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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE

June, 1876.

Vol. XVII, No. 102.




TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ILLUSTRATIONS.

  THE CENTURY--ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL.
    VI.--THE DISPLAY--INTRODUCTORY. [Illustrated]

  DOLORES by EMMA LAZARUS.

  GLIMPSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE by SHEILA HALE.
    CONCLUDING PAPER. [Illustrated]

  THEE AND YOU by EDWARD KEARSLEY.
    A STORY OF OLD PHILADELPHIA.  IN TWO PARTS.--I.

  MODERN HUGUENOTS by JAMES M. BRUCE.

  BLOOMING by MAURICE THOMPSON.

  FELIPA by CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.

  AT CHICKAMAUGA by ROBERT LEWIS KIMBERLY.

  THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS by MRS. E. LYNN LINTON.
    CHAPTER XXXVII. UNWORTHY.
    CHAPTER XXXVIII. BLOTTED OUT.
    CHAPTER XXXIX. WINDY BROW.
    CHAPTER XL. LOST AND NOW FOUND.

  THE ITALIAN MEDIÆVAL WOOD-SCULPTORS by T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

  REST by CHARLOTTE F. BATES.

  LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA by LADY BARKER.

  OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
    THE CABS OF PARIS by L.H.H.
    A NEW MUSEUM AT ROME by T.A.T.
    OUR FOREIGN SURNAMES by W.W.C.
    THE NEW FRENCH ACADEMICIAN by R.W.

  LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
    Books Received.




ILLUSTRATIONS

  FAÇADE OF THE SPANISH DIVISION, MAIN BUILDING.
  FAÇADE OF THE EGYPTIAN DIVISION, MAIN BUILDING.
  FAÇADE OF THE SWEDISH DIVISION, MAIN BUILDING.
  FAÇADE OF THE BRAZILIAN DIVISION, MAIN BUILDING.
  DOM PEDRO, EMPEROR OF BRAZIL.
  JAPANESE CARPENTERS.
  FAÇADE OF THE DIVISION OF THE NETHERLANDS, MAIN BUILDING.
  THE CORLISS ENGINE, FURNISHING MOTIVE-POWER FOR MACHINERY HALL.
  INTERIOR OF COOK'S WORLD'S TICKET-OFFICE.
  FRENCH RESTAURANT LA FAYETTE.
  THE MAMMOTH RODMAN GUN.
  SCENE AT ONE OF THE ENTRANCES TO THE GROUNDS--THE TURNSTILE.
  SCENE IN A BURIAL-GROUND.
  THE SULTAN ABDUL-ASSIZ.
  TURKISH COW-CARRIAGE.
  ENTERING A MOSQUE.
  CASTLE OF EUROPE, ON THE BOSPHORUS.
  FORTRESS OF RIVA, AND THE BLACK SEA.
  TURKISH QUARTER--STAMBOUL.
  OBELISK OF THEODOSIUS.
  SHEPHERDS.




LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.

June, 1876.





THE CENTURY--ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL.

VI. THE DISPLAY--INTRODUCTORY.


[Illustration: FAÇADE OF THE SPANISH DIVISION, MAIN BUILDING.]

All things being ready for their reception, how were exhibits,
exhibitors and visitors to be brought to the grounds? To do this with
the extreme of rapidity and cheapness was essential to a full and
satisfactory attendance of both objects and persons. In a large majority
of cases the first consideration with the possessor of any article
deemed worthy of submission to the public eye was the cost and security
of transportation. Objects of art, the most valuable and the most
attractive portion of the display, are not usually very well adapted to
carriage over great distances with frequent transshipments. Porcelain,
glass and statuary are fragile, and paintings liable to injury from
dampness and rough handling; while an antique mosaic, like the
"Carthaginian Lion," a hundred square feet in superficies, might, after
resuscitation from its subterranean sleep of twenty centuries with its
minutest _tessera_ intact and every tint as fresh as the Phoenician
artist left it, suffer irreparable damage from a moment's carelessness
on the voyage to its temporary home in the New World. More solid things
of a very different character, and far less valuable pecuniarily, though
it may be quite as interesting to the promoter of human progress, exact
more or less time and attention to collect and prepare, and that will
not be bestowed upon them without some guarantee of their being safely
and inexpensively transmitted. So to simplify transportation as
practically to place the exposition buildings as nearly as possible at
the door of each exhibitor, student and sight-seer became, therefore, a
controlling problem.

In the solution of it there is no exaggeration in saying that the
Centennial stands more than a quarter of a century in advance of even
the latest of its fellow expositions. At Vienna a river with a few small
steamers below and a tow-path above represented water-carriage. Good
railways came in from every quarter of the compass, but none of them
brought the locomotive to the neighborhood of the grounds. In the matter
of tram-roads for passengers the Viennese distinguished themselves over
the Londoners and Parisians by the possession of _one_. In steam-roads
they had no advantage and no inferiority. At each and all of these
cities the packing-box and the passenger were both confronted by the
vexatious interval between the station and the exposition
building--often the most trying part of the trip. Horsepower was the one
time-honored resource, in '73 as in '51, and in unnumbered years before.
Under the ancient divisions of horse and foot the world and its
_impedimenta_ moved upon Hyde Park, the Champ de Mars and the Prater,
the umbrella and the oil-cloth tilt their only shield against Jupiter
Pluvius, who seemed to take especial pleasure in demonstrating their
failure, nineteen centuries after the contemptuous erasure of him from
the calendar, to escape his power. It was reserved for the Philadelphia
Commission to bring his reign (not the slightest intention of a pun) to
a close. The most delicate silk or gem, and the most delicate wearer of
the same, were enabled to pass under roof from San Francisco into the
Main Building in Fairmount Park, and with a trifling break of twenty
steps at the wharf might do so from the dock at Bremen, Havre or
Liverpool. The hospitable shelter of the great pavilion was thus
extended over the continent and either ocean. The drip of its eaves
pattered into China, the Cape of Good Hope, Germany and Australia. Their
spread became almost that of the welkin.

Let us look somewhat more into the detail of this unique feature of the
American fair.

Within the limits of the United States the transportation question soon
solved itself. Five-sixths of the seventy-four thousand miles of railway
which lead, without interruption of track, to Fairmount Park are of
either one and the same gauge, or so near it as to permit the use
everywhere of the same car, its wheels a little broader than common.
From the other sixth the bodies of the wagons, with their contents, are
transferable by a change of trucks. The expected sixty or eighty
thousand tons of building material and articles for display could thus
be brought to their destination in a far shorter period than that
actually allowed. Liberal arrangements were conceded by the various
lines in regard to charges. Toll was exacted in one direction only,
unsold articles to be returned to the shipper free. As the time for
closing to exhibitors and opening to visitors approached the Centennial
cars became more and more familiar to the rural watcher of the passing
train. They aided to infect him, if free from it before, with the
Centennial craze. Their doors, though sealed, were eloquent, for they
bore in great black letters on staring white muslin the shibboleth of
the day, "1776--International Exhibition--1876." The enthusiasm of those
very hard and unimpressible entities, the railroad companies, thus
manifesting itself in low rates and gratuitous advertising, could not
fail to be contagious. Nor was the service done by the interior lines
wholly domestic. Several large foreign contributions from the Pacific
traversed the continent. The houses and the handicraft of the Mongol
climbed the Sierra Nevada on the magnificent highway his patient labor
had so large a share in constructing. Nineteen cars were freighted with
the rough and unpromising chrysalis that developed into the neat and
elaborate cottage of Japan, and others brought the Chinese display.
Polynesia and Australia adopted the same route in part. The canal
modestly assisted the rail, lines of inland navigation conducting to the
grounds barges of three times the tonnage of the average sea-going craft
of the Revolutionary era. These sluggish and smooth-going vehicles were
employed for the carriage of some of the large plants and trees which
enrich the horticultural department, eight boats being required to
transport from New York a thousand specimens of the Cuban flora sent by
a single exhibitor, M. Lachaume of Havana. Those moisture-loving shrubs,
the brilliant rhododendra collected by English nurserymen from our own
Alleghanies and returned to us wonderfully improved by civilization,
might have been expected also to affect the canal, but they chose, with
British taste, the more rapid rail. They had, in fact, no time to lose,
for their blooming season was close at hand, and their roots must needs
hasten to test the juices of American soil. Japan's miniature garden of
miniature plants, interesting far beyond the proportions of its
dimensions, was perforce dependent on the same means of conveyance.

[Illustration: FAÇADE OF THE EGYPTIAN DIVISION, MAIN BUILDING.]

The locomotive was summoned to the aid of foreign exhibitors on the
Atlantic as on the Pacific side, though to a less striking extent, the
largest steamships being able to lie within three miles of the
exposition buildings. It stood ready on the wharves of the Delaware to
welcome these stately guests from afar, indifferent whether they came in
squadrons or alone. It received on one day, in this vestibule of the
exposition, the Labrador from France and the Donati from Brazil. Dom
Pedro's coffee, sugar and tobacco and the marbles and canvases of the
Société des Beaux-Arts were whisked off in amicable companionship to
their final destination. The solidarity of the nations is in some sort
promoted by this shaking down together of their goods and chattels. It
gives a truly international look to the exposition to see one of
Vernet's battle-pieces or Meissonier's microscopic gems of color jostled
by a package of hides from the Parana or a bale of India-rubber.

Yet more expressive was the medley upon the covered platforms for the
reception of freight. Eleven of these, each one hundred and sixty by
twenty-four feet, admitted of the unloading of fifty-five freight-cars
at once. At this rate there was not left the least room for anxiety as
to the ability of the Commission and its employés to dispose, so far as
their responsibility was concerned, of everything presented for
exhibition within a very few days. The movements of the custom-house
officials, and the arrangements of goods after the passing of that
ordeal, were less rapid, and there seemed some ground for anxiety when
it was found that in the last days of March scarce a tenth of the
catalogued exhibits were on the ground, and for the closing ten days of
the period fixed for the receipt of goods an average of one car-load per
minute of the working hours was the calculated draft on the resources of
the unloading sheds. Home exhibitors, by reason of the very completeness
of their facilities of transport, were the most dilatory. The United
States held back until her guests were served, confident in the abundant
efficiency of the preparations made for bringing the entertainers to
their side. Better thus than that foreigners should have been behind
time.

When the gates of the enclosure were at last shut upon the steam-horse,
a broader and more congenial field of duty opened before him. From the
rôle of dray-horse he passed to that of courser. Marvels from the ends
of the earth he had, with many a pant and heave, forward pull and
backward push, brought together and dumped in their allotted places. Now
it became his task to bear the fiery cross over hill and dale and
gather the clans, men, women and children. The London exhibition of
1851 had 6,170,000 visitors, and that of 1862 had 6,211,103. Paris in
1855 had 4,533,464, and in 1867, 10,200,000. Vienna's exhibition drew
7,254,867. The attendance at London on either occasion was barely double
the number of her population. So it was with Paris at her first display,
though she did much better subsequently. Vienna's was the greatest
success of all, according to this test. The least of all, if we may take
it into the list, was that of New York in 1853. Her people numbered
about the same with the visitors to her Crystal Palace--600,000.
Philadelphia's calculations went far beyond any of these figures, and
she laid her plans accordingly.

Some trainbands from Northern and Southern cities might give their
patriotic furor the bizarre form of a march across country, but the
millions, if they came at all, must come by rail, and the problem was to
multiply the facilities far beyond any previous experience, while
reconciling the maximum of safety, comfort and speed with a reduction of
fares. The arrangements are still to be tested, and are no doubt open to
modification. On one point, however, and this an essential one, we
apprehend no grounds of complaint. There will be no crowding. The train
is practically endless, the word _terminus_ being a misnomer for the
circular system of tracks to which the station (six hundred and fifty by
one hundred feet) at the main entrance of the grounds forms a tangent.
The line of tourists is reeled off like their thread in the hands of
Clotho, the iron shears that snip it at stated intervals being
represented by the unmythical steam-engine. The same modern minister of
the Fates has another shrine not far from the dome of Memorial Hall,
where his acolytes are the officials of the Reading Railroad Company.

Care for the visitor's comfortable locomotion does not end with
depositing him under the reception-verandah. The Commission did not
forget that a pedestrian excursion over fifteen or twenty miles of
aisles might sufficiently fatigue him without the additional trudge from
hall to hall over a surface of four hundred acres under a sun which the
century has certainly not deprived of any mentionable portion of its
heat. Hence, the belt railway, three and a half miles long, with trains
running by incessant schedule--a boon only to be justly appreciated by
those who attended the European expositions or any one of them. His
umbrella and goloshes pocketed in the form of a D.P.C. check, the
visitor, more fortunate than Brummel or Bonaparte, cannot be stopped by
the elements.

[Illustration: FAÇADE OF THE SWEDISH DIVISION, MAIN BUILDING.]

We shall have amply disposed of the subject of transportation when we
add that the neighborhood or city supply to the thirteen entrance-gates
is provided for by steam-roads capable of carrying twenty-four thousand
persons hourly, and tram-roads seating seven thousand, besides an
irregular militia or voltigeur force of light wagons, small steamers and
omnibuses equal to a demand of two or three thousand more in the same
time. It was not deemed likely that Philadelphia would require
conveyance for half of her population every day. Should that supposition
prove erroneous, the excess can fall back upon the safe and inexpensive
vehicle of 1776, 1851, 1867 and 1873--sole leather.

Let us return to our packing-cases, and see where they go. To watch the
gradual dispersal of a congregation to their several places of abode is
always interesting. Especially is it so when those places of retreat
bear the names and fly the flags of the several nations of the globe.
This stout cube of deal, triple-bound with iron, disappears under the
asp and winged sphere of the Pharaohs. That other, big with rich velvets
and broideries, seeks the tricolor of France. Yonder, a wealth of silks
and lacquer finds a resting-place in the carved black-walnut _étagères_
of Japan. Here go, cased in the spoils of the fjelds, toward a pavilion
seventy-five paces long and twenty wide, the bulky contributions of the
Norsemen. Swedish carpentry in perfection offers to a deposit separate
from that of the sister-kingdom a distinct receptacle. Close at hand
stand the antipodes in the pavilion of Chili, that opens its graceful
portal to bales sprinkled mayhap with the ashes of Aconcagua. There
"crashes a sturdy _box_ of stout John Bull;" and Russia, Tunis and
Canada roll into close neighborhood with him and each other. A queer and
not, let us hope, altogether transitory show of international comity is
this. Many a high-sounding, much-heralded and more-debating Peace
Congress has been held with less effect than that conducted by these
humble porters, carpenters and decorators. This one has solidity. Its
elements are palpable. The peoples not only bring their choicest
possessions, but they also set up around them their local habitations.
It is a cosmopolitan town that has sprung into being beneath the great
roof and glitters in the rays of our republican sun. In its
rectangularly-planned streets, alleys and plazas every style of
architecture is represented--domestic, state and ecclesiastical,
ancient, mediæval and modern. The spirit and taste of most of the races
and climes find expression, giving thus the Sydenham and the Hyde Park
palaces in one. The reproductions at the former place were the work of
English hands: those before us are executed, for the most part, by
workmen to whom the originals are native and familiar. In this feature
of the interior of the Main Building we are amply compensated for the
breaking up of the _coup d'oeil_ by a multiplicity of discordant forms.
The space is still so vast as to maintain the effect of unity; and this
notwithstanding the considerable height of some of the national stalls,
that of Spain, for example, sending aloft its trophy of Moorish shields
and its effigy of the world-seeking Genoese to an elevation of forty-six
feet. The Moorish colonnade of the Brazilian pavilion lifts its head in
graceful rivalry of the lofty front reared by the other branch of the
Iberian race. In so vast an expanse this friendly competition of
Spaniards and Portuguese becomes, to the eye, a union of their
pretensions; and a single family of thirty-three millions in Europe and
America combines to present us with two of the handsomest structures in
the hall.

[Illustration: FAÇADE OF THE BRAZILIAN DIVISION, MAIN BUILDING.]

A moderate dip into statistics can no longer be evaded. We must map out
the microcosm, and allot to each sovereign power its quota of the
surface. The great European states which have assumed within the century
the supreme direction of human affairs are assigned a prominent central
position in the Main Building. Great Britain and her Asiatic possessions
occupy just eighty-three feet less than a hundred thousand; her other
colonies, including Canada, 48,150; France and her colonies, 43,314;
Germany, 27,975; Austria, 24,070; Russia, 11,002; Spain, 11,253; Sweden
and Belgium, each 15,358; Norway, 6897; Italy, 8167; Japan, 16,566;
Switzerland, 6646; China, 7504; Brazil, 6397; Egypt, 5146; Mexico, 6504;
Turkey, 4805; Denmark, 1462; and Tunis, 2015. These, with minor
apportionments to Venezuela, the Argentine Confederation, Chili, Peru
and the Orange Free State of South Africa, cover the original area of
the structure, deducting the reservation of 187,705 feet for the United
States, and excluding thirty-eight thousand square feet in the annexes.
France must be credited, in explanation of her comparatively limited
territory under the main roof, with her external pavilions devoted to
bronzes, glass, perfumery and (chief of all) to her magnificent
government exhibit of technical plans, drawings and models in
engineering, civil and military, and architecture. These outside
contributions constitute a link between her more substantial displays
and the five hundred paintings, fifty statues, etc. she places in
Memorial Hall.

In Machinery and Agricultural Halls, respectively, Great Britain has
37,125 and 18,745 feet; Germany, 10,757 and 4875; France, 10,139 and
15,574; Belgium, 9375 and 1851; Canada, 4300 and 10,094; Brazil, 4000
and 4657; Sweden, 3168 and 2603; Spain, 2248 and 5005; Russia, 1500 and
6785; Chili, 480 and 2493; Norway, 360 and 1590. Austria occupies 1536
feet in Mechanical Hall; and in that of Agriculture are the following
additional allotments: Netherlands, 4276; Denmark, 836; Japan, 1665;
Peru, 1632; Liberia, 1536; Siam, 1220; Portugal, 1020.

The foreign contributions in the department of machinery are, it will be
seen, hardly so large as might have been anticipated. When the spacious
annexes are added to the floor of the main hall, the great preponderance
of home exhibitors--five to one in the latter--is shown to be still more
marked. In Agricultural Hall the United States claim less than
two-thirds. The unexpected interest taken in this branch by foreigners
will enhance its prominence and value among the attractions of the
exposition. The collection of tropical products for food and
manufacturing is very complete. The development of the equatorial
regions of the globe has barely commenced. Even our acquaintance with
their natural resources remains but superficial. The country which takes
the lead in utilizing them in its trade and manufactures will gain a
great advantage over its fellows. England's commercial supremacy never
rested more largely on that foundation than now. Brazil, the great power
of South--as the Union is of North--America, possesses nearly half of
the accessible virgin territory of the tropics. Our interest joins hers
in retaining this vast endowment as far as possible for the benefit of
the Western World. A perception of this fact is shown in the exceptional
efforts made by Brazil to be fully represented in all departments of the
exposition, and in the visit to it of her chief magistrate, as we may
properly term her emperor, the only embodiment of hereditary power and
the monarchical principle in a country that enjoys--and has for the half
century since its erection into an independent state maintained--free
institutions.

[Illustration: DOM PEDRO, EMPEROR OF BRAZIL.]

In art domestic exhibits utterly lose their preponderance. Our artists
content themselves with a small fraction of the wall- and floor-space in
Memorial Hall and its northern annex. In extent of both "hanging" and
standing ground they but equal England and France, each occupying
something over twenty thousand square feet. Italy in the æsthetic combat
selects the chisel as her weapon, and takes the floor with a superb
array of marble eloquence, some three hundred pieces of statuary being
contributed by her sculptors. She might in addition set up a colorable
claim to the works executed on her soil or under the teaching of her
schools by artists of other nativities, and thus make, for example, a
sweeping raid into American territory. But she generously leaves to that
division the spoils swept from her coasts by the U.S. ship Franklin,
together with the works bearing her imprint in other sections, satisfied
with the wealth undoubtedly her own, itself but a faint adumbration of
the vast hoard she retains at home. Italy does not view the occasion
from a fine-art standpoint alone. Of her nine hundred and twenty-six
exhibitors, only one-sixth are in this department.

[Illustration: JAPANESE CARPENTERS.]

Nor, on the art side of our own country, must we overlook the Historical
division, the perfecting of which has been a labor of love with Mr.
Etting. He allots space among the old Thirteen, and reserves a place at
the feast of reunion to the mother of that rebellious sisterhood.

Forty acres of "floor-space" _sub Jove_ remained to be awarded to
foreign and domestic claimants. Gardening is one of the fine arts.
Certainly nothing in Memorial Hall can excel its productions in
richness, variety and harmony of color and form. Flower, leaf and tree
are the models of the palette and the crayon. Their marvelous
improvement in variety and splendor is one of the most striking triumphs
of human ingenuity. A few hundred species have been expanded into many
thousand forms, each finer than the parent. It is a new flora created by
civilization, undreamed of by the savage, and voluminous in proportion
to the mental advancement of the races among whom it has sprung up.
Progress writes its record in flowers, and scrawls the autographs of the
nations all over Lansdowne hill. No need of gilded show-cases to set off
the German and Germantown roses, the thirty thousand hyacinths in
another compartment, or the plot of seven hundred and fifty kinds of
trees and shrubs planted by a single American contributor. The Moorish
Kiosque, however, comes in well. The material is genuine Morocco, the
building having been brought over in pieces from the realm of the
Saracens, of "gul in its bloom" and of "Larry O'Rourke"--as Rogers
punned down the poem of his Irish friend.

The nations comfortably installed, we must sketch the tactical system
under which they are drawn up for peaceful contest. The classification
of subjects adopted by the Commission embraces seven departments. Of
these, the Main Building is devoted to I. _Mining and Metallurgy_; II.
_Manufactures_; III. _Education and Science_; Memorial Hall and its
appendages, to IV. _Art_; Machinery Hall, to V. _Machinery_;
Agricultural Hall, to VI. _Agriculture_; and Horticultural Hall and its
parterres, to VII. _Horticulture_. These habitats have, as we have
heretofore seen, proved too contracted for the august and expansive
inmates assigned them. All of the latter have overflowed; mining, for
instance, into the mineral annex of thirty-two thousand square feet and
the great pavilion (a hundred and thirty-five feet square) of Colorado
and Kansas; education into the Swedish and Pennsylvania school-houses
and others already noted; manufactures into breweries, glass-houses,
etc.; and so on with an infinity of irrepressible outgrowths.

[Illustration: FAÇADE OF THE DIVISION OF THE NETHERLANDS, MAIN
BUILDING.]

Department I. is subdivided into classes numbered from 100 to 129, and
embracing the products of mines and the means of extracting and reducing
them. II. extends from Class 200 to Class 296--chemical manufactures,
ceramics, furniture, woven goods of all kinds, jewelry, paper,
stationery, weapons, medical appliances, hardware, vehicles and their
accessories. III. deals with the high province of educational systems,
methods and libraries; institutions and organizations; scientific and
philosophical instruments and methods; engineering, architecture in its
technical and non-æsthetic aspect, maps; physical, moral and social
condition of man. Fifty classes, 300 to 349 inclusive, fence in this
field of pure reason. Department IV., Classes 400-459, covers sculpture,
painting, photography, engraving and lithography, industrial and
architectural designs, ceramic decorations, mosaics, etc. V., Classes
509-599, takes charge of machines and tools for mining, chemistry,
weaving, sewing, printing, working metal, wood and stone; motors;
hydraulic and pneumatic apparatus; railway stock or "plant;" machinery
for preparing agricultural products; "aërial, pneumatic and water
transportation," and "machinery and apparatus especially adapted to the
requirements of the exhibition." VI., Classes 600-699, assembles
arboriculture and forest products, pomology, agricultural products, land
and marine animals, pisciculture and its apparatus, "animal and
vegetable products," textile substances, machines, implements and
products of manufacture, agricultural engineering and administration,
tillage and general management. Under Department VII., Classes 700-739,
come ornamental trees, shrubs and flowers, hothouses and conservatories,
garden tools and contrivances, garden designing, construction and
management.

The accumulated experience of past expositions, seconded by the judgment
and systematic thoroughness apparent in the preparations for the present
one, makes this a good "working" classification. It has done away with
confusion to an extent hardly to have been hoped for, and all the
thousands of objects and subjects have dropped into their places in the
exhibition with the precision of machinery, little adapted as some of
them are to such treatment. Very impalpable and elusive things had to
submit themselves to inspection and analysis, and have their elements
tabulated like a tax bill or a grocery account. All human concerns were
called on to be listed on the muster-roll and stand shoulder to shoulder
on the drill-ground. Some curious comrades appear side by side in the
long line. For example, we read: Class 286, brushes; 295, sleighs; 300,
elementary instruction; 301, academies and high schools, colleges and
universities; 305, libraries, history, etc.; 306, school-books, general
and miscellaneous literature, encyclopædias, newspapers; 311, learned
and scientific associations, artistic, biological, zoological and
medical schools, astronomical observatories; 313, music and the drama.
Then we find, closely sandwiched between, 335--topographical maps,
etc.--and 400--figures in stone, metal, clay or plaster--340, physical
development and condition (of the young of the genus _Homo_); 345,
government and law; 346, benevolence, beginning with hospitals of all
kinds and ending with--in the order we give them--emigrant-aid
societies, treatment of aborigines and prevention of cruelty to animals!
In the last-named subdivision the visitor will be stared out of
countenance by Mr. Bergh's tremendous exposure of "various instruments
used by persons in breaking the law relative to cruelty to animals," the
glittering banner of the S.P.C.A., and its big trophy, eight yards
square, that illuminates the east end of the north avenue of the Main
Building, in opposition to the trophy at the other end of the same
avenue illustrating the history of the American flag. But he will look
in vain for selected specimens of the emigrant-runner, the luxuries of
the steerage and Castle Garden, or for photographs of the well-fed
post-trader and Indian agent, agricultural products from Captain Jack's
lava-bed reservation and jars of semi-putrescent treaty-beef. He will
alight, next door to the penniless immigrant, the red man and the
omnibus-horse, on Class 348, religious organizations and systems,
embracing everything that grows out of man's sense of responsibility to
his Maker. It will perhaps occur to the observer that, though the
juxtaposition is well enough, religion ought to have come in a little
before. His surprise at the power of condensation shown in compressing
eternity into a single class will not be lessened when he passes on to
Class 632, sheep; 634, swine; and 636, dogs and cats!

A glance over the classification-list assists us in recognizing the
advantages of the system of awards framed by the Commission and adopted
after patient study and discussion. It discards the plan--if plan it
could be called--of scattering diplomas and medals of gold, silver and
bronze right and left, after the fashion of largesse at a mediæval
coronation, heretofore followed at international expositions. These
prizes were decided on and assigned by juries whose impartiality--by
reason of the imperfect representation upon them of the nations which
exhibited little in mass or little in certain classes, and also of their
failure to make written reports and thus secure their
responsibility--could not be assured, and whose action, therefore, was
defective in real weight and value. The juries were badly constituted:
they had too much to do of an illusory and useless description, and they
had too little to do that was solid and instructive. Special mentions,
diplomas, half a dozen grades of medals and other honors, formed a
programme too large and complicated to be discriminatingly carried out.
So it happened that to exhibit and to get a distinction of some kind
came, at Vienna, to be almost convertible expressions; and who excelled
in the competition in any of the classes, or who had contributed anything
substantial to the stock of human knowledge or well-being, remained quite
undetermined. What instruction the display could impart was confined to
spectators who studied its specialties for themselves and used their
deductions for their individual advantage, and to those who read the
sufficiently general and cursory reports made to their several
governments by the national commissions. The official awards and reports
of the exposition authorities amounted to little or nothing.

[Illustration: THE CORLISS ENGINE, FURNISHING MOTIVE-POWER FOR MACHINERY
HALL.]

A sharp departure from this practice was decided on at the Centennial.
Two hundred judges, of undoubted character and intelligence and entire
familiarity with the departments assigned to them, were chosen--half by
the foreign bureaus and half by the U.S. Commission. These were made
officers of the exposition itself, and thus separated from external
influences. They were given a reasonable and fixed compensation of one
thousand dollars each for their time and personal expenses. An equal
division of the number of judges between the domestic and foreign sides
gives the latter an excess, measured by the comparative extent of the
display from the two sources. But this is favorable to us, as we shall
be the better for an outside judgment on the merits of both our own and
foreign exhibits. Were it otherwise, the excess of private observers
from this country would counterbalance our deficit in judges. The
foreign jurors have to see for the millions they represent. Our own will
have vast numbers of their constituents on the ground.

Written reports are drawn up by these selected examiners and signed by
the authors. The reports must be "based upon inherent and comparative
merit. The elements of merit shall be held to include considerations
relating to originality, invention, discovery, utility, quality, skill,
workmanship, fitness for the purpose intended, adaptation to public
wants, economy and cost." Each report, upon its completion, is delivered
to the Centennial Commission for award and publication. The award comes
in the shape of a diploma with a bronze medal and a special report of
the judges upon its subject. This report may be published by the
exhibitor if he choose. It will also be used by the Commission in such
manner as may best promote the objects of the exposition. These
documents, well edited and put in popular form, will constitute the most
valuable publication that has been produced by any international
exhibition. To this we may add the special reports to be made by the
State and foreign commissions. These ought, with the light gained by
time, to be at least not inferior to the similar papers scattered
through the bulky records of previous exhibitions. Let us hope that
brevity will rule in the style of all the reports, regular and
irregular. There is a core to every subject, every group of subjects and
every group of groups, however numerous and complex: let all the scribes
labor to find it for us. When we recall the disposition of all
committees to select the member most fecund of words to prepare their
report, we are seized with misgivings--a feeling that becomes oppressive
as we further reflect that the local committee which deliberately
collected and sent for exhibition eighty thousand manuscripts written by
the school-children of a Western city is at large on the exposition
grounds.

The passion for independent effort characteristic of the American people
led to the supplementing of the official list by sundry volunteer
prizes. These are offered by associations, and in some cases
individuals. They are not all, like the regular awards, purely honorary.
They lean to the pecuniary form, those particularly which are offered in
different branches of agriculture. Competition among poultry-growers,
manufacturers of butter, reaping-and threshing-machines,
cotton-planters, etc. is stimulated by money-prizes reaching in all some
six or eight thousand dollars. Agricultural machinery needs the open
field for its proper testing, and cannot operate satisfactorily in
Machinery Hall. Without a sight of our harvest-fields and
threshing-floors foreigners would carry away an incomplete impression of
our industrial methods, the farm being our great factory. The oar, the
rifle and the racer are as impatient of walls as the plough and its
new-fangled allies. They demand elbow-room for the display of their
powers, and the Commission was fain to let their votaries tempt it to
pass the confines of its territory. The lusty undergraduates of both
sides of Anglo-Saxondom escort it unresistingly down from its airy halls
to the blue bosom of the Schuylkill, while "teams" picked from eighty
English-speaking millions beckon it across the Jerseys to Creedmoor. And
the horse--is he to call in vain? Is a strait-laced negative from the
Commission to echo back his neigh? Is the blood of Eclipse and Godolphin
to stagnate under a ticket in "Class 630, horses, asses and mules"? Why,
the very ponies in front of Memorial Hall pull with extra vim against
their virago jockeys and flap their little brass wings in indignation at
the thought. The thoroughbred will be heard from, and the judges that
sit on him will be "experts in their department."

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF COOK'S WORLD'S TICKET-OFFICE.]

Another specimen of the desert-born, the Western Indian, forms an
exhibit as little suited as the improved Arab horse to discussion and
award at a session fraught with that "calm contemplation and poetic
ease" which ought to mark the deliberations of the judges. How are the
representatives of fifty-three tribes to be put through their paces?
These poor fragments of the ancient population of the Union have, if we
exclude the Cherokees and Choctaws and two or three of the Gila tribes,
literally nothing to show. The latter can present us with a faint trace
of the long-faded civilization of their Aztec kindred, while the former
have only borrowed a few of the rudest arts of the white, and are
protected from extinction merely by the barrier of a frontier more and
more violently assailed each year by the speculator and the settler, and
already passed by the railway. If we cannot exactly say that the Indian,
alone of all the throng at the exhibition, goes home uninformed and
unenlightened, what ideas may reach his mind will be soon smothered out
by the conditions which surround him on the Plains. It is singular that
a population of three or four hundred thousand, far from contemptible
in intellectual power, and belonging to a race which has shown itself
capable of a degree of civilization many of the tribes of the Eastern
continents have never approached, should be so absolutely an industrial
cipher. The African even exports mats, palm-oil and peanuts, but the
Indian exports nothing and produces nothing. He lacks the sense of
property, and has no object of acquisition but scalps. Can the assembled
ingenuity of the nineteenth century, in presence of this mass of waste
human material, devise no means of utilizing it? There stands its
Frankenstein, ready made, perfect in thews and sinews, perfect also in
many of its nobler parts. It is not a creation that is demanded--simply
a remodeling or expansion. For success in this achievement the United
States can afford to offer a pecuniary prize that will throw into the
shade all the other prizes put together. The cost of the Indian bureau
for 1875-76 reached eight millions of dollars. The commission appointed
to treat for the purchase of the Black Hills reports that the feeding
and clothing of the Sioux cost the government thirteen millions during
the past seven years; and that without the smallest benefit to those
spirited savages. Says the report: "They have made no advancement
whatever, but have done absolutely nothing but eat, drink, smoke and
sleep."

Social and political questions like this point to a vast field of
inquiry. For its proper cultivation the exposition provides data
additional to those heretofore available. They should be used as far as
possible upon the spot. At least, they can be examined, collated and
prepared for full employment. To this end, meetings and discussions held
by men qualified by intellect and study to deal with them are the
obvious resort. There is room among the two hundred judges for some such
men, but the juries are little more numerous than is required for the
examination of and report on objects. For more abstract inquiries they
will need recruits. These should be supplied by the leading
philosophical associations of this country and Europe. The governments
have all an interest in enlisting their aid, and the Centennial
Commission has done what in it lay to promote their action. Ethnic
characteristics, history, literature, education, crime, statistics as a
science, hygiene and medicine generally are among the broad themes which
are not apt to be adequately treated by the average committee of
inspection. So with the whole range of the natural sciences.
Dissertations based on the jury reports will doubtless be abundant after
a while, but those reports themselves, being limited in scope, will not
be as satisfactory material as that which philosophic specialists would
themselves extract from direct observation and debate upon the ground.

For the study of the commanding subject of education the provision made
at the present exhibition is exceptionally great. In bulk, and probably
in completeness, it is immeasurably beyond the display made on any
preceding occasion. The building erected by the single State of
Pennsylvania for her educational department covers ten or eleven
thousand square feet, and other States of the Union make corresponding
efforts to show well in the same line. The European nations all manifest
a new interest in this branch, and give it a much more prominent place
in their exhibit than ever before. The school-systems of most of them
are of very recent birth, and do not date back so far as 1851. The
kingdom of Italy did not exist at that time or for many years after, yet
we now see it pressing for a foremost place in the race of popular
education, and multiplying its public schools in the face of all the
troubles attendant upon the erection and organization of a new state.

The historian will find aliment less abundant. A century or two of
Caucasian life in America is but a thing of yesterday to him, and,
though far from uninstructive, is but an offshoot from modern European
annals. For all that, he finds himself on our soil in presence of an
antiquity which remains to be explored, and which clamors to be rescued
from the domain of the pre-historic. It has no literary records beyond
the scant remains of Mexico. It writes itself, nevertheless, strongly
and deeply on the face of the land--in mounds, fortifications and tombs
as distinct, if not so elaborate, as those of Etruria and Cyprus. These
remains show the hand of several successive races. Who they were, what
their traits, whence they came, what their relations with the now
civilized Chinese and Japanese--whom, physically, their descendants so
nearly resemble--are legitimate queries for the historian. Geologically,
America is older than Europe, and was fitted for the home of the red man
before the latter ceased to be the home of the whale. The investigation
of its past, if impossible to be conducted in the light of its own
records or even traditions, is capable of aiding in the verification of
conclusions drawn from those of the Old World. If History, however,
contemptuously relegates the Moundbuilders to the mattock of the
antiquarian, she is still "Philosophy teaching by example." As thus
allied with Philosophy, she finds something to look into at the
Centennial, even though she look obliquely, after the fashion of the
observant Hollanders, who have stuck the reflecting glasses of the Dutch
street-windows into the sides of their compartment in the Main Building,
and squint, without a change of position, upon the United States, Spain,
South America, Egypt, Great Britain and several other countries.

Religion and philanthropy find the field inviting, and their
representatives, individual and associated, are busy in preparing to
till it. The enthusiasm of the leading religious societies took the
concrete shape of statuary. Hence the Catholic Fountain, heretofore
noticed; the Hebrew statue to Religious Liberty, as established in a
land that never had a Ghetto or a Judenstrasse; the Presbyterian figure
of Witherspoon; an Episcopalian of Bishop White; and others under way or
proposed. The temperance movement, too, embodies itself in a fountain
that runs ice-water instead of claret. The less tangible but perhaps
more fruitful form of reunions and discussions must in a greater or less
degree enhance the power for good of these organizations. They are led
by men of mind and energy, seldom averse to enlightenment, and all
professing to seek nothing else. When men of these qualities, aiming at
the same or a like object, meet to compare their respective
admeasurements of its parallax made from as many different points, they
cannot fail to approach accuracy. Faith is a first element in all great
undertakings. It removes mountains at Mont Cenis, as it walked the waves
with Columbus. In our century even faith is progressive, and does not
shrink from elbowing its way through what Bunyan would have styled
Vanity Fair.

Modestly in the rear of the moral reformers, yet not wholly and
uniformly unaggressive, nor guiltless altogether of isms and schisms,
step forward the literary men. As a rule, they do not affect
expositions, or exhibitions of any kind. But one general meeting, with
some minor and informal ones, is on the programme for them. This is
well. The world and the fullness thereof belongs to them, and they may
care to come forward to scan this schedule of their inheritance. We do
not hear of their having combined to put up a pavilion of their own,
like the dairymen and the brewers, "to show the different processes of
manufacture." The pen will be at work here, nevertheless, and has been
from the beginning, before the foundations of the Corliss engine were
laid or the granite of Memorial Hall left the quarry. Without this first
of implements none of the other machinery would ever have moved. The pen
is mightier than the piston. It is the invisible steam that impels all.

[Illustration: FRENCH RESTAURANT LA FAYETTE.]

In a visible form also it is here. The publishers of the London _Punch_
have selected as the most comprehensive motto for the case in which they
exhibit copies of their various publications a sentence from Shakspeare:
"Come and take choice of all my library, and so beguile thy sorrow." We
do not know that to dull his sorrows is all that can be done for man.
Literature assumes to do more than make him forget. The lotos-eater is
not its one hero. School-books, piled aloft "in numbers without number
numberless," may to the man be suggestive of hours without thought and
void of grief, but they certainly are not to the boy. Blue books, ground
out in a thousand bureaus, and contributed in like profusion, may be
pronounced a weariness to the adult flesh, however sweet their ultimate
uses. Unhappy those who wade through them for increasing the happiness
of others! These humble but portly representatives of political
literature are the log-books of the ship of state. They chart and
chronicle the currents and winds along its course, so that from the mass
of chaff a grain of guidance may be painfully winnowed out for the
benefit of its next voyage, or for the voyages of other craft
floundering on the same perilous and baffling sea. Everything comes pat
to a log-book. As endless is the medley of memoranda in blue-books. They
deal, like government itself, with everything. They take up the citizen
on his entry into the cradle, and do not quite drop him at the grave.
How to educate, clothe, feed and doctor him; how to keep him out of
jail, and how, once there, to get him out again with the least possible
moral detriment; how to adjust as lightly as possible to his shoulders
the burden of taxation; how to economize him as food for powder; and how
to free him from the miasm of crowded cities,--are but a small part of
their contents. And the index is growing, if possible, larger, as the
apparatus of government becomes more and more intricate. With such
contributions and credentials do the rulers of the nations enroll
themselves in the guild of authorship. They are proud of them, and
exhibit them in profusion, in whole libraries, rich with gold and the
primary colors.

Expositions, as we have before remarked, come into the same worshipful
guild by right of a special literature they have brought into being.
They come, moreover, into the blue-book range by their bearing upon
certain topics generally assigned to it. It is found, for example, that,
like other great gatherings, they are apt to be followed by a temporary
local increase of crime. The police-records of London show that the
arrests in 1851 outnumbered those of the previous year by 1570, and that
in 1862 the aggregate exceeded by 5043 that of 1861. It will at once
occur that the population of the city was greatly increased on each
occasion, and that the influx of thieves and lawbreakers generally must
have thinned out that class elsewhere, and in that way very probably
reduced, rather than added to, the sum-total of crime, the preventive
arrangements in London having been exceptionally thorough. The drawback
that would consist in an increase of crime is therefore only an apparent
result. An opposite effect cannot but result, if only from the evidence
that so vast and heterogeneous an assemblage can be held without marked
disorder. The police as well as the criminals and the savants of all
nations come together, compare notes and enjoy a common improvement.

[Illustration: THE MAMMOTH RODMAN GUN.]

This is the first opportunity the physicians of Europe have had to
become fully acquainted with the advances in surgery and pathology their
American brethren have the credit of having made within the past few
years. They will find it illustrated in the government buildings and
elsewhere; and they have an ample _quid pro quo_ to offer from their own
researches. The balancing of opinions at the proposed medical congress
and in private intercourse must tend to free medical science from what
remnants of empiricism still disfigure it, to perfect diagnosis and to
trace with precision the operation of all remedial agents. Means remain
to be found of administering the _coup de grâce_ to the few epidemics
which have not yet been extirpated, but linger in a crippled condition.
This will be aided by the illustrations afforded of processes of
draining, ventilation, etc.

Man's health rests in that of his stomach. The food question is a
concern of the physician as well as of the publicist. The race began
life on a vegetable diet, and to that it reverts when compelled by
enfeebled digestion or by the increasing difficulty of providing animal
food for a dense population. But it likes flesh when able to assimilate
it or to procure it, and demands at least the compromise of fish. Hence,
the revived attention to fish-breeding, an art wellnigh forgotten since
the Reformation emptied the carp-ponds of the monks. Maryland, New York
and other States illustrate this device for enhancing the food-supply,
and the aquaria at Agricultural Hall, containing twelve or fifteen
thousand gallons of salt and fresh water, present a congress of the
leaders, gastronomically speaking, of the finny people. The shad remains
not only to be naturalized in Europe, but to be reintroduced to the
water-side dwellers above tide, who once met him regularly at table. He
is joined by delegates from the mountain, the great lakes and the
Pacific coast in the trout, the salmon and the whitefish, and by that
quiet, silent and slow-going cousin of the fraternity, the oyster, most
valuable of all, as possessors of those qualities not unfrequently are.
Europe does not dream, and we ourselves do not realize until we come
carefully to think of it, what the oyster does for us. He sustains the
hardiest part of our coasting marine, paves our best roads, fertilizes
our sands, enlivens all our festivities, and supports an army of
packers, can-makers, etc., cased in whose panoply of tin he traverses
the globe like a mail-clad knight-errant in the cause of commerce and
good eating. Yet he needs protection. All this burden is greater than he
can bear, and it is growing. System and science are invoked to his
rescue ere he go the way of the inland shad and the salmon that became a
drug to the Pilgrim Fathers. It is not easy to frame a medal or diploma
for the fostering of the oyster. More effective is a consideration of
the impending penalty for neglecting to do so. _Ostrea edulis_ is one of
the grand things before which prizes sink into nothingness.

Another of them is that triumph of pure reason, chess, an unadulterated
product of the brain--i.e., of phosphorus--i.e., of fish. Nobody stakes
money on chess or offers a prize to the best player. Honor at that board
is its own reward. So when we are told of the Centennial Chess
Tournament we recognize at once the fitness of the word borrowed from
the chivalric joust. It is the culmination of human strife. The thought,
labor and ardor spread over three hundred and fifty acres sums itself in
that black and white board the size of your handkerchief. War and
statecraft condense themselves into it. Armies and nations move with the
chessman. Sally, leaguer, feint, flank-march, triumphant charge are one
after another rehearsed. There, too, moves the game of politics in plot
and counterplot. It is the climax of the subjective. From those lists
the trumpet-blare, the crowd, the glitter, the banners, "the boast of
heraldry and pomp of power," melt utterly away. To the world-champions
who bend above the little board the big glass houses and all the
treasures stared at by admiring thousands are as naught.

[Illustration: SCENE AT ONE OF THE ENTRANCES TO THE GROUNDS--THE
TURNSTILE.]

But man is an animal, and not by any means of intellect all compact. The
average mortal confesses to a craving for the stimulus of great shows,
of material purposes, substantial objects of study and palpable prizes.
It is so in 1876, as it was in 1776, and as it will be in a long series
of Seventy-sixes.

It is the concrete rather than the abstract which draws him in through
the turnstiles of the exposition enclosure. Separated by the divisions
of those ingeniously-contrived gates into taxed and untaxed spectators,
the masses stream in with small thought of the philosophers or the
chess-players. Their minds are reached, but reached through the eye, and
the first appeal is to that. Each visitor constitutes himself a jury of
one to consider and compare what he sees. The hundreds of thousands of
verdicts so reached will be published only by word of mouth, if
published at all. Their value will be none the less indubitable, though
far from being in all cases the same. The proportion of intelligent
observers will be greater than on like occasions heretofore. So will,
perhaps, be that of solid matter for study, although in some specialties
there may be default. He who enters with the design of self-education
will find the text-books in most branches abundant, wide open before him
and printed in the clearest characters. What shortcomings there may have
been in the selection and arrangement of them he will have, if he can,
himself to remedy. There stands the school, founded and furnished with
great labor. The would-be scholar can only be invited to use it. The
centennial that is to turn out scholars ready-made has not yet rolled
round.




DOLORES.

    A light at her feet and a light at her head,
      How fast asleep my Dolores lies!
    Awaken, my love, for to-morrow we wed--
      Uplift the lids of thy beautiful eyes.

    Too soon art thou clad in white, my spouse:
      Who placed that garland above thy heart
    Which shall wreathe to-morrow thy bridal brows?
      How quiet and mute and strange thou art!

    And hearest thou not my voice that speaks?
      And feelest thou not my hot tears flow
    As I kiss thine eyes and thy lips and thy cheeks?
      Do they not warm thee, my bride of snow?

    Thou knowest no grief, though thy love may weep.
      A phantom smile, with a faint, wan beam,
    Is fixed on thy features sealed in sleep:
      Oh tell me the secret bliss of thy dream.

    Does it lead to fair meadows with flowering trees,
      Where thy sister-angels hail thee their own?
    Was not my love to thee dearer than these?
      Thine was my world and my heaven in one.

    I dare not call thee aloud, nor cry,
      Thou art so solemn, so rapt in rest,
    But I will whisper: Dolores, 'tis I:
      My heart is breaking within my breast.

    Never ere now did I speak thy name,
      Itself a caress, but the lovelight leapt
    Into thine eyes with a kindling flame,
      And a ripple of rose o'er thy soft cheek crept.

    But now wilt thou stir not for passion or prayer,
      And makest no sign of the lips or the eyes,
    With a nun's strait band o'er thy bright black hair--
      Blind to mine anguish and deaf to my cries.

    I stand no more in the waxen-lit room:
      I see thee again as I saw thee that day,
    In a world of sunshine and springtide bloom,
      'Midst the green and white of the budding May.

    Now shadow, now shine, as the branches ope,
      Flickereth over my love the while:
    From her sunny eyes gleams the May-time hope,
      And her pure lips dawn in a wistful smile.

    As one who waiteth I see her stand,
      Who waits though she knows not what nor whom,
    With a lilac spray in her slim soft hand:
      All the air is sweet with its spicy bloom.

    I knew not her secret, though she held mine:
      In that golden hour did we each confess;
    And her low voice murmured, Yea, I am thine,
      And the large world rang with my happiness.

    To-morrow shall be the blessedest day
      That ever the all-seeing sun espied:
    Though thou sleep till the morning's earliest ray,
      Yet then thou must waken to be my bride.

    Yea, waken, my love, for to-morrow we wed:
      Uplift the lids of thy beautiful eyes.
    A light at her feet and a light at her head,
      How fast asleep my Dolores lies!

EMMA LAZARUS.




GLIMPSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

CONCLUDING PAPER.


[Illustration: SCENE IN A BURIAL-GROUND.]

There is a continuous fascination about this old city. The guide-book
says, "A week or ten days are required to see the sights," but though we
make daily expeditions we seem in no danger of exhausting them. Neither
does one have to go far to seek amusement. I never look down into the
street below my windows without being attracted by some object of
interest. The little donkeys with their great panniers of long slim
loaves of bread (oh, tell it not, but I once saw the driver use one as a
stick to belabor the lazy animal with, and then leave it, with two or
three other loaves, at the opposite house, where a pretty Armenian, that
I afterward saw taking the air on the roof with her bright-eyed little
girl, perhaps had it for her breakfast!); the fierce, lawless Turkish
soldiers stalking along, their officers mounted, and looking much better
in their baggy trousers and frock-coats on their fine horses than on
foot; Greek and Armenian ladies in gay European costumes; veiled Turkish
women in their quiet street-dress; close carriages with
gorgeously-dressed beauties from the sultan's harem followed by black
eunuchs on horseback,--these and similar groups in every variety of
costume form a constant stream of strange and picturesque sights.

