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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
OF
POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

OLD SERIES, VOL. XXXVI.--NEW SERIES, VOL. X.

PHILADELPHIA: J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
1885.


Entered according to Act of Congress,
in the year 1885, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

LIPPINCOTT'S PRESS, _Philadelphia_.

       *       *       *       *       *

CONTENTS.

[Note: The sign * denotes the letters or pages which are missing on the
original manuscript.]

Art of Reading, The, _Grace R. Peirce_
Aurora, _Mary Agnes Tincker_
Backwoods Romance, A, _Susan Hartley Swett_
Birds of a Texan Winter, _Edward G. Bruce_
Brown, Anthony Calvert, _P. Deming_
Chapter of Mystery, A, _Charles Morris_
Cookham Dean, _Margaret Bertha Wright_
Dieu Dispose, _Nathan Clifford Brown_
Drama in the Nursery, The, _Norman Pearson_
Eye of a Needle, The, _Sophie Swett_
Ferryman's Fee, The, _Margaret Vandegrift_
Fishing in Elk River, _Tobe Hodge_
Forest Beauty, A, _Maurice Thompson_
Friend George Randall, My, _Frank Parke_
Grant, General, at Frankfort, _Alfred E. Lee_
Hoosier Idyl, A, _Louise Coffin Jones_
In a Suppressed Tuscan Monastery, _Kate Johnston Matson_
Lady Lawyer's First Client, The, _Thomas Wharton_      ,
Letters and Reminiscences of Charles Reade ,_Kinahan Cornwallis_
"Mees", _Charles Dunning_
Mickley, Joseph J., _J. Bunting_
Muster-Day in New England, _Frederick G. Mather_
New York Libraries, _Charles Burr Todd_
Next Vacation, The, _Alice Wellington Rollins_
North-River Ferry, A, _F.N. Zabriskie_
Nos Pensions
On this Side, _F.C. Baylor_
Parisian *, The, _Theodore Child_
P* of Archaeology, The, _Ernest Ingersoll_      *
* the Short-Story, The, _Brander Matthews_      *
* Southwest, The; _Edmund Kirke_      *
*t, A, _Margaret Vandegrift_      *
*ple, The, _M.H. Catherwood_      *
* or Free Classic Architecture, _George C. Mason, Jr._      *
*t, A, _C.W. Wilmerding_      *
*ning, _W.W. Crane_      *
* Yesterday and To-Day, _Alice King Hamilton_      *
Roughing it in Palestine, _Charles Wood_
Salt-Mine, In a, _Margery Deane_
Scenes of Charlotte Bronté's Life in Brussels, _Theo. Wolfe, M.D._
Scottish Crofters, The, _David Bennett King_
Second Rank, The, _Felix L. Oswald_
Story of an Italian Workwoman's Life, The, _Marie L. Thompson_
Story of a Story, The, _Horace E. Scudder_
Substitute, The, _James Payn_
Temple Pilgrimage, A, _Henry Frederick Reddall_
Texas Sheep-Ranch, On a, _E.C. Reynolds_
Tobacco-Plantation, A, _Philip A. Bruce_
Truth about Dogs, The, _F.N. Zabriskie_
Turtling on the Outer Reef, _C.F. Holder_
Van, _Charles King, U.S.A._
Ville, Our, _Margaret Bertha Wright_
White-Whalers, The _C.F. Holder_




LITERATURE OF THE DAY, comprising Reviews of the following Works:


Across the Chasm
Agassiz, Louis: His Life and Correspondence. Edited by Elizabeth Gary
Agassiz
Allen, Willis Boyd--Pine-Cones
At the Red Glove
Bates, Arlo--A Wheel of Fire
Beers, Henry A.--Nathaniel Parker Willis
Behler, W.H., Lieutenant, U.S.N.--The Cruise of the Brooklyn
Bompas, George O.--Life of Frank Buckland
Byron, Lord--Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Carey, Rose Nouchette--Barbara Heathcote's Trial
Carey, Eose Nouchette--For Lilias
Carryl, Charles E.--Davy the Goblin; or, What Followed Reading "Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland"
Cleveland, Rose Elizabeth--George Eliot's Poetry,
and Other Studies
Craddock, Charles Egbert--Down the Ravine
Dunning, Charlotte--Upon a Cast
Eugène Delacroix, par lui-même
Forbes, F.R.G.S., Henry O.--A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern
Archipelago.
A Narrative of Travel and Exploration from  to
Hamilton, Alice King--One of the Duanes
Harrison, Mrs. Burton--Bric-à_Brac Stories
Harte, Bret--By Shore and Sedge
Hawthorne, Julian--Love--or a Name
Holmes, Oliver Wendell--The Last Leaf
Hornaday, William T.--Two Years in the Jungle
Howard, Blanche Willis--Aulnay Tower
Howells, William D.--The Rise of Silas Lapham
Jewett, Sarah Orne--A Marsh Island
Luska, Sidney--As it was Written: A Jewish Musician's Story
Married for Fun
Noble, Edmund--The Russian Revolt: its Causes, Condition, and
Prospects
Pennell, Joseph and Elizabeth Robbins--A Canterbury Pilgrimage
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart--An Old Maid's Paradise
Pyle, Howard--Pepper and Salt; or, Seasoning for Young Folks
Pyle, Howard--Within the Capes
Roosevelt, Blanche--Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré
Rosseau, Jean--Hans Holbein
Searing, E.A.P.--A Social Experiment
Sermon on the Mount, The
Stanley, Henry M.--The Congo, and the Founding of its Free State:
A Story of Work and Exploration
Stockton, Frank R.--Rudder Grange
Tales from Many Sources
The Bar Sinister
Thompson, Maurice--At Love's Extremes
Torrey, Bradford--Birds in the Bush
Warner, Beverley Ellison--Troubled Waters
Wendell, Barrett--The Duchess Emilia
Whittier, John Greenleaf--Poems of Nature
*rs. A.L.--The Lady with the Rubies
*cles--J.F. Millet




OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP, comprising the following Articles:


* The,       "Additional Hair" Supply, The,
Art of Modern
Novel-Writing, The, *
Daniel Webster's "Moods,"
Dothegirls Hall,
Etymology of "Babe," The,
Feuds and Lynch-Law in the Southwest,
Future for Women, A,
Ice-Saints, The,
Man who Laughs, The,
Mystifications of Authoresses,
Old Songs and Sweet Singers,
Reminiscence of Harriet Martineau, A,
Svenska Maid, A,
Tourgéneff's Idea of Bazaroff,
Virginia Lady of the Old School, A,
Why we Forget Names,




POETRY:


Carcanet, A, _John B. Tabb_
Elusive, _Sarah D. Hobart_
Epitaph written in the Sand on a Butterfly Drowned in the Sea,
_Helen Gray Cone_
Into Thy Hands, _Stuart Sterne_
Mithra, _Charles L. Hildreth_
Morning, _Florence Earle Coates_
On a Noble Character marred by littleness, _Charlotte Fiske Bates_
Probation, _Florence Earle Coates_
Rose Romance, _Ada Nichols_
Shadows All, _Paul Hamilton Hayne_
Song, _Robertson Trowbridge_
"What do I Wish for You?" ,_Carlotta Perry_
Wood-Thrush at Sunset,_Mary C. Peckham_

       *       *       *       *       *


LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

_JULY, 1885_.




ON THIS SIDE.

VII.


It has not been concealed that, with all his fine qualities, Mr. Ketchum
was an obstinate man, and so, in spite of his wife's remonstrances, he
came down-stairs next morning--Sunday morning--in a dress that she had
assured him was "only fit for one's bedroom,"--namely, a very gorgeous
Oriental dressing-gown (Mabel's gift the preceding Christmas), with a fez
on his head, and on his feet a pair of slippers of amazing workmanship and
soundlessness, the joy of his feet, if not of his heart. Thus accoutred,
he prowled about on the lower floor, looking after various things, and,
going into the pantry for something, he chanced to look through the small
window used for the transmission of dishes from the next room, and saw
Parsons holding a pile of letters one by one over a steaming kettle.
Unconscious of his proximity, the respectable Parsons dexterously and
neatly opened several envelopes with a practised hand, and then
transferred the letters to her pocket, to be enjoyed at her leisure, after
which she laid hold of the kettle and retired into the kitchen beyond.

"Well, upon my word, if that isn't the coolest thing I ever saw!"
exclaimed Mr. Ketchum mentally, and, feeling that he had made a great
discovery, was at first for sharing it immediately with Parsons's mistress;
but on reflection he thought differently. "It is her funeral: I guess I
had better not meddle: there would be a great scene," he thought. "At any
rate, I'll wait until they are leaving before putting her on her guard."
He went back to the dining-room to his newspaper, and sat there until the
others came down.

Miss Noel was not long in the room before an idea struck her. "Did you not
say that your post-bag containing the night's mail would be sent over this
morning?" she asked.

"I did. It came about an hour ago," said Mr. Ketchum.

"How very nice! I hope there may be something for me. It is so very trying
to get no news from England," said Miss Noel.

"Why, Mabel had twenty-three letters laid aside for you until you should
come. Didn't she give them to you?" asked Mr. Ketchum. "Were none of those
from England?"

"Oh, yes. But that was three days since, and I've heard nothing for a
fortnight. If Parsons has _quite_ finished with the letters, I suppose I
may as well have them. And she must be, by this. Would you kindly ring and
send for them?" said Miss Noel.

"What! you know that she reads your letters?" exclaimed Mr. Ketchum,
surprised.

"Oh, dear, yes. They all do. It is very tiresome, but they will do it.
Parsons is generally good enough to let me have them quite promptly; but
she reads them, of course,--all but my cousin Blanche Best's letters.
Blanche has always been my most intimate friend, and can't bear the idea:
so she blocked the game by a most ingenious device. She writes one
sentence in French, the next in Italian, the third in English,--at least
she did until a happier plan suggested itself: now she writes English in
German text. It answers perfectly; but it is having a great effect on
Parsons, quite undermining her constitution, I fear, especially when
important things are happening at 'The Court,' where I often go. I
sometimes wickedly slip one of Blanche's letters under the pin-cushion, as
if with the intention of concealing it, and I have so enjoyed seeing
Parsons whip it under her apron when she got the chance, knowing that she
could not make out a single word. She really looked quite green afterward
for a week: pure chagrin."

