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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE

January, 1873

Volume XI, No. 22







CONTENTS.

IRON BRIDGES, AND THEIR CONSTRUCTION by EDWARD ROWLAND.
SEARCHING FOR THE QUININE-PLANT IN PERU.
PROBATIONER LEONHARD; OR, THREE NIGHTS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY
    by CAROLINE CHESEBRO'.
    CHAPTER I. OUR HERO.
    CHAPTER II. IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.
    CHAPTER III. HIGH ART.
THE IRISH CAPITAL by REGINALD WYNFORD.
THE MAESTRO'S CONFESSION (ANDREA DAL CASTAGNO--1460.)
    by MARGARET J. PRESTON.
MONSIEUR FOURNIER'S EXPERIMENT by CORNELIUS DEWEES.
A VISIT TO THE KING OF AURORA (FROM THE GERMAN OF THEODORE KIRSCHOFF.)
    by ELIZABETH SILL.
GRAY EYES by ELLA WILLIAMS THOMPSON.
REMINISCENCES OF FLORENCE by MARIE HOWLAND.
THE SOUTHERN PLANTER by WILL WALLACE HARNEY.
BABES IN THE WOOD by EDGAR FAWCETT.
MY CHARGE ON THE LIFE-GUARDS by CHARLES L. NORTON.
PAINTING AND A PAINTER.
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
    WILHELMINE VON HILLERN.
HIS NAME? by M. J. P.
UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM LORD NELSON TO LADY HAMILTON.
"WHITE-HAT" DAY by K. H.
MR. SOTHERN AS GARRICK by M. M.
NOTES.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
    Forster, John--The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. II
    Gautier, Théophile--Émaux et Camées
    Alcott, A. Bronson--Concord Days
    Hanum, Melek--Thirty Years in the Harem
    Gale, Ethel C.--Hints on Dress
    Sketch Map of the Nile Sources and Lake Region of Central
      Africa, showing Dr. Livingstone's Discoveries and Mr. Stanley's
      Route
Books Received




ILLUSTRATIONS

WILHELMINE VON HILLERN, Author of "Only a Girl," "By His Own Might," etc.
[See Our Monthly Gossip.]

"ASSEMBLING" BRIDGE UNDER SHED.

THE LYMAN VIADUCT.

BLAST-FURNACES.

DUMPING ORE AND COAL INTO BLAST-FURNACES.

ELEVATOR.

THE ENGINE-ROOM.

RUNNING METAL INTO PIGS.

CARRYING THE IRON BALLS.

ROTARY SQUEEZER.

BOILING-FURNACE.

THE ROLLS.

COLD SAW.

HOT SAW.

RIVETING A COLUMN.

FURNACE AND HYDRAULIC DIE.

VIEW OF MACHINE-SHOP

NEW RIVER BRIDGE ON ITS STAGING.

BRIDGE AT ALBANY.

LA SALLE BRIDGE.

BRIDGE AT AUGUSTA, MAINE.

SACO BRIDGE.

PHOENIX WORKS.

"THE FIRST FORD OF THE CCONI WAS PASSED JUST OUTSIDE THE TOWN."

"GENTLEMEN, I AM JUAN THE NEPHEW OF ARAGON."

"THE STRAW SHEDS AND GRASSY PLAZA OF CHILE-CHILE."

"CHAUPICHACA WAS MARKED WITH A SQUARE TERMINAL PILLAR."

"THE MAMABAMBA WAS CROSSED BY AN EXTEMPORIZED BRIDGE."

"THE EXAMINADOR AND THE COLONEL HOPPED VALIANTLY OVER THE MENDOZA".

"THE REPUTED GOLD-BEARING RIVER OR OUITUBAMBA ROLLED FROM ITS TUNNEL."




[Illustration: WILHELMINE VON HILLERN, Author of "Only a Girl," "By
His Own Might," etc. (See Our Monthly Gossip.)]




IRON BRIDGES, AND THEIR CONSTRUCTION.

[Illustration: "ASSEMBLING" BRIDGE UNDER SHED.]


In a graveyard in Watertown, a village near Boston, Massachusetts, there
is a tombstone commemorating the claims of the departed worthy who lies
below to the eternal gratitude of posterity. The inscription is dated in
the early part of this century (about 1810), but the name of him who was
thus immortalized has faded like the date of his death from my memory,
while the deed for which he was distinguished, and which was recorded
upon his tombstone, remains clear. "He built the famous bridge over the
Charles River in this town," says the record. The Charles River is here
a small stream, about twenty to thirty feet wide, and the bridge was a
simple wooden structure.

[Illustration: THE LYMAN VIADUCT.]

Doubtless in its day this structure was considered an engineering feat
worthy of such posthumous immortality as is gained by an epitaph, and
afforded such convenience for transportation as was needed by the
commercial activity of that era. From that time, however, to this, the
changes which have occurred in our commercial and industrial methods are
so fully indicated by the changes of our manner and method of
bridge-building that it will not be a loss of time to investigate the
present condition of our abilities in this most useful branch of
engineering skill.

In the usual archaeological classification of eras the Stone Age
precedes that of Iron, and in the history of bridge-building the same
sequence has been preserved. Though the knowledge of working iron was
acquired by many nations at a pre-historic period, yet in quite modern
times--within this century, even--the invention of new processes and the
experience gained of new methods have so completely revolutionized this
branch of industry, and given us such a mastery over this material,
enabling us to apply it to such new uses, that for the future the real
Age of Iron will date from the present century.

The knowledge of the arch as a method of construction with stone or
brick--both of them materials aptly fitted for resistance under
pressure, but of comparatively no tensile strength--enabled the Romans
to surpass all nations that had preceded them in the course of history
in building bridges. The bridge across the Danube, erected by
Apollodorus, the architect of Trajan's Column, was the largest bridge
built by the Romans. It was more than three hundred feet in height,
composed of twenty-one arches resting upon twenty piers, and was about
eight hundred feet in length. It was after a few years destroyed by the
emperor Adrian, lest it should afford a means of passage to the
barbarians, and its ruins are still to be seen in Lower Hungary.

With the advent of railroads bridge-building became even a greater
necessity than it had ever been before, and the use of iron has enabled
engineers to grapple with and overcome difficulties which only fifty
years ago would have been considered hopelessly insurmountable. In this
modern use of iron advantage is taken of its great tensile strength, and
many iron bridges, over which enormous trains of heavily-loaded cars
pass hourly, look as though they were spun from gossamer threads, and
yet are stronger than any structure of wood or stone would be.

[Illustration: BLAST-FURNACES.]

Another great advantage of an iron bridge over one constructed of wood
or stone is the greater ease with which it can, in every part of it, be
constantly observed, and every failing part replaced. Whatever material
may be used, every edifice is always subject to the slow disintegrating
influence of time and the elements. In every such edifice as a bridge,
use is a process of constant weakening, which, if not as constantly
guarded against, must inevitably, in time, lead to its destruction.

[Illustration: DUMPING ORE AND COAL INTO BLAST-FURNACES.]

In a wooden or stone bridge a beam affected by dry rot or a stone
weakened by the effects of frost may lie hidden from the inspection of
even the most vigilant observer until, when the process has gone far
enough, the bridge suddenly gives way under a not unusual strain, and
death and disaster shock the community into a sense of the inherent
defects of these materials for such structures.

The introduction of the railroad has brought about also another change
in the bridge-building of modern times, compared with that of all the
ages which have preceded this nineteenth century. The chief bridges of
ancient times were built as great public conveniences upon thoroughways
over which there was a large amount of travel, and consequently were
near the cities or commercial centres which attracted such travel, and
were therefore placed where they were seen by great numbers. Now,
however, the connection between the chief commercial centres is made by
the railroads, and these penetrate immense distances, through
comparatively unsettled districts, in order to bring about the needed
distribution; and in consequence many of the great railroad bridges are
built in the most unfrequented spots, and are unseen by the numerous
passengers who traverse them, unconscious that they are thus easily
passing over specimens of engineering skill which surpass, as objects of
intelligent interest, many of the sights they may be traveling to see.

[Illustration: ELEVATOR.]

The various processes by which the iron is prepared to be used in
bridge-building are many of them as new as is the use of this material
for this purpose, and it will not be amiss to spend a few moments in
examining them before presenting to our readers illustrations of some of
the most remarkable structures of this kind. Taking a train by the
Reading Railroad from Philadelphia, we arrive, in about an hour, at
Phoenixville, in the Schuylkill Valley, where the Phoenix Iron-and
Bridge-works are situated. In this establishment we can follow the iron
from its original condition of ore to a finished bridge, and it is the
only establishment in this country, and most probably in the world,
where this can be seen.

[Illustration: THE ENGINE-ROOM.]

These works were established in 1790. In 1827 they came into the
possession of the late David Reeves, who by his energy and enterprise
increased their capacity to meet the growing demands of the time, until
they reached their present extent, employing constantly over fifteen
hundred hands.

[Illustration: RUNNING METAL INTO PIGS.]

The first process is melting the ore in the blast-furnace. Here the ore,
with coal and a flux of limestone, is piled in and subjected to the heat
of the fires, driven by a hot blast and kept burning night and day. The
iron, as it becomes melted, flows to the bottom of the furnace, and is
drawn off below in a glowing stream. Into the top of the blast-furnaces
the ore and coal are dumped, having been raised to the top by an
elevator worked by a blast of air. It is curious to notice how slowly
the experience was gathered from which has re suited the ability to
work iron as it is done here. Though even at the first settlement of
this country the forests of England had been so much thinned by their
consumption in the form of charcoal in her iron industry as to make a
demand for timber from this country a flourishing trade for the new
settlers, yet it was not until 1612 that a patent was granted to Simon
Sturtevant for smelting iron by the consumption of bituminous coal.
Another patent for the same invention was granted to John Ravenson the
next year, and in 1619 another to Lord Dudley; yet the process did not
come into general use until nearly a hundred years later.

[Illustration: CARRYING THE IRON BALLS.]

The blast for the furnace is driven by two enormous engines, each of
three hundred horse-power. The blast used here is, as we have said, a
hot one, the air being heated by the consumption of the gases evolved
from the material itself. The gradual steps by which these successive
modifications were introduced is an evidence of how slowly industrial
processes have been perfected by the collective experience of
generations, and shows us how much we of the present day owe to our
predecessors. From the earliest times, as among the native smiths of
Africa to-day, the blast of a bellows has been used in working iron to
increase the heat of the combustion by a more plentiful supply of
oxygen. The blast-furnace is supposed to have been first used in
Belgium, and to have been introduced into England in 1558. Next came the
use of bituminous coal, urged with a blast of cold air. But it was not
until 1829 that Neilson, an Englishman, conceived the idea of heating
the air of the blast, and carried it out at the Muirkirk furnaces. In
that year he obtained a patent for this process, and found that he could
from the same quantity of fuel make three times as much iron. His patent
made him very rich: in one single case of infringement he received a
cheque for damages for one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. In his
method, however, he used an extra fire for heating the air of his blast.
In 1837 the idea of heating the air for the blast by the gases generated
in the process was first practically introduced by M. Faber Dufour at
Wasseralfingen in the kingdom of Würtemberg.

In this country, charcoal was at first used universally for smelting
iron, anthracite coal being considered unfit for the purpose. In 1820 an
unsuccessful attempt to use it was made at Mauch Chunk. In 1833,
Frederick W. Geisenhainer of Schuylkill obtained a patent for the use of
the hot blast with anthracite, and in 1835 produced the first iron made
with this process. In 1841, C.E. Detmold adapted the consumption of the
gases produced by the smelting to the use of anthracite; and since then
it has become quite general, and has caused an almost incalculable
saving to the community in the price of iron.

The view of the engines which pump the blast will give an idea of the
immense power which the Phoenix company has at command. Twice every day
the furnace is tapped, and the stream of liquid iron flows out into
moulds formed in the sand, making the iron into pigs--so called from a
fancied resemblance to the form of these animals. This makes the first
process, and in many smelting-establishments this is all that is done,
the iron in this form being sold and entering into the general
consumption.

The next process is "boiling," which is a modification of "puddling,"
and is generally used in the best iron-works in this country. The
process of puddling was invented by Henry Cort, an Englishman, and
patented by him in 1783 and 1784 as a new process for "shingling,
welding and manufacturing iron and steel into bars, plates and rods of
purer quality and in larger quantity than heretofore, by a more
effectual application of fire and machinery." For this invention Cort
has been called "the father of the iron-trade of the British nation,"
and it is estimated that his invention has, during this century, given
employment to six millions of persons, and increased the wealth of Great
Britain by three thousand millions of dollars. In his experiments for
perfecting his process Mr. Cort spent his fortune, and though it proved
so valuable, he died poor, having been involved by the government in a
lawsuit concerning his patent which beggared him. Six years before his
death, the government, as an acknowledgment of their wrong, granted him
a yearly pension of a thousand dollars, and at his death this miserly
recompense was reduced to his widow to six hundred and twenty-five
dollars.

[Illustration: ROTARY SQUEEZER.]

[Illustration: BOILING-FURNACE.]

When iron is simply melted and run into any mould, its texture is
granular, and it is so brittle as to be quite unreliable for any use
requiring much tensile strength. The process of puddling consisted in
stirring the molten iron run out in a puddle, and had the effect of so
changing its atomic arrangement as to render the process of rolling it
more efficacious. The process of boiling is considered an improvement
upon this. The boiling-furnace is an oven heated to an intense heat by a
fire urged with a blast. The cast-iron sides are double, and a constant
circulation of water is kept passing through the chamber thus made, in
order to preserve the structure from fusion by the heat. The inside is
lined with fire-brick covered with metallic ore and slag over the bottom
and sides, and then, the oven being charged with the pigs of iron, the
heat is let on. The pigs melt, and the oven is filled with molten iron.
The puddler constantly stirs this mass with a bar let through a hole in
the door, until the iron boils up, or "ferments," as it is called. This
fermentation is caused by the combustion of a portion of the carbon in
the iron, and as soon as the excess of this is consumed, the cinders
and slag sink to the bottom of the oven, leaving the semi-fluid mass on
the top. Stirring this about, the puddler forms it into balls of such a
size as he can conveniently handle, which are taken out and carried on
little cars, made to receive them, to "the squeezer."

[Illustration: THE ROLLS.]

To carry on this process properly requires great skill and judgment in
the puddler. The heat necessarily generated by the operation is so great
that very few persons have the physical endurance to stand it. So great
is it that the clothes upon the person frequently catch fire. Such a
strain upon the physical powers naturally leads those subjected to it to
indulge in excesses. The perspiration which flows from the puddlers in
streams while engaged in their work is caused by the natural effort of
their bodies to preserve themselves from injury by keeping their normal
temperature. Such a consumption of the fluids of the body causes great
thirst, and the exhaustion of the labor, both bodily and mental, leads
often to the excessive use of stimulants. In fact, the work is too
laborious. Its conditions are such that no one should be subjected to
them. The necessity, however, for judgment, experience and skill on the
part of the operator has up to this time prevented the introduction of
machinery to take the place of human labor in this process. The
successful substitution in modern times of machines for performing
various operations which formerly seemed to require the intelligence and
dexterity of a living being for their execution, justifies the
expectation that the study now being given to the organization of
industry will lead to the invention of machines which will obviate the
necessity for human suffering in the process of puddling. Such a
consummation would be an advantage to all classes concerned. The
attempts which have been made in this direction have not as yet proved
entirely successful.

In the squeezer the glowing ball of white-hot iron is placed, and forced
with a rotary motion through a spiral passage, the diameter of which is
constantly diminishing. The effect of this operation is to squeeze all
the slag and cinder out of the ball, and force the iron to assume the
shape of a short thick cylinder, called "a bloom." This process was
formerly performed by striking the ball of iron repeatedly with a
tilt-hammer.

[Illustration: COLD SAW.]

The bloom is now re-heated and subjected to the process of rolling. "The
rolls" are heavy cylinders of cast iron placed almost in contact, and
revolving rapidly by steam-power. The bloom is caught between these
rollers, and passed backward and forward until it is pressed into a flat
bar, averaging from four to six inches in width, and about an inch and a
half thick. These bars are then cut into short lengths, piled, heated
again in a furnace, and re-rolled. After going through this process they
form the bar iron of commerce. From the iron reduced into this form the
various parts used in the construction of iron bridges are made by being
rolled into shape, the rolls through which the various parts pass having
grooves of the form it is desired to give to the pieces.

[Illustration: HOT SAW.]

[Illustration: RIVETING A COLUMN.]

These rolls, when they are driven by steam, obtain this generally from a
boiler placed over the heating-or puddling-furnace, and heated by the
waste gases from the furnace. This arrangement was first made by John
Griffin, the superintendent of the Phoenix Iron-works, under whose
direction the first rolled iron beams over nine inches thick that were
ever made were produced at these works. The process of rolling toughens
the iron, seeming to draw out its fibres; and iron that has been twice
rolled is considered fit for ordinary uses. For the various parts of a
bridge, however, where great toughness and tensile strength are
necessary, as well as uniformity of texture, the iron is rolled a third
time. The bars are therefore cut again into pieces, piled, re-heated and
rolled again. A bar of iron which has been rolled twice is formed from
a pile of fourteen separate pieces of iron that have been rolled only
once, or "muck bar," as it is called; while the thrice-rolled bar is
made from a pile of eight separate pieces of double-rolled iron. If,
therefore, one of the original pieces of iron has any flaw or defect, it
will form only a hundred and twelfth part of the thrice-rolled bar. The
uniformity of texture and the toughness of the bars which have been
thrice rolled are so great that they may be twisted, cold, into a knot
without showing any signs of fracture. The bars of iron, whether hot or
cold, are sawn to the various required lengths by the hot or cold saws
shown in the illustrations, which revolve with great rapidity.

[Illustration: FURNACE AND HYDRAULIC DIE.]

For the columns intended to sustain the compressive thrust of heavy
weights a form is used in this establishment of their own design, and to
which the name of the "Phoenix column" has been given. They are tubes
made from four or from eight sections rolled in the usual way and
riveted together at their flanges. When necessary, such columns are
joined together by cast-iron joint-blocks, with circular tenons which
fit into the hollows of each tube.

To join two bars to resist a strain of tension, links or eye-bars are
used from three to six inches wide, and as long as may be needed. At
each end is an enlargement with a hole to receive a pin. In this way any
number of bars can be joined together, and the result of numerous
experiments made at this establishment has shown that under sufficient
strain they will part as often in the body of the bar as at the joint.
The heads upon these bars are made by a process known as die-forging.
The bar is heated to a white heat, and under a die worked by hydraulic
pressure the head is shaped and the hole struck at one operation. This
method of joining by pins is much more reliable than welding. The pins
are made of cold-rolled shafting, and fit to a nicety.

The general view of the machine-shop, which covers more than an acre of
ground, shows the various machines and tools by which iron is planed,
turned, drilled and handled as though it were one of the softest of
materials. Such a machine-shop is one of the wonders of this century.
Most of the operations performed there, and all of the tools with which
they are done, are due entirely to modern invention, many of them within
the last ten years. By means of this application of machines great
accuracy of work is obtained, and each part of an iron bridge can be
exactly duplicated if necessary. This method of construction is entirely
American, the English still building their iron bridges mostly with
hand-labor. In consequence also of this method of working, American iron
bridges, despite the higher price of our iron, can successfully compete
in Canada with bridges of English or Belgian construction. The American
iron bridges are lighter than those of other nations, but their absolute
strength is as great, since the weight which is saved is all dead
weight, and not necessary to the solidity of the structure. The same
difference is displayed here that is seen in our carriages with their
slender wheels, compared with the lumbering, heavy wagons of European
construction.

[Illustration: VIEW OF MACHINE-SHOP.]

Before any practical work upon the construction of a bridge is begun the
data and specifications are made, and a plan of the structure is drawn,
whether it is for a railroad or for ordinary travel, whether for a
double or single track, whether the train is to pass on top or below,
and so on. The calculations and plans are then made for the use of such
dimensions of iron that the strain upon any part of the structure shall
not exceed a certain maximum, usually fixed at ten thousand pounds to
the square inch. As the weight of the iron is known, and its tensile
strength is estimated at sixty thousand pounds per square inch, this
estimate, which is technically called "a factor of safety" of six, is a
very safe one. In other words, the bridge is planned and so constructed
that in supporting its own weight, together with any load of locomotives
or cars which can be placed upon it, it shall not be subjected to a
strain over one-sixth of its estimated strength.

[Illustration: NEW RIVER BRIDGE ON ITS STAGING.]

After the plan is made, working drawings are prepared and the process of
manufacture commences. The eye-bars, when made, are tested in a
testing-machine at double the strain which by any possibility they can
be put to in the bridge itself. The elasticity of the iron is such that
after being submitted to a tension of about thirty thousand pounds to
the square inch it will return to its original dimensions; while it is
so tough that the bars, as large as two inches in diameter, can be bent
double, when cold, without showing any signs of fracture. Having stood
these tests, the parts of the bridge are considered fit to be used.

[Illustration: BRIDGE AT ALBANY.]

When completed the parts are put together--or "assembled," as the
technical phrase is--in order to see that they are right in length, etc.
Then they are marked with letters or numbers, according to the working
plan, and shipped to the spot where the bridge is to be permanently
erected. Before the erection can be begun, however, a staging or
scaffolding of wood, strong enough to support the iron structure until
it is finished, has to be raised on the spot. When the bridge is a large
one this staging is of necessity an important and costly structure. An
illustration on another page shows the staging erected for the support
of the New River bridge in West Virginia, on the line of the Chesapeake
and Ohio Railway, near a romantic spot known as Hawksnest. About two
hundred yards below this bridge is a waterfall, and while the staging
was still in use for its construction, the river, which is very
treacherous, suddenly rose about twenty feet in a few hours, and became
a roaring torrent.

[Illustration: LA SALLE BRIDGE.]

The method of making all the parts of a bridge to fit exactly, and
securing the ties by pins, is peculiarly American. The plan still
followed in Europe is that of using rivets, which makes the erection of
a bridge take much more time, and cost, consequently, much more. A
riveted lattice bridge one hundred and sixty feet in span would require
ten or twelve days for its erection, while one of the Phoenixville
bridges of this size has been erected in eight and a half hours.

The view of the Albany bridge will show the style which is technically
called a "through" bridge, having the track at the level of the lower
chords. This view of the bridge is taken from the west side of the
Hudson, near the Delavan House in Albany. The curved portion crosses the
Albany basin, or outlet of the Erie Canal, and consists of seven spans
of seventy-three feet each, one of sixty-three, and one of one hundred
and ten. That part of the bridge which crosses the river consists of
four spans of one hundred and eighty-five feet each, and a draw two
hundred and seventy-four feet wide. The iron-work in this bridge cost
about three hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

The bridge over the Illinois River at La Salle, on the Illinois Central
Railroad, shows the style of bridge technically called a "deck" bridge,
in which the train is on the top. This bridge consists of eighteen spans
of one hundred and sixty feet each, and cost one hundred and eighty
thousand dollars. The bridge over the Kennebec River, on the line of the
Maine Central Railroad, at Augusta, Maine, is another instance of a
"through" bridge. It cost seventy-five thousand dollars, has five spans
of one hundred and eighty-five feet each, and was built to replace a
wooden deck bridge which was carried away by a freshet.

[Illustration: BRIDGE AT AUGUSTA, MAINE.]

The bridge on the Portland and Ogdensburg Railroad which crosses the
Saco River is a very general type of a through railway bridge. It
consists of two spans of one hundred and eighty-five feet each, and cost
twenty thousand dollars. The New River bridge in West Virginia consists
of two spans of two hundred and fifty feet each, and two others of
seventy-five feet each. Its cost was about seventy thousand dollars.

The Lyman Viaduct, on the Connecticut Air-line Railway, at East Hampton,
Connecticut, is one hundred and thirty-five feet high and eleven
thousand feet long.

These specimens will show the general character of the iron bridges
erected in this country. When iron was first used in constructions of
this kind, cast iron was employed, but its brittleness and unreliability
have led to its rejection for the main portions of bridges. Experience
has also led the best iron bridge-builders of America to quite generally
employ girders with parallel top and bottom members, vertical posts
(except at the ends, where they are made inclined toward the centre of
the span), and tie-rods inclined at nearly forty-five degrees. This
form takes the least material for the required strength.

[Illustration: SACO BRIDGE.]

The safety of a bridge depends quite as much upon the design and
proportions of its details and connections as upon its general shape.
The strain which will compress or extend the ties, chords and other
parts can be calculated with mathematical exactness. But the strains
coming upon the connections are very often indeterminate, and no
mathematical formula has yet been found for them. They are like the
strains which come upon the wheels, axles and moving parts of
carriages, cars and machinery. Yet experience and judgment have led the
best builders to a singular uniformity in their treatment of these
parts. Each bridge has been an experiment, the lessons of which have
been studied and turned to the best effect.

[Illustration: PHOENIX WORKS.]

There is no doubt that iron bridges can be made perfectly safe. Their
margin is greater than that of the boiler, the axles or the rail. To
make them safe, European governments depend upon rigid rules, and
careful inspection to see that they are carried out. In this country
government inspection is not relied on with such certainty, and the
spirit of our institutions leads us to depend more upon the action of
self-interest and the inherent trustworthiness of mankind when indulged
with freedom of action. Though at times this confidence may seem vain,
and "rings" in industrial pursuits, as in politics, appear to corrupt
the honesty which forms the very foundation of freedom, yet their
influence is but temporary, and as soon as the best public sentiment
becomes convinced of the need for their removal their influence is
destroyed. Such evils are necessary incidents of our transitional
movement toward an industrial, social and political organization in
which the best intelligence and the most trustworthy honesty shall
control these interests for the best advantage of society at large. In
the mean time, the best security for the safety of iron bridges is to be
found in the self-interest of the railway corporations, who certainly do
not desire to waste their money or to render themselves liable to
damages from the breaking of their bridges, and who consequently will
employ for such constructions those whose reputation has been fairly
earned, and whose character is such that reliance can be placed in the
honesty of their work. Experience has given the world the knowledge
needed to build bridges of iron which shall in all possible
contingencies be safe, and there is no excuse for a penny-wise and
pound-foolish policy when it leads to disaster.

EDWARD ROWLAND.


       *       *       *       *       *




SEARCHING FOR THE QUININE-PLANT IN PERU.


SECOND PAPER.

The crystal peaks of the Andes were behind our explorers: before, were
their eastward-stretching spurs and their eastward-falling rivers. On
the mountain-flanks, as the last landmark of Christian civilization,
nestled the village of Marcapata, whose square, thatched belfry faded
gradually from sight, reminding the travelers of the ghostly
ministrations of the padre and the secular protection of the gobernador.
Neither priest nor edile would they encounter until their return to the
same church-tower. Their patron, Don Juan Sanz de Santo Domingo, was
already picking his way along the snowy defiles of the mountains to
attain again his luxurious home in Cuzco. Behind the adventurers lay
companionship and society--represented by the dubious orgies of the
House of Austria--and the security of civil government--represented by
the mortal ennui of a Peruvian city. Before them lay difficulties and
perhaps dangers, but also at least variety, novelty and possible wealth.

Colonel Perez, Marcoy and the examinador retained their horses, and a
couple of the mozos their mules, the remainder of the beasts being kept
at livery in Marcapata, and the muleteers volunteering to accompany the
troupe as far as Chile-Chile: at this point the bridle-path came to an
end, and the gentlemen would have to dismount, accompanying thenceforth
their peons on a literal "footing" of equality.

Two torrents which fall in perpendicular cataracts from the mountains,
the Kellunu ("yellow water") and the Cca-chi ("salt"), run together at
the distance of a league from their place of precipitation. They enclose
in their approach the hill on which Marcapata is perched, and they form
by their confluence the considerable river which our travelers were
about to trace, and which is called by the Indians Cconi ("warm"), but
on the Spanish maps is termed the river of Marcapata.

[Illustration: "THE FIRST FORD OF THE CCONI WAS PASSED JUST OUTSIDE THE
TOWN."]

The first ford of the Cconi was passed just outside the town, at a point
where the right bank of the river, growing steeper and steeper, became
impracticable, and necessitated a crossing to the left. The ford allowed
the peons to stagger through at mid-leg on the uneven pavement afforded
by the large pebbles of the bed. At this point the valley of the Cconi
was seen stretching indefinitely outward toward the east, enclosed in
two chains of conical peaks: their regular forms, running into each
other at the middle of their height, clothed with interminable forests
and bathed with light, melted regularly away into the perspective.
Indian huts buried in gardens of the white lily which had seemed so
beautiful in the chapel of Lauramarca, hedges of aloe menacing the
intruder with their millions of steely-looking swords, slender bamboos
daintily rocking themselves over the water, and enormous curtains of
creepers hanging from the hillsides and waving to the wind in vast
breadths of green, were the decorations of this Peruvian paradise.

The pretty lilies gradually disappeared, and the thatched cabins became
more and more sparse, when from one of the latter, at a hundred paces
from the caravan, issued a human figure. The man struck an attitude in
the pathway of the travelers, his carbine on his shoulder, his fist on
his hip and his nose saucily turned up in the air. Neither his
Metamora-like posture nor his dress inspired confidence.

"He is evidently waiting for us," remarked Colonel Perez, an heroic yet
prudent personage: "fortunately, it is broad day. I would not grant an
interview to such a _salteador_ (brigand) alone at night and in a
desert."

The salteador wore a low broad felt, on whose ample brim the rain and
sun had sketched a variety of vague designs. A gray sack buttoned to the
throat and confined by a leathern belt, and trowsers of the same stuffed
into his long coarse woolen stockings, completed his costume. He was
shod, like an Indian, in _ojotas_, or sandals cut out of raw leather and
laced to his legs with thongs. Two ox-horns hanging at his side
contained his ammunition, and a light haversack was slung over his back.
This mozo, who at a distance would have passed for a man of forty,
appeared on examination to be under twenty-two years of age. It was
likewise observable on a nearer view that his skin was brown and clear
like a chestnut, and that his lively eye, perfect teeth and air of
decision were calculated to please an Indian girl of his vicinity. To
complete his rehabilitation in the eyes of the party, his introductory
address was delivered with the grace of a Spanish cavalier.

"The gentlemen," said he, gracefully getting rid of his superabundant
hat, "will voluntarily excuse me for having waited so long with my
respects and offers of service. I should have gone to meet them at
Marcapata, but my uncle the gobernador forbade me to do so for fear of
displeasing the priest. Gentlemen, I am Juan the nephew of Aragon. It is
by the advice of my uncle that I have come to place myself in your way,
and ask if you will admit me to your company as mozo-assistant and
interpreter."

The colonel, whose antipathy to the salteador did not yield on a closer
acquaintance, roughly asked the youth what he meant by his assurance.
Mr. Marcoy, however, was disposed to temporize.

"If you are Juan the nephew of Aragon," said he, "you must have already
learned from your uncle that we have engaged an interpreter, Pepe Garcia
of Chile-Chile."

"Precisely what he told me, señor," replied the young man; "but, for my
part, I thought that if one interpreter would be useful to these
gentlemen on their journey, two interpreters would be a good deal
better, on account of the fact that we walk better with two legs than
with one: that is the reason I have intercepted you, gentlemen."

This opinion made everybody laugh, and as Juan considered it his
privilege to laugh five times louder than any one, a quasi engagement
resulted from this sudden harmony of temper. Colonel Perez shrugged his
shoulders: Marcoy, as literary man, took down the name of the new-comer.
The nephew of Aragon was so delighted that he gave vent to a little cry
of pleasure, at the same time cutting a pirouette. This harmless caper
allowed the party to detect; tied to his haversack, the local banjo, or
_charango_, an instrument which the Paganinis of the country make for
themselves out of half a calabash and the unfeeling bowels of the cat.

[Illustration: "GENTLEMEN, I AM JUAN THE NEPHEW OF ARAGON."]

The priest, who had recommended Pepe Garcia, had made mention of that
person's fine voice, with which the church of Marcapata was edified
every Sunday. The gobernador, while putting in a word for his nephew,
and particularizing the beauty of his execution on the guitar, had
insinuated doubts of the baritone favored by the padre. Happy land,
whose disputes are like the disputes of an opera company, and where
people are recommended for business on the strength of their musical
execution!

Aragon quickly understood that his friend in the expedition was not
Colonel Perez, who had insultingly dubbed him the Second Fiddle (or
Charango). He attached himself therefore with the fidelity of a spaniel
to Mr. Marcoy, walking alongside and resting his arm on the pommel of
his saddle. After an hour's traverse of a comparatively desert plateau
called the Pedregal, covered with rocks and smelling of the
patchouli-scented flowers of the mimosa, Aragon pointed out the straw
sheds and grassy plaza of Chile-Chile. This rustic metropolis is not
indicated on many maps, but for the travelers it had a special
importance, bearing upon the inca history and etymological roots of
Peru, for it was the residence of their interpreter-in-chief, Pepe
Garcia.

Introduced by the latter, our explorers made a kind of triumphal entry
into the village. The old Indian women dropped their spinning, the naked
children ceased to play with the pigs and began to play with the
garments and equipage of the visitors, and a couple of blind men, who
were leading each other, remarked that they were glad to see them.

Garcia the polyglot, radiant with importance, lost no time in dragging
his guests toward his own residence, a large straw thatch surmounting
walls of open-work, which took the fancy of the travelers from the
singular trophy attached above the door. This trophy was composed of the
heads of bucks and rams, with those of the fox and the ounce, where the
shrunken skin displayed the pointed _sierra_ of the teeth, while the
horns of oxen and goats, set end to end around the borders, formed dark
and rigid festoons: all vacancies were filled up with the forms of bats,
spread-eagled and nailed fast, from the smallest variety to the large,
man-attacking _vespertilio_. As a contrast to this exterior decoration,
the inside was severely simple: it was even a little bare. A partition
of bamboo divided the hut into kitchen and bed-room, and that was all.
Into the latter of these apartments Pepe Garcia dragged the saddles of
his guests, and in the former his two twin-daughters, melancholy little
half-breeds in ragged petticoats, assisted their father to prepare for
the wanderers a hunter's supper.

Every moment, in a dark corner or behind the backs of the company,
Garcia was observed caressing these little girls in secret. Being
rallied on his tenderness, he observed that the twins were the double
pledge of a union "longer happy than was usual," and the only survivors
of fifteen darlings whom he had given to the world in the various
countries whither his wandering fortunes had led him. Still explaining
and multiplying his caresses, the man of family went on with his
exertions as cook, and in due time announced the meal.

This festival consisted of sweet potatoes baked in the ashes, and steaks
of bear broiled over the coals. The latter viand was repulsed with
horror by the colonel, who in the effeminacy of a city life at Cuzeo had
never tasted anything more outlandish than monkey. Seeing his companions
eating without scruple, however, the valiant warrior extended his tin
plate with a silent gesture of application. The first mouthful appeared
hard to swallow, but at the second, looking round at his
fellow-travelers with surprise and joy, he gave up his prejudices, and
marked off the remainder of his steak with wonderful swiftness. Standing
behind his boarders, Pepe Garcia had been watching the play of jaws and
expressions of face with some uneasiness, but when the colonel gave in
his adhesion his doubts were removed, and he smiled agreeably, flattered
in his double quality of hunter and cook.

The beds of the gentlemen-travelers were spread side by side in the
adjoining room, and Garcia gravely assured them that they would sleep
like the Three Wise Men of the East. Unable to see any personal analogy
between themselves and the ancient Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar, the
tired cavaliers turned in without remarking on the subject. They paused
a moment, however, before taking up their candle, to set forth to Garcia
in full the circumstances and nature of Juan of Aragon's engagement.
This explanation, which the close quarters of the troop had made
impossible during the journey, was received in excellent part by the
interpreter-in-chief.

[Illustration: "THE STRAW SHEDS AND GRASSY PLAZA OF CHILE-CHILE."]

"Oh, I am not at all jealous of Aragon," said he, "and the gentlemen
have done very well in taking him along. He will be of great use. He is
a bright, capable mozo, who would walk twenty miles on his hands to gain
a piastre. As an interpreter, I think he is almost as good as I am."

Having thus smoothed away all grounds of rivalry, the colonel, the
examinador and Marcoy took possession of their sleeping-room. Here, long
after their light was put out, they watched the scene going on in the
apartment they had just left, whose interior, illuminated by a candle
and a lingering fire, was perfectly visible through the partition of
bamboo. The dark-skinned girls, on their knees in a corner, were
gathering together the shirts and stockings destined for the parental
traveling-bag. Garcia, for his part, was occupied in cleaning with a bit
of rag a portentous, long-barreled carbine, apparently dating back to
the time of Pizarro, which he had been exhibiting during the day as his
hunting rifle, and which he intended to carry along with him.

The sleep under the thatched roof of Pepe Garcia, though somewhat less
sound than that of the Three Magi in their tomb at Cologne, lasted until
a ray of the morning sun had penetrated the open-work walls of the hut.
The colonel rapidly dressed himself, and aroused the others. A
disquieting silence reigned around the modest mansions of Chile-Chile.
The interpreter was away, Juan of Aragon was away, the muleteers had
returned, according to instructions received over-night, to Marcapata
with the animals, and the peons were found dead-drunk behind the mud
wall of the last house in the village.

After three hours of impatient waiting there appeared--not Garcia and
Aragon, whose absence was inexplicable, but--the faithful Bolivian
bark-hunters in a body. Not caring to stupefy themselves with the peons,
they had gone out for a reconnoissance in the environs. Contemplating
the nodding forms of their comrades, they now let out the discouraging
fact that these tame Indians, madly afraid of their wild brothers the
Chunchos, had been fortifying themselves steadily with brandy and chicha
all the way from Marcapata. Disgusted and helpless, Perez and the
examinador betook themselves to reading tattered newspapers issued at
Lima a month before, and Marcoy to his note-book. Suddenly a ferocious
wild-beast cry was heard coming from the woods, and while the Indian
porters tried to run away, and the white men looked at each other with
apprehension, Pepe Garcia and Aragon appeared in the distance. Their
arms were interlaced in a brother-like manner, they were poising
themselves with much care on their legs, and they were drunk. Well had
the elder interpreter said that he was not jealous of Aragon. They
rolled forward toward the party, repeating their outrageous duet, whose
reception by the staring peons appeared to gratify them immensely.

The mozo, feeling his secondary position, had enervated himself
slightly--the superior was magisterially tipsy. He wore a remarkable hat
entirely without a brim, and patched all over the top with a lid of
leather. His face, marked up to the eyes with the blue stubble of that
beard which filled him with pride as a sign of European extraction, was
swollen and hideous with drunkenness. He carried, besides the fearful
blunder-buss of the night before, a belt full of pistols and hatchets. A
short infantry-sword was banging away at his calves, and two long
ox-horns rattled at his waist. The interpreters had been partaking of a
little complimentary breakfast with the muleteers in whose care the
animals had gone off to Marcapata.

[Illustration: "CHAUPICHACA WAS MARKED WITH A SQUARE TERMINAL PILLAR."]

A concentration of energy on the part of the chiefs of the expedition
was required to set in movement this unpromising assemblage. The
examinador undertook the peons: he rapped them smartly and repeatedly
about the head and shoulders, until they staggered to their feet and
declared that they were a match for whole hordes of Indians: this
courage, borrowed from the flask, gave strong assurance that at the
first alarm from genuine Chunchos they would take to their heels. Mr.
Marcoy, feeling unable to do justice to the case of the nephew, turned
him over to Perez, whose undisguised dislike made the work of correction
at once grateful and thorough. Marcoy himself confronted the stolid and
sullen Pepe Garcia, insisting upon the example he owed to the Indian
porters and the responsibility of his Caucasian blood. The half-breed
listened for a minute, his eyes fixed upon the ground: he then shook
himself, looked an instant at his employer, and planted himself firmly
on his legs. Then, determined to prove by a supreme effort that he was
clear-headed and master of his motions, he suddenly drew his sword,
hustled the Indians in a line by two and two, pointed out to Aragon his
position as rear-guard, and cried with a voice of thunder, "_Adelante_!"
The porters and peons staggered forward, knocking against each other's
elbows and tottering on their stout legs. The three white men,
burdenless, but regretting their horses, walked as they pleased, keeping
the train in sight. And John the nephew of Aragon's guitar, dangling at
his back, brought up the rear, with its suggestions of harmony and the
amenities of life.

The first trait of aboriginal character (after this parenthetical
alacrity at drunkenness) was shown after some hours of marching and the
passage of a dozen streams. The porters, weakened by their drink and the
extreme heat, squatted down on the side of a hill by their own consent
and with a single impulse. With that lamb-like placidity and that
mule-like obstinacy which characterize the antique race of Quechuas,
they observed to the chief interpreter that they were weary of falling
on their backs or their stomachs at every other step, and that they were
resolved to go no farther. Pepe Garcia caused the remark to be repeated
once more, as if he had not understood it: then, convinced that an
incipient rebellion was brewing, he sprang upon the fellow who happened
to be nearest, haled him up from the ground by the ears, and, shaking
him vigorously, proceeded to do as much for the rest of the band. In the
flash of an eye, much to their astonishment, they found themselves on
their feet.

A judicious if not very discriminating award of blows from the sabre
then followed, causing the Indians to change their resolve of remaining
in that particular spot, and to show a lively determination to get away
from it as quickly as possible. Each porter, forgetting his fatigue, and
seeming never to have felt any, began to trot along, no longer languidly
as before, but with a precision of step and a firmness in his round
calves which surprised and charmed the travelers. Pepe Garcia, much
refreshed by this exercise of discipline, and perspiring away his
intoxication as he marched, began to give grounds for confidence from
his steady and authoritative manner. By nightfall the whole troop was in
harmony, and the strangers retired with hopeful hearts to the privacy of
the hammocks which Juan of Aragon slung amongst the trees on the side of
Mount Morayaca.