One morning, attracted by an unusual noise, I looked out and found it
proceeded from a funeral procession. First came a man carrying the lid
of the coffin; then several Greek priests; after them boys in white
robes with lighted candles, followed by choir-boys in similar dresses
who chanted as they walked along. Such sounds! Greek chanting is a
horrible nasal caterwauling. Get a dozen boys to hold their noses, and
then in a high key imitate the gamut performed by several festive cats
as they prowl over the housetops on a quiet night, and you have Greek,
Armenian or Turkish chanting and singing to perfection. There is not the
first conception of music in the souls of these barbarians. Behind this
choir came four men carrying the open coffin. The corpse was that of a
middle-aged man dressed in black clothes, with a red fez cap on the head
and yellow, red and white flowers scattered over the body. The hot sun
shone full on the pinched and shriveled features, and the sight was most
revolting. Several mourners followed the coffin, the ladies in black
clothes, with black lace veils on their heads and their hair much
dressed. The Greeks are obliged to carry their dead in this way,
uncovered, because concealed arms were at one time conveyed in coffins
to their churches, and then used in an uprising against the government.
We witnessed a still more dreadful funeral outside the walls. A party,
evidently of poor people, were approaching an unenclosed cemetery, and
we waited to see the interment. The body, in its usual clothes, was
carried on a board covered by a sheet. When they reached the grave the
women shrieked, wept and kissed the face of the dead man: then his
clothes were taken off, the body wrapped in the sheet and laid in the
grave, which was only two feet deep. The priest broke a bottle of wine
over the head, the earth was loosely thrown in, and the party went away.
There is no more melancholy spot to me than a Turkish cemetery. The
graves are squeezed tightly together, and the headstones, generally in a
tumble-down state, are shaped like a coffin standing on end, or like a
round hitching-post with a fez cap carved on the top. Weeds and rank
wild-flowers cover the ground, and over all sway the dark, stiff
cypresses.

A little way down the street is a Turkish pastry-shop. Lecturers and
writers have from time to time held forth on the enormities of
pie-eating, and given the American people "particular fits" for their
addiction to it. Now, while I fully endorse all I ever heard said on the
subject, I beg leave to remark that the Americans are not the _worst_
offenders in this way. If you want to see pastry, come to
Constantinople: _seeing_ will satisfy you--you won't risk a taste.
Mutton is largely eaten, and the mutton fat is used with flour to make
the crust, which is so rich that the grease fairly oozes out and
"smells to Heaven." Meat-pies are in great demand. The crust is baked
alone in a round flat piece, and laid out on a counter, which is soon
very greasy, ready to be filled. A large dish of hash is also ready, and
when a customer calls the requisite amount of meat is clapped on one
side of the paste, the other half doubled over it, and he departs eating
his halfmoon-shaped pie. On the counters you see displayed large
egg-shaped forms of what look like layers of tallow and cooked meat,
cheesy-looking cakes of many kinds and an endless variety of
confectionery. The sweetmeats are perfection, the fresh Turkish paste
with almonds in it melts in your mouth, and the sherbet, compounded of
the juice of many fruits and flowers and cooled with snow, is the most
delicious drink I ever tasted. There are also many kinds of nice
sweet-cakes; but, on the whole, I should prefer not to board in a
Turkish family or employ a Turkish cook. No wonder the women are pale
and sallow if they indulge much in such food!

Being anxious to see a good display of Turkish rugs, and our party
having some commissions to execute, we sallied forth one afternoon on
this errand. If you intend to visit a Turkish carpet warehouse, and your
purse or your judgment counsels you not to purchase, put yourself under
bonds to that effect before you go; for, unless you possess remarkable
strength of character, the beautiful rugs displayed will prove
irresistible temptations. Near the bazaar in Stamboul is a massive
square stone house, looking like a fortress compared with the buildings
around it. Mosses and weeds crop out of every uneven part of its walls.
A heavy door that might stand a siege admitted us to a small vestibule,
and from this we passed into a paved court with a moss-grown fountain in
the centre. Around this court ran a gallery, its heavy arches and
columns supporting a second, to which we ascended by a broad flight of
steps. A double door admitted us to the wareroom, where, tolerably
secure from fire (the doors alone were of wood), were stored Turkish and
Persian rugs of all sizes and colors. The Turkish were far handsomer
than the Persian, and the colors more brilliant than those I have
usually seen. The attendants unrolled one that they said was a hundred
years old. It had a dusty, faded look, as if it had been in the
warehouse quite that length of time, and made the modern ones seem
brighter by contrast. Several rugs having been selected, we returned to
the office, where a carpet was spread and we were invited to seat
ourselves on it. Coffee was passed around, and we proceeded to bargain
for our goods through our interpreter. The merchant, as usual, asked an
exorbitant price to start with, and we offered what was equally
ridiculous the other way; and so we gradually approached the final
price--he coming gracefully down, and we as affably ascending in the
scale, till a happy medium was reached, and we departed with our
purchases following us on the back of an ammale.

[Illustration: THE SULTAN ABDUL ASSIZ.]

Three days of each week are observed as holy days. Friday is the Turkish
Sabbath, Saturday the Jewish, and the Greeks and Armenians keep Sunday.
The indolent government officials, glad of an excuse to be idle, keep
all three--that is, they refrain from business--so there are only four
days out of the seven in which anything is accomplished.

One of the great sights is to see the sultan go to the mosque; so one
Friday we took a caïque and were rowed up the Bosphorus to Dolma Backté,
and waited on the water opposite the palace. The sultan's caïque was at
the principal entrance on the water-side of the palace, and the steps
and marble pavement were carpeted from the caïque to the door. Presently
all the richly-dressed officers of the household, who were loitering
around, formed on either side the steps, and, bending nearly double,
remained so while the sultan passed down to his caïque. Abdul Assiz is
quite stout and rather short, with a pleasant face and closely-cut
beard. He was dressed in a plain black uniform, his breast covered with
orders. The sultan's caïque was a magnificent barge--white, profusely
ornamented with gilt, and rowed by twenty-four oarsmen dressed in white,
who rose to their feet with each stroke, bowed low, and settled back in
their seats as the stroke was expended. The sultan and grand vizier
seated themselves under the plum-colored velvet canopy, and the caïque
proceeded swiftly toward the mosque, followed by three other caïques
with his attendants. A gun from an iron-clad opposite the palace
announced that the sultan had started. The shore from the palace to the
mosque was lined with soldiers; the bands played; the people cheered;
the ships ran up their flags; all the war-vessels were gay with bunting,
had their yards manned and fired salutes, which were answered by the
shore-batteries. The mosque selected for that day's devotions was in
Tophaneh, near the water. Several regiments were drawn up to receive the
sultan, and an elegant carriage and a superb Arab saddle-horse were in
waiting, so that His Majesty might return to the palace as best suited
his fancy. After an hour spent in devotion the sultan reappeared, and
entering his carriage was driven away. We saw him again on our way
home, when he stopped to call on an Austrian prince staying at the
legation. The street leading up to the embassy was too narrow and steep
for a carriage, so, mounting his horse at the foot, he rode up, passing
very close to us.

[Illustration: TURKISH COW-CARRIAGE.]

In the afternoon we drove to the "Sweet Waters of Europe" to see the
Turkish ladies, who in pleasant weather always go out there in carriages
or by water in caïques. Compared with our parks, with their lovely lakes
and streams and beautiful lawns, the far-famed Sweet Waters of Europe
are only fields with a canal running through them; but here, where this
is the only stream of fresh water near the city, and in a country
destitute of trees, it is a charming place. The stream has been walled
up to the top of its banks, which are from three to six feet above the
water, and there are sunny meadows and fine large trees on each side.
The sultan has a summer palace here with a pretty garden, and the stream
has been dammed up by blocks of white marble cut in scallops like
shells, over which the water falls in a cascade. The road to the Sweet
Waters, with one or two others, was made after the sultan's return from
his European trip, and in anticipation of the empress Eugénie's visit.
European carriages were also introduced at that time. The ladies of the
sultan's harem drive out in very handsome coupés, with coachmen wearing
the sultan's livery, but you more frequently see the queer one-horse
Turkish carriage, and sometimes a "cow-carriage." This last is drawn by
cows or oxen: it is an open wagon, with a white cloth awning ornamented
with gay fringes and tassels. Many people go in caïques, and all carry
bright-colored rugs, which they spread on the grass. There they sit for
several hours and gossip with each other, or take their luncheons and
spend the afternoon. A Turkish woman is never seen to better advantage
than when "made up" for such an excursion. Her house-dress is always
hidden by a large cloak, which comes down to the ground and has loose
sleeves and a cape. The cloak is left open at the neck to show the lace
and necklace worn under it, and is generally made of silk, often of
exquisite shades of pink, blue, purple or any color to suit the taste of
the wearer. A small silk cap, like the low turbans our ladies wore eight
or nine years ago, covers the head, and on it are fastened the most
brilliant jewels--diamond pins, rubies, anything that will flash. The
wearer's complexion is heightened to great brilliancy by toilet arts,
and over all, covering deficiencies, is the yashmak or thin white veil,
which conceals only in part and greatly enhances her beauty. You think
your "dream of fair women" realized, and go home and read _Lalla Rookh_
and rave of Eastern peris. Should some female friend who has visited a
harem and seen these radiant beauties face to face mildly suggest that
paint, powder and the enchantment of distance have in a measure deluded
you, you dismiss the unwelcome information as an invention of the
"green-eyed monster," and, remembering the brilliant beauties who
reclined beside the Sweet Waters or floated by you on the Golden Horn,
cherish the recollection as that of one of the brightest scenes of the
Orient.

These I have spoken of are the upper classes from the harems of the
sultan and rich pashas, but those you see constantly on foot in the
streets are the middle and lower classes, and not so attractive. They
have fine eyes, but the yashmaks are thicker, and you feel there is less
beauty hidden under them. The higher the rank the thinner the yashmak is
the rule. They also wear the long cloak, but it is made of black or
colored alpaca or a similar material. Gray is most worn, but black,
brown, yellow, green, blue and scarlet are often seen. The negresses
dress like their mistresses in the street, and if you see a pair of
bright yellow boots under a brilliant scarlet ferraja and an unusually
white yashmak, you will generally find the wearer is a jet-black
negress. Sitting so much in the house _à la Turque_ is not conducive to
grace of motion, nor are loose slippers to well-shaped feet, and I must
confess that a Turkish woman walks like a _goose_, and the size of her
"fairy feet" would rejoice the heart of a leather-dealer.

[Illustration: ENTERING A MOSQUE.]

We have been to see the Howling Dervishes, and I will endeavor to give
you some idea of their performances. Crossing to Scutari in the steam
ferryboat, we walked some distance till we reached the mosque, where the
services were just commencing. The attendant who admitted us intimated
that we must remove our boots and put on the slippers provided. N----
did so, but I objected, and the man was satisfied with my wearing them
over my boots. We were conducted up a steep, ladder-like staircase to a
small gallery, with a low front only a foot high, with no seats but
sheepskins on the floor, where we were expected to curl ourselves up in
Turkish fashion. Both my slippers came off during my climb up stairs,
and were rescued in their downward career by N----, who by dint of much
shuffling managed to keep his on. Below us were seated some thirty or
forty dervishes. The leader repeated portions of the Koran, in which
exercise others occasionally took part in a quiet manner. After a while
they knelt in line opposite their leader and began to chant in louder
tones, occasionally bowing forward full length. Matters down below
progressed slowly at first, and were getting monotonous. One of my feet,
unaccustomed to its novel position, had gone to sleep, and I was in a
cramped state generally. Moreover, we were not the sole occupants of the
gallery: the sheepskins were full of them, and I began to think that if
the dervishes did not soon begin to howl, _I_ should. Some traveler has
said that on the coast of Syria the Arabs have a proverb that the
"sultan of _fleas_ holds his court in Jaffa, and the grand vizier in
Cairo." Certainly some very high dignitary of the realm presides over
Constantinople, and makes his head-quarters in the mosque of the Howling
Dervishes.

[Illustration: CASTLE OF EUROPE, ON THE BOSPHORUS.]

The dervishes now stood up in line, taking hold of hands, and swayed
backward, forward and sideways, with perfect uniformity, wildly
chanting, or rather howling, verses of the Koran, and keeping time with
their movements. They commenced slowly, and increased the rapidity of
their gymnastics as they became more excited and devout. The whole
performance lasted an hour or more, and at the end they naturally seemed
quite exhausted. Then little children were brought in, laid on the
floor, and the head-dervish stepped on their bodies. I suppose he
stepped in such a manner as not to hurt them, as they did not utter a
sound. Perhaps the breath was so squeezed out of them that they could
not. One child was quite a baby, and on this he rested his foot lightly,
leaning his weight on a man's shoulder. I could not find out exactly
what this ceremony signified, but was told it was considered a cure for
sickness, and also a preventive.

We concluded to _do_ the dervishes, and so next day went to see the
spinning ones. They have a much larger and handsomer mosque than their
howling brethren. First they chanted, then they indulged in a "walk
around." Every time they passed the leader, who kept his place at the
head of the room, they bowed profoundly to him, then passed before him,
and, turning on the other side, bowed again. After this interchange of
courtesies had lasted a while, they sailed off around the room, spinning
with the smooth, even motion of a top--arms folded, head on one side and
eyes shut. Sometimes this would be varied by the head being thrown back
and the arms extended. The rapid whirling caused their long green
dresses to spread out like a half-open Japanese umbrella, supposing the
man to be the stick, and they kept it up about thirty minutes to the
inspiring music of what sounded like a drum, horn and tin pan. We
remained to witness the _first set:_ whether they had any more and wound
up with the German, I cannot say. We were tired and went home, satisfied
with what we had seen. I should think they corresponded somewhat with
our Shakers at home, as far as their "muscular Christianity" goes, and
are rather ahead on the dancing question.

One of the prominent objects of interest on the Bosphorus is Roberts
College. It stands on a high hill three hundred feet above the water,
and commands an extensive view up and down the Bosphorus. For seven
years Dr. Hamlin vainly endeavored to obtain permission to build it, and
the order was not given till Farragut's visit. The gallant admiral,
while breakfasting with the grand vizier, inquired what was the reason
the government did not allow Dr. Hamlin to build the college, when the
grand vizier hastily assured him that all obstacles had been removed,
and that the order was even then as good as given. Americans may well be
proud of so fine and well-arranged a building and the able corps of
professors. We visited it in company with Dr. Wood and his agreeable
wife, who are so well known to all who take any interest in our foreign
missions. After going over the college and listening to very creditable
declamations in English from some of the students, we were hospitably
entertained at luncheon by Professor Washburn, who is in charge of the
institution, and his accomplished wife. Within a short distance of the
college is the Castle of Europe, and on the opposite side of the
Bosphorus the Castle of Asia. They were built by Mohammed II. in 1451,
and the Castle of Europe is still in good preservation. It consists of
two large towers and several small ones connected by walls, and is built
of a rough white stone, to which the ivy clings luxuriantly.

A pleasant excursion is to take a little steamer, which runs up the
Bosphorus and back, touching at Beicos (Bey Kos), and visit the Giant
Mountain, from which is a magnificent view of the Black Sea and nearly
the whole length of the Bosphorus. We breakfasted early, but when ready
to start found our guide had disappointed us, and his place was not to
be supplied. The day was perfect, and rather than give up our trip we
determined to go by ourselves, trusting that the success which had
attended similar expeditions without a _commissionnaire_ would not
desert us on this occasion. The sail up on the steamer was charming.
There are many villages on the shores of the Bosphorus, and between
them are scattered palaces and summer residences, the latter often
reminding us of Venetian houses, built directly on the shore with steps
down to the water, and caïques moored at the doors, as the gondolas are
in Venice. The houses are surrounded by beautiful gardens, with a
profusion of flowers blooming on the very edge of the shore, their gay
colors reflected in the waves beneath.

We learned from the captain of the steamer that Giant Mountain was two
and a half miles from the village, with no very well-defined road
leading to it; so on landing at Bey Kos we made inquiries for a guide,
and this time were successful. Horses were also forthcoming, but no
side-saddle. I respectfully declined to follow the example of my Turkish
sisters and mount a gentleman's saddle; neither was I anxious to ride my
Arab steed bareback, so we concluded to try a cow-carriage, and
despatched our guide to hire the only one the place afforded. This
stylish establishment was not to be had; so, having wasted half an hour
in trying to find some conveyance, we gave it up and started on foot;
and were glad afterward that we did so. The road was shaded to the base
of the mountain, and led through a beautiful valley, the fields covered
with wild-flowers. I have never seen such masses of color--an acre
perhaps of bright yellow, perfectly dazzling in the sunlight, then as
large a mass of purple, next to that an immense patch of white daisies,
so thick they looked like snow. The effect of these gay masses, with
intervals of green grass and grain, was very gorgeous. We passed two of
the sultan's palaces, one built in Swiss style. The ascent of Giant
Mountain from the inland side is gradual, while it descends very
abruptly on the water-side. On the top of the mountain are the ruins of
the church of St. Pantaleon, built by Justinian, also a mosque and the
tomb of Joshua: so the Turks affirm. From a rocky platform just below
the mosque there is a magnificent view. Toward the north you look off on
the Black Sea and the old fortress of Riva, which commands the entrance
to the Bosphorus. In front and to the south winds the beautiful
Bosphorus for sixteen miles till it reaches the Sea of Marmora, which
you see far in the distance glittering in the sunlight. You look down on
the decks of the passing vessels, and the large steamers seem like toy
boats as they pass below you. Near the mosque is a remarkable well of
cool water. Shrubs and a few small trees grow on the mountain, and the
ground is covered with quantities of heather, wild-flowers and ivy. We
picked long spikes of white heather in full bloom, and pansies,
polyanthus, the blue iris and many others of our garden flowers. The
country all around Constantinople is very destitute of trees. The woods
were cut down long ago, and the multitudes of sheep, which you see in
large flocks everywhere, crop the young sprouts so they cannot grow up
again.

[Illustration: FORTRESS OF RIVA, AND THE BLACK SEA.]

Returning to Constantinople, our steamer ran close to the European
shore, stopping at the villages on that side. Most of the officers of
these boats are Turks, but they find it necessary to employ European
(generally English) engineers, as the Turks are fatalists and not
reliable. It is said they pay but little attention to their machinery
and boilers, reasoning that if it is the will of Allah that the boiler
blow up, it will certainly do so; if not, all will go right, and why
trouble one's self? Laughable stories are told of the Turkish navy;
e.g., that a certain captain was ordered to take his vessel to Crete,
and after cruising about some time returned, not being able to find the
island. Another captain stopped an English vessel one fine day to ask
where he was, as he had lost his reckoning, although the weather had
been perfectly clear for some time. In the Golden Horn lies an old
four-decker which during the Crimean war was run broadside under a
formidable battery by her awkward crew, who were unable to manage her,
and began in their fright to jump overboard. A French tugboat went to
the rescue and towed her off.

On our way to the hotel we saw the sultan's son, a boy of fifteen. He
was driving in a fine open carriage drawn by a very handsome span of bay
horses, and preceded by four outriders mounted on fine Arabian horses.
Coachman, footman and outriders, in the black livery of the sultan, were
resplendent in gold lace. The harness was of red leather and the
carriage painted of the same bright color. The cushions were of white
silk embroidered with scarlet flowers. It was a dashing equipage, but
seemed better suited to a harem beauty than the dark, Jewish-looking boy
in the awkward uniform of a Turkish general who was its sole occupant.

[Illustration: TURKISH QUARTER--STAMBOUL.]

Yesterday we took our last stroll in Constantinople, crossing the Golden
Horn by the new bridge to Stamboul. This bridge is a busy spot, for
besides the constant throngs that cross and recross, it is the favorite
resort of beggars and dealers in small wares. Many of the ferryboats
also start from here, so that, although long and wide, it is crowded
most of the day. An Englishman who is an officer in the Turkish army
told us of an amusing adventure of his in crossing the bridge. He had
been at the war department, and was told he could have the six months'
pay which was due him if he would take it in piasters. Thankful to get
it, and fearing if he did not take it then in that shape he might have
to wait a good while, he accepted, and the piasters (which are large
copper coins worth about four cents of our money) were placed in bags on
the backs of porters to be taken to a European bank at Pera. As they
were crossing the bridge one of the bags burst open with the weight of
the coins, and a quantity of them were scattered. Of course a first
class scramble ensued, in which the beggars, who are always on hand, and
others reaped quite a harvest, and when the officer got the hole tied
up the ammale found the bag considerably lighter to carry.

Reaching Stamboul, we made our way through the crowded streets, past the
Seraglio gardens and St. Sophia, till we reached the old Hippodrome,
which was modeled after the Circus at Rome. Little remains of its
ancient glory, for the Crusaders carried off most of its works of art.
The granite obelisk of Theodosius and the pillar of Constantine, which
the vandal Turks stripped of its bronze when they first captured the
city, are still left, but the stones are continually falling, and it
will soon be a ruin. The serpentine column consists of three serpents
twisted together: the heads are gone, Mohammed II. having knocked off
one with his battle-axe. A little Turk was taking his riding-lesson on
the level ground of the Hippodrome, and his frisky little black pony
gave the old fellow in attendance plenty of occupation. We watched the
boy for a while, and then, passing on toward the Marmora, took a look at
the "Cistern of the Thousand Columns." A broad flight of steps leads
down to it, and the many tall slender columns of Byzantine architecture
make a perfect wilderness of pillars. Wherever we stood, we seemed
always the centre from which long aisles of columns radiated till they
lost themselves in the darkness. The cistern has long been empty, and is
used as a ropewalk.

The great fire swept a large district of the city here, which has been
but little rebuilt, and the view of the Marmora is very fine. On the
opposite Asiatic shore Mount Olympus, with its snow-crowned summit,
fades away into the blue of the heavens. This is a glorious atmosphere,
at least at this season, the air clear and bracing, the sky a beautiful
blue and the sunsets golden. In winter it is cold, muddy and cheerless,
and in midsummer the simoom which sweeps up the Marmora from Africa and
the Syrian coast renders it very unhealthy for Europeans to remain in
the city. The simoom is exceedingly enervating in its effects, and all
who can spend the summer months on the upper Bosphorus, where the
prevailing winds are from the Black Sea and the air is cool and
healthful. Nearly all the foreign legations except our own have summer
residences there and beautiful grounds.

[Illustration: OBELISK OF THEODOSIUS.]

Following the old aqueduct built by the emperor Hadrian, which still
supplies Stamboul with water, and is exceedingly picturesque with its
high dripping arches covered with luxuriant ivy, we reached the walls
which protected the city on the land-side, and then, threading our way
through the narrow, dirty streets, we returned to the Golden Horn. I do
not wonder, after what I have seen of this part of Stamboul, that the
cholera made such ravages here a few years since. I should think it
would remain a constant scourge. Calling a caïque, we were rowed up the
Golden Horn to the Sweet Waters, but its tide floated only our own boat,
and the banks lacked the attraction of the gay groups which render the
place so lively on Fridays. We were served with coffee by a Turk who
with his little brasier of coals was waiting under a wide-spreading tree
for any chance visitor, and after a short stroll on the bank opposite
the sultan's pretty palace we floated gently down the stream till we
reached the Golden Horn again. On a large meadow near the mouth of the
Sweet Waters some Arabs were camped with an immense flock of sheep. They
had brought them there to shear and wash the wool in the fresh water,
and the ground was covered with large quantities of beautiful long
fleece. The shepherds in their strange mantles and head-dresses looked
very picturesque as they spread the wool and tended their flocks. Our
_caïquegee_, as the oarsman of a caïque is called, ought not to be
overlooked. His costume was in keeping with his pretty caïque, which was
painted a delicate straw-color and had white linen cushions. He was a
tall, finely-built fellow, a Cretan or Bulgarian I should think, for he
looked too wide awake for a Turk. The sun had burned his olive
complexion to the deepest brown, and his black eyes and white teeth when
he smiled lighted up his intelligent face, making him very handsome. He
wore a turban, loose shirt with hanging sleeves and voluminous trousers,
all of snowy whiteness. A blue jacket embroidered with gilt braid was in
readiness to put on when he stopped rowing. It must have taken a ruinous
amount of material to make those trousers. They were full at the waist
and knee, and before seating himself to his oars he gracefully threw the
extra amount of the fullness which drooped behind over the wide seat as
a lady spreads out her overskirt.

[Illustration: SHEPHERDS.]

Last night we bade farewell to the strange old city with its picturesque
sights, its glorious views and the many points of interest we had grown
so familiar with. Our adieus were said, the ammales had taken our
baggage to the steamer, which lay at anchor off Seraglio Point, and
before dark we went on board, ready to sail at an early hour.

The bustle of getting underway at daylight this morning woke me, and I
went on deck in time to take a farewell look. The first rays of the sun
were just touching the top of the Galata Tower and lighting up the dark
cypresses in the palace-grounds above us. The tall minarets and the blue
waves of the Bosphorus caught the golden light, while around Olympus the
rosy tint had not yet faded and the morning mists looked golden in the
sunlight. We rounded Seraglio Point and steamed down the Marmora, passed
the Seven Towers, and slowly the beautiful city faded from our view.

SHEILA HALE.




THEE AND YOU.

A STORY OF OLD PHILADELPHIA. IN TWO PARTS.--I.


Once on a time I was leaning over a book of the costumes of forty years
before, when a little lady said to me, "How ever could they have loved
one another in such queer bonnets?" And now that since then long years
have sped away, and the little critic is, alas! no longer young, haply
her children, looking up at her picture by Sully in a turban and short
waist; may have wondered to hear how in such disguise she too was fatal
to many hearts, and set men by the ears, and was a toast at suppers in
days when the waltz was coming in and the solemn grace of the minuet
lingered in men's manners.

And so it is, that, calling up anew the soft September mornings of which
I would draw a picture before they fade away, with me also, from men's
minds, it is the quaintness of dress which first comes back to me, and I
find myself wondering that in nankeen breeches and swallow-tailed blue
coats with buttons of brass once lived men who, despite gnarled-rimmed
beavers and much wealth of many-folded cravats, loved and were loved as
well and earnestly as we.

I had been brought up in the austere quiet of a small New England town,
where life was sad and manners grave, and when about eighteen served for
a while in the portion of our army then acting in the North. The life of
adventure dissatisfied me with my too quiet home, and when the war ended
I was glad to accept the offer of an uncle in China to enter his
business house. To prepare for this it was decided that I should spend
six months with one of the great East India firms. For this purpose I
came to Philadelphia, and by and by found myself a boarder in an up-town
street, in a curious household ruled over by a lady of the better class
of the people called Friends.

For many days I was a lonely man among the eight or ten people who came
down one by one at early hours to our breakfast-table and ate somewhat
silently and went their several ways. Mostly, we were clerks in the
India houses which founded so many Philadelphia fortunes, but there were
also two or three of whom we knew little, and who went and came as they
liked.

It was a quiet lodging-house, where, because of being on the outskirts
and away from the fashion and stir of the better streets, chiefly those
came who could pay but little, and among them some of the luckless ones
who are always to be found in such groups--stranded folks, who for the
most part have lost hope in life. The quiet, pretty woman who kept the
house was of an ancient Quaker stock which had come over long ago in a
sombre Quaker Mayflower, and had by and by gone to decay, as the best of
families will. When I first saw her and some of her inmates it was on a
pleasant afternoon early in September, and I recall even now the simple
and quiet picture of the little back parlor where I sat down among them
as a new guest. I had been tranquilly greeted, and had slipped away into
a corner behind a table, whence I looked out with some curiosity on the
room and on the dwellers with whom my lot was to be cast for a long
while to come. I was a youth shy with the shyness of my age, but, having
had a share of rough, hardy life, ruddy of visage and full of that
intense desire to know things and people that springs up quickly in
those who have lived in country hamlets far from the stir and bustle of
city life.

The room I looked upon was strange, the people strange. On the floor was
India matting, red and white in little squares. A panel of painted white
wood-work ran around an octagonal chamber, into which stole silently the
evening twilight through open windows and across a long brick-walled
garden-space full of roses and Virginia creepers and odorless
wisterias. Between the windows sat a silent, somewhat stately female,
dressed in gray silk, with a plain frilled cap about the face, and with
long and rather slim arms tightly clad in silk. Her fingers played at
hide-and-seek among some marvelous lace stitches--evidently a woman
whose age had fallen heir to the deft ways of her youth. Over her
against the wall hung a portrait of a girl of twenty, somewhat sober in
dress, with what we should call a Martha Washington cap. It was a
pleasant face, unstirred by any touch of fate, with calm blue eyes
awaiting the future.

The hostess saw, I fancied, my set gaze, and rising came toward me as if
minded to put at ease the new-comer. "Thee does not know our friends?"
she said. "Let me make thee known to them."

I rose quickly and said, "I shall be most glad."

We went over toward the dame between the windows. "Mother," she said,
raising her voice, "this is our new friend, Henry Shelburne, from New
England."

As she spoke I saw the old lady stir and move, and after a moment she
said, "Has he a four-leaved clover?"

"Always that is what she says. Thee will get used to it in time."

"We all do," said a voice at my elbow; and turning I saw a man of about
thirty years, dressed in the plainest-cut Quaker clothes, but with a
contradiction to every tenet of Fox written on his face, where a brow of
gravity for ever read the riot act to eyes that twinkled with
ill-repressed mirth. When I came to know him well, and saw the
preternatural calm of his too quiet lips, I used to imagine that unseen
little demons of ready laughter were for ever twitching at their
corners.

"Mother is very old," said my hostess.

"Awfully old," said my male friend, whose name proved to be Richard
Wholesome.

"Thee might think it sad to see one whose whole language has come to be
just these words, but sometimes she will be glad and say, 'Has thee a
four-leaved clover?' and sometimes she will be ready to cry, and will
say only the same words. But if thee were to say, 'Have a cup of
coffee?' she would but answer, 'Has thee a four-leaved clover?' Does it
not seem strange to thee, and sad? We are used to it, as it might
be--quite used to it. And that above her is her picture as a girl."

"Saves her a deal of talking," said Mr. Wholesome, "and thinking. Any
words would serve her as well. Might have said, 'Topsail halyards,' all
the same."

"Richard!" said Mistress White. Mistress Priscilla White was her name.

"Perchance thee would pardon me," said Mr. Wholesome.

"I wonder," said a third voice in the window, "does the nice old dame
know what color has the clover? and does she remember fields of
clover--pink among the green?"

"Has thee a four-leaved clover?" re-echoed the voice feebly from between
the windows.

The man who was curious as to the dame's remembrances was a small stout
person whose arms and legs did not seem to belong to him, and whose face
was strangely gnarled, like the odd face a boy might carve on a
hickory-nut, but withal a visage pleasant and ruddy.

"That," said Mistress White as he moved away, "is Mr. Schmidt--an old
boarder with some odd ways of his own which we mostly forgive. A good
man if it were not for his pipe," she added demurely--"altogether a good
man."

"With or without his pipe," said Mr. Wholesome.

"Richard!" returned our hostess, with a half smile.

"Without his pipe," he added; and the unseen demons twitched at the
corners of his mouth anew.

Altogether, these seemed to me droll people, they said so little, and,
saving the small German, were so serenely grave. I suppose that first
evening must have made a deep mark on my memory, for to this day I
recall it with the clearness of a picture still before my eyes. Between
the windows sat the old dame with hands quiet on her lap now that the
twilight had grown deeper--a silent, gray Quaker sphinx, with one only
remembrance out of all her seventy years of life. In the open window sat
as in a frame the daughter, a woman of some twenty-five years, rosy yet
as only a Quakeress can be when rebel Nature flaunts on the soft cheek
the colors its owner may not wear on her gray dress. The outline was of
a face clearly cut and noble, as if copied from a Greek gem--a face
filled with a look of constant patience too great perhaps for one
woman's share, with a certain weariness in it also at times, yet
cheerful too, and even almost merry at times--the face of one more
thoughtful of others than herself, and, despite toil and sordid cares, a
gentlewoman, as was plain to see. The shaft of light from the window in
which she sat broadened into the room, and faded to shadow in far
corners among chairs with claw toes and shining mahogany tables--the
furniture of that day, with a certain flavor about it of elegance,
reflecting the primness and solidness of the owners. I wonder if to-day
our furniture represents us too in any wise? At least it will not
through the generations to follow us: of that we may be sure. In the
little garden, with red graveled walks between rows of box, walked to
and fro Mr. Schmidt, smoking his meerschaum--a rare sight in those days,
and almost enough to ensure your being known as odd. He walked about ten
paces, and went and came on the same path, while on the wall above a
large gray cat followed his motions to and fro, as if having some
personal interest in his movements. Against an apricot tree leaned Mr.
Wholesome, watching with gleams of amusement the cat and the man, and
now and then filliping at her a bit of plaster which he pulled from the
wall. Then the cat would start up alert, and the man's face would get to
be quizzically unconscious; after which the cat would settle down and
the game begin anew. By and by I was struck with the broad shoulders and
easy way in which Wholesome carried his head, and the idea came to me
that he had more strength than was needed by a member of the Society of
Friends, or than could well have been acquired with no greater exercise
of the limbs than is sanctioned by its usages. In the garden were also
three elderly men, all of them quiet and clerkly, who sat on and about
the steps of the other window and chatted of the India ships and
cargoes, their talk having a flavor of the spices of Borneo and of
well-sunned madeira. These were servants of the great India houses when
commerce had its nobles and lines were sharply drawn in social life.

I was early in bed, and rising betimes went down to breakfast, which was
a brief meal, this being, as Mr. Wholesome said to me, the short end of
the day. I should here explain that Mr. Wholesome was a junior partner
in the house in which I was to learn the business before going to China.
Thus he was the greatest person by far in our little household, although
on this he did not presume, but seemed to me greatly moved toward jest
and merriment, and to sway to and fro between gayety and sadness, or at
the least gravity, but more toward the latter when Mistress White was
near, she seeming always to be a checking conscience to his mirth.

On this morning, as often after, he desired me to walk with him to our
place of business, of which I was most glad, as I felt shy and lonely.
Walking down Arch street, I was amazed at its cleanliness, and surprised
at the many trees and the unfamiliar figures in Quaker dresses walking
leisurely. But what seemed to me most curious of all were the plain
square meeting-houses of the Friends, looking like the toy houses of
children. I was more painfully impressed by the appearance of the
graves, one so like another, without mark or number, or anything in the
disposition of them to indicate the strength of those ties of kinship
and affection which death had severed. Yet I grew to like this quiet
highway, and when years after I was in Amsterdam the resemblance of its
streets to those of the Friends here at home overcame me with a crowd of
swift-rushing memories. As I walked down of a morning to my work, I
often stopped as I crossed Fifth street to admire the arch of lindens
that barred the view to the westward, or to gaze at the inscription on
the 'Prentices' Library, still plain to see, telling that the building
was erected in the eighth year of the Empire.

One morning Wholesome and I found open the iron grating of Christ Church
graveyard, and passing through its wall of red and black glazed brick,
he turned sharply to the right, and coming to a corner bade me look down
where under a gray plain slab of worn stone rests the body of the
greatest man, as I have ever thought, whom we have been able to claim as
ours. Now a bit of the wall is gone, and through a railing the busy or
idle or curious, as they go by, may look in and see the spot without
entering.

Sometimes, too, we came home together, Wholesome and I, and then I found
he liked to wander and zigzag, not going very far along a street, and
showing fondness for lanes and byways. Often he would turn with me a
moment into the gateway of the University Grammar School on Fourth
street, south of Arch, and had, I thought, great pleasure in seeing the
rough play of the lads. Or often, as we came home at noon, he liked to
turn into Paradise alley, out of Market street, and did this, indeed, so
often that I came to wonder at it, and the more because in an open space
between this alley and Commerce street was the spot where almost every
day the grammar-school boys settled their disputes in the way more
common then than now. When first we chanced on one of these encounters I
was surprised to see Mr. Wholesome look about him as if to be sure that
no one else was near, and then begin to watch the combat with a strange
interest. Indeed, on one occasion he utterly astonished me by taking by
the hand a small boy who had been worsted and leading him with us, as if
he knew the lad, which may well have been. But presently he said,
"Reuben thee said was thy name?"--"Yes, sir," said the lad.--"Well,"
said Mr. Wholesome, after buying him a large and very brown horse
gingerbread, two doughnuts and a small pie, "when you think it worth
while to hit a fellow, never slap his face, because then he will strike
you hard with his fist, which hurts, Reuben. Now, mind: next thee
strikes first with thee fist, my lad, and hard, too." If I had seen our
good Bishop White playing at taws, I could not have been more overcome,
and I dare say my face may have shown it, for, glancing at me, he said
demurely, "Thee has seen in thy lifetime how hard it is to get rid of
what thee liked in thy days of boyhood." After which he added no more in
the way of explanation, but walked along with swift strides and a dark
and troubled face, silent and thoughtful.

Sometimes in the early morning I walked to my place of business with Mr.
Schmidt, who was a man so altogether unlike those about him that I found
in him a new and varied interest. He was a German, and spoke English
with a certain quaintness and with the purity of speech of one who has
learned the tongue from books rather than from men. I learned after a
while that this guess of mine was a good one, and that, having been bred
an artist, he had been put in prison for some political offence, and had
in two years of loneliness learned English from our older authors. When
at last he was set free he took his little property and came away with a
bitter heart to our freer land, where, with what he had and with the
lessons he gave in drawing, he was well able to live the life he liked
in quiet ease and comfort. He was a kindly man in his ways, and in his
talk gently cynical; so that, although you might be quite sure as to
what he would do, you were never as safe as to what he would say;
wherefore to know him a little was to dislike him, but to know him well
was to love him. There was a liking between him and Wholesome, but each
was more or less a source of wonderment to the other. Nor was it long
before I saw that both these men in their way were patient lovers of the
quiet and pretty Quaker dame who ruled over our little household, though
to the elder man, Mr. Schmidt, she was a being at whose feet he laid a
homage which he felt to be hopeless of result, while he was schooled by
sorrowful fortunes to accept the position as one which he hardly even
wished to change.

It was on a warm sunny morning very early, for we were up and away
betimes, that Mr. Schmidt and I and Wholesome took our first walk
together through the old market-sheds. We turned into Market street at
Fourth street, whence the sheds ran downward to the Delaware. The
pictures they gave me to store away in my mind are all of them vivid
enough, but none more so than that which I saw with my two friends on
the first morning when we wandered through them together.

On either side of the street the farmers' wagons stood backed up against
the sidewalk, each making a cheap shop, by which stood the sturdy owners
under the trees, laughing and chaffering with their customers. We
ourselves turned aside and walked down the centre of the street under
the sheds. On either side at the entry of the market odd business was
being plied, the traders being mostly colored women with bright chintz
dresses and richly-colored bandanna handkerchiefs coiled turban-like
above their dark faces. There were rows of roses in red pots, and
venders of marsh calamus, and "Hot corn, sah, smokin' hot," and
"Pepperpot, bery nice," and sellers of horse-radish and
snapping-turtles, and of doughnuts dear to grammar-school lads. Within
the market was a crowd of gentlefolks, followed by their black servants
with baskets--the elderly men in white or gray stockings, with
knee-buckles, the younger in very tight nankeen breeches and pumps,
frilled shirts and ample cravats and long blue swallow-tailed coats with
brass buttons. Ladies whose grandchildren go no more to market were
there in gowns with strangely short waists and broad gypsy-bonnets, with
the flaps tied down by wide ribbons over the ears. It was a busy and
good-humored throng.

"Ah," said Schmidt, "what color!" and he stood quite wrapped in the joy
it gave him looking at the piles of fruit, where the level morning
sunlight, broken by the moving crowd, fell on great heaps of dark-green
watermelons and rough cantaloupes, and warmed the wealth of peaches
piled on trays backed by red rows of what were then called love-apples,
and are now known as tomatoes; while below the royal yellow of vast
overgrown pumpkins seemed to have set the long summer sunshine in their
golden tints.

"If these were mine," said Schmidt, "I could not for ever sell them.
What pleasure to see them grow and steal to themselves such sweet colors
out of the rainbow which is in the light!"

"Thee would make a poor gardener," said Wholesome, "sitting on thee
fence in the sun and watching thee pumpkins--damn nasty things anyhow!"

I looked up amazed at the oath, but Schmidt did not seem to remark it,
and went on with us, lingering here and there to please himself with the
lovely contrasts of the autumn fruit.

"Curious man is Schmidt," remarked Wholesome as we passed along. "I
could wish thee had seen him when we took him this way first. Old Betsey
yonder sells magnolia flowers in June, and also pond-lilies, which thee
may know as reasonably pleasant things to thee or me; but of a sudden I
find our friend Schmidt kneeling on the pavement with his head over a
tub of these flowers, and every one around much amazed."

"Was it not seemly?" said Schmidt, joining us. "There are who like
music, but to me what music is there like the great attunement of color?
and mayhap no race can in this rise over our black artists hereabout the
market-ends."

"Thee is crazed of many colors," said Wholesome laughing--"a bull of but
one."

Schmidt stopped short in the crowd, to Wholesome's disgust. "What," said
he, quite forgetful of the crowd, "is more cordial than color? This he
recalleth was a woman black as night, with a red turban and a lapful of
magnolias, and to one side red crabs in a basket, and to one side a
tubful of lilies. Moss all about, I remember."

"Come along," said Wholesome. "The man is cracked, and in sunny weather
the crack widens."

And so we went away down street to our several tasks, chatting and
amused.

Those were most happy days for me, and I found at evening one of my
greatest pleasures when Schmidt called for me after our early tea and we
would stroll together down to the Delaware, where the great India ships
lay at wharves covered with casks of madeira and boxes of tea and
spices. Then we would put out in his little rowboat and pull away toward
Jersey, and, after a plunge in the river at Cooper's Point, would lazily
row back again while the spire of Christ Church grew dim against the
fading sunset, and the lights would begin to show here and there in the
long line of sombre houses. By this time we had grown to be sure
friends, and a little help from me at a moment when I chanced to guess
that he wanted money had made the bond yet stronger. So it came that he
talked to me, though I was but a lad, with a curious freedom, which very
soon opened to me a full knowledge of those with whom I lived.

One evening, when we had been drifting silently with the tide, he
suddenly said aloud, "A lion in the fleece of the sheep."

"What?" said I, laughing.

"I was thinking of Wholesome," he replied. "But you do not know him. Yet
he has that in his countenance which would betray a more cunning
creature."

"How so?" I urged, being eager to know more of the man who wore the garb
and tongue of Penn, and could swear roundly when moved.

"If it will amuse," said the German, "I will tell you what it befell me
to hear to-day, being come into the parlor when Mistress White and
Wholesome were in the garden, of themselves lonely."

"Do you mean," said I, "that you listened when they did not know of your
being there?"

"And why not?" he replied. "It did interest me, and to them only good
might come."

"But," said I, "it was not--"

"Well?" he added as I paused. "--'Was not honor,' you were going to say
to me. And why not? I obey my nature, which is more curious than stocked
with honor. I did listen."

"And what did you hear?" said I.

"Ah, hear!" he answered. "What better is the receiver than is the thief?
Well, then, if you will share my stolen goods, you shall know, and I
will tell you as I heard, my memory being good."

"But--" said I.

"Too late you stop me," he added: "you must hear now."

The scene which he went on to sketch was to me strange and curious, nor
could I have thought he could give so perfect a rendering of the
language, and even the accent, of the two speakers. It was a curious
revelation of the man himself, and he seemed to enjoy his power, and yet
to suffer in the telling, without perhaps being fully conscious of it.
The oars dropped from his hands and fell in against the thwarts of the
boat, and he clasped his knees and looked up as he talked, not regarding
at all his single silent listener.

"When this is to be put upon the stage there shall be a garden and two
personages."

"Also," said I, "a jealous listener behind the scenes."

"If you please," he said promptly, and plunged at once into the dialogue
he had overheard:

"'Richard, thee may never again say the words which thee has said to me
to-night. There is, thee knows, that between us which is builded up like
as a wall to keep us the one from the other.'

"'But men and women change, and a wall crumbles, or thee knows it may be
made to. Years have gone away, and the man who stole from thee thy
promise may be dead, for all thee knows.'

"'Hush! thee makes me to see him, and though the dead rise not here, I
am some way assured he is not yet dead, and may come and say to me,
"'Cilla"--that is what he called me--"thee remembers the night and thy
promise, and the lightning all around us, and who took thee to shore
from the wrecked packet on the Bulkhead Bar." The life he saved I
promised.'

"Well, and thee knows--By Heaven! you well enough know who tortured the
life he gave--who robbed you--who grew to be a mean sot, and went away
and left you; and to such you hold, with such keep faith, and wear out
the sweetness of life waiting for him!'

"'Richard!'

"'Have I also not waited, and given up for thee a life, a career--little
to give. I hope thee knows I feel that. Has thee no limit, Priscilla?
Thee knows--God help me! how well you know--I love you. The world, the
old world of war and venture, pulls at me always. Will not you find it
worth while to put out a hand of help? Would it not be God taking your
hand and putting it in mine?'

"'Thee knows I love thee.'

"'And if the devil sent him back to curse you anew--'

"'Shame, Richard! I would say, God, who layeth out for each his way, has
pointed mine.'

"'And I?'

"'Thee would continue in goodness, loving me as a sister hardly tried.'

"'By God! I should go away to sea.'

"'Richard!'

"Which is the last word of this scene," added Schmidt. "You mayhap have
about you punk and flint and steel."

I struck alight in silence, feeling moved by the story of the hurt
hearts of these good people, and wondering at the man and his tale. Then
I said, "Was that all?"

"Could you, if not a boy, ask me to say more of it? Light thy pipe and
hold thy peace. Happy those who think not of women. I, who have for a
hearth-side only the fire of an honest pipe--'Way there, my lad! pull us
in and forget what a loose tongue and a soft summer night have given
thee to hear from a silly old German who is grown weak of head and sore
at soul. How the lights twinkle!"

Had I felt any doubt at all of the truth of his narration I should have
ceased to do so when for the next few days I watched Mr. Wholesome, and
saw him, while off his guard, looking at Mistress White askance with a
certain wistful sadness, as of a great honest dog somehow hurt and
stricken.

When an India ship came in, the great casks of madeira, southside, grape
juice, bual and what not were rolled away into the deep cellars of the
India houses on the wharves, and left to purge their vinous consciences
of such perilous stuff as was shaken up from their depths during the
long homeward voyage. Then, when a couple of months had gone by, it was
a custom for the merchant to summon a few old gentlemen to a solemn
tasting of the wines old and new. Of this, Mr. Wholesome told me one
day, and thought I had better remain to go through the cellars and drive
out the bungs and drop in the testers, and the like. "I will also stay
with thee," he added, "knowing perhaps better than thee the prices."

I learned afterward that Wholesome always stayed on these occasions, and
I had reason to be glad that I too was asked to stay, for, as it
chanced, it gave me a further insight into the character of my friend
the junior partner.

I recall well the long cellar running far back under Water street, with
its rows of great casks, of which Wholesome and I started the bungs
while awaiting the new-comers. Presently came slowly down the
cellar-steps our senior partner in nankeen shanks, silk stockings and
pumps--a frosty-visaged old man, with a nose which had fully earned the
right to be called bottle. Behind him limped our old porter in a blue
check apron. He went round the cellar, and at every second cask, having
lighted a candle, he held it upside down until the grease had fallen
thick on the cask, and then turning the candle stuck it fast in its
little pile of tallow, so that by and by the cellar was pretty well
lighted. Presently, in groups or singly, came old and middle-aged
gentlemen, and with the last our friend Schmidt, who wandered off to a
corner and sat on a barrel-head watching the effects of the mingling of
daylight and candlelight, and amused in his quiet way at the scene and
the intense interest of the chief actors in it, which, like other things
he did not comprehend, had for him the charm of oddness. I went over
and stood by him while the porter dropped the tester-glass into the cool
depths of cask after cask, and solemn counsel was held and grave
decisions reached. I was enchanted with one meagre, little old gentleman
of frail and refined figure, who bent over his wine with closed eyes, as
if to shut out all the sense-impressions he did not need, while the rest
waited to hear what he had to say.

"Needs a milk fining," muttered the old gentleman, with eyes shut as if
in prayer.

"Wants its back broke with a good lot of eggshell," said a short, stout
man with a snuff-colored coat, the collar well up the back of his head.

"Ach!" murmured Schmidt. "The back to be hurt with eggshell! What hath
he of meaning?"

"Pshaw!" said a third: "give it a little rest, and then the white of an
egg to every five gallons. Is it bual?"

"Is it gruel?" said our senior sarcastically.

"Wants age. A good wine for one's grandchildren," murmured my old friend
with shut eyes.

"What is it he calls gruel?" whispered Schmidt. "How nice is a picture
he makes when he shuts his eyes and the light of the candle comes
through the wine, all bright ruby, in the dark here! And ah, what is
that?" for Wholesome, who had been taking his wine in a kindly way, and
having his say with that sense of being always sure which an old taster
affects, glancing out of one of the little barred cellar-windows which
looked out over the wharf, said abruptly, "Ha! ha! that won't do!"

Turning, I saw under the broad-brimmed hat in the clear gray eyes a
sudden sparkle of excitement as he ran hastily up the cellar-stairs.
Seeing that something unusual was afloat, I followed him quickly out on
to the wharf, where presently the cause of his movement was made plain.

