the last world's delight.

Perhaps we should read 'lost.'"

We fail to get any light from these quotations, and we should be
glad to have been spared the doubt as to Mr. Lowell's accuracy and
authority as a verbal critic suggested by his off-hand emendation of a
phrase which he has remembered for its alliterative sweetness while
he has missed its sense and forgotten the context. In the line "Fayre
Venice," etc., which occurs not at the beginning, but near the end,
of the sonnet, "lost" would be so contradictory to the sense that
any editor who had found the word thus printed and had failed to
substitute "last" would have betrayed inexcusable negligence.
Spenser, writing while Venice, though declined from the height of her
greatness, was still flourishing as well as fair, considers her as the
marvel of his own age--the "last," i.e., latest, world--as Babylon and
Rome, with which he compares her, had been the marvels of antiquity,
of worlds that were indeed lost.[6] Slips of this kind are probably
rare, but a prevailing tendency to put forward loose or fanciful
conjectures as _ex-cathedrâ_ rulings detracts from the pleasure and
instruction to be derived from these essays.

[Footnote 6: Here is the sonnet, that the reader may judge for
himself:

  "The antique Babel, Empresse of the East,
    Upreard her buildinges to the threatned skie;
  And second Babell, Tyrant of the West,
    Her ayry towers upraised much more high.
    But, with the weight of their own surquedry,
  They both are fallen, that all the earth did feare,
    And buried now in their own ashes ly:
  Yet shewing, by their heapes, how great they were.
  But in their place doth now a third appeare,
    Fayre Venice, flower of the last world's delight;
  And next to them in beauty draweth neare,
    But far exceedes in policie of right.
  Yet not so fayre her buildinges to behold
  As Lewkenor's stile that hath her beautie told."]




_BOOKS RECEIVED._


The Excavation of Olympia, by Ernst Curtius; and Ernst Curtius, by
Prof. Robert P. Keep, Ph. D. Republished from _International Review_.
New York: A.S. Barnes & Co.

History of the United States. By J.A. Doyle, with Maps by Francis A.
Walker. (Freeman's Historical Course for Schools.) New York: Henry
Holt & Co.

Our National Currency and the Money Problem. By Hon. Amasa Walker,
LL.D. New York: A.S. Barnes & Co.

A Hundred Years Ago, and other Poems. By Charles W.E. Siegel, A.B.
Lancaster: Daily and Weekly Examiner.

History of the United States. (Centenary Edition.) Vol.I. By George
Bancroft. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

The Christ of Paul; or, The Enigmas of Christianity. By George Reber.
New York: Charles P. Somerby.

Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer. By Charles
Sotheran. New York: Charles P. Somerby.

The Summerfield Imbroglio: A Tale. By Mortimer Collins. Boston:
Loring.

Dear Lady Disdain. By Justin McCarthy. New York: Sheldon & Co.