No effect could seem finer, to wanderers from another latitude, than
this first night-bivouac in the absolute wilderness. The moon, seeming
to race through the clouds, and the camp-fire flashing in the wind,
appeared to give movement and animation to the landscape. The Indians,
grouped around the flame, seemed like swarthy imps tending the furnace
of some fantastic pandemonium. Meanwhile, amidst the constant murmurs of
the trees, the nephew of Aragon was heard drawing the notes of some kind
of amorous despair from the hollow of his melodious calabash. The
examinador and Colonel Perez lulled themselves to sleep with a
conversation about the beauties and beatitudes of their wives, now
playing the part of Penelopes in their absence. To hear the eulogies of
the examinador, an angel fallen perpendicularly from heaven could hardly
have realized the physical and moral qualities of the spouse he had left
in Sorata. The Castilian tongue lent wonderful pomp and magnificence to
this portrait, and as the metaphors thickened and the superb phrases
lost themselves in hyperbole, one would have thought the lady in
question was about to fly back to her native stars on a pair of
resplendent wings. Colonel Perez furnished an equally elaborate
delineation of his own fair helpmate. As for the wife of Lorenzo, nobody
knew what she was like, and the panegyric from the lips of her faithful
lord rolled on in safety and success. But the personage called by Perez
"his Theresa" was a female whom anybody who had passed through the small
shopkeeping quarters of Cuzco might have seen every day, as well as
heard designated by her common nickname (given no one knows why) of
Malignant Quinsy; and, arguing in algebraic fashion from the known to
the unknown, it was not difficult to be convinced that the poetic
flights of the examinador were equally the work of fond flattery.

Surprised by a midnight storm, the camp was broken up before the early
daylight, and our explorers' caravan moved on without breakfast. This
necessary stop-gap was arranged for at the first pleasant spot on the
route. An old clearing soon appeared, provided with the welcome
accommodation of an _ajoupa_, or shed built upon four posts. At the
command of _Alto alli!_--"Halt there!"--uttered by Perez in the tone he
had formerly used in governing his troops, the whole band stopped as one
person; the porters dumped their bales with a significant _ugh!_ the
Bolivian bark-hunters laid down their axes; and the gentlemen arranged
themselves around the parallelogram of the hut, attending the
commissariat developments of Colonel Perez. The site which hazard had so
conveniently offered was named Chaupichaca. It was the scene of an
ancient wood-cutting, around which the trunks of the antique forests
showed themselves in a warm soft light, like the columns of a temple or
the shafts of a mosque.

A detail which struck the travelers in arriving was very characteristic
of these lands, filled so full of old traditions and inca customs.
Chaupichaca was marked with a square terminal pillar, one of those
boundaries of mud and stones, called _apachectas_, which Peruvian
masonry lavishes over the country of Manco Capac. A rude cross of sticks
surmounted this stone altar, on which some pious hand had laid a
nosegay, now dried--signifying, in the language of flowers proper to
masons and stone-cutters, that the work was finished and left. A little
water and spirits spared from the travelers' meal gave a slight air of
restoration to these mysterious offerings, and a couple of splendid
butterflies, whether attracted by the flowers or the alcoholic perfume,
commenced to waltz around the bouquet; but the corollas contained no
honey for their diminutive trunks, and after a slight examination they
danced contemptuously away.

At seven or eight miles' distance another streamlet was reached, named
the Mamabamba. It is a slender affluent of the Cconi, to be called a
rivulet in any country but South America, but here named a river with
the same proud effrontery which designates as a _city_ any collection of
a dozen huts thrown into the ravine of a mountain. The Mamabamba was
crossed by an extemporized bridge, constructed on the spot by the
ingenuity of Garcia and his men. Strange and incalculable was the
engineering of Pepe Garcia. Sometimes, across one of these
continually-occurring streams, he would throw a hastily-felled tree,
over which, glazed as it was by a night's rain or by the humidity of the
forest, he would invite the travelers to pass. Sometimes, to a couple of
logs rotting on the banks he would nail cross-strips like the rungs of a
ladder, and, while the torrent boiled at a distance below, pass jauntily
with his Indians, more sure-footed than goats. The wider the abyss the
more insecure the causeway; and the terrible rope-bridges of South
America, or the still more conjectural throw of a line of woven roots,
would meet the travelers wherever the cleft was so wide as to render
timbering an inconvenient trouble. Occasionally, on one of these damp
and moss-grown ladders, a peon's foot would slip, and down he would go,
the load strapped on his back catching him as he was passing through the
aperture: then, using his hands to hold on by, he would compose, on the
spur of the moment, a new and original language or telegraphy of the
legs, _kicking_ for assistance with all his might. Juan of Aragon was
usually the hero to extricate these poor estrays from the false step
they had taken, the other peons regarding the scene with their tranquil
stolidity. A glass of brandy to the unfortunate would always compose
his nerves again, and make him hope for a few more accidents of a like
nature and bringing a like consolation.

[Illustration: "THE MAMABAMBA WAS CROSSED BY AN EXTEMPORIZED BRIDGE."]

The bridge of the Mamabamba conducted the party to a site of the same
name, through an interval of forest where might be counted most of the
varieties of tree proper to the equatorial highlands. Up to this point
the vegetation everywhere abounding had not indicated the presence, or
even the vicinage, of the cinchona. The only circumstance which brought
it to the notice of the inexperienced leaders of the expedition would be
a halt made from time to time by the Bolivian bark-hunters. The
examinador and his cascarilleros, touching one tree or another with
their hatchets, would exchange remarks full of meaning and
mysteriousness; but when the colonel or Mr. Marcoy came to ask the
significance of so many hints and signals, they got the invariable
answer of Sister Anna to the wife of Bluebeard: "I see nothing but the
forest turning green and the sun turning red." The most practical
reminder of the quest of cinchona which the travelers found was an
occasional _ajoupa_ alone in the wilderness, with a broken pot and a
rusted knife or axe beneath it--witness that some eager searcher had
traveled the road before themselves. The cascarilleros are very
avaricious and very brave, going out alone, setting up a hut in a
probable-looking spot, and diverging from their head-quarters in every
direction. If by any accident they get lost or their provisions are
destroyed, they die of hunger. Doctor Weddell, on one occasion in
Bolivia, landed on the beach of a river well shaded with trees. Here he
found the cabin of a cascarillero, and near it a man stretched out upon
the ground in the agonies of death. He was nearly naked, and covered
with myriads of insects, whose stings had hastened his end. On the
leaves which formed the roof of the hut were the remains of the
unfortunate man's clothes, a straw hat and some rags, with a knife, an
earthen pot containing the remains of his last meal, a little maize and
two or three _chuñus_. Such is the end to which their hazardous
occupation exposes the bark-collectors--death in the midst of the
forests, far from home; a death without help and without consolation.

It was not until after passing the elevated site of San Pedro, and
clambering up the slippery shoulders of the hill called Huaynapata--the
crossing of half a dozen intervening streamlets going for nothing--that
the explorers were rewarded with a sight of their Canaan, the
bark-producing region. To attain this summit of Huaynapata, however, the
little tributary of Mendoza had to be first got over. This affluent of
the Cconi, flowing in from the south-south-west, was very sluggish as
far as it could be seen. Its banks, interrupted by large rocks clothed
with moss, offered now and then promontories surrounded at the base with
a bluish shade. At the end of the vista, a not very extensive one, a
quantity of blocks of sandstone piled together resembled a crumbling
wall. Other blocks were sprinkled over the bed of the stream; and by
their aid the examinador and the colonel hopped valiantly over the
Mendoza, leaving the peons, who were less afraid of rheumatism and more
in danger of slipping, to ford the current at the depth of their
suspender-buttons.

It was on the top of Huaynapata, while the interpreters built a fire and
prepared for supper a peccary killed upon the road, that Marcoy observed
the examinador holding with his Bolivians a conversation in the Aymara
dialect, in which could be detected such words as _anaranjada_ and
_morada_. These were the well-known commercial names of two species of
cinchona. The historiographer interrupted their conversation to ask if
anything had yet been discovered.

"Nothing yet," replied the examinador; "and this valley of the Cconi
must be bewitched, for with the course that we have taken we should long
ago have discovered what we are after. But this place looks more
favorable than any we have met. I shall beat up the woods to-morrow with
my men, and may my patron, Saint Lorenzo, return again to his gridiron
if we do not date our first success in quinine-hunting from this very
hillock of Huaynapata!"

[Illustration: "THE EXAMINADOR AND THE COLONEL HOPPED VALIANTLY OVER THE
MENDOZA."]

The above style of threatening the saints is thought very efficacious in
all Spanish countries. Whether or not Saint Lawrence really dreaded
another experience of broiling, at the end of certain hours the
Bolivians reappeared, and their chief deposited in the hands of the
colonel a few green and tender branches. At the joyful shout of Perez,
the man of letters, who had been occupied in making a sketch, came
running up. Two different species of cinchona were the trophy brought
back by Lorenzo, like the olive-leaves in the beak of Noah's dove. One
of these specimens was a variety of the _Carua-carua,_ with large
leaves heavily veined: the other was an individual resembling those
quinquinas which the botanists Ruiz and Pavon have discriminated from
the cinchonas, to make a separate family called the _Quinquina
cosmibuena._ After all, the discovery was rather an indication than a
conquest of value. The examinador admitted as much, but observed that
the presence of these baser species always argued the neighborhood of
genuine quinine-yielding plants near by.

In the presence of this first success on the part of the exploration set
on foot by Don Juan Sanz de Santo Domingo, we may insert a few words on
the nature of the wonderful plant toward which its researches were
directed.

It is doubtful whether the aboriginal inhabitants of Peru, Bolivia and
Ecuador were acquainted with the virtues of the cinchona plant as a
febrifuge. It seems probable, nevertheless, that the Indians of Loxa,
two hundred and thirty miles south of Peru, were aware of the qualities
of the bark, for there its use was first made known to Europeans. It was
forty years after the pacification of Peru however, before any
communication of the remedial secret was made to the Spaniards. Joseph
de Jussieu reports that in 1600 a Jesuit, who had a fever at Malacotas,
was cured by Peruvian bark. In 1638 the countess Ana of Chinchon was
suffering from tertian fever and ague at Lima, whither she had
accompanied the viceroy, her husband. The corregidor of Loxa, Don Juan
Lopez de Canizares, sent a parcel of powdered quinquina bark to her
physician, Juan de Vega, assuring him that it was a sovereign and
infallible remedy for "tertiana." It was administered to the countess,
who was sixty-two years of age, and effected a complete cure. This
countess, returning with her husband to Spain in 1640, brought with her
a quantity of the healing bark. Hence it was sometimes called
"countess's bark" and "countess's powder." Her famous cure induced
Linnaeus, long after, to name the whole genus of quinine-bearing trees,
in her honor, _Cinchona_. By modern writers the first _h_ has usually
been dropped, and the word is now almost invariably spelled in that way,
instead of the more etymological _Chinchona_. The Jesuits afterward made
great and effective use of it in their missionary expeditions, and it
was a ludicrous result of their patronage that its use should have been
for a long time opposed by Protestants and favored by Catholics. In
1679, Louis XIV. bought the secret of preparing quinquina from Sir
Robert Talbor, an English doctor, for two thousand louis-d'or, a large
pension and a title. Under the Grand Monarch it was used at dessert,
mingled with Spanish wine. The delay of its discovery until the
seventeenth century has probably lost to the world numbers of valuable
lives. Had Alexander the Great, who died of the common remittent fever
of Babylon, been acquainted with cinchona bark, his death would have
been averted and the partition of the Macedonian empire indefinitely
postponed. Oliver Cromwell was carried off by an ague, which the
administration of quinine would easily have cured. The bigotry of
medical science, even after its efficacy was known and proved, for a
long time retarded its dissemination. In 1726, La Fontaine, at the
instance of a lady who owed her life to it, the countess of Bouillon,
composed a poem in two cantos to celebrate its virtues; but the
remarkable beauty of the leaves of the cinchona and the delicious
fragrance of its flowers, with allusions to which he might have adorned
his verses, were still unknown in Europe.

The cinchonas under favorable circumstances become large trees: at
present, however, in any of the explored and exploited regions of their
growth, the shoots or suckers of the plants are all that remain.
Wherever they abound they form the handsomest foliage of the forest. The
leaves are lanceolate, glossy and vividly green, traversed by rich
crimson veins: the flowers hang in clustering pellicles, like lilacs, of
deep rose-color, and fill the vicinity with rich perfume. Nineteen
varieties of cinchonae have been established by Doctor Weddell. The
cascarilleros of South America divide the species into a category of
colors, according to the tinge of the bark: there are yellow, red,
orange, violet, gray and white cinchonas. The yellow, among which figure
the _Cinchona calisaya, lancifolia, condaminea, micrantha, pubescens,_
etc., are placed in the first rank: the red, orange and gray are less
esteemed. This arrangement is in proportion to the abundance of the
alkaloid _quinine,_ now used in medicine instead of the bark itself.

The specimens found by the examinador were carefully wrapped in
blankets, and the march was resumed. After a slippery descent of the
side of Huaynapata and the passage of a considerable number of babbling
streams--each of which gave new occasion for the colonel to show his
ingenuity in getting over dry shod, and so sparing his threatening
rheumatism--the cry of "Sausipata!" was uttered by Pepe Garcia. Two neat
mud cabins, each provided with a door furnished with the unusual luxury
of a wooden latch, marked the plantation of Sausipata. The situation was
level, and within the enclosing walls of the forest could be seen a
plantation of bananas, a field of sugar-cane, with groves of coffee,
orange-orchards and gardens of sweet potato and pineapple. The white
visitors could not refrain from an exclamation of surprise at the
neatness and civilization of such an Eden in the desert. At this point,
Juan of Aragon, who had been going on ahead, turned around with an air
of splendid welcome, and explained that the farm belonged to his uncle,
the gobernador of Marcapata, who prayed them to make themselves at home.
Introducing his guests into the largest of the houses, Juan presented
them with some fine ripe fruit which he culled from the garden. Colonel
Perez, who never lost occasion to give a sly stab to the mozo, asked, as
he peeled a banana, if he was duly authorized to dispose so readily of
the property of his uncle: the youth, without losing a particle of his
magnificent adolescent courtesy, replied that as nephew and direct heir
of the governor of Marcapata it was a right which he exercised in
anticipation of inheritance; and that just as Pepe Garcia, the
interpreter-in-chief, had regaled the party in his residence, he, Juan
of Aragon, proposed to do in the family grange of Sausipata.

Meantime, the examinador, who had pushed forward with his men, returned
with a couple more specimens of quinquina, which they had discovered
close by in clambering amongst the forest. Neither had flowers, but the
one was recognizable by its flat leaf as the species called by the
Indians _ichu-cascarilla,_ from the grain _ichu_ amongst which it is
usually found at the base of the Cordilleras; and the other, from its
fruit-capsules two inches in length, as the _Cinchona acutifolia_ of
Ruiz and Pavon. To moderate the pleasures of this discovery, the
examinador came up leaning upon the shoulder of his principal assistant,
Eusebio, complaining of a frightful headache, and a weakness so extreme
that he could not put one foot before the other.

The sudden illness of their botanist-in-chief cast a gloom upon the
party, and utterly spoiled the festive intentions of young Aragon.
Lorenzo was put to bed, from which retreat, at midnight, his fearful
groans summoned the colonel to his side. The latter found him tossing
and murmuring, but incapable of uttering a word. His faithful Eusebio,
at the head of the bed, answered for him. The honest fellow feared lest
his master might have caught again a touch of the old fever which had
formerly attacked him in searching for cascarillas in the environs of
Tipoani in Bolivia. These symptoms, recurring in the lower valleys of
the Cconi, would make it impossible for the brave explorer safely to
continue with the party. As the mestizo propounded this inconvenient
theory, a new burst of groans from the examinador seemed to confirm it.
The grave news brought all the party to the sick bed. Colonel Perez,
whom the touching comparison of wives made in the hammocks of Morayaca
had sensibly attached to Lorenzo, endeavored to feel his pulse; but the
patient, drawing in his hand by a peevish movement, only rolled himself
more tightly in his blanket, and increased his groans to roars.
Presently, exhausted by so much agony, he fell into a slumber.

In the morning the examinador, in a dolorous voice, announced that he
should be obliged to return to Cuzco. This resolution might have seemed
the obstinate delirium of the fever but for the mournful and pathetic
calmness of the victim. Eusebio, he said, should return with him as far
as Chile-Chile, where a conveyance could be had; and he himself would
give such explicit instructions to the cascarilleros that nothing would
be lost by his absence to the purposes of the expedition. Yielding to
pity and friendship, the colonel gave in his adhesion to the plan, and
even proposed his own hammock as a sort of palanquin, and the loan of a
pair of the peons for bearers. They could return with Eusebio to
Sausipata, where the party would be obliged to wait for the three. After
sketching out his plan, Colonel Perez looked for approval to Mr. Marcoy,
and received an affirmative nod. The proposition seemed so agreeable to
the sick man that already an alleviation of his misery appeared to be
superinduced. He even smiled intelligently as he rolled into the
hammock. In a very short time he made a sort of theatrical exit, borne
in the hammock like an invalid princess, and fanned with a palm branch
out of the garden by the faithful Eusebio.

"Poor devil!" said Perez as the mournful procession departed: "who knows
if he will ever see his dear wife at Sorata, or if he will even live to
reach Chile-Chile?"

"Do you really think him in any such danger?" asked the more suspicious
Marcoy.

"Danger! Did you not see his miserable appearance as he left us?"

"I saw an appearance far from miserable, and therefore I am convinced
that the man is no more sick than you or I."

On hearing such a heartless heresy the colonel stepped back from his
comrade with a shocked expression, and asked what had given him such an
idea.

"A number of things, of which I need only mention the principal. In the
first place, the man's sickness falling on him like a thunder-clap;
next, his haste in catching back his hand when you tried to feel his
pulse; and then his smile, at once happy and mischievous, when you
offered him the peons and he found his stratagem succeeding beyond his
hopes."

"Why, now, to think of it!" said the colonel sadly; "but what could have
been his motive?"

"This gentleman is too delicate to sustain our kind of life," suggested
Marcoy. "He is tired of skinning his hands and legs in our service, and
eating peccary, monkey and snails as we do. His Bolivians are perhaps
quite as useful for our service, and while he is rioting at Cuzco we may
be enriching ourselves with cinchonas."

In effect, on the return of the peons ten days after, the examinador was
reported to have got quit of his fever shortly after leaving Sausipata,
and to have borne the journey to Chile-Chile remarkably well. He charged
his men to take back his compliments and the regrets he felt, at not
being able to keep with the company.

Nothing detained the band longer at Sausipata. The ten days of hunting,
botanizing, butterfly-catching and sketching had been an agreeable
relief, and young Aragon had assumed, with sufficient grace, the task of
attentive host and first player on the charango. The returning porters
had scarcely enjoyed two hours of repose when the caravan took up its
march once more.

As usual, the interpreters assumed the head of the command: the Indians
followed pellmell. Observing that some of them lingered behind, Mr.
Marcoy had the curiosity to return on his steps. What was his surprise
to find these honest fellows running furiously through the farm, and
devastating with all their might those plantations which were the pride
and the hope of the nephew of Aragon! They had already laid low several
cocoa groves, torn up the sugar-canes, broken down the bananas, and
sliced off the green pineapples.

Indignant at such vandalism, Marcoy caught the first offender by the
plaited tails at the back of the neck. "What are you doing?" he cried.

"I am neither crazy nor drunk, Taytachay" (dear little father), calmly
explained the peon with his placid smile. "But my fellows and I don't
want to be sent any more to work at Sausipata." As the white man
regarded him with stupefaction, "Thou art strange here," pursued the
Indian, "and canst know nothing about us. Promise not to tell Aragon,
and I will make thee wise."

"Why Aragon more than anybody else?" asked Marcoy.

"Because Senor Aragon is nephew to Don Rebollido, the governor, and
Sausipata belongs to Rebollido; and if he were to learn what we have
done, we should be flogged and sent to prison to rot."

The explanation, drawn out with many threats when the Indians had been
driven from their work of ruin and placed once more in line of march,
was curious.

The able gobernador of Marcapata had had the sagacious idea of making
the local penitentiary out of his farm of Sausipata! It was cultivated
entirely by the labor of his culprits. When culprits were scarce, the
chicha-drinkers, the corner-loungers, became criminals and disturbers of
the peace, for whom a sojourn at Sausipata was the obvious cure. Aragon,
the nephew, shared his uncle's ability, and visited the plantation month
by month. But the life in this paradise was not relished by the
convicts. The regimen was strict, the food everywhere abounding, was not
for them, and the vicinity of the wild Chunchos was not reassuring.
Often a peon would appear in the market-place of Marcapata wrapped
merely in a banana leaf, which, cracking in the sun, reduced all
pretence of decent covering to an irony. This evidence of the spoliation
of a Chuncho would be received in the worst possible part by the
gobernador, who would beat the complainant back to his servitude,
remarking with ingenuity that Providence was more responsible for the
acts of the savages than he was.

This strange history, told with profound earnestness, was enough to
make any one laugh, but Marcoy could not be blind to its side of
oppression and tyranny. This was the way, then, that the humble and
primitive gobernador, who had presented himself to the travelers
barefoot, was enriching himself by the knaveries of office! Marcoy could
not take heart to inform Juan of Aragon of the devastation behind him,
but on the other hand he resolved to correct the abuse on his return by
appeal, if necessary, to the prefect of Cuzco.

A frightful night in a deserted hut on a site called Jimiro--where
Marcoy had for mattress the legs of one of the porters, and for pillow
the back of a bark-hunter--followed the exodus from Sausipata. The
Guarapascana, the Saniaca, the Chuntapunco, flowing into the Cconi on
opposite sides, were successively left behind our adventurers, and they
bowed for an instant before the tomb of a stranger, "a German from
Germany," as Pepe Garcia said, "who pretended to know the language of
the Chunchos, and who interpreted for himself, but who starved in the
wilderness near the heap of stones you see." Leaving this resting-place
of an interpreter who had interpreted so little, the party attained a
stream of rather unusual importance. The reputed gold-bearing river of
Ouitubamba rolled from its tunnel before them, exciting the most
visionary schemes in the mind of Colonel Perez, to whom its auriferous
reputation was familiar. Nothing would do but that the California
process of "panning" must be carried out in these Peruvian waters, and
the peons, _multum reluctantes,_ were summoned to the task, with all the
crow-bars and shovels possessed by the expedition, supplemented by
certain sauce-pans and dishes hypothecated from the culinary department.
The issue of the stream from under a crown of indigenous growths was the
site of this financial speculation. Pepe Garcia was placed at the head
of the enterprise. A long ditch was dug, revealing milky quartz, ochres
and clay. The deceptive hue of the yellow earth made the search a long
and tantalizing one. At the moment when the colonel, attracted by
something glistening in the large frying-pan which he was agitating at
the edge of the stream, uttered an exclamation which drew all heads into
the cavity of his receptacle, an answering sound from the heavens caused
everybody suddenly to look up. An equatorial storm had gathered
unnoticed over their heads. In a few minutes a solid sheet of warm
rain, accompanied by a furious tornado sweeping through the valley,
caused whites and Indians to scatter as if for their lives. The golden
dream of Colonel Perez and the similar vision entertained by Pepe Garcia
were dissipated promptly by this answer of the elements. On attaining
the neighboring sheds of Maniri the gold--seekers abandoned their
implements without remark to the services of the cooks, and betook
themselves to wringing out their stockings as if they had never dreamed
of walking in silver slippers through the streets of Cuzco. They made no
further attempt to wring gold from the mouth of the Ouitubamba. As for
Maniri, it was the last site or human resting-place of any, the very
most trivial, kind before the opening of the utter wilderness which
proceeded to accompany the course of the Cconi River.

[Illustration: "THE REPUTED GOLD-BEARING RIVER OR OUITUBAMBA ROLLED FROM
ITS TUNNEL."]

The Bolivians imagined an exploration of a little stream on the left
bank, the Chuntapunco, which they thought might issue from a
quinine-bearing region. They built a little raft, and departed with
provisions for three or four days. They returned, in fact, after a
week's absence, with seven varieties of cinchona--the _hirsuta,
lanceolata, purpurea_ and _ovata_ of Ruiz and Pavon, and three more of
little value and unknown names.

During the absence of the cascarilleros a flat calm reigned in the
ajoupa of Maniri. Garcia and the colonel, the day after their
unproductive gold-hunt, betook themselves into the forest, ostensibly
for game, but in reality to review their hopeful labors by the banks of
the Ouitubamba. Aragon was detailed by Mr. Marcoy to accompany him in
his botanical and entomological tours. On these excursions the
acquaintance between the mozo and the señor was considerably developed.
The youth had naturally a gay and confident disposition, and added not a
little to the liveliness of the trips. Marcoy profited by their stricter
connection to converse with him about the cultivation of the farm at
Sausipata, making use of a venial deception to let him think that the
plan of operations had been communicated by the governor himself.
Aragon modestly replied that the plantation in question was only the
first of a series of similar clearings contemplated by his uncle at
various points in the valley. Arrangements made for this purpose with
the governors of Ocongata and Asaroma, who were pledged with their
support in return for heavy presents, would enable him soon to cultivate
coffee and sugar and cocoa at once in a number of haciendas. The
enterprise was a splendid one; and if God--Aragon pronounced the name
without a particle of diffidence--deigned to bless it, the day was
coming when the fortune of his uncle, solidly established, would make
him the pride and the joy of the region.

It may as well be mentioned here that the subsequent career of the
chest-nut-colored interpreter is not entirely unknown. In 1860, Mr.
Clement Markham, collecting quinine-plants for the British government,
came upon a splendid hacienda thirty miles from the village of Ayapata,
in a valley of the Andes near the scene of this exploration. Here, on
the sugar-cane estate named San José de Bellavista, he discovered "an
intelligent and enterprising Peruvian" named Aragon, who appears to have
been none other than our interpreter escaped from the chrysalis. His
establishment was very large, and protected from the savages by two
rivers, Aragon had made a mule-road of thirty miles to the village. He
found the manufacture of spirits for the sugar-cane more profitable than
digging for gold in the Ouitubamba or hunting for cascarillas along the
Cconi. In 1860 he sent an expedition into the forest after wild
cocoa-plants. An india-rubber manufactory had only failed for want of
government assistance. He contemplated the establishment of a line of
steamers on the neighboring rivers to carry off the commerce of his
plantations. "Any scheme for developing the resources of the country is
sure to receive his advocacy," says Mr. Markham: "it would be well for
Peru if she contained many such men."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]




PROBATIONER LEONHARD;

OR, THREE NIGHTS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.

CHAPTER I.

OUR HERO.

Young Mr. Leonhard Marten walked out on the promenade at the usual hour
one afternoon, after a good deal of hesitation, for there was quite as
little doubt in his mind as there is in mine that the thing to do was to
remain within-doors and answer the letters--or rather the letter--lying
on his table. The brief epistle which conveyed to him the regrets of the
new female college building committee, that his plans were too elaborate
and costly, and must therefore be declined, really demanded no reply,
and would probably never have one. It was the hurried scrawl from his
friend Wilberforce which claimed of his sense of honor an answer by the
next mail. The letter from Wilberforce was dated Philadelphia, and ran
thus:

"DEAR LENNY: Please deposit five thousand for me in some good bank of
Pennsylvania or New York. I shall want it, maybe, within a week or so. I
am talking hard about going abroad. Why can't you go along? Say we sail
on the first of next month. Richards is going, and I shall make enough
out of the trip to pay expenses for all hands. You'll never know
anything about your business, Mart, till you have studied in one of
those old towns. Answer. Thine,

"WIL."

When I say that Leonhard had, or _had_ had, ten thousand dollars of
Wilberforce's money, and that he was now about as unprepared to meet the
demand recorded as he would have been if he had never seen a cent of the
sum mentioned, the assertion, I think, is justified that his place was
at his office-table, and not on the promenade. What if the town-clock
had struck four? what if at this hour Miss Ayres usually rounded the
corner of Granby street on her way home? But, poor fellow! he _had_
tried to think his way through the difficulty. Every day for a week he
had exercised himself in letter--writing: he had practiced every style,
from the jocular to the gravely interrogative, and had succeeded pretty
well as a stylist, but the point, the point, the bank deposit, remained
still insurmountable and unapproachable.

Once or twice he had thought that probably the best thing to do was to
go off on a long journey, and by and by, when things had righted
themselves somehow, find out where Wilberforce was and acknowledge his
letter with regrets and explanations. He was considering this course
when he destroyed his last effort, and went out on the promenade to get
rid of his thoughts and himself and to meet Miss Ayres. The present
contained Miss Ayres; as to the future, it was dark as midnight; for the
past, it was not in the least pleasant to think of it, and how it had
come to pass that Wilberforce trusted him.

The days when he and Wilberforce were lads, poor, sad-hearted, all but
homeless, returned upon him with their shadows. It was in those days
that his friend formed so lofty an estimate of his exactness in figures
and his skill in saving, and thus it had happened that when the engine
constructed by Wilberforce began to pay him so past belief, he was
really in the perplexity concerning places of deposit which he had
expressed to Marten. Leonhard chanced to be with this young Croesus--who
had begun life by dipping water for invalids at the springs--when the
ten thousand dollars alluded to were paid him by a dealer; and the
instant transfer of the money to his hands was one of those off-hand
performances which, apparently trivial, in the end search a man to the
foundations.

What had become of the money? Seven thousand dollars were swallowed up
in a gulf which never gives back its treasure. And oh on the verge of
that same gulf how the siren had sung! A chance of clearing five
thousand dollars by investing that amount presented itself to Leonhard:
it was one of those investments which will double a man's money for him
within three months, or six months at latest. The best men of A---- were
in the enterprise, and by going into it Leonhard would reap every sort
of advantage. He might give up teaching music, and confine himself to
the studies which as an architect he ought to pursue; and to be known
among the A--- landers as a young gentleman who had money to invest
would secure to him that social position which the music-lessons he gave
did no doubt in some quarters embarrass.

It was while buoyed up by his "great expectations," and flattered by the
attentions which strangely enough began to be extended toward him by
some of the "best men"--who also were stockholders in the new
sugar-refining process--that Leonhard took a room at the Granby House,
and began to manifest a waning interest in his work as a music-master.

This display of himself, modest though it was, cost money. Before the
letter quoted was written Leonhard had begun to feel a little troubled:
he had been obliged to add two thousand dollars to his original
investment, and the thought that possibly there might be a demand for a
yet further sum--for some unforeseen difficulty had arisen in the matter
of machinery--had fixed in his mind a misgiving to which at odd moments
he returned with a flutter of spirits amounting almost to panic.

On the promenade he met Miss Ayres. She stood before the window of a
music-dealer's shop, looking at the photograph of some celebrity--a tall
and not too slightly-formed young lady, attired in a buff suit with
brown trimmings, and a brown hat from which a pretty brown feather
depended. On her round cheeks was a healthy glow, deepened perhaps by
exercise on that warm afternoon, and a trifle in addition, it may be, by
the sound of footsteps advancing. Yet as Leonhard approached, she,
chancing to look around, did not seem surprised that he was so near. Not
that she expected him! What reason had she for supposing that from his
office-window he would see her the instant she turned the corner of
Granby street and walked down the avenue fronting the parade-ground? No
reason of course; but this had happened so many times that the meeting
of the two somewhere in this vicinity was daily predicted by the wise
prophets of the street.

A rumor was going about A---- in those days which occasioned the mother
of our young lady a little uneasiness. When Leonhard came to A---- it
was to live by his profession--music. He was an enthusiast in the
science, and the best people patronized him. He might have all the
pupils he pleased now, and at his own prices, thought Mrs. Washington
Ayres, who had herself taught music: why doesn't he stick to his
business? But then, she reminded herself, they say he has money; and he
is so bewitched about architecture that he can't let it alone. Too many
irons in the fire to please me! Perhaps, though, if he has money, it
makes not so much difference. But I don't like to see a young man
dabbling in too many things: it looks as if he would never do anything
to speak of. It is the only thing I ever heard of against him; but if he
can't make up his mind, I don't know as there could be anything much
worse to tell of a man.

She was not far wrong in her thinking, and she had seen the great fault
in the character of young Mr. Marten. It was his nature to take up and
embrace cordially, as if for life, the objects that pleased him. Perhaps
the tendency conduced to his popularity and reputation as a
music-master, for his acquaintance with the works of composers was
really vast; but the effect of it was not so hopeful when it set him to
studying a difficult art almost without instruction, in the confidence
that he should soon by his works take rank with Angelo, Wren and other
great masters.

At the music-dealer's window Mr. Leonhard stood for a moment beside
Miss Marion, and then said with a queer smile, "How cool it looks over
yonder among the trees! I wish somebody would like to walk there with an
escort."

"Anybody might, I should think," answered the young lady. "I have waded
through hot dust, red-hot dust, all the afternoon. Besides, I want to
ask you, Mr. Marten, what it means. Everybody is coming to me for
lessons. Are you refusing instruction, or are you growing so unpopular
of late? I have vexed myself trying to answer the question."

"They all come to you, do they? Yes, I think I am growing unpopular. And
I am rather glad of it, on the whole," answered Leonhard, not quite
clear as to her meaning, but not at all disturbed by it.

"I know they must all have gone to you first," she said. "Of course they
all went to you first, and you wouldn't have them."

Leonhard smiled on. Her odd talk was pleasant to him, and to look at her
bright face was to forget every disagreeable thing in the world. "You
know I have been thinking that I would give up instruction altogether,"
said he; "but I suppose that unless I actually go away to get rid of my
pupils, I shall have a few devoted followers to the last. The more you
take off my hands the better I shall like it."

"But how should everybody know that you _think_ of giving up
instruction?" Miss Marion inquired.

"Oh, I dare say I have told everybody," he answered carelessly.

"Ah!" said she; and two or three thoughts passed through the mind of the
young lady quite worthy the brain of her mother. "I am half sorry," she
continued. "But at least you cannot forget what you know. That is a
comfort. And I am sure you love music too well to let me go on
committing barbarisms with my hands or voice without telling me."

Leonhard hesitated. How far might he take this dear girl into his
secrets? "My friend Wilberforce is always saying that I ought to study
abroad in the old European towns before I launch out in earnest," said
he finally.

"As architect or musician?" asked the "dear girl."

"As architect, of course," he answered, without manifesting surprise at
the question. "He is going himself now, and he wants me to go with him."

"Why don't you go?" The quick look with which he followed this question
made Miss Marion add: "It would be the best thing in the world for--for
a student, I should think. You said once that your indecision was the
bane of your life. I beg your pardon for remembering it. When you have
heard the best music and seen the best architecture, you can put an end
to this 'thirty years' war,' and come back and settle down."

"All very well," said he, "but please to tell me where I shall find you
when I come home."

"Oh, I shall be jogging along somewhere, depend."

"With your mind made up concerning every event five years before it
happens? If you had my choice to make, you think, I suppose, that you
would decide in a minute which road to fame and fortune you would
choose." Mr. Leonhard used his cane as vehemently while he spoke as if
he were a conductor swinging his baton through the most exciting
movement.

"I don't understand your perplexity, that is the fact," said she with
wonderful candor; "but then I have been trained to do one thing from the
time I could wink."

"It was expected of me that I should rival the greatest performers,"
said Leonhard with a half-sad smile. "If I go abroad now, as you
advise--"

"Advise? I advise!"

"Did you not?"

"Not the least creature moving. Never!"

"If you did you would say, 'Keep to music.'"

"I should say, 'Keep to architecture.' Then--don't you see?--I should
have all your pupils."

"That would matter little: you have long had all that I could give you
worth the giving, Miss Ayres."

Were these words intent on having utterance, and seeking their
opportunity?

In the midst of her lightness and seeming unconcern the young lady found
herself challenged, as it were, by the stern voice of a sentinel on
guard. But she answered on the instant: "The most delicious music I have
ever heard, for which I owe you endless thanks. I have said
architecture; but I never advise, you know."

"She has not understood me," thought Leonhard, but instead of taking
advantage of that conclusion and retiring from the ground, he said,
"Perhaps I must speak more clearly. I don't care what I do or where I
go, Miss Marion, if you are indifferent. I love you."

What did he read in the face which his dark eyes scanned as they turned
full upon it? Was it "I love you"? Was it "Alas!"? He could not tell.

"You are pledged to love 'the True and the Beautiful,'" said she quite
gayly, "and so I am not surprised."

Leonhard looked mortified and angry. A man of twenty-two declaring love
for the first time to a woman had a right to expect better treatment.

"I have offended you," she said instantly. "I only followed out your own
train of thought. You may have half a dozen professions, and--"

"I am at least clear that I love only you," he said. "I hoped you would
feel that. It is certain, I think, that I shall confine myself to the
studies of an architect hereafter. I will give no more lessons. And
shall you care to know whether I go or stay?"

Miss Ayres answered--almost as if in spite of herself and that good
judgment for which she had been sufficiently praised during her eighteen
years of existence--"Yes, I shall care a vast deal. That is the reason
why I say, 'Go, if it seems best to you'--'Stay, if you think it more
wise.' I have the confidence in you that sees you can conduct your own
affairs."

"If I go," he cried in a happy voice, in strong contrast with his words,
"it will be to leave everything behind me that can make life sweet."

"But if you go it will be to gain everything that can make life
honorable. I did not understand that you thought of going for pleasure."
Ah, how almost tender now her look and tone!

"Say but once to me what I have said to you," said Leonhard joyfully,
confident now that he had won the great prize.

"Now? No: don't talk about it. Wait a while, and we will see if there is
anything in it." What queer lover's mood was this? Miss Marion looked as
if she had passed her fortieth birthday when she spoke in this wise.

"Oh for a soft sweet breeze from the north-east to temper such cruel
blasts!" exclaimed Leonhard. "Was ever man so treated as I am by this
strong-minded young woman?"

"Everybody on the grounds is looking, and wondering how she will get
home with the intemperate young gentleman she is escorting. Did you say
you were going to talk with your friend Mr. Wilberforce about going
abroad with him for a year or two?"

"I said no such thing, but perhaps I may. I was going to write, but it
may be as easy to run down to Philadelphia."

"Easier, I should say."

So they talked, and when they parted Leonhard said: "If you do not see
me to-morrow evening, you will know that I have gone to Philadelphia. I
shall not write to let you know. You might feel that an answer was
expected of you."

"I have never been taught the arts of a correspondent, and it is quite
too late to learn them," she answered.

Miss Marion will probably never again feel as old as she does this
afternoon, when she has half snubbed, half flattered and half accepted
the man she admires and loves, but whose one fault she clearly perceives
and is seriously afraid of.

The next day Leonhard sat staring at Wilberforce's letter with a face as
wrinkled as a young ape's in a cold morning fog. After one long serious
effort he sprang from his seat, and I am afraid swore that he would go
down to Philadelphia that very afternoon. Therefore (and because he
clung to the determination all day) at six o'clock behold him passing
with his satchel from the steps of the Granby House to the Grand
Division Dépôt. He was always going to and fro, so his departure
occasioned no remark. He supposed, for his own part, that he was going
to talk with his friend Wilberforce, and his ticket ensured his passage
to Philadelphia; and yet at eight o'clock he found himself standing on
the steps of the Spenersberg Station, and saw the train move on. At the
moment when his will seemed to him to be completely demoralized the
engine-whistle sounded and the engine stopped. Utterly unnerved by his
doubts, he slunk from the car like an escaping convict, and looked
toward the narrow moonlit valley which was as a gate leading into this
unknown Spenersberg. The path looked obscure and inviting, and so,
without exchanging a word with any one, he walked forward, a more
pitiable object than is pleasant to consider, for he was no coward and
no fool.



CHAPTER II.

IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.

About the time that Leonhard Marten was paying for his ticket in the
dépôt at A----, how many events were taking place elsewhere! Multitudes,
multitudes going up and down the earth perplexed, tempted, discouraged.
What were _you_ doing at that hour? I wonder.

Even here, at this Spenersberg, was Frederick Loretz--with reason deemed
one of the most fortunate of the men gathered in the happy
valley--asking himself, as he walked homeward from the factory, "What is
the use?"

When he spied his wife on the piazza he seemed to doubt for a second
whether he should go backward or forward. Into that second of
vacillation, however, the voice of the woman penetrated: "Husband, so
early? Welcome home!"

The voice decided him, and so he opened his gate, passed along the
graveled walk to the piazza steps, ascended, wiping the perspiration
from his bald head, dropped his handkerchief into his hat and his hat
upon the floor, and sat down in one of the great wide-armed wooden
chairs which visitors always found awaiting them on the piazza.

His wife, having bestowed upon him one brief glance, quickly arose and
went into the house: the next moment she came again, bringing with her a
pitcher of iced water and a goblet, which she placed before him on a
small rustic table. But a second glance showed her that he was suffering
from something besides the heat and fatigue. There was a look on his
broad honest face that told as distinctly as color and expression could
tell of anguish, consternation, remorse. He drank from the goblet she
had filled for him, and said, without looking at his wife, "I have
brought you the worst news, Anna, that ever you heard." She must have
guessed what it was instantly, but she made neither sign nor gesture.
She could have enumerated there and then all the sorrows of her life;
but for a moment it was not possible even for her to say that this
impending affliction was, in view of all she had endured, a light one,
easy to be borne.

"It has gone against us," said Mr. Loretz, picking up his red silk
handkerchief and passing it from one hand to another, and finally hiding
his face within its ample dimensions for a moment.

"Do you mean the lot?" Her voice wavered a little. Though she asked or
refrained from asking, something had taken place which must be made
known speedily. Wherefore, then, delay the evil knowledge?

He signified by a nod that it was so.

"And that is in store for our poor child!" said the mother.

Mr. Loretz was now quite broken down. He passed his handkerchief across
his face again, and this time made no answer.

Then the mother, with lips firmly compressed, and eyes bent steadily
upon the floor, and forehead crumpled somewhat, sat and held her peace.

At last the father said, in a low tone that gave to his strong voice an
awful pathos, "How can the child bear it, Anna? for she loves Spener
well--and to love _him_ well!"

"Oh, father," said the wife, who had by this time sounded the depth of
this tribulation, and was already ascending, "how did we bear it when we
had to give up Gabriel, and Jacob, and dear little Carl?"

"For me," said the man, rising and looking over the piazza rail into the
gay little flower-garden beneath--"for me all that was nothing to this."

"O my boys!" the mother cried.

"We know that they went home to a heavenly Parent, and to more delight
and honor than all the earth could give them," the father said.

"It rent the heart, Frederick, but into the gaping wound the balm of
Gilead was poured."