Beside the wharf was a large ship, with two planks running down from her
decks to the wharf. Just at the top of the farther one from us a large
black-haired, swarthy man was brutally kicking an aged negro, who was
hastily moving downward, clinging to the hand-rail. Colored folks were
then apt to be old servants--that is to say, friends--and this was our
pensioned porter, Old Tom. I was close behind Wholesome at the door of
the counting-house. I am almost sure he said "Damnation!" At all events,
he threw down his hat, and in a moment was away up the nearer plank to
the ship's deck, followed by me. Meanwhile, however, the black, followed
by his pursuer, had reached the wharf, where the negro, stumbling and
still clinging to the rail, was seized by the man who had struck him. In
the short struggle which ensued the plank was pulled away from the
ship's side, and fell just as Wholesome was about to move down it. He
uttered an oath, caught at a loose rope which hung from a yard, tried it
to see if it was fast, went up it hand over hand a few feet, set a foot
on the bulwarks, and swung himself fiercely back across the ship, and
then, with the force thus gained, flew far in air above the wharf, and
dropping lightly on to a pile of hogs-heads, leapt without a word to the
ground, and struck out with easy power at the man he sought, who fell as
if a butcher's mallet had stunned him--fell, and lay as one dead. The
whole action would have been amazing in any man, but to see a Quaker
thus suddenly shed his false skin and come out the true man he was, was
altogether bewildering--the more so for the easy grace with which the
feat was done. Everybody ran forward, while Wholesome stood a strange
picture, his eyes wide open and his pupils dilated, his face flushed and
lips a little apart, showing his set white teeth while he awaited his
foe. Then, as the man rallied and sat up, staring widely, Wholesome ran
forward and looked at him, waving the crowd aside. In a moment, as the
man rose still bewildered, his gaze fell on Wholesome, and, growing
suddenly white, he sat down on a bundle of staves, saying faintly, "Take
him away! Don't let him come near!"

"Coward!" said I: "one might have guessed that."

"There is to him," said Schmidt at my elbow, "some great mortal fear;
the soul is struck."

"Yes," said Wholesome, "the soul is struck. Some one help him"--for the
man had fallen over in something like a fit--and so saying strode away,
thoughtful and disturbed in face, as one who had seen a ghost.

As he entered the counting-house through the group of dignified old
merchants, who had come out to see what it all meant, one of them said,
"Pretty well for a Quaker, friend Richard!"

Wholesome did not seem to hear him, but walked in, drank a glass of wine
which stood on a table, and sat down silently.

"Not the first feat of that kind he has done," said the elder of the
wine-tasters.

"No," said a sea-captain near by. "He boarded the Penelope in that
fashion during the war, and as he lit on her deck cleared a space with
his cutlass till the boarding-party joined him."

"With his cutlass?" said I. "Then he was not always a Quaker?"

"No," said our senior: "they don't learn these gymnastics at Fourth and
Arch, though perchance the committee may have a word to say about it."

"Quaker or not," said the wine-taster, "I wish any of you had legs as
good or a heart as sound. Very good body, not too old, and none the
worse for a Quaker fining."

"That's the longest sentence I ever heard Wilton speak," said a young
fellow aside to me; "and, by Jove! he is right."

I went back into the counting-house, and was struck with the grim
sadness of face of our junior partner. He had taken up a paper and
affected to be reading, but, as I saw, was staring into space. Our
senior said something to him about Old Tom, but he answered in an absent
way, as one who half hears or half heeds. In a few moments he looked up
at the clock, which was on the stroke of twelve, and seeing me ready,
hat in hand, to return home for our one-o'clock dinner, he gathered
himself up, as it were, limb by limb, and taking his wide-brimmed hat
brushed it absently with his sleeve. Then he looked at it a moment with
a half smile, put it on decisively and went out and away up Arch street
with swifter and swifter strides. By and by he said, "You do not walk as
well as usual."

"But," said I, "no one could keep up with you."

"Do not try to: leave a sore man to nurse his hurts. I suppose you saw
my folly on the wharf--saw how I forgot myself?"

"Ach!" said Schmidt, who had toiled after us hot and red, and who now
slipped his quaint form in between us--"Ach! 'You forgot yourself.' This
say you. I do think you did remember your true self for a time this
morning."

"Hush! I am a man ashamed. Let us talk no more of it. I have ill kept my
faith," returned Wholesome impatiently.

"You may believe God doth not honor an honest man," said Schmidt; "which
is perhaps a God Quaker, not the God I see to myself."

I had so far kept my peace, noting the bitter self-reproach of
Wholesome, and having a lad's shyness before an older man's calamity;
but now I said indignantly, "If it be Friends' creed to see the poor and
old and feeble hurt without raising a hand, let us pray to be saved from
such religion."

"But," said Wholesome, "I should have spoken to him in kindness first.
Now I have only made of him a worse beast, and taught him more hatred.
And he of all men!"

"There is much salvation in some mistakes," said Schmidt smiling.

Just then we were stopped by two middle-aged Friends in drab of orthodox
tint, from which now-a-days Friends have much fallen away into gay
browns and blacks. They asked a question or two about an insurance on
one of our ships; and then the elder said, "Thee hand seems bleeding,
friend Richard;" which was true: he had cut his knuckles on his
opponent's teeth, and around them had wrapped hastily a handkerchief
which showed stains of blood here and there.

"Ach!" said Schmidt, hastening to save his friend annoyance. "He ran
against something.--And how late is it! Let us go."

But Wholesome, who would have no man lie ever so little for his benefit,
said quietly, "I hurt it knocking a man down;" and now for the first
time to-day I observed the old amused look steal over his handsome face
and set it a-twitching with some sense of humor as he saw the shock
which went over the faces of the two elders when we bade them
good-morning and turned away.

Wholesome walked on ahead quickly, and as it seemed plain that he would
be alone, we dropped behind.

"What is all this?" said I. "Does a man grieve thus because he chastises
a scoundrel?"

"No," said Schmidt. "The Friend Wholesome was, as you may never yet
know, an officer of the navy, and when your war being done he comes
here. There is a beautiful woman whom he must fall to loving, and this
with some men being a grave disorder, he must go and spoil a good
natural man with the clothes of a Quaker, seeing that what the woman did
was good in his sight."

"But," said I, "I don't understand."

"No," said he; "yet you have read of Eve and Adam. Sometimes they give
us good apples and sometimes bad. This was a russet, as it were, and at
times the apple disagrees with him for that with the new apple he got
not a new stomach."

I laughed a little, but said, "This is not all. There was something
between him and the man he struck which we do not yet know. Did you see
him?"

"Yes, and before this--last week some time in the market-place. He was
looking at old Dinah's tub of white lilies when I noticed him, and to me
came a curious thinking of how he was so unlike them, many people having
for me flower-likeness, and this man, being of a yellow swarthiness and
squat-browed, 'minded me soon of the toadstool you call a corpse-light."

"Perhaps we shall know some time; but here is home, and will he speak of
it to Mistress White, do you think?"

"Not ever, I suppose," said Schmidt; and we went in.

The sight we saw troubled me. In the little back parlor, at a round
mahogany table with scrolled edges and claw toes, sat facing the light
Mistress White. She was clad in a gray silk with tight sleeves, and her
profusion of rich chestnut hair, with its willful curliness that forbade
it to be smooth on her temples, was coiled in a great knot at the back
of her head. Its double tints and strange changefulness, and the smooth
creamy cheeks with their moving islets of roses that would come and go
at a word, were pretty protests of Nature, I used to think, against the
demure tints of her pearl-gray silken gown. She was looking out into the
garden, quite heedless of the older dame, who sat as her wont was
between the windows, and chirruped now and then, mechanically, "Has thee
a four-leaved clover?" As I learned some time after, one of our older
clerks, perhaps with a little malice of self-comfort at the fall of his
senior's principles, had, on coming home, told her laughingly all the
story of the morning. Perhaps one should be a woman and a Friend to
enter into her feelings. She was tied by a promise and by a sense of
personal pledge to a low and disgraced man, and then coming to love
another despite herself she had grown greatly to honor him. She might
reason as she would that only a sense of right and a yearning for the
fullness of a righteous life had made him give up his profession and
fellows and turn aside to follow the harder creed of Fox, but she well
knew with a woman's keenness of view that she herself had gone for
something in this change; and now, as sometimes before, she reproached
herself with his failures. As we came in she hastily dried her eyes and
went out of the room. At dinner little was said, but in the afternoon
there was a scene of which I came to know all a good while later.

Some of us had gone back to the afternoon work when Mr. Wholesome, who
had lingered behind, strayed thoughtfully into the little back garden.
There under a thin-leaved apricot tree sat Mistress White, very pretty,
with her long fair fingers clasped over a book which lay face down on
her lap. Presently she was aware of Richard Wholesome walking to and fro
and smoking a long-stemmed clay pipe, then, as yet in England, called a
churchwarden. These were two more than commonly good-looking persons,
come of sturdy English breeds, fined down by that in this climate which
has taken the coarseness of line and feature out of so many of our
broods, and has made more than one English painter regret that the
Vandyke faces had crossed the ocean to return no more.

Schmidt and I looked out a moment into the long vista where, between the
rose-boughs bending from either wall under the apricot, we could see the
gray silvery shimmer of the woman's dress, and beyond it, passing to and
fro, the broad shoulders of the ex-captain.

"Come," I said, "walk down with me to the wharf."

"Yet leave me," he returned. "I shall wisely do to sit here on the step
over the council-fire of my pipe. Besides, when there are not markets
and flowers, and only a straight-down, early-afternoon sun, I shall find
it a more noble usage of time to see of my drama another scene. The
actors are good;" and he pointed with his pipe-stem down to the garden.
"And this," he said, "is the mute chorus of the play," indicating a
kitten which had made prey of the grand-dame's ball of worsted, and was
rolling it here and there with delight.

"But," I answered, "it is not right or decent to spy upon others'
actions."

"For right!" he said. "Ach! what I find right to me is my right; and for
decent, I understand you not. But if I tell you what is true, I find my
pleasure to sit here and see the maiden when at times the winds pull up
the curtain of the leaves."

"Well! well!" said I, for most of the time he was not altogether plain
as to what he meant, as when he spoke of the cat as a chorus--"Well!
well! you will go out with me on the water at sundown?"

"That may be," he answered; and I went away.

I have observed since then, in the long life I have lived, that the
passion called love, when it is a hopeless one, acts on men as ferments
do on fluids after their kind--turning some to honest wine and some to
vinegar. With our stout little German all trials seemed to be of the
former use, so that he took no ill from those hurts and bruises which
leave other men sore and tender. Indeed, he talked of Mistress White to
me, or even to Wholesome, whom he much embarrassed, in a calm,
half-amused way, as of a venture which he had made, and, having failed,
found it pleasant to look back upon as an experience not altogether to
be regretted. We none of us knew until much later that it was more than
a mere fancy for a woman who was altogether so sweet and winsome that no
man needed an excuse for loving her. When by and by I also came to love
a good woman, I used to try myself by the measure of this man's lack of
self-love, and wonder how he could have seen with good-will the woman he
cared for come to like another man better. This utter sweetness of soul
has ever been to me a riddle.

An hour passed by, when Schmidt heard a footfall in the room behind him,
and rising saw an old member of the Society of Friends who came at times
to our house, and was indeed trustee for a small estate which belonged
to Mistress White. Nicholas Oldmixon was an overseer in the Fourth
street meeting, and much looked up to among Friends as a prompt and
vigilant guardian of their discipline. Perhaps he would have been
surprised to be told that he had that in his nature which made the post
of official fault-finder agreeable; but so it was, I fancy, and he was
here on such an errand. The asceticism of Friends in those days, and the
extent to which Mr. Oldmixon, like the more strict of his sect, carried
their views as to gravity of manner and the absence of color in dress
and furniture, were especially hateful to Schmidt, who lived and was
happy in a region of color and sentiment and gayety. Both, I doubt not,
were good men, but each was by nature and training altogether unable to
sympathize with the other.

"Good-evening!" said Schmidt, keeping his seat in the low window-sill.

Mr. Oldmixon returned, "Thee is well, I trust?"

"Ach! with such a sun and the last roses, which seem the most sweet, and
these most lovely of fall-flowers, and a good book and a pipe," said
Schmidt, "who will not be well? Have you the honest blessing of being a
smoker?"

"Nay," said the Quaker, with evident guarding of his words. "Thee will
not take it amiss should I say it is a vain waste of time?"

"But," answered Schmidt, "time hath many uses. The one is to be wasted;
and this a pipe mightily helps. I did think once, when I went to
meeting, how much more solemn it would be for each man to have a pipe to
excuse his silence."

"Thee jests idly, I fear," said the Friend, coloring and evidently
holding himself in check. "Is that friend Wholesome in the garden? I
have need to see him."

"Yea," said Schmidt, with a broad smile, "he is yonder under a tree,
like Adam in the garden. Let us take a peep at Paradise."

Mr. Oldmixon held his peace, and walked quietly out of the window and
down the graveled path. There were some who surmised that his years and
his remembrance of the three wives he had outlived did not altogether
suffice to put away from him a strong sentiment of the sweetness of his
ward. Perhaps it was this notion which lit up with mirth the ruddy face
of the German as he walked down the garden behind the slim ascetic
figure of the overseer of meeting in his broad hat and drab clothes. On
the way the German plucked a dozen scarlet roses, a late geranium or two
and a few leaves of motley Poinsetta.

Wholesome paused a moment to greet quietly the new-comer, and
straightway betook himself absently to his walk again to and fro across
the garden. Mistress White would have had the old overseer take her
seat, but this he would not do. He stood a moment near her, as if
irresolute, while Schmidt threw himself down on the sward, and, half
turning over, tossed roses into the gray lap of Mistress White, saying,
"How prettily the God of heaven has dressed them!"

Mistress White took up the flowers, not answering the challenge, but
glancing under her long lashes at the ex-captain, to whom presently the
overseer turned, saying, "Would thee give me a word or two with thee by
ourselves, Richard?"

"There are none in the parlor," said Priscilla, "if thee will talk
there."

"If," said Wholesome, "it be of business, let it wait till to-morrow,
and I will call upon thee: I am not altogether myself to-day."

"Nay," said Nicholas, gathering himself up a little, "thee must know
theeself that I would not come to thee here for business: thee knows my
exactness in such matters."

"And for what, then, are you come?" said Wholesome with unusual
abruptness.

"For speech of that in thee conduct which were better, as between an
elder friend and a younger, to be talked over alone," said Mr. Oldmixon
severely.

Now, Wholesome, though disgusted by his lack of power to keep the silent
pledges he had given when he entered the Society of Friends, was not
dissatisfied with his conduct as he judged it by his own standard of
right. Moreover, like many warm-hearted people, he was quick of temper,
as we have seen. His face flushed, and he paused beside the overseer:
"There are none here who do not know most of what passed this morning;
but as you do not know all, let me advise you to hold your peace and go
your ways, and leave me to such reproach as God may send me."

"If that God send thee any," muttered Schmidt.

But Nicholas Oldmixon was like a war-horse smelling the battle afar off,
and anything like resistance to an overseer in the way of duty roused
him into the sternness which by no means belonged to the office, but
rather to the man. "If," he said, "any in membership with us do
countenance or promote tumults, they shall be dealt with as disorderly
persons. Wherefore did thee give way to rash violence this morning?"

Priscilla grew pale, I think. She said, "Friend Nicholas, thee forgets
the Christian courtesy of our people one to another. Let it rest a
while: friend Richard may come to think better of it by and by."

"And that I trust he may never," muttered Schmidt.

But the overseer was not to be stayed. "Thee would do better to mind the
things of thy house and leave us," he said. "The ways of this young man
have been more than once a scandal, and are like to come before the
preparative meeting to be dealt with."

"Sir," returned Wholesome, approaching him and quite forgetting his
plain speech to make it plainer, "your manners do little credit to your
age or your place. Listen: I told you to speak no more of this matter;"
and he seized him by the lappel of his coat and drew him aside a few
paces. "For your own sake, I mean. Let it die out, with no more of talk
or nonsense."

"For my sake!" exclaimed the overseer; "and why? Most surely thee
forgets theeself."

"For your own sake," said Wholesome, drawing him still farther away, and
bending toward him, so that his words were lost to Schmidt and
Priscilla, "and for your son John's. It was he I struck to-day."

Mr. Oldmixon grew white and staggered as if stricken. "Why did thee not
come and tell me?" he said. "It had been kinder; and where is that
unhappy man?"

"I do not know," returned Wholesome.

"Nevertheless, be it he or another, thee was in the wrong, and I have
done my duty,--God help us all! and is my son yet alive?" and so saying,
he turned away, and without other words walked through the house with
uncertain steps and went down the street, while Wholesome, with softened
face, watched him from the doorstep. Then he went back quietly into the
garden, and turning to Schmidt, said, "Will you oblige me by leaving me
with Mistress White? I will explain to thee by and by."

Schmidt looked up surprised, but seeing how pale and stern he looked,
rose and went into the house. The woman looked up expectant.

"Priscilla, the time has come when thee must choose between me and him."

"He has come back? I knew always he would come."

"Yes, he has come back: I saw him to-day," said Wholesome, "and the John
Oldmixon of to-day is more than ever cruel and brutal. Will thee trust
me to make thee believe that?"

"I believe thee," she returned; "but because he is this and worse, shall
I forget my word or turn aside from that which, if bitter for me, may
save his soul alive?"

"And yet you love me?"

"Have I said so?" she murmured with a half smile.

The young man came closer and seized both hands in his: "Will it not be
a greater sin, loving me, to marry him?"

"But he may never ask me, and then I shall wait, for I had better die
fit in soul to be yours than come to you unworthy of a good man's love."

He dropped her hands and moved slowly away, she watching him with full
eyes. Then he turned and said, "But should he fall--fall as he must--and
come to be what his life will surely make him, a felon whom no woman
could marry--"

"Thee makes duty hard for me, Richard," she answered. "Do not make me
think thee cruel. When in God's good time he shall send me back the
words of promise I wrote when he went away a disgraced man, to whom,
nevertheless I owed my life, then--Oh, Richard, I love thee! Do not hurt
me. Pray for me and him."

"God help us!" he said. "We have great need, to be helped;" and suddenly
leaning over he kissed her forehead for the first time, and went away up
the garden and into the house.

EDWARD KEARSLEY.




MODERN HUGUENOTS.


It demands a good deal of energy, and it involves a little hardship, to
see the Protestant communities of the High Alps of France, but the
picturesque and historic interests of the journey furnish a sufficient
motive and make ample amends. I can think of no route so entirely
unhackneyed to recommend to blasé tourists. The point of departure is
Grenoble, reached in an hour or so from Chambéry, and in itself well
worth turning aside from the Mont Cenis thoroughfare to visit. As far as
Corps the way lies over the beaten track of the Salette pilgrims, of
which the charms are recorded in many a devout description.

It happened to us, however, to get a preliminary glimpse of French
Protestantism in a characteristic, although wholly modern, development
before leaving Grenoble. We applied to the Protestant clergyman there
for information respecting the details of our proposed tour. Pleased
with our project, he told us the story of a mission which he had
established under circumstances altogether unique, and invited us to
join him in paying it a visit. The scene of his enterprise was a sunny
little village lying high among vineyarded hills, and bearing the name
of Notre Dame des Commiers. Owing to its remoteness and insignificance,
the Roman Catholic authorities had never replaced its last priest, who
withdrew during the turmoils of the Revolution. For all their
ecclesiastical needs the people were obliged to descend to the next
village, the curé of which gave them little pastoral care beyond the
thrifty collection of his dues. Learning these facts, our Grenoble
friend determined to take advantage of the situation. He presented
himself in the village and told the people he was willing to become
their pastor. He only asked them to acknowledge the validity of baptism
and marriage performed by him, and to pledge him their support in the
struggle with the priests that would probably ensue. Later, he said, he
hoped to convince them that he taught a better religion than that at the
hands of whose ministers they had suffered such neglect. A majority of
the villagers accepted his proposal, and by a formal act constituted
themselves a Protestant commune. By so doing they were able to secure
recognition by the government as belonging to the National Protestant
Church of France. It was not long before the parishioners grew warmly
attached to their new pastor. His position of assistant at Grenoble
enabled him to assume the sole charge of the enterprise. Week after week
he made the tedious stage-coach journey, walking up the two-mile hill at
the foot of which he had to quit the highway. Often in winter he toiled
for hours through deep snow and faced violent storms in making the
ascent. In the worst weather it sometimes happened that the whole
journey from Grenoble had to be made on foot. For two years he carried
on the work unaided, holding his services in such rude quarters as he
was able to secure. The village is now, after an interval of seven years
since the missionary's first visit, adorned with a pretty chapel and
school-house and provided with a resident minister.

In talking with the people we found abundant proof that their Protestant
faith is both intelligent and practical. Such of them as were not busy
in the fields surrounded their old pastor with greetings that touchingly
expressed their affection and gratitude, and we, as his friends, had a
share in the demonstration. One stalwart, clear-eyed old woman obliged
us to sit down in front of her chalet, cheerfully explaining that she
had just been burned out, and that the shed in which she had found a
shelter was not fit for us to enter. She would take no refusal of her
offer to fetch us grapes, and ran all the way to and from her vineyard
on the opposite hillside, returning in an incredibly short time,
scarcely out of breath, and carrying a basket heavy with great white
and purple clusters. As she stood watching with delight our appreciation
of her produce--the only sweet and luscious grapes, by the way, that we
found throughout the autumn in that land of vines--she talked frankly of
her religious vicissitudes, summing up as follows: "The priests used to
say to me that I had turned Protestant because that is an easier
religion than the Roman Catholic. But I have not found it so at all. _Il
est beaucoup plus facile de me confesser que de me corriger._" Presently
another woman came up the hill, bending painfully under the weight of
two water-pails hanging from the ends of a yoke that rested on her
shoulders. "Ah," said our hostess, "if they would but let us build the
aqueduct, we should not have that ugly work to do." And then we learned
that among the small minority of Roman Catholics left in the village, to
care for whom, as soon as it was found a wolf had entered the fold, a
priest arrived promptly enough, there prevail the wildest superstitions
concerning the Protestants. Among many improvements introduced by the
latter an aqueduct had been planned to furnish the hamlet with wholesome
water. The project was defeated by the opposition of the Roman
Catholics, who considered it a scheme for poisoning them _en masse_. It
was here that we heard for the first time the epithet Huguenots applied
as a term of reproach and derision to the Protestants. Afterward, in
regions where Protestants have a history of centuries, we found it
commonly used in the same way.

Our visit to Notre Dame des Commiers was like reading a living page of
early Reformation history, and the whole neighborhood made a fitting
stage for such a reproduction. Some six or seven miles from Grenoble we
passed the restored but still, in parts at least, historic château of
Lesdiguières at Vizille. Nearer our mountain-village we stopped to
admire an ivy-covered bit of tower-ruin, associated by a grim tradition
with the same Dauphiné hero. A prisoner confined here by the apostate
constable had, says the legend, a lady true who came every night and
clasped her lover's hand stretched out to her between the bars of his
dungeon window. Lesdiguières discovered the rendezvous, and the spot is
still pointed out where his soldier was stationed one fatal night to
chop off the hand that sought its accustomed pledge. The historical
associations of our excursion were, indeed, somewhat confused, but a
fresh feature was added to its interest by the departure, which we
chanced to witness, of Monsieur Thiers from the Château de Vizille, now
occupied by Casimir Perier, whom the ex-president had been visiting.

The two days' diligence journey from Grenoble to the département des
Hautes-Alpes was over one of those broad macadamized highways which make
driving a luxury in many parts of Europe. If we were more huddled than
in the less-antiquated Swiss diligences, we had the compensation of far
more original fellow-travelers than one is apt to find among the
tourists that monopolize those vehicles. There were generally two or
three priests, half a dozen merry peasants, and a sprinkling of small
officers and country-townspeople, who respectively lost no time in
establishing a pleasant intimacy with their neighbors. The unflagging
chatter, in which all joined vivaciously, and often all at once, was in
striking contrast with the silent gloom which would have enshrouded a
similar party of English or American travelers. It was impossible to
resist the contagion of cheerfulness or to refuse to mingle more or less
in the talk.

On the second evening, having trusted to the map and the very meagre
information supplied by _Murray_, we found ourselves deposited at an
isolated wayside cabaret. It presently transpired that St. Bonnet, where
we expected to pass the Sunday, was some half mile or more off the
high-road on which this was the nearest station. While we waited in a
long, low, dimly-lighted room for the guide we had bespoken, two
gendarmes and a peasant sat listening to, or rather looking at, a vivid
account of some shooting adventure given in extraordinary pantomime by
a deaf and dumb huntsman. In time a withered gnome trundling a
wheelbarrow took possession of us and our light belongings, and led us
forth into the night. We traversed the valley, mounted the hill on the
other side, and at last entered the deeper night of a lampless village,
and began to thread its steep, black streets. The only gleam of light
was at what seemed to be the central fountain. Many women were gathered
there, chatting as they filled their pails or stood with the replenished
vessels poised on their heads. The inn was of a piece with all those at
which we lodged in Dauphiné, deficient in everything for which an inn
exists. The feature of these inns which I remember, I think, with the
least relish was the condition of the floors. It is literally true that
they are never washed. A daily sprinkling is the only cleansing process
they undergo: its effect is to soften the wood until it begins to absorb
a large proportion of the rubbish which is often but never thoroughly
swept up, and grows black and evil-odored. This result is most manifest,
of course, and most offensive in the dining-rooms.

St. Bonnet offered even less than we anticipated of interest. On the
Sunday morning we gladly drove away in such an equipage as the place
afforded to the not very distant village of St. Laurent en Champsaur.
Here we reached our first point in what was fifty years ago the parish
of Felix Neff, and has been for centuries a refuge of Protestantism. It
is a hamlet of stone cottages, lying on a kind of plateau and
overlooking a wide and fertile valley. The surrounding hills, though
mostly bare, were broken and beautified on that still autumn morning
with dim clefts of shadow. The sun was not yet high, and broad masses of
purple fell here and there across the plain and the brawling stream that
divides it, still the Drac, which we had seen an almost stately river
near Grenoble.

Having already learned something of the local habits, we bade our driver
take us to the _temple_. That is the distinctive name of a Protestant
church in these Roman Catholic lands. The morning service was in
progress when we entered the square and austere little chapel. Every pew
was occupied, the men and women taking different sides of the one
stone-paved aisle. A gentle-looking old man was reading from a book with
much clearness and expression, and in a singularly pleasant voice, what
we soon found to be an excellent sermon. At its close a quaint, slow
hymn was sung, and the congregation was dismissed. To our amusement, the
simple folk formed a double line outside the door to inspect us as we
emerged. It was easy to imagine their interest in an apparition so
unusual as foreign visitors, and we submitted to their curious but
entirely respectful scrutiny, wishing that our aspect might give them
half the satisfaction we had in watching their eager faces and noting
their droll costumes. Ludicrously high stocks and "swallow-tail" coats
of brown homespun made the dress of the men different from that of
corresponding rustics in America. The chief peculiarity in the women's
attire was a straw hat, of which the towering crown, decked with huge
bows, and the vast flapping brim, were like an extravagant caricature of
the poke-bonnets of our grandmothers.

As we stood demurely in the midst of the group, the old man who had
read, and who proved to be the schoolmaster, hastened out to greet us.
It was his habit, he said, in the pastor's absence, to conduct the
service. For more than thirty years, although the parish had repeatedly
been for months without a minister, he had not allowed the temple to
remain closed a single Sunday. His wife appeared directly, and both
insisted, with apologies for their peasant fare, that we should stop to
dinner at their house, a few yards from the church. We were in truth
nothing loath to accept the invitation, and found little to excuse in
the savory soup, the fresh-laid eggs and the fruit that composed the
simple feast, while we were scarcely less regaled with the neatness of
the rooms and the spectacle of well-washed floors and spotless though
coarsely-woven linen. But most of all to be enjoyed and remembered was
the peep we got into this good old man's life and history. From his
youth he had been schoolmaster at St. Laurent, and it seemed never to
have occurred to him that he might claim a more distinguished post.
Unconscious of any special self-sacrifice, he told us about his work,
heroic through its quiet faithfulness, in that obscure hamlet. He
enumerated with pride the various pastors and teachers who had been his
scholars--among the former his eldest son, among the latter two of his
daughters. Listening to his talk, we understood the intelligence of
expression in many faces and the large proportion of young men at the
service of the morning.

In our walks about the village after dinner the schoolmaster took us to
see an ancient woman who in her youth had been a catechumen of Felix
Neff. It is curious to find that term, which was applied by the early
Church to candidates for admission, in use now among the Protestants of
France and Italy. With tears in her eyes and an enthusiasm that made her
speech almost incoherent, the grandame talked of "Monsieur Neff," his
courage, his friendliness, how he went among his people like one of
themselves, and what good words he always spoke. As we left St. Laurent
our host and his wife bore us company to the brow of a little hill
whither we had sent on our chaise, and stood there to wave us an adieu
as we descended on the other side. Then we saw them turn back toward the
group of thatched and moss-grown cottages which was all their world.

That evening we reached Gap, the capital of the department of the High
Alps, and once an important Protestant centre. Farel, the French
Reformer of the sixteenth century, was born and for a time preached
here. But since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes until very
lately--during a period, that is, of nearly two hundred years--no
Protestant pastor has been tolerated in the town, and the once numerous
flock was long since dispersed. A Swiss society undertook two or three
years ago a Protestant mission at Gap, and a friend in Geneva had given
us the name of the present evangelist. A humbler or more thankless
charge could scarcely be imagined than such a work in such a place.
There is no nucleus of hereditary Protestants, as in the
mountain-parishes of the department, and at the same time the little
city is so isolated that its people have retained the superstitions and
religious animosities of the Dark Ages. It was therefore with much
compassionate thought of his pitiful case that we sought the
evangelist's house. He was not, however, a man toward whom one could
maintain for a moment that frame of mind. Brisk, cheerful, polished in
manner and with an unsought elegance of dress and carriage, he had not
in the least the air of a despised heretic struggling hopelessly against
social as well as ecclesiastical contempt. Six avowed converts were the
definite results of his work for more than two years. During much of
that time he had been hampered by insuperable difficulties in finding a
place for his service or even a lodging for his family. The latter was
at last provided, as a daring defiance of popular prejudice, by a
landlord who prided himself upon being a _libre penseur_. For his chapel
he secured a disused shop in the front of a bath-house. The proprietress
of the establishment was punished by the priests for her unrighteous
thrift by being refused the sacrament. Her business, too, was for a
while endangered. One instance out of many of the kind of prejudice she
provoked was that of two wealthy and educated ladies, who, as they
entered the bath one day, heard music in the _chapelle évangélique_ and
instantly beat a hurried retreat. They only stopped to explain that all
the world knows the object of Protestant worship is the devil, and they
dare not stay within hearing of the sacrilegious rites. In spite of
multiform discouragements like these, the evangelist and his wife, a
motherly woman of much quiet strength, whose gentleness made sweet a
very homely face, talked of their work and prospects with a
matter-of-course hopefulness which it was not easy to share. Nothing in
their habits, they told us, had more amazed their Roman Catholic
neighbors at first than their lavish use of water. But in that
particular, at least, suspicion had been allayed, their perseverance had
proved the practice harmless, and their example was beginning to find a
few timid imitators.

Our first night after leaving Gap was spent at Embrun. As we approached
the town, which surmounts an extraordinary platform of rock, its walls
looking like part of the smooth, brown tufa precipice that rises
abruptly out of the valley, we seemed to see in its picturesque and
impressive aspect something of the grandeur and gloom of its long
history. The cathedral where so many archbishops have ministered
preserves little trace of its former splendors: even architecturally it
is without attraction.

For the next two days our route continued to lie through the valley,
which we entered upon leaving Gap, of the Durance. It is an apparently
insignificant but treacherous stream, which by repeated floods has
spread ugly devastation over a hill-girdled country that ought to be
smiling with peace and plenty. At Guillestre we came in sight of the
jagged double peak of Mont Pelvoux, and got a magnificent vista toward
the south, ending in the white slopes of some giant of the Cottian Alps.
The Mont Pelvoux and the Pointe des Écrins, the greatest of those
mountains from which the department takes its name, although they appear
on none of the ordinary maps, stand, I believe, only twelfth and
thirteenth in the scale of height among the mountains of Europe. The
explorations of Whymper have introduced them to his readers, but they
still remain almost untrodden by other climbers.

On the second afternoon we reached the lateral valley of Fressinière,
the climax of our journey. There was refreshment for soul as well as
body in the daintily-clean, bare-floored rooms, redolent of apples set
out to dry, into which we were welcomed by Pastor Charpiot and his wife
at Pallons. The village is a mere group of Alpine huts, and the only
chance of shelter was at the presbytery. So much we had little doubt of
finding there, but we counted as little upon the warm and graceful
hospitality which greeted our application. And when our nationality
transpired it added new zest to the good-will of our host and hostess.
We were their first Transatlantic guests.

The valley of Fressinière, at the entrance of which Pallons lies, is the
centre of those special interests which first prompted the pilgrimage I
am recording. With it are specially associated the earliest traditions
of Protestantism in France, and here Felix Neff spent the larger part of
his brief but memorable career as pastor in the High Alps. I suppose the
exact antiquity of the Protestants of Dauphiné is one of the historical
problems that still await their final solution. The older chronicles
provide them with what seems an unbroken line of descent from the second
century, when Irenæus preached in Lyons and Vienne. Christian fugitives
from those cities during the persecution of Marcus Aurelius may, it is
alleged, have taken refuge in the not distant Dauphiné mountains, and
have transmitted to their descendants the primitive faith they had
received. But modern criticism has so seriously undermined, as
practically to have demolished, this imposing genealogical structure. It
is not denied that voices of more or less emphatic protest against Rome
made themselves heard among these mountains and the neighboring Cottian
Alps during the earlier centuries. Can such voices be held to represent
any definitely-organized dissentient body of more remote origin than the
Poor Men of Lyons, led by Peter Waldo in 1172? The latest researches
give an apparently final negative answer to this question. At least,
however, it is beyond dispute that long before the Reformation the
valleys of the High Alps were a retreat for persecuted schismatics whose
opposition to the Romish Church anticipated Protestantism. As early as
the fifteenth century a papal bull denounced as _inveterate_ the
heretics of Dauphiné and Provence, and about the middle of the next
century delegates from those provinces appeared at the first national
Protestant synod in France with the following declaration: "We consent
to merge in the common cause, but we require no Reformation, for our
forefathers and ourselves have ever disclaimed the corruptions of the
churches in communion with Rome." Enough is therefore certain as to the
antecedents of these Protestant mountaineers to surround them with an
entirely peculiar interest. The saddest feature, perhaps, of all their
history is the stunting of mind and character that has resulted from
centuries of oppression. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
they were subject to fresh persecution, and until within the present
century they have been denied the privileges of citizenship and forced
to look upon themselves as outcasts. One can only wonder at the degree
of individuality and force which they have still preserved.

Felix Neff, while still a _proposant_, or candidate for the ministry, at
Geneva, was sent to Dauphiné in response to the appeal of two pastors
there for an assistant. Two years later, at the beginning of 1824, in
the twenty-sixth year of his age, he became pastor of the Protestant
churches in the Arvieux section of the High Alps. This was the larger
and by far the more arduous of the two parishes into which the
department was at that time divided. In seventeen or eighteen
widely-scattered villages Neff found the little groups of "Huguenots"
which composed his charge. His official residence, the presbytery, was
at La Chalp, a hamlet above the village of Arvieux and near the border
of Italy. From this point to St. Laurent, the western limit of his
parish, is a journey of sixty miles, including the passage of a
dangerous gorge and the crossing of a difficult snow-pass. St. Véran on
the east was the least remote of his boundaries, but even this is
separated from La Chalp by twelve miles of steep descent and rough
climbing. On the north and the south the extreme points were distant
respectively thirty-three and twenty-miles, and the routes are of the
same character as in the other directions.

These disadvantages, instead of daunting the young pastor, seemed only
to stimulate his ardor. "I am always dreaming of the High Alps," he had
written in 1823, after visiting them for the first time. "I had rather
be stationed there than in places which are under the beautiful sky of
Languedoc. The country bears a strong resemblance to the Alps of
Switzerland. It has their advantages, and even their beauties. It has,
above all, an energetic race of people--intelligent, active, hardy and
patient under fatigue--who offer a better soil for the gospel than the
wealthy and corrupt inhabitants of the plains of the South." The
illusions that mingled with these early impressions were doubtless soon
dispelled. He shows later a perfectly clear perception of the degenerate
condition of his parishioners, but his eagerness to serve them waxes
with his sense of their need. Neff was in modern times their first
regularly-appointed pastor. A son of Oberlin, whose short but devoted
life shows him to have inherited his father's spirit, had once
undertaken the provisional charge of the parish, but only for a few
months. In general, it had had no ministry beyond occasional visits from
the pastor of Orpierre, the other section of the department.

The valley of Fressinière at once attracted Neff's peculiar regard. It
was the part of his parish most difficult of access and most cut off
from any chance of material prosperity. The climate is such that in
unfavorable seasons even rye will not ripen, and the patches of potatoes
straggling forlornly among the rocks often fail to reach maturity. No
other grain or vegetable can be raised. Mould quickly attacks the flour
in this mountain-air, and the year's baking is accordingly done in the
autumn as soon as the rye comes back from the mill. The coarse black
loaves grow perfectly hard in a few weeks, and have to be chopped into
pieces and soaked in hot water before they can be eaten. It is only at
the head of the valley, above the hamlet of Dourmillouse, that any
pastures are found, and many of those are inaccessible to cattle and
scarcely safe for sheep. They are besides so meagre that in dry summers
no hay can be made, and the peasants are forced to sell their beasts at
a loss or else see them die for want of food. The addition of a little
salted meat to the half-grown potatoes and the stony bread is a luxury
of only the most prosperous years. The bald mountain-slopes furnish no
fuel, and it is of course only in the smallest quantities that the
people can afford to buy wood in the valley of the Durance. Their
resource against the winter's cold is moving into their stables, where,
huddled together in a corner cleared for the purpose, they pass four or
five months. The smoky and confined air is a welcome change from the icy
winds outside, and the steaming cattle are a source of grateful warmth.
"This village," Neff writes, about the middle of September, from the
smallest and most destitute of the hamlets of Fressinière, "is squeezed
up in the very narrowest gorge of the valley, and is now buried in snow,
and without the hope of seeing the sun during the rest of the winter.
The houses are low, dark and dirty, and the people themselves seem to be
stupefied with the utter misery of their condition."

Besides the strong appeal thus made to his sympathy, the young pastor
nowhere else felt as in this valley the inspiration of his parish's
history. Dourmillouse especially he regarded as the most staunchly
Protestant of all the villages to which he ministered. "It is
celebrated," he writes, "for the resistance which its inhabitants have
opposed for more than six hundred years to the Church of Rome. They
never bowed their knee before an idol, even when all the inhabitants of
the valley of Queyras" (on the opposite side of the Durance, and
embracing Arvieux, St. Véran and other villages) "dissembled their
faith. The aspect of this desert, both terrible and sublime, which
served as the asylum of truth when almost all the world lay in darkness;
the recollection of the faithful martyrs of old; the deep caverns into
which they withdrew to read the Bible in secret and to worship the
Father of Light in spirit and in truth,--everything tends to elevate my
soul." He spent here the whole of one winter and large portions of
another, and it was here that he gathered his most important schools.

The rest of the field was not, however, neglected. Neff allowed himself
twenty-one days for traversing his parish from end to end, and during
much of the year his rounds succeeded each other with little interval.
He was continually passing from the extreme of heat in sunny valleys to
the arctic cold of snows and glaciers. His lodging on these journeys was
in the huts of the peasants. He shared their coarse and unwholesome
food, often cooked in ill-cleansed copper vessels. He slept in small,
unventilated hovels, a dozen other persons often dividing with him the
scanty space. He did not shrink from even the stables in winter. However
exhausted he might be by hours of toilsome walking, his elastic spirit
quickly revived: all thought of refreshment for himself was secondary to
the spiritual wants he sought to meet in others.

Nor was he content without trying to ameliorate the temporal condition
of his parishioners. By the care of his own garden he sought to teach
them more intelligent and productive methods of agriculture than the
rude processes to which they were accustomed. In the valley of
Fressinière he built an aqueduct for purposes of irrigation, overcoming
prejudice and opposition by beginning the work with his own hands. The
example of Oberlin was constantly before him, and he often expresses his
ambition to be to his people such a guide and helper as the pastor of
Ban de la Roche had been to the peasants of the Vosges.

Neff was not long in discovering that his work must begin with the most
elementary instruction. Generally, the people were ignorant of any
language but their native patois. Up to this period their schoolmasters,
paid at the rate of twenty-five francs a year, had been peasants like
themselves. Their only time for study was such of the year as was not
needed for the tilling of the niggardly soil or spent in the care of the
flocks. And even the little they were able to learn was easily lost on
account of the scarcity of books. Neff first addressed himself to
learning the patois, and then, as he went from village to village, made
ordinary teaching a part of his pastoral functions. At the beginning of
his second winter he resolved to undertake the training of teachers. "I
foresaw," he writes, "that the truth which I had been permitted to
preach would not only not spread, but might even be lost, unless
something should be done to promote its continuance." Accordingly, for
five months he relinquished the more congenial general work of his
parish and devoted himself to a normal school at Dourmillouse. One
reason for planting it there was the inaccessibility of the place and
its consequent freedom from distraction. More than twenty young men from
other villages cheerfully submitted to the long confinement in this
ice-bound fastness, and the people of Dourmillouse were glad to make
room in their huts for the new-comers, and to add to the supplies
brought by them their own scanty stores.

The following winter, his third in the High Alps, Neff again opened this
school, dividing its care, however, with one of his most capable pupils
of the previous year, and paying occasional visits to other parts of his
parish. But now his health, never robust, began to give way under the
incessant strain to which it was subjected. Early in the spring of 1829
he was forced to go to Geneva with the hope of recruiting. There, after
two years of suffering, the details of which are painful beyond
expression, he died at the age of thirty-one.

With our minds full of these memories we set out on the morning after
our arrival at Pallons, with Pastor Charpiot as guide, to explore the
valley of Fressinière and ascend to Dourmillouse. The immediate vicinity
of Pallons is fair and fertile, but a short walk up the course of an
impetuous torrent brought us to a narrow gorge, beyond which we found a
totally different region. Bare slopes of rock that looked grim even in
the sunny morning, and a waste valley-bottom, here of considerable
width, but sterile and bleak, made up the landscape. Its dreariness was
only increased by an occasional chalet standing beside a patch of limp
and discolored potato-vines. As we went on the scene grew more and more
gloomy. The tillage is in cleared spots not so large as the heaps of
stones that surround them, or on bits of practicable soil left by
land-slides in the midst of their hideous débris. The only trees are
dwarfish pollards, reduced to bare trunks with thin tufts of green atop
by the practice of stripping off the sprouts every two or three years to
make fodder for the goats. Midway up the valley we passed the village of
Violins. It seemed mournfully empty, and many of the houses were in
reality deserted. A shy, bright-faced fellow opened the little _temple_
for our inspection, and Pastor Charpiot reminded us how its interior was
not only planned by Neff, but in large measure his actual handiwork.
Half an hour further on our path led us through the hamlet of Minsas,
now entirely abandoned and in ruins. The desolation of the valley here
becomes appalling. On either hand sheer precipices of crumbling rock
rise above steep slopes of gravel and loose stones. The ground is strewn
thick with great boulders, many of which had left traces of their
furious descent before settling, sometimes close beside the path, or
even after crossing it in a final bound. The precipices from which they
had detached themselves are composed of strangely-twisted strata, and
frequently recurring streaks of lurid red give them a fierce and ghastly
aspect. Landslips and torrents of stones are so frequent of late years
that no more attempts are made to clear away the rubbish thus deposited.
Where these scourges have not fallen the sullen stream has carried
devastation. Floods occur every year. That of 1856 wrought a ruin from
which the villages have never rallied. In the whole upper half of the
valley of Fressinière there is not, I suppose, an acre of land capable
of cultivation. In the time of Neff, wretched as its condition must
always have been, the poverty of this region was not so utterly hopeless
as it has since become. The failure of all resources is literally
driving away its inhabitants. Those who remain, as in such cases a
certain proportion cannot help doing, sometimes in bad years pass
three, six, and even nine, months without bread. Their small stock of
potatoes is often exhausted long before it can be replenished. "I am at
a loss," said the pastor, "when we are no longer able to give them aid,
to know how they live. The only semblance of food left to them is soup,
for which, perhaps, they haven't even salt, much less meat or
vegetables. Turbid water--_de l'eau trouble, rien de plus!_"

The valley terminates abruptly at what seems an impassable wall of rock.
Upon nearer approach a zigzag path up its face is discovered. Not far
from the top the narrow way creeps by a ledge which barely affords
foothold across a thread of sparkling foam slipping down a perpendicular
precipice. In winter this passage is sheeted in dangerously unstable
ice, and makes Dourmillouse inaccessible for weeks. Neff gives a
spirited account in his journal of leading out a party of young peasants
by torchlight, armed with axes, to cut a path here on the evening before
some service in which he wished the people of the upper and lower
valleys to unite. Dourmillouse lies on a slope above this difficult
ascent. It is a mere group of rude chalets, like the other villages, but
it has a less miserable air. The land-slides are mostly confined to the
lower valley, and here the scanty Alpine pastures and steep patches of
rye are out of reach of the floods. The people are seldom reduced to
actual want of food, and are esteemed prosperous by their more destitute
neighbors below.

Our first visit was to the old priory in which Neff held his winter
schools. A row of half a dozen trees planted by him in front of the
house now shuts off a good deal of much-needed sunshine, but is
nevertheless carefully cherished as a memorial. Beside the priory stands
the _temple_, once a Roman Catholic church, in which, before the
Revolution, a priest is said to have ministered for twenty-five years
without making a single convert, his own servant constituting his flock.
Presently we went to rest and eat the lunch Pastor Charpiot had brought,
at the house of the local _ancien_, or elder. His wife, a sturdy,
smiling young woman, gave us an eager welcome. Two round-cheeked boys
frisked about their old friend the pastor, and a baby--its spirits quite
unclouded by its austere surroundings--crowed lustily from the cradle in
which, after the fashion of the country, it was tightly strapped. It was
a low, grimy room, with one square bit of a window, and far from clean.
Dr. Gilly, the prim English biographer of Neff, quaintly says:
"Cleanliness is not a virtue which distinguishes any of the people in
these mountains; and, with such a nice sense of moral perception as they
display, and with such strict attention to the duties of religion, it is
astonishing that they have not yet learnt those ablutions in their
persons or habitations which are as necessary to comfort as to health."
I suspect, however, that the nicest "sense of moral perception" in the
world would excuse the omission of a good many "ablutions" in a place
where all the water that is used has to be carried more than a quarter
of a mile up a steep and rough mountain-path from the nearest stream.
And there was one refinement in the rude chalet not always present in
regions far less removed from the centres of civilization: besides the
cloth--so coarse as to be a curiosity--which the woman laid for us over
an end of the unscoured table, she put at each of our places, as a
matter of course, a fresh napkin of the same rude stuff.

I could not sufficiently admire the brave cheerfulness of these simple
folk. Many of the villagers were busy gathering their little stock of
potatoes, and all had something bright to say about their good fortune
in getting them so well grown and safely stored before the frosts. It
was the last week in September, and they thought the winter already
close at hand. There was, too, in spite of a shrinking from strangers
painfully suggestive of tendencies inherited from generations of
persecuted ancestors, a degree of intelligence and self-respect often
wanting among peasants far more favorably circumstanced. And it seemed
to me worthy of remark that in all our walk--notwithstanding the
valley's unexampled poverty--we did not encounter a single beggar.
Before we left Dourmillouse the "elder" appeared, a stalwart young
mountaineer with his gun slung across his shoulder. He had finished his
morning's work in some distant field, and was off for a chamois-hunt
among the rocks and glaciers. As a relic of our visit he gave us a block
of rye bread twenty-two months old, which he chopped off the loaf with a
hatchet.

We had frequent evidence in the course of our excursion that Pastor
Charpiot is a real shepherd to his needy flock. Indeed, he gave to the
walk an intimate and peculiar interest quite apart from its historical
associations. Here he bade us go slowly on while he looked in upon a
sick man, explaining that he had to be doctor as well as minister. Again
he asked us to stop and share with him some of the grapes which a stout
young peasant-woman was bringing on her donkey from the Durance
vineyards, and which had no sweetness save in the good-will that offered
them. For all whom we met he had a cheery greeting or an affectionate
inquiry that showed familiar acquaintance with their concerns; and
occasionally a word or two suggested a truth or hope, aptly illustrated
in some passing incident, no matter how trifling or homely.

A storm was gathering in the mountains as we made our way back to
Pallons through the deepening shadows of the autumn afternoon. Before we
emerged from the desolate valley its gloom had grown almost intolerable;
and yet this was but a suggestion of the winter horrors which the
white-haired pastor at our side had faced for years in his regular
ministrations at the different hamlets we had visited. Speaking of the
five pastors now distributed over the field of which Neff assumed the
whole charge, he said with a modesty that was quite unaffected, "All
five together, we are not worth him alone" (_nous ne le valons pas_).
What we had seen that day convinced us that so far at least as concerned
himself his deprecation was unfounded, but in expressing it he echoed
the tone that seemed universal in the High Alps in reference to the
illustrious young pastor. Neff could not, of course, in his short career
accomplish the permanent revolution which he dreamed of and longed for.
At the same time, it cannot be said that his work has perished while not
only pastors but people feel so strongly the inspiration of that heroic
life.