"I am sure I have done everything that I could think of to keep my letters
from my man," said Sir Robert, "but quite without success. I think he
finds my correspondence a little dull sometimes, as compared with that of
a former place. He came to me from the greatest scamp in England; and I
can fancy that the letters there were very various and diverting. My own
must be altogether too ponderous and respectable for a taste formed on
sensational models."

"Well, all I have got to say is that if I caught a servant of mine at that
little game I'd make my letters uncommonly interesting reading to him; and
if the style suited him, I'd see that he got a little leisure in the
penitentiary to copy them and impress them on his mind. Do you mean to say
that you don't even discharge them for it?" said Mr. Ketchum, "I never
heard anything like it!"

"One could discharge the culprit easily enough; the trouble is that his
successor or successors would do exactly the same thing," replied Sir
Robert. "When the Barons rose, they neglected to provide a remedy for an
unforeseen nuisance, and I suppose this literary partnership of Master &
Servant, Limited, will always exist. I wrote a note once to Beazely (my
man), addressed to myself, and told him that if he disapproved of the
Conservative tone of my correspondence, as was likely, seeing that he was
a Radical, I would make an effort to get at Dilke or Bright, with a view
to an _occasional_ note at least. The envelope had been resealed, I saw
when it reached me, but Beazely had no more expression in his face than
the Sphinx. My letters, however, were not tampered with for about a week."

Mrs. Ketchum senior became fluent in her amazement: "How perfectly
dreadful! Good gracious! What did you do about your husband's letters? The
idea of sharing his letters with a servant!"

She was addressing Mrs. Sykes, who said very cheerfully in reply, "Oh,
there was never anything in his letters, except warnings to put the
servants at board-wages before I went away, and look to expenditures, and
not ask him for any more money soon. I didn't mind much. I was rather
ashamed of the spelling,--that was all. Poor dear Guy never could spell,
and I never read anything so dull as his letters,--the same thing over and
over again, till it hardly seemed worth while to open them, only for
knowing what he was up to, or when he was coming. How my poor sisters did
laugh one Christmas when I got a letter from him in Italy, saying, 'The
cole here is intense; but I have got a projick in my head, which is to get
back to England as fast as rale and steme can possibly carry me'! It
wasn't often that bad; but there was always something wrong. I can't think
how it is, for he had no end of tutors and masters, except that he
certainly was a very thick-headed fellow." She laughed merrily over the
epistolary deficiencies of her late lord as she spoke, and every one
joined her except Mrs. Ketchum, who was too shocked to countenance her.

"I saw Parsons in the very act of opening your letters this morning as I
was roaming around in my Jesuit creepers, and thought you would be
horrified; but it seems to be all right," said Mr. Ketchum, glancing down
at his slippers. "Suppose, now, we have some breakfast: it is late. We
haven't nearly as much time as the patriarchs, anyway, and so much more
use for it."

"I have been thinking it would never be ready," said Mrs. Sykes.

"And I am quite ready for it. Isn't that a nice new-laid egg for me?"
asked Miss Noel, taking her place with the others.

"Mabel, eggs for Miss Noel every morning, if she likes them, and don't you
forget it," said Mr. Ketchum. "'Trouble'? Not the least that ever was. I
have them for myself always. An egg for me must be like Caesar's wife,
--above suspicion. I have provided myself with a conscientious High-Church
hen that lays one every day of the year; though how she can think it worth
her while, when they are selling for ten cents a dozen, I can't
imagine.--What's the matter, Heathcote?"

The matter was the "Jesuit creepers" and the hen combined, which had sent
all the party into a little fit of laughter, from which Mr. Heathcote
could not recover.

"I don't see anything to double you up like a jack-knife," said Mr.
Ketchum, in allusion to his guest's way of stooping over and having the
laughs, as it were, shaken out of him by a superior force, while he got
out at intervals,--

"Jest--creep--High--such a fellow!" in staccato jerks that made every one
else laugh from sympathy.

"I call 'em that because Mother Schmidt made them for me so that I could
steal a march on my mother-in-law, and she's a Catholic and knew how to do
it. Talking of Catholics and what Washington calls the 'Peskypalians,' who
is going to church to-day?"

"I am going to walk over to Dale with Bijou Brown and her father," said
Ethel.

"That isn't as nice a church as ours. We will take the others into Kalsing,
eh, husband?" said Mabel; "that is, if they will come."

"I will go to the scaffold with Mrs. Ketchum," protested Sir Robert
gallantly. "What do you youngsters say?"

"Ramsay and I thought we would walk over to that little village on the
crest of a hill that one can see from my window," said Mr. Heathcote.

"You had much better go to church, --much better. But of course your soul
is your own," said Sir Robert.

"You won't have much body left when you get back: it is a good twenty
miles," remarked Mr. Ketchum.

"Oh, that is nothing." replied Mr. Ramsay.

"Forty miles there and back! Are they crazy?" Mrs. Ketchum asked of Mabel
_sotto voce_; to which a smile and shake of the head came in answer.--"The
day is very damp, Job. I am almost afraid to go out; but it is my duty,
and I will."

"That's right, ma. Do your duty. It is a good earthly as well as heavenly
investment," replied Mr. Ketchum.

"But I wish, son, that you would live in Kalsing, next to the church, or
in New York, which would be better. I saw a beautiful house advertised in
the neighborhood of Trinity Church the other day, and wrote to ask about
it," said Mrs. Ketchum, who was always in spirit moving the family away
from Fairfield.

"You are too speculative, ma, entirely," said he. "You are like my partner,
Richardson, who would write to ask the Czar what he would take for the
Winter Palace, if I'd let him, when if steamships were a dollar a dozen he
couldn't put up enough to buy a gang-plank. I can't move next to a church,
because all you womenites belong to different ones; but I can take a room
for you in the steeple and have an elevator put in that will make close
connection with the services, if you like."

"Don't be irreverent, my son," said Mrs. Ketchum, who, like some other
Protestants, believed in an infallible steeple, if not an infallible Pope.
"I don't expect _my_ wishes to be considered in anything."

"Oh, come, now, ma; that isn't fair. Except that I married to suit myself,
which is about the only foolish thing that I have done, I have been
tolerably obedient, I think," said Mr. Ketchum, aware that he was on
dangerous ground.

"Do tell us about it. You wanted him to marry some one else,--some one
with a fortune, didn't you?" said Mrs. Sykes. "Quite natural, I am sure."

"She wanted me to marry the ugliest woman east of the Rockies," said Mr.
Ketchum. "But I couldn't stand that face behind my cups and saucers three
hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and I bolted to England, where my
wife picked me up."

"She wasn't so ugly at all, Job, except that her nose was a little
aquiline," protested Mrs. Ketchum.

"Aquiline as a camel's back," asserted her son, in an aside.

"And her hair _was_ rather auburn," Mrs. Ketchum went on, in reluctant
concession.

"Call it pink, as the English do their hunting-coats," suggested he,
smiling.

"But such a dear, _good_ girl, you quite forgot that she wasn't exactly
handsome" ("No, not precisely," interjected he) "when you came to know
her."

"That I _never_ did. It might as a speculation have done to get a cast of
her face for andirons to keep the American child from falling into the
fire; but _marry her_! Good Lord! When I eat anything now that disagrees
with me, I dream of Emily's mouth," affirmed Mr. Ketchum, with the most
laughing mirth in his eyes, his mobile features expressing volumes.

"Her mouth _was_ large, and her teeth _a little_ prominent. But you shall
not abuse Emily any more. You would have been very happy with her, I can
tell you," asserted Mrs. Ketchum. "You would have got over her mouth."

"I might in time have got _around_ it, and I could easily have got _into_
it, but I should never have got _over_ it in the world," affirmed Mr.
Ketchum, with decision. "I would rather be married to that Puseyite there,
unhappy as I am."

This closed the little duel between the mother and son, and another laugh
drowned Mabel's remark to Miss Noel, which was, "Husband is in one of his
joking moods, and does not mean that he is _really_ unhappy at all. He
should not say such things, they are so very misleading."

When quiet was restored, a discussion followed about the parties in the
English Church, and, the question being raised as to who was the head of
the Low Church party, Mr. Ketchum had just said, "Why, _Lucifer_, of
course," when, amid general merriment, Miss Brown walked in, saying, "I
never heard of such an uproarious Sunday party. Are you ready, Ethel? We
ought to be off,"--which practically ended the meal, for first Mr. Ramsay
and then the others left the table, he to talk to Bijou, they to get ready
for church. Job's eyes followed Mr. Ramsay, and he said to Sir Robert,
"What a charming girl Mrs. De Witt was in the old Cheltenham days!
Heathcote didn't make the landing there, and I'm sorry."

"So am I. She is an immense favorite of mine," said Sir Robert. "As
charming as ever! It was a more serious thing than I thought it would be.
I doubt whether he ever marries."

"She was a born enchantress, Jenny was," he replied. "Some women are like
poison oak,--once get them in your system, and they will break out on you
every spring for fifty years, if you live that long, fresh and painful as
ever. But as for his marrying, some one of our girls will enter for the
Consolation stakes, very likely, and he will be married before he knows
what has hurt him."

"A consummation devoutly to be wished," said Sir Robert. "He is my heir,
you know."

In a few minutes Ethel joined Bijou, who looked at her rather hard, as she
felt. Ethel wore a simple serge dress, heavy boots, a stout frieze jacket,
and a hat of a shape unknown in America, that seemed to be all cocks'
plumes. Her eyes being weak, she had put on her smoked glasses. The day
being damp, and her chest delicate, she had added her respirator. "I am
nicely protected, am I not?" she said contentedly. "I had a severe cold
last winter, from which I am not quite recovered, and auntie thinks I had
best be prudent. Are you ready?"

"Not quite," said Bijou. "I want to see Mrs. Ketchum a moment." She ran
off, accordingly, into the library in search of the old lady, whom she
found there looking out the lessons, it being her practice to verify every
word the clergyman read, and no small satisfaction to catch him tripping.
"Do, Mrs. Ketchum, speak to Ethel and get her to take off those machines
and put on something stylish," said Bijou. "I am really ashamed to take
her into our pew; people will stare so. She is a perfect fright. The idea
of a girl making herself look like that!"