"There is no man alive to be compared with Albert Spener."

"I know of one--but one."

"Not one," he said with an emphasis which sternly rebuked the ill-timed,
and, as he deemed, untruthful flattery. "There is not his like, go where
you will."

"Ah, how you have exalted him above all that is to be worshiped!" sighed
the good woman, putting her hands together, and really as troubled and
sympathetic, and cool and calculating, as she seemed to be.

"I tell you I have never seen his equal! Look at this place here--hasn't
he called it up out of the dust?"

"Yes, yes, he did. He made it all," she said. "It must be conceded that
Albert Spener is a great man--in Spenersberg."

"How, then, can I keep back from him the best I have when he asks for it
--asks for it as if I were a king to refuse him what he wanted if I
pleased? I would give him my life!"

"Ah, Frederick, you have! It isn't you that denies now--think of that!
Remind him of it. _Who_ spoke by the lot? Where are you going, husband?"

Mr. Loretz had turned away from the piazza rail and picked up his hat.
His wife's question arrested him. "I--I thought I would speak with
Brother Wenck," said he, somewhat confused by the question, and looking
almost as if his sole purpose had been to go beyond the sound of his
wife's remonstrating voice.

"Husband, about this?"

"Yes, Anna."

"Don't go. What will he think?"

"Nobody knows about it yet, except Wenck, unless he spoke to Brother
Thorn."

"Oh, Frederick, what are you thinking?"

"I am thinking"--he paused and looked fixedly at his wife--"I am
thinking that I have been beside myself, Anna--crazy, out and out, and
this thing can't stand."

"Husband, it was our wish to learn the will of God concerning this
marriage, and we have learned it. The Lord----"

"I will go back to the factory," said Mr. Loretz, turning quickly away
from his wife. "I must see if everything is right there before it gets
darker." He had caught sight of the tall figure of a woman at the gate
when he snatched up his hat so suddenly and interrupted his wife. Then
he turned to her again: "Is Elise within?"

"No, husband: she went to the garden for twigs this afternoon."

"She had not heard?"

"No. It is Sister Benigna that is coming. Must you go back?" She poured
another glass of water for her husband, and walked down the steps with
him; and coming so, out from the shade into the sunlight, Sister Benigna
was startled by their faces as though she had seen two ghosts.

Two hours later, Mr. Loretz again turned his steps homeward, and Mr.
Wenck, the minister, walked with him as far as the gate. They had met
accidentally upon the sidewalk, and Mr. Loretz must of necessity make
some allusion to the letter he had received from the minister that day
acquainting him with the allotment which had made of him so hopeless a
mourner. The good man hesitated a moment before making response: then
he took both the hands of Loretz in his, and said in a deep, tender
voice, "Brother, the wound smarts."

"I cannot bear it!" cried Loretz. "It is all my doing, and I must have
been crazy."

"When in devout faith you sought to know God's will concerning your dear
child?"

"I cannot talk about it," was the impatient response. "And you cannot
understand it," he continued, turning quickly upon his companion. "You
have never had a daughter, and you don't understand Albert Spener."

"I think," said the minister patiently--"I think I know him well enough
to see what the consequence will be if he should suspect that Brother
Loretz is like 'a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed.'"

Yet as the minister said this his head drooped, his voice softened, and
he laid his hand on the shoulder of Mr. Loretz, as if he would fain
speak on and in a different strain. It was evident that the distressed
man did not understand him, and reproof or counsel was more than he
could now bear. He walked on a little faster, and as he approached his
gate voices from within were heard. They were singing a duet from _The
Messiah_.

"Come in," said Loretz, his face suddenly lighting up with almost hope.

Mr. Wenck seemed disposed to accept the invitation: then, as he was
about to pass through the gate, he was stayed by a recollection
apparently, for he turned back, saying, "Not to-night, Brother Loretz.
They will need all the time for practice. Let me tell you, I admire your
daughter Elise beyond expression. I wish that Mr. Spener could hear that
voice now: it is perfectly triumphant. You are happy, sir, in having
such a daughter."

As Mr. Wenck turned from the gate, Leonhard--our Leonhard
Marten--approached swiftly from the opposite side of the street. He had
been sitting under the trees half an hour listening to the singing, and,
full of enthusiasm, now presented himself before Mr. Loretz,
exclaiming, "Do tell me, sir, what singers are these?"

Mr. Loretz knew every man in Spenersberg. He looked at the stranger, and
answered dryly, "Very tolerable singers."

"I should think so! I never heard anything so glorious. I am a stranger
here, sir. Can you direct me to a public-house?"

To answer was easy. There was but the one inn, called the Brethren's
House, the sixth below the one before which they were standing. It was a
long house, painted white, with a deep wide porch, where half a dozen
young men probably sat smoking at this moment. Instead of giving this
direction, however, Loretz said, after a brief consultation with
himself, "I don't know as there's another house in Spenersberg that
ought to be as open as mine. I live here, sir. How long have you been
listening?"

"Not long enough," said Leonhard; and he passed through the gate, which
had been opened for the minister, and now was opened as widely for him.

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER III.

HIGH ART.

The room into which Mr. Loretz conducted Leonhard seemed to our young
friend, as he glanced around it, fit for the court of Apollo. Its
proportions had obviously been assigned by some music-loving soul. It
occupied two-thirds of the lower floor of the house, and its high
ceiling was a noticeable feature. The furniture had all been made at the
factory; the floor-mats were woven there; and one gazing around him
might well have wondered to what useful or ornamental purpose the green
willows growing everywhere in Spenersberg Valley might not be applied.
The very pictures hanging on the wall--engraved likenesses of the great
masters Mozart and Beethoven--had their frames of well-woven willow
twigs; and the rack which held the books and sheets of music was
ornamented on each side with raised wreaths of flowers wrought by deft
hands from the same pliant material.

At the piano, in the centre of the room, sat Sister Benigna--by her
side, Elise Loretz.

It seemed, when Elise's father entered with the stranger, as if there
might be a suspension of the performance, but Loretz said, "Two
listeners don't signify: we promise to make no noise. Sit down, sir:
give me your bag;" and taking Leonhard's satchel, he retired with it to
a corner, where he sat down, and with his elbows on his knees, his head
between his hands, prepared himself to listen.

Sister Benigna said to her companion, "It is time we practiced before an
audience perhaps;" and they went on as if nothing had happened.

And sitting in that cool room on the eve of a scorching and distracted
day, is it any wonder that Leonhard composed himself to accept any
marvel that might present itself? Once across the threshold of the
Every-day, and there is nothing indeed for which one should not be
prepared.

If in mood somewhat less enthusiastic than that of our traveler we look
in upon that little company, what shall we see?

In the first place, inevitably, Sister Benigna. But describe a picture,
will you, or the mountains, or the sea? It must have been something for
the Spenersberg folk to know that such a woman dwelt among them, yet
probably two-thirds of her influence was unconsciously put forth and as
unconsciously received. They knew that in musical matters she inspired
them and exacted of them to the uttermost, but they did not and could
not know how much her life was worth to all of them, and that they lived
on a higher plane because of those half dozen wonderful notes of hers,
and the unflagging enthusiasm which needed but the name of love-feast or
festival to bring a light into her lovely eyes that seemed to spread up
and around her white forehead and beautiful hair like a supernatural
lustre. There was a fire that animated her which nobody who saw its glow
or felt its warmth could question. Without that altar of music--But why
speculate on what she might have been if she had not been what she was?
That would be to consider not Benigna, but somebody else.

She was accompanying Elise through Handel's "Pastoral Symphony." Elise
began: "He is the righteous Saviour, and He shall speak peace unto the
heathen." At the first notes Leonhard looked hastily toward the window,
and if it had been a door he would have passed out on to the piazza,
that he might there have heard, unseeing, unseen. While he sat still and
looked and listened it seemed to him as if he had been engaged in
foolish games with children all his life. He sat as it were in the dust,
scorning his own insignificance.

The young girl who now sat, now stood beside her, must have been the
child of her training. For six years, indeed, they have lived together
under one roof, sharing one apartment. Within the hour just passed, that
has been said by them toward which all the talk and all the action of
the six years has tended, and the heart of the girl lies in the hand of
the woman, and what will the woman do with it?

Perhaps all that Benigna can do for Elise has to-day been accomplished.
It may be that to grow beside her now will be to grow in the shade when
shade is needed no longer, and when the effect will be to weaken life
and to deepen the spirit of dependence. Possibly sunlight though
scorching, winds though wild, would be better for Elise now than the
protecting shadow of her friend.

Looking at Elise, Leonhard feels more assured, more at home. She has a
kindly face, a lovely face, he decides, and what a deliciously rich,
smooth voice! She is rather after the willowy order in her slender
person, and when she begins to sing "Rejoice greatly," he looks at her
astonished, doubting whether the sound can really have proceeded from
her slender throat. He is again reminded of Marion, but by nothing he
hears or sees: poor Marion has her not small reputation as a singer in
A----, yet her voice, compared with this, is as wire--gold wire
indeed--wire with a _color_ of richness at least; while Elise's is as
honey itself--honey with the flavor of the sweetest flowers in it, and,
too, the suggestion of the bee's swift, strong wing.

Into the room comes at last Mrs. Loretz. It is just as Elise takes up
the final air of the symphony that she appears. She would look upon her
daughter while she sings, "Come unto Him, all ye that labor and are
heavy laden, and He shall give you rest. Take His yoke upon you, and
learn of Him," etc. Chiefly to look upon her child she comes--to listen
with her loving, confident eyes.

But on the threshold of the music-room she pauses half a second,
perceiving the stranger by the window: then she nods pleasantly to him,
which motion sets the short silvery hair on her forehead waving, as
curls would have waved there had she only let them. She wears a cap
trimmed with a blue ribbon tied beneath her chin, and such is the order
of her comely gown and apron that it commands attention always, like a
true work of art.

She sits down beside her husband, and presently, as by the flash of a
single glance indeed, has taken the weight and measure of the gentleman
opposite. She likes his appearance, admires his fine dark face and his
fine dark eyes, wonders where he came from, what he wants, and--will he
stay to tea?

Gazing at her daughter, she looks a little sad: then she smooths her
dress, straightens herself, shakes her head, and is absorbed in the
music, beating time with tiny foot and hand, and following every strain
with an intentness which draws her brows together into a slight frown.
Elise almost smiles as she glances toward her mother: she knows where to
find enthusiasm at a white heat when it is wanted. With the final
repetition, "Ye shall find rest to your souls," the dame rises quickly,
and hastening to her daughter embraces her; then passing to the next
room, she pauses, perhaps long enough to wipe her eyes; then the jingle
of a bell is heard.

At the ringing of this bell, Sister Benigna rose instantly, saying,
"Welcome sound!" Loretz also came forth from his corner. He was about to
speak to Leonhard, when Benigna took up the trombone which was lying on
the piano, and said, "I am curious to know how many rehearsals you have
had, sir. It is time, Elise, that our trombonist reported."

Loretz, casting an eye toward his daughter, said, "Never mind Sister
Benigna. Our quartette will be all right." Then he turned to Leonhard:
it was not now that he felt for the first time the relief of the
stranger's presence. "We are going to take food," said he: "will you
give me your name and come with us?"

Leonhard gave his name, and moreover his opinion that he had trespassed
too long already on the hospitality of the house.

To this remark Loretz paid no attention. "Wife," he called out, "isn't
that name down in the birthday book--_Leonhard Marten?_ I am sure of it.
He was a Herrnhuter."

"Very likely, husband," was the answer from the other room. "Will you
come, good people?" The good people who heard that voice understood just
what its tone meant, and there was an instant response.

"Come in, sir," said Loretz; and the invitation admitted no argument,
for he went forward at once with a show of alacrity sufficient to
satisfy his wife. "This young man here was looking for a public-house.
They are full at the Brethren's, I hear. I thought he could not do
better than take luck with us," he said to her by way of explanation.

"He is welcome," said the wife in a prompt, business-like tone, which
was evidently her way. "Daughter!" She looked at Elise, and Elise
brought a plate, knife and fork for "this young man," and placed them
where her mother indicated--that is, next herself. Between the mother
and daughter Leonhard therefore took refuge, as it were, from the rather
too majestic presence opposite known as Sister Benigna. He should have
felt at ease in the little circle, for not one of them but felt the
addition to their party to be a diversion and a relief. As to Dame Anna
Loretz, thoughts were passing through her mind which might pass through
the minds of others also in the course of time should Leonhard prove to
be a good Moravian and decide to remain among them. They were thoughts
which would have sent a dubious smile around the board, however, could
they have been made known just now to Elise and her father and Sister
Benigna; and what would our young friend--from the city evidently--have
looked or said could they have been communicated to him? Already the
mind and heart of the mother of Elise, disconcerted and distracted for
the moment by that untoward casting of the lot, had risen to a calm
survey of the situation of things; and now she was endeavoring to
reconcile herself to the prospect which imagination presented to the eye
of faith, _If_ she had perceived in the unannounced appearing of the
young gentleman who sat near her devouring with keen appetite the good
fare before him, and apologizing for his hunger with a grace which
ensured him constant renewal of vanishing dishes,--if she had perceived
in it a manifestation of the will of Providence, she could not have
smiled on Leonhard more kindly, or more successfully have exerted
herself to make him feel at home.

And might not Mr. Leonhard have congratulated himself? If there was a
"great house" in Spenersberg, this was that mansion; and if there were
great people there, these certainly were they. And to think of finding
in this vale cultivators of high art, intelligent, simple-hearted,
earnest, beautiful!

CAROLINE CHESEBRO'.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]




THE IRISH CAPITAL.

The metropolis of Ireland about the middle of the last century was the
fourth in Europe in point of size. Since then it has made little
progress in comparison with many others. Yet it is a large place,
covering a great area, and holding a population which numbers some three
hundred thousand souls.

It may further be said that notwithstanding the withdrawal, consequent
on the Union, of the aristocratic classes from Dublin, the city has
improved more in the last fifty years than at any previous period.
Dublin, at the Union, and for some time after, was a very dirty place
indeed. To-day, although, from that antipathy to paint common to the
whole Irish nation--which can apparently never realize the Dutch
proverb, that "paint costs nothing," or the English one, that "a stitch
in time saves nine"--much of the town looks dingy, it is, as a whole,
cleaner than almost any capital in Europe, so far as drainage and the
sanitary state of the dwellings are concerned. And here we speak from
experience, having last year, in company with detective officers,
visited all its lowest and poorest haunts.

The cause of this sanitary excellence is that matters of this kind are
placed entirely in the hands of the police, who rigorously carry out the
orders given to them on such points. It is devoutly to be hoped that a
similar system will ere long be in vogue in the towns of our own
country.

The noblesse have now quite deserted the Irish capital. Besides the
lord-chancellor, there is probably not a single peer occupying a house
there to-day. Houses are excellent and very cheap. An immense mansion in
the best situation can be had for a thousand dollars a year. The markets
are capitally supplied, and the prices are generally about one-third of
those of New York. Not a single item of living is dear. But,
notwithstanding these and many other advantages, the place has lost
popularity, has a "deadly-lively" air about it, and, it must be
admitted, is in many respects wondrously dull, especially to those who
have been used to the brisk life of a great commercial or
pleasure-loving capital.

"Cornelius O'Dowd" paid a visit to Dublin in 1871 after a long absence,
and said some very pretty things about it. Never was the company or
claret better. Well, the fact was, that while the great and lamented
Cornelius was there he was fêted and made much of. Lord Spencer gave him
a dinner, so did other magnates, and his séjour was one prolonged
feasting; but nevertheless the every-day life of the Irish capital is
awfully and wonderfully dull, as those who know it best, and have the
cream of such society as it offers, would in strict confidence admit.
From January to May there is an attempt at a "season," during the
earlier part of which the viceroy gives a great many entertainments.
These are remarkably well done, and the smaller parties are very
agreeable. But politics intervene here, as in everything else in
Ireland, to mar considerably the brilliancy of the vice-regal court.
When the Whigs are "in" the Tory aristocracy hold off from "the Castle,"
and _vice versâ_. Dublin is generally much more brilliant under a Tory
viceroy, inasmuch as nine-tenths of the Irish peerage and landed gentry
support that side of politics. The vice-reign of the duke of Abercorn,
the last lord-lieutenant, will long be remembered as a period of
exceptional splendor in the annals of Dublin. He maintained the dignity
of the office in a style which had not been known for half a century,
and in this respect proved particularly acceptable to people of all
classes. Besides, he is a man of magnificent presence, and has a fitting
helpmate (sister of Earl Russell) and beautiful daughters; and it was
universally admitted that the round people had got into the round holes,
so far as the duke and duchess were concerned.

The lord-lieutenant's levees and drawing-rooms take place at night, and
are therefore much more cheerful than similar ceremonials at Buckingham
Palace. His Excellency kisses all the ladies presented to him. The
vice-regal salary is one hundred thousand dollars, with allowances, but
most viceroys spend a great deal more. There are in such a poor country,
where people have no sort of qualms about asking, innumerable claims
upon their purses.

The office of viceroy of Ireland is one which prime ministers find it no
easy task to fill. Just that kind of person is wanted for the office who
has no wish to hold it. A great peer with half a million of dollars'
income doesn't care about accepting troublesome and occasionally anxious
duties, from which he, at all events, has nothing to gain. For some time
Lord Derby was in a quandary to get any one who would do to take it, and
it may be doubted whether the marquis of Abercorn would have sacrificed
himself if the glittering prospect of a coronet all strawberry leaves
(for he was created a duke while in office) had not been held before his
eyes. The vice-regal lodge is a plain, unpretending building. It is
charmingly situated in the Phoenix Park (1760 acres), and commands
delightful views over the Wicklow Mountains. Within, it is comfortable
and commodious. The viceroy resides there eight months in the year. He
goes to "the Castle" from December to April. The Castle is "no great
thing." It is situated in the heart of Dublin. Around it are the various
government offices. St. Patrick's Hall is a fine apartment, but
certainly does not deserve the name of magnificent, and is a very poor
affair compared with the reception-saloons of third-rate continental
princes.

The Dublin season culminates, so far at least as the vice-regal
entertainments go, in the ball given here on St. Patrick's Day (March
17). On such occasions it is _de rigueur_ to wear a court-dress. Even
those who venture to appear in the regulation trowsers admissible at a
levee at St. James's are seriously cautioned "not to do it again."

Though Dublin is now deserted by the aristocracy, most of the
_grand-seigneur_ mansions are still standing. Leinster House, built
about 1760, and said to have served as a model for the "White House,"
was in 1815 sold by the duke to the Royal Dublin Society. Up to 1868 the
duke of Leinster[1] was Ireland's only duke, and the house is certainly
a stately and appropriate ducal residence.

It must, however, be confessed that there is something decidedly
_triste_ and severe about this big mansion. A celebrated whilom tenant
of it, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, appeared to think so, for in 1791 he
writes to his mother, after his return from the bright and sunny
atmosphere of America: "I confess Leinster House does not inspire the
brightest ideas. By the by, what a melancholy house it is! You can't
conceive how much it appeared so when first we came from Kildare. A
country housemaid I brought with me cried for two days, and said she
thought that she was in a prison." It was at Leinster House that "Lord
Edward"--he is to this day always thus known by the people of Ireland,
who never think it needful to add his surname--after having joined "the
United Irishmen," had interviews with the informer Reynolds, who, it is
believed, afterward betrayed him.

Lady Sarah Napier, mother of Sir William Napier, the well-known
historian of the Peninsular War, and other eminent sons, was aunt to
Lord Edward, being sister of his mother. These ladies were daughters of
the duke of Richmond, and Lady Sarah was remarkable as being a lady to
whom George III. was passionately attached, and whom, but for the
vehement opposition of his mother and her _entourage_, he would have
married. In a journal of this lady's I find the following interesting
account of the search for her nephew: "The separate warrant went by a
messenger, attended by the sheriff and a party of soldiers, into
Leinster House. The servants ran to Lady Edward, who was ill, and told
her. She said directly, 'There is no help: send them up.' They asked
very civilly for her papers and for Edward's, and she gave them all.
Her apparent distress moved Major O'Kelly to tears, and their whole
conduct was proper."

Lady Edward Fitzgerald (whose husband had served under Lord Moira in
America) was at Moira House on the evening of her husband's arrest.
Writing from Castletown, county Kildare, two days after that event, Lady
Louisa Connolly, Lord Edward's aunt, says: "As soon as Edward's wound
was dressed he desired the private secretary at the Castle to write for
him to Lady Edward and tell her what had happened. The secretary carried
the note himself. Lady E. was at Moira House, and a servant of Lady
Mountcashel's came soon after to forbid Lady Edward's servants saying
anything to her that night." She continued, after Lord E.'s death, to
reside at Moira House till obliged by an order of the privy council to
retire to England, where she became the guest of her husband's uncle,
the duke of Richmond.[2]

Lady Moira, who so kindly befriended Lady Edward, was unquestionably a
very remarkable woman, and had considerable influence, politically and
socially, in the Dublin of her day. Although an Englishwoman, she became
in some respects _ipsis Hibernis Hibernior,_ and for a very long period
prior to her death never quitted the soil of Ireland. Had the Irish
aristocracy generally been of the complexion of those who assembled in
the more intimate reunions at Moira House, the history of that country
during the past century would have been a widely different one. The
members of that brilliant circle were thorough anti-Unionists, and Lord
Moira and his sons-in-law, the earls of Granard and Mountcashel, proved
that they were not to be conciliated by bribes, either in money or
honors, by entering their formal protest against that measure on the
books of the Irish House of Lords.

When the delegates on behalf of Catholic claims came to London in 1792,
it was this enlightened Irish nobleman who received them, and who, in
the event of the minister declining to admit them, intended as a peer to
have claimed an audience of the king. Lord Moira both in the English and
Irish Houses of Peers denounced the oppressive measures of the
government, and his opposition gave so much offence that the English
general Lake was reported to hayer declared that if a town in the North
was to be burnt, they had best begin with Lord Moira's, causing him so
much apprehension that he removed his collection, which was of
extraordinary value, from his seat, Moira Hall, in the county Down, to
England.

The celebrated John Wesley visited Lady Moira at Moira House in 1775,
"and was surprised to observe, though not a more grand, a far more
elegant room than he had ever seen in England. It was an octagon, about
twenty feet square, and fifteen or sixteen high, having one window (the
sides of it inlaid throughout with mother-of-pearl) reaching from the
top of the room to the bottom: the ceiling, sides and furniture of the
room were equally elegant." It was here that two of the greatest members
of their respective legislatures--Charles Fox and Henry Grattan--first
met in 1777, and Moira House continued to be the scene of splendid
entertainments up to the death of the first Lord Moira, in 1793. Wesley
concludes his letter about Moira House by asking, "Must this too pass
away like a dream?" Whether like a dream or no, it certainly has been
signally the fate of this whilom proud mansion to pass from the highest
to the very humblest almost at a bound. For some years after Lady
Moira's death (in 1808) the house was kept up by the family, but in 1826
it was let to an anti-mendicity society. The upper story was removed,
the mansion was stripped throughout of its splendid decorations--some
of the furniture is now at Castle Forbes, the seat of the earl of
Granard, Lady Moira's great-grandson, a worthy descendant--and the
saloons which were wont to be thronged with the most brilliant and
splendid society of the Irish metropolis in its heyday are now the abode
of perhaps the very poorest outcasts who are to be found in the whole
wide world.

The district in which Moira House stands has long ceased to be
fashionable. The mansion stands close to the Liffey, a few yards back
from the road. An elderly man who has charge of the mendicity
institution for whose purposes the house is at present used, told me
that he remembered it when kept up by the family, although its members
were not actually residing there. What is now a fearfully dreary
courtyard, where the outcasts of Dublin disport themselves, was then, he
said, a fine garden with splendid mulberry trees, which he, being a
favorite with the gardener, was permitted to climb--a circumstance which
had naturally impressed itself on his childish memory. I told him that I
had heard that long after the difficulties of the first marquis--who
lent one hundred thousand pounds to George the Magnificent when that
glorious prince was at the last gasp for _£ s. d_.--had compelled him to
part with his large estates; in the county Down, he had retained
possession of this mansion, and that it had even descended to the last
marquis, whose wild career concluded when he was only six-and-twenty;
but the old man thought it had passed from them long before. He
remembered, he said, the last peer (with whom the title became extinct)
coming to Dublin, because he had an interview with him about some
furniture for his yacht, my informant being at that time in business,
and he thought he should have heard if the property had been still
retained. I asked if the marquis had exhibited any interest as to the
old historical mansion of his family. "Not the slightest," he replied.

Hardy, in his well-known life of Lord Charlemont, says: "His (Lord
Moira's) house will be long, very long, remembered: it was for many
years the seat of refined hospitality, of good nature and of good
conversation. In doing the honors of it, Lord Moira had certainly one
advantage above most men, for he had every assistance that true
magnificence, the nobleness of manners peculiar to exalted birth, and
talents for society the most cultivated, could give him in his
illustrious countess."

Powerscourt House, a really noble mansion in St. Andrew street, is now
used by a great wholesale firm, but is so little altered that it could
be fitted for a private residence again in a very brief time. The
staircase is grand in proportion, and the steps and balustrades are of
polished mahogany, the last being richly carved.

Tyrone House is now the Education Office, and Mornington House, where
Wellington's father resided, and where or at Dangan--for it is a
doubtful point--the duke was born, is also used for government purposes.

The great squares of Dublin are St. Stephen's Green, Rutland, Mountjoy,
Merrion and Fitzwilliam Squares. The first of these dates from the
latter half of the seventeenth century, and is probably in a far more
prosperous condition now than it ever was before. If we are to judge by
Whitelaw's history, it presented in 1819 an aspect such as no public
square out of Dublin--the enclosure of Leicester Square, London,
excepted--could present. "Of that kind of architectural beauty," he
says, "which arises from symmetry and regularity, here are no traces."
Some houses were on a level with the streets, others were approached by
a grand _perron_. The proprietors were of all degrees: here was the
great house of a lord, there a miserable dramshop. The enclosure
consisted of no less than thirteen acres, making Stephen's Green the
largest public square in Europe. It was simply a great treeless field,
with an equestrian statue of George II. stuck in the middle of it. The
principal entrance to the ground is described as "decorated with four
piers of black stone crowned with globes of mountain granite, once
respectable, but exhibiting shameful symptoms of neglect and decay."
There had been a gravel walk called the "Beaux' Walk," from its having
been a fashionable resort, "but," says Whitelaw, "the ditch which bounds
it is now usually filled with stagnant water, which seems to be the
appropriate receptacle of animal bodies in a disgusting state of
putrefaction." At night this charming recreation-ground was illumined by
twenty-six lamps, at a distance of one hundred and seventy feet from
each other, stuck on wooden poles. Such an account of the grand square
of Dublin does not make one surprised to learn that the main approach to
it from the heart of the city was of a very miserable description.

In reading Whitelaw's history of Dublin it is impossible not to be
struck with the fact that it records a degree of neglect and
indifference on the part of the people and the local authorities to
beauty, decency and order such as could scarcely be found in another
country. In the centre of Merrion Square was a fountain of very
ambitious expense and design, erected to the honor of the duke and
duchess of Rutland, a lord and lady lieutenant. The fountain was only
finished in 1791, but "from a fault in the foundation, or some shameful
negligence in the construction, is already cracked and bulged in several
places; and though intended as a monument to perpetuate the memory of an
illustrious nobleman and his heroic father (the famous Lord Granby), is,
after an existence of only sixteen years, tottering to its fall." Mr.
Whitelaw continues: "Unhappily, _a savage barbarism that seems hostile
to every idea of order or decency, of beauty and elegance, prevails
among but too many of the lower orders_; and hence the decorations of
almost every public fountain have been destroyed or disfigured: the
figure, shamefully mutilated, of the water-nymph in this fountain has
been reduced to a disgusting trunk, and the _alto relievo_ over it shows
equal symptoms of decay, arising partly from violence, and partly,
perhaps, from the perishable nature of the materials." Truly a forcible
picture of art and the appreciation thereof in Ireland!

During the last century some Italians came to Dublin, who left their
mark upon the interior decorations of rich men's houses. Many of the old
houses retain the beautiful mantelpieces designed and executed by these
accomplished artists. A leading house-fitter of Dublin has, however,
bought up a good many, and they are finding their way to London, where
it is to be hoped they may produce a revolution in taste, for London
mantelpieces are, as a rule, hideous. Some of these specimens of art
have been bought by wealthy Irishmen and transferred to their
country-houses. One nobleman, Lord Langford, whose ancestral home was
wrecked in the rebellion of 1798, has lately been restoring it, and
bought up many of the Dublin mantelpieces.

The ornamentation of Belvedere House, in Gardener Row, is particularly
elaborate and in wonderfully good repair.

Irish family history contains few sadder stories than that of the first
countess of Belvedere. Lord Belvedere was a man of fashion who much
frequented St. James's, and indeed owed his elevation, first to a barony
and then to an earldom, to the favor of that highly uninteresting
monarch, George II. Leaving his wife sometimes for long periods at
Gaulston, a vast and dreary residence (since pulled down) in Westmeath,
he betook himself to London, and Lady Belvedere at such times lived much
with her husband's brother, Mr. Arthur Rochfort, and his family. It is
said that some woman with whom Lord Belvedere had long been connected
was determined to make mischief between him and his wife. Eight years
after their marriage, Lady Belvedere was accused of adultery with Mr.
Rochfort: in an action of _crim. con._ damages to the extent of twenty
thousand pounds were given, and the defendant was obliged to fly the
country. For many years he lived abroad, but at length ventured to
return, when his brother caused him to be arrested, and he died in
confinement, protesting to the last, as did Lady Belvedere, his
innocence. For Lady Belvedere a terrible punishment for her alleged
misdeeds was in store. Her husband quitted Gaulston for a cheerful
retreat in another part of the county, and henceforth that gloomy
mansion became the prison-house of the unhappy countess.

When her imprisonment commenced Lady Belvedere was twenty-five. For
eighteen years she remained a prisoner. Her husband often visited
Gaulston, but uniformly avoided all personal communication with her.
Once she succeeded in speaking to him, but her entreaties were in vain,
and thenceforward, whenever he was about the grounds at Gaulston, the
attendant accompanying Lady Belvedere in her walks was instructed to
ring a bell to give warning of her approach. At length, after twelve
years of captivity, Lady Belvedere contrived to escape, but Lord
Belvedere, who had been apprised of the fact, reached her father's house
in Dublin before her, and she found that his representations had weighed
so strongly with Lord Molesworth--who had married a second time--that
orders had been given that she was not to be admitted. She then took a
very unfortunate step by repairing to the house of her friends, the wife
and family of the brother-in-law with whom she had been accused of being
guilty of misconduct, Mr. Rochfort himself being in exile. She was
presently seized and reconveyed to Gaulston, where a much more rigorous
treatment was henceforth pursued toward her. At length her husband's
death set her free.

Lady Belvedere passed the rest of her days in peace and comfort at the
house of her daughter and son-in-law, Lord and Lady Lanesborough. She
did not long survive her husband, and on her deathbed, after partaking
of the holy communion, affirmed with a most solemn oath her perfect
innocence of the crime for which she had suffered so much.

But perhaps in many respects Charlemont House has the most interesting
recollections connected with it of all the _grand-seigneur_ mansions of
the Irish metropolis. It was here that the first earl of Charlemont,
the best specimen of a nobleman that Ireland has to boast of, passed the
greater portion of his later life. Lord Charlemont's name is to be found
in all the memoirs of eminent political and literary men of his time. He
was the friend of Burke and Johnson, a popular member of _the_ club, and
a munificent patron of literature and art. But more than all this, he
stuck bravely to his country, and to no man in Ireland did the Stopford
motto, _Patriæ infelici fidelis_, more correctly apply. Had more of his
order been like him, what a different country might Ireland have been!

I found Charlemont House full of painters and glaziers. The mansion,
which was retained _in statu quo_ by the late earl, although, for fifty
years no member of the family had slept there, has now been sold to the
government, and is being prepared for the accommodation of the survey
department. The mouldings of the beautiful ceilings are still extant in
some of the rooms, although what once was gilt is now white-wash. The
library is much as it was, minus the very valuable collection of books,
which were sold some time since by the present earl, and fetched a large
sum, albeit many of the most valuable were destroyed in a fire which
broke out at the auctioneer's where they were deposited in London.[3]

With his friend Edmund Burke, Lord Charlemont maintained a close
correspondence. One of Burke's published letters relates to an American
gentleman, Mr. Shippen, whom he was introducing to the hospitalities of
Charlemont House, and whom he describes as very agreeable, sensible and
accomplished. "America and we," he concludes, "are not under the same
crown, but if we are united by mutual good-will and reciprocal good
offices, perhaps it may do almost as well. Mr. Shippen will give you no
unfavorable specimen of the New World."

From the middle of the last century Henrietta street,[4] on the north
bank of the Liffey, was the residence of many of the leading members of
the aristocracy. The street is a _cul-de-sac_, with the King's Inn (the
Temple and Lincoln's Inn of Dublin) at the farther end. The houses are
extremely spacious and richly ornamented; in fact, far finer in point of
proportion and design than ordinary London houses of the first class.

Through the politeness of a gentleman who possesses half the street, I
went over some of the houses, which are extremely spacious, and contain
beautifully-proportioned rooms richly ornamented with carving and
moulding. In what was formerly Mountjoy House I found a dining-room
whose cornices and ceilings were of the most elegant design and
execution. This house had seen many curious scenes. It was formerly the
town-house of the earl of Blessington--whose second title was Viscount
Mountjoy--to whom the whole street belonged. The founder of this family,
Luke Gardiner, rose from a humble origin by energy and intrigue, and his
son married the heiress of the Mountjoys. It was occupied up to 1830 by
the last earl of Blessington, husband of the celebrated literary star.
Soon after their marriage Lady Blessington accompanied her husband to
Ireland, and he invited some of his friends who were ignorant of the
event to dine at his house in Henrietta street. These latter were
somewhat startled when he entered the room with a beautiful woman
leaning on his arm whom he introduced as his wife. Among the guests was
a gentleman who had been in that room only four years before, when the
walls were hung with black, and in the centre, on an elevated platform,
was placed a coffin with a gorgeous velvet pall, with the remains in it
of a woman once scarcely surpassed in loveliness by the lady then
present in bridal costume. This was the first Lady Blessington.

The last of the Irish noblesse in this street was Lady Harriet, widow of
the Right Hon. Denis Bowes-Daly, on whom Grattan passed such warm
eulogies, and who was the original of Lever's happiest creation, _The
Knight of Gwynne_.

It has been a frequent subject of conjecture why the Phoenix Park was so
called. The best explanation seems to be that on a site within its
boundaries there formerly stood, close to a remarkable spring of water,
an ancient manor-house. The manor was called Fionn-uisge, pronounced
_finniské_, which signifies clear or fair water, and this term easily
became corrupted into Phoenix. The land became Crown property in 1559,
and was made into a park in 1662. It was immensely improved and put into
its present shape by the earl of Chesterfield, author of the
_Letters_--one of the best viceroys Ireland ever had--about 1743. The
area is seventeen hundred and sixty acres. With the exception of Windsor
and our own Fairmount, no public park in the world can compare with it.
The ground undulates charmingly, the views are extensive and beautiful.

Grouped around the Phoenix Park are many beautiful seats: the finest is
Woodlands. This belonged formerly to the Luttrells, a notorious family,
the head of which was raised to the Irish peerage as earl of Carhampton.
It was with a Lord Carhampton that his son declined to fight a duel, not
at all because he was his father, but because he "did not consider him a
gentleman." Early in the century, Woodlands, then known as
Luttrellstown, became the property of Luke White, one of the most
remarkable men that Ireland has produced. In 1778, Luke White was in the
habit of buying cheap odds and ends of literature from a bookseller,
named Warren, in Belfast to peddle about the country. In 1798 he loaned
the Irish government, then in great difficulty, a million of pounds! Mr.
Warren, who found him very punctual and exact, used to permit him to
leave his pack behind his counter and call for it in the morning. No one
would then have dreamed that the greasy bag was to lead to such results.
By degrees, White scraped together some means. He used to take odd
volumes to a binder in Belfast and employ him to get the "vol." at the
beginning and end of an odd volume erased, so as to pass it off among
the unwary as a perfect book, and generally furbish it up. Then he used
to sell his literary wares by auction in the streets of Belfast. The
knowledge he thus acquired of public sales procured him a clerkship with
a Dublin auctioneer. He opened first a book-stall, and then a regular
book-shop, in Dawson street, a leading thoroughfare of Dublin. There he
became eminent. He sold lottery-tickets, speculated in the funds and
contracted for government loans. In 1798, when the rebellion broke out,
the Irish government was desperately in need of funds. They came into
the Dublin market for a loan of a million, and the best terms they could
get were from Luke White, who offered to take it at sixty-five pounds
per one hundred pound share at five per cent.--not unremunerative terms.

At the time of his death, in 1824, he had long been M.P. for Leitrim,
and his son was member for the county of Dublin. He left property worth
a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars a year. Eventually almost
the whole of it devolved on his fourth son, who some years ago was
created a peer of the United Kingdom as Lord Annaly.

The family has probably spent more than a million and a half of dollars
on elections. It has always been on the Liberal side. The present peer
has property in about a dozen counties, and is lord-lieutenant of
Langford, whilst his younger son holds the same high office in Clare.

The University of Dublin consists of a single college--Trinity. This
edifice forms a prominent feature in the Irish metropolis. It stands in
College Green, almost opposite to the Bank of Ireland, the former
legislative chambers. Since the Union, Trinity College has been but
little resorted to by men of the upper ranks of Irish society, although
it has certainly contributed some very eminent men to the public
service--notably, the late unfortunate governor-general, Lord Mayo, and
Lord Cairns, ex-lord-chancellor of England. Trinity is one of the
largest owners of real estate in the country. The fellowships are far
better than those of the English universities. The provost, who occupies
a large and stately mansion, has a separate estate worth some fifteen
thousand dollars a year, which he manages himself.

Trinity has a very fine library. It is one of the five which by an act
of Parliament has a right to demand from the publisher a copy of every
work published. The origin of the library is quite unique. It dates from
a benefaction by the victorious English army after its defeat of the
Spaniards at Kinsale in 1603, when they devoted one thousand eight
hundred pounds--a sum equivalent to five times that money at present
rates--to establish a library in the university, being, it may be
presumed, instigated by some eminent personage, who suggested that such
a course would be acceptable to the queen, who had founded the
university.

Dr. Chaloner and Mr. (afterward Archbishop) Ussher were appointed
trustees of this donation; "and," says Dr. Parr, "it is somewhat
remarkable that at this time, when the said persons were in London about
laying out this money in books, they there met Sir Thomas Bodley, then
buying books for his newly-erected library in Oxford; so that there
began a correspondence between them upon this occasion, helping each
other to procure the choicest and best books on moral subjects that
could be gotten; so that the famous Bodleian Library at Oxford and that
of Dublin began together."

The private collection of Ussher himself, consisting of ten thousand
volumes, was the first considerable donation which the library
received, and for this also, curiously enough, it was again indebted to
the English army. In 1640, Ussher left Ireland. The insurgents soon
after destroyed all his effects with the exception of his books, which
were secured and sent to London. In 1642--when the troubles between King
and Parliament had broken out--Ussher was nominated one of the
Westminster Assembly of Divines, but having offended the parliamentary
authorities by refusing to attend, his library was confiscated as that
of a delinquent by order of the House of Commons. However, his friend,
the celebrated John Selden, got leave to buy the books, as though for
himself, but really to restore them to Ussher. Narrow circumstances
subsequently caused him to leave the library to his daughter, instead of
to Trinity. Cardinal Mazarin and the king of Denmark made offers for it,
but Cromwell interfered to prevent their acceptance. Soon after, the
officers and, soldiers of Cromwell's army then in Ireland, wishing to
emulate those of Elizabeth, purchased the whole library, together with
all the archbishop's very valuable manuscripts and a choice collection
of coins, for the purpose of presenting them to the college. But when
these articles were brought over to Ireland, Cromwell refused to permit
the intentions of the donors to be carried into effect, alleging that he
intended to found a new college, in which the collection might more
conveniently be preserved separate from all other books. The library was
therefore deposited in Dublin Castle, and so neglected that a great
number of valuable books and manuscripts were stolen or destroyed. At
the Restoration, Charles II. ordered that what remained of the primate's
library should be given to the university, as originally intended.

One of the most extraordinary persons who ever occupied the position of
provost, or indeed any position, was John Hely Hutchinson. He was a man
of great ability, and perfectly determined to succeed, without being
troubled with any very tiresome qualms as to the means he employed in
the process. Such an officeholder as this man the world probably never
saw. He was at the same time reversionary principal secretary of state
for Ireland, a privy councilor, M.P. for Cork, provost of Trinity
College, Dublin, major of the fourth regiment of horse, and searcher of
the port of Strangford. When he was appointed provost--a situation
always filled since the foundation by a bachelor--there was great
indignation amongst the fellows, and to appease them he ultimately
procured a decree permitting them to marry--a privilege which they,
unlike their brethren at Oxford and Cambridge, enjoy to this day. His
position as provost did not prevent his righting a duel with a Mr.
Doyle, but neither was hurt. Mr. Hutchinson had a great dislike to a Mr.
Shrewbridge, one of the junior fellows, who had shown opposition to him.
Mr. Shrewbridge died, and the under--graduates attributed his death to
the provost's having refused him permission to go away for change of
air. A thoroughly Hiber-man _émeute_ was the consequence. The provost
ordered that the great bell, which usually tolls for a fellow, should
not toll, and that the body should be privately buried at six A.M. in
the fellows' burial-ground. The students immediately posted up placards
that the great bell _should_ toll, and that the funeral should be by
torchlight. They carried the point. Almost all the students attended the
corpse to the grave in scarfs and hatbands at their own expense, and
when the funeral oration was pronounced they flew in wild excitement to
the provost's house, burst open his doors and smashed the furniture to
pieces. The provost had a hint given him, and with his family had
retreated to his house near Dublin. It was subsequently stated on good
authority that Mr. Shrewbridge could not in any case have recovered.