JAMES M. BRUCE.




BLOOMING.

    A little seed lay underneath the ground,
      While from the south a mild wind-current blew,
      And from the tropics to the northward flew
    Long, angular lines of wild-fowl with a sound
    Of silken wings. About that time the sun
      Put forth a shining finger, and did stir
    The sleeping soil to effort; whereupon
      The seed made roots like webs of gossamer,
    Shot up a stem, and flourished leaf and flower.
      Now look, O sweet! see what your eyes have done
    With just one ray of their mysterious power
      Upon the germ of my heart's passion thrown!
    Through all my frame steal roots of pure desire:
    My dreams are blooms that shake and shine like fire.

MAURICE THOMPSON




FELIPA.


Christine and I found her there. She was a small, dark-skinned,
yellow-eyed child, the offspring of the ocean and the heats, tawny,
lithe and wild, shy yet fearless--not unlike one of the little brown
deer that bounded through the open reaches of the pine barren behind the
house. She did not come to us--we came to her: we loomed into her life
like genii from another world, and she was partly afraid and partly
proud of us. For were we not her guests?--proud thought!--and, better
still, were we not women? "I have only seen three women in all my life,"
said Felipa, inspecting us gravely, "and I like women. I am a woman too,
although these clothes of the son of Pedro make me appear as a boy: I
wear them on account of the boat and the hauling in of the fish. The son
of Pedro being dead at a convenient age, and his clothes fitting me,
what would you have? It was manifestly a chance not to be despised. But
when I am grown I shall wear robes long and beautiful like the
señora's." The little creature was dressed in a boy's suit of dark-blue
linen, much the worse for wear, and torn.

"If you are a girl, why do you not mend your clothes?" I said.

"Do you mend, señora?"

"Certainly: all women sew and mend."

"The other lady?"

Christine laughed as she lay at ease upon the brown carpet of pine
needles, warm and aromatic after the tropic day's sunshine. "The child
has divined me already, Catherine," she said.

Christine was a tall, lissome maid, with an unusually long stretch of
arm, long sloping shoulders and a long fair throat: her straight hair
fell to her knees when unbound, and its clear flaxen hue had not one
shade of gold, as her clear gray eyes had not one shade of blue. Her
small, straight, rose-leaf lips parted over small, dazzlingly white
teeth, and the outline of her face in profile reminded you of an etching
in its distinctness, although it was by no means perfect according to
the rules of art. Still, what a comfort it was, after the blurred
outlines and smudged profiles many of us possess--seen to best
advantage, I think, in church on Sundays, crowned with flower-decked
bonnets, listening calmly serene to favorite ministers, unconscious of
noses! When Christine had finished her laugh--and she never hurried
anything, but took the full taste of it--she stretched out her arm
carelessly and patted Felipa's curly head. The child caught the
descending hand and kissed the long white fingers.

It was a wild place where we were, yet not new or crude--the coast of
Florida, that old-new land, with its deserted plantations, its skies of
Paradise, and its broad wastes open to the changeless sunshine. The old
house stood on the edge of the dry land, where the pine barren ended and
the salt marsh began: in front curved the tide-water river that seemed
ever trying to come up close to the barren and make its acquaintance,
but could not quite succeed, since it must always turn and flee at a
fixed hour, like Cinderella at the ball, leaving not a silver slipper,
but purple driftwood and bright sea-weeds, brought in from the Gulf
Stream outside. A planked platform ran out into the marsh from the edge
of the barren, and at its end the boats were moored; for although at
high tide the river was at our feet, at low tide it was far away out in
the green waste somewhere, and if we wanted it we must go and seek it.
We did not want it, however: we let it glide up to us twice a day with
its fresh salt odors and flotsam of the ocean, and the rest of the time
we wandered over the barrens or lay under the trees looking up into the
wonderful blue above, listening to the winds as they rushed across from
sea to sea. I was an artist, poor and painstaking: Christine was my kind
friend. She had brought me South because my cough was troublesome, and
here because Edward Bowne recommended the place. He and three
fellow-sportsmen were down at the Madre Lagoon, farther south; I thought
it probable we should see him, without his three fellow-sportsmen,
before very long.

"Who were the three women you have seen, Felipa?" said Christine.

"The grandmother, an Indian woman of the Seminoles who comes sometimes
with baskets, and the wife of Miguel of the island. But they are all
old, and their skins are curled: I like better the silver skin of the
señora."

Poor little Felipa lived on the edge of the great salt marsh alone with
her grand-parents, for her mother was dead. The yellow old couple were
slow-witted Minorcans, part pagan, part Catholic, and wholly ignorant:
their minds rarely rose above the level of their orange trees and their
fish-nets. Felipa's father was a Spanish sailor, and as he had died only
the year before, the child's Spanish was fairly correct, and we could
converse with her readily, although we were slow to comprehend the
patois of the old people, which seemed to borrow as much from the
Italian tongue and the Greek as from its mother Spanish. "I know a great
deal," Felipa remarked confidently, "for my father taught me. He had
sailed on the ocean out of sight of land, and he knew many things. These
he taught to me. Do the gracious ladies think there is anything else to
know?"

One of the gracious ladies thought not, decidedly: in answer to my
remonstrance, expressed in English, she said, "Teach a child like that,
and you ruin her."

"Ruin her?"

"Ruin her happiness--the same thing."

Felipa had a dog, a second self--a great gaunt yellow creature of
unknown breed, with crooked legs, big feet and the name Drollo. What
Drollo meant, or whether it was an abbreviation, we never knew, but
there was a certain satisfaction in it, for the dog was droll: the fact
that the Minorcan title, whatever it was, meant nothing of that kind,
made it all the better. We never saw Felipa without Drollo. "They look
a good deal alike," observed Christine--"the same coloring."

"For shame!" I said.

But it was true. The child's bronzed yellow skin and soft eyes were not
unlike the dog's, but her head was crowned with a mass of short black
curls, while Drollo had only his two great flapping ears and his low
smooth head. Give him an inch or two more of skull, and what a creature
a dog would be! For love and faithfulness even now what man can match
him? But, although ugly, Felipa was a picturesque little object always,
whether attired in boy's clothes or in her own forlorn bodice and skirt.
Olive-hued and meagre-faced, lithe and thin, she flew over the pine
barrens like a creature of air, laughing to feel her short curls toss
and her thin childish arms buoyed up on the breeze as she ran, with
Drollo barking behind. For she loved the winds, and always knew when
they were coming--whether down from the north, in from the ocean, or
across from the Gulf of Mexico: she watched for them, sitting in the
doorway, where she could feel their first breath, and she taught us the
signal of the clouds. She was a queer little thing: we used to find her
sometimes dancing alone out on the barren in a circle she had marked out
with pine-cones, and once she confided to us that she talked to the
trees. "They hear," she said in a whisper: "you should see how knowing
they look, and how their leaves listen."

Once we came upon her most secret lair in a dense thicket of
thorn-myrtle and wild smilax, a little bower she had made, where was
hidden a horrible-looking image formed of the rough pieces of
saw-palmetto grubbed up by old Bartolo from his garden. She must have
dragged these fragments thither one by one, and with infinite pains
bound them together with her rude withes of strong marsh-grass, until at
last she had formed a rough trunk with crooked arms and a sort of a
head, the red hairy surface of the palmetto looking not unlike the skin
of some beast, and making the creature all the more grotesque. This
fetich was kept crowned with flowers, and after this we often saw the
child stealing away with Drollo to carry to it portions of her meals or
a new-found treasure--a sea-shell, a broken saucer, or a fragment of
ribbon. The food always mysteriously disappeared, and my suspicion is
that Drollo used to go back secretly in the night and devour it, asking
no questions and telling no lies: it fitted in nicely, however, Drollo
merely performing the ancient part of the priests of Jupiter, men who
have been much admired. "What a little pagan she is!" I said.

"Oh no, it is only her doll," replied Christine.

I tried several times to paint Felipa during these first weeks, but
those eyes of hers always evaded me. They were, as I have said before,
yellow--that is, they were brown with yellow lights--and they stared at
you with the most inflexible openness. The child had the full-curved,
half-open mouth of the tropics, and a low Greek forehead. "Why isn't she
pretty?" I said.

"She is hideous," replied Christine: "look at her elbows."

Now, Felipa's arms _were_ unpleasant; they were brown and lean,
scratched and stained, and they terminated in a pair of determined
little paws that could hold on like grim Death. I shall never forget
coming upon a tableau one day out on the barren--a little Florida cow
and Felipa, she holding on by the horns, and the beast with its small
fore feet stubbornly set in the sand; girl pulling one way, cow the
other; both silent and determined. It was a hard contest, but the girl
won.

"And if you pass over her elbows, there are her feet," continued
Christine languidly. For she was a sybaritic lover of the fine linens of
life, that friend of mine--a pre-Raphaelite lady with clinging draperies
and a mediæval clasp on her belt. Her whole being rebelled against
ugliness, and the mere sight of a sharp-nosed, light-eyed woman on a
cold day made her uncomfortable for hours.

"Have we not feet, too?" I replied sharply.

But I knew what she meant. Bare feet are not pleasant to the eye
now-a-days, whatever they may have been in the days of the ancient
Greeks; and Felipa's little brown insteps were half the time torn or
bruised by the thorns of the chapparal. Besides, there was always the
disagreeable idea that she might step upon something cold and squirming
when she prowled through the thickets knee-deep in the matted grasses.
Snakes abounded, although we never saw them; but Felipa went up to their
very doors, as it were, and rang the bell defiantly.

One day old Grandfather Bartolo took the child with him down to the
coast: she was always wild to go to the beach, where she could gather
shells and sea-beans, and chase the little ocean-birds that ran along
close to the waves with that swift gliding motion of theirs, and where
she could listen to the roar of the breakers. We were several miles up
the river, and to go down to the ocean was quite a voyage to Felipa. She
bade us good-bye joyously; then ran back to hug Christine a second time,
then to the boat again; then back.

"I thought you wanted to go, child?" I said, a little impatiently, for I
was reading aloud, and these small irruptions were disturbing.

"Yes," said Felipa, "I want to go; and still--Perhaps if the gracious
señora would kiss me again--"

Christine only patted her cheek and told her to run away: she obeyed,
but there was a wistful look in her eyes, and even after the boat had
started her face, watching us from the stern, haunted me.

"Now that the little monkey has gone, I may be able at last to catch and
fix a likeness of her," I said: "in this case a recollection is better
than the changing quicksilver reality."

"You take it as a study of ugliness, I suppose?"

"Do not be so hard upon the child, Christine."

"Hard? Why, she adores me," said my friend, going off to her hammock
under the tree.

Several days passed, and the boat returned not. I accomplished a fine
amount of work, and Christine a fine amount of swinging in the hammock
and dreaming. At length one afternoon I gave my final touch, and carried
my sketch over to the pre-Raphaelite lady for criticism. "What do you
see?" I said.

"I see a wild-looking child with yellow eyes, a mat of curly black hair,
a lank little bodice, her two thin brown arms embracing a gaunt old dog
with crooked legs, big feet and turned-in toes."

"Is that all?"

"All."

"You do not see latent beauty, proud courage, and a possible great gulf
of love in that poor wild little face?"

"Nothing of the kind," replied Christine decidedly. "I see an ugly
little girl: that is all."

The next day the boat returned, and brought back five persons--the old
grandfather, Felipa, Drollo, Miguel of the island and--Edward Bowne.

"Already?" I said.

"Tired of the Madre, Kitty: thought I would come up here and see you for
a while. I knew you must be pining for me."

"Certainly," I replied: "do you not see how I have wasted away?"

He drew my arm through his and raced me down the plank-walk toward the
shore, where I arrived laughing and out of breath.

"Where is Christine?" he asked.

I came back into the traces at once: "Over there in the hammock. You
wish to go to the house first, I suppose?"

"Of course not."

"But she did not come to meet you, Edward, although she knew you had
landed."

"Of course not, also."

"I do not understand you two."

"And of course not, a third time," said Edward, looking down at me with
a smile. "What do quiet, peaceful little artists know about war?"

"Is it war?"

"Something very like it, Kitty. What is that you are carrying?"

"Oh! my new sketch. What do you think of it?"

"Good, very good. Some little girl about here, I suppose?"

"Why, it is Felipa!"

"And who is Felipa? Seems to me I have seen that old dog, though."

"Of course you have: he was in the boat with you, and so was Felipa, but
she was dressed in boy's clothes, and that gives her a different look."

"Oh! that boy? I remember him. His name is Philip. He is a funny little
fellow," said Edward calmly.

"Her name is Felipa, and she is not a boy or a funny little fellow at
all," I replied.

"Isn't she? I thought she was both," replied Ned carelessly, and then he
went off toward the hammock. I turned away after noting Christine's cool
greeting, and went back to the boat.

Felipa came bounding to meet me. "What is his name?" she demanded.

"Bowne."

"Buon--Buona: I cannot say it."

"Bowne, child--Edward Bowne."

"Oh! Eduardo: I know that. Eduardo--Eduardo--a name of honey."

She flew off singing the name, followed by Drollo carrying his
mistress's palmetto basket in his big patient mouth; but when I passed
the house a few moments afterward she was singing, or rather talking
volubly of, another name--"Miguel," and "the wife of Miguel," who were
apparently important personages on the canvas of her life. As it
happened, I never really saw that wife of Miguel, who seemingly had no
name of her own; but I imagined her. She lived on a sandbar in the ocean
not far from the mouth of our river; she drove pelicans like ducks with
a long switch, and she had a tame eagle; she had an old horse also, who
dragged the driftwood across the sand on a sledge, and this old horse
seemed like a giant horse always, outlined as he ever was against the
flat bar and the sky. She went out at dawn, and she went out at sunset,
but during the middle of the burning day she sat at home and polished
sea-beans, for which she obtained untold sums: she was very tall, she
was very yellow, and she had but one eye. These items, one by one, had
been dropped by Felipa at various times, and it was with curiosity that
I gazed upon the original Miguel, the possessor of this remarkable
spouse. He was a grave-eyed, yellow man, who said little and thought
less, applying _cui bono?_ to mental much as the city man applies it to
bodily exertion, and therefore achieving, I think, a finer degree of
inanition. The tame eagle, the pelicans, were nothing to him, and when I
saw his lethargic, gentle countenance my own curiosity about them seemed
to die away in haze, as though I had breathed in an invisible opiate. He
came, he went, and that was all: exit Miguel.

Felipa was constantly with us now. She and Drollo followed the three of
us wherever we went--followed the two also whenever I stayed behind to
sketch, as I often stayed, for in those days I was trying to catch the
secret of the barrens: a hopeless effort, I know it now. "Stay with me,
Felipa," I said; for it was natural to suppose that the lovers might
like to be alone. (I call them lovers for want of a better name, but
they were more like haters: however, in such cases it is nearly the same
thing.) And then Christine, hearing this, would immediately call
"Felipa!" and the child would dart after them, happy as a bird. She wore
her boy's suit now all the time, because the señora had said she "looked
well in it." What the señora really said was, that in boy's clothes she
looked less like a grasshopper. But this had been translated as above by
Edward Bowne when Felipa suddenly descended upon him one day and
demanded to be instantly told what the gracious lady was saying about
her; for she seemed to know by intuition when we spoke of her, although
we talked in English and mentioned no names. When told, her small face
beamed, and she kissed Christine's hand joyfully and bounded away.
Christine took out her beautiful handkerchief and wiped the spot.

"Christine," I said, "do you remember the fate of the proud girl who
walked upon bread?"

"You think that I may starve for kisses some time?" said my friend,
going on with the wiping.

"Not while I am alive," called out Edward from behind. His style of
courtship _was_ of the sledge-hammer sort sometimes. But he did not get
much for it on that day; only lofty tolerance, which seemed to amuse him
greatly.

Edward played with Felipa very much as if she was a rubber toy or a
trapeze performer. He held her out at arm's length in mid-air, he poised
her on his shoulder, he tossed her up into the low myrtle trees, and
dangled her by her little belt over the claret-colored pools on the
barren; but he could not frighten her: she only laughed and grew wilder
and wilder, like a squirrel. "She has muscles and nerves of steel," he
said admiringly.

"Do put her down: she is too excitable for such games," I said in
French, for Felipa seemed to divine our English now. "See the color she
has."

For there was a trail of dark red over the child's thin oval cheeks
which made her look strangely unlike herself. As she caught our eyes
fixed upon her she suddenly stopped her climbing and came and sat at
Christine's feet. "Some day I shall wear robes like the señora's," she
said, passing her hand over the soft fabric; "and I think," she added
after some slow consideration, "that my face will be like the señora's
too."

Edward burst out laughing. The little creature stopped abruptly and
scanned his face.

"Do not tease her," I said.

Quick as a flash she veered around upon me. "He does not tease me," she
said angrily in Spanish; "and, besides, what if he does? I like it." She
looked at me with gleaming eyes and stamped her foot.

"What a little tempest!" said Christine.

Then Edward, man-like, began to explain. "You could not look much like
this lady, Felipa," he said, "because you are so dark, you know."

"Am I dark?"

"Very dark; but many people are dark, of course; and for my part I
always liked dark eyes," said this mendacious person.

"Do you like my eyes?" asked Felipa anxiously.

"Indeed I do: they are like the eyes of a dear little calf I once owned
when I was a boy."

The child was satisfied, and went back to her place beside Christine.
"Yes, I shall wear robes like this," she said dreamily, drawing the
flowing drapery over her knees clad in the little linen trousers, and
scanning the effect: "they would trail behind me--so." Her bare feet
peeped out below the hem, and again we all laughed, the little brown
toes looked so comical coming out from the silk and the snowy
embroideries. She came down to reality at once, looked at us, looked at
herself, and for the first time seemed to comprehend the difference.
Then suddenly she threw herself down on the ground like a little animal,
and buried her head in her arms. She would not speak, she would not look
up: she only relaxed one arm a little to take in Drollo, and then lay
motionless. Drollo looked at us out of one eye solemnly from his
uncomfortable position, as much as to say, "No use: leave her to me." So
after a while we went away and left them there.

That evening I heard a low knock at my door. "Come in," I said, and
Felipa entered. I hardly knew her. She was dressed in a flowered muslin
gown which had probably belonged to her mother, and she wore her
grandmother's stockings and large baggy slippers: on her mat of curly
hair was perched a high-crowned, stiff white cap adorned with a ribbon
streamer, and her lank little neck, coming out of the big gown, was
decked with a chain of large sea-beans, like exaggerated lockets. She
carried a Cuban fan in her hand which was as large as a parasol, and
Drollo, walking behind, fairly clanked with the chain of sea-shells
which she had wound around him from head to tail. The droll tableau and
the supreme pride on Felipa's countenance overcame me, and I laughed
aloud. A sudden cloud of rage and disappointment came over the poor
child's face: she threw her cap on the floor and stamped on it; she tore
off her necklace and writhed herself out of her big flowered gown, and
running to Drollo, nearly strangled him in her fierce efforts to drag
off his shell chains. Then, a half-dressed, wild little phantom, she
seized me by the skirts and dragged me toward the looking-glass. "You
are not pretty either," she cried. "Look at yourself! look at yourself!"

"I did not mean to laugh at you, Felipa," I said gently: "I would not
laugh at any one; and it is true I am not pretty, as you say. I can
never be pretty, child; but if you will try to be more gentle, I could
teach you how to dress yourself so that no one would laugh at you again.
I could make you a little bright-barred skirt and a scarlet bodice: you
could help, and that would teach you to sew. But a little girl who wants
all this done for her must be quiet and good."

"I am good," said Felipa--"as good as everything."

The tears still stood in her eyes, but her anger was forgotten: she
improvised a sort of dance around my room, followed by Drollo dragging
his twisted chain, stepping on it with his big feet, and finally winding
himself up into a knot around the chair-legs.

"Couldn't we make Drollo something too? dear old Drollo!" said Felipa,
going to him and squeezing him in an enthusiastic embrace. I used to
wonder how his poor ribs stood it: Felipa used him as a safety-valve for
her impetuous feelings.

She kissed me good-night and then asked for "the other lady."

"Go to bed, child," I said: "I will give her your good-night."

"But I want to kiss her too," said Felipa.

She lingered at the door and would not go; she played with the latch,
and made me nervous with its clicking; at last I ordered her out. But on
opening my door half an hour afterward there she was sitting on the
floor outside in the darkness, she and Drollo, patiently waiting.
Annoyed, but unable to reprove her, I wrapped the child in my shawl and
carried her out into the moonlight, where Christine and Edward were
strolling to and fro under the pines. "She will not go to bed,
Christine, without kissing you," I explained.

"Funny little monkey!" said my lily friend, passively allowing the
embrace.

"Me too," said Edward, bending down. Then I carried my bundle back
satisfied.

The next day Felipa and I in secret began our labors: hers consisted in
worrying me out of my life and spoiling material--mine in keeping my
temper and trying to sew. The result, however, was satisfactory, never
mind how we got there. I led Christine out one afternoon: Edward
followed. "Do you like tableaux?" I said. "There is one I have arranged
for you."

Felipa sat on the edge of the low, square-curbed Spanish well, and
Drollo stood behind her, his great yellow body and solemn head serving
as a background. She wore a brown petticoat barred with bright colors,
and a little scarlet bodice fitting her slender waist closely; a
chemisette of soft cream-color with loose sleeves covered her neck and
arms, and set off the dark hues of her cheeks and eyes; and around her
curly hair a red scarf was twisted, its fringed edges forming a drapery
at the back of the head, which, more than anything else, seemed to bring
out the latent character of her face. Brown moccasins, red stockings and
a quantity of bright beads completed her costume.

"By Jove!" cried Edward, "the little thing is almost pretty."

Felipa understood this, and a great light came into her face: forgetting
her pose, she bounded forward to Christine's side. "I am pretty, then?"
she said with exultation: "I _am_ pretty, then, after all? For now you
yourself have said it--have said it."

"No, Felipa," I interposed, "the gentleman said it." For the child had a
curious habit of confounding the two identities which puzzled me then as
now. But this afternoon, this happy afternoon, she was content, for she
was allowed to sit at Christine's feet and look up into her fair face
unmolested. I was forgotten, as usual.

"It is always so," I said to myself. But cynicism, as Mr. Aldrich says,
is a small brass field-piece that eventually bursts and kills the
artilleryman. I knew this, having been blown up myself more than once;
so I went back to my painting and forgot the world. Our world down there
on the edge of the salt marsh, however, was a small one: when two
persons went out of it there was a vacuum at once.

One morning Felipa came sadly to my side. "They have gone away,'" she
said.

"Yes, child."

"Down to the beach to spend all the day."

"Yes, I know it."

"And without me!"

This was the climax. I looked up. The child's eyes were dry, but there
was a hollow look of disappointment in her face that made her seem old:
it was as though for an instant you caught what her old-woman face would
be half a century on.

"Why did they not take me?" she said. "I am pretty now: she herself said
it."

"They cannot always take you, Felipa," I replied, giving up the point as
to who had said it.

"Why not? I am pretty now: she herself said it," persisted the child.
"In these clothes, you know: she herself said it. The clothes of the son
of Pedro you will never see more: they are burned."

"Burned?"

"Yes, burned," replied Felipa composedly. "I carried them out on the
barren and burned them. Drollo singed his paw. They burned quite nicely.
But they are gone, and I am pretty now, and yet they did not take me!
What shall I do?"

"Take these colors and make me a picture," I suggested. Generally, this
was a prized privilege, but to-day it did not attract: she turned away,
and a few moments after I saw her going down to the end of the plank
walk, where she stood gazing wistfully toward the ocean. There she
stayed all day, going into camp with Drollo, and refusing to come to
dinner in spite of old Dominga's calls and beckonings. At last the
patient old grandmother went down herself to the end of the long plank
walk where they were with some bread and venison on a plate. Felipa ate
but little, but Drollo, after waiting politely until she had finished,
devoured everything that was left in his calmly hungry way, and then sat
back on his haunches with one paw on the plate, as though for the sake
of memory. Drollo's hunger was of the chronic kind: it seemed impossible
either to assuage it or to fill him. There was a gaunt leanness about
him which I am satisfied no amount of food could ever fatten. I think he
knew it too, and that accounted for his resignation. At length, just
before sunset, the boat returned, floating up the river with the tide,
old Bartolo steering and managing the brown sails. Felipa sprang up
joyfully: I thought she would spring into the boat in her eagerness.
What did she receive for her long vigil? A short word or two: that was
all. Christine and Edward had quarreled.

How do lovers quarrel ordinarily? But I should not ask that, for these
were no ordinary lovers: they were decidedly extraordinary.

"You should not submit to her caprices so readily," I said the next day
while strolling on the barren with Edward. (He was not so much cast
down, however, as he might have been.)

"I adore the very ground her foot touches, Kitty."

"I know it. But how will it end?"

"I will tell you: some of these days I shall win her, and then--she will
adore me."

Here Felipa came running after us, and Edward immediately challenged her
to a race: a game of romps began. If Christine had been looking from her
window, she might have thought he was not especially disconsolate over
her absence; but she was not looking. She was never looking out of
anything or for anybody. She was always serenely content where she was.
Edward and Felipa strayed off among the pine trees, and gradually I lost
sight of them. But as I sat sketching an hour afterward Edward came into
view, carrying the child in his arms. I hurried to meet them.

"I shall never forgive myself," he said: "the little thing has fallen
and injured her foot badly, I fear."

"I do not care at all," said Felipa: "I like to have it hurt. It is _my_
foot, isn't it?"

These remarks she threw at me defiantly, as though I had laid claim to
the member in question. I could not help laughing.

"The other lady will not laugh," said the child proudly. And in truth
Christine, most unexpectedly, took up the rôle of nurse. She carried
Felipa to her own room--for we each had a little cell opening out of the
main apartment--and as white-robed Charity she shone with new radiance.
"Shone" is the proper word, for through the open door of the dim cell,
with the dark little face of Felipa on her shoulder, her white robe and
skin seemed fairly to shine, as white lilies shine on a dark night. The
old grandmother left the child in our care and watched our proceedings
wistfully, very much as a dog watches the human hands that extract the
thorn from the swollen foot of her puppy. She was grateful and asked no
questions; in fact, thought was not one of her mental processes. She did
not think much: she only felt. As for Felipa, the child lived in rapture
during those days in spite of her suffering. She scarcely slept at
all--she was too happy: I heard her voice rippling on through the night,
and Christine's low replies. She adored her beautiful nurse.

The fourth day came: Edward Bowne walked into the cell. "Go out and
breathe the fresh air for an hour or two," he said in the tone more of a
command than a request.

"But the child will never consent," replied Christine sweetly.

"Oh yes, she will: I will stay with her," said the young man, lifting
the feverish little head on his arm and passing his hand softly over the
bright eyes.

"Felipa, do you not want me?" said Christine, bending down.

"He stays: it is all the same," murmured the child.

"So it is. Go, Christine," said Edward with a little smile of triumph.

Without a word Christine left the cell. But she did not go to walk: she
came to my room, and throwing herself on my bed fell in a moment into a
deep sleep, the reaction after her three nights of wakefulness. When she
awoke it was long after dark, and I had relieved Edward in his watch.

"You will have to give it up," he said as our lily came forth at last
with sleep-flushed cheeks and starry eyes shielded from the light. "The
spell is broken: we have all been taking care of Felipa, and she likes
one as well as the other."

Which was not true, in my case at least, since Felipa had openly derided
my small strength when I lifted her, and beat off the sponge with which
I attempted to bathe her hot face. "They" used no sponges, she said,
only their nice cool hands; and she wished "they" would come and take
care of her again. But Christine had resigned in toto. If Felipa did not
prefer her to all others, then Felipa could not have her: she was not a
common nurse. And indeed she was not. Her fair beauty, ideal grace,
cooing voice and the strength of her long arms and flexible hands were
like magic to the sick, and--distraction to the well; the well in this
case being Edward Bowne looking in at the door.

"You love them very much, do you not, Felipa?" I said one day when the
child was sitting up for the first time in a cushioned chair.

"Ah, yes: it is so delicious when they carry me," she replied. But it
was Edward who carried her.

"He is very strong," I said.

"Yes, and their long soft hair, with the smell of roses in it too," said
Felipa dreamily. But the hair was Christine's.

"I shall love them for ever, and they will love me for ever," continued
the child. "Drollo too." She patted the dog's head as she spoke, and
then concluded to kiss him on his little inch of forehead: next she
offered him all her medicines and lotions in turn, and he smelled at
them grimly. "He likes to know what I am taking," she explained.

I went on: "You love them, Felipa, and they are fond of you. They will
always remember you, no doubt."

"Remember!" cried Felipa, starting up from her cushions like a
Jack-in-the-box. "They are not going away? Never! never!"

"But of course they must go some time, for--"

But Felipa was gone. Before I could divine her intent she had flung
herself out of her chair down on to the floor, and was crawling on her
hands and knees toward the outer room. I ran after her, but she reached
the door before me, and, dragging her bandaged foot behind her, drew
herself, toward Christine. "You are _not_ going away! You are not! you
are not!" she sobbed, clinging to her skirts.

Christine was reading tranquilly: Edward stood at the outer door mending
his fishing-tackle. The coolness between them remained unwarmed by so
much as a breath. "Run away, child: you disturb me," said Christine,
turning over a leaf. She did not even look at the pathetic little bundle
at her feet. Pathetic little bundles must be taught some time what
ingratitude deserves.

"How can she run, lame as she is?" said Edward from the doorway.

"You are not going away, are you? Tell me you are not," sobbed Felipa in
a passion of tears, beating on the floor with one hand, and with the
other clinging to Christine.

"I am not going," said Edward. "Do not sob so, you poor little thing!"

She crawled to him, and he took her up in his arms and soothed her into
stillness again: then he carried her out on to the barren for a breath
of fresh air.

"It is a most extraordinary thing how that child confounds you two," I
said. "It is a case of color-blindness, as it were--supposing you two
were colors."

"Which we are not," replied Christine carelessly. "Do not stray off into
mysticism, Catherine."

"It is not mysticism: it is a study of character--"

"Where there is no character," replied my friend.

I gave it up, but I said to myself, "Fate, in the next world make me
one of those long, lithe, light-haired women, will you? I want to see
how it feels."

Felipa's foot was well again, and spring had come. Soon we must leave
our lodge on the edge of the pine barren, our outlook over the salt
marsh, our river sweeping up twice a day, bringing in the briny odors of
the ocean: soon we should see no more the eagles far above us or hear
the night-cry of the great owls, and we must go without the little fairy
flowers of the barren, so small that a hundred of them scarcely made a
tangible bouquet, yet what beauty! what sweetness! In my portfolio were
sketches and studies of the barrens, and in my heart were hopes.
Somebody says somewhere, "Hope is more than a blessing: it is a duty and
a virtue." But I fail to appreciate preserved hope--hope put up in cans
and served out in seasons of depression. I like it fresh from the tree.
And so when I hope it _is_ hope, and not that well-dried, monotonous
cheerfulness which makes one long to throw the persistent smilers out of
the window. Felipa danced no more on the barrens; her illness had toned
her excitable nature; she seemed content to sit at our feet while we
talked, looking up dreamily into our faces, but no longer eagerly
endeavoring to comprehend. We were there: that was enough.

"She is growing like a reed," I said: "her illness has left her weak."

"-Minded," suggested Christine, smiling.

At this moment Felipa stroked the lady's white hand tenderly and laid
her brown cheek against it.

"Do you not feel reproached," I said.

"Why? Must we give our love to whoever loves us? A fine parcel of
paupers we should all be, wasting our inheritance in pitiful small
change! Shall I give a thousand beggars a half hour's happiness, or
shall I make one soul rich his whole life long?"

"The latter," remarked Edward, who had come up unobserved.

They gazed at each other unflinchingly. They had come to open battle
during those last days, and I knew that the end was near. Their words
had been cold as ice, cutting as steel, and I said to myself, "At any
moment." There would be a deadly struggle, and then Christine would
yield. Even I comprehended something of what that yielding would be.
There are beautiful velvety panthers in the Asian forests, and in real
life too, sometimes.

"Why do they hate each other so?" Felipa said to me sadly.

"Do they hate each other?"

"Yes, for I feel it here," she answered, touching her breast with a
dramatic little gesture.

"Nonsense! Go and play with your doll, child." For I had made her a
respectable, orderly doll to take the place of the ungainly fetich out
on the barren.

Felipa gave me a look and walked away. A moment afterward she brought
the doll out of the house before my very eyes, and, going down to the
end of the dock, deliberately threw it into the water: the tide was
flowing out, and away went my toy-woman out of sight, out to sea.

"Well!" I said to myself. "What next?"

I had not told Felipa we were going: I thought it best to let it take
her by surprise. I had various small articles of finery ready as
farewell gifts which should act as sponges to absorb her tears. But Fate
took the whole matter out of my hands. This is how it happened. One
evening in the jessamine arbor, in the fragrant darkness of the warm
spring night, the end came: Christine was won. She glided in like a
wraith, and I, divining at once what had happened, followed her into her
little room, where I found her lying on her bed, her hands clasped on
her breast, her eyes open and veiled in soft shadows, her white robe
drenched with dew. I kissed her fondly--I never could help loving her
then or now--and next I went out to find Edward. He had been kind to me
all my poor gray life: should I not go to him now? He was still in the
arbor, and I sat down by his side quietly: I knew that the words would
come in time. They came: what a flood! English was not enough for him.
He poured forth his love in the rich-voweled Spanish tongue also: it
has sounded doubly sweet to me ever since.

    "Have you felt the wool of the beaver?
    Or swan's down ever?
    Or have smelt the bud o' the brier?
    Or the nard in the fire?
    Or ha' tasted the bag o' the bee?
    Oh so white, oh so soft, oh so sweet is she!"

said the young lover again and again; and I, listening there in the dark
fragrant night, with the dew heavy upon me, felt glad that the old
simple-hearted love was not entirely gone from our tired metallic world.

It was late when we returned to the house. After reaching my room I
found that I had left my cloak in the arbor. It was a strong fabric: the
dew could not hurt it, but it could hurt my sketching materials and
various trifles in the wide inside pockets--_objets de luxe_ to me,
souvenirs of happy times, little artistic properties that I hang on the
walls of my poor studio when in the city. I went softly out into the
darkness again and sought the arbor: groping on the ground I found, not
the cloak, but--Felipa! She was crouched under the foliage, face
downward: she would not move or answer.

"What is the matter, child?" I said, but she would not speak. I tried to
draw her from her lair, but she tangled herself stubbornly still farther
among the thorny vines, and I could not move her. I touched her neck: it
was cold. Frightened, I ran back to the house for a candle.

"Go away," she said in a low hoarse voice when I flashed the light over
her. "I know all, and I am going to die. I have eaten the poison things
in your box, and just now a snake came on my neck and I let him. He has
bitten me, I suppose, and I am glad. Go away: I am going to die."

I looked around: there was my color-case rifled and empty, and the other
articles were scattered on the ground. "Good Heavens, child!" I cried,
"what have you eaten?"

"Enough," replied Felipa gloomily. "I knew they were poisons: you told
me so. And I let the snake stay."

By this time the household, aroused by my hurried exit with the candle,
came toward the arbor. The moment Edward appeared Felipa rolled herself
up like a hedgehog again and refused to speak. But the old grandmother
knelt down and drew the little crouching figure into her arms with
gentle tenderness, smoothing its hair and murmuring loving words in her
soft dialect.

"What is it?" said Edward; but even then his eyes were devouring
Christine, who stood in the dark, vine-wreathed doorway like a picture
in a frame. I explained.

Christine smiled softly. "Jealousy," she said in a low voice. "I am not
surprised." And of her own accord she gave back to Edward one of his
looks.

But at the first sound of her voice Felipa had started up: she too saw
the look, and wrenching herself free from old Dominga's arms, she threw
herself at Christine's feet. "Look at _me_ so," she cried--"me too: do
not look at him. He has forgotten poor Felipa: he does not love her any
more. But _you_ do not forget, señora: _you_ love me--_you_ love me. Say
you do or I shall die!"

We were all shocked by the pallor and the wild hungry look of her
uplifted face. Edward bent down and tried to lift her in his arms, but
when she saw him a sudden fierceness came into her eyes: they shot out
yellow light and seemed to narrow to a point of flame. Before we knew it
she had turned, seized something and plunged it into his encircling arm.
It was my little Venetian dagger.

We sprang forward; our dresses were spotted with the fast-flowing blood;
but Edward did not relax his hold on the writhing wild little body he
held until it lay exhausted in his arms. "I am glad I did it," said the
child, looking up into his face with her inflexible eyes. "Put me
down--put me down, I say, by the gracious señora, that I may die with
the trailing of her white robe over me." And the old grandmother with
trembling hands received her and laid her down mutely at Christine's
feet.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ah, well! Felipa did not die. The poisons wracked but did not kill her,
and the snake must have spared the little thin brown neck so
despairingly offered to him. We went away: there was nothing for us to
do but to go away as quickly as possible and leave her to her kind. To
the silent old grandfather I said, "It will pass: she is but a child."

"She is nearly twelve, señora. Her mother was married at thirteen."

"But she loved them both alike, Bartolo. It is nothing: she does not
know."

"You are right, lady: she does not know," replied the old man slowly;
"but _I_ know. It was two loves, and the stronger thrust the knife."

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.




AT CHICKAMAUGA.


It was the cream of army life in Southern Tennessee that we left to go
to Chickamauga. Our brigade had been detached, and lay for some days at
the foot of Waldron's Ridge, which runs parallel to the broad Tennessee
River, and a few miles north of Chattanooga, then the objective point of
the campaign of the Army of the Cumberland under Rosecrans. Of course we
knew that when the movements in progress in the country below were
sufficiently advanced there would probably be lively work in effecting a
passage of the river in the face of the formidable force which was
guarding the ford two or three miles in our front. In fact, for some
days we had been preparing for the effort, and up in a sluggish bayou
the best of our mechanics were industriously at work fashioning a rude
scow out of such material as axes could get from the native forests. In
this craft, if it could be made to float, a select party was to cross
the river some foggy morning, while the enemy were intently watching the
ford below, and then, while the chosen few were being gloriously shot on
the other side, the rest of us were to attempt the waist-deep, crooked
ford.

For the time we were, however, as has been said, enjoying the cream of
army life. The nights were chilly, though the days were hot and the clay
roads dusty. The mornings were glorious with their bracing fresh air,
their blue mists clinging about far-off Lookout Mountain, and even
hiding the top of Waldron's Ridge at our backs, and their bright
sunshine, which came flooding over the distant heights of Georgia and
North Carolina. The wagon-tracks winding among the low, mound-like hills
which filled the valley from the base of the ridge to the river were as
smooth and gravelly as a well-kept private roadway, and an
ambulance-ride along their tortuous courses was a most enjoyable
recreation in those fine September days of 1863. A gallop twenty miles
up the valley to where Minty kept watch and ward upon our flank with his
trusty horsemen; a dinner at that hospitable mess-table, furnished maybe
with a pig which had strayed from its home not wholly through natural
perversity; and then a lively ride back in the early evening,--this,
indeed, was pleasure.

The charm of campaigning is its rapidly-succeeding surprises. The
general of the army may be proceeding regularly in the path he marked
out months before. The corps commanders, and even the chiefs of
division, may sometimes be able to foresee the movements from day to
day. But to their subordinates everything is a surprise: they lie down
at night in delightful uncertainty as to where the next sunset will find
them, and they sit down to a breakfast of hard bread and bacon, relieved
by a little foraging from the country, not sure that their coffee will
cool before the bugle sounds a signal to pack and be off, to Heaven
knows where. We found this charm of surprise, as we had hundreds of
times before in other places, at our camp in the valley of the
Tennessee. The alternating quick and droning notes of "the general" made
us spring up from the mess-table one morning, and in a moment the lazy
encampment was all hurry and bustle. An aide leaped upon his horse at
head-quarters and dashed off on the road to the river, and we saw that
the servants of General Hazen, our brigade commander, were stripping his
baggage of the small impedimenta which accumulate so rapidly even in a
few days of rest, but are abandoned when the army starts on an active
campaign. It was not to be a mere change of camp, evidently, but a final
adieu to the locality and a dash over the Tennessee--if we could make
it.

While some of us were yet sipping our hot coffee, saved out of the
general wreck in packing up, the bugles called "the assembly," and in
ten minutes the brigade was stretching out at a lively rate on the road
the aide had taken. At the river was the detail of mechanics who had
been at work on the scow in the bayou. Their task had been suddenly
abandoned. It was useless: the enemy had left the opposite bank and
fallen back from Chattanooga. The crossing was made, and the brigade
struck out into the country toward Ringgold and the Georgia line. We
belonged to Palmer's division of Crittenden's corps, but we had no idea
where our comrades were. Passing over the uninviting country, and by the
cornfields wasted by Bragg's men that we might not gather the grain, the
brigade fell in with the rest of its division near a lonely grist-mill
at a junction of cross-roads, where a battalion of Southern cavalry had
just galloped in upon an infantry regiment lying under its stacked arms
by the wayside. So the enemy was not entirely out of the country, it
appeared. Still, we saw nothing of him, save in a trifling skirmish the
next day on the road from Ringgold to Gordon's Mills. Near this place,
however, we fell in with General Thomas J. Wood, who had had a little
encounter which convinced him that Bragg's infantry was in force near
by. The gallant old soldier was in something of a passion because the
theories of his superiors did not coincide with his demonstrations, and
of course the demonstrations had to give way in that case.

Passing Gordon's Mills, our division stretched away on the road toward
La Fayette, and after a day's march bivouacked in a wilderness of wood
and on a sluggish stream different enough from the sparkling waters
which came down by the old camp below Waldron's Ridge. McCook's corps,
they said, having crossed the Tennessee below Chattanooga and advanced
southward on the western side of the Lookout range, was to come through
a gap opposite our present position and join us. Then the army, being
together once more, and having gained Chattanooga by McCook's flank
movement, would return to that point. To get Chattanooga was the object
of the campaign, and the movements since we crossed the river were
simply to assure the safe reunion of the several corps.

The idle days wore on until the afternoon of the 18th of September. Then
"the general" was suddenly sounded from brigade head-quarters, the
regimental buglers took up the signal, and in twenty minutes we were on
the road and moving back toward Gordon's Mills and Chattanooga. No
leisurely march this time, however, but a race which tasked even the
legs of the veterans. Two hours of this brought the command to the crest
of a ridge from which, away to the right, a wide expanse of country lay
in view. There was a broad valley running parallel to the road we were
traveling and covered by a dense growth of low oaks, which effectually
hid roads, streams, and even the few lonely habitations of the people.
But, looking from our eminence over the unbroken expanse of tree-tops,
we could see a light yellow snake-like line stretching down the valley.
It was dust from the road on which Bragg's army was hurrying toward the
Rossville Pass, through which was the way to Chattanooga and all our
communications and supplies. The line of dust extended miles down the
valley, far in advance of the point we had reached. The rest of our army
might be ahead of us and ahead of Bragg, or it might be on our left, or
even behind us, for aught we knew, but it was plain enough why we were
making such haste back toward Chattanooga.

The afternoon passed: darkness came, and still the march continued. Late
in the evening we came upon a group of tents by the roadside--Rosecrans's
head-quarters, with Rosecrans himself, and not in the best of humors, as
some of us discovered on riding up to see friends on his staff. In his
petulance and excitability the commanding general forgot to be gentlemanly,
some of them said; and they left him not at all relieved of any doubts they
had concerning our sudden and forced march.

It was long after midnight when we reached Gordon's Mills. Here the road
was full of ambulances, wagons, artillery and infantry, while in the
thickets on the left were heard the confused noises of the bivouac.
There were no fires, which showed that we were supposed to be in the
immediate presence of the enemy, and that our commander did not want his
position revealed by camp-fires. At some distance past the mills
Palmer's division was halted in the road, and the troops were massed by
regiments, and moved some yards into the thicket to pass the few hours
before daylight.

In the morning it was said that Bragg had indeed beaten in the race the
day before, and had halted at night, if he halted at all, much nearer to
the Rossville Pass than we were. The Chickamauga River was supposed to
be between the two armies, but it is a stream which is easily fordable
in many places, and a mile or two below where we lay was a bridge over
which Bragg could cross rapidly with his artillery and trains, and then
strike our road to Rossville ahead of us. A division moved out early in
the day and went off toward this bridge. Soon after there was lively
musketry and some cannonading in that direction. Word came back that the
enemy had crossed the river in force too heavy to be successfully
encountered by our reconnoitering division. Another division followed in
the path of the first, and there was more firing. Finally, General
Palmer moved his division out upon the road, and along it for some
distance toward Rossville, approaching the firing down by the bridge.
Halting near the Widow Glenn's cottage, about which were a little cloud
of cavalry and many officers, we saw that Rosecrans was there, directing
the movements in person. Palmer got his orders quickly. He was to move
down the road toward Rossville to an indicated point, then form his
division _en échelon_ by brigade from the left, and move off the road to
the right and attack. When he struck the enemy's left flank he was to
envelop and crush it. The formation _en échelon_ was to facilitate this
enveloping and crushing.

Moving off the road as ordered, the division passed through several
hundred yards of forest, and came upon a wide open field of lower
ground, through the centre of which ran, parallel to our front, a narrow
belt of timber. The skirmishers passed through this belt and a few yards
beyond, and were then driven back by an overpowering fire from the
enemy's skirmishers. Our main line came up to the timber and passed
through it to the farther side; and then the edge of the forest beyond,
in front, on the right and on the left, was suddenly fringed with a line
of flashing fire, above which rose a thin white smoke. The tremendous
crash of musketry was measured by the deep thunder of artillery farther
back, and soon columns of dense white smoke rising above the tree-tops
indicated the positions of several swift-working batteries. A storm of
bullets whizzed through the ranks of the attacking échelons, while
shrieking shells filled the air with a horrid din, and, bursting
overhead, sent their ragged fragments hurtling down in every direction.
In an instant a hundred gaps were opened in the firm ranks as the men
sank to the ground beneath the smiting lead and iron. In an instant the
gaps were closed, and in another a hundred more were opened. Every yard
of the advance was costing the assailants a full company of men--every
rod at least half a regiment. They wavered, halted and fell back to the
shelter of the narrow belt of timber. The attack had failed, the flank
of the enemy had not been struck.

But the other divisions of the army? Sent in as ours had been, some one
of them must surely strike the opposing flank, unless Bragg's whole army
had crossed the river and was in position before Rosecrans moved.
Palmer's division held its place, fired its sixty rounds of cartridges
into the wood where the unseen foe was, and waited for the attack of the
succeeding division which should strike Bragg's flank. But we waited in
vain. When Rosecrans's last division was forming its échelons it was
itself enveloped on its outer flank by the active foe. Rosecrans's line,
as he formed it a division at a time, had been constantly outflanked.

The battle was a failure thus far. We could all see that, and some of us
saw how nearly it became an irretrievable disaster. Hazen's brigade had
been withdrawn to replenish its ammunition after the attack, and was
lying along the Rossville road. The men were filling their
cartridge-boxes, and the captains were counting their diminished ranks
and noting who were dead and who but wounded. Out at the front the fight
still went on, but in a desultory way. Suddenly there was an ominous
sound in front of Van Cleve's division, which was in the main line next
on the right of Palmer.

Hazen leaped upon his horse. "Now Van Cleve is in for it!" he exclaimed.
"They're coming for him!"

Quickly getting the men under arms, Hazen moved his brigade behind Van
Cleve to act as a support, and awaited the coming attack. It came like a
whirlwind, and Van Cleve's lines were scattered like fallen leaves. On
came the triumphant enemy in heavy masses, while Van Cleve's disordered
horde swept back with it Hazen's supporting regiments. All but one.
Colonel Aquila Wiley of the Forty-first Ohio Infantry, seeing the coming
avalanche of fugitives, broke his line to the rear by companies and
allowed the flying mass to pass through the intervals. Then instantly
reforming his line, Wiley delivered a volley by battalion upon the
advancing foe. The latter, his ranks loose, as usual in a headlong
pursuit, was staggered and stopped in Wiley's front, but pressed forward
on his right, and had got well to his rear in that direction before the
guns of the Forty-first were reloaded. At a double-quick step Wiley
changed front to the rear on his left company, and sent another volley
among the swarming enemy on his right. Twice he repeated this manoeuvre,
and, gaining ground to the rear with each change of front, kept back the
enemy from front and flank until he could take his place in good order
upon a new line on a ridge to the rear.

Meantime, Hazen was not idle. Seeing the inevitable result when Van
Cleve's lines wavered, he dashed down the road to some unemployed
batteries. These he got quickly into position to enfilade the enemy as
he passed over Van Cleve's abandoned ground, and while Wiley with his
Forty-first was striking in front and flank to clear himself of the
surrounding foes, Hazen's batteries were pouring shells at short range
into the well-ordered supporting troops which the enemy was hurrying
forward to improve the success he had gained. Bragg had actually crossed
the Rossville road and cut the Army of the Cumberland in two, with
nothing in the gap but one regiment of three hundred men. But the
enfilading artillery smote asunder the solid ranks which were to follow
up the victory and left their advantage a barren triumph. Night fell and
ended there the first day's battle.