Mrs. Ketchum, however, declined to interfere, and when Bijou got back to
the drawing-room Ethel was missing. Taking advantage of Bijou's absence,
she had gone up-stairs, and, during the library interview, was saying to
her aunt, "You never saw anything got up as she is,--silk, and satin, and
lace, and bracelets, and feathers, and what not. And for church, too! I
wonder she should turn out like that: she should have better taste. I
really don't quite like going with her, she looks so conspicuous,--just as
if she were going to a garden-party or flower-show, for all the world."
When they met again, both girls looked a little conscious, and Ethel said,
"How very smart you are!"

"Why, this is an old dress that I put on for fear it might rain," said
Bijou. "Don't you hate having to wear goggles and cages and things? It
must be perfectly horrid."

"I don't mind. Of course one isn't looking one's best; but that is of no
consequence. Health is the first consideration," said Ethel. "Ah! there
comes your father."

Of the walk it need only be said that it was very pleasant going, and
rained a little coming back; that Ethel produced her "goloshes," put up
her umbrella, and walked home as serenely as her concern for Bijou would
admit. That young lady had on paper-soled boots that got soaking wet, a
fine summer parasol that she seemed to think fulfilled every office that
was desirable in shielding her bonnet, a dress ill fitted to resist chill
or dampness. She persisted that she was "all right," while her pretty
teeth chattered; but she caught a violent cold, and was in bed a week,
while Ethel came down to dinner as rosy as Baby Ketchum, and ate as
heartily as Mr. Ramsay and Mr. Heathcote, who certainly showed themselves
good trenchermen. Mrs. Ketchum persisted in regarding the two young men
very much as though they had been returned Arctic travellers, and amused
them not a little by suggesting that they should lie down all the evening.

"Why, we haven't turned a hair. We are as fit as a fiddle," they exclaimed,
and looked anything but unstrung.

Ethel had made one speech that astonished Bijou considerably. "Do you know,
I have been watching you ever since I have known you," she said, "to see
if it was true? That is, that the American ladies _spat_ on all occasions,
as I have read. Don't think me rude to mention it."

"We don't quarrel any more than any one else," said Bijou, quite
misunderstanding.

"I don't mean that, you know: _expectorate_. And I see it was not true at
all. I have not seen it once," explained Ethel.

"I should think not! Well, I do think! How could you believe such
ridiculous nonsense?" asked Bijou indignantly.

"Don't be vexed, Bijou dear. I did not mean to make unkind reflections. It
was only that I had read a stupid book about America," said Ethel; and
peace was restored.

As for the other members of the party, they had gone to a handsome church
in Kalsing, which boasted the best stained glass in the country and was
thoroughly churchly and attractive. Here they not only heard good music,
but one of the most eloquent preachers in "the American branch of the
English establishment," as Sir Robert called the Episcopalian communion.

It amused Mr. Ketchum not a little to see the way in which the baronet
conducted his devotions,--his preliminary prayer in his silk hat, from
which streamed a halo of side-whiskers, the heartiness with which he
joined in the service, especially the way in which, avoiding all the
compromises the male American practises in prayer-time (such as bending
forward a little, or leaning back pensively with the hand shading the
face), he plumped squarely down on his knees, turned up a pair of shoes
half as long as his very respectable, tightly-rolled umbrella, and made
his responses in a clear, audible voice, like an honest gentleman and a
miserable sinner.

It did not escape Mr. Ketchum's keen eyes, either, that although Sir
Robert contributed a five-dollar bill to the offertory, he first rolled it
up into a tiny, unrecognizable wad before dropping it into the alms-basin.
The service over, Sir Robert and the eminent divine were made acquainted.
The latter said he would call as soon as he could snatch a moment, and Sir
Robert, his hands folded behind his back, holding his hat and gloves, made
the rounds of the church, inspecting every bit of carving, frescoing,
glass, and brass, and making the most intelligent criticisms upon what he
saw to Miss Noel in a whisper. Mrs. Sykes sat still in the pew, fuming at
being "let in for a charity sermon," for some inexplicable reason, seeing
she had given nothing to the charity. Miss Noel was stopped at the door by
no less a person than Captain Kendall, who had suddenly discovered that he
had a great-aunt living in Kalsing, whom he must see, and now stood there
saying, "Where is Miss Ethel? How is it that you are here without her? I
hope she is quite well."

"My niece, Miss Heathcote, is quite well, thanks, and has gone to church
elsewhere," said Miss Noel, with dignity, intending to mildly repress a
young gentleman whom she thought a little too free with his "Miss Ethels."

"Then I will have the pleasure of calling upon you to-morrow," said
Captain Kendall, unabashed and joyous, as he walked away.

So active an intelligence as Sir Robert's requires plenty of food, and
when Mrs. Ketchum senior issued from her room about ten the next morning,
whom should she meet in the hall but the baronet in a state of the most
overflowing energy and brilliant good humor, dressed in a suit of striped
red-and-white "pajamas," having on his head a paper cap, under his arm a
roll of designs, and in his mind the delightful intention of painting the
ceiling of Mabel's boudoir!

"Good-morning, madam. Here we are," he said, shaking his box of paints and
stencils at her. "I have improvised a scaffolding, and am now going to
work on my outlines. I planned the whole thing in bed last night, and,
unless I am much mistaken, we are going to have the prettiest boudoir in
this part of the country. I shall do a panel or two to get the effect, and
any workman can finish it."

"But can you do it?" asked Mrs. Ketchum, amazed, but interested.

"You shall see. I frescoed the chapel on my place at home, and I may say
there have been worse pieces of work," replied Sir Robert, descending the
stairs as he spoke, eager to get to work.

"Is he _raving crazy_, Mabel? What on earth has he got on? He isn't
_respectable_. I declare to goodness, he has set my heart beating so I
shan't get over it all day," said the startled lady to her daughter-in-law,
who joined her just then.

"Oh, for shame, ma, to give yourself away like that! Fashionable men wear
those costumes altogether now," said Mr. Ketchum, coming up. "You see,
Daisy, that if I shocked him beyond expression yesterday morning, as you
said I should, he has horrified me to death to-day: so I guess we are
quits. Come along: let's go down to see the trapeze-performance."

Down they went, and, meeting Mr. Ramsay, who was coming up, Job stopped a
moment to tell him to take out any of the horses that he fancied. "Take
the piebalds," said he, "if you'd like to have a drive, and take some nice
girl--Miss Ethel or Bijou Brown--for a two-forty shine."

"Thanks awfully," said Mr. Ramsay. "But I think I had better--that is, I
had rather ask Heathcote."

"You are horribly welcome, but I don't think much of your taste," replied
Mr. Ketchum, not understanding what a proposition he had made.

In the lower hall they found the eminent divine, irreproachably clerical
and dignified, and Captain Kendall, just arrived. Sir Robert, hearing
voices, came out, brush in hand, to welcome them, producing quite as great
an impression on them as on Mrs. Ketchum. "I belong to the working-classes
now. Just you come here and see how the fine arts are prospering in the
State of Michigan," said he, and led them into the boudoir, where he
nimbly ran up a step-ladder, laid himself out on the scaffolding, and,
with a bold, free touch, went on sketching a procession of Cupids which
was to go around the base of the small dome, talking all the while with
the utmost animation to the guests below. "As soon as I get in this fellow
riding a dolphin, I shall be entirely at your service," said he. "No
considerations of respect and attachment to the Church or fear of the Army
can influence me just now."

The two gentlemen begged that he would go on; the ladies came in, and
together they passed an agreeable morning, Sir Robert declaring that on
the scaffold he was entitled to benefit of clergy, and begging the eminent
divine when he left to let him have his ghostly counsel every day for at
least a week. In spite of his eminence, this gentleman had no very great
breadth of view. To sit about on boxes and window-seats, picnicking in an
empty room, while the stranger upon whom he had come to call lay above him
in red pajamas, painting Cupids on the ceiling, was to his mind
monstrously indecorous. It was amusing to see the dignified way in which
he took the pleasantries of the party; and he made no response to Sir
Robert's farewell overture except a bow. "Your guest is a very
entertaining man," he said to Mr. Ketchum, who accompanied him to the
hat-rack, "but is he quite--quite--you understand?"

"Perfectly so," said Job, with a laugh. "Head and heart both of the best,
as you will find out when you know him better. You are coming back to
dinner, ain't you, to help us out with the fatted calf?"

The dinner was a very elegant affair of twenty-five covers, given to the
guests, the first of a series of entertainments planned in their honor.
All the notable people of the neighborhood were represented at it. The
scandalized divine returned to partake of it, and, seeing Sir Robert in a
dress-suit, dignified, polished, of preternatural respectability, not to
say distinction, looking the pillar of Church and State that he was, and
talking with due gravity of the tariff, free trade, and the like ponderous
subjects, concluded to overlook the mad behavior of the morning, and,
joining him, gave him a long account of the Indian Missions of the Church.
Unconscious of having done anything that might be regarded as eccentric,
Sir Robert was all affability, soon grew interested, asked a number of
questions as to the death-rate among the tribes, the prevalence of
smallpox and cholera among them, the spread of civilization, confirmed
nomadism, traces of Jewish rites, and so on, thanked him for a "very
profitable half-hour," and said he should send a little check to be
applied in any way he might see fit, obliterating thereby the last trace
of the previous prejudice. This, indeed, was replaced by something very
like enthusiasm when there came next day a slip of paper representing five
hundred dollars, also a note from the donor, saying that he should be glad
to know that some portion of the sum enclosed had gone to an industrial
school, if any such existed, where the young Indian women could learn to
boil a potato properly, and the use of brooms and pails and
scrubbing-brushes. "You must first clean them and then convert them: get
them into the bath-tub, and you can take them anywhere," said Sir Robert,
with great truth and perspicacity.

"One doesn't get such a dinner, except at a few great houses, outside of
London or Paris," Mrs. Sykes was pleased to say when it was over. "I have
found out that almost everything was ordered from New York; and a pretty
penny it must have cost. Not that this man cares. I dare say he is only
too glad to have the chance of entertaining me,--that is, us. I was sent
in with a waspish little man that turned suddenly crusty on my hands and
was an owl for the rest of the time; but I was rather glad to be able to
devote myself to my dinner for once."