Any one who takes an interest in the most original writer--not to say,
man--of the eighteenth century will not fail to find his way to "the
Liberties," as that queer district is called which surrounds St.
Patrick's Cathedral. Some years ago the present writer made his way into
the great deserted deanery--the then dean resided in another part of
the city--got the old woman in charge of the house to open the shutters
of the dining-room, and gazed at the original portrait of Jonathan
Swift, which hangs there an heirloom to his successors. Of the precincts
of his cathedral he writes to Pope: "I am lord-mayor of one hundred and
twenty houses,[5] I am absolute lord of the greatest cathedral in the
kingdom, and am at peace with the neighboring princes--_i.e._, the
lord-mayor of the city and the archbishop of Dublin--but the latter
sometimes attempts encroachments on my dominions, as old Lewis did in
Lorraine."

Again, he writes to Dr. Sheridan: "No soul has broken his neck or is
hanged or married; only Cancerina is dead.[6] I let her go to her grave
without a coffin and without fees."

St. Patrick's, which was, in a deplorable state during Swift's deanship,
and indeed for a century after, is now restored to its original
magnificence. Indeed, it may be doubted whether it is not in a condition
superior to what it ever was. This superb work has been effected
entirely by the princely munificence of the Guinness family, the great
_stout_ brewers of Dublin; and Mr. Roe, a wealthy distiller, is now
engaged in the work of restoring Christ Church, the other Protestant
cathedral.

I paid a visit to the Bank of Ireland, the edifice on which the hopes of
so many patriotic Irishmen have been centred, insomuch as it is the old
Parliament-house. The elderly official who conducted us over the
building took us first through the bank-note manufacturing rooms, where
we espied in a corner a queer wooden figure draped in a queerer
uniform. Demanding its history, he said that the clothes had belonged to
an old servant of the establishment, and were discovered after his
decease a few years ago. Formerly the Bank of Ireland was guarded by a
special corps of its own, and the ancient retainer, who had been a
member of this very commercial regiment, was proud of it, and had kept
his dress as a cherished memorial. When George IV. came to Ireland, on
his celebrated popularity-hunt, in 1821--previous to which no English
monarch had visited Ireland since William III.--he graciously
condescended to give the bank a military guard, which has since been
continued. On the day I went I found a number of soldiers of the Scots
Fusileer Guards occupying the guard-room. The officer on duty receives
an allowance of two dollars and a half for his dinner. At the Bank of
England he gets instead a dinner for himself and a friend, and a couple
of bottles of wine.

The interior of the Parliament-house is almost the same as when Ireland
had her own separate legislature. The House of Lords is in precisely the
condition in which it was left in 1801. It is a large oak-paneled,
oblong chamber of no particular beauty, and might very well pass for the
dining-hall of a London guild. There is a handsome fireplace, and the
walls are in great part covered with two fine pieces of tapestry
representing the battle of the Boyne and the siege of Derry, King
William, "of glorious, pious and immortal," etc., being of course the
most conspicuous object in the foreground. The attendant stated that a
special clause in the lease of the buildings, to the Bank of Ireland
Company stipulated that the House of Lords was to remain _in statu quo_.
Perhaps it may return some of these days to its former use. The House of
Commons, a large stone hall of stately dimensions, is now the
cash-office of the bank. There seemed nothing about it architecturally
to call for special notice. I mooted the probability of the Parliament
being restored, but found, rather to my surprise, that the attendant
was by no means disposed to regard such a step with unqualified
approval. It would be a blessing if the country was fit to govern
itself, he said, or words to that effect, but looking at the religious
dissension and political bitterness existing in the country, he feared
that it wouldn't do yet a while; and I suspect he's right. Ireland is a
house divided against itself: fifty years hence it may resemble
Scotland. Meanwhile, there is no doubt whatever that a measure giving
both Ireland and Scotland something in the nature of State legislatures
would find favor with many English M.P.s, who greatly grudge having the
valuable time of the imperial legislature wasted over a gas-bill in
Tipperary or a water-works scheme for Dundee. The bank seemed to me to
be guarded with extraordinary care. I went all over the roof, on which a
guard is mounted at night. At "coigns of vantage" there is a
bullet-proof palisading, with peepholes through which a volley of
musketry might be poured. I should fancy that extra precautions have
probably been taken since the Fenian _émeutes_ of the last ten years.

Dublin swarms with soldiers, constabulary and police. The metropolitan
police is divided into six divisions, each two hundred strong. Its men
are, I believe, beyond a doubt the very finest in the world in point of
physique. Numbers of them are six feet two or three inches high, and
they are broad and athletic in proportion. Indeed, the magnificence of
some of them who are detached for duty at certain "great confluences of
human existence" is such that you see strangers standing and gaping at
the giants in sheer amazement. The metropolitan police is quite distinct
from the constabulary, and under a different chief.

Outside the bank, in College Green, is the celebrated statue of William
III. Its location has been more than once changed, and it is now placed
where the officer on guard at the bank can keep an eye upon it. This
fearful object, which would make a Pradier or Chantrey shudder, is
painted and gilt annually. It has long served as a bone of contention
between Protestant and Papist, and has come off very badly several times
at the hands of the latter--a circumstance which probably accounts for
one of the horse's legs being about a foot longer than the rest--half of
that limb having been renewed after it had been lost in one of the many
free fights in which this remarkable quadruped has seen service. The
greatest proprietor of real estate in Dublin is the young earl of
Pembroke, son of the late Right Hon. Sidney Herbert, so well known in
connection with the Crimean war, who was created, shortly before his
death, Lord Herbert of Lea. His estate, which is the most valuable in
Ireland, comprises Merrion Square and all the most fashionable part of
the Irish metropolis, and extends for several miles along the railway
line running from Kingstown, the landing-place from England, to the
capital. The property also includes Mount Merrion, a neglected seat
about four miles from the city. This mansion, which might easily be made
delightful, commands a charming view over the lovely bay, and is
surrounded by a small but picturesque park containing deer. It was, with
the rest of Lord Pembroke's estate, formerly the property of Viscount
Fitzwilliam, who founded the Fitzwilliam Museum in the University of
Cambridge.

Lord Fitzwilliam was a somewhat eccentric person. His nearest relation
had displeased him by some very trivial offence, such as coming down
late for dinner, so he determined to leave his estate to his distant
cousin, Lord Pembroke. Falling ill, Lord Fitzwilliam, desired that Lord
Pembroke might be summoned from London. Word came back that it was
unfortunately impossible for him to leave England immediately. Presently
news arrived from Dublin that Lord Fitzwilliam was dead, and had
bequeathed all--the property is now three hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a year--to Lord Pembroke, with remainder to his second son. By
the death of the late Lord Pembroke the English and Irish properties
have become united, and are to-day worth not less than six hundred
thousand dollars a year! It is this young nobleman who has lately
written _The Earl and The Doctor_.

REGINALD WYNFORD.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The Fitzgeralds, of which family the duke of Leinster is
chief, became Protestant in 1611, when George, sixteenth earl of
Kildare, coming to the title and estates when eight years old, was given
in ward, according to the custom of the time, to the duke of Lenox (then
lord privy seal), who bred him a Protestant.]

[Footnote 2: In June, 1798, the corpse of Lord Edward Fitzgerald was
conveyed from the jail of Newgate and entombed in St. Werburgh's church,
Dublin, until the times would admit of their being removed to the family
vault at Kildare. "A guard," says his brother, "was to have attended at
Newgate the night of my poor brother's burial, in order to provide
against all interruption from the different guards and patrols in the
streets: it never arrived, which caused the funeral to be several times
stopped on its way, so that the funeral did not take place until nearly
two in the morning, and the people attending were obliged to stay in
church until a pass could be procured to permit them to go out."]

[Footnote 3: Lord Charlemont had a seat called Marino, beautifully
situated within a few miles of Dublin. There is within the grounds an
exquisite building erected from designs of Sir William Chambers. It is a
small villa, in its arrangements suggesting a _maison de joie_. The
furniture is just as it was, and although sadly out of repair, the
visitor can easily judge how exquisite the place must once have been.
There is a superb mantelpiece, richly mounted in bronze and inlaid with
lapis lazuli.]

[Footnote 4: The occupants of Henrietta street in 1784 included--the
primate (Lord Rokeby); the earl of Shannon; Hon. Dr. Maxwell, bishop of
Meath; the bishop of Kilmore; the bishop of Clogher; Right Hon. Luke
Gardiner, M.P.; Viscount Kingsborough; Right Hon. D. Bowes-Daly, M.P.;
Sir E. Crofton, Bart.

Twenty years later, Dublin was nearly deserted by the aristocracy on
account of the Union. Up to that time nearly all the peers, except those
really English, seem to have had residences in Dublin. In 1844, Lords
Longford, De Vesci and Monck were the only peers who had houses there.]

[Footnote 5: The precincts, including a portion of the Liberties, were
then entirely under the jurisdiction of the dean of St. Patrick's.]

[Footnote 6: It was a part of the grim and ghastly humor of this
extraordinary man,

    "Who left what little wealth he had
    To found a home for fools or mad,
    And prove by one satiric touch
    No nation wanted it so much,"

to give nicknames, of which Cancerina was one, to the poor old wretches
he met in his walks, to whom he gave charity.

Amongst Cancerina's sisters in misery were Stompanympha, Pullagowna,
Friterilla, Stumphantha.]




THE MAESTRO'S CONFESSION.

(ANDREA DAL CASTAGNO--1460.)

    I.

        Threescore and ten!
          I wish it were all to live again.
        Doesn't the Scripture somewhere say,
        By reason of strength men oft-times may
          Even reach fourscore? Alack! who knows?
        Ten sweet, long years of life! I would paint
        Our Lady and many and many a saint,
          And thereby win my soul's repose.
        Yet, Fra Bernardo, you shake your head:
                Has the leech once said
                I must die? But he
        Is only a fallible man, you see:
        Now, if it had been our father the pope,
        I should _know_ there was then no hope.
        Were only I sure of a few kind years
        More to be merry in, then my fears
        I'd slip for a while, and turn and smile
        At their hated reckonings: whence the need
        Of squaring accounts for word and deed
        Till the lease is up?... How? hear I right?
        No, no! You could not have said, _To-night_!

        II.

                Ah, well! ah, well!
        "Confess"--you tell me--"and be forgiven."
        Is there no easier path to heaven?
          Santa Maria! how can I tell
        What, now for a score of years and more,
          I've buried away in my heart so deep
        That, howso tired I've been, I've kept
        Eyes waking when near me another slept,
          Lest I might mutter it in my sleep?
          And now at the last to blab it clear!
        How the women will shrink from my pictures! And worse
        Will the men do--spit on my name, and curse;
          But then up in heaven I shall not hear.

                I faint! I faint!
        Quick, Fra Bernardo! The figure stands
          There in the niche--my patron saint:
        Put it within my trembling hands
          Till they are steadier. So!
                My brain
        Whirled and grew dizzy with sudden pain,
        Trying to span that gulf of years,
        Fronting again those long laid fears.
        _Confess_? Why, yes, if I must, I must.
        Now good Sant' Andrea be my trust!
        But fill me first, from that crystal flask,
        Strong wine to strengthen me for my task.
        (That thing is a gem of craftsmanship:
        Just mark how its curvings fit the lip.)

        Ah, you, in your dreamy, tranquil life,
        How can _you_ fathom the rage and strife,
        The blinding envy, the burning smart,
        That, worm-like, gnaws the Maestro's heart
        When he sees another snatch the prize
        Out from under his very eyes,
          For which he would barter his soul? You see
        I taught him his art from first to last:
          Whatever he was he owed to me.
        And then to be browbeat, overpassed,
        Stealthily jeered behind the hand!
        Why that was more than a saint could stand;
        And I was no saint. And if my soul,
        With a pride like Lucifer's, mocked control,
        And goaded me on to madness, till
        I lost all measure of good or ill,
        Whose gift was it, pray? Oh, many a day
        I've cursed it, yet whose is the blame, I say?

        _His name_? How strange that you question so,
        When I'm sure I have told it o'er and o'er,
        And why should you care to hear it more?

        III.

        Well, as I was saying, Domenico
        Was wont of my skill to make such light,
        That, seeing him go on a certain night
        Out with his lute, I followed. Hot
        From a war of words, I heeded not
          Whither I went, till I heard him twang
        A madrigal under the lattice where
          Only the night before I sang.
        --A double robbery! and I swear
        'Twas overmuch for the flesh to bear.

        _Don't ask me_. I knew not what I did,
        But I hastened home with my rapier hid
        Under my cloak, and the blade was wet.
          Just open that cabinet there and see
        The strange red rustiness on it yet.

        A calm that was dead as dead could be
        Numbed me: I seized my chalks to trace--
        What think you?--_Judas Iscariot's face_!
        I just had finished the scowl, no more,
        When the shuffle of feet drew near my door
          (We lived together, you know I said):
        Then wide they flung it, and on the floor
          Laid down Domenico--dead!

        Back swam my senses: a sickening pain
        Tingled like lightning through my brain,
        And ere the spasm of fear was broke,
        The men who had borne him homeward spoke
        Soothingly: "Some assassin's knife
        Had taken the innocent artist's life--
        Wherefore, 'twere hard to say: all men
        Were prone to have troubles now and then
        The world knew naught of. Toward his friend
        Florence stood waiting to extend
        Tenderest dole." Then came my tears,
        And I've been sorry these twenty years.

        Now, Fra Bernardo, you have my sin:
        Do you think Saint Peter will let me in?

MARGARET J. PRESTON.




MONSIEUR FOURNIER'S EXPERIMENT.

"_La transfusion parait avoir eu quelque succes dans ces derniers
temps_."

A dejected man, M. le docteur Maurice Fournier locked the door of his
physiological laboratory in the Place de l'École de Médecine, and walked
away toward his rooms in the rue Rossini. At two-and-thirty, rich,
brilliant, an ambitious graduate of l'École de Médecine, an enthusiastic
pupil of Claude Bernard's, a devoted lover of science, and above all of
physiology, yesterday he was without a care save to make his name great
among the great names of science--to win for himself a place in the
foremost rank of the followers of that mistress whom only he loved and
worshiped. To-day a word had swept away all his fondest hopes.
Trousseau, the keenest observer in all Paris, formerly his father's
friend, now no less his own, had kindly but firmly called his attention
to himself, and to the malady that had so imperceptibly and insidiously
fastened itself upon him that until the moment he never dreamed of its
approach. He had been too full of his work to think of himself. In any
other case he would scarcely have dared to dispute the opinion of the
highest medical authority in Europe; nevertheless in his own he began to
argue the matter: "But, my dear doctor, I am well."

"No, my friend, you are not. You are thin and pale, and I noticed the
other night, when you came late to the meeting of the Institute, that
your breathing was quick and labored, and that the reading of your
excellent paper was frequently interrupted by a short cough."

"That was nothing. I was hurried and excited, and I have been keeping
myself too closely to my work. A run to Dunkerque, a week of rest and
sea-air, will make all right again."

But the great man shook his head gravely: "Not weeks, but years, of a
different life are needed. You must give up the laboratory altogether if
you want to live. Remember your mother's fate and your father's early
death--think of the deadly blight that fell so soon upon the rare beauty
of your sister. Some day you will realize your danger: realize it now,
in time. Close your laboratory, lock up your library, say adieu to
Paris, and lead the life of a traveler, an Arab, a Tartar. For the
present cease to dream of the future: strength is better than a
professorship in the College of France, and health more than the cross
of the Legion of Honor."

Fournier was at first surprised and incredulous: he became convinced,
then alarmed. After some thought he was horribly dejected. At such a
time an Englishman becomes stolid, a German gives up utterly, an
American begins to live fast, since he may not live long; but he, being
a Frenchman and a Parisian, had alternations--first, the idea of
suicide, which means sleep; second, reaction, which is hopefulness.

He chose to react, and did it promptly. A little time, and the rooms in
the Place de l'École de Médecine, opposite the bookseller's, displayed a
card stuck on the entrance-door with red wafers, "_à louer_," the hammer
of the auctioneer knocked down the comfortable furniture of the
apartments in the rue Rossini, while that of the carpenter nailed up the
well-beloved books in stout boxes, and the places that had known M. le
docteur knew him no more. None but those who have experienced the
pleasures of a life devoted to scientific research can understand how
hard all this was to him. The fulfillment of long-cherished desires, the
completion of elaborate systematic investigations, the realization of
pet theories, the establishment of new principles,--all, all abandoned
after so much toil and care. To struggle painfully through a desert
toward some beautiful height, which, at first dimly seen, has grown
clearer and clearer and always more splendid as he advances, and now at
its very foot to be turned back by a gloomy stream in whose depths lurks
death itself; to reach out his hand to the golden truth, fruit of much
winnowing of human knowledge, and as he grasps the precious grains to be
borne back by a grim spectre whose very breath is horrible with the
noisome odors of the tomb; to choose an arduous life, and learn to love
it because it has high aims, and then to give it up at once and
utterly!--alas, poor Fournier!

"Nevertheless," he said as he turned his back on Paris, "even idle
wanderings are better than dying of consumption."

Behold the student of science a wanderer--sailing his yacht among the
islands of the Mediterranean; making long journeys through the wild
mountain-regions and lovely valleys of untraveled Spain; stemming the
historic current of the Nile; among the nomad tribes, in Arab costume
riding an Arabian mare, as wild an Arab as the wildest of them; killing
tigers in India, tending stock in Australia, chasing buffaloes in
Western America,--everywhere avoiding civilization and courting Nature
and the company of men who either by birth or adoption were the children
of Nature. By day the winds of heaven kissed his cheeks and the sun
bronzed them: at night he often fell asleep wondering at the star-worlds
that gemmed the only canopy over his welcome blanket-couch.

His treatment of consumption was certainly a rational one, and perhaps
the only one that is ever wholly successful. But, alas! few can take so
costly a prescription.

How often had his studies led him to dissect the bodies of animals that
had died in their dens in the Jardin des Plantes! Often in the first
generation of cage-life, almost always in the second, invariably in the
third, they grow dull, listless, the fire goes out of their eyes, the
litheness out of their limbs: they forget to eat, they cough, and soon
they die. Of what? Consumption. Once our fathers were wild and lived in
the open air: they scarcely ever died, as we do, of consumption.
Crowded cities, bad drainage, overwork, want of healthful exercise,
stimulating food, dissipation,--these are human cage-life. If a man is
threatened with consumption, let him go back to the plains and forests
before it is too late.

Certainly the treatment benefited Fournier. By and by it did more--it
cured him. The cough was forgotten, the cheeks filled out, the muscles
became hard as bundles of steel wire, his strength was prodigious: he
ate his food with a relish unknown in Paris, and slept like a child.

Nevertheless, his mind, trained to habits of thought and observation,
was not idle. When a city was his home he had been a physiologist and
had studied _man_: he made the world his dwelling-place, and wandering
among the nations he became an ethnologist and began to study _men_.

A distinguished professor, writing of the influence of climate upon man,
for the sake of illustration supposes the case of a human being whose
life should be prolonged through many ages, and who should pass that
life in journeying slowly from the arctic regions southward through the
varying climates of the earth to the eternal winter of the antarctic
zone. Always preserving his personal identity, this traveler would
undergo remarkable changes in form, feature and complexion, in habits
and modes of life, and in mental and moral attributes. Though he might
have been perfectly white at first, his skin would pass through every
degree of darkness until he reached the equator, when it would be black.
Proceeding onward, he would gradually become fairer, and on reaching the
end of his journey he would again be pale. His intellectual powers would
vary also, and with them the shape of his skull. His forehead, low and
retreating, would by degrees assume a nobler form as he advanced to more
genial climes, the facial angle reaching its maximum in the temperate
zone, only to gradually diminish as he journeyed toward the torrid, and
to again exhibit under the equator its original base development. As he
continued his journey toward the south pole he would undergo a second
time this series of progressing and retrograding changes, until at
length, as he laid his weary bones to rest in some icy cave in the drear
antarctics,

    Multum ille et terris jactatus et alto,

he would be in every respect, save in age and a ripe experience, the
same as at the outset of his wanderings.

Extravagant as this illustration may appear, the professor goes on to
say, philosophically, on the doctrine of the unity of the human race, it
is not so; for what else than such an imaginary prolonged individual
life is the life of the race? And what greater changes have occurred to
our imaginary traveler than have actually befallen the human family?

The facts are patent. Under the equator is found the negro, in the
temperate zones the Indo-European, and toward the pole the Lapp and
Esquimaux. They are as different as the climates in which they dwell;
nevertheless, history, philology, the common traditions of the race,
revelation, point to their brotherhood.

How is it that climate can bring about such modifications in man? Is it
possible that the sun, shining upon his face and his children's faces
for ages, can make their skin dark, and their hair crisp and curly, and
their foreheads low? Or that sunshine and shadow, spring-time and
autumn, summer's showers beating upon him and winter's snows falling
about his path, can make him fair and free? Or that the dreary night and
cheerless day of many changeless arctic years can make him short and fat
and stolid as a seal? Surely not. These avail much; but other
influences, indirect and obscure in their workings, but not the less
essentially climatic, are required. Food, raiment, shelter, occupation,
amusement, influences that tell upon the very citadel and stronghold of
life--and all in their very nature climatic, since they are controlled
and modified by climate--are the means by which such changes are
effected. The savage living in the open air, not trammeled with much
clothing, anointing his skin with oil, eating uncooked food, delighting
in the chase and in battle, and living thus because his surroundings
indicate it, becomes swart and athletic, fierce, cunning and
cruel--takes ethnologically the lowest place. Of literature, science,
art, he knows nothing: for him will is justice, fear law, some miserable
fetich God. Still, in his nature lie dormant all the capabilities of the
noblest manhood, awaiting only favorable surroundings to call them into
glorious being. It might shock the salt of the earth to reflect that
some centuries of life among them and their fair descendants would make
him like them.

The arctic savage clad in furs and eating blubber does not differ
essentially from his brother of the tropics. So much of his food is
necessarily converted into heat that he cannot afford to lead so active
a life; but he also, like him of the tropics, partakes with his
surroundings in color. The one, living amid snowclad scenery, where the
sparse vegetation is gray and grayish-green, and the birds and animals
almost as white as the snow over which they wander, is pale, etiolated.
The other, under a vertical sun, surrounded by a lush and lusty growth,
whose flowers for variety and intensity of color are beyond description,
and in which birds of brightest plumage and black and tawny beasts make
their home, has the most marked supply of pigment--is dark-hued, black,
in short a negro. Between these two extremes is the typical man, fair of
face, with expanded brow and wavy hair, well fed, well clad, well
housed, wresting from Nature her hidden things and making her mightiest
forces the workers of his will; heaping together knowledge, cherishing
art, reverencing justice, worshiping God. How startling the contrast
between brothers!

Such changes do not take place in a few generations. For their
completion hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years must elapse. The
descendants of the blacks who were carried from Africa to America as
slaves two centuries and a half ago, save where their color has been
modified by a mixed parentage, are still black. Already the influence
of new climatic surroundings and of association has wrought great
changes upon them: they are no longer savages. But their complexion is
as dark as that of their kidnapped forefathers. Their original physical
condition remains almost unaltered, and with it many mental
characteristics: their love of display and of bright colors, their
fondness for tune and the power of music to move them, their weird and
fantastic belief in ghosts and spirits, in signs, omens and charms, and
many other traits, still bear witness to their savage origin. But even
these are fading away, and these men are slowly but not the less surely
becoming civilized and _white_.

The point of departure for every structural change in a living organism
lies in the apparatus by which nutrition is maintained; and this in the
higher classes is the blood. Most complex and wonderful of fluids, it
contains in unexplained and inscrutable combination salts of iron, lime,
soda and potassa, with water, oil, albumen, paraglobulin and fibrinogen,
which united form fibrine--in fact, at times, some part of everything we
eat and all that goes to form our bodies, which it everywhere permeates,
vitalizes and sustains. Borne in countless numbers in its ever-ebbing
and returning streams are little disks, flattened, bi-concave, not
larger in man than one-three-thousandth of an inch in diameter, called
red corpuscles, whose part it is to carry from the lungs to the tissues
pure oxygen, without which the fire called life cannot be sustained, and
back from the tissues to the lungs carbonic acid, one of the products of
that fire; and larger, yet marvelously small, bodies called leucocytes
or white corpuscles, whose precise origin and use to this day, in spite
of all the labor that has been spent upon their study, remain unknown.
But that which makes the blood wonderful above all other fluids is its
vitality. Our common expression, "life's blood," is no idle phrase. The
blood is indeed the very throne of life. If its springs are pure and
bountiful, if its currents flow strong and free, muscle, bone and brain
grow in symmetry and power, and there is cunning to devise and the
strong right arm to execute. But if it be thin and poor, and its
circulation feeble and uncertain, the will flags, the mind is weak and
vacillating, the muscles grow puny, and the man becomes an unresisting
prey to disease and circumstance. If it escape through a wound, strength
ebbs with it, until at length life itself flows out with the unchecked
crimson stream. Thus, then, by acting upon the blood, climate has
wrought and is working such changes upon man. But why are
constantly-acting causes so slow in producing their effects? How is it
that countless generations must pass away before purely climatic causes,
potent as they are, begin to manifest themselves in physical changes in
the races of men exposed to them?

Fournier, physiologist, as I have said, by the education of the schools,
but by the broader education of his travels sociologist and ethnologist,
devoted himself again to science, and framed this hypothesis: _Climatic
influences, acting upon man, bring about physical changes exceedingly
slowly, because they are resisted by an inveterate habit of
assimilation. This habit pertains either to the blood or the tissues,
possibly to both, probably to the blood alone_.

To establish an hypothesis experiment is necessary. Physiology is a
science of experiment. Hence the frequent uncertainty of its results,
since no two observers conduct an experiment in exactly the same
manner--certainly no two ever institute it under precisely the same
conditions. Nevertheless, let us not decry science. Out of much
searching after truth comes the finding of truth--after long groping in
darkness one comes upon a ray of light.

An experiment was necessary. To the ingenious mind of Fournier an
elaborate one occurred. If he could perform it, not only would his
hypothesis be established and confirmed beyond all cavil, but a, field
of scientific research also be opened such as was yet undreamed of.
However, for this experiment subjects were needed. Brutes, beasts of the
field? Not so: that were easy to achieve. Human beings, two living,
healthy men, one white, one black, were the requirements. Impossible!
The experiment could never be performed: its requirements were
unattainable. O tempora! O mores! Alas, for the degeneracy of the age!
In the days of the Roman emperors men were fed, literally fed, to wild
beasts in the arena--Gauls, Scythians, Nubians, even Roman freedmen when
barbarians were scarce. This to amuse the populace alone. Frightful
waste of life! In India, a thousand lives thrown away in a day under the
wheels of Juggernaut; in Europe, tens of thousands to gratify the
imperious wills of grasping monarchs; in America, hundreds to sate the
greed of railroad corporations. And now not two men to be had for an
experiment of untold value to science, that would scarcely endanger life
in one of them, and in the other would necessitate only the merest
scratch! To what are we coming? No one complains that tattooed heads are
going out of fashion--that the king of the Cannibal Isles no longer
flatters a ship's master by inquiring which head of all his subjects is
ornamented most to his fancy, and the next day sending him that head as
a souvenir of his visit to the anthropophagic shores. It is well that
the custom is dead. But is there not danger of drifting too far even
toward the shore of compassion? May it not be that there is something
wrong with the bowels of mercy when criminals are executed barbarously,
while science needs their lives, or at least an insight into the method
of their dying; when precise examination of the manner of nerve and
blood supply to the organs of a superannuated horse is heavily finable;
when charitable but perchance too enthusiastic societies for the
prevention of cruelty to animals push their earnestness even to
interference with scientific researches, because, forsooth! they
jeopardize the lives of rabbits, guinea-pigs and dogs? The legend _Cave
canem_ bears a deeper meaning now than it did in the inlaid pavements
of Pompeian vestibules. We dare not trample it under foot.

Five years passed, and with restored health back came the old desires in
redoubled force. Fournier longed to return to civilization and to work.
The life that had been so delightful while it did him good became
utterly unbearable when he had reaped its full benefit. I am tempted to
quote a line about Europe and Cathay, but refrain: it will recur to the
reader. He burned to renew the labors he had abandoned, to take up again
the work he had laid down to do battle with disease, now that disease
was vanquished. Thus the year 1863 found him in the city of Charleston,
homeward bound in his journey around the world.

While still in the wilds west of the Mississippi he could have shaped
his course northward and readily proceeded directly by steamer from New
York to Europe. But a determined purpose led him to choose a different
course, though he was well aware that it would involve indefinite delay
in reaching Paris, and great personal risk. The life he had been leading
made him think lightly of danger, and years would be well spent if he
could accomplish the plans that induced him to go into the disorganized
country of the South.

He straightway connected himself with the army as surgeon, and solicited
a place at the front. He wanted active service. In this he was
disappointed. Charleston, blockaded and beseiged, was in a state of
military inaction. Save the occasional exchange of shot and shell at
long range between the works on shore and those which the Unionists had
erected and held upon the neighboring islands and marshes, nothing was
done, and for nearly a year Fournier experienced the irksomeness of
routine duty in a wretchedly arranged and appointed military hospital.
Nevertheless, the time was not wholly wasted. From a planter fleeing
from the anarchy of civil war he procured a native African slave, one of
the shipload brought over a few years before in the Wanderer, the last
slave-ship that put into an American harbor. This man he made his
body-servant and kept always near him, partly to study him, but chiefly
to secure his complete mental and moral thraldom. An almost unqualified
savage, Fournier avoided systematiclly everything that would tend to
civilize him. He taught him many things that were convenient in his
higher mode of life, and taught him well, but of the great principles of
civilization he strove to keep him in ignorance; and more, he so
confused and distorted the few gleams of light that had reached that
darkened soul that they made its gloom only the more hideous and
profound. He wanted a man altogether savage, mentally, morally and
physically. Instead of teaching him English or French, he learned from
him many words of his own rude native tongue, and communicated with him
as much as possible in that alone, aided by gesture, in which, like all
Frenchmen, he possessed marvelous facility of expression. In the
unexplored back-country of Africa the negro had been a prince, and
Fournier bade him look forward to the time when he would return and
rule. He always addressed him by his African name and title in his own
tongue. He took him into the wards of his hospital, and taught him to be
useful at surgical operations and to care for the instruments, that he
might become familiar with them and with the sight of blood, which at
first maddened him. Once he gave him a drug that made his head throb,
and then bled him, with almost instant relief. He affected an interest
in the amulets which hung at his neck, and besought him to give him one
to wear. He committed to his care, with expressions of the greatest
solicitude, a strong box, brass bound and carefully locked, which he
told him contained his god, a most potent and cruel deity, who would,
however, when it pleased him, give back the life of a dead man for
_blood_. This box contained a silver cup, with a thermometer fixed in
its side; a glass syringe holding about a third of a pint; a large
curved needle perforated in its length like a tube, sharp at one end, at
the other expanded to fit accurately the nozzle of the syringe; a
little strainer also fitting the syringe; and last, a small bundle of
wires with a handle like an egg-beater.

For the rest, this savage was crooked, ill-shapen and hideous. His skin
was as black as night; his head small, the face immensely
disproportionate to the cranium; his jaws massive and armed with
glittering white teeth filed to points; his cheeks full, his nose flat,
his eyes little, deep-set, restless, wicked. The usage he received from
his new master was so different from his former experience with white
men, and so in accord with his own undisciplined nature, that it called
forth all the sympathies of his character. He soon loved the Frenchman
with an intensity of affection almost incomprehensible. It is no
exaggeration to say that he would have willingly laid down his life to
gratify his master's slightest wish. The latter's knowledge was to him
so comprehensive, his power so boundless and his will so imperious and
inflexible, that he feared and worshiped him as a god.

Fournier looked upon his monster with satisfaction, and longed for a
battle. His wish was at last gratified. On the Fourth of July, 1864, an
engagement took place three miles north-west of Legaréville, near the
North Edisto River. A force of Union soldiery had been assembled from
the Sea Islands and from Florida, massed on Seabrook Island, and pushed
thence up into South Carolina. The object of this expedition was
unknown; indeed, as nothing whatever was accomplished, the strategy of
it remains to this day unexplained. However, forewarned is forearmed.
Every movement was watched and reported by the rebel scouts; all the
troops that could be spared from Charleston were sent out to oppose the
invaders; roads were obstructed; bridges were destroyed, batteries
erected in strong positions, everything prepared to impede their
progress. Our story needs not that we should dwell upon the sufferings
of the Union soldiers on that futile expedition, from the narrow, dusty
roads, the frequent scarcity of water, the intense heat. With infinite
fatigue and peril they advanced only five or six miles in a day's
march. Many died of sunstroke, and many fell by the way utterly
exhausted. There was occasional skirmishing; but one actual battle. To
that the troops gave the name of "the battle of Bloody Bridge." Picture
a slightly undulating country covered with thick low forest; a narrow
road that by an open plank bridge crosses a wide, sluggish stream with
marshy banks, and curves beyond abruptly to the right to avoid a low,
steep hill facing the bridge; crowning this hill an earth-work, rude to
be sure, but steep, sodded, almost impregnable to men without artillery
to play upon it; within, two cannon, for which there is plenty of
ammunition, and six hundred Confederate soldiers, fresh, eager,
determined; on the road in front of the battery, but just out of range
of its guns, the Union forces halting under arms, the leaders anxious
and discouraged, the men exhausted, careworn, wondering what is to be
done next, heartily sick of it all, yet willing to do their best; in the
thicket on both sides the road, not sheltered, only covered, within
pistol-shot of the enemy, six hundred United States soldiers, a
Massachusetts colored regiment, one of the first recruited, without
cannon, over-marched, overheated, a forlorn hope, _sent forward to take
the battery_! These men, stealthily assembling there among the trees and
bushes, are ready. Not one of them carries a pound of superfluous
weight. Their rifles with fixed bayonets, a handful of cartridges, a
canteen of water, are enough. They wear flannel shirts and blue
trowsers; numbers are bareheaded, some have cut off the sleeves of their
shirts: they know there is work before them. Many kneel in prayer;
comrades exchange messages to loved ones at home, and give each other
little keepsakes--the rings they wore or brier pipes carved over with
the names of coast battles; others--perhaps they have no loved
ones--look to the locks of their pieces and await impatiently the signal
to advance. The officers--white men, most of them Boston society
fellows, old Harvard boys who once thought a six-mile pull or a long
innings at cricket on a hot day hard work, and knew no more of military
tactics than the Lancers--move about among them, speaking to this one
and to that one, calling each by name, jesting quietly with one,
encouraging another, praising a third, endeavoring to inspire in all a
hope which they dare not feel themselves.

But hark! The signal to move. Quickly they form in the road, and with a
shout advance at a run, their dusky faces glistening in that summer sun
and their manly hearts beating bravely in the very jaws of death. Now
the bridge trembles beneath their steady tread: the foremost are at the
hill, yet no sign of life in the battery. Only the smooth green bank,
the wretched flag in the distance, and those guns charged with death
looking grimly down upon them and waiting. On they come, nearer and
nearer, and now some are on the hill and begin to climb the steep that
forms the defence, slowly and with difficulty, using at times their
rifles as aids like alpenstocks. Not a word is spoken. It is hard to
understand how so many men can move with so little noise. The silence is
that which precedes all dreadful noises. It is ominous, terrible.
Scarcely twenty feet more, and the foremost will reach the rampart.
Haste! haste! The day is won!

Suddenly a figure in gray leaps upon the breastwork: he waves his sword,
utters a short quick word of command, and disappears. It is enough. The
sleeping battery awakes. The silence becomes hideous uproar. The smooth
green line of the sod against the sky is lined with marksmen, and in an
instant fringed with fire. Then the cannon bellow and the breezeless air
is dense with smoke. The attacking column hesitates, trembles, makes a
useless effort to advance, and then falls back beyond the bridge. The
officers endeavor to rally their men and renew the attack at once, but
in vain: flesh and blood cannot stand in such a storm. Nevertheless, the
brave fellows--God bless their memory!--halt at length, and form and
charge once more. And so again and again and again; every time in vain
and with new losses, until at last they cannot rally, but retreat,
broken and bleeding, to the main body of the expedition, carrying with
them such of the wounded and dead as they can snatch from under the fire
of the rebel riflemen. Such was the battle of Bloody Bridge, and well
was it named. Five times that gallant regiment charged the battery, and
when the smoke of battle cleared away the sun shone down upon a piteous
sight--blood dyeing the green of that sodded escarp--blood in great
clots upon the rocks and stumps of the rugged hill below--blood poured
plenteously upon the dusty road, making it horrible with purple
mire--blood staining the bridge and gathering in little pools upon the
planks, and dripping slowly down through the cracks between them into
the sluggish stream, where it floated with the water in great red
clouds, toward which creatures dwelling in slimy depths below came up
lazily, but when they tasted it became furious and fought among
themselves like demons--blood drying in hideous networks and arabesques
upon the railing of the bridge--blood upon the fences, blood upon the
trembling leaves of the bushes by the wayside--blood everywhere! And
everywhere the upturned faces and torn bodies of men who had dared to do
their duty and to die: side by side the white, who led and the black who
followed--all set and motionless, but all wearing the same expression of
brave but hopeless determination. That was a brave charge at Balaklava,
but, trust me, there have been Balaklavas that are yet unsung.

So the expedition went back, and its brigades were redistributed to the
Sea Islands and to Florida; but why it was ever sent out, and why that
regiment was sent forward to take the battery without artillery and
without reinforcements, God, who knoweth all things, only knows. And God
alone knows why there must be wars and rumors of wars, and why men made
in his image must tear each other like maddened beasts.

In this battle, heavy as the losses were, the Confederates took but one
prisoner. At the third charge a tall, broad-shouldered captain, who
seemed, like another son of Thetis, almost invulnerable, darted
impetuously ahead of his men and reached the summit of the defence.
Useless bravery! In an instant a volley point blank swept away the
charging men behind him, and a gunner's sabrethrust bore him to the
ground within the works, where he lay stunned and bleeding beside the
gun he had striven so hard to take. The man who had captured him, wild
with excitement and maddened with the powder that blackened him and the
hot blood which jetted upon him, sprang down, spat upon him, spurned him
with his foot, and would have dashed out his brains with the heavy hilt
of his clubbed sword had not a strong hand grasped his uplifted wrist.

It was Fournier, who had watched the battle with an interest as intense
as that of the most ardent Southerner in the battery, though widely
different in character. His interest was that of the naturalist who
stands by eager and curious to see a rustic entrap some _rara avis_ that
he desires to study, to use for his experiment. Better for the bird: it
can suffer and die. Afterward what matter whether it stand neatly
stuffed and mounted, a voiceless worshiper, in some glass mausoleum, or
slowly moulder in a fence corner until its feathers are wafted far and
wide, and only a little tuft of greener grass remains to its memory? As
our naturalist's game was nobler and destined for more important study,
so it was capable of lifelong suffering more subtle and intense. Perhaps
Fournier had not fully considered, in his eagerness to prove his
hypothesis, the dangers to the subjects of his experiment. Perhaps his
mind was so intent upon the physical aspect of the questions that he had
overlooked some of the intellectual and moral elements involved in the
problem, and did not realize the enormities that would result should he
succeed. On the other hand, perhaps he saw them, realized them fully,
and was the more deeply fascinated with the research because of its
leading into such gloomy and mysterious regions of speculation. Let us
do him justice. Science was his god, and this idolater was willing to
endure any labor and privation and to assume any responsibility in her
service. Would that more who worship a greater God were as devoted!

He was a physiologist, and was simply engaged in an experimental
investigation, yet in its progress he had already uncivilized a man
whose eyes were beginning dimly to see the truth, had poisoned his mind
with lies, and had hurled him into depths of Plutonian ignorance
inconceivably more profound than his original estate; and now he was
about to debase another fellow-creature of his own race, to tamper with
his manhood, to confuse his identity, to render him among his own
kindred and people perhaps tabooed, ostracised, despised--perhaps an
object of pity. If he should succeed? Surely he had not come thus near
success to suffer his splendid Yankee captain to be brained there before
his eyes. Like a hawk he had watched every incident of the fight, and
was on the alert to act the part of surgeon toward any who might be
either wounded in the battery or taken prisoner. He had even resolved,
in case of the capture of the place, to represent his peculiar position
to the United States officer in command, and to beg of him permission to
make his experiment upon a wounded rebel.

The gunner turned fiercely upon him, but dropped his arm and sheathed
his sabre at his question, and then walked back to his gun abashed, for
he was, after all, a brave and chivalrous man.

Fournier simply asked: "Do Confederate soldiers _murder_ prisoners of
war?" And added, "He is a wounded man--leave him to me."

Then he knelt down beside him and examined his wound, and though he
strove to be calm he trembled with excitement as he tore open the blue
blouse and felt the warm blood welling over his fingers. It was a simple
wound through the fleshy part of the shoulder: a strand of saddler's
silk and a few strips of sticking-plaster would have sufficed to dress
it, but the Frenchman smiled when he wiped away the clots and saw the
blood spurting from two or three small divided arteries.

Then he called his African, and they carried the wounded man back to a
tent, and laid him on a bed of moss and cypress boughs, and left him
there to bleed, while he went out into the air, and walked about, and
tossed his hat and shouted with excitement like a madman. But the battle
raged, and the gunners charged their guns and fired, and charged and
fired again, and the men along the breastwork grew furious with the
slaughter and the fiery draughts they took from their canteens through
lips blackened with powder and defiled with grease and shreds of
cartridge-paper; and no one noticed the doctor's mad conduct nor the
savage standing guard before the tent; nor did any other save those two
in the whole battery--no, not even the gunner who had captured him--give
a thought to the prisoner who lay bleeding there, until the battle was
over.