The blessed night! better for the Army of the Cumberland then than
thirty thousand fresh men. Under its sheltering mantle a thousand
necessary things were done. We knew well enough that the struggle must
be renewed in the morning, but we hoped that it would not be taken up on
our side under such disadvantages as had been against us in the day just
closed. So when, some time after dark, an order came to move down the
road to the left, it was gladly obeyed. We were going into position, it
was evident, though where and how none of us could tell in the darkness.
The road and the woods on each side of it were full of troops,
ambulances, ammunition and head-quarter wagons, artillery, and, lastly,
stragglers hunting for their regiments. Now and then a wounded man,
whose hurt did not prevent his walking, came along inquiring for the
hospitals. There were not many of these, however, for the hospital
service was pretty efficient, and the surgeons were located near the
ground where the fighting had been.

Winding about through such surroundings for what seemed a long time, so
slow was the movement and so frequent the halts to allow the
staff-officer who was directing the march to verify the route, Palmer's
division at length stacked arms on a slightly rising ground not many
hundred yards in front of the Rossville road. There were troops to the
left of us, and soon after we halted troops came up on our right. We
knew by this that we were in the main line of battle as it was being
formed for the next day's fight. There were sounds occasionally from the
forest in front which told us that the enemy also was making his
preparations for the morning, and there was moving of troops, wagons,
artillery, stragglers and mounted officers in rear of us almost all
night. Even our troops in line, tired as they were, were not quite
still. The men lay upon the ground and talked of the events of the day.
Company commanders were inquiring the fate of their missing men, and
some of them were even counting up the guns lost by killed and wounded
men, and wondering how they could account for them on their next
ordnance returns. Waking and sleeping by turns, officers and men passed
the chilly night as best they could until it was near the time when the
first gray streaks of dawn should come. Then those who were sleeping
were quietly aroused; the ranks were noiselessly formed; the stacks of
arms were broken; the first sergeants passed along the fronts of their
companies to verify the attendance; and then the men were allowed to
sit down, guns in hand, to await the daybreak and be in instant
readiness for an attack if the enemy should attempt an early surprise.

Daylight came, however, on the memorable 20th of September, and no
attack had been made. The first thought, naturally, after apprehension
of an early attack had gone, was to appease hunger and thirst. But there
was little in the haversacks, and nothing in the canteens. Details of
men were sent for water, and never returned. The enemy had possession of
the springs we had used the day before, and our details walked
unconsciously into his hands. There was not a drop of water on the whole
field, and men and officers resigned themselves to the torments of
thirst, a thousand times worse than the gnawings of hunger. But with
daylight we could at least get some idea of our position. In front was a
dense forest, in which nothing was to be seen except our own skirmishers
a few yards in advance. Just behind us was an oblong open field, three
hundred yards wide and thrice as long. On the other side of this field
ran the Rossville road. Beyond our division, to the left, was Johnson's,
and then Baird's division, the latter forming the extreme left of the
army, and extending off into the woods beyond the lower end of the open
field. To our right--though this we could not see, the line being in a
dense forest--was the division of Reynolds; beyond him was Brannan, and
then came Wood; and so on to the right of the army, in what further
order we did not know. It was evident that the line had been hastily
formed: the divisions had been placed just as they were picked up in the
confusion of the night. No corps was together in the line, but it was
made up of a division from one corps, then a division from another, and
then one from a third corps, and so on. Thus it happened that the four
divisions on the left of the line had with them no corps commander.

In the idle hour after daylight our brigade commander directed the
construction of a barricade of rails and logs, a little more than
knee-high, along the front of his command. Some of the troops on the
left and the right followed the example. The supposition was that the
game would be changed this day, and that we should stand for attack as
the enemy had done the day before. There was no little satisfaction in
thinking that Bragg's men would have a chance to walk up to a fire at
least as murderous as we had faced when attacking them. If the
haversacks were empty and the canteens had gone for water never to
return, the cartridge-boxes were full, and each man had about him an
extra package or two of cartridges.

The morning wore slowly away, and on our part of the line everything was
remarkably quiet. There was some skirmishing toward the right between
eight and nine o'clock, but evidently nothing serious. The barricade was
finished, and there was nothing to do but to lie behind it and wish for
water as the day grew warmer and thirst became more intense.--But what
is that?

There was a sharp rattle of Springfield rifles from Baird's skirmishers,
a third of a mile to our left and hidden from sight by the woods. In a
moment came a crash of musketry which brought every man to his feet.
Baird's skirmishers had been driven in, and his main line had hurled its
thousands of bullets as the attacking enemy came into view. Instantly
the answering fire was given, and then followed the continuous rattling
roar of a fierce general engagement. Wounded men began to come out of
the wood where Baird was as they made their way alone toward the
hospitals or were carried off by the hospital corps. Suddenly, a hundred
men with arms in their hands emerged from the woods into the open field
behind Baird, straggling and without order. These were not wounded men.
No: it was too plain that Baird's division was giving way. A moment
more, and the lower end of the open field was filled with a dense mass
of men as Baird's disordered lines poured forth out of the woods, which
were swarming with the exultant enemy. Through and behind the retreating
mass the mounted officers rode furiously, their swinging sabres
flashing in the sun as they alternately commanded and exhorted their men
to rally and breast the storm of lead which the enemy was hurling upon
them. Then Johnson, whose division was next to Baird's, wheeled a
regiment or two backward and opened fire on the enemy engaged with
Baird. The troops of the latter were not running, but falling back,
firing as they went. Suddenly, one of their colonels seized his
regimental standard from the color-bearer and faced his horse toward the
enemy, holding the flag high above his head. The men began to rally
around this flag, and in a moment an imperfect line had been formed. The
enemy's success was at an end. A moment more, and with a wild cheer
Baird's men dashed forward and drove the enemy from their front.

Meanwhile, we were not idle spectators of all this. At the moment when
Baird's men had been forced into the open field, and it seemed
impossible to re-form them under the fire they were receiving, the
skirmishers in front of Johnson's and Palmer's divisions broke out into
a lively fire and came in at a run. Close behind them were the
rapidly-advancing skirmishers of the enemy. As these came in sight of
our position they took shelter behind trees and waited for their main
force to come up. Soon the woods behind them were filled with the long,
sweeping lines of Bragg's infantry, moving swiftly and steadily up to
the attack. They reached their skirmishers, and as the latter fell in
with the main body the whole broke into the peculiar shrill and fitful
yell of the Southern soldiery, and rushed impetuously upon our line.
From behind its barricade Hazen's brigade gave the yelling assailants
two volleys, by front and rear rank, and then, as the enemy staggered
under the regular blows, the command "Load and fire at will!" rang along
the line. Out burst a swift storm of lead, before which the wasting
ranks of the assailants first wavered, and then stopped to open a rapid
but wild and diminishing fire against the barricade. For a moment or two
their colors waved defiantly at their front as their officers rode
among them in the vain endeavor to hold them to the hopeless effort; and
then they turned and vanished into the deep recesses of the forest
whence they came. Not as they came, however, but as a flying multitude
of panic-stricken men, insensible to authority, conscious only of their
defeat and their peril.

Ah! but this was quite different from yesterday's work, thought the men
of Hazen's brigade. It is one thing to march up to an enemy waiting to
receive you on his chosen ground, and another to lie quietly in position
and let your enemy feel his way up until he is within fair range. This
was the thought after the successful defence: before the fight it is a
question whether it does not require greater steadiness of nerve to wait
inactive for an attack than to rush forward in an onslaught. Officers
and men in Palmer's division were in excellent spirits. They saw that
their comrades on the right and the left had met with equally good
fortune. Johnson's division on one side and Reynolds's on the other
remained as steady as rocks.

It was nearly eleven o'clock, and all had prospered with us thus far.
The enemy was getting his share of bloody repulses, of which we had had
more than enough the day before. The attacks upon our line had begun
upon the left, and were traveling toward our right. The two armies were
thus brought together gradually, something after the manner of
scissor-blades when they are slowly closed. The four divisions on the
left had already successfully withstood the shock, which it was to be
supposed the enemy had made as heavy as possible at that point, since
the left was the vital point of the whole line. Success there would give
him the line of retreat to Chattanooga, with Rosecrans's entire army
shut out. Besides, we knew that the line was stronger toward the right,
where at least two divisions were in reserve. No one apprehended
disaster, therefore, when a long and rapid roll of musketry far to the
right told that the enemy was attacking there. "Brannan and Wood are
attending to 'em now!" said General Palmer, standing in a group of
officers in rear of Hazen's brigade. The talk went on as before--about
the successful defences of the morning, the barricade, Baird's splendid
recovery, etc. But soon everybody was listening anxiously to the sounds
of the battle on the right. The roar of musketry had worked round until
it was behind our right shoulders as we stood facing to our front. There
could be no doubt about it: the line had given way somewhere on the
right, and the enemy was following up. It was not long before stray
bullets were singing behind and among us, flying in a direction parallel
to our line. Then, all in a moment, a battery far to the right and rear
opened a rapid fire, and some of its shells came shrieking into the rear
of Palmer's and Johnson's divisions. Meanwhile, the crash and roar of
battle came nearer and nearer, until the attack struck Reynolds on the
flank and in rear. But he had been forewarned, and his line was swung
backward, at right angles with his original position, to face the attack
from the new direction. Even then he was forced backward until his men
were stretched across the open field in rear of Palmer's division, and
the battle was going on directly behind us. Something--a shell
perhaps--set fire to a log house at the upper end of this field, not
three hundred yards from our brigade. This house had been taken for a
hospital the night before. It was filled with wounded men, too badly
hurt to be taken farther away in the ambulances, and the regular
hospital flag floated above it. This unfortunate house, with its maimed
occupants, was brought between Reynolds's men and the attacking enemy
when the former were driven into the open field; and, despite the
non-combatant flag flying from the gable, it was riddled with shells
from the Southern batteries. I do not charge upon those gunners a
knowledge of the facts here given: their batteries were some distance
away through the forest. However, whether they saw the house and the
flag or not, their fire swept mercilessly through the house, while many
a stout-hearted soldier, knowing what was there, wished that if he were
to be hit at all, he might be struck dead at once, and so avoid such
sickening horrors.

For the second time on that memorable day it looked for a few moments as
if Palmer would have to face his men about and fight to the rear.
Preparations to do this were made on the right of the division, but,
fortunately, the appalling disaster which seemed imminent in the
complete encompassing of the four divisions of the left was averted. The
enemy yielded at last to the stubborn resistance, and Reynolds
re-established his line--not upon the old ground entirely, but to
conform to the altered situation. He was now the right of the army upon
the original field, and four divisions comprised all that was left of
the Army of the Cumberland in the position of the morning.

The divisions of the centre and the right--where were they? Brannan, and
Wood, and Negley, and Davis, and Van Cleve, and gallant Sheridan, who
held stubbornly his division even amid the panic at Stone River--where
were they? And Rosecrans, commander of the army; Thomas, the hero in
every fight; rash McCook and unfortunate Crittenden, chiefs of corps?
Gone with the centre and the right of the army; gone with the reserves
and the artillery; gone with the ammunition-trains; gone with everything
that belonged to the Army of the Cumberland except four divisions of
unconquered soldiers with half-filled cartridge-boxes and with hearts
that knew no fear.

All gone? No! In the hush which came after Reynolds's desperate defence,
and while hearts were yet beating fast from watching the doubtful fight,
there arose far off to the right and rear a roar of musketry, telling
that somewhere in the distance the flags of the Army of the Cumberland
still waved before the foe, as they did with us. Long afterward we knew
that this was Thomas--he who would not leave the field amid the wreck
which surrounded him--Thomas, with his fragments, posted on a commanding
ridge and bravely beating off the thickening foes about him.

The story of the disaster is an old one. It is hardly necessary to tell
how Wood, in the main line on the right of Brannan, received an order
from Rosecrans to support Reynolds, the second division in line to the
left of Wood; how the gallant soldier hesitated to obey an order from
which such disaster might come; how McCook, chief of corps, told Wood
the order was imperative, and promised to put a reserve division into
the line to take his place; how Wood withdrew from the line, as ordered,
at the fatal moment when the enemy was preparing to attack; how the
furious foe pressed through the gap, cut the army in two, struck the
lines to right and left in flank and rear, swept the centre, the right
wing and the reserves off the field, and doubled up and crushed the left
wing as far as Reynolds's division, whose fortune has been told. All
this is familiar enough now, but those who remained on the field in the
four divisions of the left knew nothing of it then. They only knew that
the line was broken beyond Reynolds, and that, although somewhere in the
distance was a force which had not yet fled nor surrendered, they were
left to bear alone the battle against Bragg's victorious army. The odds
were five or six to one--perhaps more, maybe less. It did not matter to
be precise: Bragg had men enough to put a double line of troops entirely
around the four divisions. That was enough.

It was after midday when the disaster was complete and the divisions of
Baird, Johnson, Palmer and Reynolds were able to understand the
situation. I need not recount in detail the repeated attempts of the
enemy to crush the line of the four divisions at one point and another.
If the reader can recall the description of the first attack on Palmer's
division, he will have a very fair example of the work which busied us
at intervals during those long hours. The enemy was, of course, not
unaware of his great success in dividing the army and driving off the
greater part of it; nor was he lacking in efforts to improve the
advantage by destroying the divisions which yet confronted him. Every
attack, however, resulted in failure, and the assailants retired each
time with heavy losses. At length it was evident to us that it had
become difficult to bring even Longstreet's boasted troops up to attacks
which met such sure and bloody repulses. There were but four divisions
against an army, but the four would not be taken or driven.

With hands and faces blackened by the smoke and dust of battle those men
stood devotedly to their posts, their ranks thinned by every assault,
but their aim as fatal as ever. But one dread possessed them: ammunition
ran short, and there were no supplies. In the intervals between the
enemy's assaults the cartridge-boxes of dead comrades along the line and
in the open field, where were the fierce struggles of the morning, were
emptied of their contents to replenish the failing stock of the
survivors. More precious than food and water, though they were sorely
needed, were these inheritances from the dead.

The long afternoon wore slowly away. Night could not come too soon, but
it seemed that never before was it so tardy. Officers and men were
tortured by thirst. Their tongues were swollen and their lips black and
distended, often to bursting. Speech became difficult or absolutely
impossible. Officers mumbled their commands, and prayed silently for
darkness to save them from enforced surrender or flight when the last
cartridge should be spent.

Meantime, the relentless but cautious foe was carefully feeling his way
around the flanks, apparently unwilling to venture boldly into the rear
of the little army which he could not move by attack in front. A group
of officers stood by their horses in rear of Hazen's brigade when the
crack of an Enfield rifle was heard from the woods in rear across the
open field. A bullet came whizzing into the group and killed a colonel's
horse. Other shots followed from the same direction. The woods behind us
were evidently occupied by the enemy's skirmishers. A captain
volunteered to take his company and clear the woods, but ammunition was
too scarce to waste on sharpshooters.

Word came at last, in some way, that Thomas, whose firing we heard far
to the right and rear, was sorely pressed. A consultation was held by
the four division generals. They needed a commander, but who should it
be? Who would take command of that beleaguered force and undertake to
extricate it from its surrounding peril or deliver it over to Thomas?
Would Palmer? No. Would Reynolds? No. The stern duty of fighting their
divisions until they could fight no longer, and doing then whatever
desperate thing might be possible--that they would not fail in; but that
responsibility was as great as they cared to assume. Up came Hazen then.
"I'll take my brigade across that interval," said he, "and find Thomas
if he's there." Palmer objected: it would make a gap in his line; it
would expose one of his brigades to a thousand chances of
destruction--for who could tell what forces of the enemy were in that
interval or watching it?--and finally, it would take away the brigade
which had most ammunition, for Hazen had husbanded his store. But
something must be done. If the four divisions could hold out until
night, somebody must command them and take them out if it could be done.
Thomas was the proper commander, and he was needed. It was agreed that
Hazen should make the attempt.

The brigade was withdrawn from the line which it had faithfully held all
day, and some disposition made to fill the gap. Hazen formed his
regiments in close masses, faced them to the right and rear, covered his
front with a trusty battalion as skirmishers, waved an adieu to the
comrades left behind, and plunged into the unknown forest in the
direction of Thomas's firing. On and on went the brigade and came nearer
and nearer to the ridge which Thomas held. Suddenly, the skirmishers
strike obliquely an opposing line. They brush it away in an instant, but
the warning is not lost. Keep more to the rear: no fighting now, though
you should whip three to one. The fate of the four divisions rests upon
that. With quick and steady tread the regiments move on. They clear the
wood at last, climb the end of a ridge through a field of standing
corn, and burst into an open field at the summit amid the wild cheers of
Thomas's exhausted men, while Thomas himself, beloved of all the army,
rides down to take Hazen by the hand. And not a moment too soon.

Almost at the very instant Thomas's skirmishers along the front of the
ridge broke out into a rattling fire, and were seen falling back. The
enemy was about to make his final effort, and it was to be against the
flank where now lay Hazen's brigade. Quickly deploying his regiments,
Hazen placed them in four lines, closed one upon another, and the men
lay flat upon their faces. The yell of the enemy was heard in the wood
below, and in a moment the declivity in front was covered with the heavy
lines of the assailants. Then the first of Hazen's regiments was brought
to its feet and poured its volley straight into the faces of the
oncoming foe. The next regiment, and the next, and then the last,
followed in quick succession. The echoes of the last volley had hardly
died away before the enemy, who came on so confident and so strong, had
disappeared, crushed and broken, into the forest, leaving the hillside
strewn with his dead and wounded.

So ended the fighting. Night came down and shrouded the fierce
combatants from each other's sight.

The dusky ranks take up the unfamiliar march with faces from the foe.
Their drums are silent, and their bugles voice-less as the spirit-horns
which marshal their heroic dead upon the farther shore. The shadowy
ranks pass on into the night. Bearing their close-furled banners and
their empty guns, they pass on into the sad and silent night of
Chickamauga to await the glorious sun of Mission Ridge.

ROBERT LEWIS KIMBERLY.


    NOTE.--The writer is aware that this narrative of the battle of
    Chickamauga differs so materially from the commonly-received
    impressions of that event that it ought to be supported by more
    than his own authority. The reader will observe that the main
    narrative is made up of the experiences of one command, that to
    which the writer belonged, and of which he can therefore speak
    as of things which he saw. For the statements of the general
    battle reference is made to official reports, as follows: (1) In
    regard to the first day's battle, see report of General W.S.
    Rosecrans, which may be found in vol. vii. of Putnam's
    _Rebellion Record_, p. 222 and following pages. (2) In regard to
    the complete isolation of the four divisions of the left during
    the second day, and the final opening of communication with
    General Thomas, see General W.B. Hazen's official report on p.
    238 of the volume above quoted.

    The writer also quotes, by permission, from letters from
    Generals Hazen and Thomas J. Wood, addressed to him within the
    present year. General Hazen says: "Do not forget about the
    length of time Thomas was cut off from us--how we could hear
    nothing from him; how neither Reynolds nor Palmer would assume
    command," etc. General Wood says, in reference to the great
    disaster on the second day: "About 11 A.M. I received the
    following order from General Rosecrans: 'The commanding general
    directs that you close up on Reynolds as fast as possible, and
    support him.' As there was an entire division (Brannan's)
    between my division and Reynolds, I could only close upon the
    latter and support him by withdrawing my division from line and
    passing in rear of Brannan to the rear of Reynolds. This I did.
    Of course I knew it was an order involving perhaps the most
    momentous consequences, but General McCook concurred with me
    that it was so emphatic and positive as to demand instant
    obedience. I write you stubborn facts, and you can use them as
    such."

    General Wood has been so severely criticised for his obedience
    to this fatal order that perhaps I should add this further
    explanation, contained in the letter from which I have quoted
    above: "After the battle was over, and it was apparent that
    Rosecrans's ill-considered order had led to a disaster, he
    offered as an explanation of it the statement that some
    staff-officer had reported to him that Brannan was out of line,
    and that he intended I should close to the left on Reynolds, and
    that I overlooked this direction to close to the left on
    Reynolds. Certainly, I overlooked it, or rather I did not see
    it, for it was not there to be seen. On the contrary, I was
    ordered to close up on Reynolds, and for a purpose--viz., to
    support him. I remark also that it was impossible for any man,
    on reading Rosecrans's order to me, to even remotely conjecture
    that it was based on the supposition that Brannan was out of
    line. He had previously ordered me to rest my left on Brannan's
    right, and I had reported to him that I had done so. Colonel
    Starling (of Crittenden's staff) testified before the
    McCook-Crittenden court of inquiry that he was with Rosecrans at
    the time the latter directed the order to be sent to me, and
    told him that Brannan was not out of line."




THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS.

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


CHAPTER XXXVII.

UNWORTHY.

The storm had passed with the night, and the day was bright and
joyful--almost hard in its brightness and cruel in its joy; for while
the sun was shining overhead and the air was musical with the hum of
insects and the song of birds, the flowers were broken, the tender
plants destroyed, the uncut corn was laid as if a troop of horse had
trampled down the crops, and the woods, like the gardens and the fields,
were wrecked and spoiled. But of all the mourners sighing between earth
and sky, Nature is the one that never repents, and the sun shines out
over the saddest ruin as it shines out over the richest growth, as
careless of the one as of the other.

Edgar came down from the Hill in the sunshine, handsome, strong, jocund
as the day. As he rode through the famous double avenue of chestnuts he
thought, What a glorious day! how clear and full of life after the
storm! but he noted the wreckage too, and was concerned to see how the
trees and fields had suffered. Still, the one would put forth new
branches and fresh leaves next year; and if the other had been roughly
handled, there was yet a salvage to be garnered. The ruin was not
irreparable, and he was in the mood to make the best of things. Do not
the first days of a happy love ever give the happiest kind of philosophy
for man and woman to go on?

And he was happy in his love. Who more so? He was on his way now to Ford
House as a man going to his own, serene and confident of his possession.
He had left his treasure overnight, and he went to take it up again,
sure to find it where he had laid it down. He had no thought of the
thief who might have stolen it in the dark hours, of the rust that might
have cankered it in the chill of the gray morning. He only pictured to
himself its beauty, its sweetness and undimmed radiance--only remembered
that this treasure was his, his own and his only, unshared by any, and
known in its excellence by none before him.

He rode up to the door glad, dominant, assured. Life was very pleasant
to the strong man and ardent lover--the English gentleman with his
happiness in his own keeping, and his future marked out in a clear broad
pathway before him. There was no cloud in his sky, no shadow on his sea:
it was all sunshine and serenity--man the master of his own fate and the
ruler of circumstance--man the supreme over all things, a woman's past
included.

Not seeing Leam in the garden, Edgar rang the bells and was shown into
the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. The down-drawn blinds had
darkened the room to a pleasant gloom for eyes somewhat overpowered by
the blazing sunshine and the dazzling white clouds flung like heaps of
snow against the hard bright blue of the sky; yet something struck more
chill than restful on the lover as he came through the doorway, little
fanciful or sentimental as he was.

Leam, who had not been in bed through the night, was sitting on the sofa
in the remotest and darkest part of the room. She rose as he
entered--rose only, not coming forward to meet him, but standing in her
place silent, pale, yet calm and collected. She did not look at him, but
neither did she blush nor tremble. There was something statuesque,
almost dead, about her--something that was not the same Leam whom he had
known from the first.

He went up to her, both hands held out. She shrank back and folded hers
in each other, still not looking at him.

"Why, Leam, what is it?" he cried in amazement, pained, shocked at her
action. Was she in her right mind? Had she heard of his former
attentions to Adelaide, divined their ultimate meaning, and been seized
with a mad idea of sacrifice and generosity? It must be with Adelaide,
he thought, rapidly reviewing his past. He was absolutely safe about
Violet Cray, who had never known his name; and those later Indian
affairs were dead and as good as buried. What, then, did it mean?

"No, not till you have heard me," said Leam in a low voice. "And never
after."

"My darling! what is it?" he repeated.

"You must not call me dear names: I am unworthy," said Leam. "No,"
checking him as he would have spoken, smiling with a sense of relief
that her craze--if it was a craze--went to the visionary side of her own
unworthiness, and was not due to any knowledge of his misdemeanors, as
she might think them. "Do not speak. I have to tell you. I had forgotten
it," she went on to say in the same tense, compressed manner--the manner
of one who has a task to get through, and has gathered all her strength
for the effort, leaving none to be squandered in emotion--"I was so
happy in these last days I had forgotten it. Now I have remembered, and
we must part."

Edgar was grieved to see her in such deadly trouble, for it was easy to
see her pain beneath her still exterior, but he was confident, and if
grieved not afraid. Leam's little life, so innocent and uneventful as it
must have been, could hold no such tremendous evil, could have been
smirched with no such damning stain, as that at which she seemed to
hint. Grant even that there had been something more between her and
Alick Corfield than he would quite like to hear--which was his first
thought--still, that more must needs be very little, could but be very
simple. His wife must be spotless--that he knew, and he would marry none
whose past was not as unsullied as new-fallen snow, as unsullied as must
be her future--absolute purity--the unruffled emotions of a maidenhood
undisturbed until now even by dreams, even by visions. He owed it to
himself and his position that his wife, man of many loves as he was,
should be this; but at the worst the childish affection of brother and
sister, which was all that could possibly have been between Leam and
that awkward young gangrel Alick Corfield, could have nothing in it that
he ought to take to heart or that should influence him. Yes, he might
smile and not be afraid. And indeed her delicate conscience was another
grace in his eyes. He loved her more than ever for the honesty that must
confess all its little sins. Sweet Leam! Leam having to confess! Leam!
she who was almost too modest for an ordinary lover's comfort, needing
to be tamed out of her savage bashfulness, not to be reproved for
transgressing the proper reticence of an English maid. It was a pretty
play, but it was only a play.

"Come and sit by me and make full confession, my darling," he said
lovingly.

"I will stand where I am. You sit," said Leam, without looking at him.

He seated himself on the sofa. "And now what has my little culprit to
say for herself?" he asked pleasantly, putting on a playful magisterial
air.

"It is over," said Leam, her hands pressed in each other with so tight a
clasp that the strained knuckles were white and started. "You must not
love me: I cannot be your wife."

"Why?" He showed his square white teeth beneath the golden sweep of his
moustache, his moist red lips parted, always smiling.

"I have done a great crime," said Leam in a low, monotonous voice.

"A crime! That is a large word for a small peccadillo--larger than any
sin of yours merits, my sweetheart."

"You do not know," said Leam with a despairing gesture. "How can you
know when you have not heard?"

"Well, what may be its name?" he asked, willing to humor her.

She paused for a moment: then with a visible effort, drawing in her
breath, she said, in a voice that was unnaturally calm and low, "I
killed madame."

"Leam!" cried Edgar, "how can you talk such nonsense? The thing is
growing beyond a joke. Unsay your words; they are a wrong done to _me_."

He had started to his feet while he spoke, and now stood before her
with a strangely scared and startled face. Naturally, as such a man
would, he was resolute not to accept such a terrible confession, and one
so unlikely, so impossible; but something in the girl's voice and
manner, something in its sad, still reality, seemed to overpower his
determination to find this simply a bad joke which she was playing off
on his credulity. And then the thing fitted only too well. He had heard
half a dozen times of Madame de Montfort's sudden death, and how very
strange it was that the draught which she had taken so often with
impunity before should have been found so laden with prussic acid on the
first night of her homecoming as to kill her in an instant--how strange,
too, that not the strictest search or inquiry could come upon a trace of
such poison bought or possessed by any member of the family, for what
police-officer would look to find a sixty-minim bottle of prussic acid
concealed among the coils of a young girl's hair? And when Leam said in
that quiet if desperate manner that it was she who had killed madame,
her words made the whole mystery clear and solved the as yet unsolved
problem.

Nevertheless, he would not believe her, but said again, passionately,
"Unsay your words, Leam: they offend me."

"I cannot," said Leam.

He laughed scornfully. "Kill Madame de Montfort. Absurd! You could not.
It was impossible for a girl like you to kill any one," he cried in
broken sentences. "How could you do such a thing, Leam, and not be found
out? Silly child! you are raving."

"I put poison into the bottle, and she died," said Leam in a half
whisper.

"Leam! you a murderess!"

She quivered at the word, at the tone of loathing, of abhorrence, of
almost terror, in which he said it, but she held her terrible ground.
She had begun her martyrdom, her agony of atonement for the sake of
truth and love, and she must go through now to the end. "Yes," she said,
"I am a murderess. Now you know all, and why you must not love me."

"I cannot believe you," he pleaded helplessly. "It is too horrible. My
darling, say that you have told me this to try me--that it is not true,
and that you are still my own, my very own, my pure and sinless Leam."

He knelt at her feet, clasping her waist. He was not of those who, like
Alick, could bear the sin of the beloved as the sacrifice of pride, of
self, of soul to that love. He himself might be stained from head to
heel with the soil of sin, but his wife must be, as has been said,
without flaw or blemish, immaculate and free from fault. Any lapse,
involving the loss of repute should it ever be made public, would have
been the death-knell of his hopes, the requiem of his love; but such an
infamy as this! If true it was only too final.

"Oh, no! no! do not do that," cried Leam, trying to unclasp his hands.
"Do not kneel to me. I ought to kneel to you," she added with a little
cry that struck with more than pity to Edgar's heart, and that nearly
broke her down for so much relaxing of the strain, so much yielding to
her grief, as it included.

"Leam, tell me you are joking--tell me that you did not do this awful
thing," he cried again, his handsome face, blanched and drawn, upturned
to her in agony.

She put her hands over her eyes. "I cannot lie to you," she said. "And I
must not degrade you. Do not touch me: I am not good enough to be
touched by you."

He loosened his arms, and she shrank from him almost as if she faded
away.

"Why did you deceive me?" he groaned. "You should not have let me love
you, knowing the truth."

"I did not know that you loved me, or that I loved you, till that
night," she pleaded piteously. "If I had known I would have prevented
it. I have told you as soon as I remembered."

"You have broken my heart," he cried, flinging himself on the sofa, his
face buried in the cushions. And then, strong man as he was, a brave
soldier and an English country gentleman, he burst into a passion of
tears that shook him as the storm had shaken the earth last
night--tears that were the culmination of his agony, not its relief.

Leam stood by him as pale as the shattered lilies in the garden. What
could she do? How could she comfort him? Tainted and dishonored, she
dared not even lay her hand on his--her infamous and murderous hand, and
he so pure and noble! Neither could she pray for him, nor yet for
herself. Pray? to whom? To God? God had turned His face away from her,
even as her lover had now turned away his: He was angry with her, and
still unappeased. She dared not pray to Him, and He would not hear her
if she did. The saints were no longer the familiar and parental deities,
grave and helpful, to whom she could refer all her sorrows and
perplexities, as in earlier times, sure of speedy succor. The teaching
of the later days had destroyed the simple fetichism of childhood; and
now--afraid of God, by whom she was unforgiven; the saints swept out of
her spiritual life like those mist-wreaths of morning which were once
taken for solid towers and impregnable fortresses; the Holy Mother
vanished with the rest; all spiritual help a myth, all spiritual
consolation gone--how could she pray? Lonely as her life had been since
mamma died, it had never been so lonely as now, when she felt that God
had abandoned her, and that she had sacrificed her lover to her sense of
truth and honor and what was due to his nobility.

She stood by him and watched his passionate outburst with anguish
infinitely more intense than his own. To have caused him this sorrow was
worse than to have endured it for herself. There was no sacrifice of
self that she could not have made for his good. Spaniard as she was, she
would have been above jealousy if another woman would have made him
happier than she; and if her death would have given him gain or joy, she
would have died for him as another would have lived. Yet it was she, and
she only, who was causing him this pain, who was destroying his
happiness and breaking his heart.

She dared not speak nor move. It took all the strength she drew from
silence to keep her from breaking into a more terrible storm of grief
than even that into which he had fallen. She dared not make a sign, but
simply stood there, doing her best to bear her heavy burden to the end.
The only feeling that she had for herself was that it was cruel not to
let her die, and why did not mute anguish kill her?

For the rest, she knew that she had done the thing that was right,
however hard. It was not fitting that she should be his wife; and it was
better that he should suffer for the moment than be degraded for all
time by association with one so shameful, so dishonored, as herself.

Presently, Edgar cleared his eyes and lifted up his face. He was angry
with himself for this unmanly burst of feeling, and because angry with
himself disposed for the moment to be hard on her. She was standing
there in exactly the same spot and just the same attitude as before, her
head a little bent, her hands twined in each other, her eyes with the
pleading, frightened look of confession turned timidly to him; but as he
raised himself from the sofa, pushing back his hair and striding to the
window as if to hide the fact of his having shed tears, she turned her
eyes to the floor. She was beginning to feel now that she must not even
look at him. The gulf that separated them, dug by her own ineffaceable
crime, was so deep, the distance so wide!

A painful silence fell between them: then Edgar, not looking at her,
said in a constrained voice, "I will keep your dreadful secret, Leam,
sacredly for ever. You feel sure of that, I hope. But, as you say, we
must part. I do not pretend to be better than other men, but I could not
take as my wife one who had been guilty of such an awful crime as this."

"No," said Leam, her parched lips scarcely able to form a word at all.

"Your secret will be safe with me," he repeated.

She did not reply. In giving up himself she had given up all that made
life lovely, and the refuse might as well go as not.

"But we must part."

"Yes," said Leam.

He turned back to the window, desperately troubled. He did really love
her, passionately, sincerely. He longed at this very moment to take her
in his arms and tell her that he would accept her crime if only he might
have herself. Had he not been the master of the Hill and a Harrowby he
would have done so, but the master of the Hill and the head of the house
of Harrowby had a character to maintain and a social ideal to keep pure.
He could not bring into such a home as his, present to his mother as her
daughter, to his sisters as their sister, a girl who by her own
confession was a murderess--a girl who, if the law had its due, would be
hanged by the neck in the precincts of the county jail till she was
dead. He might have been sinful enough in his own life, in the ordinary
way of men--and truly there were passages in his past that would
scarcely bear the light--but what were the worst of his misdemeanors
compared with this awful crime? No: he must resolutely crush the last
lingering impulse of tenderness, and leave her to work through her own
tribulation, as he also must work through his.

"But we must part," he said for a third time.

Her lips quivered. She did not answer, only bent her head in sign of
acquiescence.

"It is hard to say it, harder still to do; and I who loved you so
dearly!" cried Edgar with the angry despair of a man forced against
himself to give up his desire.

She put up her hands. "Don't!" she said with a sharp cry. "I cannot bear
to hear about your love."

He gave a sudden sob. Her love for him was very precious to him--his for
her very strong.

"Why did you tell me?" he then said. "And yet you did the right thing to
tell me: I was wrong to say that. It was good of you, Leam--noble, like
yourself."

"I love you. That is not being noble," she answered slowly and with
infinite pathos. "I could not have deceived you after I remembered."

"You are too noble to deceive," he said, holding out his hand.

Leam turned away. "I am not fit to touch your hand," she said, the very
pride of contrition in her voice--pride for him, if humiliation for
herself.

"For this once," he pleaded.

"I am unworthy," she answered.

At this moment little Fina came jumping into the room. She had in her
hand a rose-colored scarf that had once been poor madame's, and which
the nurse, turning out an old box of hers, had found and given to the
child.

After she had kissed Edgar, played with his _bréloques_, looked at the
works of his watch, plaited his beard into three strings, and done all
that she generally did in the way of welcome, she shook out the gauze
scarf over her dress.

"This was mamma's--my own mamma's," she said. "Leam will never tell me
about mamma: you tell me, Major Harrowby," coaxingly.

"I cannot: I did not know her," said Edgar in an altered voice, while
Leam looked as if her judgment had come, but bore it as she had borne
all the rest, resolutely.

"I want to hear about mamma, and who killed her," pouted Fina.

"Hush, Fina," said Leam in an agony: "you must not talk."

"You always say that, Leam, when I want to hear about mamma," was the
child's petulant reply.

"Go away now, dear little Fina," said Edgar, who felt all that Leam must
feel at these inopportune words, and who, moreover, weak as he was in
this direction, was longing for one last caress.

"I will go and send her nurse," said Leam, half staggering to the door.

Had anything been wanting to show her the impossibility of their
marriage, this incident of Fina's random but incisive words would have
been enough.

"Leam! not one word more?" he asked as he stood against the door,
holding the handle in his hand.

"No," she said hopelessly. "What words can we have together?"

"And we are parting like this, and for ever?"

"For ever. Yes, it has to be for ever," she answered almost
mechanically.

"Leam, why did you love me?" he cried, taking her hands in his and
keeping them.

"How could I help it? Who would not love you?" she answered.

Again he gave a sudden heavy sob, and again the poor pale, tortured face
reflected the pain it witnessed.

"Good-bye!" she then said, drawing her hands from his. "Remember only,
when you blame me, that I told you, not to let you be degraded. And
forgive me before I die, for I loved you--ah, better than my own life!"

With a sudden impulse she stooped forward, took back his right hand in
both of hers, pressed it to her bosom, kissed it passionately again and
again, then turned with one faint, half-suppressed moan, and left him.
And as he heard her light feet cross the hall, wearily, heavily, as the
feet of a mourner dragging by the grave of the beloved, he knew that his
dream of love was over. But, with the strange satire of the senses in
moments of sorrow, noting ever the most trivial things, Edgar noted
specially the powerful perfume of a spray of lemon-plant which she
bruised as she pressed his hand against her breast.

That evening Edgar Harrowby went down to the rectory. He was strong
enough in physique and in some phases of will, but he was not strong all
through, and he had never been able to face unassisted the first
desolation of a love-disappointment.

Adelaide, in a picturesque dress and her most becoming mood, welcomed
him with careful cordiality as a prodigal whose husks, clinging about
his coat, were to be handled tenderly as if they were pearls. She saw
that something was gravely wrong, and she grasped the line of connection
if she did not understand the issue; but, mindful of the doctrine of
letting well alone--also of that of catching a heart at the rebound--she
made no allusion in the beginning, but let her curiosity gnaw her like
the Spartan boy's fox without making a sign. At last, however, her
curiosity became impatience, and her impatience conquered her reserve.
She was clever in her generation and fairly self-controlled, but she was
only a woman, after all.

"And when did you see that eccentric little lady, Miss Leam?" she asked
with a smile--not a bitter smile, merely one of careless amusement, as
if Leam was acknowledged to be a comical subject of conversation and one
naturally provoking a smile.

"Dear Adelaide," said Edgar, not looking at her, but speaking with
unusual earnestness, "do not speak ill of Leam Dundas--neither to me nor
to any one else. I ask it as a favor."

Adelaide turned pale. "Tell me only one thing, Edgar: are you going to
marry her?" she asked, her manner as earnest as his own, but with a
different meaning.

"No. Marry her? Good God, no!" was his vehement reply. Then more
tenderly: "But for all that do not speak ill of her. Will you promise,
dear, good friend?"

"Yes, I will promise," she answered with what was for her fervor and a
sudden look of intense relief. "I never will again, Edgar; and I am
sorry if I have hurt you at any time by what I may have said. I did not
mean to do so."

"No, I know you did not. I can appreciate your motives, and they were
good," Edgar answered with emotion; and then their two pairs of fine
blue eyes met, and both pairs were moist.

This was just at the moment when Leam, pale, rigid as a statue, thickly
veiled, and holding a box in her hand, met Mr. Gryce in Steel's Wood, he
having gone to catch such rare specimens of sleeping lepidoptera as the
place afforded and his eyes could discern.




CHAPTER XXXVIII.

BLOTTED OUT.

Gone! no one knew where. Gone in the night like a falling star, like a
passing cloud--gone and left no trace, vanished like the sunshine of
yesterday or the flowers of last spring! No one knew what had become of
her, and no one knew where to look for her; for the sole information
gathered by the scared neighbors was, that Leam Dundas was missing and
no one had seen her go.

She was thought by some to have simply run away after the manner of
undisciplined youth aiming at mock heroism; but where, or with whom?
for, said the keen-eyed women and large-mouthed men, incredulous of
maiden meditation fancy free, a pretty young thing of nineteen would
never have left her comfortable home, her father, friends and good name,
without some lover stirring in the matter. And this lover was just the
missing link not to be found anywhere. Others said she had drowned
herself; but here, again, Why? Young girls do not give up their precious
freight of hope in love and present joy in youth for a trifling ailment
or a temporary annoyance. And nothing worse than either could have
befallen Leam, said the reasoners, putting their little twos and twos
together and totting up the items with the serene accuracy of spiritual
arithmeticians, dealing with human emotion as if it was a sum in long
division which any schoolboy could calculate.

Edgar Harrowby, however, who came forward manfully enough to say when
and where--if not how--he had last seen Miss Dundas, leant to the side
of the believers in suicide, and on his own responsibility ordered the
Broad to be dragged. Which looked ugly, said a few of the rasher spirits
in the village, cherishing suspicion of their betters as the birthright
which had never had a chance of being bartered for a mess of pottage;
while the more contemptuous, critical after the event, gave it as their
opinion that the major had a bee in his bonnet somewhere, for what
gentleman in his seven sane senses would have looked for such a mare's
nest as Miss Leam Dundas lying among the bulrushes of the Broad? Drowned
herself? No: it was no drowning of herself that had come to little miss,
be sure of that.

What, however, had come to her no one knew. The fact only was certain:
she had gone, and no one had met her coming or seen her going, and for
all trace left she might as well have melted into air like one of the
fairy women of romance. To be sure, the servants had heard her in her
room in the early evening, and she had refused the tea which they had
brought her, and told them, through the closed door, that she wanted
nothing more that night. So they left her to herself, supposing her to
be in one of her queer moods, to which they were used to give but scant
heed, and not thinking more about her. The next morning she was missing,
but when she had gone was as dark as where.

The discovery, later in the day, that certain effects, such as her
mother's dressing-case and a few personal necessities of daily use, were
gone too, seemed to dispose effectually of the theory of suicide; though
what remained, a lover, companion of her flight, being wanting? It was a
strange thing altogether, and the country was alive with wild theories
and wild reports. But in a few days a letter from Mr. Dundas to the
rector, and another to Edgar, set the question of self-destruction at
rest, though also they gave loose to other energies of conjecture, for
in both he said, "No harm has come to her, and I am content to let her
remain where she has elected to place herself."

As it was just this _where_ which tormented the folk with the sense of
mystery and made them eager for news, the father's meagre
explanation--which, in point of fact, was no explanation at all--was not
found very satisfactory, and a few hard words were said of Mr. Dundas,
his reserve to the world being taken for the same thing as indifference
to his daughter, and resented as an offence. But for the third time in
his life Sebastian was found capable of maintaining this impenetrable
reserve. Pepita's true status in her own country--madame's suspicious
debts and those damaging letters from London--Leam's hiding-place: he
had had strength enough to keep his own counsel about the first two
unbroken, and now he betrayed no more about this last. It may as well be
said that for this he had sufficient reason. Leam, who had confessed
her crime, and announced her intention of flight and of hiding herself
where no one should find her again, had not told him more than these
bare bones of the story. And he did not care to know more. The skeleton
was horrible enough as it stood: he was by no means inclined to clothe
it with the flesh of detail, still less to follow his erring child to
her place of exile. He was content that she should be blotted out. It
was the sole reparation that she could make.

This sudden disappearance ended the foreign tour which had been
Josephine's sweetest anticipations of the honeymoon, for Mr. Dundas
turned back for home at once, intending to put up Ford House for sale
and leave the place for ever. He was ashamed to live at North Aston, he
said, after Leam's extraordinary conduct, her shameful, shameless
_esclandre_, which--said Josephine to her own people, weeping--she
supposed was due to her, the poor little thing not liking her for a
stepmother.

"Though, indeed, she need not have been afraid," said the good creature
effusively, "for I had intended to be kindness itself to the poor dear
girl."

And when she said this, Mrs. Harrowby who never failed an opportunity
for moral cautery, remarked dryly, "In all probability it is as well as
it is, Josephine. You would have been very uncomfortable with her, and
would have been sure to have spoiled her. And, as Adelaide Birkett
always says, very sensibly, she is odd enough already. She need not be
made more so."

Maria threw out a doubt as to whether Mr. Dundas had heard from Leam at
all. It was not like Sebastian to be so close, she said; but Josephine
assured her that he had, and bridled a little at the vapory insinuation
that Sebastian was not perfect. She detailed the whole circumstance with
all the facts fully fringed and feathered. He had received the letter
just as they were preparing to go to the Louvre, but he had not shown it
to her, and she had not asked to see it. She saw, though, that he was
much agitated when he read it, but he had put it in his pocket, and
when she looked for it it was not there. All that he had said was, "Leam
has left home, Josephine, and we must go back at once." Of course she
had not asked questions, she said with a pleasant little assumption of
wifely submission. Her search in her husband's pockets was only what
might have been expected from the average woman, but the wifely
submission was special.

For this curtailment of their sister's enjoyment Maria and Fanny judged
Leam almost more severely than for any other delinquency involved in her
flight. They spoke as if she had planned it purposely to vex her father
and his bride in their honeymoon and deprive them of their lawful
pleasure; but Josephine never blamed her as they did, and when they were
most bitter cast in her little words of soothing and excused her with
more zeal than evidence--excused her sometimes to the point of making
her sisters angry with her and inclined to accuse her of her old
failing, meek-spiritedness carried to the verge of self-abasement.

But the one who suffered most of all those left to lament or to wonder
was poor Alick Corfield. It was a misery to see him with his hollow
cheeks and haggard eyes, like an animal that has been hunted into lone
places, terrified and looking for a way of escape, or like a dog that
has lost its master. He tried every method known to him to gain
information of her directly or indirectly, but Mr. Dundas, ignorant
himself, had only to guard that ignorance from breaking out. As for
knowledge, he could not give what he did not possess, and the terrible
thing that he did know he was not likely to let appear.

One day when the poor fellow broke down, as was not unusual with him
when asking about Leam--and Mr. Dundas read him like a book, all save
that one black page where the beloved name stood inscribed in letters of
his own heart's blood between the words "crime" and "murder"--with a
woman's liking for saying pleasant things which soothed those who heard
them, and did no hurt to those who said them save for the insignificant
manner in which falsehood hurts the soul, Sebastian, laying his hand
kindly on the poor fellow's angular shoulder, said, "I am sorry to know
as much as I do, Alick. There is no one to whom I would have given her
so readily as to you, my dear boy. Indeed, it was always one of my hopes
for the future, poor misguided child! and I can see that it was yours
too. Ah, how I grieve that it is impossible!"

"Why impossible?" asked Alick, who had the faculty of faith, his pale
face flushing.

Mr. Dundas turned white. A look not so much of pain as of abhorrence
came into his face. "Impossible!" he said vehemently. "I would not curse
my greatest enemy with my daughter's hand."

Alick felt his blood run cold. What did he mean? Did he know all, or was
he speaking only with the angry feeling of a man who had been
disappointed and annoyed? There was a short pause. Then said Alick,
looking straight into Sebastian's eyes and speaking very slowly, but
with not too much emphasis, "I would hold myself blessed with her as my
wife had she even committed murder."

Mr. Dundas started perceptibly. "Oh," he answered after a moment's
hesitation, with a forced and sickly kind of smile, "a silly girl's
wrong-headedness does not reach quite so far as that. She has done
wrong, miserably wrong, but between withdrawing herself from her
father's house and committing such a crime as murder there is rather a
wide difference. All the same, I am disgraced by her folly," angrily,
"and I will not let any one--not even you, Alick--know where she is."

"That is cruel to those who love her," pleaded Alick, his eyes filling
with tears.

"If cruel it is necessary," said Mr. Dundas.

"But she must need friends about her now more than she ever did," urged
Alick. "Tell me at least where to find her, that I may do what I can to
console her."

Mr. Dundas shook his head. "No," he said sternly, "She is dead to me,
and shall be dead to my friends. She is blotted out from my love, and I
will blot her out from my memory; and no one's persuasions can bring
back what is effaced. Now, my dear boy, let us understand one another. I
have surprised your secret: you love my daughter, and had she been
worthy of you I would have given her to you more willingly than to any
one I know. But she herself has fixed the gulf between us, which I will
not pass nor help any one else to pass. Learn to look on her as dead,
for she is dead to me, to you, to the world."

"Never to me," cried Alick. "While she lives she must be always to me
what she has been from the first day I saw her. Whatever she has done, I
shall always love her as much as I do now."

"You are faithful," replied Sebastian, "but trust me, boy, no woman that
ever lived was worth so much fidelity. I will protect you against your
own wish, and be your friend in spite of yourself. You shall not know
where she is, and you shall not throw yourself away on her. As she has
elected to be effaced, she shall be effaced--blotted out for ever."

"Then I will consecrate my life to finding her," cried Alick warmly.

Mr. Dundas shrugged his shoulders. "Who can persuade a willful man
against his folly?" he said coldly. "You are following a marsh-light, my
boy, and if you do find it you will only be landed in a bog."

"If I find her I shall have found my reward," Alick answered with boyish
fervor. "It will be happiness enough for me if I can bring back one
smile to her face or lighten one hour of its sorrow."

"Let well alone," said Mr. Dundas; but Alick answered, "Not till it is
well; and God will help me."

Whereupon the interview ended, and Alick left the house, feeling
something as one of the knights of old might have felt when he had vowed
himself to the quest of the Holy Grail.