Mrs. Sykes's escort had "turned crusty" because that lady, following her
instinct of ingratiation, had said to him, "All the gentry of this country
are in the South, aren't they? They don't live about here, do they?"--not
from a prejudice in favor of Southerners at all, as was proved when she
went to New Orleans later and promptly asked the first acquaintance she
made whether all the education was not at the North.

The week that followed was a very gay one, the Ketchums' friends in the
neighborhood and in Kalsing being most intent on hospitable thoughts and
providing something agreeable in the shape of an entertainment for every
night. Every moment of the day, too, of every day was filled up. It seemed
to Mrs. Ketchum that "those English people," as she called them, were
never idle, and had discovered the secret of perpetual motion.

Sir Robert had the boudoir, to which he devoted exactly two hours after
breakfast. He had a geological chart of America, with what he felt to be
melancholy blanks for the chalk and oolite beds of his own country, and
appropriate fossils indicated by an index-finger in red ink. He had the
Poor-Law and electoral systems to master, as well as the prison systems of
the different States. He had to prove that the Mound-Builders and the race
that built the buried cities of Central America were one and the same. He
had innumerable questions, political, social, agricultural, pressing upon
him, from the history of spiritualism, the purity of the ballot, and the
McCormack reaper, down to certain expressions that immensely struck and
pleased him, which had to be entered in the diary as "unconscious poetry
of the Westerners,"--such phrases as "the fall" (of the leaf),
"morning-glories," "dancing like a breeze," "Daphnes" (instead of laurels),
and many more, which he hoped would be "permanently engrafted on the
mother-tongue." There were other entries to be made,--"customs of the
Westerners," their "descent," "taxation," "climate" (as affected by the
Great Lakes), "population in 1900," and so on. There were books, books,
books, to be read, referred to, ordered. There was even a little taxidermy
to be done, and the "native birds" to be first sought, then bought, then
prepared, and packed to be sent back to England. The others, if not quite
so busy, were anything but idle. Miss Noel walked her five miles a day.
She was out sketching for hours under her umbrella, no matter what the
weather was, and only said, "Thank you for your kind concern, but I am
quite equal to it," when Mrs. Ketchum, astonished to see a woman of her
own age enduring such fatigue and running such risks, undertook to
remonstrate with her. "One must get one's constitutional, you know, and
one must not mind a drop or two. There has been no really bad weather yet,
--nothing to keep one in-doors, at least." If she stayed in-doors, she and
Mrs. Sykes (when the latter was not scouring the country on foot or
horse-back) interested themselves in their plants, minerals, seeds,
drawings, the herbarium, the Wardian case, the diaries and letters and
fancy-work, the beautiful collection of sea-weed sent by Miss Marlow from
New England, and a dozen things besides. Mr. Heathcote, meanwhile, was
walking, and riding, and visiting, and, above all, photographing. He got a
small covered cart, into which he would put his photographic apparatus and
go the rounds of the country-side alone, getting his luncheon as he could,
and coming back late in the evening, flushed with heat and victory,
bringing amusing accounts of his experiences, a bouquet as of an
apothecary-shop, and "proofs" of "a lane,--quite an English-looking lane,"
"a dog on the chain," "rear view of an American public" (house), "Saint
Lieuk's Church" (five different aspects), "what the natives call an
'ash-hopper,'--came out beautifully," "children among the hay-cocks,--very
indistinct," "squatter's hut on the edge of a common," "Western American
farm-house," "negro dust-man," "village beauty," and many others. He was
much complimented upon them all by Mr. Ketchum, who enjoyed the whole
collection and made comments and suggestions of the most delightful kind.
Mr. Heathcote looked infinitely pleased and flattered when told by him
that they had "a cold, professional air," and asked for copies of some of
them, after which he was eclipsed behind his black cloth and instrument
for two days, had his room darkened to a Cimmerian pitch, worked very
diligently, and presented the fruits of his labors to his host with the
modest depreciation but secret delight of the artist, smiling indulgently
at Mr. Ramsay, with his "I say, old chappy, what an out-and-out swell you
are at it, to be sure! You must do the horses." Thus encouraged, Mr.
Heathcote did the horses, the house, the family grouped inside and outside,
Master Jared Ponsonby, Hannibal Hamlin, Master Bobo and Miss Blanche, the
poultry, and (aided by mirrors) himself in almost every dress and attitude
which it is possible for a man to assume. He must have spent a small
fortune in chemicals alone, and all his talk was of light and shadow,
background, draperies, foreground, plates, and proofs; every table was
strewn with photographs, finished and not finished, mounted or curled up
like paper crumpets.

Mr. Ramsay, too, had his little diversions, not precisely scientific, but
amusing. He was in and out of the stables all day long, and was loved by
every animal on the place. Such long-suffering and good nature Master
Ketchum had never seen, except in Fräulein Schmidt; and then the strength,
the resources, the conversation of his new friend enchanted the child, who
followed him about, perched on his shoulder, played games with him, and
had to be carried away from him struggling by his nurse. Mr. Ramsay had
other occupations: he rode, he fished, he cleaned his guns, he got over
leagues and leagues of ground, he killed several snakes and captured
scores of insects. He caught dozens of tree-frogs, for one thing, and shut
them all up together in the drawing-room coal-scuttle, where he peeped at
them from time to time, well satisfied. He played little tunes on his chin,
asked conundrums, showed Job a great many tricks at cards, and two French
puzzles (saying, "Those French beggars are awfully sharp at that kind of
thing, you know"); he played "God Save the Queen" with one finger on the
piano, held skeins of wool for the ladies, shut doors, got shawls, and
really need have done none of these arduous duties, for in looking so
handsome and so jolly from Monday morning until Saturday night he
contributed his quota toward the carrying on of society, and all beside
were works of supererogation. When these palled upon him a little, as was
shown by his picking up a book, he looked very unhappy for ten minutes,
and then, making a pass at his face with one of has beautiful hands, he
cried out, "No fellow can read badgered like this. There's a regular brute
of a fly that has been lighting on my nose every half-second since I sat
down," closed the book, smiled, and said, "I may as well call upon Mr.
Brown while I have time," and took himself off. This happened on the ninth
day after his arrival, and with it began a new era in his existence. He
not only went to Mr. Brown's that day, but the next, and the day after
that. In short, he had found an amusement best expressed in the French
equivalent _distraction_. He rode with Bijou, and reported to Mr.
Heathcote that she was "a clinker at her fences, and went at them as
straight as an English girl." He taught her a good deal about the
management of her reins and animal, and admitted that she was "a plucky
one." If she had only consented to get an English saddle (which she
declined to do, with one of her customary exaggerations, saying that she
"didn't want a thousand pommels"), to rise in that saddle, and to have the
tail of her horse cropped properly, he would have been quite happy. As it
was, he acknowledged that in her own fashion she was a most graceful and
fearless horsewoman, and approved of her accordingly. It soon struck him
that she did other things well. Used to the reserved and rather
constrained manner of most English girls, he found a great charm in her
bright gayety, her frank cordiality, the good-humored comradeship and
absence of stiffness, untainted by vulgarity. For, although Bijou was not
high-bred, distinguished, or clever, she was a girl of real refinement,
and he had the wit to see it. Her merry tongue and generous and
affectionate heart, neither chilled nor hardened yet by contact with the
world, were very attractive, and it is just possible that he felt the
influence of her piquantly-pretty face. At any rate, he had found a great
number of imperative reasons for going to Brown's, when one morning, as he
was opening the little wicket-gate that admitted him to their
croquet-field, he saw something that gave him an unpleasant shock. It was
a buggy in front of the door, in which sat Bijou, charmingly arrayed,
smiling upon a gentleman who had just helped her in and was only deterred
from taking the seat waiting for him by her calling out, "Stop, till I fix
my skirts and put up my parasol," the gentleman being his cousin, Mr.
Edward Plummer, _alias_ Drummond. The sight of Mr. Plummer enraged him.
Bijou's cheerful air did not improve matters, and for the first time he
felt irritated at her American speech and accent. "'Fix my skirts,'" he
quoted discontentedly, as he watched them drive off, and then, after a
moment's indecision, he stalked angrily up to the front door, pulled the
bell fiercely, and asked to see Mr. Brown. He was almost immediately
ushered into the library, where Mr. Brown was sitting.

"Good-morning, sir. I am glad to see you. I am sorry to say that Bijou is
out. She has gone driving with our guest: an English guest, by the way,
--Mr. Drummond. He came on with us from New York, and has been here ever
since, except the last two weeks, which he has spent in Chicago," said Mr.
Brown.

"That's what I've come about," blurted out Mr. Ramsay, the moment there
was a pause. "His name isn't Drummond at all: it is Plummer. And he isn't
fit to be a guest in any decent house, and I've come to tell you so and
have you give him the sack and put him to the door at once. Excuse me
meddling, but you have been very kind to me and received me most
hospitably, and I am not going to see you taken in by a rascal and a
blackguard."

Mr. Brown was shocked, but did not show it. He prided himself on being
very logical and dispassionate and judicial, and was privately convinced
that he would have greatly adorned the legal profession if Fate had been
kinder. Besides, Mr. Drummond was his guest and there by his invitation,
which to his mind was strong presumptive proof that Mr. Ramsay's charges
were without foundation. "Grave accusations these, Mr. Ramsay,--very grave
accusations. I trust you are making them upon some better grounds than
mere personal prejudice or idle rumor, if you expect me to believe them.
Not that I mean any discourtesy to you, sir, in saying this," he said, in
his roundest, most impressive tones.

"What do you mean? The fellow was sent to Coventry by his regiment and
forced to resign, his father has cut him off with a shillin', he can't
show his face in London, and he has been kicked out of his club for
keepin' too many aces up his sleeve. I should think that was grounds
enough for an accusation. Do you suppose I go about inventin' lies to take
away other people's characters?" said Mr. Ramsay excitedly.

"Do not exaggerate. Be calm; be reasonable," said Mr. Brown. "Observe, I
do not accuse you of wilful misrepresentation, but of misapprehension,
perhaps of prejudice. There is a difference. Note it, and do not take
offence, my young friend, too readily."