And this prisoner, what of him? Any one, looking upon him as he lay upon
the cypress boughs, would have known him to be thoroughbred. Everything
about him proclaimed it. His face, manly but gentle, his figure, great
in stature and strength, yet graceful in outline like a Grecian god, the
very dress and accoutrements he wore, which were neat, strong,
expensive, but without ornament, showed him to be a gentleman. And
Robert Shirley was a gentleman. Probably no man in all the States could
have been found who would have presented a greater contrast to the man
standing guard outside the tent than this man who lay within it; and for
that reason none who would have been so welcome to Fournier. As the one
was a pure savage, the other was the realization of the most illustrious
enlightenment; the one fierce, cunning, undisciplined, the other gentle,
frank, considerate; as the one was hideous, ill-formed and black as
night, so the other was radiant with manly beauty and fair as the
morning. Each among his own people sprang from noble stock; the one a
prince, the other the descendant of the purest Puritan race, which knew
among its own divines and judges brave captains, and farther back a
governor of the colony. But the guard and his people were at the foot of
the scale, the guarded at the top. The blood flowing out upon the
cypress bed was the best blood of America. It was blue blood and brave
blood. Generation after generation it had flowed in the veins of fair
women and noble men, and had never known dishonor. Yet Fournier let it
flow. More, he was delighted that it continued to flow.

Presently, however, he sobered down, and began to prepare for his work.
He placed a large caldron of water over a fire; he brought basins,
towels and his case of surgical instruments, and placed them in the,
tent, and with them the case which he had taught the African to believe
contained his god. While thus busied he did not neglect the subject of
his experiment. His watchful eye noted everything--the mass, of clots
growing like a great crimson fungus under the wounded shoulder, the
deadly pallor, the dark circles forming around the sunken eyes, the
blanched lips, the transparent nostrils, the slow, deep respiration.
From time to time he felt the wounded man's pulse and counted it
carefully. _Ninety_--he went out again into the open air; _one
hundred_--"The loss of blood tells," he muttered, and began to rearrange
his appliances and busy himself uneasily with them; _one hundred and
thirty beats to the minute _--"He is failing too fast: I must stop this
bleeding" said the experimenter. Then he cleansed the wound, and tied
the arteries, and bound it up. But the loss of blood had been so great
that the heart fluttered wildly and feebly in its efforts to contract
upon its diminished contents, and Fournier, anxious, and pale himself
almost as his victim, trembled when his finger felt in vain for the
bleeding artery and caught only a faint tremulous thrill, so feeble that
he scarcely knew whether the heart was beating at all or not. In terror
he threw the ends of the little tent and fanned him, and moistened his
lips, and gave him brandy, and hastened to begin the experiment for
which he had waited so long and for which both subjects were at last
ready.

He told his savage that the Yankee was dying, but that he had communed
with his god, who would let him live if blood was given in return. Then
he reminded him of the time when he lost blood, and that it had done him
no harm. The African, trained for this duty with so much care, did not
fail him, but bared his arm and gave the blood. The god was brought
forth and caught it, and the sacrifice began. As the silver, bowl
floated in a basin of water so warm that the thermometer in its side
marked ninety-eight degrees of Fahrenheit, Fournier stirred the blood
flowing into it quickly with the bundle of wires, to collect the fibrine
and prevent the formation of clots; he then drew it into the syringe
through the strainer, and forced it through the perforated needle, which
he had previously thrust into a large vein in Shirley's arm, carefully
avoiding the introduction of the slightest bubble of air. Time after
time he filled his syringe and emptied it into the veins of the wounded
man, until at length he saw signs of reaction. The color came, the
breathing became more natural, the pulse became slower, fuller, regular.
By and by he moved, sighed, opened his eyes and spoke.

He asked a question: "What has happened?"

While he had been lying there much had happened. Life and death had
battled over him, and life had triumphed. When he recovered from the
effects of his fall and found himself bleeding, he tried to rise and
stanch the flow, but, already exhausted, he fell back almost fainting
from the effort. He called repeatedly for help, but his only reply was
the hideous face of his guard, silently leering at him for a moment,
then disappearing without a word, At last it occurred to him that he had
been left there to die, and he roused all his energies to his aid. How
we strive for our lives! But Shirley accomplished nothing, he could not
even raise his hand to the bleeding shoulder, with every effort the
blood flowed more copiously. His mind was rapidly becoming benumbed like
his body, which shivered as though it were mid winter. Darkness came
over his eyes, and as he listened to the din of the battle he fell into
a dreamy state that soon passed into seeming unconsciousness again.
Nevertheless, while the doctor came and went and did his work, and the
savage scowled at him, yet gave his life's blood to save him, though he
lay like a dead man and saw them not, nor heard them, nor even felt the
needle in his flesh, his mind was not idle. Strange doubts and fears,
wild longings and regrets, sweet thoughts of long-forgotten happiness,
and fair visions of the future, busied his brain. Memory unrolled her
scroll and breathed upon the letters of his story that lapse of time and
press of circumstance had made dim, till they grew clear, and with
himself he lived his life again, and nothing was lost out of it or
forgotten. There was his mother's face again, with the old, old loving
smile upon her lips and the tender mother-love in the depths of her
beautiful blue eyes--lips that had so oven kissed away his childish
tears, and had taught him to say at evening, "Our Father" and "Now I lay
me down to sleep," eyes that had never looked upon him without something
of the heavenly light of which they were now so full. There before him,
bright and clear as ever, were the scenes of his boyhood--the
school-forms defaced with many a rude cutting of names and dates, the
master knitting his shaggy brows and tapping meaningly with his ruler
upon the awful desk while some white haired urchin floundered through an
ill-learned task and his classmates tittered at his blunders. Dear old
classmates! How their faces shone and gladdened as they chased the
bounding football! How merrily they flushed and glowed when the clear
frosty air of the Northern winter quivered with the ring of their skates
upon the hard ice! How soberly side by side they solved problems and
looked up _sesquipedalia verba_ in big lexicons! And how happily the
late evening hours wore away as they read _Ivanhoe_ and the _Leather
Stocking Tales_ by the fireside with shellbarks and pippins!

Then the college days flew by with all their romance and delight. Again
there were bells ringing to morning prayers, recitations and lectures,
examinations and prizes, speeches and medals, and the glorious
friendships, pure, earnest, almost holy. Would there were more such
friendships in the outer, wider world! Commencement with its "pomp and
circumstance," its tedious ceremony and scholarly display, its friends
from home--mothers, sisters, sweethearts, all bright eyes and fond
hearts, its music and flowers, its caps, gowns, dress-coats and
"spreads," and, last and worst of all, its sorrowful "good-byes," some
of them, alas! for ever! Once more he trembled as he rose to make his
commencement speech, but slowly, as he went on, his voice grew steady
and his manner calmer, for, lad as he was, and tyro at "orations," he
was in earnest. "May my light hand forget its cunning, O my brother! may
my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, O ye oppressed! if ever there
comes to me an opportunity to help you win your way to freedom and I
fail you!" He, the aristocrat of his class, had chosen to speak "Against
Caste," and though he spoke with the enthusiasm of an untried man, it
was with devoted honesty of purpose, of which his earnestness was
witness, and of which his future was to give ample proof. Again in
vision he stood before that assembly and spoke for the lowly and
oppressed. "Let every man have place and honor as he proves himself
worthy. Make the way clear for all."

Through the bewilderment of applause that greeted him as he finished he
saw only the glad, smiling face of Alice Wentworth nodding approval of
the rest, hundreds though they were, he saw nothing. Her congratulation
was enough.

Then came tenderer scenes, and Alice Wentworth was to be his wife.
Another change, and he is in the midst of ruder scenes. There is war,
civil war, and he is a soldier, once more he seems to be in Virginia,
and there are marches and counter-marches, camps and barracks, battles
and retreats, and all the great and little miseries of long campaigns.
The silver leaflets of a major are exchanged for the golden eagles of a
colonel, and all the time, amid sterner duties, he finds time to write
to Alice Wentworth, and never a mail comes into camp but he is sure of
letters dated 'Home' and full of words that make him hopeful and brave,
"'Home!' Yes hers and mine too, if home's where the heart is!'" he
thinks, and he loves her more dearly every day.

Negro troops are raised, and, true to his principles and to himself, he
resigns his commission to take a lower rank in a colored regiment. Now
the scenes grow dim, confused sounds far off disturb him, low music,
familiar yet strange, now distant, now at his very ear, attracts him, a
weird, shadowy mist encloses him, concealing even the things which were
visible to the mind's eye, and memory and thought have almost ceased.
Yet while all else fades away, clear and beautiful before him are two
faces that cannot be forgotten--his mother's face, and that other, which
he loves, if that can be, even more. Thus, with the 'Our Father' not on
his lips, but fixed in his mind, he feels himself drifting
away--drifting away like a boat that has broken its moorings and drifts
out with the ebbing tide--whither?

But the rich, warm, lusty blood of the African quickly does its work.
The heart, which had almost ceased to beat, because there was not blood
enough for it to contract upon, reacted to the stimulus, and as it
revived and sent the new life pulsating through all the body the whole
man revived, and again:

The fever called _living_ burned in his brain.

Fournier, under one pretext or another, but really by the force of his
relentless will, kept his victim by him for years after their escape
from the South. He noted from time to time certain curious changes that
took place in his physical nature, and recorded his observations with
scientific precision in a book kept for the purpose, for the renewal of
life had entailed results of an extraordinary character, as the reader
may have already anticipated. At length he wrote 'My hypothesis is
verified, it has become a theory. My theory is proved, it is a
physiological law. _Climatic influences, acting upon man, bring about
physical changes exceedingly slowly, because they are resisted by an
inveterate habit of assimilation which pertains to the blood._'

That day Shirley was free. His rescuer had finished his experiment.

Alice Wentworth had never believed that her lover was dead. She had
heard all with a troubled heart, but while his distant kinsmen, who were
heirs-at-law, put on the deepest mourning and grew impatient of the
law's delay, she simply said, "I will wait until there is some proof
before I give him up! Proof! proof! Shall I be quicker than the law to
give up every hope?" And in her heart she said, "He is not dead." Even
when years had passed and the war was over, and her agent had searched
everywhere and found no trace of him, she did not cease to hope that he
would yet appear. So, when at length a letter came, it was welcome and
expected. Not surprise but joy made her start and tremble as the old
familiar superscription met her eyes.

Such a letter!--filled with the spirit of his love, breathing in every
word the tender, passionate devotion of an earlier day, and yet so sad.
Tears dropped down through her smiles of joy and blurred the lines she
read at first, but smiles and tears alike ceased as she read on. He had
written many, many times, but he knew she had not got his letters. He
had been a prisoner--not only prisoner of war, but afterward prisoner to
a man whose will was iron. It could hardly be explained. This man had
not only saved his life, but he had also rescued him from the horrors of
a Southern prison--would God he had let him die!--and they had been
living together in a ranch in a far off Mexican valley.

Then the letter went on:

"In my heart I am unchanged; my love for you is ever the same; yet I am
no longer the Robert Shirley whom you knew. That has come upon me which
will separate me from you for ever: I cannot ask you now to be my wife.
You are free. It is through no fault of mine. It is my burden, the price
of life, and I must bear it. God bless you and give you all happiness!

"ROBERT SHIRLEY:"

When she had read it all she bowed her head and wept again, and the face
that had grown more and more beautiful with the years of waiting was
radiant. Who can fathom the depths of a woman's love? Who can follow the
subtle workings of a woman's thought? Who can comprehend a woman's
boundless faith? Her course was clear. If misfortune had befallen him,
if he were maimed, disfigured, crazed, even if he were loathsome to her
eyes, she loved him, and she must see him: she would see him and speak
to him, and love him still, even if she could not be his wife. What
would she have done if she could have guessed the truth? As it was, she
wrote upon her card, "If you love me, come to me," and sent it to him.
And in answer to the summons he stood before her--not disfigured, not
maimed, not crazed, not loathsome in any way, yet irrevocably separated
from her for Dr. Fournier's experiment had succeeded, and Robert Shirley
was a mulatto!

CORNELIUS DEWEES.




A VISIT TO THE KING OF AURORA.

(FROM THE GERMAN OF THEODORE KIRSCHOFF.)


On the Oregon and California Railroad, twenty-eight miles south of the
city of Portland in Oregon, lies the German colony of Aurora, a
communist settlement under the direction of Doctor William Keil. In
September, 1871, I made a second journey from San Francisco to Oregon,
on which occasion I found both time and opportunity to carry out a
long-cherished desire to visit this colony, already famous throughout
all Oregon, and to make the acquaintance of the still more famous
doctor, the so-called "king of Aurora." During the years in which I had
formerly resided in Oregon, and especially on this last journey thither,
I had frequently heard this settlement and its autocrat spoken of, and
had been told the strangest stories as to the government of its
self-made potentate. All reports agreed in stating that "Dutchtown," the
generic appellation of German colonies among Americans, was an example
to all settlements, and was distinguished above any other place in
Oregon for order and prosperity. The hotel of "Dutchtown," which stands
on the old Overland stage-route, and is now a station on the Oregon and
California Railroad, has attained an enviable reputation, and is
regarded by all travelers as the best in the State; and as to the colony
itself, I heard nothing but praise. On the other hand, with regard to
Doctor Keil the strangest reports were in circulation. He had been
described to me in Portland as a most inaccessible person, showing
himself extremely reserved toward strangers, and declining to give them
the slightest satisfaction as to the interior management of the
prosperous community over which he reigned a sovereign prince. The
initiated maintained that this important personage had formerly been a
tailor in Germany. He was at once the spiritual and secular head of the
community: he solemnized marriages (much against his will, for,
according to the rules of the society, he was obliged to provide a
house for every newly-married couple); he was physician and preacher,
judge, law-giver, secretary of state, administrator, and unlimited and
irresponsible minister of finance to the colony; and held all the very
valuable landed property of the settlement, with the consent of the
colonists, in his own name; and while he certainly provided for his
voluntarily obedient subjects an excellent maintenance for life, he
reserved to himself the entire profits of the labor of all and the value
of the joint property, notwithstanding that the colony was established
on the broadest principles as a communist association.

I had a great desire to see this original man--a kindred spirit of the
renowned Mormon leader, Brigham Young--with my own eyes, and, so to
speak, to visit the lion in his den. From Portland, where I was staying,
the colony was easily accessible by rail, and before leaving I made the
acquaintance of a. German life-insurance agent of a Chicago
company--Körner by name--who, like myself, wished to visit Aurora, and
in whom I found a very agreeable traveling companion. He had procured in
Portland letters of introduction to Doctor Keil, and had conceived the
bold plan of doing a stroke of business in life insurance with him;
indeed, his main object in going to Aurora was to induce the doctor to
insure the lives of the entire colony--that is to say, of all his
voluntary subjects--in the Chicago company, pay, as irresponsible
treasurer of the association, the legal premiums, and upon the
occurrence of a death pocket the amount of the policy.

My fellow-traveler had great hopes of making the doctor see this project
in the light of an advantageous speculation, and accordingly provided
himself amply with the necessary tables of mortality and other
statistics. It had been carefully impressed upon us in Portland always
to address the _ci-devant_ tailor, now "king of Aurora," as "Doctor," of
which title he was extremely vain, and to treat him with all the
reverence which as sovereign republicans we could muster; otherwise he
would probably turn his back on us without ceremony.

On a pleasant September morning the steam ferry-boat conveyed us from
Portland across the Willamette River to the dépôt of the Oregon and
California Railroad, and soon afterward we were rushing southward in the
train along the right shore of that stream--here as broad as the
Rhine--the rival of the mighty Columbia. After a pleasant and
interesting journey through giant forests and over fertile prairies,
some large, some small, embellished here and there with farms, villages
and orchards, we reached Oregon City, which lies in a romantic region
close to the Willamette: then leaving the river, we thundered on some
miles farther through the majestic primitive forest, and soon entered
upon a broad, wood-skirted prairie, over which here and there pretty
farm-houses and groves are scattered; and presently beheld, peeping out
from swelling hills and standing in the middle of a prosperous
settlement embowered in verdure, the slender white church-tower of
Aurora, and were at the end of our journey.

Our first course after we left the cars was to the tavern, standing
close to the railroad on a little hill, whither the passengers hurried
for lunch. This so-called "hotel," the best known and most famous, as
has already been said, in all Oregon, I might compare to an
old-fashioned inn. The long table with its spotless table-cloth was
lavishly spread with genuine German dishes, excellently cooked, and we
were waited on by comely and neatly-dressed German girls; and though the
dinner would not perhaps compare with the same meal at the club-house of
the "San Francisco" I must confess that it was incomparably the best I
ever tasted in Oregon, in which region neither the cooks nor the bills
of fare are usually of the highest order.

Dinner being over, we made inquiry for Doctor Keil, to whom we were now
ready to pay our respects. Our host pointed out to us the doctor's
dwelling-house, which looked, in the distance, like the premises of a
well-to-do Low-Dutch farmer; and after passing over a long stretch of
plank-road, we turned in the direction of the royal residence. On the
way we met several laborers just coming from the field, who looked as if
life went well with them--girls in short frocks with rake in hand, and
boys comfortably smoking their clay pipes--and received from all an
honest German greeting. Everything here had a German aspect--the houses
pleasantly shaded by foliage, the barns, stables and well-cultivated
fields, the flower and kitchen-gardens, the white church-steeple rising
from a green hill: nothing but the fences which enclose the fields
reminded us that we were in America.

The doctor's residence was surrounded by a high white picket-fence:
stately, widespreading live-oaks shaded it, and the spacious courtyard
had a neat and carefully-kept aspect. Crowing cocks, and hens each with
her brood, were scratching and picking about, the geese cackled, and
several well-trained dogs gave us a noisy welcome. Upon our asking for
the doctor, a friendly German matron directed us to the orchard, whither
we immediately turned our steps. A really magnificent sight met our
eyes--thousands of trees, whose branches, covered with the finest fruit,
were so loaded that it had been necessary to place props under many of
them, lest they should break beneath the weight of their luscious
burden.

Here we soon discovered the renowned doctor, in a toilette the very
opposite of regal, zealously engaged in gathering his apples. He was
standing on a high ladder, in his shirt sleeves, a cotton apron, a straw
hat, picking the rosy-cheeked fruit in a hand-basket. Several laborers
were busy under the trees assorting the gathered apples, and carefully
packing in boxes the choicest of them--really splendid specimens of this
fruit, which attains its utmost perfection in Oregon. As soon as the
doctor perceived us he came down from the ladder, and asked somewhat
sharply what our business there might be. My companion handed him the
letters of introduction he had brought with him, which the doctor read
attentively through: he then introduced my humble self as a literary man
and assistant editor of a well-known magazine, who had come to Oregon
for the special purpose of visiting Dr. Keil, and of inspecting his
colony, of which such favorable reports had reached us. Without waiting
for the doctor's reply, I asked him whether he were not a relative of
K----, the principal editor of the magazine to which I was attached. I
could scarcely, as it appeared, have hit upon a more opportune question,
for the doctor was evidently flattered, and became at once extremely
affable toward us. The relationship to which I had alluded he was
obliged unwillingly to disclaim. I learned from him that his name was
William Keil, and that he was born at Bleicherode in Prussian Saxony. He
now left the apple-gathering to his men, and offered to show us whatever
was interesting about the colony: as to the life-insurance project, he
said he would take some more convenient opportunity to speak with Mr.
Körner about it.

The doctor, who after this showed himself somewhat loquacious, was a man
of agreeable appearance, perhaps of about sixty years of age, with white
hair, a broad high forehead and an intelligent countenance. Sound as a
nut, powerfully built, of vigorous constitution and with an air of
authority, he gave the idea of a man born to rule. He seemed to wish to
make a good impression on us, and I remarked several times in him a
searching side-glance, as though he were trying to read our thoughts. He
sustained the entire conversation himself, and it was somewhat difficult
to follow his meaning: he spoke in an unctuous, oratorical tone, with
extreme suavity, in very general terms, and evaded all direct questions.
When I had listened to him for ten minutes I was not one whit wiser than
before. His language was not remarkably choice, and he used liberally a
mixture of words half English, half German, as uneducated
German-Americans are apt to do.

While we wandered through the orchard, the beauty and practical utility
of which astonished me, the doctor, gave us a lecture on colonization,
agriculture, gardening, horticulture, etc., which he flavored here and
there with pious reflections. He pointed out with pride that all this
was his own work, and described how he had transformed the wilderness
into a garden. In the year 1856 he came with forty followers to Oregon,
as a delegate from the parent association of Bethel in Missouri, in
order to found in the far West, then so little known, a branch colony.
At present the doctor is president both of Aurora and of the original
settlement at Bethel: the latter consists of about four hundred members,
the former of four hundred and ten.

When he first came into this region he found the whole district now
owned by his flourishing colony covered with marsh and forest. Instead,
however, of establishing himself on the prairies lying farther south, in
the midst of foreign settlers, he preferred a home shared only with his
German brethren in the primitive woods; and here, having at that time
very small means, he obtained from the government, gratis, land enough
to provide homes for his colonists, and found in the timber a source of
capital, which he at once made productive. He next proceeded to build a
block-house as a defence against the Indians, who at that time were
hostile in Oregon: then he erected a saw-mill and cleared off the
timber, part of which he used to build houses for his colonists, and
with part opened an advantageous trade with his American neighbors, who,
living on the prairie, were soon entirely dependent on him for all their
timber. The land, once cleared, was soon cultivated and planted, with
orchards: the finer varieties of fruit he shipped for sale to Portland
and San Francisco, and from the sour apples he either made vinegar or
sold them to the older settlers, who very soon made themselves sick on
them. He then attended them in the character of physician, and cured
them of their ailments at a good round charge. This joke the good doctor
related with especial satisfaction.

By degrees, the doctor continued to say, the number of colonists
increased; and his means and strength being thus enlarged, he
established a tannery, a factory, looms, flouring-mills, built more
houses for his colonists, cleared more land and drained the marshes,
increased his orchards, laid out new farms, gave some attention to
adornment, erected a church and school-houses, and purchased from the
American settlers in the neighborhood their best lands for a song. He
did everything systematically. He always assigned his colonists the sort
of labor that they appeared to him best fitted for, and each one found
the place best suited to his capabilities. If any one objected to doing
his will and obeying his orders, he was driven out of the colony, for he
would endure no opposition. He made the best leather, the best hams and
gathered the best crops in all Oregon. The possessions of the colony,
which he added to as he was able, extended already over twenty sections
(a section contains six hundred and forty acres, or an English square
mile), and the most perfect order and industry existed everywhere.

Thus the doctor; and amid this and the like conversation we walked over
an orchard covering forty acres. The eight thousand trees it contained
yielded annually five thousand bushels of choice apples and eight
thousand of the finest pears, and the crop increased yearly. The doctor
pointed out repeatedly the excellence of his culture in contrast with
the American mode, which leaves the weeds to grow undisturbed among the
trees, and disregards entirely all regularity and beauty. He, on the
contrary, insisted no less on embellishment than on neatness and order;
and this was no vain boast. Carefully-kept walks led through the
grounds; verdant turf, flowerbeds and charming shady arbors met us at
every turn; there were long beds planted with flourishing currant,
raspberry and blackberry bushes, and large tracts set with rows of
bearing vines, on which luscious grapes hung invitingly. Order also
reigned among the fruit trees: here were several acres of nothing but
apples, again a plantation of pears or apricots, beneath which not a
weed was to be seen: the hoe and the rake had done their work
thoroughly. Everything was in the most perfect order: the courtgardener
of a German prince might have been proud of it.

We seated ourselves in a shady arbor, where the doctor entertained us
further with an account of his religious belief. He had, he said, no
fixed creed and no established religion: there were in the colony
Protestants, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, indeed Christians of every
name, and even Jews. Every one was at liberty to hold what faith he
pleased: he preached only natural religion, and whoever shaped his life
according to that would be happy. After this he enlarged on the
prosperity of the colony, which was founded on the principles of natural
religion, and prosed about humility, love to our neighbor, kindness and
carrying religion into everything; and then back he came to Nature and
himself, until my head was perfectly bewildered. I had given up long
before this, in despair, any questions as to the interior organization
of the colony, for the doctor either gave me evasive answers or none at
all. His colonists, he asserted, loved him as a father, and he cared for
them accordingly: both these assertions were undoubtedly true. The deep
respect with which those whom we occasionally met lifted their hats to
"the doctor"--a form of greeting by no means universal in America--bore
witness to their unbounded esteem for him. Toward us also they demeaned
themselves with great respect, as to noble strangers whom the doctor
deigned to honor with his society. As to his care for them, no one who
witnessed it could deny the exceedingly flourishing condition of the
settlement. Whether, however, in all this the doctor had not a keen eye
to his own interest was an afterthought which involuntarily presented
itself.

As we left the orchard, the doctor pointed out to us several
wheat-fields in the neighborhood, cultivated with true German love for
neatness, which formed, with the pleasant dwellings adjoining, separate
farms. The average yield per acre, he observed, was from twenty-five to
forty bushels of wheat, and from forty to fifty of oats. He then took us
into a neighboring grove, to a place where the pic-nics and holiday
feasts of the colony are held: here we paused near a grassy knoll shaded
by a sort of awning and surrounded by a moat. This, which bears the name
of "The Temple Hill," forms the centre of a number of straight roads,
which branch out from it into the woods in the shape of a fan. Not far
from it I noticed a dancing ground covered by a circular open roof, and
a pavilion for the music.

"At our public feasts," said the doctor, "I have all these branching
roads lighted with colored lanterns, and illuminate the temple, which,
with its brilliant lamps, makes quite an imposing spectacle. When we
celebrate our May-day festival it looks, after dark, like a scene out of
the _Arabian Nights_; and when, added to this, we have beautiful music
and fine singing, and the young folks are enjoying the dance, it is
really very pleasant. But none are permitted to set foot on the Temple
Hill, nor can they do it very easily if they would. Do you know the
reason, gentlemen?" Körner opined that it might be on account of the
ditch, which would be difficult to pass, in which view I agreed.
"Exactly so," remarked the doctor. "This Temple Hill has an especial
significance: it represents the sovereign ruler of the people, on whose
head no one may tread: on that account the ditch is there."

After a walk of several hours we returned to the doctor's house, where
he invited us to take a glass of homemade wine. As we had been informed
that the sale and use of wine and spirits were strictly forbidden in the
colony, this invitation was certainly an unprecedented exception. The
wine, of which two kinds were placed before us--one made of wild grapes,
and the other of currants--was very good, and was partaken of in the
doctor's office. Here Mr. Körner again brought forward his
life-insurance project: the doctor gave him hopes that he would go into
it, but he wished to give the matter due consideration, and to subject
the advantages and disadvantages of the speculation to a strict
investigation, before giving a definite answer; and with this ended our
visit to the "king of Aurora."

Before leaving the colony we obtained considerable information from the
members as to their interior organization and government, the results of
which, as well as what I further learned respecting Doctor Keil, I will
state briefly.

Should any one wish to become a member of the colony, he must, in the
first place, put all his ready money into the hands of Doctor Keil: he
will then be taken on trial. If the candidate satisfies the doctor, he
can remain and become one of the community: should this, however, not be
the case, he receives again the capital he paid in, but without
interest. How long he must remain "on probation" in the colony, and work
there, depends entirely on the doctor's pleasure. If a member leaves the
community voluntarily--a thing almost unheard of--he receives back his
capital without interest, together with a _pro rata_ share of the
earnings of the community during his membership, as appraised by the
doctor.

All the ordinary necessaries of life are supplied gratuitously to the
members of the community. The doctor holds the common purse, out of
which all purchases are paid for, and into which go the profits from the
agricultural and industrial products of the colony. If any member needs
a coat or other article of clothing, flour, sugar or tobacco, he can get
whatever he wants, without paying for it, at the "store:" in the same
way he procures meat from the butcher and bread from the baker: spirits
are forbidden except in case of sickness. The doctor also appoints the
occupation of each member, so as to contribute to the best welfare of
the colony--whether he shall be a farmer, a mechanic, a common laborer,
or whatever he can be most usefully employed in; and the time and
talents of each are regarded as belonging to the whole community,
subject only to the doctor's judgment. If a member marries, a separate
dwelling-house and a certain amount of land are assigned him, so that
the families of the settlement are scattered about on farms. The elders
of the colony support the doctor in the duties of his office by counsel
and assistance.

The lands of the colony are collectively recorded in Doctor Keil's name,
in order, as he says, to avoid intricate and complicated law-papers. It
would, however, be for the interest of the colonists to make, a speedy
change in this respect, so that the members of the community, in case of
the doctor's death, might obtain each his share of the lands without
litigation. Should the doctor's decease occur soon, before this
alteration is made, his natural heirs could claim the whole property of
the colony, and the members would be left in the lurch. He does not
appear, however, to be in great haste to effect this change, though it
ought to have been done long ago. It is always said among the colonists,
naturally enough, that all the ground is the common property of the
community. Whether the doctor fully subscribes to this opinion in his
secret heart might be a question.

Doctor Keil is at the same time the religious head and the unlimited
secular ruler of the colony of Aurora, and can ordain, with the consent
of the elders (who very naturally uphold his authority), what he
pleases. A life free from care and responsibility, such as the members
of the community (who, for the most part, belong to the lower and
uncultivated class) lead--a life in regard to which no one but the
doctor has the trouble of thinking--is the main ground of the
undisturbed continuance of the colony. The pre-eminent talent for
organization, combined with the unlimited powers of command, which the
doctor--justly named "king of Aurora"--possesses, together with the
inborn industry peculiar to Germans, is the cause of the prosperity of
the settlement, which calls itself communistic, but is certainly nothing
more than a vast farm belonging to its talented founder. It has its
schools, its churches, newspapers and books--the selection and tendency
of which the doctor sees to--and no lack of social pleasures, music and
singing. Taken together with an easily-procured livelihood, all this
satisfies the desires of the colonists entirely, and the good doctor
takes care of everything else.

ELIZABETH SILL.



GRAY EYES.


I have always counted it among the larger blessings of Providence that
a woman can bear up year after year under a weight of dullness which
would drive a man of the same mental calibre to desperation in a month.

I had no idea what a heavy burden mine had been until one day my brother
asked me to go to sea with him on his next voyage. He and his wife were
at the farm on their wedding-tour, and only the happiness of a
bridegroom could have led him to hold out to me this way of escape.
Christian's heart when he dropped his pack was not lighter than mine.
Butter and cheese are good things in their way--the world would miss
them if all the farmers' daughters went suddenly down to the sea in
ships--but it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and such had
been my feeling for some years.

So suddenly and completely did my threadbare endurance give way that if
Frank had revoked his words the next minute, I must have gone away at
once to some crowded place and drawn a few deep breaths of excitement
before I could have joined again the broken ends of my patience.

No bride-elect poor in this world's goods ever went about the
preparations for her wedding with more delicious awe than I felt in
turning one old gown upside down, and another inside out, for seafaring
use. There was excitement enough in the departure, the inevitable
sea-changes, and finally the memory of it all, to keep my mind busy for
a few weeks, but when we settled into the grooves of a tropical voyage,
wafted along as easily by the trade winds as if some gigantic hand,
unseen and steady, had us in its grasp, my life was wholly changed, and
yet it bore an odd family resemblance to the days at the farm. It was a
pleasant dullness, because, in the nature of things, it must soon have
an end.

I went on deck to look at a passing ship about as often as I used to run
to the window at the sound of carriagewheels. One can't take a very
intimate interest in whales and the other seamonsters unless one is
scientific. Time died with me a slow but by no means a painful death. I
used to fold my hands and look at them by the hour, internally
rollicking over the idea that there was no milk to skim or dishes to
wash, or any earthly wheel in motion that required my shoulder to turn
it. I spent much time in a half-awake state in the long warm days, out
of sheer delight in wasting time after saving it all my life.

So it came about that I slept lightly o' nights. Every morning the
steward came into the cabin with the first dawn of day to scour his
floors before the captain should appear. He had a habit of talking to
himself over this early labor, and one morning, more awake than usual, I
found that he was praying. "O Lord, be good to me! I wasn't to blame. I
would have helped her if I could. O Lord, be good to me!" and other
homely entreaties were repeated again and again.

He was a meek, bowed old negro, with snowy hair, and so many wrinkles
that all expression was shrunk out of his face. He was an excellent
cook, but he waited on table with a manner so utterly despairing that
it took away one's appetite to look at him.

For many mornings after this I listened to his prayers, which grew more
and more earnest and importunate. I could not think he had done any harm
with his own will. He must have been more sinned against than sinning.

He brought me a shawl one cool evening as if it were my death-warrant,
and I said, in the sepulchral tone that wins confidence, "Pedro, do you
always say your prayers when you are alone?"

"Yes, miss, 'board _this_ ship."

"What's the matter with, this ship?"

"I s'pose you don't have no faith in ghosts?"

"Not much."

"White folks mostly don't," said Pedro with aggravating meekness, and
turned into his pantry.

I followed him to the door, and stood in it so that he had no escape:
"What has that to do with your prayers?"

"This cabin has got a ghost in it."

I looked over my shoulder into the dusk, and shivered a little, which
was not lost on Pedro. He grew more solemn if possible than before: "I
see her 'most every morning, and if my back is to the door, I see her
all the same. She don't never touch me, but I keep at the prayers for
fear she will."

"Do you never see her except in the morning?"

"Once or twice she has just put her head out of the door of the middle
state-room when I was waitin' on table."

"In broad daylight?"

"Sartin. Them as sees ghosts sees 'em any time. Every morning, just at
peep o' day, she comes out of that door and makes a dive for the stairs.
She just gives me one look, and holds up her hand, and I don't see no
more of her till next time."

"How does she look?" I almost hoped he would not tell, but he did.

"She's got hair as black as a coal, kind o' pushed back, as if she'd
been runnin' her hands through it; she has big shiny eyes, swelled up as
she'd been cryin' a great while; and she's always got on a gray dress,
silvery-like, with a tear in one sleeve. There ain't nothin' more, only
a handkerchief tied round her wrist, as if it had been hurt."

"Is she handsome?"

"Mebbe white folks'd think so."

"Why does she show herself to you and no one else, do you suppose?"

"Didn't I tell you the reason before?"

"Of course you didn't."

"Well, you see, she looked just so the last time I seen her alive. I
must go and put in the biscuit now, miss."

I submitted, knowing that white folks may be hurried, but black ones
never; and I could not but admire the natural talent which Pedro shared
with the authors of continued stories, of always dropping the thread at
the most thrilling moment.

"Who was she?" said I, lying in wait for him on his return.

"She was cap'n's wife, miss--a young woman, and the cap'n was old, with
a blazing kind of temper. He was dreffle sweet on her for about a month,
and mebbe she was happy, mebbe she wa'n't: how should I know about white
folks' feelin's? All of a suddent he said she was sick and couldn't go
out of the middle state-room. The old man took in plenty of stuff to
eat, but he never let me go near her. We was on just such a v'y'ge as
this, only hotter. The cap'n would come out of that room lookin' black
as thunder, and everybody scudded out of his sight when he put his head
out of the gangway.

"He was always bad enough, but he got wuss and wuss, and nothin'
couldn't please him. Sometimes I'd hear the poor thing a-moaning to
herself like a baby that's beat out with loud cryin' and hain't got no
noise left. She was always cryin' in them days. Once the supercargo (he
was a cool hand, any way) give me a bit of paper very private to give to
her, and I slipped it under the door, but the old man had nailed
somethin' down inside, an' he found it afore she did. Then there was a
regular knockdown fight, and the supercargo was put in irons. The old
man was in the middle room a long time that day, talkin' in a hissin'
kind of a way, and the missus got a blow. Just after that a sort of a
white squall struck the ship, and the old man give just the wrong
orders. You see, he was clean out of his head. He got so worked up at
last that he fell down in a fit, and they bundled him into his
state-room and left him, 'cause nobody cared whether he was dead or
alive. The mate took the irons off the supercargo first thing, and broke
open the middle room. The supercargo went in there and stayed a long
time, whispering to the missus, and she cried more'n ever, only it
sounded different.

"Toward night the old man come to, and begun to ask questions--as ugly
as ever, only as weak as a baby. 'Bout midnight I was comin' out of his
room, and I seen the missus in a gray dress, with her eyes shinin' like
coals of fire, dive out of her room and up the stairs, and nobody never
seen her afterward. The next morning the supercargo was gone too, and I
think they just drownded themselves, 'cause they couldn't bear to live
any more without each other. Mebbe the mate knew somethin' about it, but
he never let on, and I dunno no more about it; only the old man had
another fit when he heard it, and died without no mourners."

"It might be she was saved, after all," I said, with true Yankee
skepticism.

"Then why should I see her ghost, if she ain't dead-drownded?"

"Did you never find anything in the state-room that would explain?"

"Well, I did find some bits of paper, but I couldn't read writin'."

"Oh, what did you do with them?" I insisted, quivering with excitement.

"You won't tell the cap'n?"

"No, never."

"You'll give 'em back to me?"

"Yes, yes--of course."

"Here they be," he said, opening his shirt, and showing a little bag
hung round his neck like an amulet. He took out a little wad of brown
paper, and gave it jealously into my hand.

"I will give it back to you to-night," I said with the solemnity of an
oath, and carried it to my room.

It proved to be a short and fragmentary account of the sufferings which
the "missus" had endured in the middle room, written in pencil on coarse
wrapping-paper, and bearing marks of trembling hands and frequent tears.
I thought I might copy the papers without breaking faith with Pedro. The
outside paper bore these words:

"Whoever finds this is besought for pity's sake, by its most unhappy
writer, to send it as soon as possible to Mrs. Jane Atwood of
Davidsville, Connecticut, United States of America."

Then followed a letter to her mother:

Dearest Mother: If I never see your blessed face again, I know you will
not believe me guilty of what my husband accuses me of. I married
Captain Eliot for your sake, believing, since Herbert had proved
faithless, that no comfort was left to me except in pleasing others. I
meant to be a good wife to Captain Eliot, and I believe I should have
kept my vow all my days if the most unfortunate thing had not wakened
his jealousy. Since then he has been almost or quite crazed.

I knew we had a supercargo of whom Captain Eliot spoke highly. He kept
his room for a month from sea-sickness, and when he came out it was
Herbert. Of course I knew him, every line of his face had been so long
written on my heart. I strove to treat him as if I had never seen him
before, but the old familiar looks and tones were very hard to bear. If
Herbert could only have submitted patiently to our fate! But it was not
in him to be patient under anything, and one evening, when I was sitting
alone on deck, he must needs pour out his soul in one great burst,
trying to prove that he had never deserted me, but only circumstances
had been cruel. I longed to believe him, but I could only keep repeating
that it was too late.

When I went down, Captain Eliot dragged me into the middle state-room,
and gave vent to his jealous feelings. He must have listened to all that
Herbert had said. His last words were that I should never leave that
room alive. I had a wretched night, and the first time I fell into an
uneasy sleep I started suddenly up to find my husband flashing the light
of a lantern across my eyes. "Handsome and wicked," he muttered--"they
always go together."

I begged him to listen to the story of my engagement to Herbert, and he
did listen, but it did not soften his heart. If he ever loved me, his
jealousy has swallowed it up.

I have been in this room just a week. My husband does not starve or beat
me, but his taunts and threats are fearful, and his eyes when he looks
at me grow wild, as if he had the longing of a beast to tear me in
pieces.

       *       *       *       *       *

_May_ 10. I placed a copy of the paper that is pinned to this letter in
a little bottle that had escaped my husband's search, and threw it out
of my window.

I am Waitstill Atwood Eliot, wife of Captain Eliot of the ship Sapphire.
I have been kept in solitary confinement and threatened with death for
four weeks, for no just cause. I believe him to be insane, as he
constantly threatens to burn or sink the ship. I pray that this paper
may be picked up by some one who will board this ship and bring me help.

Of course it is a most forlorn hope, but it keeps me from utter despair.

20. Herbert tried to communicate with me by slipping a paper under the
door, but I did not get it, and he has been put in irons. Captain Eliot
boasts of it. I wish he would bind us together and let us drown in one
another's arms, as they did in the Huguenot persecution.

28. A little paper tied to a string hung in front of my bull's-eye
window to-day: I took it in. The first officer had lowered it down:
"Captain Eliot says you are ill, but I don't believe it. If he tries
violence, scream, and I will break open the door. I am always on the
watch. Keep your heart up."

This is a drop of comfort in my black cup, but my little window was
screwed down within an hour after I had read the paper.

_June_ 10. My spirit is worn out: I can endure no more. I have begged my
husband to kill me and end my misery. I don't know why he hesitated. He
means to do it some time, but perhaps he cannot think of torture
exquisite enough for his purpose.

11. My husband came in about four in the afternoon, looking so
vindictive that my heart stood still. He gradually worked himself into a
frenzy, and aimed a blow at my head: instinct, rather than the love of
life, made me parry it, and I got the stroke on my wrist.

I screamed, and at the same moment there was a tumult on deck, and the
ship quivered as if she too had been violently struck. Captain Eliot
rushed on deck, and began to give hurried orders. I could hear the first
officer contradict them, and then there was a heavy fall, and two or
three men stumbled down the cabin stairs, carrying some weight between
them.

_Later_. My husband is helpless, and Herbert has been with me, urging me
passionately to trust myself to him in a little boat at midnight. He
says there are several ships in sight, and one of them will be almost
sure to pick us up. He swears that he will leave me, and never see me
again (if I say so), so soon as he has placed me in safety, but he will
save me, by force if need be, from the brute into whose hands I fell so
innocently. If the ship does not see us, it is but dying, after all.

Good-bye, mother! I pray that this paper will reach you before Captain
Eliot can send you his own account, but if it does not, you will believe
me innocent all the same.

This was the last, and I folded up the papers as they had come to me.
That night I read them all to Pedro.

"They was drownded--I knew it," said Pedro; and nothing could remove
that opinion. A ghost is more convincing than logic.

Our voyage wore on, with one day just like another: my brother looked at
the sun every day, and put down a few cabalistic figures on a slate, but
his steady business was reading novels to his wife and drinking weak
claret and water.

The sea was always the same, smiling and smooth, and the "man at the
wheel" seemed to be always holding us back by main strength from the
place where we wanted to go. I had a growing belief that we should sail
for ever on this rippling mirror and never touch the frame of it. It
struck me with a sense of intense surprise when a dark line loomed far
ahead, and they told me quietly that that line meant Bombay.

It seemed a matter of course to my brother that the desired port should
heave in sight just when he expected it, but to me the efforts that he
had made to accomplish this tremendous result were ridiculously small.

"I have done more work in a week, and had nothing to show for it at
last," said I, "than you have seemed to do in all this voyage."

"Poor sister! don't you wish you were a man?"