When Mr. Dundas came home, naturally the families called, as in duty
bound and by inclination led. Excitement concerning Ford House was at
its height, for there were two things to keep it alive--the one to see
how the bride and bridegroom looked, the other to try and pick up
something definite about Leam. And among the rest came Mr. Gryce, with
his floating white locks falling about his bland cherubic face, his mild
blue eyes with their trick of turning red on small provocation, and his
lisping manner of speech, ingenuous, interrogatory, and knowing nothing
when interrogated in his turn--somehow gleaning full ears wherever he
passed, and dropping not even a solitary stalk of straw in return. He
expressed his sorrow that he had not seen lately his young friend, Miss
Dundas.

"In my secluded life," he said, his eyelids reddening, "she is like a
beautiful bird that flashes through the dull sky for a moment, but
leaves the atmosphere brighter than before." He glanced round the room
as if looking for her. "I hope she is well?" he added, not attempting to
conceal a certain accent of disappointment at her absence.

"Quite well when I heard from her," answered Mr. Dundas, doing his best
to speak without embarrassment.

Mr. Gryce turned his face in frank astonishment on the speaker. "Ah! She
is from home, then?" he asked.

"Yes," said Mr. Dundas curtly.

"I had not heard," lisped the tenant of Lionnet. "But I myself have been
from home for a few days, and have just returned. Though, indeed,
present or absent, I know very little of my neighbors' doings, as you
may see. I did not even know that Miss Dundas was from home."

"Yet it was pretty widely talked about," said Mr. Dundas, with a certain
suspicious glance at the cherubic face smiling innocently into his.

"Doubtless the absence of Miss Dundas must have caused a gap," replied
Mr. Gryce, "but you see, as I said, I have been away myself, and when I
am at home I do not gossip."

"Have--Where have you been?" asked Mr. Dundas abruptly, with that sudden
glance as suddenly withdrawn which tells of a half-formed suspicion
neither dwelt on nor clearly made out.

"To Paris," said Mr. Gryce demurely. "I went to see--"

"Oh! you went to see Notre Dame and La Madeleine of course," interrupted
Sebastian satirically.

"No," answered Mr. Gryce with a cherubic smile. "Strange to say, I had
business connected with that odd drama of _Le Sphinx_."

There was not much more talk after this, and Mr. Gryce soon took his
leave, desiring to be most respectfully remembered to Miss Dundas when
her father next wrote, and to say that he was keeping some pretty
specimens of moths for her on her return; both of which messages
Sebastian promised to convey at the earliest opportunity, improvising a
counter-remark of Leam's which he was sorry he could not remember
accurately, but it was something about butterflies and Mr. Gryce, though
what it was he could not positively say.

"Never mind: I will take the will for the deed," said the naturalist as
he smiled himself through the doorway.

And when he had gone Josephine declared that she did not care if he
never came again: there was something she did not like about him. Pushed
for a reason by her husband, who always assumed a logical and masculine
tone to her, she had not one to produce, but she stumbled as if by
chance on the word "sinister," which was just what Mr. Gryce was not. So
Sebastian made her go into the library for the dictionary and hunt up
the word through all its derivations, and thus proved to her
incontestably that she was ignorant of the English language and of human
nature in about equal proportions.

It was soon remarked at the post-office that no letter addressed to Miss
Dundas ever left North Aston, and that none came to Mr. Dundas or any
one else in the queer, cramped handwriting which experience had taught
Mrs. Pepper, post-mistress as well as the keeper of the village general
shop, carried the sentiments of Leam Dundas. This caused a curious
little buzz in the lower parts of the hive when Mrs. Pepper mentioned
it to her friends and gossips; but as no fire can live without fresh
fuel, and as nothing whatever was heard of Leam to stimulate curiosity
or set new tales afloat, by degrees her name dropped out of the daily
discussions of the place, and she was no longer interesting, because she
had become used up and talked out.

Only, Mr. Gryce wrote more frequently than had been his wont to Miss
Gryce at Windy Brow in Cumberland--conjectured to be his sister; and
only, Alick never ceased in his attempts to discover where his lost
queen was hidden, though these attempts had hitherto been hopelessly
baffled, partly because he had not an inch of foothold whence to make
his first spring, nor the thinnest clew to tell him which path to take.

And as a purchaser, the final cause of whose existence seemed to have
been the unquestioning possession of Ford House, came suddenly on the
scene and took the whole thing as it stood, Sebastian and his wife left
the place, taking Fina with them, and migrated to Paris to finish their
interrupted honeymoon. So now it was supposed that the last link
connecting Leam with North Aston was broken, and that she was indeed
blotted out and for ever.

True love is faithful, and Alick Corfield's love was true. Had all the
world forsaken her, he would have remained immovable in his old place
and attitude of devotion--the one fixed idea always possessing him to
find her in her retreat and restore her to self-respect and happiness by
his undying love. But how to find her? All sorts of mad projects passed
through his brain, but mad projects need some methods, and methods in
harmony with existing conditions, if they are to bring success; and
Alick's vague resolves to go out and look for her had no more meaning in
them than the random moves of a bad chessplayer.

Had Sir Lancelot lived at the present time, he would have gone to
Camelot by express, like meaner souls; and had Sir Galahad set out on
his quest in the latter half of the nineteenth century, he would have
either advertised in the newspapers or have employed a detective for
the first part of his undertaking. So, had Alick gone to Scotland Yard
and taken the police into his confidence, Leam would have been found in
less than a week; but as he shrank from bringing her into contact with
the force mainly associated with crime, he was left to his own devices
unassisted, and these devices ended only in constantly-recurring
disappointment, and consequent increase of sorrow.

His sorrow indeed was so great, and told on him so heavily, that every
one said he was going to die. He had been left thin and gaunt enough by
his illness, but distress of mind, coupled with weakness of body,
reduced him to a kind of sketchy likeness of Don Quixote--his pure soul
and honest nature the only beautiful things about him--while his
mother's heart was as nearly broken as his own.




CHAPTER XXXIX.

WINDY BROW.


While North Aston was employing its time in wondering, and Alick
Corfield was breaking his heart in sorrowing, Leam was doing battle with
her despair and distress at Windy Brow--doing the best she could to keep
her senses clear and to live through the penance which she had inflicted
on herself.

So far, Mrs. Pepper's conclusions, based on a badly-gummed envelope,
were right: Miss Gryce of Windy Brow was the sister of Mr. Gryce of
Lionnet, though even Mrs. Pepper did not know that Leam Dundas, under
the name of Leonora Darley, was living with her.

It is not the most obvious agents that are the most influential. The
greatest things in Nature are the work of the smallest creatures, and
our lives are manipulated far more by unseen influences, known only to
ourselves, than by those patent to the world. In all North Aston, Mr.
Gryce was the man who had apparently the least hold on the place and the
slightest connection with the people. He had come there by accident and
by choice lived in retirement, though also by choice he had not been
there a month before he knew all there was to be known of every
individual for miles round. The merest chances had made him personally
acquainted with Sebastian Dundas--those chances his tenancy of Lionnet
and the slight attack of fever which called forth his landlord's
sentiment and pity. Through the father he came to know the daughter,
when the prying curiosity of his nature, his liking for secret influence
and concealed action, together with the kind heart at bottom, and his
real affection for the girl whose confidence he had partly forced and
partly won, threw the whole secret into his hands and made him master of
the situation--the keeper of the seal set against the writings whom no
one suspected of complicity. This was exactly the kind of thing he
liked, and the kind of thing that suited him, human mole, born detective
and conspirator as he was.

When Leam met him in the wood on the evening of her confession to Edgar,
she met him with the deliberate intention of confessing her fearful
secret to him too, and of asking him to help her to escape, like the
friend which he had promised he would be. She knew that it was
impossible for her now to live at North Aston, and the sole desire she
had was to be blotted out, as she had been.

There was no excitement about her, no feverish exaltation that would
burn itself cold before twenty-four hours were over--only the dead
dreariness of heartbreak, the tenacious resolution of despair. She
neither wept nor wrung her hands, but quiet, pale, rigid, she told her
terrible story in the low and level tones in which a Greek Fate might
have spoken, as sad and as immutable. She had sinned, and now had made
such atonement as she could by confession--to her lover to save him from
pollution, to her father to cancel his obligations to her, to her friend
to be helped in her lifelong penance. This done, she had strengthened
herself to bear all that might come to her with that resignation of
remorse which demands no rights and inherits no joys. She was not one of
those emotional half-hearted creatures who resolve one day, break down
the next, and drift always. For good and evil alike she had the power to
hold where she had gripped and to maintain what she had undertaken; and
even her life at Windy Brow did not shake her.

And that life might well have shaken both a stronger mind and even a
more resolute will than hers.

A square stone house of eight rooms, set on a bleak fell-side where the
sun never shone, where no fruits ripened, no flowers bloomed and no
trees grew, save here and there a dwarfed and twisted thorn covered with
pale gray lichen and bent by the wind into painful deformity of
growth--a house which had no garden, only a strip of rank, coarse grass
before the windows, with a potato-patch and kail-yard to the side; where
was no adornment within or without, no beauty of color, no softness of
line, merely a rugged, lonesome, square stone tent set up on a
mountain-spur, as it would seem for the express reception of tortured
penitents not seeking to soften sorrow,--this was Windy Brow, the
patrimony of the Gryces, where Keziah, Emmanuel's eldest sister, lived
and had lived these sixty years and more.

The house stood alone. Monk Grange, the hamlet to which it
geographically belonged--a place as bleak and bare as itself, and which
seemed to have been flung against the fell-foot as if a brick-layer's
hodman had pitched the hovels at haphazard anyhow--was two good miles
away, and the market-town, to be got at only by crossing a dangerous
moor, was nine miles off--as far as Sherrington from North Aston.

The few poor dwellers in Monk Grange had little to do with the
market-town. They lived mostly on what they managed to raise and rear
among themselves--holding braxy mutton good enough for feast-days, and
oatmeal porridge all the year round the finest food for men and bairns
alike. As for the gudewives' household necessaries, they were got by the
carrier who passed once a fortnight on their road; and for the rest, if
aught was wanting more than that which they had, they did without, and,
according to the local saying, "want was t' master."

Society of a cultured kind there was none. The clergyman was an old man
little if it all superior to the flock to which he ministered. He was a
St. Bees man, the son of a handloom weaver, speaking broad Cumberland
and hopelessly "dished" by a hard word in the Bible. He was fond of his
glass, and was to be found every day of his life from three to nine at
the Blucher, smoking a clay pipe and drinking rum and milk. He had never
married, but he was by no means an ascetic in his morals, as more than
one buxom wench in his parish had proved; and in all respects he was an
anachronism, the like of which is rare now among the fells and dales,
though at one time it was the normal type for the clergy of the remoter
North Country districts.

This old sinner--Priest Wilson as he was called--and Miss Gryce of Windy
Brow represented the wealth and intellect of a place which was at the
back of everything, out of the highway of life and untouched by the
progress of history or science. And the one was not very much superior
to the other save in moral cleanliness; which, however, counts for
something.

If North Aston had said with a sniff that Mr. Gryce was not
thoroughbred, what would have been its verdict on Sister Keziah? He at
least had rubbed off some of the native fell-side mould by rolling about
foreign parts, gathering experience if not moss, and becoming rich in
knowledge if not in guineas; but Keziah, who had spent the last twenty
years of her life in close attendance on a paralytic old mother, had
stiffened as she stood, and the local mould encrusting her was very
thick. Nevertheless, she too had a good heart if a rough hand, and,
though eccentric almost to insanity, as one so often finds with people
living out of the line and influence of public opinion, yet was as sound
at the core as she was rude and odd in the husk.

She was a small woman, lean, wrinkled, and with a curious mixture of
primness and slovenliness in her dress. She wore a false front, which
she called a topknot, the small, crimped, deep-brown mohair curls of
which were bound about her forehead with a bit of black velvet ribbon,
while gray hairs straggled from underneath to make the patent sham more
transparent still; and over her topknot she wore a rusty black cap that
enclosed the keen monkeyish face like a ruff. Her every-day gown was one
of coarse brown camlet, any number of years old, darned and patched till
it was like a Joseph's coat; and the Rob Roy tartan shawl which she
pinned across her bosom hid a state of dilapidation which even she did
not care should be seen. She wore a black stuff apron full of fine tones
from fruit-stains and fire-scorchings; and she took snuff.

She was reputed to be worth a mort of money, and she had saved a goodly
sum. It would have been more had she had the courage to invest it; but
she had a profound distrust of all financial speculations--had not
Emmanuel lost his share by playing at knucklebones with it in the
City?--and she was not the fool to follow my leader into the mire. For
her part, she put her trust in teapots and stockings, with richer hoards
wrapped in rags and sewn up in the mattress, and here a few odd pounds
under the rice and there a few hidden in the coffee. That was her idea
of a banking account, and she held it to be the best there was.

"Don't lend your hat," she used to say, "and then you'll not have to go
bareheaded." And sometimes, talking of loans on securities, she would
take a pinch of snuff and say she "reckoned nowt of that man who locked
his own granary door and gave another man the key."

To all appearance, she lived only to scrape and hoard, moidering away
her loveless life on the futile energies and sordid aims of a miser's
wretched pleasures. But every now and then she had risen up out of the
slough into which she had gradually sunk, and had done some grand things
that marked her name with so many white stones. While she gloried in her
skill in filching from the pig what would serve the chickens, in making
Jenny go short to save to-day's baking of havre-bread, in skimping Tim's
bowl of porridge--his appetite being a burden on her estate which she
often declared would break her--she had more than once given a hundred
pounds at a blow to build a raft for a poor drowning wretch who must
otherwise have sunk. In fact, she was one of those people who are small
with the small things of life and great with the great--who will grudge
a daily dole of a few threshed-out stalks of straw, but who sometimes,
when rightly touched, will shower down with both hands full sheaves of
golden grain. That is, she had mean aims, a bad temper, no imagination,
but the capacity for pity and generosity on occasions.

Above all things, she hated to be put out of the way or intruded on.
When her brother Emmanuel came down on her without a word of warning,
bringing a girl with eyes that, as she said, made her feel foolish to
look at, and a manner part scared, part stony, and wholly unconformable,
telling her to keep this precious-bit madam like a bale of goods till
called for, and to do the best with it she could, she was justified, she
said, in splurging against his thoughtlessness and want of
consideration, taking a body like that all of a heap, without With your
leave or By your leave, or giving one a chance of saying Yes I will, or
No I won't.

But though she splurged she gave way; and after she had fumed and
fussed, heckled the maid and harried the man, said she didn't see as how
she could, and she didn't think as how she would, sworn there was no
bedding fit to use, and that she had no place for the things--apples and
onions chiefly--that were in the spare room if she gave it up for the
young lass's use, she seemed to quiet down, and going over to Leam,
standing mutely by the black-boarded fireplace, put on her spectacles,
peered up into her face, and said in shrill tones, rasping as a saw,
though she meant to be kind, "Ah, well! I suppose it must be; so go your
ways up stairs with Jenny, bairn, and make yourself at home. It's little
I have for a fine young miss like you to play with, but what I have
you're welcome to; so make no bones about it: d'ye hear?"

"But I am in your way," said Leam, not moving. "You do not want me?"

Miss Gryce laughed. "Want ye?" she shouted. "Want ye, do you say? Nay,
nay, honey, it was no wanting of you or your marras that would ever have
given me a headache, I'll ensure ye. But now that you are here you can
bide as long as you've a mind; and you're welcome kindly. And Emmanuel
there knows that my word is as good as my bond, and what I say I mean."

"Am I to stay?" asked Leam, turning to Mr. Gryce with a certain forced
humility which showed how much it cost her to submit.

"Yes," he answered, less cheerfully and more authoritatively than was
his manner at North Aston, speaking without a lisp and with a full
Cumberland accent. "It is the best thing I can do for you--all I have to
offer."

To which Leam bent her sad head with pathetic patience--pathetic indeed
to those who knew the proud spirit that it reported broken and humbled
for ever. Following the red-armed, touzled, ragged maid to the dingy
cabin that was to be her room, she left her friend to explain to his
sister, so far as he chose and could, the necessity under which he found
himself of leaving his adopted daughter, Leonora Darley, in her care for
a week or two, until such time as he should return and claim her.

"Your adopted daughter? God bless my soul, man! but you are the daftest
donnet I ever saw on two legs!" cried Keziah, snatching up the coarse
gray knitting which was the sole unanchored circumstance in the room and
casting off her heel viciously. "What call had you to adopt a
daughter--you with never a wife to mother her nor a house of your own to
take her to? For I reckon nowt of your furnished houses here and your
beggarly apartments there, as you know. And now you can do nothing
better than bring her here to fash the life out of me before the week's
over! But that's always the way with you men. You talk precious big, but
it's mighty little you put your hands to; and when you hack out yokes
for which you get a deal of praise, you take care not to bear them on
your own backs. It's us women who have to do that."

"One would have supposed you would have liked a pretty young thing like
that in the house. You are lonesome enough here, and it makes a little
life," said Emmanuel quietly.

He knew his sister Keziah, and that she must have her head when the
talking fit was on her.

"'A pretty young thing like that!'" she repeated scornfully. "Lord love
you, born cuddy as you are! What's her good looks to me, I wonder, but a
pound spent on a looking-glass, and Jenny taken off her work to make
cakes and butter-sops for her dainty teeth? We'll have all the men-folk
too havering round to see which of 'em may have the honor of ruining
himself for my fine lady. And I'll not have it, I tell ye. I'll not have
my house turned into a fair, with madam there as the show. Life! what do
I want with 'life' about me, or you either, Emmanuel? I've got my right
foot in the grave, and I reckon yours is not far off; and what we've
both got to do now is to see that we make a good ending for our souls."

"At all events, you don't refuse to take her for a week or two?" asked
Emmanuel innocently.

"Did I say I refused? Did I send her up stairs as the nighest road to
the street-door?" retorted his sister with disdain. "Did I not tell you,
as plain as tongue could speak, that she is welcome to her bit and sup,
and I'll pass the time away for her in the best way I can, though bad is
the best, I reckon?"

"Well, well, you are a good body," said her brother.

"Ay," she answered, "I am good enough when I jump your way. But tell me,
Emmanuel," changing from the disdain of the superior creature holding
forth on high matters to the inferior to the familiar gossip of the
natural woman, "what's to do with her? It's as plain as a pike-staff
that something is troubling her, and maybe it will be some of your love
nonsense? for it's mainly that as fashes the lasses. Good Lord! I'm
thankful I was never hindered that way."

"Yes," said Mr. Gryce, "she has had what you women call a
disappointment; and," speaking with unusual energy, "the man was a fool
and a coward, and she has had a lucky escape."

"Say ye? If so, then there is no call for her to carry on," said Keziah
philosophically. "But the poor bairn's looking wantle enough now, though
I warrant me the fell-side air will brisk her up in no time."

"I hope it will," said her brother.

"What does she eat, now? You see, now I've got the lass on my hands, I
cannot hunger her," said Keziah. "Not that I can give her dainties and
messes," she added hastily, the miser's cloak suddenly covering the
woman's heart. "She'll have to take what we get, and be thankful for her
meat. Still, it's as well to know what a body's been accustomed to when
they come like this, all of a heap."

"Don't fash yourself about her," answered Emmanuel. "Do what you
can--that you will, I know--but leave her to herself: that's the way for
her. She's an odd little body, and the least said the soonest mended
with Leam."

"With who, d'ye say?" asked Keziah sharply.

"Lean--Leonora," said Emmanuel cherubically.

"Well, I wouldn't call a daughter of mine after old Pharaoh's kine,"
snapped Keziah with supreme scorn; and at that moment Leam came into the
room, and Keziah bustled out of it to tig after Jenny and ding at Tim,
as these two faithful servitors were wont to express the way of their
mistress toward them.

"My dear, I did not know that things were so miserable here for you, but
you must just bide here till the scent grows cold, and then I'll come
for you and put you where you'll be better off," said Mr. Gryce kindly
when he was alone with Leam.

"This will do," said Leam, suppressing a shudder as she looked round
the little room, where what had originally been a rhubarb-colored
paper--chosen because it was a good wearing color--was patched here and
there with scraps of newspapers or bits of other patterned papers; where
the huge family Bible and a few musty and torn odd volumes of the
_Spectator_ and the _Tatler_ comprised the sole library; and where the
only ornaments on the chimneypiece were three or four bits of lead ore
from the Roughton Gill mines, above Caldbeck.

"You have been used to something far different," said Emmanuel,
compassionately.

"My past is over," she answered in a low voice.

"But you'll come to a better future," he cried, his mild blue eyes
watery and red.

"Shall I? When I die?" was her reply as she passed her hand wearily over
her forehead, and wished--ah, how ardently!--that the question might
answer itself now at once.

But the young live against their will, and Leam, though bruised and
broken, had still the grand vitality of youth to support her. Of the
stuff of which in a good cause martyrs, in a bad criminals, are made,
she accepted her position at Windy Brow with the very heroism of
resignation. She never complained, though every circumstance, every
condition, was simply torture; and so soon as she saw what she was
expected to do, she did it without remonstrance or reluctance. Her life
there was like a lesson in a foreign language which she had undertaken
to learn by heart, and she gave herself to her task loyally. But it was
suffering beyond even what Emmanuel Gryce supposed or Keziah ever
dreamed of. She, with the sun of the South in her veins, her dreams of
pomegranates and orange-groves, of music and color and bright blue
skies, of women as beautiful as mamma, of that one man--not of the
South, but fit to have been the godlike son of Spain--suddenly
translated from soft and leafy North Aston to a bleak fell-side in the
most desolate corner of Cumberland--where for lush hedges were cold,
grim gray stone walls, and the sole flowers to be seen gorse which she
could not gather, and heather which had no perfume--to a house set so
far under the shadow that it saw the sun only for three months in the
year, and where her sole companion was old Keziah Gryce, ill-favored in
person, rough of mood if true of soul, or creatures even worse than
herself;--she, with that tenacious loyalty, that pride and concentrated
passion, that dry reserve and want of general benevolence characteristic
of her, to be suddenly cast among uncouth strangers whose ways she must
adopt, and who were physically loathsome to her; dead to the only man
she loved, his love for her killed by her own hand, herself by her own
confession accursed; and to bear it all in silent patience,--was it not
heroic? Had she been more plastic than she was, the effort would not
have been so great. Being what she was, it was grand; and made as it was
for penitence, it had in it the essential spirit of saintliness. For
saintliness comes in small things as well as great, and George Herbert's
swept room is a true image. There was saintliness in the docility with
which she rose at six and went to bed at nine; saintliness in the quiet
asceticism with which she ate porridge for breakfast and porridge for
supper--at the first honestly believing it either a joke or an insult,
and that they had given her pigs' food to try her temper; saintliness in
the silence with which she accepted her dinners, maybe a piece of fried
bacon and potatoes, or a huge mess of apple-pudding on washing-days, or
a plate of poached eggs cooked in a pan not over clean; saintliness in
the enforced attention which she gave to Keziah's rambling stories of
her pigs and her chickens, her mother's ailments, Jenny's shortcomings
in the matter of sweepings and savings, Tim's wastefulness in the garden
over the kailrunts, and the hardships of life on a lone woman left with
only a huzzy to look after her; saintliness in the repression of that
proud, fastidious self to which Keziah's familiarity and snuff, Jenny's
familiarity and disorder, the smell of the peat--which was the only fuel
they burnt--reeking through the house, and the utter ugliness and
barren discomfort of everything about, were hourly miseries which she
would once have repudiated with her most cutting scorn; saintliness in
the repression of that self indeed at all four corners, and the resolute
submission to her burden because it was her fitting punishment.

So the sad days wore on, and the fell-side air had not yet brisked up
Emmanuel's adopted daughter as his sister prophesied. Indeed, she seemed
slighter and paler than ever, and if possible more submissive to her lot
and more taciturn. And as her intense quietude of bearing suited Miss
Gryce, who could not bear to be fussed, and time proved her douce and
not fashious, she became quite a favorite with her rough-grained
hostess, who wondered more and more where Emmanuel had picked her up,
and whose bairn she really was.

Her only pleasure was in wandering over the fells, whence she could see
the tops of the Derwentwater mountains, and from some points a glimpse
of blue Bassanthwaite flowing out into the open; where mountain-tarns,
lying like silver plates in the purple distance, were her magic shows,
seen only in certain lights, and more often lost than found; whence she
could look over the broad Carlisle plain and dream of that day on the
North Aston moor when she first met Edgar Harrowby; and whence the
glittering strip of the Solway against the horizon made her yearn to be
in one of the ships which she could dimly discern passing up and down,
so that she might leave England for ever and lay down the burden of her
life and her sorrow in mamma's dear land.

So the hours passed, dreary as Mariana's, and hopeless as those wherein
we stand round the grave and know that the end of all things has come.
And while North Aston wondered, and Alick mourned, and Edgar repented of
his past folly with his handsome head in Adelaide's lap, Leam Dundas
moved slowly through the shadow to the light, and from her chastisement
gathered that sweet grace of patience which redeemed her soul and raised
her from sin to sanctity.




CHAPTER XL.

LOST AND NOW FOUND.


In bringing up Alick tied tight to her apron-strings, feeding him on
moral pap, putting his mind into petticoats, and seeking to make him
more of a woman than a man, Mrs. Corfield had defeated her design and
destroyed her own influence. During his early growth the boy had yielded
to her without revolt, because he was more modest than
self-assertive--had no solid point of resistance and no definite purpose
for which to resist; but after his college career he developed on an
independent line, and his soul escaped altogether from his mother's
hold. Had she let him ripen into manhood in the freedom of natural
development, she would have been his chosen friend and confidante to the
end: having invaded the most secret chambers of his mind, and sought to
mould every thought according to the pattern which she held best, when
the reaction set in the pendulum swung back in proportion to its first
beat; and as a protest against his former thraldom he now made her a
stranger to his inner life and shut her out inexorably from the holy
place of his sorrow.

The mother felt her son's mind slipping from her, but what could she do?
Who can set time backward or reanimate the dead? Day by day found him
more silent and more suffering, the poor little woman nearly as
miserable as himself. But the name of Leam, standing as the spectre
between them, was never mentioned after Mrs. Corfield's first outburst
of indignation at her flight--indignation not because she was really
angry with Leam, but because Alick was unhappy.

After Alick's stern rejoinder, "Mother, the next time you speak ill of
Leam Dundas I will leave your house for ever," the subject dropped by
mutual consent, but it was none the less a living barrier between them
because raised and maintained in silence.

"Oh, these girls! these wicked girls!" Mrs. Corfield had said with a
mother's irrational anger when speaking of the circumstance to her
husband. "We bring up our boys only for them to take from us. As soon
as they begin to be some kind of comfort and to repay the anxiety of
their early days, then a wretched little huzzy steps in and makes one's
life in vain."

"Just so, my dear," said Dr. Corfield quietly. "These were the identical
words which my mother said to me when I told her I was going to marry
you."

"Your mother never liked me, and I did like Leam," said Mrs. Corfield
tartly.

"As Leam Dundas, maybe; but as Leam the wife of your son, I doubt it."

"If Alick had liked it--" said Mrs. Corfield, half in tears.

"You would have been jealous," returned her husband. "No: all girls are
only daughters of Heth to the mothers of Jacobs, and I never knew one
whom a mother thought good enough for her boy."

"You need not discredit your own flesh and blood for a stranger," cried
Mrs. Corfield crossly; and the mute man with an aggravating smile
suddenly seemed to repent of his unusual loquacity, and gradually
subsided into himself and his calculations, from which he was so rarely
aroused.

Alick, ceasing to make a confidante of his mother, began to make a
friend of Mr. Gryce. Perhaps it ought rather to be said that Mr. Gryce
began to make a friend of him. The old philosopher, with that corkscrew
mind of his, knew well enough what was amiss with the poor lank-visaged
curate. Being of the order of the benevolent busybodies fond of playing
Providence, how mole-like soever his method, he had marked out a little
plan of his own by which he thought he could make all the crooked roads
run straight and discord flow into harmony. But he too fell into the
mistake common to busybodies, benevolent and otherwise--treating souls
as if they were machines to be wound up and kept going by the clockwork
of an extraneous will and neatly manipulated by well-arranged
circumstance.

One day he joined Alick in his walk to an outlying cottage of the
parish, where the husband was sick and the wife and children short of
food, and the Church sent its prayer-book and ministers as the best
substitute it knew for a wholesome dwelling and sufficient wages.
Theology was not much in the way of an old heathen who reduced all
religions save Mohammedanism to the transmuted presentation of the
archaic solar myth, and who thought Buddhism far ahead of every other
creed; but he liked the man Alick, if the parson bored him, and he was
caressing a plan which he had in his pocket.

"You find your life here satisfying, I suppose?" he began, his blue eyes
looking into the wayside banks for creatures.

"Is any life?" answered Alick, his eyes turned to the vague distance.

"Not fully: the spirit of progress, working by discontent, forbids the
social stagnation of rest and thankfulness; but we can come to something
that suffices for our daily wants if it does not satisfy all our
longings. Work in harmony with our nature, and doing good here and there
when we can, both these help us on. But the work must be harmonious and
the good we do manifest."

"So far as that goes, Church-work is pleasant to me--all, indeed, I care
for or am fit for; but North Aston is stony ground," said Alick.

"Can you wonder? When the husbandman-in-chief is such a man as Mr.
Birkett, you must make your account with stones and weeds. The spiritual
cannot flourish under the hand of the unspiritual; and, considering the
pastor, the flock is far from bad."

"That may be, but we do not like to live only in comparatives," said
Alick. "I confess I should be happier in a cure where I was more of one
mind with my rector than I am here, and not decried or ridiculed on
account of every scheme for good that I might propose. Parish-work here
is shamefully neglected, but Mr. Birkett will not let me do anything to
mend it."

"Ah!" said Mr. Gryce, catching a luckless curculio by the way, "that is
bad. A more harmonious one would certainly be, as you say, far more
agreeable. Or a little parish of your own--a parish, however small,
which would be all your own, and you not under the control of any one
below your diocesan? How would that do? That would be my affair if I
were in the Church."

Alick's face lightened. "Yes," he said, "that is my dream--at least one
of them. I would not care how small the place might be, if I had supreme
control and might work unhindered in my own way."

"It will come," said Mr. Gryce cheerily. "All things come in time to him
who knows how to wait."

"Ah, if I could believe that!" sighed Alick, thinking of Leam.

"Take my word for it," returned Mr. Gryce. "It will do you no harm to
have a dash of rose-color in your rather sombre life; and Hope, if it
tells flattering tales, does not always tell untrue ones."

"I fear my hope has flattered me untruly," said Alick, his faithful
heart still on Leam.

Mr. Gryce captured a caterpillar wandering across the road. "Conduct is
fate," he said. "If this poor fellow had not been troubled with a fit of
restlessness, but had been content to lie safely hidden among the
grass-roots where he was born, he would not have been caught. Yes,
conduct is fate for a captive caterpillar as well as for man."

"And yet who can foresee?" said Alick. "We all walk in the dark
blindfold."

"As you say, who can foresee? That makes perhaps the hardship of it, but
it does not alter the fact. Blindly walking or with our eyes wide open,
our steps determine our destiny, and our goal is reached by our own
endeavors. We ourselves are the artificers of our lives, and mould them
according to our own pattern."

"But that part of our lives which is under the influence of another? How
can we manipulate that?" said Alick. "Love and loss are twin powers
which create or crush without our co-operation."

"I only know one irreparable manner of loss--that by death," said Mr.
Gryce steadfastly. "For all others while there is life there is hope,
and I hold nothing, beyond the power of the will to remedy."

"I wish I could believe that," Alick sighed again; and again Mr. Gryce
said cheerily, "Then take that too on trust, and believe me if you do
not believe in your own inborn elasticity, your own power of doing and
undoing."

"There are some things which can never come right when they have once
gone wrong," said Alick.

"You think so? I know very few," his companion answered in the hearty,
inspiriting manner which he had used all through the interview, talking
with a broader accent and lisping less than usual, looking altogether
more manly and less cherubic than his wont. "I am a believer myself in
the power of the will and holding on." After a pause he added suddenly,
"You would be really glad of a small living, no matter where situated,
nor how desolate and unimportant, where you would be sole master?"

"Yes," said Alick. "If I could win over one soul to the higher life, I
should count myself repaid for all my exertions. We must all have our
small beginnings."

"I am an odd old fellow, as you know, Mr. Corfield," laughed Emmanuel
Gryce. "Give me your hand: I can sometimes see a good deal of the future
in the hand."

Alick blushed and looked awkward, but he gave his bony, ill-shaped hand
all the same.

After a little while, during which Mr. Gryce had bent this finger this
way and that finger another way, had counted the lines made by the
bended wrist, and had talked half to himself of the line of Jupiter and
the line of Saturn, the line of life and that of Venus, he said quietly,
"You will have your wish, and soon. I see a most important change of
residence at about this time, which in conjunction with this," pointing
to a small cross at the root of the fourth finger, "will be certainly to
your advantage."

"How strange!" said Alick. "One scarcely knows whether to laugh at it
all as old wives' fables or to believe in the mysterious forewarnings of
fate, the foremarkings of the future."

"There are more things in heaven and earth--" said Mr. Gryce. "And we
know so little we may well believe a trifle more."

The fact was, all this was founded on these circumstances: He had at
this moment a letter in his pocket from his sister Keziah telling him
that old Priest Wilson had been found dead in his bed last night; the
bishop's chaplain was a friend of his, both having been at the same
station in India; and the perpetual curacy of Monk Grange was one which,
if offices went according to their ratio of unpleasantness, a man should
have been paid a large income to take. Hence there was no chance of a
rush for the preferment, and the bishop would be grateful for any
intimation of a willing martyr. Through all of which chinks whereby to
discover the future Mr. Gryce founded his prophecy; and through them,
too, it came about that he proved a true prophet. In three days' time
from this the post brought a letter to Alick Corfield from the bishop
offering him the perpetual curacy of Monk Grange, income seventy pounds
a year and a house.

Before speaking even to his mother, Alick rushed off with this letter to
Mr. Gryce. The old leaven of superstition which works more or less in
all of us--even those few who think proof a desirable basis for belief,
and who require an examination conducted on scientific principles before
they accept supernaturalism as "only another law coming in to modify
those already known"--that superstition which belongs to most men, and
to Alick with the rest, made this letter a matter of tremendous
excitement to him. He saw in it the hand of God and the finger of Fate.
It was impossible that Mr. Gryce, living at North Aston, should know
anything of a small country incumbency in the North. It was all that
study made of his poor parched and knuckly hand. And what had been seen
there was manifestly the thing ruled for him by Providence and destiny.

"How could you possibly tell?" he cried, looking at his own hand as if
he could read it as his clever friend had done.

"That is my secret," said Emmanuel, smiling at the credulity on which he
traded. Then, thinking a flutter outward of the corners of his cards the
best policy in the circumstances about them at the moment, he added,
"And when you get there you will understand more than you do now. For
you will go?"

"Surely," said Alick: "it would be unfaithful in me to refuse."

"But see if you cannot make arrangements to take the place on trial for
a few months. I know very little of your ecclesiastical law, but grant
even that it is as devoid of common sense as I should suppose--seeing
who are the men who make, administer and obey it--still, I should think
that a temporary incumbency might be arranged."

"I should think so, and I will take your advice," said Alick, over whom
Emmanuel Gryce was fast establishing the power which belongs to the
stronger over the weaker, to the more astute over the more dense.

"You will find an adopted daughter of mine in the neighborhood," then
said Mr. Gryce with the most amiable indifference. "She lives with my
sister at our old home on the fell-side: Windy Brow the place is called.
You must tell me how she looks and what you think of her altogether when
you write to me, as I suppose you will do, or when you come home, if you
elect not to take the cure even on trial."

"I am not much in the way of criticising young ladies," said Alick
sadly.

"She is rather a remarkable girl, all things considered," returned Mr.
Gryce quietly. "Her name is Leonora Darley. You will remember--Leonora
Darley. Ask for her when you go up to Windy Brow: Leonora Darley," for
the third time.

"All right: Miss Leonora Darley," repeated Alick, suspecting nothing;
and again Mr. Gryce smiled as he dug his fingers into the earth of a
chrysalis-box. How pleasant it was to pull the strings and see his
puppets dance!

Of course, Mr. Birkett's consent was a necessary preliminary to Alick's
departure, but there was no difficulty about it. The military rector was
tired to death, so he used to say, of his zealous young aide-de-camp,
and hailed the prospect of getting rid of him handsomely with a frank
pleasure not flattering to poor Alick's self-love. "Certainly, my dear
boy, certainly," he said. "It will be better for you to have a place of
your own, where you can carry out your new ideas. You see I am an old
man now, and have learnt the value of letting well alone. You are in all
the fever-time of zeal, and believe that vice and ignorance are like the
walls of Jericho, to fall down when you blow your trump. I do not. But
on the whole, it is as well that you should learn the realities of life
for yourself, and carry your energies where they may be useful."

"Then you do not mind?" asked Alick boyishly.

The rector gave a loud clear laugh. "Mind! a thousand times no," he
said, rubbing his plump white hands. "I can manage well enough alone,
and if I cannot there are dozens of young eligibles ready to jump at the
place. Mind! no. Go in Heaven's name, and may you be blessed in your
undertaking!"

The last words came in as grace-lines, and with them Alick felt himself
dismissed.

If the rector had been facile to deal with, Mrs. Corfield was not. When
she heard of the proposed arrangement, and that she was to lose her boy
for the second time out of her daily life, and more permanently than
before, her grief was as intense as if she had been told of his
approaching death. She wept bitterly, and even bent herself to entreaty;
but Alick, to whom North Aston had become a dungeon of pain since Leam
went, held pertinaciously to his plan--not without sorrow, but surely
without yielding. He was fascinated by the idea of a cure where he might
be sole master, not checked by rectorial ridicule when he wished to
establish night schools or clothing clubs, penny savings banks, or any
other of the schemes in vogue for the good of the poor; thinking too,
not unwisely, that the best heal-all for his sorrow was to be found in
change of scene and more arduous work together. Also, he thought that if
his vague tentative advertisements in the papers, which he dared not
make too evident, had as yet brought nothing, some more satisfactory
way of discovering Leam's hiding-place might shape itself when he was
alone, freer to act as he thought best. On all of which accounts he
resisted his mother's grief, and his own at seeing her grieve, and
decided on going down to Monk Grange the next day.

Had not Dr. Corfield been ailing at this time, the mother would have
accompanied her son. The possibility of damp sheets weighed heavy on her
mind; and landladies who filch from the tea-caddy, with landladies'
girls, pert and familiar, preparing insidious gruel and seductive cups
of coffee, were the lions which her imagination conjured up as prowling
for her Alick through the fastnesses of Monk Grange. Circumstances,
however, were stronger than her desire; and, happily for Alick, she was
perforce obliged to remain at home while her darling went out from the
paternal nest to shake those limp wings of his, and bear himself up
unassisted in a new atmosphere in the best way he could.

It was on the cold and rainy evening of a cold and rainy summer's day
that Alick arrived at Monk Grange--an evening without a sunset or a
moon, stars or a landscape; painful, mournful, as those who dwell in the
North Country know only too well as the tears on its face of beauty. He
had driven in a crazy old gig from Wigton, and the nine miles which lay
between that not too brilliant town and the desolate fell-side hamlet
which he had been so fain to make his own spiritual domain had not been
such as disposed him to a cheerful view of things. The rain had fallen
in a steady, pitiless downpour, which seemed to soak through every outer
covering and to penetrate the very flesh and marrow of the tired
traveler as it pattered noisily on the umbrella and streamed over the
leather apron; and the splash of the horse's hoofs through the liquid
mud and broad tracts of standing water was as dreary as the "splash,
splash" of Bürger's ballad. And when all this was over, and they drew up
at the Blucher, with its handful of desolate gray hovels round it, the
heart of the man sank at the gloomy surroundings into the midst of which
he had flung himself. But the zeal of the churchman was as good a tonic
for him as the best common sense, and he waited until to-morrow and
broad daylight before he allowed himself to even acknowledge an
impression. The warm fireside at the Blucher cheered him too, and his
supper of eggs and bacon and fresh crisp havre-bread satisfied such of
his physical cravings as, unsatisfied, make a man's spiritual
perceptions very gaunt.

He went to bed, slept, and the next day woke up to a glory of sun and
sky, a brilliancy of coloring, a photographic sharpness and clearness of
form, a suggestion of beauty beyond that which was seen, which
transformed the place as if an angel had passed through it in the night.
As he tramped about the sordid hamlet he forgot the rude uncouthness of
men and place for a kind of ecstasy at the loveliness about him. Every
jutting rock of granite shone in the sun like polished jasper, and the
numberless little rills trickling down the fell-sides were as threads of
silver, now concealed in the gold of the gorse, and now whitening the
purple of the heather. The air was full of blithesome sounds. Overhead
the sky-larks sang in jocund rivalry, mounting higher and higher as if
they would have beaten their wings against the sun: the bees made the
heather and the thyme musical as they flew from flower to flower, and
the tinkling of the running rills was like the symphony to a changeful
theme. It was in real truth a transformation, and the new-comer into the
fitful, seductive, disappointing North felt all its beauty, all its
meaning, and gave himself up to his delight as if such a day as
yesterday had never been.

After he had done what he wished to do in the village, he went up the
fell-side road to Windy Brow, and, obeying his instructions, asked when
he got there "if Miss Leonora Darley was at home."

"Na, she bain't," said Jenny, eying poor innocent Alick as a colley
might eye a wolf sniffing about the fold. "T' auld mistress is."

"Say Mr. Corfield, please," said Alick; and Jenny, telling him to "gang
intilt parlor," scuffled off to Keziah, pottering over some pickled red
cabbage, which made the house smell like a vinegar-cask.

"I've heard tell of you," said Miss Gryce as she came in wiping her
hands on a serviceable and by no means luxurious cloth: "Emmanuel wrote
me a letter about you. You're kindly welcome to Monk Grange, but you're
only a haverel to look at. Take a seat, and tell me--how's Emmanuel, my
brother?"

"He was well when I saw him the day before yesterday: at least he said
nothing to the contrary," answered Alick with his conscientious
literalness.

"I like that," said Keziah, also eying him, but as a colley might have
eyed a strange sheep, not a wolf. "A random rory would have made no
difference between now and two days back, and believing and being. You
cannot be over-particular in the truth, I take it."

Alick blushed, shifted his place and looked uneasy. And again, as so
often before, it came across him: had he done right, judged by the
highest law, to conceal the truth as he knew it about Leam?

"Hoot, man! there's no call for you to sit on pins and needles in that
fashion," said Keziah. "It's a daft body that cannot hear a word of
praise without turning as red as a turkey-cock and fidging like a
parched pea on a drum-head. I've not turned much of you over yet, and
maybe I'll come to what I'll have no mind to praise; so keep your fidges
till you are touched up with the other end of the stick. And so you are
to be our new priest, are you?"

"I am going to offer myself for a time," said Alick.

"For a time? That's a thing as has two sides to it. If you are not to
our minds, that's its good side: if you are, and we are not to yours,
that's its bad. I doubt if our folk will care to be played Jumping Joan
with in that fashion."

"I will be guided by the will of the Lord," said Alick reverently.

"Humph! I like the words better nor the chances in them," returned
Keziah, taking a pinch of snuff. "But maybe things'll work round as one
would have them; and whether you stay or you do not, the Lord's will be
done, amen! and His grace follow you, young man!"

"Thank you," said Alick with emotion, getting up and shaking the
pickle-stained and snuff-discolored hand.

"I have a message for Miss Leonora Darley," he then said after a pause.
"Mr. Gryce told me I was to be sure and tell him how she was looking."

"Eh, poor bairn! she is not very first-rate," the old woman answered
tenderly. At least it was tenderness in her: in another person her voice
and manner might have been taken for crabbedness and impatience. "She's
up by there, on the fell somewhere. She a'most lives on the fell-side,
but it don't make her look as brisk as I should like. Have you seen the
view from our brow-top? It is a real bonny one; and you'll maybe find
Leonora not far off. I don't think she wanders far."

"I should like to see it," said Alick. "The country altogether looks
splendid to-day."

"Ay, it's a bonny day enough if it would but last. Come your ways with
me and I'll set you out by the back door. You can come in again the same
road if you've a mind."

On which she bustled up, and Alick, escorted by her, went through the
house and on to the fell-side.

It was, if possible, grander now than it had been in the earlier part of
the day. The hot sun had cleared away the lingering mist, and the
cloudless sky was like one large perfect opal, while the earth beneath
shone and glistened as if it were a jewel set with various-colored gems.
There was not a mean or sordid thing about. Touched by the splendid
alchemy of the sun, the smallest circumstance was noble, the poorest
color glorious. Alick stood on the fell-brow entranced: then turning, he
saw slowly coming across the pathless green a young slight figure
dressed in gray. He looked as it came near, and his heart beat with a
force that took all power from him. It was absurd, he knew, but there
was such a strange look of Leam about that girl! He stood and watched
her coming along with that slow, graceful, undulating step which was
Leam's birthright. Was he mad? Was he dreaming? What was this mocking
trick of eyesight that was perplexing him? Surely it was madness; and
yet--no, it could be no one else. Supreme, beloved, who else could
personate her so as to cheat him?

She came on, her eyes always fixed on the distance, seeing nothing of
Alick standing dark against the sky. She came nearer, nearer, till he
saw the glory of her eyes, the curve of her lip, and could count the
curling tresses on her brow. Then he came down from the height and
strode across the space between them.

She lifted up her eyes and saw him. For an instant the sadness cleared
out of them as the mists had cleared from the sky: her pathetic mouth
broke into a smile, and she held out both her hands. "Alick, dear Alick!
my good Alick!" she cried in a voice of exquisite tenderness.

"My queen!" he said kneeling, his honest upturned face wet with tears.
"Lost and now found!"

[TO BE CONTINUED.]




THE ITALIAN MEDIÆVAL WOOD-SCULPTORS.

More or less during the whole of this century, and ever more during the
recent years of it, the love of art, especially in what have been called
the "industrial" manifestations of it, has been becoming a passion in
Germany and in France, as well as in England and America. Museums for
the collection and preservation of the works produced by the artists of
those centuries which were the palmy days of art have been established
in all these countries, and private amateurs have vied with them in
enriching their respective countries with specimens of all the many
kinds of art-industry which remain to us from those times when religion
encouraged and surrounded itself with the beautiful and the cultivation
of the beautiful was a religion. And it is mainly--indeed, almost
entirely--to Italy that the lovers and admirers of mediæval art come in
search of those remains of it which, it is hoped, will be (or rather are
being) the means of producing a second art _renaissance_. The quantity
of objects, more or less genuinely representing the mediæval art in all
its many branches, which has been carried out of Italy within the last
quarter of a century is something perfectly astounding, and far exceeds
what any one would believe who has not remained in Italy long enough to
observe the process. A considerable portion, no doubt, of the articles
thus carried home with them by the lovers of art has consisted of modern
imitations of ancient workmanship, but the quantity of genuine mediæval
articles--pottery in its various kinds, furniture, carving in wood, in
marble, in stone and in ivory, lace, bronzes, embroidery, metal-work,
brocaded stuffs, etc.--has been so enormous as to reveal in a very
striking manner the extraordinary wealth of the country in the days when
it was the mistress of Europe in civilization, and the all-pervading
love of the beautiful which caused so very large a portion of that
wealth to be expended for the gratification of a refined taste.

Before proceeding to the more special subject of this article--certain
interesting and recently-discovered notices of some of the most famous
of the old carvers in wood--it may be well to say a word or two on the
subject of the commerce in imitations of the mediæval works so
extensively carried on in Italy. Of course, a trade based on deception
is in every way to be condemned and regretted. It is not only immoral,
but it generates demoralization. But it is to be observed that in very
many cases--especially in those branches where art-industry approaches
the most nearly to art proper--the artist or artisan who produced the
works in question has neither co-operated with the fraud we are speaking
of, nor has worked with any view to the perpetration of such by others.
In the next place, it is to be noted that the mortification and
humiliation which many purchasers are conscious of when it is brought
home to them that they have been taken in, and have purchased as old
that which is in truth of recent production, may well be spared to them.
I do not mean, of course, as regards the money they may have been
cheated of, but as regards the slight put upon their own
connoisseurship. The art of imitating the old works in question has been
brought to such a pitch of perfection that it needs a very special
education of the eye and large practice to detect the imposture. A
circumstance occurred a few years ago at Florence which curiously
illustrates both the facts I have mentioned--the frequent innocence of
the producer of the imitation and the extreme difficulty of detecting
the modern origin of the work. The facts are very little known, because
it was the interest of many persons to misrepresent and conceal them.
They ought, nevertheless, to be known, and I do not see any good reason
why I should not tell them here.