"I am not offended, but what I say is true, and I hope you will act upon
it, so that Miss Brown shall not go out ridin' round the country with
that--" began Mr. Ramsay, only to be interrupted by--

"No violence; no excitement. Let us look at the thing rationally," from
Mr. Brown. "Mr. Drummond is my guest,--my guest, remember; introduced to
me by one of the first men in New York; received everywhere. You are both
strangers to me. This is a matter of purely individual testimony," Mr.
Brown went on, feeling that he was growing exquisitely subtile, and
clothing himself in imaginary ermine as he spoke. "He may tell me that
_you_ are a rascal. In that event, how am I to know who is the honest man
and who the villain? Shall I believe you, or shall I believe him, in the
absence of documentary evidence and disinterested statement? As my guest,
he has, if anything, the prior claim to consideration; though I am far
from saying that whatever views you may advance will not have equal weight
with me,--as _views_, mark you."

"You can believe who you please and what you please," said Mr. Ramsay;
"but remember that I have given you warnin'. He may be your guest, but he
is my cousin, and I should think that I ought to know what I am talkin'
about. There is no necessity for me stayin' any longer."

He rose to go, but Mr. Brown stopped him by a gesture. "A cousin!" he
exclaimed. "Do not excite yourself; be calm. On the face of it, that would
seem conclusive; but appearances are notoriously deceitful. Will you
assure me on your honor that there is no motive, no family feud, at the
bottom of this? Cousins do not go about the world denouncing each
other--_as a rule_. Family pride, affection, a thousand things, prevent
them from making such things public; but still it is not impossible. I do
not say that it is _impossible_; only _improbable_,--very improbable. Give
me your word, though, that there is _no motive_.--we must always look for
a motive in these cases,--and I will promise to give the matter full and
impartial investigation."

"I'll do nothing of the sort. I will bid you good-morning," exclaimed
Mr. Ramsay, reaching out impetuously for his hat.

"You have meant well, perhaps. I am obliged to you, if such be the case. I
will bear what you have said in mind, and let you know my decision," said
Mr. Brown, delivering a verdict from the bench.

"Just as you please," replied Mr. Ramsay haughtily; and so they parted.

Left to himself, however, Mr. Brown ceased to be judicial, and became
practical. He recalled, as he sat there, a number of circumstances that
had not impressed him favorably in connection with his guest. Mr. Drummond
had borrowed a considerable sum of him, on the ground of delayed
remittances. Mr. Drummond had filled his pockets with his host's Havanas
in the most scandalous fashion, yet never had a cigar. Mr. Drummond had
done a number of ill-bred things that he had not liked,--such as ordering
the carriage to be got ready on his own responsibility, lending valuable
books without so much as asking permission, and the like. The longer Mr.
Brown thought of the late interview, the more uneasy he felt. The paper
had dropped from his hand, and he was still deep in his uncomfortable
meditations, when the door opened, and his daughter ran to him and threw
herself into his arms, crying hysterically, "Oh, popper, popper! Oh! oh!
oh!"

We will extricate the story of what had happened from the sobs and
interruptions to which Mr. Brown had to submit, and preface it with some
account of the relations between Bijou and Mr. Drummond-Plummer or
Plummer-Drummond.

They had met in New York the previous winter, where Mr. Drummond had
suddenly appeared, put up at a fashionable hotel, and, with no other
credentials than his handsome person, good manners, and bold assertions
that he was related to certain great people in England, had been accepted
in society with that beautiful faith and charity that believeth all things
an Englishman of supposed position may choose to say of himself, in spite
of much disastrous experience of foreign adventurers both painful and
ludicrous. Attracted by Bijou, he promptly satisfied himself of the
stability and reality of her father's fortune, and began to lay siege to
her hand: about her heart he gave himself small concern. Now, Bijou was a
Western belle, and was in the habit of receiving any amount of attention.
At seventeen a famous racer and a steam-boat had already been named for
her. The local newspapers chronicled her toilets and triumphs. Her little
sitting-room was a sentimental hall of Eblis, full of shapes with hearts
that were one burning coal, bright with the sacred flame. She had a large
album which she called her "him-book," because it contained nothing but
the photographs of her admirers. She had hats, and bats, and caps, and
whips, and cravats, and oars, and canes disposed about it tastefully,
souvenirs of various persons, times, and places, and talked of the
original owners in a way that made Ethel's blue eyes open their widest
when she came to be admitted there, that decorous young person not being
used, as she frankly said, to hearing "a person of the opposite sex"
called "a perfectly lovely fellow," and his nose pronounced "a dream,"
though not in the sense of its being broken or disjointed.

"Why, you wouldn't have me call _you_ a lovely fellow, would you?" said
Bijou laughingly, as she tripped about doing the honors of her den,
--showing locks of hair (of which she had almost enough to stuff a
sofa-cushion), dried bouquets of vast dimensions, little gifts she had
received, verses and valentines that she thought "perfectly splendid" or
"too utterly killing for anything," and bundle after bundle of letters,
--the adorers' letters, all of them, written from all parts of the country,
in every style. She read Ethel choice passages from them with great glee,
and gave spirited sketches of her correspondents; how she had met them at
Saratoga, Mt. Desert, "and pretty much every place;" how she had danced,
flirted, walked, driven, sailed, "crabbed," read, sung, talked with them,
apparently without either fear or reproach; and of their appearance, dress,
character, position, prospects,--a full, if not perfectly complete,
history of her relations with them that almost made Ethel's lower jaw drop
as she listened. There was no mention of mother, aunt, governess, or maid
throughout. Bijou had gone away from home with friends who had let her
amuse herself in her own fashion; and at home she was what De Tocqueville
has pronounced "the freest thing in the world,--an American girl in her
father's house." Yet it was a liberty that was worlds removed from
license. Undisciplined she was, impulsive, indulged beyond all European
conceptions, but, in spite of a good deal of innocent coquetry and vanity,
effervescing in some foolish ways very pardonable in a motherless girl,
and of which a great deal too much has been made in discussing American
girls, there was never one of any nation more pure-hearted and womanly.
Her worst deviations from rigidly conventional standards were better than
the best behavior of some very nice people, as Swift defines them,--"Nice
people: people who are always thinking of and looking out for nasty
things." Different training would have improved her, just as a hot-house
rose is more perfect than the wild one; but she, too, was pink-petalled,
had a heart of gold, and was full of lovely, fragrant qualities, like the
English variety near her.

"You correspond with twelve men! Good heavens!" exclaimed Ethel, when
these open secrets had been revealed to her. "Don't tell auntie of it, I
beg. She will--will misunderstand, I fear, and think it dreadful, and
perhaps prevent me being here so much. It is not at all in accord with
English ideas, you know, dear; and auntie is rather stricter than most,
even there."

"Not tell! Why not?" asked Bijou. "What is there to shock her? She must be
easily shocked. I have got nothing to be ashamed of; and I shall tell the
old dear to-morrow."

"Does your father know it?" said Ethel.

"Why, _of course_ he does," replied Bijou impatiently. "I generally read
him the letters, and he laughs fit to kill himself over some of them.
Popper don't care one bit. He says I am old enough to paddle my own canoe;
and so I am. And he knows I don't care a pin about any of them. It's great
fun until you get tired of it. I am tired of it now, rather. I used to
write to twenty; but it has dwindled down to twelve, and I'm going to drop
two of those, because they are in the army and are both stationed at the
same post. You see, it is too much trouble to write different letters to
each one, so I get up one bright, smart one that suits all around, and
copy it for them all, with some changes."

This speech almost stunned Ethel for a while. "But doesn't it vex them
very much to get such letters? What if they should find it out? And if you
don't at all care for them, why do it at all?"

"Why, for the _fun_ of the thing, goosie. Angry? No. They do the same
thing themselves. Will Piper sent Kate Price and me letters that were
exactly the same, word for word: we compared them. That is where I got the
idea. Splendid one, isn't it? I am just bent and determined on having
stacks of fun before I am married, because after that, you know, I shall
be laid on the shelf completely," said Bijou.

"But why should you be 'laid on the shelf'? I can't make it out. Your life
will be just beginning," said Ethel.

"Well, because what is so is _so_," replied Bijou, showing her some
patterns for slippers, watch-pockets, tobacco-pouches, and so on, that she
meant to work up for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, "philopoenas,"
and other festive occasions, as presents for the adorers.

It is perhaps clearer now why Bijou laid no stress whatever on Mr.
Drummond's attentions, while she seemed to him to be receiving them with
marked favor. When, on their leaving New York, Mr. Brown had asked him to
go home with them and spend a month, he looked upon the prize as won.
Before going to Chicago he had shown this so plainly that Bijou had
snubbed him roundly,--a course so foreign to her amiable nature and
hospitable creed that on his return she had received him with a kindness
that had revived all his hopes,--or rather designs. He utterly
misunderstood it, and easily persuaded himself that he was practically
irresistible. The drive of that afternoon had been planned by him that he
might ask the fateful question. He had asked it, and, presumptuously
taking her answer for granted, had slipped an arm about her waist, when,
to his great surprise, he had found himself half ordered, half pushed out
of the buggy immediately, after which Bijou, transported by fury, had laid
the whip once smartly across his shoulders and driven away at a gallop,
leaving him standing in the middle of the road, an angry man.

She went home, as we have seen, and told her father, who was distinctly
excited on hearing it, ordered Mr. Drummond's effects to be packed and
sent to the hotel in Kalsing at once, forbade her ever taking another
drive with a stranger "the longest day she lived," and would certainly
have caned the offender with unparliamentary fervor, instead of being
"reasonable" and letting the affair drop, had he known where to find him.

What Mr. Drummond did was to walk into Kalsing and put up at a
boarding-house there, where he spent the evening glowering into vacancy
blackly enough, and showed his high breeding and respect for the other
boarders by taking off his shoes in the parlor and sitting with his
stockinged feet propped up on a chair in front of him while he gave
himself up to his reflections,--bitter thoughts of the past in which he
had been an English gentleman, desperate plans for his future as a
_chevalier d'industrie,_ fierce abuse of Americans in general and the
Browns in particular, culminating in a fixed resolve to leave "this
beastly hole" next day; which was happily carried out.