"Certainly, all women do who have any sense. I hold with that ancient
Father of the Church who maintained that all women are changed into men
on the judgment-day. The council said it was heresy, but that don't
alter my faith."

"I shouldn't like you half as well if you had been born a boy," said
Frank.

"But I should like myself vastly better," said I, clinging to the last
word.

Bombay is a city by itself: there is none like it on earth, whatever
there may be in the heaven above or in the waters under it. From Sir
Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy's hospital for sick animals to the Olympian conceit
of the English residents, there are infinite variations of people and
things that I am persuaded can be matched nowhere else. I felt myself
living in a series of pictures, a sort of supernumerary in a theatre,
where they changed the play every night.

One of the first who boarded our ship was Mr. Rayne, an old friend of
Frank's. He insisted on our going to his house for a few days in a
warm-hearted way that was irresistible.

"Are you quite sure you want _me_?" I said dubiously. "Young married
people make a kind of heaven for themselves, and do not want old maids
looking over the wall."

"But you _must_ go with us," said Frank, man-like, never seeing anything
but the uppermost surface of a question.

"Not at all. I'm quite strong-minded enough to stay on board ship; or,
if that would not do in this heathen place, the missionaries are always
ready to entertain strangers. A week in the missionhouse would make me
for ever a shining light in the sewing circle at home.

"A woman of so many resources would be welcome anywhere. For my part, an
old maid is a perfect Godsend. The genus is unknown here, and the loss
to society immense," said Mr. Rayne.

"But what shall I do when Mrs. Rayne and my sister-in-law are comparing
notes about the perfections of their husbands?"

"Walk on the verandah with me and convert me to woman suffrage."

Mr. Rayne had his barouche waiting on shore, and drove us first to the
bandstand, where, in the coolness of sunset, all the Bombay world meet
to see and to be seen. When the band paused, people drove slowly round
the circle, seeking acquaintance. Among them one equipage was perfect--a
small basket-phaeton, and two black ponies groomed within an inch of
their lives. My eyes fell on the ponies first, but I saw them no more
when the lady who drove them turned her face toward me.

She wore a close-fitting black velvet habit and a little round hat with
long black feather. Her hair might have been black velvet, too, as it
fell low on her forehead, and was fastened somehow behind in a heavy
coil. Black brows and lashes shaded clear gray eyes--the softest gray,
without the least tint of green in them--such eyes as Quaker maidens
ought to have under their gray bonnets. Little rose colored flushes kept
coming and going in her cheeks as she talked.

All at once I thought of Queen Guinevere,

    As she fled fast thro' sun and shade,
      With jingling bridle-reins.

"Mr. Rayne, do you see that lady in black, with the ponies?"

"Plainly."

"If I were a man, that woman would be my Fate."

"I thought women never admired each other's beauty."

"You are mistaken. Heretofore I have met beautiful women only in poetry.
Do you remember four lines about Queen Guinevere?--no, six lines, I
mean:

    "She looked so lovely as she swayed
      The rein with dainty finger-tips,
    A man had given all other bliss,
    And all his worldly worth for this,
    To waste his whole heart in one kiss
      Upon her perfect lips.

"I always thought them overstrained till now."

"I perfectly agree with you," said Mr. Rayne: "I knew we were congenial
spirits." Then he said a word or two in a diabolical language to his
groom, who ran to the carriage which I had been watching and repeated it
to the lady: she bowed and smiled to Mr. Rayne, and soon drew up her
ponies beside us.

"My wife," said Mr. Rayne with laughter in his eyes.

Mrs. Rayne talked much like other people, and her beauty ceased to
dazzle me after a few minutes; not that it grew less on near view, but,
being a woman, I could not fall in love with her in the nature of
things.

When the music stopped we drove to Mr. Rayne's house, his wife keeping
easily beside us. When she was occupied with the others Mr. Rayne
whispered, "Her praises were so sweet in my ears that I would not own
myself Sir Lancelot at once."

"If you are Sir Lancelot," I said, "where is King Arthur?"

"Forty fathoms deep, I hope," said Mr. Rayne with a sudden change in his
voice and a darkening face. I had raised a ghost for him without knowing
it, and he spoke no more till we reached the house.

It was a long, low, spreading structure with a thatched roof, and a
verandah round it. A wilderness of tropical plants hemmed it in. But all
appearance of simplicity vanished on our entrance. In the matted hall
stood a tree to receive the light coverings we had worn; not a "hat
tree," as we say at home by poetic license, but the counterfeit
presentment of a real tree, carved in branches and delicate foliage out
of black wood. The drawing-room was eight-sided, and would have held,
with some margin, the gambrel-roofed house, chimneys and all, in which I
had spent my life. Two sides were open into other rooms, with Corinthian
pillars reaching to the roof. Carved screens a little higher than our
heads filled the space between the pillars, and separated the
drawing-room from Mrs. Rayne's boudoir on the side and the dining-room
on the other.

The furniture of these rooms was like so many verses of a poem. Every
chair and table had been designed by Mrs. Rayne, and then realized in
black wood by the patient hands of natives.

Another side opened by three glass doors on a verandah, and only a few
rods below the house the sea dashed against a beach.

After dinner I sat on the verandah drinking coffee and the sea-breeze by
turns. The gentlemen walked up and down smoking the pipe of peace, while
Mrs. Rayne sat within, talking with Rhoda in the candlelight. Opposite
me, as I looked in at the open door, hung two Madonnas, the Sistine and
the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. In front of each stood a tall
flower-stand carved to imitate the leaves and blossoms of the calla
lily. These black flowers held great bunches of the Annunciation lily,
sacred to the Virgin through all the ages. Mrs. Rayne had taken off the
close-buttoned jacket, and her dress was now open at the throat, with
some rich old lace clinging about it and fastened with a pearl daisy.

"Have you forgiven me the minute's deception I put upon you?" said Mr.
Rayne, pausing beside me. "If I had not read admiration in your face, I
would have told you the truth at once."

"How could one help admiring her?"

"I don't know, I'm sure: I never could."

"She has the serenest face, like still, shaded water. I wonder how she
would look in trouble?"

"It is not becoming to her."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite."

"Your way of life here seems so perfect! No hurry nor worry--nothing to
make wrinkles."

"You like this smooth Indian living, then?"

"_Like it_! I hope you won't think me wholly given over to love of
things that perish in the using, but if I could live this sort of life
with the one I liked best, heaven would be a superfluity."

"It is heaven indeed when I think of the purgatory from which we came
into it," said Mr. Rayne, throwing away his cigar and carrying off my
coffee-cup.

"Do you know anything of Mrs. Rayne's history before her marriage?" I
said to Frank as I joined him in his walk.

"Nothing to speak of--only she was a widow."

"Oh!" said I, feeling that a spot or two had suddenly appeared on the
face of the sun.

"That's nothing against her, is it?"

"No, but I have no patience with second marriages."

"Nor first ones, either," said Frank wickedly.

"But seriously, Frank--would you like to have a wife so beautiful as
Mrs. Rayne?"

"Yes, if she had Rhoda's soul inside of her," said Frank stoutly.

"I shouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because all sorts of eyes gloat on her beauty and drink it in, and in
one way appropriate it to themselves. Mr. Rayne is as proud of the
admiration given to his wife as if it were a personal tribute to his own
taste in selecting her. A beautiful woman never really and truly belongs
to her husband unless he can keep a veil over her face, as the Turks
do."

"I knew you had 'views,'" said Mr. Rayne behind me, "but I had no idea
they were so heathenish. What is New England coming to under the new
rule? Are the plain women going to shut up all the handsome ones?"

"I was only supposing a case."

"Suppositions are dangerous. You first endure, then dally with them, and
finally embrace them as established facts."

"I was only saying that if I am a man when I come into the world next
time (as the Hindoos say), I shall marry a plain woman with a charming
disposition, and so, as it were, have my diamond all to myself by reason
of its dull cover."

"Jealousy, thy name is woman!" said Mr. Rayne. "When the Woman's
Republic is set up, how I shall pity the handsome ones!"

"They will all be banished to some desert island," said Frank.

"And draw all men after them, as the 'Pied Piper of Hamelin' did the
rats," said Mr. Rayne.

"What are you talking about?" said Mrs. Rayne, joining us at this point.

"The pity of it," said her husband, "that beauty is only skin deep."

"That is deep enough," said Mrs. Rayne.

"Yes, if age and sickness and trouble did not make one shed it so soon,"
said I ungratefully.

"Don't mention it," said Mrs. Rayne--"'tis bad enough when it comes. Do
you remember that Greek woman in _Lothair,_ whose father was so
fearfully rich that she seemed to be all crusted with precious stones?"

"Perfectly."

"To dance and sing was all she lived for, and Lothair must needs bring
in the skeleton, as you did, by reminding her of the dolorous time when
she would neither dance nor sing. You think she is crushed, to be sure,
only Disraeli's characters never are crushed, any more than himself. 'Oh
then,' she says, 'we will be part of the audience, and other people will
dance and sing for us.' So beauty is always with us, though one person
loses it."

She gave a little shrug of her shoulders, which made her pearls and
velvet shimmer in the moonlight. She looked so white and cool and
perfect, so apart from common clay, that all at once Queen Guinevere
ceased to be my type of her, and I thought of "Lilith, first wife of
Adam," as we see her in Rossetti's fanciful poem:

    Not a drop of her blood was human,
    But she was made like a soft, sweet woman.

We all went to our rooms after this, and in each of ours hung a
full-length swinging mirror; I had never seen one before, except in a
picture-shop or in a hotel.

"Truly this is 'richness'!" I said, walking up and down and sideways
from one to the other.

"I had no idea you had so much vanity," said Frank, laughing at me, as
he has done ever since he was born.

"Vanity! not a spark. I am only seeing myself as others see me, for the
first time."

"I always had a glass like that in my room at home," said my
sister-in-law, with the least morsel of disdain in her tone.

"Had you? Then you have lost a great deal by growing up to such things.
A first sensation at my age is delightful."

Next day Rhoda and I were sitting with Mrs. Rayne in her dressing-room,
with a great fan swinging overhead. We all had books in our hands, but I
found more charming reading in my hostess, whose fascinations hourly
grew upon me.

She wore a long loose wrapper, clear blue in color, with little silver
stars on it. I don't know how much of my admiration sprang from her
perfect taste in dress. Raiment has an extraordinary effect on the whole
machinery of life. Most people think too lightly of it. Somebody says if
Cleopatra's nose had been a quarter of an inch shorter, the history of
the world would have been utterly changed; but Antony might equally have
been proof against a robe with high neck and tight sleeves. Mrs. Rayne's
face always seemed to crown her costume like a rose out of green leaves,
yet I cannot but think that if I had seen her first in a calico gown and
sitting on a three-legged stool milking a cow, I should still have
thought her a queen among women.

While I sat like a lotos-eater, forgetful of home and butter-making, a
servant brought in a parcel and a note. Mrs. Rayne tossed the note to me
while she unfolded a roll of gray silk.


Dear Guinevere: I send with this a bit of silk that old Fut'ali insisted
on giving to me this morning. It is that horrid gray color which we both
detest. I know you will never wear it, and you had better give it to
Miss Blake to make a toga for her first appearance in the women's
Senate. LANCELOT.

"With all my heart!" said Mrs. Rayne as I gave back the note. "You will
please us both far more than you can please yourself by wearing the
dress with a thought of us. I wonder why Mr. Rayne calls me 'Guinevere'?
But he has a new name for me every day, because he does not like my
own."

"What is it?"

"Waitstill. Did you ever hear it?"

"Never but once," I said with a sudden tightness in my throat. I could
scarcely speak my thanks for the dress.

"I should never wear it," said Mrs. Rayne: "the color is associated with
a very painful part of my life."

"Do you suppose water would spot it?" asked Rhoda, who is of a practical
turn of mind.

"Take a bit and try it."

"Water spots some grays" said Mrs. Rayne with a strange sort of smile as
Rhoda went out, "especially salt water. I spent one night at sea in an
open boat, with a gray dress clinging wet and salt to my limbs. When I
tore it off in rags I seemed to shed all the misery I had ever known.
All my life since then has been bright as you see it now. It would be a
bad omen to put on a gray gown again."

"Then you have made a sea-voyage, Mrs. Rayne?"

"Yes, such a long voyage!--worse than the 'Ancient Mariner's.' No words
can tell how I hate the sea." She sighed deeply, with a sudden darkening
of her gray eyes till they were almost black, and grasped one wrist hard
with the other hand.

A sudden trembling seized me. I was almost as much agitated as Mrs.
Rayne. I felt that I must clinch the matter somehow, but I took refuge
in a platitude to gain time: "There is such a difference in ships,
almost as much as in houses, and the comfort of the voyage depends
greatly on that."

"It may be so," she said wearily.

"My brother's ship is old, but it has been refitted lately to something
like comfort. It's old name was the Sapphire."

This was my shot, and it hit hard.

"The Sapphire! the Sapphire!" she whispered with dilated eyes. "Did you
ever hear--did you ever find--But what nonsense! You must think me the
absurdest of women."

The color came back to her face, and she laughed quite naturally.

"The fact is, Miss Blake, I was very ill and miserable when I was on
shipboard, and to this day any sudden reminder of it gives me a
shock.--Did water spot it?" she said to Rhoda, who came in at this
point.

I thought over all the threads of the circumstance that had come into my
hand, and like Mr. Browning's lover I found "a thing to do."

The next morning I made an excuse to go down to the ship with my
brother, and there, by dint of pressure, I got those stained and dingy
papers into my possession again. I had only that day before me, for we
were going to a hotel the same evening, and the Raynes were to set out
next day for their summer place among the hills, a long way back of
Bombay. Our stay had already delayed their departure.

This was my plot: Mrs. Rayne had been reading a book that I had bought
for the home-voyage, and was to finish it before evening. I selected the
duplicate of the paper which "Waitstill Atwood Eliot" had put in a
bottle and cast adrift when her case had been desperate, and laid it in
the book a page or two beyond Mrs. Rayne's mark. It seemed impossible
that she could miss it: I watched her as a chemist watches his first
experiment.

Twice she took up the book, and was interrupted before she could open
it: the third time she sat down so close to me that the folds of her
dress touched mine. One page, two pages: in another instant she would
have turned the leaf, and I held my breath, when a servant brought in a
note. Her most intimate friend had been thrown from her carriage, and
had sent for her. It was a matter of life and death, and brooked no
delay. In ten minutes she had bidden us a cordial good-bye, and dropped
out of my life for all time.

She never finished _my_ book, nor I _hers_. I had had it in my heart, in
return for her warm hospitality, to cast a great stone out of her past
life into the still waters of her present, and her good angel had turned
it aside just before it reached her. I might have asked Mr. Rayne in so
many words if his wife's name had been Waitstill Atwood Eliot when he
married her, but that would have savored of treachery to her, and I
refrained.

Often in the long calm days of the home-voyage, and oftener still in the
night-watches, I pondered in my heart the items of Mrs. Rayne's history,
and pieced them together like bits of mosaic--the gray eyes and the gray
dress, the identity of name, the indefinite terrors of her sea-voyage,
the little touch concerning Lancelot and Guinevere, her emotion when I
mentioned the Sapphire. If circumstantial evidence can be trusted, I
feel certain that Pedro's ghost appeared to me in the flesh.

ELLA WILLIAMS THOMPSON.




REMINISCENCES OF FLORENCE.


I had six months more to stay on the Continent, and I began for the
first time to be discontented in Paris. There was no soul in that great
city whom I had ever seen before, but this alone would hot have been
sufficient to make me long for a change, except for an accident which
unluckily surrounded me with my own countrymen. These I did not go
abroad to see; and having lived almost entirely in the society of the
French for over two years, it was with dismay that I saw my sanctum
invaded daily by twos and threes of the aimless American nonentities who
presume that their presence must be agreeable to any of their
countrymen, and especially to any countrywoman, after a chance
introduction on the boulevard or an hour spent together in a café.

"Seeing these things," I determined to leave Paris, and the third day
after found me traveling through picturesque Savoy toward Mont Cenis.
All the afternoon the rugged hills had been growing higher and whiter
with snow, and now, just before sunset, we reached the railway terminus,
St. Michel, and were under the shadow of the Alps themselves.

The previous night in the cars I had found myself the only woman among
some half dozen French military officers, who paid me the most polite
attention. They were charmed that I made no objection to their
cigarettes, talked with me on various topics, criticised McClellan as a
general, and were enthusiastic on the subject of our country generally.
About midnight they prepared a grand repast from their traveling-bags,
to which they gave me a cordial invitation. I begged to contribute my
_mesquin_ supply of grapes and brioches, and the supper was a
considerable event. Their canteens were filled with red wines, and one
cup served the whole company. They drank my health and that of the
President of the United States. Afterward we had vocal music, two of the
officers being good singers. They sang Beranger's songs and the charming
serenade from _Lalla Rookh_. I finally expressed a desire to hear the
Marseillaise. This seemed to take them by surprise, but one of the
singers, declaring that he had _"rien à refuser à madame"_ boldly struck
up,

    Allons, enfants de la patrie,
    Le jour de gloire est arrivé;

but his companions checked him before he had finished the first stanza.
The law forbade, they said, the production of the Marseillaise in
society. We were a society: the guard would hear us and might report it.

"Vous voyez, madame," said the singer, "n'il n'est pas défendu d'être
voleur, mais c'est défendu d'être attrapé" (It is not against the law to
be a thief, but to be caught.)

My traveling--companions reached their destination early in the morning,
and, very gallantly expressing regrets that they were not going over the
Alps, so as to bear mer company, bade me farewell.

From the rear of the St. Michel hotel, called the Lion d'Or, I watched
the preparations for crossing Mont Cenis. Three diligences were being
crazily loaded with our baggage. The men who loaded them seemed
imitating the Alpine structure. They piled trunk on trunk to the height
of thirty feet, I verily believe; and if some one should nudge my elbow
and say "fifty," I should write it down so without manifesting the least
surprise.

When the preparations were finished the setting sun was shining clearly
on the white summits above, and we commenced slowly winding up the noble
zigzag road. Rude mountain children kept up with our diligences, asked
for sous and wished us _bon voyage_ in the name of the Virgin.

The grandeur, but especially the extent and number, of the Alpine peaks
impressed me with a vague, undefinable sense, which was not, I think,
the anticipated sensation; and indeed if I had been in a poetic mood, it
would have been quickly dissipated by the mock raptures of a young
Englishman with a poodly moustache and an eye-glass. He called our
attention to every chasm, gorge and waterfall, as if we had been wholly
incapable of seeing or appreciating anything without his aid. As for me,
I did not feel like disputing his susceptibility. I was suffering an
uneasy apprehension of an avalanche--not of snow, but of trunks and
boxes from the topheavy diligences ahead of us. However, we reached the
top of Mont Cenis safely by means of thirteen mules to each coach,
attached tandem, and we stopped at the queer relay-house there some
thirty minutes. Here some women in the garb of nuns served me some soup
with grated cheese, a compound which suggested a dishcloth in flavor,
yet it was very good. I will not attempt to reconcile the two
statements. After the soup I went out to see the Alps. The ecstatic
Briton was still eating and drinking, and I could enjoy the scene
unmolested. I crossed a little bridge near the inn. The night was cold
and bright. Hundreds of snowy peaks above, below and in every direction,
some of their hoary heads lost in the clouds, were glistening in the
light of a clear September moon, and the stillness was only broken by a
wild stream tumbling down the precipices which I looked up to as I
crossed the bridge. It was indeed an impressive scene--cold, desolate,
awful. I walked so near the freezing cataract that the icicles touched
my face, and thinking that Dante, when he wrote his description of hell,
might have been inspired by this very scene, I wrapped my cloak closer
about me and went back to the inn.

The diligences were ready, and we commenced a descent which I cannot
even now think of without a shudder. To each of those heavily-laden
stages were attached two horses only, and we bounded down the
mountain-side like a huge loosened boulder. Imagine the sensation as
you looked out of the windows and saw yourself whirling over yawning
chasms and along the brinks of dizzy precipices, fully convinced that
the driver was drunk and the horses goaded to madness by Alpine demons!
I have been on the ocean in a storm sufficiently severe to make Jew and
Christian pray amicably together; I have been set on fire by a fluid
lamp, and have been dragged under the water by a drowning friend, but I
think I never had such an alarming sense of coming destruction as in
that diligence. I think of those sure-footed horses even now with
gratitude.

We arrived at Susa a long time before daylight. At first, I decided to
stay and see this town, which was founded by a Roman colony in the time
of Augustus. The arch built in his honor about eight years before Christ
seemed a thing worth going to see; but a remark from my companion with
the eye-glass made me determine to go on. He said he was going to "do"
the arch, and I knew I should not be equal to witnessing any more of his
ecstasies.

My first astonishment in Italy was that hardly any of the railroad
officials spoke French. I had always been told that with that language
at your command you could travel all over the Continent. This is a grave
error: even in Florence, although "Ici on parle français" is conspicuous
in many shop-windows, I found I had to speak Italian or go unserved. I
had a mortal dread of murdering the beautiful Italian language; so I
wanted to speak it well before I commenced, like the Irishman who never
could get his boots on until he had worn them a week.

I stopped at Turin, then the capital of Italy, only a short time, and
hurried on to Florence, for that was to be my home for the winter. It
was delightful to come down from the Alpine snows and find myself face
to face with roses and orange trees bearing fruit and blossom. Here I
wandered through the olive-gardens alone, and gave way to the rapturous
sense of simply being in the land of art and romance, the land of love
and song; for there was no ecstatic person with me armed with _Murray_
and prepared to admire anything recommended therein. Besides, I could
enjoy Italy for days and months, and therefore was not obliged to "do"
(detestable tourist slang!) anything in a given time. I was free as a
bird. I knew no Americans in Florence, and determined to studiously
avoid making acquaintances except among Italians, for I wished to learn
the language as I had learned French, by constantly speaking it and no
other.

The day following my arrival in Florence I went out to look for
lodgings, which I had the good fortune to find immediately. I secured
the first I looked at. They were in the Borgo SS. Apostoli, in close
proximity to the Piazza del Granduca, now Delia Signoria. I was passing
this square, thinking of my good luck in finding my niche for the
winter, when, much to my surprise, some one accosted me in English.
Think of my dismay at seeing one of the irrepressible Paris bores I had
fled from! He was in Florence before me, having come by a different
route; and neither of us had known anything about the other's intention
to quit Paris. He asked me at once where I was stopping, and I told him
at the Hotel a la Fontana, not deeming it necessary to add that I was
then on my way there to pack up my traveling-bag and pay my bill. As he
was "doing" Florence in about three days, he never found me out. The
next I heard of him he was "doing" Rome. This American prided himself on
his knowledge of Italian; and one day in a restaurant, wishing for
cauliflower _(cavolo fiore)_, he astonished the waiter by calling for
_horse. "Cavallo"!_ he roared--"_Portéz me cavallo!_" "Cavallo!"
repeated the waiter, with the characteristic Italian shrug. "_Non
simangia in Italia, signore_" (It is not eaten in Italy, signore). Then
followed more execrable Italian, and the waiter brought him something
which elicited "_Non volo! non volo!_" (I don't fly! I don't fly!) from
the American, and "_Lo credo, signore_" from the baffled waiter, much to
the amusement of people at the adjacent tables.

I liked my new quarters very much. They consisted of two goodly-sized
rooms, carpeted with thick braided rag carpets, and decently furnished,
olive oil provided for the quaint old classic-shaped lamp, and the rooms
kept in order, for the astounding price of thirty francs a month. Wood I
had to pay extra for when I needed a fire, and that indeed was
expensive; for a bundle only sufficient to make a fire cost a franc.
There were few days, however, even in that exceptional winter, which
rendered a fire necessary. The _scaldino_ for the feet was generally
sufficient, and this, replenished three times a day, was included in the
rent.

One of my windows looked out on olive-gardens and on the old church San
Miniato, on the hill of the same name. Mr. Hart, the sculptor, told me
that those rooms were very familiar to him. Buchanan Read, I think he
said, had occupied them, and the walls in many places bore traces of
artist vagaries. There were several nice caricatures penciled among the
cheap frescoes of the walls. All the walls are frescoed in Florence.
Think of having your ceiling and walls painted in a manner that
constantly suggests Michael Angelo!

After some weeks spent in looking at the art-wonders in Florence, I
visited many of the studios of our artists. That of Mr. Hart, on the
Piazza Independenza, was one of the most interesting. He had two very
admirable busts of Henry Clay, and all his visitors, encouraged by his
frank manner, criticised his works freely. Most people boldly pass
judgment on any work of art, and "understand" Mrs. Browning when she
says the Venus de' Medici "thunders white silence." I do not. I am sure
I never can understand what a thundering silence means, whatever may be
its color. These appreciators talked of the "word-painting" of Mrs.
Browning.

    They sit on their thrones in a purple sublimity,
    And grind down men's bones to a pale unanimity.

I suppose this is "word-painting." I can see the picture
also--some kings, and possibly queens, seated on gorgeous thrones,
engaged in the festive occupation of grinding bones! Oh, I degrade the
subject, do I? Nonsense! The term is a stilted affectation, perhaps
never better applied than to Mrs. Browning's descriptive spasms. Still,
she was undoubtedly a poet. She wrote many beautiful subjective poems,
but she wrote much that was not poetry, and which suggests only a
deranged nervous system. I have a friend who maintains from her writings
that she never loved, that she did not know what passion meant. However
this may be, the author of the sonnet commencing--

    Go from me! Yet I feel that I shall stand
      Henceforward in thy shadow,

deserves immortality.

But to return to Mr. Hart's studio. One of the most remarkable things I
saw in Florence was this artist's invention to reduce certain details of
sculpture to a mechanical process. This machine at first sight struck me
as a queer kind of ancient armor. In brief, the subject is placed in
position, when the front part of this armor, set on some kind, of hinge,
swings round before him, and the sculptor makes measurements by means of
numberless long metal needles, which are so arranged as to run in and
touch the subject: A stationary mark is placed where the needle touches,
and then I think it is pulled back. So the artist goes on, until some
hundreds of measurements are made, if necessary, when the process is
finished and the subject is released. How these measurements are made to
serve the artist in modeling the statue I cannot very well describe, but
I understood that by their aid Mr. Hart had modeled a bust from life in
the incredible space of two days! I further understood that Mr. Hart's
portrait-busts are remarkable for their correct likeness, which of
course they must be if they are mathematically correct in their
proportions. Many of the artists in Florence have the bad taste to make
sport of this machine; but if Mr. Hart's portrait-busts are what they
have the reputation of being, this sport is only a mask for jealousy.
Mr. Hart was extremely sensitive to the light manner Mr. Powers and
others have of speaking of this invention. One day he was much annoyed
when a visitor, after examining the machine very attentively for some
time, exclaimed, "Mr. Hart, what if you should have a man shut in there
among those points, and he should happen to sneeze?"

The Pitti Palace was one of my favorite haunts, and I often spent whole
hours there in a single salon. There I almost always saw Mr. G----, a
German-American, copying from the masters; and he could copy too! What
an indefatigable worker he was! Slight and delicate of frame, he seemed
absolutely incapable of growing weary. He often toiled there all day
long, his hands red and swollen with the cold, for the winter, as I have
before remarked, was unusually severe. For many days I saw him working
on a Descent from the Cross by Tintoretto--a bold attempt, for
Tintoretto's colors are as baffling as those of the great Venetian
master himself. This copy had received very general praise, and one day
I took a Lucca friend, a dilettante, to see it. Mr. G---- brought the
canvas out in the hall, that we might see it outside of the ocean of
color which surrounded it in the gallery. When we reached the hall, Mr.
G---- turned the picture full to the light. The effect was astounding.
It was so brilliant that you could hardly look at it. It seemed a mass
of molten gold reflecting the sun. "Good God!" exclaimed G----, "did I
do that?" and an expression of bitter disappointment passed over his
face. I ventured to suggest that as everybody had found it good while it
was in the gallery, this brilliant effect must be from the cold gray
marble of the hall. G---- could not pardon the picture, and nothing that
the Italian or I could say had the least effect. He would hear no excuse
for it, and, evidently quite mortified at the début of his Tintoretto,
he hurried the canvas back to the easel. The sister of the czar of
Russia was greatly pleased with this copy, and proposed to buy it, but
whether she did or not I forgot to ascertain.

Alone as I was in Florence, cultivating only the acquaintance of
Italians, yet was I never troubled with _ennui_. I read much at
Vieussieux's, and when I grew tired of that and of music, I made long
sables on the Lung Arno to the Cascine, through the charming Boboli
gardens, or out to Fiesole. Fiesole is some two miles from Florence, and
once on my way there I stopped at the Protestant burying-ground and
pilfered a little wildflower from Theodore Parker's grave to send home
to one of his romantic admirers. Fiesole must be a very ancient town,
for there is a ruined amphitheatre there, and the remains of walls so
old that they are called Pelasgic in their origin; which is, I take it,
sufficiently vague. The high hill is composed of the most solid marble;
so the guidebooks say, at least. This is five hundred and seventy-five
feet above the sea, and on its summit stands the cathedral, very old
indeed, and built in the form of a basilica, like that of San Miniato.
From this hill you look down upon the plain beneath, with the Arno
winding through it, and upon Florence and the Apennine chain, above
which rise the high mountains of Carrara. Here, on the highest available
point of the rock, I used to sit reading, and looking upon the panorama
beneath, until the sinking sun warned me that I had only time to reach
the city before its setting. I used to love to look also at works of art
in this way, for by so doing I fixed them in my mind for future
reference. I never passed the Piazza della Signoria without standing
some minutes before the Loggia dei Lanzi and the old ducal palace with
its marvelous tower. Before this palace, exposed to the weather for
three hundred and fifty years, stands Michael Angelo's David; to the
left, the fountain on the spot where Savonarola was burnt alive by the
order of Alexander VI.; and immediately facing this is the post-office.
I never could pass the post-office without thinking of the poet Shelley,
who was there brutally felled to the earth by an Englishman, who accused
him of being an infidel, struck his blow and escaped.

I made many visits to the Nuova Sacrista to see the tombs of the two
Medici by Michael Angelo. The one at the right on entering is that of
Giuliano, duke of Nemours, brother of Leo X. The two allegorical
figures reclining beneath are Morning and Night. The tomb of Lorenzo de'
Medici, duke of Urfrino, stands on the other side of the chapel, facing
that of the duke de Nemours. The statue of Lorenzo, for grace of
attitude and beauty of expression, has, in my opinion, never been
equaled. The allegorical figures at the feet of this Medici are more
beautiful and more easily understood than most of Michael Angelo's
allegorical figures. Nevertheless, I used sometimes, when looking at
these four figures, to think that they had been created merely as
architectural auxiliaries, and that their expression was an accident or
a freak of the artist's fancy, rather than the expression of some
particular thought: at other times I saw as much in them as most
enthusiasts do--enough, I have no doubt, to astonish their great author
himself. I believe that very few people really experience rapturous
sensations when they look at works of art. People are generally much
more moved by the sight of the two canes preserved in Casa Buonarotti,
upon which the great master in his latter days supported his tottering
frame, than they are by the noblest achievements of his genius.

The Carnival in Florence was a meagre affair compared with the same fête
in Rome. During the afternoon, however, there was goodly procession of
masks in carriages on the Lung' Arno, and in the evening there was a
feeble _moccoletti_ display. The grand masked ball at the Casino about
this time presents an irresistible attraction to the floating population
in Florence. I was foolish enough to go. All were obliged to be dressed
in character or in full ball-costume: no dominoes allowed. The Casino, I
was told, is the largest club-house in the world; and salon after salon
of that immense building was so crowded that locomotion was nearly
impossible. The floral decorations were magnificent, the music was
excellent, and some of the ten thousand people present tried to dance,
but the sets formed were soon squeezed into a ball. Then they gave up in
despair, while the men swore under their breath, and the women repaired
to the dressing-rooms to sew on flounces or other skirt-trimmings. Masks
wriggled about, and spoke to each other in the ridiculously squeaky
voice generally adopted on such occasions. Most of their conversation
was English, and of this very exciting order: "You don't know me?" "Yes
I do." "No you don't." "I know what you did yesterday," etc., etc., _ad
nauseam._ How fine masked balls are in sensational novels! how
absolutely flat and unsatisfactory in fact! There was on this occasion a
vast display of dress and jewelry, and among the babel of languages
spoken the most prominent was the beautiful London dialect sometimes
irreverently called Cockney. I lost my cavalier at one time, and while I
waited for him to find me I retired to a corner and challenged a mask to
a game of chess. He proved to be a Russian who spoke neither French nor
Italian. We got along famously, however. He said something very polite
in Russian, I responded irrelevantly in French, and then we looked at
each other and grinned. He subsequently, thinking he had made an
impression, ventured to press my hand; I drew it away and told him he
was an idiot, at which he was greatly flattered; and then we grinned at
each other again. It was very exciting indeed. I won the game easily,
because he knew nothing of chess, and then he said something in his
mother-tongue, placing his hand upon his heart. I could have sworn that
it meant, "Of course I would not be so rude as to win when playing with
a lady." I thought so, principally because he was a man, for I never
knew a man under such circumstances who did not immediately betray his
self-conceit by making that gallant declaration. Feeling sure that the
Russian had done so, when we placed the pieces on the board again I
offered him my queen. He seemed astounded and hurt; and then for the
first time I thought that if this Russian were an exception to his sex,
and I had _not_ understood his remark, then it was a rudeness to offer
him my queen. I was fortunately relieved from my perplexing situation
by the approach of my cavalier, and as he led me away I gave my other
hand to my antagonist in the most impressive manner, by way of atonement
in case there _had_ been anything wrong in my conduct toward him.

One day during the latter part of my stay in Florence I went the second
time to the splendid studio of Mr. Powers. He talked very eloquently
upon art. He said that some of the classic statues had become famous,
and deservedly so, although they were sometimes false in proportion and
disposed in attitudes quite impossible in nature. He illustrated this by
a fine plaster cast of the Venus of Milo, before which we were standing.
He showed that the spinal cord in the neck could never, from the
position of the head, have joined that of the body, that there was a
radical fault in the termination of the spinal column, and that the
navel was located falsely with respect to height. As he proceeded he
convinced me that he was correct; and in defence of this, my most
cherished idol after the Apollo Belvedere, I only asked the iconoclast
whether these defects might not have been intentional, in order to make
the statue appear more natural when looked at in its elevated position
from below. I subsequently repeated Mr. Powers's criticism of the Venus
of Milo in the studio of another of our distinguished sculptors, and he
treated it with great levity, especially when I told him my authority.
There is a spirit of rivalry among sculptors which does not always
manifest itself in that courteous and well-bred manner which
distinguishes the medical faculty, for instance, in their dealings with
each other. This courtesy is well illustrated by an anecdote I have
recently heard. A gentleman fell down in a fit, and a physician entering
saw a man kneeling over the patient and grasping him firmly by the
throat; whereupon the physician exclaimed, "Why, sir, you are stopping
the circulation in the jugular vein!" "Sir," replied the other, "I am a
doctor of medicine." To which the first M.D. remarked, "Ah! I beg your
pardon," and stood by very composedly until the patient was comfortably
dead.

While Mr. Powers was conversing with me about the Venus of Milo, there
entered two Englishwomen dressed very richly in brocades and velvets.
They seemed very anxious to see everything in the studio, talked in loud
tones of the various objects of art, passed us, and occupied themselves
for some time before the statue called California. I heard one of them
say, "I wonder if there's anybody 'ere that talks Hinglish?" and in the
same breath she called out to Mr. Powers, "Come 'ere!" He was at work
that day, and wore his studio costume. I was somewhat surprised to see
him immediately obey the rude command, and the following conversation
occurred:

"Do you speak Hinglish?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What is this statue?"

"It is called California, madam."

"What has she got in 'er 'and?"

"Thorns, madam, in the hand held behind the back; in the other she
presents the quartz containing the tempting metal."

"Oh!"

We next entered a room where there was another work of the sculptor in
process of formation. Mr. Powers and myself were engaged in an animated
and, to me, very agreeable conversation, which was constantly
interrupted by these ill-bred women, who kept all the time mistaking the
plaster for the marble, and asked the artist the most pestering
questions on the _modus operandi_ of sculpturing. I was astonished at
the marvelous temper of Mr. Powers, who politely and patiently answered
all their queries. By some lucky chance these women got out of the way
during our slow progress back to the outer rooms, and I enjoyed Mr.
Powers's conversation uninterruptedly. He showed me the beautiful baby
hand in marble, a copy of his daughter's hand when an infant, and had
just returned it to its shrine when the two women reappeared, and we all
proceeded together. In the outer room there were several admirable
busts, upon which these women passed comment freely. One of these busts
was that of a lady, and they attacked it spitefully. "What an ugly
face!" "What a mean expression about the mouth!" "Isn't it 'orrible?"

"Who is it?" asked one of them, addressing Mr. Powers.

"That is a portrait of my wife," said the artist modestly.

"Your wife!" repeated one of the women, and then, nothing abashed,
added, "Who are you?"

"My name is Powers, madam," he answered very politely. This discovery
evidently disconcerted the impudence even of these visitors, and they
immediately left the studio.

As the day approached for my departure I visited all my old haunts, and
dwelt fondly upon scenes which I might never see again. My dear old
music-master cried when I bade him farewell. Povero maestro! He used to
think me so good that I was always ashamed of not being a veritable
angel. I left Florence when

        All the land in flowery squares,
    Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,
    Smelt of the coming summer.

My last visit was with the maestro to the Cascine, where he gathered me
a bunch of wild violets--cherished souvenir of a city I love, and of a
friend whose like I "ne'er may look upon again."

MARIE HOWLAND.




THE SOUTHERN PLANTER.


While Philadelphia hibernates in the ice and snow of February, the
spring season opens in the Southern woods and pastures. The fragrant
yellow jessamine clusters in golden bugles over shrubs and trees, and
the sward is enameled with the white, yellow and blue violet. The crocus
and cowslip, low anemone and colts-foot begin to show, and the land
brightens with waxy flowers of the huckleberry, set in delicate gamboge
edging. Yards, greeneries, conservatories breathe a June like fragrance,
and aviaries are vocal with songsters, mocked outside by the American
mocking-bird, who chants all night under the full moon, as if day was
too short for his medley.

New Orleans burgeons with the season. The broad fair avenues, the wide
boulevards, famed Canal street, are luxuriant with spring life and
drapery. Dashing equipages glance down the Shell Road with merry
driving-and picnic-parties. There is boating on the lake, and delicious
French collations at pleasant resorts, spread by neat-handed mulatto
waiters speaking a patois of French, English and negro. There spring
meats and sauces and light French wines allure to enjoyments less
sensual than the coarser Northern climate affords.

The unrivaled French opera is in season, the forcing house of that
bright garden of exotics. Other and Northern cities boast of such
entertainments, but I apprehend they resemble the Simon-Pure much as an
Englishman's French resembles the native tongue. In New Orleans it is
the natural, full-flavored article, lively with French taste and talent,
and for a people instinct with a truer Gallic spirit, perhaps, than that
of Paris itself. It is antique and colonial, but age and the sea-voyage
have preserved more distinctly the native _bouquet_ of the wine after
all grosser flavors have wasted away. The spectacle within the theatre
on a fine night is brilliant, recherché and French. From side-scene to
dome, and from gallery after gallery to the gay parquette, glitters the
bright, shining audience. There are loungers, American and French, blasé
and roué, who in the intervals drink brandy and whisky, or anisette,
maraschino, curçoa or some other fiery French cordial. The French
loungers are gesticulatory, and shoulders, arms, fingers, eyes and
eyebrows help out the tongue's rapid utterance; but they are never rude
or boisterous. There are belles, pretty French belles, with just a tint
of deceitless rouge for fashion's sake, and tinkling, crisp, low French
voices modulated to chime with the music and not disharmonize it; nay,
rather add to the sweetness of its concord.

And there is the Creole dandy, the small master of the revels. There is
nothing perfumed in the latest box of bonbons from Paris so exquisite,
sparkling, racy, French and happy in its own sweet conceit as he is. He
has hands and feet a Kentucky girl might envy for their shapely delicacy
and dainty size, cased in the neatest kid and prunella. His hair is
negligent in the elegantest grace of the perruquier's art, his dress
fashioned to the very line of fastidious elegance and simplicity, yet a
simplicity his Creole taste makes unique and attractive. He has the true
French persiflage, founded on happy content, not the blank indifference
of the Englishman's disregard. It becomes graceful self-forgetfulness,
and yet his vanity is French and victorious. In the atmosphere of
breathing music and faint perfume he looks around the glancing boxes,
and knows he has but to throw his sultanic handkerchief to have the
handsomest Circassian in the glowing circle of female beauty. But he
does not throw it, for all that. His manner plainly says: "Beautiful
dames, it would do me much of pleasure if I could elope with you all on
the road of iron, but the _bête noir_, the Moral, will not permit.
Behold for which, as an opened box of Louvin's perfumeries, I dispense
my fragrant affection to you all: breathe it and be happy!" Such homage
he receives with graceful acquiescence, believing his recognition of it
a sweet fruition to the fair adorers. He accepts it as he does the ices,
wines and delicate French dishes familiar to his palate. Life is a
fountain of eau sucrée, where everything is sweet to him, and he tries
to make it so to you, for he is a kindly-natured, true-hearted, valiant
little French gentleman. His loves, his innocent dissipations, his grand
passions, his rapier duels, would fill the volumes of a Le Sage or a
Cervantes. In the gay circles of New Orleans he floats with lambent
wings and irresistible fine eyes, its serenest butterfly, admired and
spoiled alike by the French and American element.

At this early spring season a new atom of the latter enters the charmed
circle, breaking its merry round into other sparkles of foam. A
well-formed, stately, rather florid gentleman alights at the St.
Charles, and is ushered into the hospitalities of that elegant
caravansary. There is something impressive about him, or there would be
farther North. He is American, from the strong, careless Anglo-Saxon
face, through all the stalwart bones and full figure, to the strong,
firm, light step. He will crush through the lepidoptera of this
half-French society like a silver knife through _Tourtereaux soufflés à
la crême_. He brings letters to this and that citizen, or he is well
known already, and "coloneled" familiarly by stamp-expectant waiters and
the courteous master of ceremonies at the clerk's desk. He calls, on his
bankers, and is received with gracious familiarity in the pleasant
bank-parlor. Correspondence has made them acquainted with Colonel
Beverage in the way of business: they are glad to see him in person, and
will be happy to wait on him. He makes them happy in that way, for they
do wait upon him satisfactorily. There is a little pleasant interchange
of news and city gossip, and of something else. There is a crinkling of
a certain crispy, green foliage, and the colonel withdraws in the midst
of civilities.