A young man at Florence of the name of Bastianini--it must be at least
ten years ago now, or perhaps more--of very humble origin had shown a
remarkable talent for modeling busts in terra-cotta. Having formed his
taste for himself, not by means of any academical teaching, but by
imbuing his mind with the examples of mediæval art which meet the eye on
all sides in his native city, his works assumed quite naturally the
manner and style of the artists who (in more or less direct line) were
his ancestors. One day it happened to him to see a man--he was a common
workman in the tobacco manufactory--whose head struck him as specially
marked by the old Florentine mediæval type and as a remarkably good
subject for a characteristic bust. From this man he made a terra-cotta
bust which few could have pronounced to be other than a _cinque-cento_
work, and a very fine one. Bastianini, then quite unknown and much in
need of wherewithal to live, sold this bust as the work of his hands to
a speculative dealer for, if I remember rightly, five hundred francs.
The man who bought it carried it to a dealer in antiquities--a very
well-known man in Florence whose name I could give were it of any
interest to do so--and proposed to sell it to him for a large sum.
Eventually, a bargain was struck on this basis: The dealer, with perfect
knowledge of the origin and authorship of the work, was to pay one
thousand francs for the bust, and to pay the seller another thousand if
and whenever he, the dealer, should succeed in reselling it for more
than a certain price named. Thereupon, in accordance with the usual
practice in such cases, the bust disappeared from sight. It was stored
in the secret repositories of the _antiquario_ till the circumstances
attending its creation should be a little forgotten, and dust and dirt
should have corrected the brand-new rawness of its surface, ready to be
produced with much mystery as a recent _trouvaille_ when a likely
purchaser should loom over the Apennine which encircles "gentile
Firenze." In due time, one of the largest and brightest of those comets
whose return is so accurately calculated and eagerly expected by the
Florentine dealers in ancient art made his appearance in the Tuscan
sky--no less than a buyer for the Louvre. Those were the halcyon days of
the Empire, and money was plenty. Poor Bastianini's bust was brought out
with all due mystery, duly admired by the infallible French connoisseur,
and eventually purchased by him for the imperial collection for, I
think, five thousand francs--at all events, for a sum sufficiently large
to give the man who had bought the bust from the poor artist the right
to demand his supplementary payment. He did so. But the greed of the
dealer prevailed over his prudence, and he refused to give his
accomplice in the fraud the promised share in the plunder. Of course
that ensued which might have been expected. The defrauded rogue "split."
The bust sold to the Frenchman was easily identified with that which
Bastianini had made, and which had been known to all artistic Florence,
and the authorities at the Louvre were duly certified by many a
loud-tongued informer that they had been gulled. The information, as is
usually the case with information of the kind, came too late to be of
service to the buyers, but not too late to give them serious annoyance.
The bust had been exhibited at the Louvre in a prominent place; it had
excited considerable notice; none of the savants presiding over that
establishment had conceived the smallest suspicion of its genuineness;
and it was excessively disagreeable to have to admit that they had all
been deceived by a work made the other day by an unknown Florentine
artist. It was so disagreeable that the gentlemen in question had not
the courage to face the truth. They pooh-poohed their informants,
professed to adhere without a doubt to their own first opinions, and the
bust, to the great amusement of all the Florentine art-world, remained
in its place of honor at the Louvre, exhibited as a cinque-cento
terra-cotta for a long time after all Florence was perfectly cognizant
of its real history, and after the young artist had produced three or
four other busts all equally marked by unmistakable cinque-cento
characteristics. One of these was a really remarkable bust of
Savonarola, which may be seen any day in the (now public) gallery of St.
Mark's at Florence. The original _teterrima causa belli_ has, I believe,
disappeared from the Louvre Gallery. Poor Bastianini died shortly
afterward, and it is due to his memory and undoubtedly great talent that
it should be distinctly understood that from first to last he was no
party to or profiter by the frauds to which his special talent had given
rise.

To return, however, to what I was saying about that large portion of the
works of art and art-industry every year exported from Italy, mainly by
individual buyers for the gratification of their own taste, which
consists of _imitations_. It may be remarked, especially as regards the
objects belonging to the latter category, that these imitations, if
bought as such, are not undesirable purchases. In many instances,
particularly in those of iron- and bronze-work, intarsia, and carving in
wood, the modern Italian artists, who began as imitators, have attained
a degree of excellence which entitles them to take rank as the founders
of a new artistic _renaissance_, while their familiarity with
cinque-cento art and the loving study of it have led them to produce
work in each of the above-named branches which is calculated to improve
the taste of both workers and purchasers in countries beyond the Alps.
As regards metal-work, whether in iron or bronze, avowedly modern, but
of the true cinque-cento type and style, the amateur would do well to
visit the foundries and workshops of Venice; for intarsia he may go to
Milan; for wood-carving to Florence, Siena and Perugia; to the last also
for intarsia. He will find in Perugia work both in carving and intarsia
on which he might spend his money very much more advantageously than in
buying second-rate bits of really old wood-work, or indeed any such bits
as he is at all likely to meet with. And it is not surprising that the
little Umbrian hill-city should have become a special home for this
particular branch of art; for it contains some of the most remarkable
works of the kind extant, the product of some of the most renowned
masters of the craft in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is a
mistake to suppose, as many persons do, that the fine works of this kind
which we still admire were the product of men who were considered in
their day as mere artisans, and whose names were not known beyond the
boundaries of their native provinces. They were recognized as true
artists, whose names were known from one end of the Peninsula to the
other, and who were sent for from distant cities to execute works of
importance. In many cases their names have perished: in more they are
unknown to the present generation of art-lovers--_caruerunt quia vate
sacro_. And in some cases--as a very notable instance, to be mentioned
presently, will show in a remarkable manner--the higher portion of the
merit which was wholly their own--the conception of their designs, with
all the grace of fancy and cultured knowledge of the principles of the
beautiful which it implies--has been assigned to others to whom the
modern world has exclusively given the title of artists. But the
increased and still increasing attention which the world is paying to
all the details and all the branches of cinque-cento art--to good
purpose, for it is due to it that we have emerged or are emerging from
the eighteenth-century depths of ugliness in all our surroundings--has
induced the useful Dryasdusts, whose nature and function it is to burrow
in corporation and conventual muniment-rooms and the like promising
covers, to search out with a very considerable degree of success a mass
of facts, not only as to the real authorship of the work in question,
but curiously illustrative of the status these artists held and the
manner in which they lived and worked. Among the principal of these
archive-hunters is the learned Professor Adam Rossi, the corporation
librarian at Perugia, and it is mainly to his researches that the facts
I am about to lay before the reader are due.

One of the finest specimens of cinque-cento wood-work extant in
Italy--perhaps I might safely say the finest--is the choir of the
monastic church of St. Peter at Perugia. The monks of St. Peter were
Benedictines of Monte Cassino, and, like most of the families of that
order, they were very wealthy and were liberal patrons of art. On the
9th of April, 1525, having determined to refit the choir of their church
in a magnificent manner, they came to an agreement with a
master-carpenter of Perugia for the execution of the work, and a
detailed contract was signed by the parties. (I have called this
cinque-cento work, and it will be observed that it was executed in the
sixteenth century. It may be necessary, therefore, to explain to those
who are unacquainted with the Italian mode of speaking in this respect
that the Italians always speak of what we should call the fourteenth
century as the "trecento," what we should call the fifteenth, as the
"quattrecento," and so on. The period at which art in all its branches
culminated in Italy was, in our language, the sixteenth century.)

Maestro Bernardino di Luca, the artist with whom the convent contracted
for the fitting of the choir, is styled in the instrument _legnaiuolo_
(a "carpenter"). And no doubt Maestro Bernardino--or "Bino," for short,
as he is called in the instrument when once at the beginning he has been
named formally at full length--practiced all the more ordinary business
of his trade. But there must have been carpenters _and_ carpenters, as
to the present day there are painters _and_ painters, the same word
indicating the calling of a Landseer and of a house-painter. This simple
modesty of designation was a characteristic of the epoch. We find
sculptors whose works are to the present day admired and studied as
masterpieces styling themselves simply "stone-cutters." The contract is
a long document, consisting of twenty-one clauses, the greater number of
which are occupied with the most minute and detailed specification of
the work to be done. It is to be executed "according to the model made
by the said Bino, changing it or keeping it as it is according to the
will of the fathers" (the monks of St. Peter's), "so as not to change
the form and substance of the model." The prices agreed to be paid for
each stall in the choir, with its arch above it, is ten golden ducats,
which, allowing for the change in the value of the precious metals, may
be considered to be about equal to three hundred and seventy-five
dollars at the present day. The price does not seem by any means a small
one. But Signor Rossi's researches have elsewhere shown that it is a
mistake to suppose that the renowned professors of any branch of art
were poorly paid in those days. The very reverse was the case. It would
not be interesting to the reader to give him the details of the work
which Maestro Bino bound himself to execute, but some of the
stipulations must be mentioned, because they curiously illustrate the
life of the times. The convent is to furnish all the wood--that which is
required for the work itself, as well as all that may be needed, planks,
scaffolding and the like, for the putting of it in its place. "_Item._
We give him rooms to work in and to sleep in and to cook in, as well as
beds furnished with bedclothes. _Item._ Maestro Bino binds himself not
to undertake any other work till the choir is wholly finished and put
up, and he engages to do all the work within the walls of the convent.
He is bound to keep four men at work under him, and more if necessary."
The work is to be completed within two years should no impediment
intervene by death or grave and manifest illness. The convent undertakes
to furnish money from time to time as needed for the pay of the
journeymen, and fifty ducats beforehand for the hiring of assistants and
other necessary expenses.

Maestro Bino went to work at once, and on the 15th of that same April
had from the convent what seems the very large sum of ten florins and
eight soldi for glue. But, after all, this Maestro Bernardino di Luca
was not the author of the exquisite carvings which people go to Perugia
to look at at the present day. A very "grave and manifest infirmity" did
intervene to prevent the execution of the work, for on the 19th of the
following August, Maestro Bino discharged his workmen on account of the
plague, which had begun to devastate Perugia; and there is reason to
think that the maestro himself perished by it, for after that last entry
the name of Bernardino di Luca vanishes into the abyss of darkness, and
is no more heard of, and shortly afterward we find the convent entering
into a new bargain with another maestro for the execution of the work.
This was Maestro Stefano de Antoniolo da Zambelli of Bergamo, who agreed
with the monks in July, 1533, to execute the required works in the choir
for the price of thirty golden crowns each stall. It will be observed
that this price is about fifty per cent. higher than that for which
Maestro Bino had contracted to do the work, which is an indication of
the then rapidly-falling value of the precious metals. But this
increased price was still insufficient, for on the 17th of July, 1534,
the monks enter into an amended contract with Maestro Stefano, in which
the terms of the original contract are rehearsed, and it is then
declared that Maestro Stefano having shown and proved to the abbot's
satisfaction that those terms could not stand, and that he should be
greatly the loser by the bargain, and it being by no means the wish of
the fathers that Maestro Stefano should be deprived of a fair reward for
his work, but rather that he should make a suitable profit by the job,
it was now agreed that the maestro should undertake to labor
uninterruptedly and with all possible diligence, that the convent should
find all materials and tools, and should maintain Maestro Stefano and
his wife and a journeyman, and should pay sixty golden crowns a year as
long as the work was in progress. Further, the convent undertakes to pay
half a golden crown monthly to the wife of the said Maestro Stefano, "on
the understanding that the said wife of the maestro shall serve and cook
and wash clothes for all the family engaged on the work of the choir;"
and further, half a golden crown monthly to the journeyman. Under this
arrangement it was of course the interest of the convent that the work
should be completed as quickly as possible. And we find, accordingly,
the abbot commissioning Antonio of Florence to carve six of the backs
of the stalls; Battista of Bologna and Ambrose, a Frenchman, to carve
the reading-desk; and Fra Damiano of Bergamo, who was then at Bologna,
to execute the four sculptures in bas-relief which adorn the door. This
Fra Damiano, who signs himself on his work "Fr. Damianus de Bergamo,
Ordinis Predicatorum," seems to have been a brother of the principal
artist, Maestro Stefano. But a curious peep at the manners of that time
is afforded by the fact of a professed monk working for hire as a
wood-carver. The main portion of the work, however, and the general
design, were due to Maestro Stefano da Zambelli of Bergamo, and just two
years and half from the signing of the contract the work was completed
and signed in intarsia, as we see it to this day, "Hoc opus fecit M^{r.}
Stephanus di Bergamo."

For a long time it was supposed that the very beautiful designs for the
entirety and for each detail of this noble work was due to Raphael. The
guide-books all copied the statement one after the other; and they were
indeed excusable in doing so, for the large and magnificent folio which
was published at Rome by the abbot and monks in 1845, containing
engravings of every detail of the celebrated carvings, declares on the
title-page that the work was executed "by Stefano da Bergamo after the
designs of Raffaelle Santi di Urbino." The celebrated and learned
Montfaucon, who was a member of the same order, seems to have been the
first who made this mistaken statement. Once made on such authority, it
was accepted and repeated without further investigation till the
undeniable evidence of the archives of the convent, dragged to light
from under the dust of centuries by the industry of Professor Rossi,
showed that in truth the conception and design, as well as the
execution, of this beautiful masterpiece, which has for so long been
thought worthy of Raphael, was the work of the "carpenter, Maestro
Stefano da Bergamo."

I do not believe that it is any longer possible to obtain a complete
copy of the above-mentioned work. Many years ago I found the separate
sheets of it lying about in the sacristy in a manner which gave one a
vivid idea of the reckless carelessness which is so marked a
characteristic of Italians. Bundles of the different plates, some
containing forty or fifty copies, some twenty or so, and some not more
than four or five, were thrust into cupboards with wax candles for the
altar, tattered choir-books and old candlesticks. And here was the whole
remaining stock of the work! I was at that time able, by the exercise of
much patience, trouble and persuasion with the old sacristan--who seemed
to consider the sale of the plates a very insufficient recompense for
the trouble of looking for them--to get together a complete copy of the
work; but when I was there the other day not more than twenty of the
plates out of nearly twice that number were to be found. In the mean
time, however, a complete set of photographs of every portion of the
sculpture has been made in a smaller size, but sufficiently large to
give a very satisfactory representation of the extreme beauty and
elegance of the work. It is indeed impossible to doubt that this Master
Stephen of Bergamo, the carpenter, whose wife was to have half a crown a
month for doing the washing and cooking for all the family living in the
rooms assigned to them in the monastery for a workshop and living-rooms,
was a man of education and culture, and in every sense of the word an
_artist_. The difference between his social position and that of any
artist of corresponding eminence in our day would seem to consist wholly
in that greater degree of personal and material luxury which
civilization and increased wealth have brought with them. The payment
which he was to receive for his year's work, besides having been
maintained, lodged and fed at the cost of the monastery during the time,
may, I take it, be considered equivalent to about twenty-two thousand
five hundred dollars.

In 1494, on the 5th of April, Maestro Mariotto di Paola, "called
Torzuolo," contracts with the canons of the cathedral to make a range of
cupboards in the sacristy. Such masses of wood-work, very frequently
richly carved and ornamented, are found in the sacristies of most of the
larger churches in Italy. They generally consist of a range of deep
drawers below, up to about the height of an ordinary table, and above
this a series of cupboards reaching to the ceiling of the apartment, so
much less deep than the drawers as to leave a large space of table on
the top of the latter. The drawers are used mainly for the keeping of
the sacred vestments; the table for the spreading out of such of these
as are about to be or have just been used; and the cupboards above for
the holding of all the treasures of the church--chalices for the altar,
monstrances for the exposition of the sacrament, reliquaries of all
sorts of shapes and sizes for the preservation of the relics of saints,
ornamental candlesticks, and such like. In the richer and more important
churches these objects are generally of the precious metals, and
frequently richly adorned with gems, so that the amount of treasure
stored in these repositories is often very considerable. Sometimes such
a range of wood-work as has been described will be found filling one
side only of the sacristy, but in many cases it runs round the whole
apartment. And this piece of ecclesiastical furniture therefore
presented a great field for the taste and ingenuity of the old _maestri_
in wood-carving to exhibit their skill both in design and in execution.
At the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter, of the choir of which we have
been speaking, this fitting up of the sacristy had been done previously;
and it is accordingly much less rich in carving than the work in the
choir. But some of the doors of the cupboards are still more preciously
ornamented by some very finely-painted heads from the hand of the great
Perugino.

Such as it is, however, this sacristy at St. Peter's was handsome enough
to excite the emulation of the canons of the cathedral, for the contract
made with Maestro Mariotto--who was nicknamed Torzuolo--specifies that
the work is to be entirely of walnut wood, after the fashion of the
sacristy at St. Peter's, and is to be executed "in the manner of a
good, loyal and expert master." It is to be all done by his own hand, or
at least in his presence and under his superintendence. The work is to
be completed in one year, and the canons are to pay for it at the rate
of ten florins every square braccio, Florentine measure. This was in
1494; and it will here again be observed that the price, as compared
with that to be paid to Maestro Stefano by the monks of St. Peter's for
their choir, even fully allowing for the greater richness of the latter,
indicates the very rapid alteration in the value of money which took
place at the beginning of the sixteenth century. But the canons, it
would seem, were very careful hands at a bargain, for we find that it is
provided in the contract that when the work shall have been completed it
shall be examined by two experts, and that if it shall be found to be
worth less than the price named, Maestro Torzuolo shall receive so much
less; but that if it shall be found by the said experts and appraisers
to be worth more, the maestro shall stand to his bargain and not receive
more than the price named--an agreement which is frequently found in the
contracts made about that period. When the work was completed it was
accordingly examined and appraised by Maestro Mattia of Reggio and
Maestro Pietro of Florence. The latter was brought from Città di
Castello, a little city in the Apennines some twenty-five miles distant,
express for the purpose. We do not find any statement of their award.
But it would seem that Maestro Torzuolo did not keep to his contract in
one respect, but was as unpunctual as the carpenters of the present
generation, for the above experts were not called to appraise the work
till the year 1497.

Maestro Pietro of Florence was evidently a man at the head of his
profession, for at Città di Castello, when he was summoned to Perugia to
appraise the work of Maestro Torzuolo, he was engaged in making for the
canons there a wooden ceiling for the nave of their church, which was,
by a contract dated 1499, to be ornamented with large roses similar to
the ornamentation of the ceiling of the council-hall in the Palazzo
Vecchio at Florence; giving us thus another indication of the degree of
general interest and attention which these works excited in those days.
The communication between city and city was difficult and comparatively
unfrequent, yet the fame of any fine work of the sort we are talking of
evidently not only reached far and wide among other cities, but
forthwith excited their rivalry and led to the production of other
_chefs-d'oeuvre_. Maestro Pietro was to receive for the ceiling of the
nave at Città di Castello no less a sum than five hundred golden ducats,
equal to at least seventeen thousand five hundred dollars at the present
day. We find him also employed as architect to direct the construction
of a cupola of the church of Calcinaio. This carpenter was, then, an
architect also; and Professor Rossi remarks that it is by no means the
only case of the kind.

Maestro Mattia, the other expert called to appraise the work done by
Maestro Torzuolo for the canons of the cathedral of Perugia, was already
well and favorably known in that city, for he had been employed in 1495
to appraise some work which had been done for the choir of the monks of
St. Lorenzo; in that same year we find him executing some very elaborate
work for the convent of St. Augustine; and on the 20th of December there
was read at a meeting of the municipal council a petition from Maestro
Mattia to be admitted to the freedom of the city of Perugia; which
request the masters of the guilds, "taking into consideration the
industry, the mode of life and the moral character" of the petitioner,
were pleased to grant, on the condition that he, together with two other
persons admitted to citizenship at the same time, should make a present
to the corporation of a silver dish and forty pounds' weight of copper
money, and, further, that he should give the masters and treasurers of
his own guild a dinner.

The notices which Professor Rossi has collected from the various
collections of archives explored by him show in a remarkable manner how
much the best patron of art and artists in those days was the Church.
By far the greatest number of the contracts cited are made by
ecclesiastics, either monks or collegiate bodies of canons or the like,
for the ornamentation of their churches and sacristies. The next best
patrons are the different trade-guilds of the cities. Each of these had
its place of meeting for the _priori_--masters or wardens, as we should
say, of the company--and many of them a contiguous chapel. The sort of
furniture needed for these places was generally a range of seats running
round the principal room, a back of wainscoting behind them, a kind of
pulpit for those who addressed the meeting, a raised and prominent seat
for the "consuls" of the guild, and a large table or writing-desk for
the transaction of business. All this, as will be readily perceived,
afforded fine opportunities for the display of rich carvings and
intarsia; and there was much rivalry between the guilds in the splendor
and adornment of their places of meeting. Some of these works still
remain intact, as in the case of the meeting-room and chapel of the
company of exchange-brokers, which is celebrated wherever art is valued
for the magnificent frescoes by Perugino which adorn the upper part of
the walls above the wood-work. I think, however, that the Church was
more liberal and magnificent in her orders. I have seen much fine
wood-work in the different guild-halls and town-halls in various cities
of Italy, but in no lay building, not even in wealthy and magnificent
Venice itself, with all the splendor of its ducal palace and its Scuole,
have I ever seen anything of the kind at all comparable to the wood-work
in the choirs of the monastery of St. Peter at Perugia and of the
cathedral at Siena. There is in the cathedral of Bergamo some intarsia,
perhaps the finest things extant in that special description of work,
but for carving the choirs I have mentioned are pre-eminent.

But there are a great number of beautiful works of this sort lurking in
places where the traveler, however eager a lover of art, would hardly
think of looking for them. The central districts of Italy are full of
such. There is in the mountains to the south of Perugia, overhanging
the valley of the Tiber, a little city, the very name of which will
probably be new to many even of those who have traveled much in Italy.
Still less likely is it that they have ever been at Todi, for that is
the name of the place I am alluding to. It lies high and bleak among the
Apennines, and possesses nothing to attract the wanderer save some
notable remains of mediæval art which strikingly show how universal, how
ubiquitous, art and artists were in those halcyon days. Todi has,
moreover, the misfortune of being situated on no line of railway, and of
not being on the way to any of the great modern centres. It is,
therefore, completely out of the modern world, and nobody knows anything
about it save a few lovers of ancient art, who will not be beat in their
explorations by want of communications and bad hostelries. But the
little hill-city possesses two churches, whose choirs well deserve a
visit by the admirers of cinque-cento wood-work, I have mentioned it
here, however, mainly because one of these, the choir of the cathedral,
offers not so much in what may still be seen there, as in its records, a
very curious example of the spirit of anti-ecclesiastical freethinking
which was widely spread at that time through the artist-world, whose
best patron was the Church. I mentioned some months ago, in the pages of
this Magazine, some curious facts showing the real sentiments of the
great Perugino on this subject while he was painting Madonnas and
miracles for his ecclesiastical patrons. And the following singular
extract from the archives of the cathedral church of Todi may be added
to what was there written as a proof of the somewhat unexpected fact.
The wood-work of the choir was begun by Maestro Antonio Bencivieni of
Mercatello, in the duchy of Urbino, and was completed in 1530 by his son
Sebastian, who finished his work by inserting in it a singularly haughty
inscription in intarsia. The Latin of the original may be Englished
thus: "Begun by the art and genius of Ant^{o} Bencivieni of Mercatello.
This work was finished by his son Sebastian. Having kept faith and
maintained his honor, he did enough." The worthy canons, however,
discovered just one and forty years afterward that Maestro Sebastiano
had done somewhat too much. For he had on the fourth stall, counting
from the bishop's seat, on the right-hand side of the choir, inserted
amid the ornamentation certain Latin words, inscribed over a carving of
three vases intended to represent reliquaries, which may be translated
thus: Over the first vase, "The shadow of the ass ridden by our Lord;"
over the second, "The feet of the Blessed Virgin as she ascended into
heaven;" over the third, "Relics of the Holy Trinity." These strange
inscriptions remained where Maestro Sebastiano had so audaciously placed
them till the May of 1571. At that date we find a record in the
cathedral archives which, after rehearsing the words in question, and
describing the position of them, proceeds: "Which words, placed there
and written scandalously, and in a certain sort derisive of the
veneration for holy relics, and in contempt of the Christian religion,
the very reverend canons" (So-and-So--names rehearsed) "ordered to be
removed and entirely canceled, so that they should no longer be seen or
read." Can it be supposed that this very extraordinary inscription in a
choir frequented daily by the canons of the church had entirely escaped
notice for more than forty years? Surely this is impossible. Should we
not rather see in the fact that the chapter of 1530 noticed the mocking
words with probably a shrug and a smile, whereas the chapter of 1571
took care that they were removed, an interesting and curious commentary
on the change which the intervening years had brought about in the
spirit of the Church, and another unexpected indication of the
difference between the Church of the worldly, pagan-minded Clement VII.
and that of the energetic, earnest bigot Pius IV. That such a difference
existed we know full well, but this passage of the Todi archives is a
very curious proof of it.

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.




REST.

    In deepest weariness I lay so still
      One might have thought it death,
    For hush of motion and a sleep of will
      Gave me but soundless breath.

    And yet I slept not; only knew that Rest
      Held me all close to her:
    Softly but firmly fettered to her breast,
      I had no wish to stir.

    "Oh, if," I thought, "death would but be like this!--
      Neither to sleep nor wake,
    But have for ages just this _conscious_ bliss,
      That perfect rest I take."

    The soul grows often weary, like the flesh:
      May rest pervade her long,
    While she shall _feel_ the joy of growing fresh
      For heavenly work and song!

CHARLOTTE F. BATES.




LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA.

BY LADY BARKER.


MARITZBURG, February 10, 1876.

In the South African calendar this is set down as the first of the
autumnal months, but the half dozen hours about mid-day are still quite
as close and oppressive as any we have had. I am, however, bound to say
that the nights--at all events, up here--are cooler, and I begin even to
think of a light shawl for my solitary walks in the verandah just before
bedtime. When the moon shines these walks are pleasant enough, but when
only the "common people of the skies" are trying to filter down their
feebler light through the misty atmosphere, I have a lurking fear and
distrust of the reptiles and bugs who may also have a fancy for
promenading at the same time and in the same place. I say nothing of
bats, frogs and toads, mantis or even huge moths: to these we are quite
accustomed. But although I have never seen a live snake in this country
myself, still one hears such unpleasant stories about them that it is
just as well to what the Scotch call "mak siccar" with a candle before
beginning a constitutional in the dark.

It is not a week ago since a lady of my acquaintance, being surprised at
her little dog's refusal to follow her into her bedroom one night,
instituted a search for the reason of the poor little creature's terror
and dismay, and discovered a snake coiled up under her chest of drawers.
At this moment, too, the local papers are full of recipes for the
prevention and cure of snake-bites, public attention being much
attracted to the subject on account of an Englishman having been bitten
by a black "mamba" (a very venomous adder) a short time since, and
having died of the wound in a few hours. In his case, poor man! there
does not seem to have been a chance from the first, for he was obliged
to walk some distance to the nearest house, and as they had no proper
remedies there, he had to be taken on a farther journey of some miles to
a hospital. All this exercise and motion caused the poison to circulate
freely through the veins, and was the worst possible thing for him. The
doctors here seem agreed that the treatment of ammonia and brandy is the
safest, and many instances are adduced to show how successful it has
been, though one party of practitioners admits the ammonia, but denies
the brandy. On the other hand, one hears of a child bitten by a snake
and swallowing half a large bottle of raw brandy in half an hour without
its head being at all affected, and, what is more, recovering from the
bite and living happy ever after. I keep quantities of both remedies
close at hand, for three or four venomous snakes have been killed within
a dozen yards of the house, and little G---- is perpetually exploring
the long grass all around or hunting for a stray cricket-ball or a
pegtop in one of those beautiful fern-filled ditches whose tangle of
creepers and plumy ferns is exactly the favorite haunt of snakes. As yet
he has brought back from these forbidden raids nothing more than a few
ticks and millions of burs.

As for the ticks, I am getting over my horror at having to dislodge them
from among the baby's soft curls by means of a sharp needle, and even
G---- only shouts with laughter at discovering a great swollen monster
hanging on by its forceps to his leg. They torment the poor horses and
dogs dreadfully; and if the said horses were not the very quietest,
meekest, most underbred and depressed animals in the world, we should
certainly hear of more accidents. As it is, they confine their efforts
to get rid of their tormentors to rubbing all the hair off their tails
and sides in patches against the stable walls or the trunk of a tree.
Indeed, the clever way G----'s miserable little Basuto pony actually
climbs inside a good-sized bush, and sways himself about in it with his
legs off the ground until the whole thing comes with a crash to the
ground, is edifying to behold to every one except the owner of the tree.
Tom, the Kafir boy, tried hard to persuade me the other day that the
pony was to blame for the destruction of a peach tree, but as the only
broken-down branches were those which had been laden with fruit, I am
inclined to acquit the pony. Carbolic soap is an excellent thing to wash
both dogs and horses with, as it not only keeps away flies and ticks
from the skin, which, is constantly rubbed off by incessant scratching,
but helps to heal the tendency to a sore place. Indeed, nothing
frightened me so much as what I heard when I first arrived about Natal
sores and Natal boils. Everybody told me that ever so slight a cut or
abrasion went on slowly festering, and that sores on children's faces
were quite common. This sounded very dreadful, but I am beginning to
hope it was an exaggeration, for whenever G---- cuts or knocks himself
(which is every day or so), or scratches an insect's bite into a bad
place, I wash the part with a little carbolic soap (there are two
sorts--one for animals and a more refined preparation for the human
skin), and it is quite well the next day. We have all had a threatening
of those horrid boils, but they have passed off.

In town the mosquitoes are plentiful and lively, devoting their
attentions chiefly to new-comers, but up here--I write as though we were
five thousand feet instead of only fifty above Maritzburg--it is rare to
see one. I think "fillies" are more in our line, and that in spite of
every floor in the house being scrubbed daily with strong soda and
water. "Fillies," you must know, is our black groom's (Charlie's) way of
pronouncing _fleas_, and I find it ever so much prettier. Charlie and I
are having a daily discussion just now touching sundry moneys he
expended during my week's absence at D'Urban for the kittens' food.
Charlie calls them the "lil' catties," and declares that the two small
animals consumed three shillings and ninepence worth of meat in a week.
I laughingly say, "But, Charlie, that would be nearly nine pounds of
meat in six days, and they couldn't eat that, you know." Charlie grins
and shows all his beautiful even white teeth: then he bashfully turns
his head aside and says, "I doan know, ma': I buy six' meat dree time."
"Very well, Charlie, that would be one shilling and sixpence." "I doan
know, ma';" and we've not got any further than that yet.

But G---- and I are picking up many words of Kafir, and it is quite
mortifying to see how much more easily the little monkey learns than I
do. I forget my phrases or confuse them, whereas when he learns two or
three sentences he appears to remember them always. It is a very
melodious and beautiful language, and, except for the clicks, not very
difficult to learn. Almost everybody here speaks it a little, and it is
the first thing necessary for a new-comer to endeavor to acquire; only,
unfortunately, there are no teachers, as in India, and consequently you
pick up a wretched, debased kind of patois, interlarded with Dutch
phrases. Indeed, I am assured there are two words, _el hashi_ ("the
horse"), of unmistakable Moorish origin, though no one knows how they
got into the language. Many of the Kafirs about town speak a little
English, and they are exceedingly sharp, when they choose, about
understanding what is meant, even if they do not quite catch the meaning
of the words used. There is one genius of my acquaintance, called
"Sixpence," who is not only a capital cook, but an accomplished English
scholar, having spent some months in England. Generally, to Cape Town
and back is the extent of their journeyings, for they are a home-loving
people; but Sixpence went to England with his master, and brought back a
shivering recollection of an English winter and a deep-rooted amazement
at the boys of the Shoe Brigade, who wanted to clean his boots. That
astonished him more than anything else, he says.

The Kafirs are very fond of attending their own schools and church
services, of which there are several in the town; and I find one of my
greatest difficulties in living out here consists in getting Kafirs to
come out of town, for by doing so they miss their regular attendance at
chapel and school. A few Sundays ago I went to one of these Kafir
schools, and was much struck by the intently-absorbed air of the pupils,
almost all of whom were youths about twenty years of age. They were
learning to read the Bible in Kafir during my visit, sitting in couples,
and helping each other on with immense diligence and earnestness. No
looking about, no wandering, inattentive glances, did I see. I might as
well have "had the receipt of fern-seed and walked invisible" for all
the attention I excited. Presently the pupil-teacher, a young black man,
who had charge of this class, asked me if I would like to hear them sing
a hymn, and on my assenting he read out a verse of "Hold the Fort," and
they all stood up and sang it, or rather its Kafir translation, lustily
and with good courage, though without much tune. The chorus was
especially fine, the words "Inkanye kanye" ringing through the room with
great fervor. This is not a literal translation of the words "Hold the
Fort," but it is difficult, as the teacher explained to me, for the
translator to avail himself of the usual word for "hold," as it conveys
more the idea of "take hold," "seize," and the young Kafir missionary
thoroughly understood all the nicety of the idiom. There was another
class for women and children, but it was a small one. Certainly, the
young men seemed much in earnest, and the rapt expression of their faces
was most striking, especially during the short prayer which followed the
hymn and ended the school for the afternoon.

I have had constantly impressed upon my mind since my arrival the advice
_not_ to take Christian Kafirs into my service, but I am at a loss to
know in what way the prejudice against them can have arisen. "Take a
Kafir green from his kraal if you wish to have a good servant," is what
every one tells me. It so happens that we have two of each--two
Christians and two heathens--about the place, and there is no doubt
whatever which is the best. Indeed, I have sometimes conversations with
the one who speaks English, and I can assure you we might all learn from
him with advantage. His simple creed is just what came from the
Saviour's lips two thousand years ago, and comprises His teaching of the
whole duty of man--to love God, the great "En' Kos," and his neighbor as
himself. He speaks always with real delight of his privileges, and is
very anxious to go to Cape Town to attend some school there of which he
talks a great deal, and where he says he should learn to read the Bible
in English. At present he is spelling it out with great difficulty in
Kafir. This man often talks to me in the most respectful and civil
manner imaginable about the customs of his tribe, and he constantly
alludes to the narrow escape he had of being murdered directly after his
birth for the crime of being a twin. His people have a fixed belief that
unless one of a pair of babies be killed at once, either the father or
mother will die within the year; and they argue that as in any case one
child will be sure to die in its infancy, twins being proverbially
difficult to rear, it is only both kind and natural to kill the weakly
one at once. This young man is very small and quiet and gentle, with an
ugly face, but a sweet, intelligent expression and a very nice manner. I
find him and the other Christian in our employment very trustworthy and
reliable. If they tell me anything which has occurred, I know I can
believe their version of it, and they are absolutely honest. Now, the
other lads have very loose ideas on the subject of sugar, and make
shifty excuses for everything, from the cat breaking a heavy stone
filter up to half the marketing being dropped on the road.

I don't think I have made it sufficiently clear that besides the
Sunday-schools and services I have mentioned there are night-schools
every evening in the week, which are fully attended by Kafir servants,
and where they are first taught to read their own language, which is an
enormous difficulty to them. They always tell me it is so much easier to
learn to read English than Kafir; and if one studies the two languages,
it is plain to see how much simpler the new tongue must appear to a
learner than the intricate construction, the varying patois and the
necessarily phonetic spelling of a language compounded of so many
dialects as the Zulu-Kafir.


FEBRUARY 12.

In some respects I consider this climate has been rather over-praised.
Of course it is a great deal--a very great deal--better than our English
one, but that, after all, is not saying much in its praise. Then we must
remember that in England we have the fear and dread of the climate ever
before our eyes, and consequently are always, so to speak, on our guard
against it. Here, and in other places where civilization is in its
infancy, we are at the mercy of dust and sun, wind and rain, and all the
eccentric elements which go to make up weather. Consequently, when the
balance of comfort and convenience has to be struck, it is surprising
how small an advantage a really better climate gives when you take away
watering-carts and shady streets for hot weather, and sheltered
railway-stations and hansom cabs for wet weather, and roads and servants
and civility and general convenience everywhere. This particular climate
is both depressing and trying in spite of the sunny skies we are ever
boasting about, because it has a strong tinge of the tropical element in
it; and yet people live in much the same kind of houses (only that they
are very small), and wear much the same sort of clothes (only that they
are very ugly), and lead much the same sort of lives (only that it is a
thousand times duller than the dullest country village), as they do in
England. Some small concession is made to the thermometer in the matter
of puggeries and matted floors, but even then carpets are used wherever
it is practicable, because this matting never looks clean and nice after
the first week it is put down. All the houses are built on the ground
floor, with the utmost economy of building material and labor, and
consequently there are no passages: every room is, in fact, a passage
and leads to its neighbor. So the perpetually dirty bare feet, or, still
worse, boots fresh from the mud or dust of the streets, soon wear out
the matting. Few houses are at all prettily decorated or furnished,
partly from the difficulty of procuring anything pretty here, the cost
and risk of its carriage up from D'Urban if you send to England for it,
and partly from the want of servants accustomed to anything but the
roughest and coarsest articles of household use. A lady soon begins to
take her drawing-room ornaments _en guignon_ if she has to dust them
herself every day in a very dusty climate. I speak feelingly and with
authority, for that is my case at this moment, and applies to every
other part of the house as well.

I must say I like Kafir servants in some respects. They require, I
acknowledge, constant supervision; they require to be told to do the
same thing over and over again every day; and, what is more, besides
telling, you have to stand by and see that they do the thing. They are
also very slow. But still, with all these disadvantages, they are far
better than the generality of European servants out here, who make their
luckless employers' lives a burden to them by reason of their tempers
and caprices. It is much better, I am convinced, to face the evil boldly
and to make up one's mind to have none but Kafir servants. Of course one
immediately turns into a sort of overseer and upper servant one's self;
but at all events you feel master or mistress of your own house, and you
have faithful and good-tempered domestics, who do their best, however
awkwardly, to please you. Where there are children, then indeed a good
English nurse is a great boon; and in this one respect I am fortunate.
Kafirs are also much easier to manage when the orders come direct from
the master or mistress, and they work far more willingly for them than
for white servants. Tom, the nurse-boy, confided to me yesterday that he
hoped to stop in my employment for forty moons. After that space of time
he considered that he should be in a position to buy plenty of wives,
who would work for him and support him for the rest of his life. But
how Tom or Jack, or any of the boys in fact, are to save money I know
not, for every shilling of their wages, except a small margin for coarse
snuff, goes to their parents, who fleece them without mercy. If they are
fined for breakages or misconduct (the only punishment a Kafir cares
for), they have to account for the deficient money to the stern parents;
and both Tom and Jack went through a most graphic pantomime with a stick
of the consequences to themselves, adding that their father said both
the beating from him and the fine from us served them right for their
carelessness. It seemed so hard they should suffer both ways, and they
were so good-tempered and uncomplaining about it, that I fear I shall
find it very difficult to stop any threepenny pieces out of their wages
in future. A Kafir servant usually gets one pound a month, his clothes
and food. The former consists of a shirt and short trousers of coarse
check cotton, a soldier's old great-coat for winter, and plenty of
mealy-meal for "scoff." If he is a good servant and worth making
comfortable, you give him a trifle every week to buy meat. Kafirs are
very fond of going to their kraals, and you have to make them sign an
agreement to remain with you so many months, generally six. By the time
you have just taught them, with infinite pains and trouble, how to do
their work, they depart, and you have to begin it all over again.

I frequently see the chiefs or indunas of chiefs passing here on their
way to some kraals which lie just over the hills. These kraals consist
of half a dozen or more large huts, exactly like so many huge beehives,
on the slope of a hill. There is a rude attempt at sod-fencing round
them; a few head of cattle graze in the neighborhood; lower down, the
hillside is roughly scratched by the women with crooked hoes to form a
mealy-ground. (Cows and mealies are all they require except snuff or
tobacco, which they smoke out of a cow's horn.) They seem a very gay and
cheerful people, to judge by the laughter and jests I hear from the
groups returning to these kraals every day by the road just outside our
fence. Sometimes one of the party carries an umbrella; and I assure you
the effect of a tall, stalwart Kafir, clad either in nothing at all or
else in a sack, carefully guarding his bare head with a tattered Gamp,
is very ridiculous. Often some one walks along playing upon a rude pipe,
whilst the others jog before and after him, laughing and capering like
boys let loose from school, and all chattering loudly. You never meet a
man carrying a burden unless he is a white settler's servant. When a
chief or the induna of a kraal passes this way, I see him, clad in a
motley garb of red regimentals with his bare "ringed" head, riding a
sorry nag, only the point of his great toe resting in his stirrup. He is
followed closely and with great _empressement_ by his "tail," all
"ringed" men also--that is, men of some substance and weight in the
community. They carry bundles of sticks, and keep up with the ambling
nag, and are closely followed by some of his wives bearing heavy loads
on their heads, but stepping out bravely with beautiful erect carriage,
shapely bare arms and legs; and some sort of coarse drapery worn across
their bodies, covering them from shoulder to knee in folds which would
delight an artist's eye and be the despair of a sculptor's chisel. They
don't look either oppressed or discontented. Happy, healthy and jolly
are the words by which they would be most truthfully described. Still,
they are lazy, and slow to appreciate any benefit from civilization
except the money, but then savages always seem to me as keen and sordid
about money as the most civilized mercantile community anywhere.


FEBRUARY 14.

I am often asked by people who are thinking of coming here, or who want
to send presents to friends here, what to bring or send. Of course it is
difficult to say, because my experience is limited and confined to one
spot at present: therefore I give my opinion very guardedly, and
acknowledge it is derived in great part from the experience of others
who have been here a long time. Amongst other wraps, I brought a
sealskin jacket and muff which I happened to have. These, I am assured,
will be absolutely useless, and already they are a great anxiety to me
on account of the swarms of fish-tail moths which I see scuttling about
in every direction if I move a box or look behind a picture. In fact,
there are destructive moths everywhere, and every drawer is redolent of
camphor. The only things I can venture to recommend as necessaries are
things which no one advised me to bring, and which were only random
shots. One was a light waterproof ulster, and the other was a lot of
those outside blinds for windows which come, I believe, from Japan, and
are made of grass--green, painted with gay figures. I picked up these
latter by the merest accident at the Baker-street bazaar for a few
shillings: they are the comfort of my life, keeping out glare and dust
in the day and moths and insects of all kinds at night. As for the
waterproof, I do not know what I should have done without it; and little
G----'s has also been most useful. It is the necessary of necessaries
here--a _real_, good substantial waterproof. A man cannot do better than
get a regular military waterproof which will cover him from chin to heel
on horseback; and even waterproof hats and caps are a comfort in this
treacherous summer season, where a storm bursts over your head out of a
blue dome of sky, and drenches you even whilst the sun is shining
brightly.

A worse climate and country for clothes of every kind and description
cannot be imagined. When I first arrived I thought I had never seen such
ugly toilettes in all my life; and I should have been less than woman
(or more--which is it?) if I had not derived some secret satisfaction
from the possession of at least prettier garments. What I was vain of in
my secret heart was my store of cotton gowns. One can't very well wear
cotton gowns in London; and, as I am particularly fond of them, I
indemnify myself for going abroad by rushing wildly into extensive
purchases in cambrics and print dresses. They are so pretty and so
cheap, and when charmingly made, as mine _were_ (alas, they are already
things of the past!), nothing can be so satisfactory in the way of
summer country garb. Well, it has been precisely in the matter of cotton
gowns that I have been punished for my vanity. For a day or two each
gown in turn looked charming. Then came a flounce or bordering of bright
red earth on the lower skirt and a general impression of red dust and
dirt all over it. That was after a drive into Maritzburg along a road
ploughed up by ox-wagons. Still, I felt no uneasiness. What is a cotton
gown made for if not to be washed? Away it goes to the wash! What is
this limp, discolored rag which returns to me iron-moulded, blued until
it is nearly black, rough-dried, starched in patches, with the fringe of
red earth only more firmly fixed than before? Behold my favorite ivory
cotton! My white gowns are even in a worse plight, for there are no two
yards of them the same, and the grotesque mixture of extreme yellowness,
extreme blueness and a pervading tinge of the red mud they have been
washed in renders them a piteous example of misplaced confidence. Other
things fare rather better--not much--but my poor gowns are only hopeless
wrecks, and I am reduced to some old yachting dresses of ticking and
serge. The price of washing, as this spoiling process is pleasantly
called, is enormous, and I exhaust my faculties in devising more
economical arrangements. We can't wash at home, for the simple reason
that we have no water, no proper appliances of any sort, and to build
and buy such would cost a small fortune. But a tall, white-aproned
Kafir, with a badge upon his arm, comes now at daylight every Monday
morning and takes away a huge sackful of linen, which is placed, with
sundry pieces of soap and blue in its mouth, all ready for him. He
brings it back in the afternoon full of clean and dry linen, for which
he receives three shillings and sixpence. But this is only the first
stage. The things to be starched have to be sorted and sent to one
woman, and those to be mangled to another, and both lots have to be
fetched home again by Tom and Jack. (I have forgotten to tell you that
Jack's real name, elicited with great difficulty, as there is a click
somewhere in it, is "Umpashongwana," whilst the pickle Tom is known
among his own people as "Umkabangwana." You will admit that our
substitutes for these five-syllabled appellations are easier to
pronounce in a hurry. Jack is a favorite name: I know half a dozen black
Jacks myself.) To return, however, to the washing. I spend my time in
this uncertain weather watching the clouds on the days when the clothes
are to come home, for it would be altogether _too_ great a trial if
one's starched garments, borne aloft on Jack's head, were to be caught
in a thunder-shower. If the washerwoman takes pains with anything, it is
with gentlemen's shirts, though even then she insists on ironing the
collars into strange and fearful shapes.

Let not men think, however, that they have it all their own way in the
matter of clothes. White jackets and trousers are commonly worn here in
summer, and it is very soothing, I am told, to try to put them on in a
hurry when the arms and legs are firmly glued together by several pounds
of starch. Then as to boots and shoes: they get so mildewed if laid
aside for even a few days as to be absolutely offensive; and these, with
hats, wear out at the most astonishing rate. The sun and dust and rain
finish up the hats in less than no time.

But I have not done with my clothes yet. A lady must keep a warm dress
and jacket close at hand all through the most broiling summer weather,
for a couple of hours will bring the thermometer down ten or twenty
degrees, and I have often been gasping in a white dressing-gown at noon
and shivering in a serge dress at three o'clock on the same day. I am
making up my mind that serge and ticking are likely to be the most
useful material for dresses, and, as one must have something very cool
for these burning months, tussore or foulard, which get themselves
better washed than my poor dear cottons. Silks are next to useless--too
smart, too hot, too entirely out of place in such a life as this, except
perhaps one or two of tried principles, which won't spot or fade or
misbehave themselves in any way. One goes out of a warm, dry afternoon
with a tulle veil on to keep off the flies, or a feather in one's hat,
and returns with the one a limp, wet rag and the other quite out of
curl. I only wish any milliner could see my feathers now! All straight,
rigidly straight as a carpenter's rule, and tinged with red dust
besides. As for tulle or crêpe-lisse frilling, or any of those soft
pretty adjuncts to a simple toilette, they are five minutes' wear--no
more, I solemnly declare.

I love telling a story against myself, and here is one. In spite of
repeated experiences of the injurious effect of alternate damp and dust
upon finery, the old Eve is occasionally too strong for my prudence, and
I can't resist, on the rare occasions which offer themselves, the
temptation of wearing pretty things. Especially weak am I in the matter
of caps, and this is what befell me. Imagine a lovely, soft summer
evening, broad daylight, though it is half-past seven (it will be dark
directly, however): a dinner-party to be reached a couple of miles away.
The little open carriage is at the door, and into this I step, swathing
my gown carefully up in a huge shawl. This precaution is especially
necessary, for during the afternoon there has been a terrific
thunderstorm and a sudden sharp deluge of rain. Besides a swamp or two
to be ploughed through as best we may, there are those two miles of deep
red muddy road full of ruts and big stones and pitfalls of all sorts.
The drive home in the dark will be nervous work, but now in daylight let
us enjoy whilst we may. Of course I _ought_ to have taken my cap in a
box or bag, or something of the sort; but that seemed too much trouble,
especially as it was so small it needed to be firmly pinned on in its
place. It consisted of a centre or crown of white crêpe, a little frill
of the same, and a close-fitting wreath of deep red feathers all round.
Very neat and tidy it looked as I took my last glance at it whilst I
hastily knotted a light black lace veil over my head by way of
protection during my drive. When I got to my destination there was no
looking-glass to be seen anywhere, no maid, no anything or anybody to
warn me. Into the dining-room I marched in happy unconsciousness that
the extreme dampness of the evening had flattened the crown of my cap,
and that it and its frill were mere unconsidered limp rags, whilst the
unpretending circlet of feathers had started into undue prominence, and
struck straight out like a red nimbus all round my unconscious head. How
my fellow-guests managed to keep their countenances I cannot tell. I am
certain _I_ never could have sat opposite to any one with such an
Ojibbeway Indian's head-dress on without giggling. But no one gave me
the least hint of my misfortune, and it only burst upon me suddenly when
I returned to my own room and my own glass. Still, there was a ray of
hope left: it _might_ have been the dampness of the drive home which had
worked me this woe. I rushed into F----'s dressing-room and demanded
quite fiercely whether my cap had been like that all the time.

"Why, yes," F---- admitted; adding by way of consolation, "In fact, it
is a good deal subdued now: it was very wild all dinner-time. I can't
say I admired it, but I supposed it was all right."

Did ever any one hear such shocking apathy? In answer to my reproaches
for not telling me, he only said, "Why, what could you have done with it
if you _had_ known? Taken it off and put it in your pocket, or what?"

I don't know, but anything would have been better than sitting at table
with a thing only fit for a May-Day sweep on one's head. It makes me hot
and angry with myself even to think of it now.