Mr. Ramsay, offended, held aloof for a little while; but, getting a note
from Mr. Brown couched in few words, and those to the effect that his
warning had been acted on and Mr. Drummond dismissed, he called next day
at the house, assured Mr. Brown with earnestness that his cousin was "a
precious rascal," gave some particulars of his shady career, and took up
the threads of his intimacy again, unvexed by any such ideas as that he
was at all responsible for or could be affected by his kinsman's
disreputable behavior. Mr. Brown concealed from him that he had lost some
money by Mr. Drummond. Bijou imagined that he must be "feeling dreadfully
about it," and took great pains not to say anything that could wound his
imaginary susceptibilities as the relative of a _mauvais sujet._ But the
simple truth was that, once assured that respectable people were not being
deluded or cheated by his cousin, Mr. Ramsay had no further sensitiveness
on the subject. The Browns kept what he had told them even from the
Ketchums, only to hear him announce in all assemblies that a cousin of his
was "goin' about over here,--an awful swindler and 'leg,'--and that the
best thing people could do would be to give him the widest sort of berth
until he got himself into the penitentiary, as he certainly would,--at
least it was quite on the cards," smiling in cheerful enjoyment of the
possibility. Entertainments were going on all the while in the
neighborhood, and he had ample opportunities of advertising the fact, all
of which he improved, while a puzzled audience knew not what to make of so
novel a situation, and were sorely put to it for suitable replies as they
stared at an Adonis in Poole-cut clothes who sat and looked alternately at
them and his patent-leather court pumps and gay silk socks while he
affably denounced his father's nephew and "hoped the blackguard was goin'
to New Orleans and would get the yellow fever there, which was beginnin'
to be had over from the Havana."

This last speech was made at a dinner-party which Mr. Ketchum's partner
Mr. Richardson had felt called upon to give in honor of the English guests,
and was almost the only amusing feature of the evening to Job. The
Richardsons' house was one of those in which everything is provided on
such occasions except amusement. When their invitation came, Job said to
his wife, "I wish we could get out of going; but we can't. I don't know
what is the matter with that house. It is one of the handsomest in the
city, elegantly furnished; they always have a crowd of people at their
entertainments, some of them delightful people to meet anywhere else, but
somehow there seems a kind of pall draped above the front door that drops
down behind you when you enter and never lifts till you leave. Mrs.
Richardson puts on all her war-paint and feathers and goes around all the
evening anxiously trying to make the thing go off, and it gets worse and
worse every moment, so dull and stupid that you can hardly keep awake, and
not quite quiet enough for a good nap. Richardson buys everything that is
to be had, and then sits around and looks as though he had a note to meet
in bank and no money to do it with. Altogether, it is about as lively as a
water-tank on the Pacific Railroad after the train has gone. But it won't
do to hurt their feelings: we have got to go."

So they did, and it was stiff and formal beyond even his expectation. The
dinner was interminably long, over-elaborate, and slowly served. They
were all sent in with the wrong people. The conversation all but died
again and again. Sir Robert was afflicted by a deaf man, who shrieked,
"Ha-ow?" and "What say?" at him with brief intervals all during the meal.
Mabel shrank into herself, and only ventured on a few trite remarks. Mr.
Ketchum's liveliness utterly evaporated after the first ten minutes. It
was quite ghastly, and the move back to the drawing-room was a most
blessed relief. Mrs. Sykes had made no effort to lighten the tedium of the
dinner, and no sooner found it at an end than she lolled back
indifferently on the sofa, and, picking up a book, coolly read it for more
than an hour, though twice interrupted by Mrs. Richardson, who vainly
tried to substitute polite conversation the first time, and offered a cup
of tea the second.

"English breakfast?" asked Mrs. Sykes loftily, raising her eyes for a
moment. "No; I am afraid not. It is green tea, I think."

"But do take some," replied Mrs. Richardson, "It is very nice indeed."

"No, thank you," said Mrs. Sykes very shortly, her eyes on her book.

"Just one cup. Let me make it for you?" suggested Mrs. Richardson.

"Not for a five-pound note would I drink the poisonous stuff. Say no more
about it," replied Mrs. Sykes, with delicate consideration, and turned
over a page.

"Do take some coffee, then, or chocolate," insisted Mrs. Richardson.

"Nothing of any sort or kind whatever," snapped Mrs. Sykes, turning away
decidedly, to get a better light on her book, apparently, but really to
get rid of her hostess.

Mr. Ketchum, fearing to show indecent exultation when the carriages were
announced, repressed the satisfaction that would have expressed itself in
gay speeches of farewell. A decorous exit was made; and as they rolled
away he gave a great sigh of relief, and exclaimed, "I haven't had as much
fun since I had the measles. Mussiful Powers! what an evening! I feel like
the boy whose mother gave him a good beating for his own sake. But all the
same I shall have a word to say to Mrs. Sykes tomorrow; and of course I
shall have to apologize for her behavior to Richardson."

"Most insolent, unpardonable conduct, I call it," said Sir Robert. "She's
an innately vulgar woman."

"Puts on an awful lot of side. I can't stand her. She gives me the jumps.
And she can tell a buster, too, when she likes: I have found that out,"
put in Mr. Ramsay.

"Well, I don't exactly hanker to be cast away on a desert island with her,
even supposing I was one of the royal dukes and had taken the precaution
of being introduced while we were tying on the life preservers, in case of
accidents," said Mr. Ketchum.

What he said to Mrs. Sykes next morning no one ever knew but the discreet
Mabel. Not much, probably, but that little was so much to the point that
it had a decided effect,--two of them, indeed, one interior, the other
external. It increased her respect for him, and it made her perfectly
civil to all his friends, as far as constitution and habit would allow.

"I cut her comb for her, and handled her without gloves," was his report
of the interview to his wife, who was amazed at his nerve.

When Sir Robert got a note addressed to "Lord Heathcote, Baronet,"
beginning "Dear Sir," and signed "Very respectfully your obedient servant,
" and read it aloud at the breakfast-table as "a most extraordinary
production," Mrs. Sykes had absolutely no comments to make. And when Ethel
opened her letters and found among them an invitation to take a
buggy-drive, commencing "Dear Miss," Mrs. Sykes still held her peace,--a
fact that was full of significance.

It was Miss Noel who said, "Really, Ettie dear, I can't have you driving
about furiously in a gig without a groom. But pray thank Mr.--what is the
name?--Price for being so kind as to propose it, meaning to give you
pleasure. He has been so obliging, too, as to procure tickets for us to
the play, and has kindly offered to escort us: I have a letter from him as
well. A most lovely day, this. There seems no end, really, to the fine
weather. Remind me to look at the thermometer after breakfast, before the
sun catches it, love. It must have been _quite_ two degrees hotter
yesterday than the day before; but I neglected to make the entry in my
journal, and so cannot be quite positive. Only fancy! Is it not annoying?
I am getting sadly forgetful about everything. And I so dislike guess-work
and conjecture in a record of the kind. I should like to see the
rose-trees at home this morning: the garden must be gay with flowers by
this,--though the last time I went pottering about it in my pattens there
was nothing out but the blackthorn."

Other entertainments followed closely upon the dinner, of which Mrs. Sykes
complained to Miss Noel, saying, "Why will they ask me out? Why can't they
leave me alone? Really, I shall not let any one know that I am here, if
anything ever brings me back to America,--which is most unlikely."

"There is nothing to prevent you staying at home if you do not wish to go
out," replied Miss Noel. "But do you not like it? I enjoy going to the
Browns'. Mr. Brown is a man of cultivated mind and Christian courtesy; I
like him very much; and the people one meets there are generally of
superior station and refined education. Why should you object to meeting
them?"

"American society may be nice some day,--that is, if it ever grows up.
There doesn't seem to be anybody in it now over twenty," grumbled Mrs.
Sykes.

One result of the parties was that Mr. Ketchum, going over to Mr. Brown's
one morning, found all the young people assembled there practising steps,
the "two-and-a-half," the "polka-glide," and other cheerful evolutions.
After watching Mr. Ramsay's efforts to do as Bijou did, for a moment, he
called out to her to know what she was doing to a British subject under
his protection, and, being shown by Bijou (skirts held up a little, the
prettiest feet imaginable, daintily shod, and the gliding, swaying,
pirouetting, galopading, graceful beyond expression), cried out, "Teaching
him to dance, are you? I thought he was practising heading off a calf in a
lane." This so exactly expressed the awkward desperate plunges to the
right and left which Mr. Ramsay was executing at the moment, that Mr.
Heathcote had another of his acute attacks of appreciation, and became
almost a subject for sal volatile and burnt feathers, Mr. Ramsay saying
good-naturedly, "What a fellow you are for chaffin', Ketchum! Just you
hook it out of this, will you, and let us get on with this? One and two
and a kick, you say, Miss Brown? I am such a duffer I can't get the kick."

"You do the one and two make one, and leave the kick to Miss Bijou," said
Mr. Ketchum suggestively. "Why aren't you gambolling like the playful
antelope, Heathcote?"

"I don't often gamble. I leave that to Ramsay, who is an all-fired
jewhillikens scratch at it, as you say over here," replied Mr.
Heathcote.

"You gamble a little differently, that is all. You have dropped a good
deal on loo first and last, for all your wisdom," retorted Mr. Ramsay
between his steps.

"Get out your 'Hand-Book of American Slang,' my boy,--two dollars a volume,
--and you will retrieve all your losses, I'll engage," said Mr. Ketchum
laughingly, as he walked away.

The dancing had been interrupted, however, and Bijou and Mr. Ramsay
retired to the bow-window to talk. "Odd that I can't get it, isn't it?"
said he. "I never was much of a dancin' man; and I ought to be, you know.
I am not a readin' man; and a man that is not a readin' man is nearly
always a dancin' man. The governor is a readin' man, and took a
double-first; but I am like my poor mother, who was dull." Thus launched,
he gave her a full account of his relatives and home with all his own
frankness, and she, listening with her heart as well as her ears, did not
know whether to smile or sigh: the phraseology of the recital and its
completeness amused her, but she also divined the loneliness of such a
boyhood. To her great embarrassment, the tears rose in her eyes in quick
sympathy when she came to hear of the way he was treated in his childish
maladies.