He next appears on Canal street, by and beyond the Clay Monument, with
occasional pauses at clothiers', and buys his shirts at Moody's, as he
has probably often sworn not to do, because of its annoyingly frequent
posters everywhere. He enters jewelers' shops and examines
trinkets--serpents with ruby eyes curled in gold on beds of golden
leaves with emerald dews upon them; pearls, pear-shaped and tearlike,
brought up by swart, glittering divers, seven fathom deep, at Tuticorin
or in the Persian Gulf; rubies and sapphires mined in Burmese Ava, and
diamonds from Borneo and Brazil. Is he choosing a bridal present? It
looks so; but no, he selects a splendid, brilliant solitaire, for which
he pays eight hundred dollars out of a plethoric purse, and also a
finger-ring, diamond too, for two hundred and fifty dollars. The
jewelers are polite, as the bankers were. He must be a large
cotton-planter, one of a class with whom a fondness for jewels serves as
a means of dozing away life in a kind of crystallization. He otherwise
adorns his stately person, till he has a Sublime Porte indeed, the very
vizier of a fairy tale glittering in barbaric gems and gold. His taste,
to speak it mildly, is expressed rather than subdued--not to be compared
with the quiet elegance of your husband or lover, madam or miss, but not
unsuited to his showy style, for all that. As the crimson-purple,
plume-like prince's feather has its own royal charm in Southern gardens
beside the pale and placidlily, so these luxuriant adornments, do not
misbecome his full and not too fleshy person. There is a certain harmony
in the Oriental sumptuousness of his attire, like radiant sunsets,
appropriate to certain styles of man and woman. Let us humble creatures
be content to have our portraits done in crayon, but the colonel calls
for the color-box.

So adorned and radiant, this variety of the American aloe floats into
the charmed circle of New Orleans society--that lively, sparkling
epitome and relic of the old régime. He has good letters and a fair
name, and mingles in the Mystick Krewe, that curious club, possible
nowhere else, that has raised mummery into the sphere of aesthetics.
Perhaps he has worn the gray, perhaps the blue. It is only in the very
arcana of exclusive passion it makes much difference. But gray or blue,
or North or South in birth, he is in every essential a Southerner, as
many, like S.S. Prentiss, curiously independent of nativity, are. He is
well received and courteously entreated. He has his little suppers at
Moreau's, and knows the ways of the place and names of the waiters. He
has his promenades, his drives, his club visits, is seen everywhere--a
brilliant convolvulus now, twining the espaliers of that Saracenic
fabric of society; to speak architecturally, its very summer-house. He
visits the opera and gives it his frank approval, but confesses a
preference for the old plantation-melodies. He crushes through the
meshes of the Creole dandies, not offensively, but as the law of his
volume and momentum dictates, and they yield the _pas_ to his superior
weight and metal. They are civil, and he is civil, but they do not like
one another, for all that. That Zodiac passed, they continue their own
summery orbit of charm and conquest. He tends toward the aureal spheres
and the green and pleasant banks of issue. The colonel is not here for
pleasure, though he takes a little pleasure, as is his way, seasonably;
but he means business, and that several thirsty, eager cotton-houses of
repute know.

Of course they know. It came in his letters and distills in the aroma of
his talk. It may even have slipped into the personals of the _Pic_ and
_Times_ that Colonel Beverage has taken Millefleur and Rottenbottom
plantations on Red River, and is going extensively into the cultivation
of the staple. The colonel is modest over this: "not extensively, no,
but to the extent of his limited means." In the mean while he looks out
for some sound, well-recommended cotton-house.

This means business. In the North the farmer raises his crop on his own
capital, and turns it over unencumbered to the merchant for the public.
The credit system prevails in the agriculture of the South, and brings
another precarious element into the already hazardous occupation of
cotton-growing. A new party appears in the cotton-merchant. He is not
merely the broker, yielding the proceeds, less a commission, to the
planter. Either, by hypothecation on advances made during the year, he
secures a legal pre-emption in the crop, or, by initiatory contract, he
becomes an actual partner of limited liability in the crop itself. He
agrees to furnish so much cash capital at periods for the cultivation
and securing of the crop, which is husbanded by the planter. The money
for these advances he obtains from the banks; and hence it is that in
every cotton-crop raised South there are three or more principals
actually interested--the banker, the merchant and the planter. This
condition of planting is almost invariable. Even the small farmer, whose
crop is a few bags, is ground into it. In his case the country-side
grocer and dealer is banker and merchant, and his advances the bare
necessaries. In this blending of interests the curious partnership
rises, thrives, labors and sometimes falls--the planter, as a rule,
undermost in that accident.

The Millefleur and Rottenbottom plantations are famous, and a hand well
over the crops raised under such shrewd, experienced management as that
of Colonel Beverage is a stroke of policy. Therefore, as the bankers and
jewelers have been polite, so now the cotton-merchants are civil; but
the colonel is shy--an old bird and a game bird.

Shy, but not suspicious. He chooses his own time, and at an early day
walks into the business-house of Negocier & Duthem. They are pleased to
see the colonel in the way of business, as they have been in society,
and the pleasure is mutual. As he expounds his plans they are more and
more convinced that he is a plumy bird of much waste feather.

He has taken Rottenbottom and Millefleur, and is going pretty well
into cotton. He thinks he understands it: he ought to. Then he
has his own capital--an advantage, certainly. Some of his friends,
So-and-so--running over commercial and bankable names easily--have
suggested the usual co-operation with some reputable house, and an
extension, but he believes He will stay within limits. He has five
thousand dollars in cash he wishes to deposit with some good firm for
the year's supplies. He believes that will be sufficient, and he has
called to hear their terms. All this comes not at once, but here and
there in the business-conversation.

The reader will perceive one strong bait carelessly thrown out by the
auriferous or folliferous colonel--the five thousand dollars cash in
hand. The immediate use of that is a strong incentive to the house. They
covet the colonel's business: they think well of the proposed extension.
Cotton is sure to be up, and under practical, experienced cultivation
must yield a handsome fortune. The result is foreseen. The cotton-house
and the colonel enter into the usual agreement of such transactions. The
colonel leaves his five thousand dollars, and draws on that, and for as
much more as may be necessary in securing the crop.

The commercial reader North who has had no dealings South will smile at
the credulous merchant who entrusts his credit to such a full-blown,
thirsty tropical pitcher-plant as the colonel, who carries childish
extravagances in his very dress; but he will judge hastily. We have seen
this gaudy efflorescence pass over the curiously-wrought enameled
gold-work, opals, pearls and rubies, and adorn himself with solid
diamonds. The careful economist North puts his superfluous thousands in
government bonds, or gambles them away in Erie stocks, because he likes
the increase of Jacob's speckled sheep. The Southerner invests his in
diamonds because he likes show, and diamonds have a pretty steady market
value. There is method, too, in the colonel's associations, and all his
acquaintance is gilt-edged and bankable.

His business is now done, and he does not tarry, but wings his way to
Millefleur and Rottenbottom, where he moults all his fine feathers. He
goes into fertilizers, beginning with crushed cotton-seed and barnyard
manure, if possible, before February is over. He follows the
shovel-plough with a slick-jack, and plants, and then the labor begins
to fail him. He talks about importing Chinese, and writes about it in
the local paper. He is sure it will do, as he is positive in all his
opinions. He is true pluck, and tries to make new machinery make up for
deficient labor. He buys "bull-tongues," "cotton-shovels," "fifteen-inch
sweeps," "twenty-inch sweeps," "team-ploughs with seven-inch twisters,"
and a "finishing sweep of twenty-six inches." He hears of other
inventions, and orders them. The South is flooded with a thousand quack
contrivances now, about as applicable to cotton-raising as a pair of
nut-crackers; but the colonel buys them. He is going to dispense with
the hoe. That is the plan; and by that plan of furnishing a large
plantation with new tools before Lent is over the five thousand dollars
are gone. But he writes cheerfully. It is his nature to be sanguine, and
to hope loudly, vaingloriously; and he writes it honestly enough to his
merchant--and draws. The labor gets worse and worse. In the indolent
summer days the negro, careless, thriftless, ignorant, works only at
intervals. Perhaps the June rise catches him, and there is a heavy
expense in ditching and damming to save the Rottenbottom crop. Maybe the
merchant hears of the army-worm and is alarmed, but the colonel writes
back assuring letters that it is only the grasshopper, and the
grasshopper has helped more than hurt--and draws. Then possibly the
army-worm comes sure enough, and cripples him. But he keeps up his
courage--and draws. The five thousand dollars appear to have been
employed in digging or building a sluice through which a constant
current of currency flows from the city to Rottenbottom and Millefleur.
The merchant has gone into bank, and the tide flows on. At last the
planter writes: "The most magnificent crop ever raised on Red River,
just waiting for the necessary hands to gather it in!" Of course the
necessary sums are supplied, and at last the crop gets to market. It
finds the market low, and declining steadily week by week. The banks
begin to press: money is tight, as it is now while I write. The crop is
sacrificed, for the merchant cannot wait, and some fine morning the
house of Negocier & Duthem is closed, and Colonel Beverage is bankrupt.

And both are ruined? No. We will suppose the business-house is old and
reputable: the banks are obliging and creditors prudently liberal, and
by and by the firm resumes its old career. As for the colonel, the
reader sees that to ruin him would be an absolute contradiction of
nature. His friends or relations give him assistance, or he sells his
diamonds, and soon you meet him at the St. Charles, as blooming,
sanguine and splendiferous as ever. No, he cannot be ruined, but his is
not an infrequent episode in the life of a Southern Planter.

WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

       *       *       *       *       *



BABES IN THE WOOD.

    I had two little babes, a boy and girl--
      Two little babes that are not with me now:
    On one bright brow full golden fell the curl--
      The curl fell chestnut-brown on one bright brow.

    I like to dream of them that some soft day,
      Whilst wandering from home, their fitful feet
    Went heedlessly through some still woodland way
      Where light and shade harmoniously meet;

    And that they wandered deeper and more deep
      Into the forest's fragrant heart and fair,
    Till just at evenfall they dropped asleep,
      And ever since they have been resting there.

    After their willful wandering that day
      Each is so tired it does not wake at all,
    Whilst over them the boughs that sigh and sway
      Conspire to make perpetual evenfall.

    And I, that must not join them, still am blest,
      Passionately, though this poor heart grieves;
    For memories, like birds, at my behest,
      Have covered them with tender thoughts, like leaves.

EDGAR FAWCETT.




MY CHARGE ON THE LIFE-GUARDS.


Now that our little international troubles about consequential damages
and the like are happily settled, and there is no danger that my
revelations will augment them in any degree, I think I may venture to
give the particulars of an affair of honor which I once had with a
gigantic member of Her Britannic Majesty's household troops.

My guardian had a special veneration for England in general and for
Oxford in particular, and I was brought up and sent to Yale with the
full understanding that St. Bridget's, Oxon., was the place where I was
to be "finished." I left Yale at the end of Junior year and crossed the
ocean in the crack steamer of the then famous Collins line. I do not
believe any young American ever had a more favorable introduction to
England than I had, and the wonder is that, considering the
philo-Anglican atmosphere in which I was educated, I did not become a
thorough-paced renegade. I was, however, blessed with a tolerably
independent spirit, and kept my nationality intact throughout my
university course.

Like Tom Brown, I felt myself drawn to the sporting set, and, as I was
always an adept at athletics, soon won repute as an oarsman, and was
well satisfied to be looked upon as the Yankee champion sundry amateur
rowing-and boxing-matches, as well as in the lecture-room. Of course, I
was the mark for no end of good-natured chaff about my nationality, but
was nearly always able, I believe, to sustain the honor of the American
name, and so at length graduated in the "firsts" as to scholarship, and
enjoyed the distinguished honor of pulling number four in the "'Varsity
eight" in our annual match with Cambridge on the Thames. Moreover, I
stood six feet in my stockings, had the muscle of a gladiator, and was
physically the equal of any man at Oxford.

After the race was over my special cronies hung about London for a few
days, usually making that classical "cave" of Evans's a rendezvous in
the evening. Two or three young officers of the Guards were often with
us, and one night, when the talk had turned, as it often did, on
personal prowess, the superb average physique of their regiment was duly
lauded by our soldier companions. At length one of them remarked, in
that aggravatingly superior tone which some Englishmen assume, that any
man in his troop could handle any two of the then present company. This
provoked a general laugh of incredulity, and two or three of our college
set turned to me with--"What do you say to that, Jonathan?"

"Nonsense!" said I. "I'll put on the gloves with the biggest fellow
among them, any day."

This somewhat democratic readiness to spar with a private soldier led to
remarks which I chose to consider insular, if not insolent, and I
replied, supporting the principle of Yankee equality, until, losing my
temper at something which one of the ensigns said, I delivered myself in
some such fashion as this: "Well, gentlemen, I'm only one Yankee among
many Englishmen, but I will bet a hundred guineas, and put up the money,
that I will tumble one of those mighty warriors out of his saddle in
front of the Horse Guards, and ride off on his horse before the guard
can turn out and stop me."

Of course my bet was instantly taken by the officers, but my friends
were so astounded at my rashness that I found no backers. However, my
blood was up, and, possibly because Evans's bitter beer was buzzing
slightly in my head, I booked several more bets at large odds in my own
favor. As the hour was late, we separated with an agreement to meet and
arrange details on the following day, keeping the whole affair strictly
secret meanwhile.

I confess that my feelings were not of the pleasantest as I sat at my
late London breakfast somewhere about noon the next day, and I was fain
to admit to my special friend that I had put myself in an awkward, if
not an unenviable, position. However, I was in for it, and being
naturally of an elastic temperament, began to cast about for a cheerful
view of my undertaking. In the course of the day preliminaries were
arranged and reduced to writing with all the care which Englishmen
practice in such affairs of "honor." I only stipulated that I should be
allowed to use a stout walking-stick in my encounter; that I should be
kept informed as to the detail for guard; that I should be freely
allowed to see the regiment at drill and in quarters; and that I should
select my time of attack within a fortnight, giving a few hours' notice
to all parties concerned, so as to ensure their presence as witnesses.

Every one who has ever visited London has seen and admired the gigantic
horsemen who sit on mighty black steeds, one on either side of the
archway facing Whitehall, and who are presumed at once to guard the
commander-in-chief's head-quarters and to serve as "specimen bricks" of
the finest cavalry corps in the world. Splendid fellows they are! None
of them are under six feet high, and many of them are considerably above
that mark. They wear polished steel corselets and helmets, white
buck-skin trowsers, high jack-boots, and at the time of which I write
their arms consisted of a brace of heavy, single-barreled pistols in
holsters, a carbine and a sabre. The firearms were, under ordinary
circumstances, not loaded, and the sabre was held at a "carry" in the
right hand. This last was the weapon against which I must guard, and I
accordingly placed a traveling cap and a coat in the hands of a discreet
tailor, who sewed steel bands into the crown of one and into the
shoulders of the other, in such a way as afforded very efficient
protection against a possible downward cut.

Besides attending to these defensive preparations, I at once looked
about for a competent horseman with military experience who could give
me some practical hints as to encounters between infantry and cavalry,
and, singularly enough, was thrown in with that gallant young officer
who rode into immortality in front of the Light Brigade at Balaklava a
few years afterward. I learned that he was a superb horseman, was down
upon the English system of cavalry training, and was using pen and
tongue to bring about a change. A sudden inspiration led me to take him
into my confidence, as the terms of our agreement permitted me to do. He
caught the idea with enthusiasm. What an argument it would be in favor
of his new system if a mere civilian unhorsed a Guardsman trained after
the old fashion! For a week he drilled me more or less every day in
getting him off his horse in various ways, and I speedily became a
proficient in the art, he meanwhile gaining some new ideas on the
subject, which were duly printed in his well-known book.

Well, to make my story short, I gave notice to interested parties on the
tenth day, put on my steel-ribbed cap and my armor-plated coat, and with
stick in hand walked over to a hairdresser's with whom I had previously
communicated, had my complexion darkened to a Spanish olive, put on a
false beard, and was ready for service. I had arranged with this
tonsorial artist, whose shop was in the Strand near Northumberland
House, that he should be prepared to remove these traces of disguise as
speedily as he had put them on, and that I should leave a stylish coat
and hat in his charge, to be donned in haste should occasion require. I
next engaged two boys to stand opposite Northumberland House, and be
ready to hold a horse. These boys I partially paid beforehand, and
promised more liberal largess if they did their duty. Preliminaries
having been thus arranged, I strolled down Whitehall, feeling very much
as I did years afterward when I found myself going into action for the
first time in Dixie.

It was early afternoon on a lovely spring day. The Strand was a roaring
stream of omnibuses and drays, carriages were beginning to roll along
the drives leading to Rotten Row, and all London was in the streets. I
was assured that at this hour I should find a big but father clumsy
giant on post; and there he was, sure enough, sitting like a colossal
statue on his coal-black charger, the crest of his helmet almost
touching the keystone of the arch under which he sat, his accoutrements
shining like jewels, and he looking every inch a British cavalryman. I
walked past on the opposite side of Whitehall, meeting, without being
recognized, all my aiders and abettors in this most heinous attack on
Her Majesty's Guards. I then crossed the street and took a good look at
my man. He and his companion-sentry under the other arch were aware of
officers in "mufti" on the opposite sidewalk, and kept their eyes
immovably to the front. Evidently nothing much short of an earthquake
could cause either to relax a muscle. The little circle of admiring
beholders which is always on hand inspecting these splendid horsemen was
present, of course, with varying elements, and I had to wait a few
minutes until a small number of innocuous spectators coincided with the
aphelion of the periodical policeman.

It was not a pleasant thing to contemplate that tower of polished
leather, brass and steel, with a man inside of it some forty pounds
heavier than I, and think that in a minute or so we two should be
engaged in a close grapple, whose termination involved considerable risk
for me physically as well as pecuniarily. However, there was, in
addition to the feeling of apprehension, a touch of elation at the
thought that I, a lone Yankee, was about to beard the British lion in
his most formidable shape, almost under the walls of Buckingham Palace.

I looked my antagonist carefully over, deciding several minor points in
my mind, and then at a favorable moment stepped quietly within striking
distance, and delivered a sharp blow with my stick on his left instep,
as far forward as I could without hitting the stirrup. The man seemed to
be in a sort of military trance, for he never winced. Quick as thought,
I repeated the blow, and this time the fellow fairly yelled with rage,
astonishment and pain. I have since made up my mind that his nerve-fibre
must have been of that inert sort which transmits waves of sensation but
slowly, so that the perception of the first blow reached the interior of
his helmet just about as the second descended. At all events, he jerked
back his foot, and somehow, between the involuntary contraction of his
flexor muscles from pain and the glancing of my stick, his foot slipped
from the stirrup. This, as I had learned from my instructor, was a great
point gained, and in an instant I had him by the ankle and by the top of
his jack-boot, doubling his leg, at the same time heaving mightily
upward.

As I gave my whole strength to the effort I was dimly aware of screams
and panic among the nursery--maids and children who were but a moment
before my fellow-spectators. At the same time I caught the flash of the
Guardsman's sabre as he cut down at me after the fashion prescribed in
the broadsword exercise. Fortune, however, did not desert me. My
antagonist had not enough elbow-room, and his sword-point was shivered
against the stone arch overhead, the blade descending flatways and
harmlessly upon my well-protected shoulder just as, with a final effort,
I tumbled him out his saddle.

The recollection of the ludicrous figure which that Guardsman cut haunts
me still. His pipeclayed gloves clutched wildly at holster and cantle as
he went over. Down came the gleaming helmet crashing upon the pavement,
and with a calamitous rattle and bang the whole complicated structure of
corselet, scabbard, carbine, cross-belts, spurs and boots went into the
inside corner of the archway, a helpless heap.

That started the horse. The noble animal had stood my assault as
steadily as if he had been cast in bronze, but precisely such an
emergency as this had never been contemplated in his training, as it had
not in that of his master, and he now started forward rather wildly. I
had my hand on the bridle before he had moved a foot, and swung myself
half over his back as he dashed across the sidewalk and up Whitehall.
The Guards' saddles are very easy when once you are in them, and I had
reason, temporarily at least, to approve the English style of riding
with short stirrups, for I readily found my seat, and ascertained that I
could touch bottom with my toes. As I left the scene of my victory
behind me I heard the guards turning out, and caught a glimpse as of all
London running in my direction, but by the time that I had secured the
control of my horse I had distanced the crowd, and as we entered the
Strand we attracted comparatively little notice. In driving, the English
turn out to the left instead of to the right, as is the custom here, and
I was obliged to cross the westward-bound line of vehicles before I
could fall in with that which would bring me to my boys. I decided to
make a "carom" of it, and nearly took the heads off a pair of horses,
and the pole off the omnibus to which they were attached, as I dashed
through. Turning to the right, I soon lost the torrent of invective
hurled after me by the driver and conductor of the discomfited 'bus, and
in less than two minutes--which seemed to me an age, for the pursuit was
drawing near--I reached my boys, dropped them a half sov. apiece, which
I had ready in my hand, and bolted for my hairdresser's, the boys
leading the horse in the opposite direction, as previously ordered.

It was none too soon, for as I ran up stairs I saw three or four
policemen running toward the horse, and there was a gleam of dancing
plumes and shining helmets toward Whitehall. My false beard and
complexion were changed with marvelous rapidity, and, assuming my
promenade costume, I sauntered down stairs and out upon the sidewalk in
time to see the whole street jammed with a crowd of excited Britons,
while the recaptured horse was turned over to the Guardsmen, and the two
boys were marched off to Bow street for examination before a magistrate.

A private room and an elaborate dinner at the United Service Club
closed the day; and I must admit that my military friends swallowed
their evident chagrin with a very good grace. Of course I was told that
I could not do it again, which I readily admitted; and that there was
not another man in the troop whom I could have unhorsed--an assertion
which I as persistently combated. The affair was officially hushed up,
and probably not more than a few thousand people ever heard of it
outside military circles.

How I escaped arrest and punishment to the extent of the law I did not
know for many years, for the duke of Wellington, who was then
commander-in-chief, had only to order the officers concerned under
arrest, and I should have been in honor bound to come forward with a
voluntary confession.

My giant was sent for to the old duke's private room the day after his
overthrow, and questioned sharply by the adjutant, who, with pardonable
incredulity, suspected that bribery alone could have brought about so
direful a catastrophe. The duke was from the first convinced of the
soldier's, honesty and bravery, and presently broke in upon the
adjutant's examination with--"Well, well! speak to me now. What have you
to say for yourself?"

"May it please yer ludship," said the undismayed soldier, "I've never
fought a civilian sence I 'listed, an' yer ludship will bear me witness
that there's nothing in the cavalry drill about resisting a charge of
foot when a mon's on post at the Horse Guards."

This speech was delivered with the most perfect sincerity and sobriety,
and although it reflected upon the efficiency of the army under the hero
of Waterloo, the Iron Duke was so much impressed by the affair that he
sent word to Lieutenant-Colonel Varian, commanding the regiment, not to
order the man any punishment whatever, but to see that his command was
thereafter trained in view of possible attacks, even when posted in
front of army head-quarters.

CHARLES L. NORTON.




PAINTING AND A PAINTER.


Charles V. once said, "Titian should be served by Caesar;" and Michael
Angelo, we read, was treated by Lorenzo de' Medici "as a son;" Raphael,
his contemporary, was great enough to revere him, and thank God he had
lived at the same time. In England, in France, in Germany, in Italy, in
Spain at this day, the poet and the painter stand hedged about by the
divinity of their gifts, and the people are proud to recognize their
kingship.

Has "Reverence, that angel of the world," as Shakespeare beautifully
says, forgot to visit America? Or must we consider ourselves less
capable yet of delicate appreciation, such as older nations possess? Or
are we over-occupied in gaining possession of material comforts and
luxuries, and so forget to revere our poets and painters till it is too
late, and the curtain has fallen upon their unobtrusive and often
struggling earthly career? What a millennium will have arrived when we
learn to be as _faithful_ to our love as we are sincere!

Questions like these have been asked also in times preceding ours.
Alfred de Musset wrote upon this subject in 1833, in Paris: "There are
people who tell you our age is preoccupied, that men no longer read
anything or care for anything. Napoleon was occupied, I think, at
Beresina: he, however, had his _Ossian_ with him. When did Thought lose
the power of being able to leap into the saddle behind Action? When did
man forget to rush like Tyrtaeus to the combat, a sword in one hand, the
lyre in the other? Since the world still has a body, it has a soul."

Monsieur Charles Blanc writes: "In order to have an idea of the
importance of the arts, it is enough to fancy what the great nations of
the world would be if the monuments they have erected to their faiths,
and the works whereon they have left the mark of their genius, were
suppressed from history. It is with people as with men--after death only
the emanations of their mind remain; that is to say, literature and art,
written poems, and poems inscribed on stone, in marble or in color."

The same writer, in his admirable book, _Grammaire des arts du dessin,_
from which we are tempted to quote again and again, says: "The artist
who limits himself simply to the imitation of Nature reaches only
_individuality_: he is a slave. He who interprets Nature sees in her
happy qualities; he evolves _character_ from her; he is master. The
artist who idealizes her discovers in her or imprints upon her the image
of _beauty_: this last is a great master.... Placed between Nature and
the ideal, between what is and what must be, the artist has a vast
career before him in order to pass from the reality he sees to the
beauty he divines. If we follow him in this career, we see his model
transform itself successively before his eyes.... But the artist must
give to these creations of his soul the imprint of life, and he can only
find this imprint in the individuals Nature has created. The two are
inseparable--the type, which is a product of thought, and the
individual, which is a child of life."

With this excellent analysis before us, we will recall one by one some
of the best-known and most interesting works of W.M. Hunt, a painter who
now holds a prominent place among the artists of America. We will try to
discover by careful observation if the high gifts of Verity and
Imagination, the sign and seal of the true artist, really belong to him:
if so, where these qualities are expressed, and what value we should set
upon them.

First, perhaps, for those readers remote from New England who may never
have seen any pictures by this artist, a few words should be said by way
of describing some characteristics of his work and the limitations of
it; which limitations are rather loudly dwelt upon by connoisseurs and
lovers of the popular modern French school. Artists discern these
limitations of course more keenly even than others, but their tribute to
verity and ideal beauty as represented by this painter is too sincere to
allow caviling to find expression. This limitation to which we refer
causes Mr. Hunt to allow _ideal suggestions_, rather than pictures, to
pass from his studio, and makes him cowardly before his own work. It
recalls in a contrary sense that saying of the sculptor Puget: "The
marble trembles before me." Mr. Hunt trembles before his new-born idea.
His swift nature has allowed him in the first hour of work to put into
his picture the tenderness or rapture, the unconscious grace or
tempestuous force, which he despaired at first of ever being able to
express. In the flush of success he stops: he has it, the idea; the
chief interest of the subject is portrayed before him; the delicate
presence (and what can be more delicate than the thoughts he has
delineated?) is there, and may vanish if touched in a less fortunate
moment. But is this lack of fulfillment in the artist entirely without
precedent or parallel? Had not Sir Joshua Reynolds a studio full of
young artists who "finished off" his pictures? Were not the very faces
themselves painted with such rapidity and want of proper method as to
drop off, on occasion, entirely from the canvas, as in case of the boy's
head, in being carried through the street? Hunt is of our own age, and
would scorn the suggestion of having a hand or a foot painted for him,
as if it were a matter of small importance what individual expression a
hand or a foot should wear; but who can tell for what future age he has
painted the wise, abrupt, kind, persistent, simple, strong old Judge in
his Yankee coat; or the genial, resolute, hopeful, self-sacrificing
governor of Massachusetts; and the Master of the boys, with his keen,
loving, uncompromising face? These are pictures that, when children say,
"Tell us about the Governor who helped Massachusetts bring her men first
into the field during our war," we may lead them up before and reply,
"He was this man!" So also with the portraits of the Judge, of the
Master of the boys, of the old man with clear eyes and firm mouth, and
that sweet American girl standing, unconscious of observation, plucking
at the daisy in her hat and guessing at her fate.

Hurry, impatience and a worship of crude thought are characteristics of
our present American life. Hunt is one of us. If these faults mark and
mar his work, they show him also to be a child of the time. His quick
sympathies are caught by the wayside and somewhat frayed out among his
fellows; but nevertheless one essential of a great painter, that of
_Verity_, will be accorded to him after an examination of the pictures
we have mentioned.

But truth, character, skill, the many gifts and great labor which must
unite to lead an artist to the foot of his shadowy, sun-crowned
mountain, can then carry him no step farther unless ideal Beauty join
him, and he comprehend her nature and follow to her height. Again we
quote from Charles Blanc--for why should we rewrite what he says so
ably?--"All the germs of beauty are in Nature, but it belongs to the
spirit of man alone to disengage them. When Nature is beautiful, the
painter _knows_ that she is beautiful, but Nature knows nothing of it.
Thus beauty exists only on the condition of being understood--that is to
say, of receiving a second life in the human thought. Art has something
else to do than to copy Nature exactly: it must penetrate into the
spirit of things, it must evoke the soul of its hero. It can then not
only rival Nature, but surpass her. What is indeed the superiority of
Nature? It is the life which animates all her forms. But man possesses a
treasure which Nature does not possess--thought. Now thought is more
than life, for it is life at its highest power, life in its glory. Man
can then contest with Nature by manifesting thought in the forms of art,
as Nature manifests life in her forms. In this sense the philosopher
Hegel was able to say that the creations of art were truer than the
phenomena of the physical world and the realities of history."

Now, thought in the soul of the true artist for ever labors to evolve
the beautiful. This is what the thought of a picture means to him--how
to express beauty, which he finds underlying even the imperfect
individual of Nature's decaying birth. To the high insight this is
always discernible. None are so fallen that some ray of God's light may
not touch them, and this possibility, the faith in light for ever,
radiates from the spirit of the artist, and renders him a messenger of
joy. No immortal works have bloomed in despondency: they may have taken
root in the slime of the earth, but they have blossomed into lilies.

We call this divine power to discern beauty in every manifestation of
the Deity, imagination. As it expresses itself in painting, it is so
closely allied with what is highest and holiest in our natures that
painting has come to be esteemed a Christian art, as contrasted in its
development subsequent to the Christian era with the less human works of
sculpture. "Christianity came, and instead of physical beauty
substituted moral beauty, infinitely preferring the expression of the
soul to the perfection of the body. Every man was great in its eyes, not
by his perishable members, but by his immortal soul. With this religion
begins the reign of painting, which is a more subtle art, more
immaterial, than the others--more expressive, and also more individual.
We will give some proofs of it. Instead of acting, like architecture and
sculpture, upon the three dimensions of heavy matter, painting acts only
upon one surface, and produces its effects with an imponderable thing,
which is color--that is to say, light. Hegel has said with admirable
wisdom: 'In sculpture and architecture forms are rendered visible by
exterior light. In painting, on the contrary, matter, obscure in itself,
has within itself its internal element, its ideal--light: it draws from
itself both clearness and obscurity. Now, unity, the combination of
light and dark, is color.' The painter, then, proposes to himself to
represent, not bodies with their real thickness, but simply their
appearance, their image; but by this means it is the mind which he
addresses. Visible but impalpable, and in some sense immaterial, his
work does not meet the touch, which is the sight of the body: it only
meets the eye, which is the touch of the soul. Painting is then, from
this point of view, the essential art of Christianity.... If the
painter, like Phidias or Lysippus, had only to portray the types of
humanity, the majesty of Jupiter, the strength of Hercules, he might do
without the riches of color, and paint in one tone, modified only by
light and shade; but the most heroic man among Christians is not a
demigod: he is a being profoundly individual, tormented, combating,
suffering, and who throughout his real life shares with environing
Nature, and receives from every side the reflection of her colors.
Sculpture, generalizing, raises itself to the dignity of
allegory--painting, individualizing, descends to the familiarity of
portraiture."

Let us now return to consider William Hunt's pictures from this second
point of view. The gift of Verity having been already assumed, can we
also discern that higher power of Imagination whose crown and seal is
the Beautiful. To decide this question we have, unhappily, to consider
his work as lyrical, rather than dramatic, and for this reason we must
study his power under disadvantage. That he possesses dramatic power
will hardly be denied by those who know his "Hamlet," "The Drummer-Boy,"
and "The Boy and the Butterfly;" but the exigencies of life appear to
prevent him from occupying himself with compositions such as filled
years in the existence of the old painters.

Portraiture being the highest and most difficult labor to which an
artist can aspire, to this branch of art Hunt has chiefly confined
himself, and from this point of view he must be studied. We do not
forget, in saying this, his angel with the flaming torch, strong and
beautiful and of unearthly presence, nor the shadowy, half-portrayed
figures which dart and flit across his easel; but as we may
_understand_ the power of Titian from his portraits, yet never
revel in it fully until we look upon "The Presentation" or "The
Assumption"--never comprehend the painter's joy or his divine rest in
endeavor until the achievement lies before us--we must speak of Hunt
only from the work to which he has devoted himself, and not do him the
injustice to predict dramas he has never yet composed.

First, pre-eminently appears that worship for moral beauty which suffers
him to fear no ugliness. This power allies him with keen sympathy to
every living thing. He sees kinship and the immortal spark in each
breathing being. The soul of love goes out and paints the dark or the
suffering or the repellant faithfully, bringing it in to the light where
God's sunshine may fall upon it, and men and women, seeing for the first
time, may help to wipe away the stain. This tendency he shares with the
great French painter Millet, whom he loves to call Master, and with
Dore, whose terrible picture of "The Mountebanks" should call men and
women from their homes to penetrate the fastnesses of vice and strive to
heal the sorrows of their kind.

This love of moral beauty, which forces painters to paint such pictures,
was never in any age more evident. Hunt in his beggar-man, in his
forlorn children, and other pictures of the same class, unfolds a beauty
that men should be thankful for.

On the other hand, his love of beauty and his power of expressing it
should be studied in its _direct_ influence. The beauty of flesh and
blood, even the loveliness of children, seems to have slight hold upon
him, compared with the significance of character and the lustre with
which his imagination endows everything. This lustre is a distinguishing
power with him. The depth to which he sees and feels causes him to give
higher lights and deeper shadows than other men. White flowers are not
only white to him--they shine like stars. His pictures give a sense of
splendor.

In his sketch of the poor mother cuddling her child, it is the feeling
of rest, the mother's sleeping joy, the relaxed limbs, the folding
embrace, which he has given us to enjoy. These are the beauty of the
picture--not rounded flesh, nor graceful curves, nor fair complexion;
and so with the singing-girls: they are not beautiful girls, but they
are simple--they love to sing, they are full of tenderness and music. We
might go over all his pictures to weariness in this way. The young girl
plucking at the daisy as she stands in an open field must, however, not
be omitted. The natural elegance of this portrait renders it peculiarly,
we should say, such a one as any woman would be proud to see of herself.
Doubtless this young girl, like others, may have worn ear-rings and
chains and pins and rings, but the artist knew her better than she knew
herself, and has portrayed that exquisite crown of simplicity with
which, it should seem, Nature only endows beggars and her royal
favorites.

In all the ages since Hamlet was created there appears never to have
been an era in which his character has excited such strong and universal
interest as in America at this time. William Hunt has thrown upon the
canvas a figure of Hamlet beautiful and living. There is no suggestion
of any actor in it. Hamlet walks new-born from the painter's brain. His
"cursed spite" bends the youthful shoulders, and the figure marches past
unmindful of terrestrial presences.

One other picture will illustrate more clearly, perhaps, than everything
which has gone before, this gift of imagination. In "The Boy and the
Butterfly," now on the walls of the Century Club-house, the loveliness
of the child, the power of action, the subtle management of color and
light, are all subordinated to the ideas of defeat and endeavor. Energy,
the irrepressible strength of the spirit upheld by a divine light of
indestructible youth, shines out from the canvas. The boy who cannot
catch the butterfly is transmuted as we stand into the Soul of Beauty
reaching out in vain for satisfaction, and ready to follow its
aspiration to another sphere.




OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

WILHELMINE VON HILLERN.


German literature, despite its extraordinary productiveness and its
possession of a few great masterpieces, is far from being rich in the
department of belles-lettres, especially in works of fiction. It has no
list of novelists like those which include such names as Fielding, Scott
and Thackeray, Balzac, Hugo and Sand. In fact, there is scarcely an
instance of a male writer in Germany who has devoted himself exclusively
to this branch of literature, and has won high distinction in it. It has
been cultivated with success chiefly by a few writers of the other sex,
whose delineations have gained a popularity in America only less than
that which they enjoy at home--in part because the life which they
depict has closer internal analogies to our own than to that of England
or of France, still more perhaps because the pictures themselves,
whatever their intrinsic fidelity, are suffused with a romantic glow
which has long since faded from those of the thoroughly realistic art
now dominant in the two latter countries.

In none of them is this characteristic more apparent than in the works
of Wilhelmine von Hillern, which bear also in a marked degree the stamp
of a mind at once vigorous and sympathetic, and are thus calculated to
awaken the interest of readers in regard to the author's personal
history.

Her father, Doctor Christian Birch, a Dane by birth and originally a
diplomatist by profession, held for many years the post of secretary of
legation at London and Paris. He withdrew from this career on the
occasion of his marriage with a German lady connected with the stage in
the triple capacity of author, manager and actress. Madame
Birch-Pfeiffer, as she is commonly called, was one of the celebrities of
her time, and her dramatic productions still keep possession of the
stage. Soon after the birth of her daughter, which took place at Munich,
she was invited to assume the direction of the theatre of Zurich. Here
Wilhelmine passed several years of her childhood, separated from her
father, whose engagements as a political writer retained him in Germany,
and scarcely less divided from her mother, whose duties at this period
did not permit her to give much attention to domestic cares. Without
companions of her own age, and left almost wholly to the charge of an
invalid aunt, she led a monotonous existence, which left an impression
on her mind all the more deep from its contrast with the life which
opened upon her in her eighth year, when Madame Birch-Pfeiffer was
summoned to Berlin to hold an appointment at the court theatre.

In the Prussian capital the family was again united, and became the
centre of a social circle embracing many persons connected with dramatic
art and literature. Devrient, Dawison and Jenny Lind were among the
visitors whose conversation was greedily listened to by the little girl
while supposed to be immersed in her lessons or her plays. Under such
influences it would have been strange if even a less active brain had
not been fired with aspirations, which took the form of an irresistible
impulse when, at thirteen, Wilhelmine was allowed for the first time to
visit the theatre and witness the acting of Dawison in Hamlet and other
parts. Henceforth all opposition had to give way, and in her seventeenth
year she made her _début_ as Juliet at the ducal theatre of Coburg. Two
qualities, we are told, distinguished her acting: a strong conception
worked out in the minutest details, and an intensity of passion which
knew no restraint, and at its culminating point overpowered even hostile
criticism. Subsequently careful training under Edward Devrient and
Madame Glossbrenner enabled her to bring her emotions under better
control, repressing all tendency to extravagance; and, greeted with the
assurance that she was destined to become the German Rachel, she entered
upon her career with a round of performances at the principal theatres
of Germany, including those of Frankfort, Hamburg and Berlin.

These triumphs were followed by the acceptance of a permanent engagement
at Mannheim, which, however, had hardly been concluded when it gave
place to one of a different kind, followed by her marriage and sudden
relinquishment of the vocation embraced with such ardor and pursued for
a short period with such brilliant promise. Dawison is said to have
remarked that by her retirement the German stage had lost its last
genuine tragic actress.

Since her marriage Madame von Hillern has resided at Freiburg, in the
grand duchy of Baden, where her husband holds a legal position analogous
to that of the judge of a superior court. Her social life is one of
great activity, though much of her time is given to superintending the
education of her two daughters. But the abounding energy of her nature
made it inevitable that her artistic instincts, repressed in one
direction, should seek their full development in another. Literature was
naturally her choice. Her first work, _Doppelleben_, appeared in 1865,
and though defective in construction, owing to a change of plan in the
process of composition, served to give assurance of her powers and to
inspire her with the requisite confidence. Three years later _Ein Arzt
der Seele_, of which a translation under the title of _Only a Girl_ has
been widely circulated in America, established her claim to a high place
among the writers of her class. Her third work, _Aus eigener Kraft (By
his own Might)_, met with equal success, securing for its author a large
circle of readers on both sides of the Atlantic ready to welcome the
future productions of her pen. The qualities which distinguish her
writings are vigor of conception, sharpness of characterization, a moral
earnestness pervading the judgments and reflections, and an ardor,
sometimes too exuberant, which gives intensity to the delineation even
while exciting doubts of its fidelity. Similar qualities had
characterized her acting, and they spring from a nature which a close
observer has described as clear in perception yet swayed by fantasy;
strong of will yet impulsive as quicksilver; finding enjoyment now in
animated discussion, now in impetuous riding, now in absolute repose;
full of maternal tenderness, yet fond of splendor and the excitements of
society; a nature, in short, abounding in contrasts, but substantially
that of a true, noble and lovable woman.




HIS NAME?

(_An incident of the Boston fire_.)

    I.

             --Oh the billows of fire!
            With maëlstrom-like swirl,
            Their surges they hurl
              Over roof--over spire,
              Mad--masterless--higher,--
            Till with rumble--crack--crash,
            Down boom with a flash,
        Whole columns of granite and marble;--see! see!
        Sucked in as a weed on the ocean might be,
                    Or engulfed as a sail
        In the hurricane riot and wreak of the gale!


    II.

        Ha! yonder they rush where the death-dealing stream,
                    Over-pent, waits their gleam,
        To shiver the city with earthquake!--Who, _who_
        Will adventure, mid-flame, and unfasten the screw,--
        Set the fiend loose, and save us so?--Fireman, you,
        _You_ willing?--Would God you might hazard it!--
              Nay,
        The red tongues are licking the faucets now: Stay!
                --Too late,--'tis too late!
                If ruin comes, wait
        Its coming: To go, is to perish:--Hold! Hold!
                You are young,--I am old,--
        You've a wife, too--and children?--O God! he is gone
        Straight into destruction! The pipes, men! On, on,
        Play the water-stream on him,--full--faster--the whole!
                And now--Christ save his soul!