F----'s clothes could also relate some curious experiences which they
have had to go through, not only at the hands of his washerwoman, but at
those of his temporary valet, Jack (I beg his pardon, Umpashongwana) the
Zulu, whose zeal exceeds anything one can imagine. For instance, when he
sets to work to brush F----'s clothes of a morning he is by no means
content to brush the cloth clothes. Oh dear, no! He brushes the socks,
putting each carefully on his hand like a glove and brushing vigorously
away. As they are necessarily very thin socks for this hot weather, they
are apt to melt away entirely under the process. I say nothing of his
blacking the boots inside as well as out, or of his laboriously
scrubbing holes in a serge coat with a scrubbing-brush, for these are
errors of judgment dictated by a kindly heart. But when Jack puts a
saucepan on the fire without any water and burns holes in it, or tries
whether plates and dishes can support their own weight in the air
without a table beneath them, then, I confess, my patience runs short.
But Jack is so imperturbable, so perfectly and genuinely astonished at
the untoward result of his experiments, and so grieved that the
_inkosacasa_ (I have not an idea how the word ought to be spelt) should
be vexed, that I am obliged to leave off shaking my head at him, which
is the only way I have of expressing my displeasure. He keeps on saying,
"Ja, oui, yaas," alternately, all the time, and I have to go away to
laugh.


FEBRUARY 16.

I was much amused the other day at receiving a letter of introduction
from a mutual friend in England, warmly recommending a newly-arrived
bride and bridegroom to my acquaintance, and especially begging me to
take pains to introduce the new-comers into the "best society." To
appreciate the joke thoroughly you must understand that there is no
society here at all--absolutely none. We are not proud, we
Maritzburgians, nor are we inhospitable, nor exclusive, nor unsociable.
Not a bit. We are as anxious as any community can be to have society or
sociable gatherings, or whatever you like to call the way people manage
to meet together; but circumstances are altogether too strong for us,
and we all in turn are forced to abandon the attempt in despair. First
of all, the weather is against us. It is maddeningly uncertain, and the
best-arranged entertainment cannot be considered a success if the guests
have to struggle through rain and tempest and streets ankle-deep in
water and pitchy darkness to assist at it. People are hardly likely to
make themselves pleasant at a party when their return home through storm
and darkness is on their minds all the time: at least, I know _I_ cannot
do so. But the weather is only one of the lets and hinderances to
society in Natal. We are all exceedingly poor, and necessary food is
very dear: luxuries are enormously expensive, but they are generally not
to be had at all, so one is not tempted by them. Servants, particularly
cooks, are few and far between, and I doubt if even any one calling
himself a cook could send up what would be considered a fairly good dish
elsewhere. Kafirs can be taught to do one or two things pretty well, but
even then they could not be trusted to do them for a party. In fact, if
I stated that there were no good servants--in the ordinary acceptation
of the word--here at all, I should not be guilty of exaggeration. If
there are, all I can say is, I have neither heard of nor seen them. On
the contrary, I have been overwhelmed by lamentations on that score in
which I can heartily join. Besides the want of means of conveyance (for
there are no cabs, and very few _remises_) and good food and attendance,
any one wanting to entertain would almost need to build a house, so
impossible is it to collect more than half a dozen people inside an
ordinary-sized house here. For my part, my verandah is the comfort of my
life. When more than four or five people at a time chance to come to
afternoon tea, we overflow into the verandah. It runs round three sides
of the four rooms called a house, and is at once my day-nursery, my
lumber-room, my summer-parlor, my place of exercise--everything, in
fact. And it is an incessant occupation to train the creepers and wage
war against the legions of brilliantly-colored grasshoppers which infest
and devour the honeysuckles and roses. Never was there such a place for
insects! They eat up everything in the kitchen-garden, devour every leaf
off my peach and orange trees, scarring and spoiling the fruit as well.
It is no comfort whatever that they are wonderfully beautiful
creatures, striped and ringed with a thousand colors in a thousand
various ways: one has only to see the riddled appearance of every leaf
and flower to harden one's heart. Just now they have cleared off every
blossom out of the garden except my zinnias, which grow magnificently
and make the devastated flower-bed still gay with every hue and tint a
zinnia can put on--salmon-color, rose, scarlet, pink, maroon, and fifty
shades besides. On the veldt too the flowers have passed by, but their
place is taken by the grasses, which are all in seed. People say the
grass is rank and poor, and of not much account as food for stock, but
it has an astonishing variety of beautiful seeds. In one patch it is
like miniature pampas-grass, only a couple of inches long each seed-pod,
but white and fluffy. Again, there will be tall stems laden with rich
purple grains or delicate tufts of rose-colored seed. One of the
prettiest, however, is like wee green harebells hanging all down a tall
and slender stalk, and hiding within their cups the seed. Unfortunately,
the weeds and burs seed just as freely, and there is one especial
torment to the garden in the shape of an innocent-looking little plant
something like an alpine strawberry in leaf and blossom, bearing a most
aggravating tuft of little black spines which lose no opportunity of
sticking to one's petticoats in myriads. They are familiarly known as
"blackjacks," and can hold their own as pests with any weed of my
acquaintance.

But the most beautiful tree I have seen in Natal was an _Acacia
flamboyante_. I saw it at D'Urban, and I shall never forget the contrast
of its vivid green, bright as the spring foliage of a young oak, and the
crown of rich crimson flowers on its topmost branches, tossing their
brilliant blossoms against a background of gleaming sea and sky. It was
really splendid, like a bit of Italian coloring among the sombre tangle
of tropical verdure. It is too cold up here for this glorious tree,
which properly belongs to a far more tropical temperature than even
D'Urban can mount up to.

I am looking forward to next month and the following ones to make some
little excursions into the country, or to go "trekking," as the local
expression is. I hear on all sides how much that is interesting lies a
little way beyond the reach of a ride, but it is difficult for the
mistress--who is at the same time the general servant--of an
establishment out here to get away from home for even a few days,
especially when there is a couple of small children to be left behind.
No one travels now who can possibly help it, for the sudden violent
rains which come down nearly every afternoon swell the rivers and make
even the spruits impassable; so a traveler may be detained for days
within a few miles of his destination. Now, in winter the roads will be
hard, and dust will be the only inconvenience. At least, that is what I
am promised.




OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE CABS OF PARIS.


Paris is without doubt, of all large cities, the easiest to get about
in. Lines of omnibuses cross and recross its surface in every direction,
and, better still, the streets swarm with cabs, in which for the small
sum of thirty cents one can pass at will from any given point to any
other far distant one within its limits. There are carriage-stands on
every side and in every principal street, and unoccupied vehicles may be
seen driven at a snail's pace, with their drivers keenly on the lookout
for a possible fare. Yet, with all this provision, it is occasionally
very difficult to secure a carriage in Paris. On a sunny Sunday
afternoon, on the day of the Grand Prix de Paris, or during the
prevalence of a sudden storm carriages are as scarce in Paris as they
are in New York. Yet their number increases daily, thanks to the law of
1866, by virtue of which any coachman who can pass an examination as to
his knowledge of driving and acquaintance with the streets of Paris can,
if he likes, purchase a vehicle of the regulation style, have his number
painted on it and set up for himself as a public cabman, subject always
in the matter of pace, charges, etc. to the police laws regulating all
such details.

It has taken two hundred and thirty years to bring the cab-system of
Paris to the point of perfection to which it has now attained. In 1617
the only public means of locomotion was afforded by a company which let
out sedan-chairs. In 1640 a certain Nicholas Sauvage, agent for the
stage-coaches of Amiens, formed the plan of establishing carriages,
harnessed and ready for use at certain designated points, for the
accommodation of the public. These vehicles were christened _fiacres_,
but the reason for their receiving this appellation remains unknown.
Some say it was because Sauvage occupied a house the façade of which was
decorated with an image of St. Fiacre: another and more probable
solution of the mystery has been found in the fact that just at that
epoch a monk of the Petits Pères, called Fiacre, died in the odor of
sanctity, and his portrait was placed in all the new vehicles to protect
them against accidents. Be this as it may, the new enterprise proved
successful, and in 1703 a law was passed compelling the numbering of all
public carriages. In 1753 there existed in Paris twenty-eight cab-stands
and sixty livery-stables, containing in all one hundred and seventy
carriages. At present, Paris possesses over eight thousand cabs and
three thousand livery-stable carriages: these last are generally very
handsome vehicles, drawn by spirited, well-kept horses and driven by
stylish-looking coachmen. The public vehicles of Paris, exclusive of
the omnibuses, may be divided into three classes. First, the _voitures
de place_, which are permitted, on payment of an annual tax of three
hundred and sixty-five francs, to stand at one of the one hundred and
fifty-eight points designated by the police; these bear a yellow number.
Secondly, the _voitures mixtes_, which may at will be hired from a
livery-stable or stand or ply upon the public highway; these bear a red
number. And thirdly, the _voitures de remise_, which can only be hired
from a stable, and are prohibited from appearing on the stands; these
also are numbered in red, but in a particular style, so that a policeman
at a glance can distinguish the difference between the voitures mixtes
and those of the last category. To this latter class belong the stunning
and splendid equipages which may be hired for any period, extending from
a few hours to an indefinite number of months, and which enable the
stranger to make as fine a display of equipages and liveries as the
wealthiest resident of the city. The first two classes, the cabs
properly so called, are, however, the most interesting to the transient
visitor to Paris or to the permanent resident with a purse of moderate
dimensions.

The cabs of Paris, as a rule, are comparatively neat and comfortable,
those belonging to the Compagnie Générale des Voitures (of which
institution more anon) being carefully brushed and cleaned every day. In
winter a two-seated coupé lined with dark cloth or with leather, and
drawn by a single horse, is the usual style of vehicle offered for the
accommodation of the public. The price of such a vehicle is thirty cents
for a "course" or single unbroken trip, which may be from one side of
Paris to the other, or forty cents an hour. The coachman is bound by law
to give the person engaging him a square ticket on which is printed his
number and the exact amount of his fare: this last, however, being
stated as varying under certain conditions and at certain hours, is apt
to be rather puzzling to the inexperienced traveler, particularly if he
or she be ignorant of French. Four-seated carriages are hard to find in
winter: they are drawn by two horses, and the fare is ten cents more on
the course and by the hour than that of the two-seated ones. In summer
the coupés are replaced by light, open, four-seated carriages, with a
hood and with leather curtains, to be used in case of rain; and they are
really pleasant and comfortable vehicles. The horses do not differ much
from the style of cab-horses known all over the world, being thin,
shabby and dismal-looking animals as a general thing, though exceptions
to the rule are not uncommon.

The cabmen of Paris form a distinct class, a separate society, composed
of all sorts of elements--a turbulent, indocile, rebellious set of men,
always in revolt against their employers and against the law, which
holds them with an iron and inflexible grasp. Most of them are
Communists, though many of them are men belonging to the higher classes
of society, whom dissipation, extravagance or misfortune has driven to
this mode of gaining a living. Thus, it is a well-known fact that the
son of a distinguished diplomat, an ambassador to more than one foreign
court, is now a cab-driver, and not a particularly good one. Unfrocked
priests, unsuccessful school-teachers, small bankrupt tradesmen, swell
the ranks, the _personnel_ of which is mainly composed of servants out
of place or of provincials who have come to Paris to seek their fortune.
These last come mostly from Normandy, Auvergne and Savoy; and it has
been noticed that the Savoyards are the most sober and docile of all.
The Parisian cabman is always under the surveillance of the police: a
policeman stationed on every stand watches each cab as it drives off,
and takes its number to guard as far as possible against any overcharge
or peculation. In case of a collision and quarrel or an accident the
ubiquitous policeman is always at hand to take the numbers of the
vehicles whose drivers may be concerned in the affair. Complaints made
by passengers are always attended to at once, and immediate redress is
pretty sure to follow. The cabman is generally gruff and surly, and,
though seldom seen drunk, in the majority of cases is addicted to
drink--a vice which the exposed nature of his calling palliates if it
does not wholly excuse. Some cabmen are devoted to newspaper reading,
and may be seen engaged perusing the _Rappel_ or the _Événement_ while
awaiting the appearance of a fare or stationed before the door of a shop
or a picture-gallery. Others prefer to nap away their leisure moments,
and may be seen, half sitting, half lying on their boxes, and sound
asleep. It is rather a curious process to pass slowly along the line of
a Parisian cab-stand and observe the faces of the men. Every variety and
type of countenance--from the Parisian "Jakey" with villainous eyes,
sharp features and black soaplocks, to the jolly old patriarch, gray and
stout, and somewhat stiff in the joints, who has been a cab-driver for
over forty years perhaps--presents itself to your view. The best way to
engage a cab is by observing the face of the driver, not the condition
of the vehicle or that of the horse. The Parisian cabmen wear no
uniform, the high glazed hat being the only article of attire which is
universally adopted. Even the red waistcoat, once a distinctive mark of
their calling, is gradually falling into disuse, and every variety of
coat and overcoat may be seen, liveries past private service being very
generally adopted. Any overcharge may be reclaimed by the passenger by
the simple process of making a complaint before the nearest chef de
police. In past days the coachman thus complained against was forced to
go in person to the complainant to beg his or her pardon, and to pay
over the extra sum demanded. A frightful catastrophe which occurred some
twenty years ago put an end to this form of retribution. On the 16th of
September, 1855, M. Juge, director of the normal school at Douai, took a
cab in the Place de la Concorde and went for a drive in the Bois de
Boulogne. The driver, one Collignon, insisted on being paid more than
his legal fare, and M. Juge forwarded his complaint to the prefecture of
police the next day. Collignon was condemned to make restitution in
person to M. Juge. He sold his furniture, purchased a pair of pistols
and went on the appointed day to the house of M. Juge in the Rue
d'Enfer. No hard words passed between them, but while the gentleman was
in the act of signing the receipt the coachman drew out one of his
pistols and shot him through the head, killing him instantly. Collignon
was at once arrested: he was tried and condemned to death, and expiated
his crime on the scaffold on the 6th of December following. Since that
event another system of restitution has been followed, the sum exacted
in excess of the legal fare being deposited at the prefecture of police,
whither the traveler is compelled to go in quest of it.

At the prefecture of police is likewise situated the storehouse of
articles forgotten or left behind in public carriages. According to the
law, every coachman is commanded to inspect carefully his carriage after
the occupant has departed, and to deposit every article left therein,
were it but an odd glove, in the storehouse above mentioned. Each object
is inscribed in a register and bears a particular number, and the number
of the cab in which it was left as well. These articles fill a large
room, whereof the contents are ever changing, and which is always full.
Umbrellas, muffs, opera-glasses, pocket-books (sometimes containing
thousands of francs) are among the most usual deposits. In one year
there were found in the cabs of Paris over twenty thousand objects,
among which were six thousand five hundred umbrellas. Should the article
bear the address of the owner, he is at once apprised by letter of its
whereabouts; otherwise, it is kept till called for, and if never claimed
it becomes the property of the city at the end of three years, and is
sold at auction. A vast row of underground apartments is appropriated to
the unclaimed articles--dim cellar-rooms, lighted with gas. There may be
seen umbrellas by the hundred or the thousand, strapped together in
bundles and stacked up like fagots. Everything is registered, numbered
and catalogued, and if returned to the owner his address and the date
of delivery are carefully noted. The strict surveillance of the police
contributes greatly toward keeping the Parisian cabman honest. Instances
are on record where costly sets of jewels, bags of napoleons and
pocket-books crammed with bank-notes have been faithfully deposited at
the prefecture by their finders. On the other hand, an anecdote is told
of a cab-driver in whose vehicle a gentleman chanced to leave his
pocket-book, containing fifty thousand francs which he had just won at
play. He traced his cabman to the stable, where he was in the act of
feeding his horse, opened the carriage-door, and found his pocket-book
lying untouched upon the floor. On learning what a prize he had missed
the coachman incontinently hung himself.

The great source of supply for public vehicles in Paris is the Compagnie
Générale des Voitures, one of the most gigantic of the great enterprises
of Paris. It possesses five thousand cabs and over two thousand handsome
and stylish voitures de remise. It furnishes every style; of carriage
for hire, from the superb private-looking barouche or landau, with
servants in gorgeous livery and splendid blooded horses, or the showy
pony-phaeton and low victoria of the _cocotte du grand monde_, down to
the humble one-horse cab. This beneficent company will furnish you, if
desired, with a princely equipage, with armorial bearings, family
liveries, etc., all complete and got up specially to suit the ideas of
the hirer. Nine-tenths of the elegant turnouts in Paris are supplied in
this manner. There is a regular tariff for everything: each additional
footman costs so much, there is a fixed charge for powder, for
postilions, for a _chasseur_ decked with feathers and gold lace. You can
be as elegant as you please without purchasing a single accessory of
your equipage.

The cab-horses of the Compagnie Générale are usually brought from
Normandy, and belong to a specially hardy race, such a one being needed
to endure the privations and trials to which a Parisian cab-horse is
exposed. Each horse has to be gradually initiated into the duties of
his new calling: he has to be trained to eat at irregular hours, to
sleep standing, and to endure the fatigues of the Parisian streets. Were
the country-bred horse to be put at once to full city work, he would die
in a week. He is first sent out for a quarter of a day; then after a
week or two for half a day; then for a whole day; and when accustomed to
that he is considered fit for night-work. The horses of the Compagnie
Générale remain in the stable one day out of every three. If well fed,
well kept and well looked after, the life of a Paris cab-horse may be
prolonged from three to five years, but the latter is the extreme limit.

The Compagnie Générale not only buys its own horses, but constructs its
own carriages. Its coachmen are obliged to pass through a preliminary
examination, not only as to their capabilities for driving, but as to
their knowledge of the streets of Paris. But the passage of the law of
1866 has let loose upon the community a swarm of ignorant coachmen, who,
assuming the reins and whip, in some instances without any knowledge
even of the great thoroughfares of Paris, will lead their unhappy hirer
a pretty dance, particularly if he or she is a stranger on a first visit
to the great city. I know of one instance where a lady, desirous of
visiting the Pare Monceau, was taken to the extreme northern boundary of
the city limits, and was only rescued by the intervention of the police.
Then one must be very particular as to the pronunciation of the name of
the street, as so many streets exist in Paris the names of which closely
resemble each other when spoken, such as the Rue de Téhéran and the Rue
de Turin, the Rue du Marl and the Rue d'Aumale, etc. And if your
coachman _can_ make a mistake, you may rest assured he will do it.

The Parisian cab is not, like its London compeer, a prohibited pariah of
a vehicle, excluded from parks or the court-yards of palaces. You can go
to call at the Élysée or to attend a ball there in a cab if you like,
and the Bois de Boulogne or the Pare Monceau is as free to that plebeian
vehicle as to the landau of a prince. And if one attends a ball in
Paris, there is no need to engage a carriage to return home in.
Attracted by the lights, the cabmen station their vehicles in long lines
in the neighborhood of any mansion where such a festivity is taking
place, waiting patiently till three, four and five o'clock in the
morning for a chance of conveying home some of the merrymakers. The only
instance in which I ever heard of their failing to be on hand on such an
occasion was at a large fancy ball where the German was kept up till six
o'clock in the morning. The gay troupe issued forth into the golden
glowing sunshine of the April morning, and found not a single cab in
attendance; so powdered and brocaded Marquises, white-satin clad
"Mignons," Highlanders, Turks and Leaguers were forced to walk to their
homes, in many instances miles away, to the immense amusement of the
street-sweepers and naughty little boys, the only Parisians astir at
that hour of the city's universal repose.

L.H.H.




A NEW MUSEUM AT ROME.


A new museum of sculpture at Rome! One would have thought that it could
hardly be needed. Besides three vast collections--that of the Lateran,
that of the Capitol, and that wondrous world of antique sculpture at the
Vatican, itself, in fact, three museums, and each of the three alone
matchless in the world--we have the work of the hands that lived and
worked here a couple of thousands of years ago in every villa, in every
garden, almost at every corner. And yet we need, and have just
established, another museum of ancient sculpture. We are now cutting new
lines of streets--not, as you are doing, on the surface of a soil that
has never been moved save by the forces of Nature since first the
Creator divided the sea from the dry land, but--among the débris of the
successive civilizations of more than three thousand years. The laying
of our gas- and water-pipes breaks the painting on the walls of
banquet-halls whose last revel was disturbed by the irruption of the
barbarian. Our "main drainage" lies among the temples of gods whose
godlike forms are found mutilated and prostrate among the fallen
columns and tumbled architraves and cornices of their shrines.

But if no awe of the mighty past prevents the speculator and contractor
of our day from marching his army of excavators in an undeviating and
unyielding line impartially athwart the temples, the palaces, the
theatres, the baths of the perished world beneath their feet, yet in
these days of ours the work is done reverently, at least so far as not
only to respect, but to gather up with the most scrupulous care, every
available fragment of the art, and even of the common life, of those
vanished generations. If the day shall come when some future people
shall yet once again build their city on this same eternal site, and
some future social cataclysm shall have overwhelmed the works and
civilization of the present time, those future builders will not find
walls constructed in great part of the fragments of statues and the
richly-carved friezes of yet older builders and artists, as we have
found. The Romans of the present day are, it must be admitted, fully
alive to the inappreciable value of the wondrous heritage they possess
in this kind; and every fragment of it is carefully and jealously
gathered and stored. And hence is the need of a new museum, and hence
will be the need of other new museums--who shall say how many? For truly
this Roman soil seems inexhaustible in buried treasures. There seems no
likelihood that the vein should be exhausted or die out. Every now and
then the excavators come upon "a fault," as the miners say, but the vein
is soon struck again.

And so the new museum at the Capitol has been rendered necessary. It was
inaugurated on the 25th of February in this year. It consists of twelve
rooms or galleries, part of which occupy the site of the apartments
which used to contain the archives, now moved to other quarters, and
part, including a large octagonal hall, the principal feature of the new
museum, have been newly constructed on ground which used to be the
garden of the Conservatori, the ancient municipal officers of the city,
so called. The entrance is by the main staircase of the palazzo of the
Conservatori, which is the building that forms the side of the square of
the Capitol to the right hand of the visitor as he ascends the
magnificent flight of steps from the Via di Ara Coeli. The steep sides
of the Capitoline Hill on either side of these steps has been recently
turned into a very well-kept and pretty garden, among the lawns and
shrubberies of which the attention of the stranger, as he ascends, may
be attracted by a neatly-painted iron cage in front of the mouth of a
little cavern in the rock, which is inhabited by a she-wolf in memorial
of the earliest traditions of the place. Memorials, indeed, are not
wanting at every step, and from the first window of the staircase as the
visitor ascends to the museum on the first floor he may look down on the
Tarpeian Rock.

The public functionaries of all sorts here do so much of their work in a
manner which gives rise to much discontentment among the Romans, and
would by the people of better-ruled countries be deemed wholly
intolerable, that it is a pleasure to be able to say that upon this
occasion the municipality has done what it had to do thoroughly well.
The galleries and rooms of the new establishment are decorated in
admirably good taste in the Pompeian style, the walls being colored in
panels and borders of blue and red on a buff ground. They are
excellently well lighted, and the visitor is not hunted round the rooms
by an attendant anxious only to get his tedious task over, but is
allowed to wander about among the treasures around him at his own
discretion, and to spend the whole day there, or as much of it as lies
between 10 A.M. and 3 P.M., if he pleases. A sufficient catalogue,
accompanied by a map of the place, is purchasable at the doors for a
couple of francs, and the visitor is required to pay half a franc for
his entrance. This last regulation is in accordance with a law recently
passed by the legislature establishing an entrance-fee at the doors of
all public galleries and museums throughout Italy. Heretofore the
entrance to all such places was entirely free. But, seeing that the
country really needs the assistance to be obtained from this source, it
cannot be said to be acting otherwise than reasonably in making such a
charge; and probably no one of the thousands who come to Italy to profit
by her artistic treasures will ever grudge the payment of the small fee
demanded; the only question being whether the measure is on the whole a
profitable one financially, of which I do not feel quite sure.

The first landing-place of the vast staircase and the ante-room at the
top of it are lined with the more interesting and perfect of the pagan
inscriptions which the recent movements of the soil have brought to
light. Of course, the majority of these present no specialties
distinguishing them from the thousands of similar inscriptions with
which the world has long since been familiar. But there are some among
them which contribute useful fragments of knowledge to the attempts of
our antiquaries to construct a satisfactory plan of the ancient
city--dedications of statues, showing what god or goddess inhabited such
or such a shrine, and the like. The letters of these inscriptions have
been rendered more easily legible by restoring the scarlet coloring of
them, as has been done in the case of those at the Vatican.

The visitor next enters a very long corridor or gallery giving access to
the various halls and rooms, and adorned with a series of modern busts
of the men of whom Italy has most reason to be proud. Some among them
are of much merit.

Then comes the gallery of the bronzes. In this department the late finds
have been very numerous and extremely interesting. Among the objects
which will immediately attract the visitor's eye as he enters the
principal room are a litter and a biga or chariot. In both cases of
course only fragments of the bronze remain, but they are sufficient to
have enabled skilled antiquaries to reconstruct the entire litter and
the entire chariot. The latter is very specially interesting. The plates
of embossed and chiseled bronze which encased the body of the chariot
are figured with admirably-worked subjects in basso-rilievo, many of
them relating to the "wondrous tale of Troy." This invaluable specimen
was the gift to the museum of that eminent and liberal archæologist,
Signor A. Castellani, of whose matchless collection of Etruscan jewelry
I wrote in a former number of this Magazine. The remaining portions of
the bronze- and iron-work of the litter, with its arrangement of poles
for carrying it, somewhat after the fashion of a sedan-chair, though the
whole of the apparatus is much lighter, are more fragmentary, but yet
sufficient for the reconstruction of a specimen illustrative to the
classical reader of many a passage in the ancient writers. Under No. 10
the visitor will find the small statue of an hermaphrodite in bronze,
fashioned as the bearer of a lamp--a statue of very great delicacy and
beauty.

The next room is that of the medals and coins, the number of which will
probably surprise the visitor not a little. The gold coins and the
better-preserved and more interesting specimens are shown single under
cleverly-arranged glass cases. The more ordinary results of the finds
which are almost daily being made have been consigned in promiscuous
heaps to huge glass vases, whose tops, however, are carefully sealed
down. The large collections of the _æs rude signatum_ of the consular
and of the imperial families, in bronze, in silver and in gold, together
with some mediæval specimens, are ranged around the walls.

Then we come to the sculpture, the main scope of the new museum, which
is distributed in a large vestibule, in a noble octagonal central hall
and in a long gallery. It was an excellent idea, adding much to the
interest which every stranger in Rome will take in the museum, to place
on each specimen a placard specifying the locality in which it was
discovered and the date of the finding. And this information is
admirably supplemented by a map hung against the wall showing in detail
the relative positions of all the places which have yielded up these
long-buried treasures. The number of specimens of sculpture is in all
one hundred and thirty-three; and it is impossible, without letting this
notice run to an immoderate length, to attempt to give an adequate
account of the various objects, or even of the principal among them.
There is a richly-ornamented and very characteristic head of Commodus,
which really looks as if it might have come from the sculptor's hands
yesterday. A colossal bust of Mæcenas, also the gift of Signor
Castellani, a bust of Tiberius, a small statue of the child Hercules, a
Venus Anadyomene, may be, and many others might be, mentioned. The
last-named is a very lovely statue of a young girl entirely nude. The
archæologists have chosen to call it a Venus, but it is to my thinking
clear that it never was intended for the laughter-loving goddess. The
expression of the face is perfectly and beautifully chaste, and indeed a
little sad. I should say that it must have been a nymph coming from the
bath, and just about to clothe herself with the drapery thrown over a
broken column at her knee as soon as she shall have completed the
arrangement of her tresses, with which her hands are (or, alas! were,
for the arms are wanting) engaged.

Room No. 10 contains a very extensive and most interesting collection of
ancient pottery. There are many of the painted vases with which the
world has become so well acquainted, and which, as being the more showy
objects, will on his first entrance attract the eye of the visitor. But
if he will with loving patience examine the vast numbers of utensils of
every sort which have been with the utmost care sifted, one might almost
say, from out of the mass of débris which the recent excavations have
thrown up, he will find an amount of suggestive illustration of the old
pagan life of two thousand years ago which cannot fail to interest and
instruct him.

T.A.T.




OUR FOREIGN SURNAMES.


It is interesting as well as amusing to read the foreign names upon the
signs in the streets of our cities and towns, and observe the number of
nationalities thereon represented, together with the peculiarities of
form and meaning displayed by the names themselves.

German names meet the eye everywhere, and are usually very outlandish in
appearance, while many of them have significations which are
conspicuously and ludicrously inappropriate. For example, a lager-beer
saloon in one of our large cities is kept by Mr. Heiliggeist ("Holy
Ghost"); a cigar-shop in another place belongs to Mr. Priesterjahn
("Prester John"); while the pastor of a devout German flock in a third
locality is the Rev. Mr. Wuestling ("low scoundrel"). The Hon. Carl
Schurz, too, is hardly the sort of man to be named "apron," though it is
certainly true that his name is in this country sometimes pronounced
"Shirts."

Other branches of the great Teutonic family have many representatives
among us, and their names seem, to the uninitiated, even more fearfully
and wonderfully constructed than those of their German cousins. It
produces a good deal of surprise in the mind of an American to see on
the sign of a tradesman from Belgium the familiar name of Cox spelled
"Kockx;" and the Norwegian patronymic Trondhjemer ("Drontheimer"),
though a very mild specimen of the language, has a formidable aspect to
the general beholder.

The German-Hebrew names display such an exuberant Eastern fancy in their
composition as to suggest the inquiry whether they are not really but
German translations of their possessors' original Oriental titles. It is
not unlikely that this was the origin of names like Rosenthal ("Vale of
Roses"), Lilienhain ("Meadow of Lilies"), Liebenstrom ("Stream of
Love"), and Goldenberg ("Golden Mount").

The Teutonic names, whether German, Scandinavian or Flemish, do not, as
a rule, seem by any means so unpronounceable as those pertaining to
foreigners of Slavonic race. The Russian, Polish and Bohemian
appellations, which occur frequently in some sections of our country, so
often begin with the extraordinary combination _cz_ that many Americans,
believing that nothing but a convulsive sneeze could meet the
necessities of such a case, decline trying to pronounce them at all. But
the difficulties which these Slavonic names apparently offer would, in a
great measure, be removed by a uniform system of orthography. The
combination _cz_, for instance, corresponds to our _ch_, and the Polish
cognomen Czajkowski becomes much less exasperating when spelled, as it
would be in English, "Chycovsky." The same thing is true, to a great
extent, of the Hungarian names, which are not rare in our larger cities.
They, too, would be greatly simplified to us by being spelled according
to English rules. A very frequent combination in Hungarian names, that
of _sz_ is really the same as our _ss_; while _s_ without the _z_ is
pronounced _sh_. The Hungarian name Szemelenyi under our system of
spelling would therefore be "Semelenye," which is less discouraging.

The foreign names in the United States that really present the most
serious difficulties to the native citizen are unquestionably the Welsh.
Some of the obstacles to easy pronunciation may even in their case be
removed by adaptation to our orthography; as is shown by the name Hwg
("hog"), which would be spelled by us "Hoog." But there are so many
sounds in Welsh that are not only unknown, but almost inconceivable to
English-speaking people, that the difficulties would still be very far
from being overcome. And some of these peculiar utterances are expressed
in Welsh by combinations of the Roman characters which in English stand
for familiar and simple sounds; so that an attempt to reduce the two
languages to a common system of spelling would not be at all easy. The
combination _ll_ stands in Welsh for a terrific gurgling, gasping sound,
which when once heard swiftly puts an end to all the romantic
associations that the name of Llewellyn has derived from history and
poetry.

But all such foreign--or, more strictly speaking, un-English--names,
after being in this country a generation or two, become, in a certain
sense, "acclimated." They undergo a change in pronunciation, in
spelling, or in both, which removes, in effect, the difficulties that
originally characterized them. In this way the German names Schneider,
Meyer, Kaiser, Kraemer, Schallenberger, Schwarzwaelder, and a host of
others have become, respectively, Snyder, Myers, Keyser, Creamer,
Shellabarger, Swartswelder, etc. Sometimes, too, an American name more
or less similar in sound or meaning has been taken or given in place of
the original German title; as when Loewenstein ("Lion-rock") was
exchanged for Livingston, and Albrecht ("Albert") for Allbright.

The old "Knickerbocker" names of the Middle States have, in most
instances, retained their Dutch spelling intact, but have generally been
subjected to a similar process of adaptation in sound. The same may be
said of the French names in this country. Their spelling has, as a rule,
been preserved, while their sound has been Americanized. In this way De
Rosset has acquired the pronunciation Derrozett, and Jacques has come to
be called either Jaquess or Jakes. Many French patronymics, such as the
old South Carolina Huguenot name _Marion_, exhibiting nothing peculiarly
French in their forms, are now pronounced entirely in accordance with
our rules, and their national origin is preserved by tradition alone.
Some French titles, however, having undergone only a partial change in
pronunciation, survive in a hybrid form as to sound, though their
spelling remains unaltered. Specimens of this class may be found in such
names as _Huger_, pronounced "Huzhée;" _Fouché_, commonly called
"Fooshée;" and _Deveraux_ or _Devereux_, now converted into "Débro" or
"Dévroo." The only very noticeable change that has taken place in the
orthography of our French names is that the article has been joined to
the noun in many cases where they were originally separate. In this way
_La Ramie_, _La Rabie_, _La Reintrée_, etc. are now usually spelled Laramie,
Larabie (or, in some instances, Larrabee), Lareintree, etc.; the
pronunciation of the newer form being Americanized in the usual way. But
this change in form is one which might easily have occurred even in
France.

Most of these French and Dutch names have been in the country for a
comparatively long time, and, indeed, many of them date back to the
early colonial period. Like the Spanish-American names of Texas,
California, Florida and Louisiana, to which the same rule generally
applies, they belonged to members of organized foreign communities,
proportionately large enough to preserve their names from a complete
assimilation with the ideas of the English-American population. And in a
lesser degree this is also true of those early German emigrants, mainly
from the Palatinate, who settled in Pennsylvania, Western Maryland and
the Shenandoah Valley.

The tendency at the present day, however, seems to be strongly in favor
of the process mentioned first--that of changing the sound of the names
to suit American ears, and altering the spelling so as to conform to the
new pronunciation. There is every indication that this will be done with
regard to a very large majority of the foreign surnames that have been
introduced among us within the last fifty years, or which may be brought
into our country in the future. And as the changes so made are quite
arbitrary, the result will be that the future student of American
nomenclature will often be sorely puzzled by some of the surnames to
which his attention shall be drawn.

W.W.C.




THE NEW FRENCH ACADEMICIAN.


No institution of its kind holds so eminent a place in the esteem of a
great country as the _Académie Française_. The elections are always a
matter of interest, largely shared by the cultivated
_Revue-des-Deux-Mondes_-reading world of both hemispheres; and the last
election was one which excited fully as much attention as most of its
predecessors. M. John Lemoinne, who at length summoned up courage to
present himself as a candidate, was born in London in Waterloo year,
1815, and has for a long period, probably thirty years, been, through
the _Journal des Débats_, in some sort a European power. His selection
to fill the seat of M. Jules Janin is in every way appropriate. Indeed,
it seems strange that he should have been contented to wait until he was
sixty-one to come forward for that distinction.

The foundation of the Academy is directly traceable to the meetings of
men of science at the house of M. Courart--who, early in the seventeenth
century, was for forty years its first secretary--but it unquestionably
owes to Richelieu a habitation and a name. It was formed with the
special object of preserving accuracy in the French language, to which
Frenchmen have been wont to pay an almost exclusive attention, but by
the election of M. Lemoinne the Academy will have at least one member
who is no less acquainted with another tongue.

Every one will remember old Miss Crawley's rage when she found that
Becky was trading on her connection with the democratic-aristocratic
spinster to make her way into the Faubourg St. Germain. Too impatient to
write in French, the old lady posted off a furious disavowal of the
little adventuress in vigorous vernacular, but, adds the author, as
Madame la Duchesse had only passed twenty years in England, she didn't
understand one word. It may be hoped that the new Academician will, in
conjunction with the new minister of public instruction, Mr. Waddington,
who is a Rugby and Cambridge man, have some effect in arousing his
countrymen to the study which they have heretofore so strangely
neglected of a tongue which threatens to obliterate in time the
inconveniences occasioned by the Tower of Babel. English is every day
more and more spoken, and French less and less.

In delivering his address of welcome to M. Lemoinne, M. Cavillier Fleury
said: "You are one of the creators of the discussion of foreign affairs
in the French papers: you gave them the taste for interesting themselves
in the concerns of foreign countries. Few of us before steam had
shortened distance really knew England. Voltaire had by turns glorified
and ridiculed it; De Staël had shown it to us in an agreeable book; the
witty letters of Duvergier de Hauranne had revealed the secrets of its
electoral system. Your correspondence of 1841 completed the work." He
might pertinently have added, "Because you are about the only French
newspaper writer who ever thoroughly understood the English language,
and could thus avoid ridiculous blunders."

It has been observed that the _Débats_ almost exclusively supplies the
Academy with its contingent of publicists--a circumstance accounted for
by that journal being jealous of the purity of its language, and in
other respects preserving a high and dignified standard. It has, indeed,
for an unusually long period enjoyed its reputation. French and Belgian
newspapers are very much of a mystery to an Anglo-Saxon. They seem to
flourish under conditions impracticable to American or English journals.
The _Indépendance Belge_ and the _Journal des Débats_ lie before us.
Neither of them contains sufficient advertisements to make up three of
our columns, yet their expenses must, we should suppose, especially in
the case of the _Débats_, published as it is where prices are so high,
be very large. Both these papers contain articles evidently the work of
able hands, and in the case of the _Indépendance_ the foreign
correspondence must be a very costly item, forming, as it frequently
does, five columns of a large page. The price of each is twenty
centimes--high, certainly, for a single sheet.

It has often been observed, too, that French newspaper-men seem
exceptionally well off. They frequent costly _cafés_, occasionally
indulge in _petits soupers_ in _cabinets particuliers_, and, altogether,
taking prices into account, appear to be in the enjoyment of larger
means than their brethren of the pen elsewhere. Of course, the success
of a French newspaper is, even in the absence of advertisements,
intelligible in the case of the _Figaro_ or _Petit Journal_, with their
circulation of 70,000 and 150,000 a day; but in the case of such papers
as the _Débats_, whose circulation is not very large, it is difficult to
explain.

The position of a journalist in Paris seems to stand in many respects
higher than elsewhere. Of course, the fact of contributions not being
anonymous adds immeasurably to the writer's personal importance, if it
also gets him into scrapes. Elsewhere, _editors_ are men of mark, and
certainly no one in the journalistic world can possibly be made more of
than Mr. Delane in London. But the editorial writers in his paper, who
would in Paris be men of nearly as much mark as rising members of
Parliament in England, are completely "left out in the cold," gaining no
reputation even among acquaintance, since they are required to preserve
the strictest secrecy as to their connection with the paper. Altogether,
we are disposed to believe that Paris--official "warnings," press
prosecutions and possible duels notwithstanding--must be accepted as the
journalist's paradise. To be courted, caressed and feared is as much as
any reasonable newspaper writer can expect, and a great deal more than
he is likely to get out of his work elsewhere.

R.W.




LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Cities of Northern and Central Italy. By Augustus J.C. Hare. New York:
George Routledge & Sons.


Those who know Mr. Hare's _Walks in Rome_ and _Days near Rome_ will
welcome another series of Italian itineraries from the same pen. These
volumes are primarily guide-books; they tell us the best hotels, the
price of cabs, the distances by rail or high-road. But the parts of
traveler and manual are inverted: whereas you take your _Murray_ or
_Baedeker_ in your hand and carry it whither you list, Mr. Hare takes
you by the hand, leads you in the way you should go, makes you pause the
requisite time before the things you are to look at, points to every
view, lets you miss no effect, does not force his own opinions upon you,
except now and then when he loses his temper a little on the debatable
ground between religion and politics, repeats that quotation you are
vainly trying to recall, or delights you by the beauty and aptness of a
new one. He gives to a course of systematic sight-seeing the freedom and
variety of a ramble with a cultivated and sympathetic companion. We
would not be ungrateful to that inestimable impersonality, Murray, for
all are his debtors, even Mr. Hare for the plan of his books; but,
remembering how, with the latest edition in hand, we have panted up four
or more flights of stairs in a Roman or Venetian palace in search of a
picture removed years before, we are not sorry to find him here taken to
task for leaving uncorrected statements which had ceased to be true.
Moreover, Murray is no guide in matters of art; his authorities are
often captains of the British Philistines; while Mr. Hare generally
gives all that has been said by competent judges, sometimes
imperturbably recording two conflicting opinions, and leaving the reader
to decide. The range of quotation is indeed remarkable, from Dean Milman
to Ouida, including many writers too little known in this country, such
as Burckhardt, Ampère and Street.

But it is not to the actual traveler only that these volumes will be of
use and give pleasure. They are not bad preparatory reading for those
who are going abroad, suggesting what should be studied beforehand; they
will be dear to those who sit within the blank limits of a home in this
raw New World trying to revive the fading outlines and colors of scenes
which, though unforgotten, tend to mingle with the visions of Dreamland;
and they are capital wishing-carpets for those who can travel only in
fancy. In the introduction there is an excellent passage on the
distinctive differences between the great Italian cities: "Each has its
own individual sovereignty; its own chronicles; its own politics,
domestic and foreign; its own saints, peculiarly to be revered--patrons
in peace and protectors in war; its own phase of architecture; its own
passion in architectural material, brick or stone, marble or
terra-cotta; ...its own proverbs, its own superstitions and its own
ballads." Mr. Hare contrives to convey much of the characteristic
impression of each town. Pretty little wood-cuts are called in to his
aid, but the best illustrations of his text are the poetical quotations
and exquisite prose-bits from Ruskin, Swinburne, Symonds and others
whose pens sometimes turn into the pencil of a great painter. The
author's own descriptions are extremely faithful and charming. To those
who have made the journey from Florence to Rome a single fine page of
the introduction brings back a thrill of that long ecstasy. In these few
quiet words he spreads Thrasymene before us: "It has a soft, still
beauty especially its own. Upon the vast expanse of shallow pale-green
waters, surrounded by low-lying hills, storms have scarcely any effect,
and the birds which float over it and the fishing-boats which skim
across its surface are reflected as in a mirror. At Passignano and
Torricella picturesque villages, chiefly occupied by fishermen, jut out
into the water, but otherwise the reedy shore is perfectly desolate on
this side, though beyond the lake convents and villages crown the hills
which rise between us and the pale violet mountains beyond
Montepulciano." Nothing can be more lifelike than the following picture
of the tract around Siena: "Scarcely do we pass beyond the rose-hung
walls which encircle the fortifications than we are in an upland desert,
piteously bleak in winter, but most lovely when spring comes to clothe
it. The volcanic nature of the soil in these parts gives a softer tint
than usual to the coloring. The miles upon miles of open gray-green
country, treeless, hedgeless, houseless, swoop toward one another with
the strangest sinuosities and rifts and knobs of volcanic earth, till at
last they sink in faint mists, only to rise again in pink and blue
distances, so far off, so pale and aërial, that they can scarcely be
distinguished from the atmosphere itself. Only here and there a lonely
convent with a few black cypress spires clustered round it, or a
solitary cross which the peasants choose as their midday resting-place,
cuts the pellucid sky. Here in these great uplands, where all is so
immense, the very sky itself seems more full of space than elsewhere: it
is not the deep blue of the South, but so soft and aërial that it looks
as if it were indeed the very heaven itself, only very far away."

The chapter on Ravenna is the best in the book: it is an admirable
piece of work, a complete monograph. Everything is there--history,
legends, art--and the quotations and illustrations are peculiarly
beautiful and convincing.

Mr. Hare, like many gentlemen of similar tastes and tendencies, does not
seem to have a strong sense of humor, although now and then he
condescends to smile as he repeats some local legend, such as that of
the crucifix at S. Francesco delle Cariere, which awoke an overwearied
devotee, who had fallen asleep on his knees before it, with "un
soavissimo schiaffo," the gentlest slap, and bade him go to sleep in the
dormitory. He speaks of an ancient custom, not mentioned by _Murray_, of
harboring lost cats in the cloister of San Lorenzo at Florence: "The
feeding of the cats, which takes place when the clock strikes twelve, is
a most curious sight.... From every roof and arch and parapet-wall,
mewing, hissing and screaming, the cats rush down to devour." It sounds
like a wicked parody on the poetic assembling of the Venetian pigeons at
the daily scattering of grain in the square of St. Mark's.

There are a few little slips--so few that it is strange there should be
any--among which is his mention of the "St. Christopher" of the doges'
palace as "the only known fresco of Titian," forgetting the celebrated
one in the Scuola del Santo at Padua, of which he has spoken in a
previous volume. He occasionally makes an assertion to which many will
demur; as, for instance, that "The real glory of the Italian towns
consists not in their churches, but in their palaces." The best
refutation of this paradox is in his own pages. Most people will be
startled, too, by hearing of "the want of architectural power in Michael
Angelo," although this remark is followed by a criticism which strikes
us as extremely just on the stupendous slumberers on the monuments of
the Medici: "The disproportionate figures are slipping off the pitiable
pedestals which support them." Among the throng of indefinable emotions
and sensations which beset one in the Medicean chapel of San Lorenzo, we
have always been conscious of distinct discomfort from the attitude of
these sleepers, who could only maintain their posture by an immense
muscular effort incompatible with their sublime repose. As regards
practical matters, few travelers or foreign residents in Italy will
endorse Mr. Hare's statement that making a bargain in advance for
lodgings or conveyances is not a necessary precaution, or his denial of
the almost universal attempt to overcharge which is recognized and
resisted by all natives. But Mr. Hare has illusions, and Italian probity
is one of them. All his remarks about the present government of Italy
(of which he speaks as "the Sardinian government" with an emphasis akin
to the B_u_onapart_e_ of old French monarchists) are to be taken with
the utmost reservation, as most readers will see for themselves after
meeting his allusion to the massacre at Perugia in 1859 as in some sort a
defensive action on the part of the papal troops. Mr. Hare's reasoning
on all that relates to this subject is weak and illogical, sometimes
puerile. Any one who loves what is venerable and picturesque must share
the impatience and regret with which he sees so much beauty and
antiquity disappearing before the besom of progress or the rage for
improvement, especially in Rome. But we must remember that Italy is not
the first, but the last, European country in which this has come about:
in England, France and Germany what delights the eyes of the few has
long been giving place to what betters the condition or serves the
interest of the masses. Moreover, the Italians themselves, of whatever
political complexion, black or red, are totally indifferent to these
losses and changes which we lament so deeply. If there be a sad want of
good taste and good sense in Cavaliere Rosa's management of the
excavations, there is at least no lack of zeal. Formerly, next to
nothing was done to preserve or protect the monuments, and many of the
finest were irrecognizable and all but inaccessible from dirt and
dilapidation. The reverence of the papal Romans for their treasures of
either classic or Christian art is well illustrated by Retzsch's
outline, in which a lovely statue of Apollo, broken and half buried,
defiled by dogs and swine, serves as a seat for a loutish herd, who
tries to copy a miserable modern Virgin and Child from a wayside shrine.
Such a temper of mind in an intelligent, high-principled Englishman can
only arise from a moral bias which distorts every view; but the
discussion of these causes and effects would be out of place here, and
we only smile in passing at the charge of "excessive cruelty" in the
suppression of the monastery of San Vivaldo. Mr. Hare's treatment of the
legitimate topics of his book deserves all admiration and praise. His
style is simple, pleasant and picturesque; in future editions a few
careless tricks should be corrected, such as the use of _from_, with
_hence_, _thence_, _whence_, and a muddled sentence here and there, of
which a very slight instance occurs in the pretty extract about Lake
Thrasymene: there is a most confusing one about a girl who refused to
kiss the emperor Otho, which reads as if she would not kiss her own
father. It would be almost a pity to spoil a laugh by particularizing
whether a tree or nut is meant in the story of "S. Vivaldo, who became a
hermit and _lived in a hollow chestnut_, in which he was found dead in
1300."




_Books Received._


The Little, or A, B, C, Book of German; that is, High School Primer;
Child's Story Book and Dictionary. By Professor C.C. Schaeffer.
Philadelphia: Charles Brothers & Co.

Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies. By Major
Henry M. Robert, U.S.A. Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Co.

Cabin and Plantation Songs, as sung by the Hampton Students. Arranged by
Thomas P. Fenner. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The Spectator. (Selected Papers.) By Addison and Steele. Edited by John
Habberton. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Characteristics from the Writings of J.H. Newman. By Wm. Samuel Lilly.
New York: D. and J. Sadlier & Co.

Brief Biographies. Vol. III. French Political Leaders. By Edward King.
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The Life of William, Earl of Shelburne. Vol. II. By Lord Edmond
Fitzmaurice. New York: MacMillan & Co.

Jonathan: A Novel. By C.C. Fraser-Tytler. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New
York: Henry Holt & Co.

Faith and Modern Thought. By Ransom B. Welch, D.D., LL.D. New York: G.P.
Putnam's Sons.

Fetich in Theology; or, Doctrinalism Twin to Ritualism. By John Miller.
New York: Dodd & Mead.

The American Kennel and Sporting Field. By Arnold Burges. New York: J.B.
Ford & Co.

On Dangerous Ground. By Mrs. Bloomfield H. Moore. Philadelphia: Porter &
Coates.

Filth-Diseases, and their Prevention. By John Simon, M.D. Boston: James
Campbell.