"Poor little fellow!" she said softly, and, as she was obliged to drop the
white, thickly-fringed lids and fall to pleating her handkerchief
industriously, she felt rather than saw that he was looking at her
narrowly.

There was a moment's silence, and then Mr. Ramsay began talking again.
"You are very happy here, aren't you? You wouldn't like to leave it and go
away to India, or Egypt, or--or--England, or anywhere?" said this
particularly deep young man, and, without waiting for any answer, except
such as was afforded by her rosy silence, went on: "American girls do have
lots of fun, I see that. I am afraid they are too fond of flirting,
though. English girls don't get much of a chance at that, as girls. They
don't amount to much until they are married and get their own way."

"Why, they don't flirt after they are _married_, do they?" said Bijou, in
a horrified tone, her ideal of post-matrimonial conduct being the exact
opposite of the ante-matrimonial.

"Oh, don't they, just!" said Mr. Ramsay cheerfully. "You see, as girls
they are heavily handicapped. They can't do anything they like, or go
anywhere; it's awfully slow for them, poor things. And so they naturally
look forward to the time when they will get their liberty as well as a
husband. But the competition must be something awful. A fellow that has
got a fine property or money is regularly hunted down; and even a poor
devil like me has to be monstrous careful. Cowrie, of the Carbineers, who
has got sixty thousand a year, says that he can't go to certain houses,
for fear they may have a clergyman secreted about the place and will get
him spliced to the ugliest daughter before he can escape. Awfully clever
chap, Cowrie,--a match for any mamma in England, I can tell you. He is not
going to marry any woman but the one he wishes to marry. No more am I.
That's why I can't marry. I've got no money. The governor picked out a
young woman from Liverpool for me last year,--a brewer's daughter, with
pots of it,--and wanted me to make up to her."

"Oh, he did! What did you do about it?" asked Bijou, in a low voice.

"Well, you see, just then I was most awfully hard up, and couldn't afford
to break with the governor; and so--"

"I'd be ashamed to say any more about it. Addressing a girl just for her
money!" interjected Bijou warmly, disappointed that he had not scorned the
proposition utterly.

"It didn't go that far. I thought it might be a good thing, you know. And
so I tried it,--spooning, you know," said he placidly.

"Oh, indeed!" commented Bijou sarcastically. "Very honorable of you, I am
sure, and delightful for the girl to have such a disinterested admirer.
How did it end?"

"How you do pick,a fellow up!" remonstrated Mr. Ramsay amiably. "It sounds
awfully conceited to say so, of course, but I think I could have carried
off the cup if I had liked. At least every one said she was hard hit. And
she wasn't long in the tooth, or very ugly, or vulgar, or anything; but
somehow I couldn't stand it. I got to hate her. She breathed so hard when
she danced, for one thing. Regular grampus. Upon my word, she almost blew
my gibus away from under my arm sometimes. Regular snorts. And then she
was always smilin'. And she talked an awful lot about Goethe and Schiller,
and those chaps. Altogether, I cried off, and told the governor I would
try the Colonies. And he told me that if I was such a consummate ass as to
let a good thing like that slip, I could take my little pittance and go to
the deuce as soon as ever I liked; and here I am. Some may think I acted
foolishly, but one's relatives are not always the best judges of what is
good for one, you know, though they may think they are actin' for one's
good; and what one wants to do is to do one's best in whatever position
one finds one's self in, you know, no matter what one--Hang it all! I know
what I want to say, but I can't say it. You understand, I fancy, without
me tryin' to explain."

Having tied himself up in this conversational bow-knot, Mr. Ramsay waited
to be extricated. His idea had been to convey in the most delicate and
roundabout way to Bijou that he was not the man to marry any woman for her
money, and that if he had seemed to like a certain person a good deal it
was not because she was the daughter of a rich man. To her, however, he
seemed to be posing as a conqueror of heiresses, indifferent to the pain
he might inflict upon any girl silly enough to be captivated by his good
looks and good manners,--a breaker of tacit engagements, and a wicked
worldling. So she rose very stiffly, and said that she neither knew nor
cared to know what he meant, and was obliged to leave him, and so went
away, and left him extremely puzzled and disconcerted by the behavior of
his charmer.

After this, the summer of Mr. Ramsay's discontent set in. There was
nothing that he could actually complain of in Bijou's treatment of him,
but it was plain that she had changed. She was vastly more polite than
before, but much less kind. Their intimacy seemed a thing of the past
century. It was Mr. Heathcote now who, partly from idleness, partly from a
desire to tease his friend, went constantly to the Browns', and showed
Bijou various attentions, which she accepted with very pronounced
satisfaction. It was with Miss Price now that Mr. Ramsay rode and walked
and talked,--Miss Price, whose free-and-easiness, vapid chatter,
artificiality, and sentimentalism contrasted unpleasantly with Bijou's
frankness and sincerity. By this course each confirmed the other in the
impression of untrustworthiness and flirtatiousness both had received, and
they ought to have been perfectly satisfied with this result. But,
considering how perfectly happy she was in Mr. Heathcote's society, it was
odd that Bijou grew paler and thinner every day. And if Miss Price was so
perfectly delightful, why did she send Mr. Ramsay home always as gloomy
and morose as any young man very well could be? With blundering honesty,
Mr. Ramsay once taxed Bijou with a preference for Mr. Heathcote, not
knowing that when a jealous lover accuses a girl of being fond of some
other man she never fails to encourage the idea, unless it is really true,
when she denies it with the utmost vehemence. Bijou, with much feminine
circumlocution, insinuated that he was devotedly attached to Miss Price,
to which he truthfully replied that he did not care "one rap" about her.
Women are born incredulous in such affairs. When sure of themselves, they
doubt the lover; when sure of the lover, they invariably doubt themselves.
And so the misunderstanding grew, and continued in mutual mistake and
suspicion, and no two people were ever more thoroughly and foolishly
miserable. Mr. Ketchum, when enlightened by his wife, could see that his
guest was in a bad way; and one day it chanced that they were left alone
in the library, where Job was most unromantically engaged in looking up
plans for a model pig-stye, while he incidentally refreshed himself with
his favorite confection, molasses candy.

"Man alive!" said he, after directing a keen glance at Mr. Ramsay's face,
"what is the matter? Take some of the Dentist's Friend, won't you?"
(pushing a plate toward him.) "I like it better than all the French stuff
that was ever made, and Mabel keeps me liberally supplied. You look
awfully down in the mouth, Ramsay, as though you'd enjoy howling like the
lone wolf on far Alaska's shore, if you were sure nobody was looking.
Suppose you tell me what has impaled you. Is it love, money, or
indigestion, old fellow?"

The words were light, but the tone hearty and kind; and, thus encouraged,
Mr. Ramsay laid bare his woes, Mr. Ketchum listening attentively, and
saying, when he had finished, "I know; I know. When I thought I had lost
Mabel once, I carried the universe around on a sore back all day, and then
my heart would get up on its hind legs and yelp half the night; and there
have been other times when I got caught in the machinery, and I know how
it hurts, I think of those times often. They grind a man down to the quick,
and send the chaff flying: they teach him valuable lessons. I remember I
started out in life with two violent prejudices,--one against Jews, and
the other against Roman Catholics. Well, in the greatest strait I have
ever known, the Christian that came to my relief was a Jew in a town of
seven thousand people; and when I had the smallpox a Sister of Charity
took me to the hospital and nursed me, when every one had deserted me and
left me to die or live without any meddling from them to bias me in my
decision. After that I said to myself, 'Job Ketchum, if the Lord can make
and stand as great a fool as you have been, he can make plenty of good
Jews and Roman Catholics, and if they have got his hall-mark they can do
without your valuable endorsement; and when smelting-day comes I reckon
you'll find that the Protestant quartz won't pan out _all_ the silver that
has been put in the earth's veins. You needn't go around blushing for
David and Thomas ?Kempis any longer, my son. Take a holiday.' My advice to
you, Ramsay, is to keep a stiff upper lip. Perhaps the buzz-saw has only
got your clothes, and you will be all right when you cut loose; but if it
has got _you_, all you can do is to stand and take it, and if you can
remember who set it going it will be better for you."

The last phrase Mr. Ketchum got out in a shamefaced way, as if very much
ashamed of it, as indeed he was; but Mr. Ramsay was the better for the
talk, and, though not "a readin' man," had easily understood the
illuminated characters in this page of human experience. He brightened
perceptibly from this date, and was able to take a healthy interest in
certain match-games of base-ball and la-crosse in neighboring cities,
which he attended with Mr. Ketchum and Sir Robert, who, besides these
diversions, had to visit the prisons and all the public schools, and to
gather a mass of information in regard to these two subjects, with
criminal and educational statistics, systems, theories, that had to be
examined, sifted, recorded in the diary with the pains, study, and
reverence for facts that characterized every entry made in it. Meanwhile,
quite an intimacy had sprung up between the ladies of the Ketchum and
Brown households, or rather the existing one soon embraced the
Englishwomen. Mrs. Sykes and Miss Noel were struck by a number of things
in the latter establishment.