    III.

               --I stifle--I choke;
        And _he_,--Heaven grant that he smother in smoke
        Ere the fearful explosion comes. Hark! What's the shout?
               --_Is he saved_?--_Is he out?_
        --Did he compass his purpose,--the Hero?--_(One_ name
        To-night we shall write on the records of fame,--
        The perilous deed was so noble!) Why here
                On my cheek is a tear,
        Which not a whole city in ashes could claim!
        --His name, now: _Can nobody tell me his name?_

M. J. P.




UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM LORD NELSON TO LADY HAMILTON.


[It has been a matter of congratulation that the destruction by the
Boston fire was confined to buildings and other property representing
simply the wealth of the city, and did not extend to its monuments or
its artistic and literary treasures. The exceptions are, in fact,
comparatively small in amount, yet they are such as must excite a
general regret. The contents of the studios in Summer street, and the
collection of armor, unique in this country, bequeathed by the late
Colonel Bigelow Lawrence to the Boston Athenaeum, and temporarily
deposited at 82 Milk street, could not perish without awaking other
feelings besides that of sympathy with their past or prospective
possessors. A similar loss was that of many of the books and manuscripts
amassed by the historian Prescott, and comprising the collections
pertaining to the Histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru and of
Philip II. The manuscripts were comprised in some thirty or forty folio
volumes, and consisted of copies or abstracts of documents in the public
archives and libraries of Europe, in the family archives of several
Spanish noblemen, and in private collections like that at Middle Hill.
The printed books, of which there were perhaps a thousand, included many
of great value and not a few of extreme rarity. A large mass of private
correspondence was also consumed. We are not yet informed whether the
same fate has befallen a small but very choice collection of autographs,
embracing letters written or signed by Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles
V., Pope Clement VII., Prospero Colonna, the Great Captain, and other
sovereigns and eminent personages of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. Very few modern autographs were included in this collection,
the only examples, we believe, being notes written by Queen Victoria,
Prince Albert and the duke of Wellington, and a longer letter addressed
by Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton. This last, which we are permitted to
print from a copy made some time ago, is not exactly a model of
composition, but it is very characteristic, and shows the strength of
that enthrallment which led him, despite his natural kindness of heart,
to risk the lives of his men in order to communicate with the object of
his passion.]


SUNDAY NIGHT, Feb. 15, 9 o'clock [1801].

MY DEAR AMIABLE FRIEND: Could you have seen the boat leave the ship, I
am sure your heart would have sunk within you. _I would not have given
sixpence for the lives of the men_: a tremendous wave broke and missed
upsetting the boat by a miracle. O God, how my heart thumped to see them
safe! Then they got safe on shore, and I had given a two-pound note to
cheer up the poor fellows when they landed; _but I was so anxious to
send a letter for you._ I knew it was impossible for any boat to come
off to us since Friday noon, when the boat carried your letters enclosed
for Napean, and she still remains on shore. Only rest assured I always
write, and never doubt your old and dear friend, who never yet deserved
it. The gale abates very little, if anything, and it is truly fortunate
that our fleet is not in port, or some accident would most probably
happen; but both St. George and this ship have new cables, which is all
we have to trust to; but if my friend is true I have no fear. I can take
all the care which human foresight can, and then we must trust to
Providence, who keeps a lookout for poor Jack. I cannot, my dear friend,
afford to buy the three pictures of the "Battle of the Nile," or I
should like very much to have them, and Mr. Boyden cannot afford to
trust me one year. If he could, perhaps I could manage it. I have
desired my brother to examine the four numbers of the tickets I bought
with Gibbs. I hope he has told you. I dare say in the office here is the
numbers of the tickets my agents have bought for the ensuing lottery. I
hope we shall be successful. I hope you always kiss my godchild for me:
pray do, and _I will repay you ten times when we meet_, which I hope
will be very soon. Monday morning. It is a little more moderate, and we
are going to send a boat, but at present none can get to us, and,
therefore, I send this letter No. (1) to say we are in being. I hope in
the afternoon to be able to get letters, and, if possible, to answer
them. Kiss my godchild for me, bless it, and Believe me ever yours,

NELSON AND BRONTE.




"WHITE-HAT" DAY.


On one of the last days in September we were the astonished recipients
of a singular and mysterious invitation from a member of the New York
Board of Brokers. The note contained words like these: "Come to the
Exchange on Monday, September 30th: white hats are declared confiscated
on that day."

It would have puzzled Oedipus or a Philadelphia lawyer to trace the
connection between white hats and stocks, to tell what Hecuba was to
them or they to Hecuba, and why they should be more interfered with by
the New York Stock Exchange on the 30th of September than upon any other
day. It is true that during the last summer some slight political bias
was supposed to be hidden beneath that popular headpiece irreverently
styled "a Greeley plug," but then stocks are not politics, nor would any
but a punster trace an intimate connection between hats and polls. A
story has gone through the papers, to be sure, about an unfortunate
deacon who found it impossible to collect the coppers of the
congregation in a Greeley hat, but then slight excuses have been made
available on charitable occasions before the present election, and we
decline to accept the sentiment of that congregation as unmixed devotion
to the Republican candidates. They did not wish to Grant their money,
that was all.

And then, again, unlike the miller of the old conundrum, men generally
wear _white_ hats to keep their heads cool; with which laudable endeavor
why should the Stock Exchange wish to interfere? One never hears of a
"corner" in hats. And then, too, was it the bulls or the bears who
objected to them? Bulls, we all know, have an aversion to scarlet
drapery, but Darwin, in his studies of the feeling for color among
animals, has omitted any references to a horror of white hats even among
the most accomplished of the anthropoid apes.

Pondering all these problems, and many more, our puzzled trio went to
the Stock Exchange on the last day of September. We were conducted into
the safe seclusion of the Visitors' Gallery, from which coign of vantage
we could look down unharmed upon the frantic multitude below. The room
is large and very lofty, its prevailing tint a warm brown, relieved by
bright decorations of the Byzantine order. Across one end runs a small
gallery for visitors, without seats, and some twenty feet above the
floor, and opposite the gallery is a raised platform, with a long table
and majestic arm-chairs for the president and other officers of the
Board. High on the wall above these elevated dignitaries glitters in
large gold letters the mystic legend, "New York Stock Exchange." On the
left of the platform stands a large blackboard, whereon the fluctuations
in stocks are recorded, and around the sides of the room are displayed
various signs bearing the names of different stocks (like the banners of
the knights in royal chapels), beneath which eager groups collect. At
the lower end of the room, under the Visitors' Gallery, are seats
whereon weary brokers may repose after the brunt of battle. In the
centre of the upper end of the vast apartment is a long oval
cock-pit--if it may be so called--of two or three degrees, with a table
in the lowest circle. It is so arranged as to give the brokers, standing
upon the graded steps, full opportunity to see and to be seen. On the
table, in singular contrast with the spirit of the place, was a large
and beautiful basket of flowers. Anything more painfully incongruous it
would be difficult to imagine. The poor flowers seemed to wear an air of
patient suffering as they wasted their sweetness on that (literally)
howling wilderness.

It was just after ten, and the doors had been open but a few moments
when we entered the gallery, already quite full of ladies and
gentlemen--generally very young gentlemen, anxious to learn from the
glorious example of their elders. The floor below us was fast being
strewn with torn bits of paper, which have to be swept up several times
a day. Eager groups were gathered under the various signs upon the walls
and pillars, apparently playing the Italian game of _morra_, to judge by
the quick gestures of their restless fingers. Some were scribbling
cabalistic signs on little bits of paper, and almost all were howling
like maniacs or wild beasts half starved. The only place I was ever in
at all to be compared with it in volume and variety of noise is the
parrot-room in the London Zoological Gardens. Bedlam and Pandemonium I
have not visited--as yet--and consequently cannot speak from personal
experience. But the parrots in that awful house in Regent's Park are
capable of making more hideous noises in a given moment than any other
wild beasts in the world, except brokers. Here the human animal comes
out triumphantly supreme.

To add to the refreshing variety of the din, long, lanky youths in gray
sauntered about like the keepers of the carnivora, and bawled
incessantly till they were red in the face. These, we were told, were
the pages, who reported the state of the market and delivered orders and
commissions. To the uninitiated they were a fraud and a delusion, but so
was the whole thing. A crowd of men, walking about or standing in
groups, note-book in hand, talking eagerly or yelling unintelligible
nonsense at the top of their voices, and gesticulating with the fury of
madmen, while in and around the crowd strolled those extraordinary
pages, calmly shouting full in the brokers' faces,--this, we were told,
was "business!" This is the mysterious occupation to which our friends,
countrymen and lovers devote so large a portion of their time and
thoughts. At this strange diversion millions of dollars change hands in
a few hours, and bulls and bears in this little nest agree to make
things generally uncomfortable and uncertain for the outside world.

But where were the white hats, and what of their daring wearers? As the
crowd thickened, they began to shine out upon the general blackness in
obvious distinction. At first, the howling multitude, eager for filthy
lucre, took no particular notice of them beyond an occasional hurried
poke or pat, but this delusive mildness did not long continue. After the
first fifteen or twenty minutes, during which the favorite stocks had
been danced up and down a few times, like so many crying babies, the
appetite of the hundred-headed hydra abated a little, and the general
attention to business relaxed. Suddenly--no one knew whence or
wherefore--up rose a white hat in the air, high above the heads of the
people, and a bareheaded individual was seen struggling wildly in the
arms of the mob, who set up ironical cheers at his unavailing efforts to
regain his flying headpiece. It rose and fell faster and farther than
any fancy stock of them all, now soaring to the vaulted roof, now being
kicked along the dusty floor.

    Press where ye see my white hat shine amidst the ranks of war,

seemed to be the sentiment of the occasion, as the unruly mob swayed and
struggled about the dilapidated victim of their sport. In one corner
stood a quiet, dignified gentleman, talking sedately to a little knot of
friends. He wore a tall white "stove-pipe" of the most obnoxious kind.
In a twinkling it was seized and sent flying toward the roof with its
softer predecessor. Its owner gave one glance over his shoulder, and
"smiled a sickly smile," while it was very evident that

    The subsequent proceedings interested him no more.

The fun grew fast and furious, the air was literally darkened with
flying hats of every shape and size, but all white. The stout tall
beavers were converted into footballs till their crowns were kicked out
and their brims torn off, when they were seized upon as instruments for
further torture. Some innocent member of the large fraternity, now, to
use a nautical phrase, scudding under bare _polls_, was pounced upon,
and over his unfortunate head the crownless hat was drawn till the
ragged remnant of its brim rested upon his shoulders. One poor creature
was thus bonneted with at least three tiers of hats, and was last seen
on the edge of the cockpit struggling with imminent suffocation.

At the height of the howling, scuffling, kicking and fighting a short
diversion was effected. A tall and portly broker appeared upon the scene
in an entire suit of new broadcloth. It was unmistakably new, its
brilliancy quite undimmed. Instantly a rush was made for him by the
fickle crowd. They swept him, as by some mighty wave, into the centre of
the room: they turned him round and round like a pivoted statue, and
examined him and patted him approvingly on every side. Then they made a
large ring round him and gave him three cheers. Not content with this,
with one sudden impulse they rushed at him again, and tried to lift him
upon the table, that they might see him better. But this the portly
broker resisted: he fought like a good fellow, and the crowd, tired of
struggling with a man of so much weight, gave one final cheer and went
back to the chase of the white hats.

We stayed about half an hour to watch these elegant and refined
diversions: at the end of that time our patience and the white hats were
giving out together. The din was deafening and the dust was rapidly
rising. The floor was strewn with scraps of papers and the mangled
remains of felt and beaver. Brimless hats and hatless brims, linings,
bands, rent and tattered crowns, and ragged fragments of the fray, were
all over the place. A writhing victim in gray, masked by a crownless
hat, was struggling upon the table to the evident danger of those
unhappy flowers; the president was calling across the tumult in
stentorian tones; but the tumult refused to fall, and the imperturbable
pages were bawling upon the skirts of the crowd with stolid pertinacity.
The noise was terrific, the confusion indescribable.

We are often told that women are unfitted for business pursuits. If this
was business, I should say decidedly they were. My acquaintance with
women has been large and varied, but I have yet to see the woman whom I
consider qualified to be a member of the New York Board of Brokers. I
have been present at many gatherings composed entirely of women, from
the "Woman's Parliament" to country sewing-societies, but never, even in
that much-abused body, the New York Sorosis, have I seen a crowd of
women, however excited, however frolicsome, however full of fun, capable
of playing football with each other's bonnets even upon April Fools'
Day. I am convinced that not even Miss Anthony or Mrs. Stanton would
have hesitated to admit, had she been present on the auspicious occasion
above recorded, that there are limits even to woman's sphere. Let her
preach and practice, and sail ships, and make horse-shoes, and command
armies, if she will, let her vote for all sorts of disreputable
characters to be set over her, if she choose, but let her recognize the
fact that between her and the gentle amenities of the New York Stock
Exchange there is a great gulf fixed, which only the superior being man,
with his lordly intellect, his keen morality and his exquisite and
unvarying courtesy, can bridge over.

K.H.




MR. SOTHERN AS GARRICK.


One hundred and thirty-five years ago two young men came up to London to
try their fortune: half riding, half walking, the young fellows made
their journey. One was thick-set, heavy and uncouth, and years afterward
became known to men and fame as Samuel Johnson: the other was bright,
slender, active, and was called David Garrick. Some ten years later,
just before the battle of Culloden, a Dutch vessel, having crossed the
Channel, landed at Harwich. There was on board an apparent page, in
reality a young Viennese girl disguised in male attire, who journeyed up
to London too, where she soon made her appearance as a dancer at the
Hay-market Theatre: there she achieved great success, and became talked
about as "La Violette." She was under the patronage of the earl and
countess of Burlington, and finally became Mrs. Garrick. It is said
that she was the daughter of a respectable citizen of Vienna--that she
had been engaged to dance at the palace with the children of the empress
Maria Teresa, but that, her charms proving too attractive to the
emperor, the empress had packed her off to London with letters of
recommendation to persons of quality there. It seems more probable,
however, that she was am actress at Vienna, and simply crossed the sea
to try her fortune in England. Becoming fascinated with Garrick's
acting, she married him after refusing several more brilliant offers,
and in spite of the opposition of her kind patroness, Lady Burlington,
who wished her to marry so as to secure higher social position. This
match gave rise to much romantic gossip. It was said that a wealthy
young lady had fallen in love with the great actor one night in
_Romeo_--that he had been induced by her father to come to the house and
break the charm by feigning intoxication: some versions had it that he
came disguised as a physician. A popular German comedy was written upon
it, and still later Mr. Robertson dramatized it for the English stage,
and produced a play in which we have lately had an opportunity of
witnessing the fine acting of Mr. Sothern. Garrick was certainly
fortunate among actors: he not only achieved high professional fame, but
he accumulated a large private fortune and lived a happy domestic life
in a splendid home filled with choice works of art. The traveler abroad
who is favored with an invitation to the Garrick Club, may there see the
picture of the great actor "in his habit as he lived," looking down
nightly on a collection of the most renowned wits and authors of the
metropolis; and to crown all, when Mr. Sothern acts--were it not for his
moustache--we might suppose we saw the man himself alive before us.

Concerning Mr. Sothern's acting, it affords a fine example of that
quality--so very difficult of attainment, it would seem--perfect
_repose_; and by repose we do not mean torpidity or sluggishness or
inattention, as opposed to clamorous ranting, but we mean the complete
subordination of subordinate parts; so that, if we may use the
illustration, the gaudiness of the frame is not allowed to over-power
and destroy the effect of the picture. Everything is clear, distinct and
well marked: the forcible passages come with double effect in contrast
with preceding serenity. The actor's manner is not confined behind the
footlights: it diffuses itself, as it were, among his audience until it
seems as if they too were acting with him. This arises from the
perfection of the picture he presents, and that perfection is the result
of careful avoidance of everything that is unnatural. There is no
_unnecessary_ exertion put forth, no palpable straining after effect: he
strives to hold the mirror up to Nature, not Art, and in Nature there is
much repose between the tempests. Old players say that the most
difficult thing to teach a tyro is to stand still, and some actors never
learn it.

Careful attention to costume is another trait exhibited by Mr. Sothern.
He might easily make his first appearance as David Garrick in the
wealthy merchant's house in ordinary walking-dress, which could be
readily retained when he returns to the dinner-party to which he causes
himself to be invited. Instead of that, he appears in the full
riding-dress of the period--boots, spurs, whip, overcoat and all. This
is rapidly changed in time for the dinner-scene for a full-dress suit,
complete in every point--powdered hair, white silk stockings, and a
little _brette_, or walking rapier, peeping out from under the coat
skirt, not slung in a belt as heavier swords, but supported by light
steel chains fastened to a _chatelaine_, which slips behind the
waistband and can be taken off in a moment. In the last scene, where he
goes out to fight the duel, his dress is changed again, and dark silk
stockings are donned as more appropriate.

The last point we shall mention here about Mr. Sothern is his scrupulous
attention to the minor business of the stage: when he is not speaking
himself, his looks act. It is said of Macready that he began to be
Cardinal Richelieu at three o'clock in the afternoon, and that it was
dangerous to speak to him after that time. When Mr. Sothern plays Lord
Dundreary, if he is addressed on any subject during the progress of the
play, he answers in his Dundreary drawl, so as not to lose his
personality for a minute. The letter from his brother "Tham" he has
written out and reads; not that he does not know every word by heart,
for he must have read it a hundred times, but because he wants to _turn
over_ at the proper place. We all know what he has made of that part. A
play in which there is absolutely nothing of a plot, which would fall
dead from the hands of an inferior actor, becomes with Mr. Sothern as
popular as _Rip van Winkle_ is with Jefferson to play the sleepy hero.
It is to be observed that the three essentials for good acting just
mentioned--repose of manner, strict attention to dress, and strict
attention to minor details of stage-business--may be acquired by any
actor of average intellect who will devote proper time and study to the
task: they are not, like a fine figure, a handsome face or a sonorous
voice, adventitious gifts of Fortune which may be bestowed on one mortal
and denied to another. Mr. Sothern owes his success, evidently, to long
and careful preparation of his parts. In David Garrick he leaves but two
points at which criticism can carp: his pathos somehow lacks sufficient
tenderness, his love-making seems too devoid of passion. When young
Garrick won the heart of La Violette, he put more fire into his speech
and manner than Mr. Sothern exhibits at the close of the last act. He is
represented as always loving Ida Ingot, but at first conceals and
suppresses his love: when the avowal comes at last, it should be like
the bursting forth of a volcano, hot, fiery and irresistible.

M. M.




NOTES.


Sir Richard Wallace evidently aims to make himself, in a small way, the
Peabody of Paris. A cynic might maintain that his gifts were a trifle
sensational, and shaped with a view to procure the greatest amount of
notoriety at the price; but that they are frequent, and that they show
a hearty love for Paris on the Englishman's part, none can deny. It was
Sir Richard who not long ago gave about five thousand dollars to the use
of the Paris poor; it was he who, in the late hunting-season, is said to
have proposed to supply the city hospitals with fresh game--whether of
his own shooting or of that of his compatriots does not appear; it is
he, in fine, who has furnished to Paris eighty street-fountains, costing
in the factory six hundred and seventy-five francs each, or a total of
fifty-four thousand francs (say ten thousand eight hundred dollars), the
expense of setting them up being undertaken by the city. These
drinking-jets are in the main like those so familiar in American cities,
and are provided, of course, with tin cups attached by iron chains--"_à
la mode Anglaise_" add the French papers in an explanatory way. Now, the
extraordinary fact concerning these fountains is, that no sooner had the
first installment of nine been put up than all the tin cups, or
"goblets," as the Parisians call them, were stolen. They were renewed,
and again disappeared in a trice. In short, within fifteen days no less
than forty-seven of these goblets were made way with, despite their
strong fastenings--that is, an average of over five cups to each
fountain. What the sum-total of plunder has been since the first
fortnight, or whether the fountains are still as useless as spiked
cannon or tongueless bells, we have yet to learn.

Now comes a contrast. The countrymen of Sir Richard claim that in London
from time immemorial not a single cup was ever stolen from the public
fountains. So tempting a theme for generalization could not be resisted
by the Paris newspaper philosophers, who have deduced from this theft of
the cups a broad distinction between the British loafer and the French
loafer, declaring that the former "respects any collective property
which he partly shares," while the latter does not even draw this
distinction, but grabs whatever he can lay his hands on. "The luck of
the Wallace fountains," cries one moralizer, "shows how hard it is to
reform the Paris _gamin_ so long as the law contents itself with its
present measures. If the state does not speedily educate children found
straying in the street, it is all up with the present generation."
Thereupon follows a disquisition on the part which Paris children played
in the Commune. "Now, the child," adds our newspaper Wordsworth, "is the
man viewed through the big end of the opera-glass;" and he points his
moral, therefore, with the need of compulsory education. "One of the
first duties incumbent on the Chamber at the next session will be the
solution of this question. Let it take as a perpetual goad the fate of
the Wallace goblets. You begin by stealing a cup of tin--you end by
firing the Tuileries or plundering the Hôtel Thiers." There is a droll
mingling of Isaac Watts and Victor Hugo in this _dénoûment_, and despite
its practical good sense one is amused at the evolution of a grave
discourse from so trivial a text as the Wallace drinking-cups.

       *       *       *       *       *

To people of a statistical rather than a sentimental turn, the
mathematics of marriage in different countries may prove an attractive
theme of meditation. It is found that young men from fifteen to twenty
years of age marry young women averaging two or three years older than
themselves, but if they delay marriage until they are twenty to
twenty-five years old, their spouses average a year younger than
themselves; and thenceforward this difference steadily increases, till
in extreme old age on the bridegroom's part it is apt to be enormous.
The inclination of octogenarians to wed misses in their teens is an
every-day occurrence, but it is amusing to find in the love-matches of
boys that the statistics bear out the satires of Thackeray and Balzac.
Again, the husbands of young women aged twenty and under average a
little above twenty-five years, and the inequality of age diminishes
thenceforward, till for women who have reached thirty the respective
ages are equal: after thirty-five years, women, like men, marry those
younger than themselves, the disproportion increasing with age, till at
fifty-five it averages nine years.

The greatest number of marriages for men take place between the ages of
twenty and twenty-five in England, between twenty five and thirty in
France, and between twenty-five and thirty-five in Italy and Belgium.
Finally, in Hungary the number of individuals who marry is seventy-two
in a thousand each year; in England it is 64; in Denmark, 59; in France,
57, the city of Paris showing 53; in the Netherlands, 52; in Belgium,
43; in Norway, 36. Widowers indulge in second marriages three or four
times as often as widows. For example, in England (land of Mrs. Bardell)
there are 66 marriages of widowers against 21 of widows; in Belgium
there are 48 to 16; in France, 40 to 12. Old Mr. Weller's paternal
advice, to "beware of the widows," ought surely to be supplemented by a
maxim to beware of widowers.


SHAKESPEARE, in one of his most famous madrigals, draws a vivid contrast
between youth and age, which, he declares, "cannot live together:"

    Youth like summer morn,
    Age like winter weather,
    Youth like summer brave,
    Age like winter bare:
    Youth is hot and bold,
    Age is weak and cold.

Science, which ruthlessly destroys so much poetry by its mattock and
spade, its scales, foot-rules and gauges, must now, we should judge,
take grave exception to the preceding bit of poesy and to the thousand
repetitions of its sentiment by the bards of all ages. By means of a
thermometer lately constructed to register with exactitude the degree of
heat in the human body, it is found, after numerous experiments under
varying circumstances, that the instrument marks 37.08° of heat on an
average for persons between twenty-one and thirty years of age, while it
marks 37.46° for people aged eighty. In face of this fact what becomes
of the "fervors of youth" and the "chills of age"? The highest average
temperatures in the human body, as indicated by this gauge, are those
which exist from birth to puberty--that is to say, 37.55° and 37.63°.
From the latter epoch the heat gradually lowers, to rise again with the
first approach of old age. Thus childhood shows the highest temperature,
old age the next, and middle life the lowest. We may add that the
greatest variations in the temperature of the body between health and
sickness are only a few tenths of a degree, according to this
measurement; for, the normal condition being 37.2° or 37.3°, an increase
to 38° would mark a burning fever, and a decrease to 36° would note the
icy approach of death. Hereafter, though we may graciously excuse to
poetic license the assertion that

    Crabbed Age and Youth
    Cannot live together,

we must yet sternly protest that the reason assigned--namely, that
"youth is hot and age is cold"--is contradicted by the facts of science.




LITERATURE OF THE DAY.


The Life of Charles Dickens. By John Forster. Vol. II. Philadelphia:
J.B. Lippincott & Co.

Beginning with Dickens's return from America in 1842, this volume covers
a period of less than ten years, the most productive, and apparently the
happiest, of his life. It brings out in even stronger relief than the
preceding volume his strong individuality, a trait which, whether it
attracts or repels--and on most persons we think it produces alternately
each of these effects--is full of interest, worthy of study and fruitful
of suggestions. Its superabundant energy seemed to create demands in
order that it might expend itself in satisfying them. Its persistence
was toughened by failure as much as by success. Its vivacity, verging
upon boisterousness, was incapable of being chilled. Its strenuousness
knew no lassitude, and needed no repose. In play as in work, in physical
exercise as in mental labor, in all his projects, purposes and
performances, Dickens seems to have been in a perpetual state of tension
that allowed of no reaction. His was a mind not morbidly self-conscious,
but ever aglow with the consciousness of power and the ardor of its
achievement, in-sensible of waste and undisturbed by critical
introspection.

The excitement into which he was thrown by the composition of his books
exceeds anything of the kind recorded in literary history, and stands in
strong contrast with the self-contained tranquillity with which Scott
performed an equal or greater amount of labor. Yet it does not, like
similar ebullitions in other men, suggest any notion of weakness or of a
talent strained beyond its capacity. It was coupled with an enormous
facility of execution and the ability to pass with undiminished
freshness from one field of action to another. It sprang from the
intensity with which every idea was conceived, and which belonged
equally to his smallest with his greatest undertakings. "The book," he
writes of the _Chimes_, "has made my face white in a foreign land. My
cheeks, which were beginning to fill out, have sunk again; my eyes have
grown immensely large; my hair is very lank, and the head inside the
hair is hot and giddy. Read the scene at the end of the third part
twice. I wouldn't write it twice for something.... Since I conceived, at
the beginning of the second part, what must happen in the third, I have
undergone as much sorrow and agitation as if the thing were real, and
have wakened up with it at night. I was obliged to lock myself in when I
finished it yesterday, for my face was swollen for the time to twice its
proper size, and was hugely ridiculous." The little book was written at
Genoa; and having finished it, he must make a winter journey to London,
"because," as he writes to Forster, "of that unspeakable restless
something which would render it almost as impossible for me to remain
here, and not see the thing complete, as it would be for a full
balloon, left to itself, not to go up." A further reason was to try the
effect of the story upon a circle of listeners, to be assembled for the
purpose: "Carlyle, indispensable, and I should like his wife of all
things; _her_ judgment would be invaluable. You will ask Mac, and why
not his sister? Stanny and Jerrold I should particularly wish. Edwin
Landseer, Blanchard perhaps Harness; and what say you to Fonblanque and
Fox?" After this it is amusing to read that the book "was not one of his
greatest successes, and it raised him up some objectors;" but the
reading was the germ of those which afterward brought him into such
close relations with his public.

Of another Christmas story he writes, "I dreamed _all last week_ that
the _Battle of Life_ was a series of chambers, impossible to be got to
rights or got out of, through which I wandered drearily all night. On
Saturday night I don't think I slept an hour. I was perpetually roaming
through the story, and endeavoring to dovetail the revolution here into
the plot. The mental distress quite horrible." Here we have, perhaps, a
clear case of the effects of overwork. But in general the details of his
plots, the names of the characters, above all, the titles of the
stories, were evolved with an amount of thought and discussion that
might have sufficed for the plan and the preparations for a battle.
"Martin Chuzzlewit" is not a name suggestive of long and serious
deliberation: one might rather suppose that it had turned up
accidentally and been accepted simply as being as good as another. Yet
it was not adopted till after many others had been discussed and
rejected. "Martin was the prefix to all, but the surname varied from its
first form of Sweezleden, Sweezleback and Sweeztewag, to those of
Chuzzletoe, Chuzzleboy, Chubblewig and Chuzzlewig." _David Copperfield_
was preceded by a still longer list of abortions, and _Household Words,_
as a mere title, was the result of a parturition far exceeding in length
and severity any throes of travail known to natural history.

All this was unaccompanied by any of the doubts and misgivings, the fits
of depression and intervals of lassitude, which are the ordinary
tortures of authorship. Nor had it any connection with the weaknesses of
the craft, its small vanities and jealousies. "It was," as Mr. Forster
well remarks, "part of the intense individuality by which he effected
so much to set the high value which in general he did upon what he was
striving to accomplish." Hence, too, no half-formed and then abandoned
projects were among the stepping-stones of his career. A plan or an
idea, once conceived, was certain to be shaped, developed and matured;
and whatever the result, it left up disheartening effect, no feeling of
distrust, to cripple a subsequent undertaking.

Nor was Dickens so absorbed in his work as to leave it reluctantly, or
to find no fullness of satisfaction in occupations or enjoyments of a
different kind. On the contrary, no man ever threw himself so heartily
and entirely into the business of the hour, or more eagerly sought
diversion and change. Dinners, private and public, excursions in chosen
companionship, amateur theatricals, schemes of charity or benevolence,
occupied a large portion of his time, and were entered into with an
ardor which never flagged or needed to be stimulated. His
correspondence--an unfailing barometer to indicate the state of the
mental atmosphere--is always full of life, overflowing, for the most
part, with animal spirits, often vivid in description both of places and
people, turning discomforts and embarrassments into subjects of lively
narrative or indignant protest. The letters from Genoa and Lausanne are
especially copious and entertaining, and form, we think, the most
interesting portion of the book. The later chapters, giving the final
year of his residence in Devonshire Terrace, are less satisfactory. We
would fain have had a picture of that circle of which Dickens was one of
the most prominent figures; but though his own personality is revealed
in the fullest light, the group in the background is left indistinct,
most of its members being barely visible, and none of them adequately
portrayed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Émaux et Camées. Par Théophile Gautier. Nombre définitif. Paris:
Charpentier; New York: F.W. Christern.

Gautier was polishing and adding to his literary jewelry almost to the
day of his death, and the final edition which he published among the
last of his works about doubles the number of poems first issued. These
verses are like nothing we have in English. Their imagery is strongly
sophisticated, tortured, brought from vast distances, and then chilled
into form. Yet they are the most sincere utterances of a soul fed
perpetually among cabinets and picture-galleries, to whom their compact
method of utterance is, so to speak, secondarily natural. That they are
precious and beauteous no one can deny. How sparkling are the successive
descriptions of women--blonde, brune, Spanish, contralto-voiced,
coquettish, etc.--whom the poet, like some capricious artist, invites
into his atelier, drapes hastily with old Moorish or Venetian or
diaphanous costumes, and then reflects in a diminishing mirror, changing
the model into a fine statuette of ivory and enamel! More virile and
thoughtful images are intermixed: such are the figures of the old
Invalides seen at the Column Vendôme in a December fog, and for whom he
pleads: "Mock not those men whom the street urchin follows, laughing:
they were the Day of which we are the twilight--maybe the night!" Not
less fresh are the two "Homesick Obelisks"--that in the Place de la
Concorde, wearying its stony heart out for Egypt, and that at Luxor,
equally tired, and longing to be planted at Paris, among a living crowd.
But Gautier is a colorist, an artist with words, and he is at his best
when he works without much outline, celebrating draperies, bouquets and
laces, to all of which he can give a meaning quite other than the
milliner's, as where he asserts that the plaits of a rose-colored dress
are "the lips of my unappeased desires," or describes March as a barber,
powdering the wigs of the blossoming almond trees, and a valet, lacing
up the rosebuds in their corsets of green velvet. Whatever he touches he
leaves artificial, "enameled," yet charming. The verses added in the
present edition are more pensive, even sombre. A life given to art
wholly, without patriotism or religion or philosophy, does not prepare
the greenest old age. There is a long and beautiful poem, "Le Château du
Souvenir," which he fills, not exactly with Charles Lamb's "old familiar
faces," but with portraits of his mistresses and of his old self. There
is the "Last Vow"--to a woman he has pursued "for eighteen years," and
whom he still accosts, though "the white graveyard lilacs have blossomed
about my temples, and I shall soon have them tufting and shading all my
forehead." There is also the accent of his irresponsible courtiership,
the facile and unashamed flattery he paid to such a woman as Princess
Mathilde. This personage was, or is, an artist; and we may not be
mistaken in believing that we have seen, cast aside in the vast
storerooms of Haseltine's galleries in this city--an example and gnomon
of disenchanted glory--her water-color sketch called the "Fellah Woman,"
and the very one of which Gautier sang: "Caprice of a fantastic brush
and of an imperial leisure!... Those eyes, a whole poem of languor and
pleasure, resolve the riddle and say, 'Be thou Love--I am Beauty.'"

The late poems, however, as well as the old, are filled with felicities.
They contain many a lesson of the word-master, who, though he did not
attain the Academy, left the French language gold, which he found
marble. The ornaments, exquisite licenses, foreign graces and wide
researches which Gautier conferred upon his mother-tongue have enriched
it for future time, and they are best seen in this volume.

       *       *       *       *       *


Concord Days. By A. Bronson Alcott. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

In these loose leaves we have the St. Martin's summer of a life. Mr.
Alcott, from his quiet home in Concord, and from the edifice of his
seventy-three years, picks out those mental growths and moral treasures
which have kept their color through all the changes of the seasons. They
bear the mark of selection, of choice, from out a vast abundance of
material: to us readers the scissors have probably been a kinder
implement than the pen. Be that as it may, the selections given are all
worth saving, and the fragmentary resurrection is just about as much as
our age has time to attend to of the growths that were formed when New
England thought was young. That was the day when Mrs. Hominy fastened
the cameo to her frontal bone and went to the sermon of Dr. Channing,
when young Hawthorne chopped straw for the odious oxen at Brook Farm,
and when a budding Booddha, called by his neighbors Thoreau, left
mankind and proceeded to introvert himself by the borders of Walden
Pond. Mr. Alcott's little diary gives us some of the best skimmings of
that time of yeast. There is Emerson-worship, Channing-worship, Margaret
Fuller-worship and the pale cast of _The Dial_. There is, besides, in
another stratum that runs through the collection, a vein of very welcome
investigation amongst old authors--Plutarch's charming letter of
consolation to his wife on the death of their child; Crashaw's "Verses
on a Prayer-Book;" Evelyn's letter on the origin of his _Sylva_; and
many a jewel five-words-long filched from the authors whom modern taste
votes slow and insupportable. We mention these to give some idea of the
spirit in which this work of marquetry is executed--a work too
fragmentary and incoherent to be easily describable except by its
specimens. And while culling fragments, we cannot forbear mentioning the
curious records of Mr. Alcott's "Conversations," held now with Frederika
Bremer, now with a band of large-browed Concord children, held forty
years ago, and turning perpetually upon the deeper questions of
metaphysics and religion; we will even indulge ourselves with a short
extract from one of the "Conversations with Children," reported verbatim
by an apparently concealed auditress, and eliciting many a cunning bit
of infantine wisdom, besides the following finer rhapsody, which Mr.
Alcott succeeded in charming out of the lips of a boy six years of age:

"Mr. Alcott! you know Mrs. Barbauld says in her hymns, everything is
prayer; every action is prayer; all nature prays; the bird prays in
singing; the tree prays in growing; men pray--men can pray _more_; we
feel; we have more, more than Nature; we can know, and do right:
_Conscience prays_; all our powers pray; action prays. Once we said,
here, that there was a Christ in the bottom of our spirits, when we try
to be good. Then we pray in Christ; and that is the whole!"

To think that the lips of this ingenuous and golden-mouthed lad may be
now pouring out patriotism in Congress is rather sad; but the author's
own career tells us that there are some of the Chrysostoms of 1830 who
have had the courage to keep quiet, and sweeten their own lives for
family use. Mr. Alcott betrays in every line the kindest, sanest and
humanest spirit; and we wish he could feel how grateful some of us are
for his example of a thinker who can keep quiet, and a writer who can
show the power of reticence.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thirty Years in the Harem; or, The Autobiography of Melek-Hanum, wife of
H.H. Kibrizli-Mehemet-Pasha. New York: Harper & Brothers.

We have had many revelations from the interior, but nothing quite like
this. Most histories are valuable in proportion to the truthfulness of
the narrator, but Mrs. Melek's story owes a large show of its interest
to her obvious tension of the long-bow. It is, in fact, a
self-revelation--the vain and audacious betrayal by an Oriental woman of
the narrowness, the shallowness, the dishonesty which ages of false
education have fastened upon her race. The lady in question is--and
evidently knows herself to be--an exception among her countrywomen for
ability and acumen: an extreme self-satisfaction and vanity are revealed
in the recital of her most disreputable tricks. She passes for a white
blackbird, a woman of intellect caught in the harem; and it needs but
little ingenuity to guess the torment she must have been to her
protectors--first to the excellent Dr. Millingen, with whom she formed a
love-match, and whom she abuses--and then to her second husband,
Kibrizli, ambassador in 1848 to the court of England, upon whom she
attempted to palm off an heir by the ruse practiced by our own revered
Mrs. Cunningham. Whatever the clever Melek does, or whatever treatment
she receives, it is always she who is in the right, and her eternal
"enemies" who are unjust, barbarous and stingy. The ferocious
blackmailing of natives in the Holy Land which she practiced when her
husband represented the sultan there, is represented as cleverness; but
her divorce after the infamous false accouchement is a piece of
persecution. The marriage and adventures of her daughter form a tangled
romance through which we hear of a great deal more oppression and
cruelty; and the escape into Europe, where the old enchantress appears
to be now prowling in poverty and degradation, concludes the curious
story. The narrative bears marks of having passed through a French
translation and then a British version. To disentangle the thread of
actuality that probably runs through it would be too troublesome and
futile; but the truths that the wily Melek cannot help telling--the
facts of the harem and of Eastern life that involuntarily sprinkle it
all like a flavoring of strange spices--these are what give it the odd
dash of interest which keeps it in our hands long after we had meant to
toss it aside. Here is a "screaming sister" of the East--an odalisque
who was not going to be oppressed and degraded like the other women, but
who meant to be capable and cultivated and smart, just like the
Christian ladies; and this bundle of lies and crimes and hates is what
she arrives at.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hints on Dress; or, What to Wear, When to Wear it, and How to Buy it. By
Ethel C. Gale, (Putnam's Handy-Book Series.) New York: G.P. Putnam &
Sons.

This little book will certainly elicit commendation from all who
consider the subject of dress within the pale of aesthetic treatment;
and, what is still more fortunate, it will probably serve to elevate, in
some degree, the standard of taste among that large class of persons for
whom handy volumes are chiefly compiled. Its statements and deductions
are accurate, sensible, comprehensive and practical, and the style in
which they are presented is simple and attractive. The color, form and
suitability of dress, as well as the best methods of economy in its
purchase and manufacture, are intelligently treated. We have only to
regret the want of a chapter devoted to the hygiene of dress, which is a
subject deserving the earnest attention of every friend of physical
development. Ten or a dozen pages given to this topic might have done a
service to hundreds who are willing enough to gather knowledge in
passing, but who are repelled from the separate consideration of any
subject which seems to call for the exercise of serious thought.

       *       *       *       *       *

A Sketch Map of the Nile Sources and Lake Region of Central Africa,
showing Dr. Livingstone's Discoveries and Mr. Stanley's Route. Folio,
folded. Philadelphia: T. Elwood Zell.

A clear, well-executed polychrome map, evidently copied from the one
recently published in England, if not actually printed there. It
exhibits not only the route of Dr. Livingstone during the period
included between the years 1866 and 1872, and that taken by Mr. Stanley
in his recent search, but also the course which the former proposes to
follow in the prosecution of his discoveries. The boundaries of lakes
and the courses of rivers, where definitely known, are indicated by
unbroken lines--where still supposititious, by dotted ones. The map,
which is printed on heavy paper, is thirteen inches wide by eighteen
inches long, and being folded within a stiff duodecimo cover, can be
easily preserved and readily consulted.




_Books Received_.

Papers relating to the Transit of Venus in 1874. Prepared under the
Direction of the Commissioners authorized by Congress. Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing-office.

Reports on Observations of Encke's Comet during its Return in 1871. By
Asaph Hall and Wm. Harkness. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing-Office.

Harry Delaware; or, An American in Germany. By Mathilde Estvan. New
York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

California for Health, Pleasure and Residence. By Charles Nordhoff. New
York: Harper & Brothers.

The Lives of General U.S. Grant and Henry Wilson. Philadelphia: T.B.
Peterson & Brothers.

The Romance of American History. By M. Schele de Vere. New York: G.P.
Putnam & Sons.

Book of Ballads, Tales and Stories. By Benjamin G. Herre. Lancaster,
Pa.: Wylie & Griest.

The Poet at the Breakfast Table. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston: James
R. Osgood & Co.

The Lawrence Speaker. By Philip Lawrence. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson &
Brothers.

Memoir of a Huguenot Family. By Ann Maury. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

Within the Maze. By Mrs. Henry Wood. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson &
Brothers.

Sermons. By Rev. C.D.N. Campbell, D.D. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

Outlines of History. By Ed. A. Freeman, D.C.L. New York: Holt &
Williams.

The End of the World. By Edward Eggleston. New York: Orange Judd & Co.

Sermons. By Rev. H.R. Haweis, M.A. New York: Holt & Williams.

Kaloolah. By W.S. Mayo, M.D. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

Nast's Illustrated Almanac for 1873. New York: Harper & Brothers.

A Summer Romance. By Mary Healy. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Song Life. By Philip Phillips. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Gavroche. By M.C. Pyle. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.