"Do you suppose that _all_ American households are organized in this
extraordinary, miscellaneous way, so as to include, besides the head of
the house, his wife and children, all sorts of relatives, outsiders, and
strangers?" said Mrs. Sykes to Miss Noel. "Mrs. De Witt told me, quite as
a matter of course, that the sister of her husband's first wife lived with
them, though she was away when we were there. And look at the Ketchums and
the Browns. It is most remarkable. Why do they do it, I wonder? I must
really ask about it, how it ever came about. And on such an extraordinary
basis, too! Only fancy, that poor, thread-paper creature, Mr. Brown's
daughter, has married badly and come back to her father with a troop of
children; and she married in opposition to his wishes, and she hasn't a
farthing of her own; and yet she seems to have no proper sense of her
position whatever. She does nothing to make herself useful and get her
living, but sits up in her bedroom, rocking and sewing, all the day long.
She bids her father buy this and that for the children, just as though
they were not actually beggars, dependent upon him for shelter and every
mouthful. She meddles in household matters to any extent, giving the
servants orders, having fires made, and even the dinner-hour changed to
suit her convenience; and one would think she was mistress there. I wonder
she dares do it. Yet, so far from being sat upon or put in her place, I
heard Mr. Brown tell Bijou the other day, when some little disagreement
took place between them, that she must let her "poor sister" have
everything to suit herself, and do her best to make her happy and
contented and help her to forget all the trouble she had known, as far as
possible. Just as if spoiling her like that, and giving her false ideas of
her importance, could be a good plan. Not that it will last. She is a
pauper, and will be made to see that she is one, sooner or later. She has
nothing but what he gives her, I know, for I have asked her; but she would
not tell me why she separated from her husband. Americans are so absurdly
secretive and sensitive! Do you know, she was vexed by the inquiry? A
great mistake, as I told her, to get rid of him, unless he was a dangerous
brute: men are so useful, and 'grass-widows,' as they say here, are always
looked down upon. Did you ever know anything so idle as those Brown women?
The men here are very active and 'go-ahead,' as they call it, but the
women seem to do one of two things,--either they hold their hands
altogether and are a thousand times more idle than any queen or duchess,
or they work themselves to death, and are cooks, sempstresses, maids,
housemaids, nurses, governesses, ladies, and a dozen other things rolled
into one,--poor things! Thank heaven I am not an American lady."

"I see what you mean," said Miss Noel. "That dear, sweet girl Bijou has
had no practical training whatever. She was amazed that I should make
Ethel dye her white kid slippers (when they were soiled) for morning use;
and when she saw me getting up some dainty bits of old point that I do not
trust to Parsons, she asked me why I bothered with the old stuff and
didn't buy new. She has absolutely no idea of the value of money or of
household management. On the other hand, that little Mrs. Grey, their
friend, told me that she did all the sewing for her twelve children; and
Mrs. Grey has not taken a holiday of even a few weeks for twenty years. I
can't think how it is they don't break down altogether."

But it was the children of the Brown household that awakened the liveliest
surprise in the minds of these ladies,--an astonishment wholly free from
admiration or approval, for they were children of a type with which
Americans are sadly familiar, but which had never come under their notice
before. The little Graysons were utterly undisciplined, and got their own
way in everything. Their grandfather, aunt, mother, and nurses combined
were powerless to control them, and would give them anything but what they
most needed. They pervaded the whole house, and were the hub of it; they
ate at all hours, and of whatever they fancied. They had no regular hour
for going to bed, but fell asleep everywhere, and were removed with the
utmost precaution. Mrs. Sykes, going there, would find them jumping up and
down with muddy feet on the drawing-room sofas or playing on the new grand
piano with the poker. Miss Noel one day found Mr. Brown in a great state
of perturbation, calling out, "Helen! Jane! Bijou! Come here, quick! The
baby is bumping his head on the floor!" (The baby being three years old.)
"Don't get angry, darling. If you won't bump your head, grandpa will bring
you a wax doll from Kalsing to-morrow." Another day, baby's sister in
banging on the window-pane struck through the glass and cut her fist.
"Poor little dear! Poor childie! Let me bind it up quickly. Harry, love,
bid nurse fetch the arnica at once," exclaimed Miss Noel; but the patient
stamped and shrieked, and would not have her hand examined or doctored by
anybody, whereupon her admiring mother said, "Jenny has always been that
way. She has a great deal of character, Miss Noel."

"A very undisciplined one, I fear," replied that lady emphatically. She
could scarcely believe that she heard aright when, on asking this model
parent what her plans were for the summer, she said,--

"I am going to try Saratoga again. We were there last year, and I went
prepared to stay until the 1st of October. I liked it very much; it was
very gay and pleasant; but Harry got tired of it, and wouldn't stay after
the second week, so I packed up and went to Long Branch, which he has
always liked."

"Your brother, or uncle?" inquired Miss Noel, in perfect good faith.

"No, my little Harry," replied the placid mother.

The very appearance of the children, fragile, delicate-looking, nervous,
was in striking contrast to the solid, rosy, somewhat stolid English
children to whom she was accustomed. They were pretty, quite abnormally
intelligent she thought, and as attractive as such rearing would permit
them to become; but their habits and manners positively afflicted her. She
pined to put them to bed at seven o'clock, keep them four or five hours of
every day in the open air, give them simple, nourishing food,--in short,
inaugurate the wholesome nursery system of her own country. To see them
sitting down to table without saying their grace or putting on their
pinafores, and order of the servant soups full of condiments, veal, any or
all of eight vegetables, pickles, tarts, pudding, jelly, custard,
fruit-cake, bon-bons, strong coffee, cheese, almonds, raisins, figs, more
custard, raisins again, and more fruit-cake, all despatched in great haste,
with no attention to the proper use of napkin, knife, fork, or spoon, was
acutely disagreeable to her; and it was amusing to see her efforts to
insinuate, as it were, better things into their daily life. "Nice, clever
children," she would say,--"so delicate-featured, and so refined in
appearance, but, heavens! what a monstrous system of education!" She had
taken a fancy to Bijou from the first, and she soon noticed in her a great
many little evidences of weariness, discontent, unhappiness; also that she
was alternately very pale and depressed or flushed and animated. She took
the girl therefore under her motherly wing, lectured her a little in her
gentle way about some things, praised her in others, and was very kind to
her.

"My dear," she would say, "do you not eat entirely too many sweets,
bon-bons, and what not, and then go without proper food at the regular
meals?" Or it would be, "How do you occupy yourself, as a rule, dear
child? Do you district-visit, botanize, sketch, learn a language? What do
you do? You would enjoy a course of belles-lettres, and should take that.
And that head in crayons that you did at school was pleasantly executed:
why not study from life constantly?" Bijou had to confess that she did
nothing, and not even that industriously. "But, my dear, you are not an
Asiatic. You surely don't wish to be a doll, a plaything, self-indulgent,
helpless, leading a life of mere luxurious indulgence and artificiality?"

No, Bijou had no such wish; but what was the use of learning or doing
anything now as a girl? If she married, it would be different; but then
she would never, never marry. But Miss Noel insisted that an idle woman
was a miserable woman, married or single, and was brisk and cheerful and
kind, and devised a number of small employments for Bijou, whom she kept
with her a great deal, and so befriended her as effectually as Mr. Ketchum
had done Mr. Ramsay. Mrs. Sykes found fault with her once or twice, but
did not find her all meekness.

"Why do you talk of 'an elegant breeze'?" she said to her one day.

"For the same reason that you spoke of 'a beautiful roast' yesterday,"
retorted the young lady, who might be broken-hearted, but was certainly
not broken-spirited. "I know better, and I suppose you do, but we are both
careless."

Matters drifted along in this way until a certain morning spent by Mr.
Ramsay at the Browns',--eventful because a little thing happened which
convinced him that Bijou cared for him. He came home with a new pang
substituted for those he had been enduring for a lover's age. After dinner
he tramped off for a long walk alone, in the course of which it may fairly
be presumed that he decided what course to take, for early on the
following day he called especially, for the second time, upon Mr. Brown.

"I have come to tell you that I can't come here any more," he said,
holding his hat with his accustomed grace, and going in his
straightforward fashion immediately to the subject in his mind. "And I
wish to thank you for bein' so kind to me and receivin' me as you have
done, and to tell you why I am actin' in this way."

"Why, what's the matter? Going away? Isn't this rather sudden?" asked
Brown _p?_, all unsuspicious of what was to come.

"Oh, it isn't _that_! Though of course I shall be goin'. It is that I
can't marry. That is what it is. You should have been told of it before,
by rights, only I kept puttin' it off. You have a perfect right to blame
me for not sayin' so long ago, when you were good enough to admit me here
on an intimate footin'. It was a shabby, dishonorable thing of me, and I
hope you'll forgive it, rememberin' that it was not my intention to
deceive you," said Mr. Ramsay. "It wasn't, now, really."

"But, my dear fellow, of what are you accusing yourself? There must be
some mistake. What has that got to do with your visits here?" asked Mr.
Brown.

"Why, don't you see?--don't you object to me bein' thrown so much with
Miss Brown, under the circumstances?" stammered out Mr. Ramsay.

"Not the least in the world,--not the least in the world, I assure you.
Delighted to see you, I am sure, whenever you like to come," said Mr.
Brown, with hospitable warmth. "Why should I? There is no necessity for
your marrying anybody, that I can see. What put such a foolish idea in
your head?"

"But I thought you would think--she would think I thought--that is--as you
might say--"

A hearty laugh from Mr. Brown interrupted him: "Why, you seem to have
thought a good deal on the subject. The most extraordinary idea! Excuse my
saying so. This house is always full of young men dancing attendance on
Bijou, who is as popular a girl as there is; but I don't trouble _my_ head
about them, I can assure you. No, indeed. Half of them don't want to marry
Bijou, and she don't want to marry any of them that I know of. And I guess
I shall be told when the affair comes off, so that I can order the
wedding-cake. Why, they are just all young people together. It don't mean
anything. They just naturally like each other's society. They are amusing
themselves,--that's all; and quite right, too."

Mr. Ramsay had never conceived of such a philosophical parent or agreeable
state of affairs. He was very much embarrassed, and caught at a familiar
idea in his confusion. "That's what I thought you would think,--that I was
amusin' myself. And I wanted to tell you that I am not, you know. I have
far too much respect for Miss Brown to dream of doin' such a thing," he
said very eagerly.

"Oh, you mean at her expense? I understand now. Well, now, let me make
your mind perfectly easy on that score. Bijou can take care of herself as
well as any girl in America, and I never thought of such a thing. If you
are thinking of _her_, that's all right. If you are thinking of yourself,
of course that is another thing. She isn't thinking of marrying _you_. She
doesn't care anything about you in that way, I am certain. I should have
noticed it if she had been," said Mr. Brown, who labored under the usual
parental delusion as to his daughter's heart having a glass window through
which he could see all that went on there.

"I am tryin' to do what is best for both of us," said Mr. Ramsay honestly,
blushing profusely. "And I came to say good-by. And here is a little note
I have written Miss Brown. I have left it open, in case you wished to see
it."

"Not at all,--not at all. Bijou would blow me up sky-high if she caught me
reading it, I can tell you. I'll give it to her, certainly. I think you
are giving yourself unnecessary concern; but your scruples, though novel,
do you honor. If you think it best to give us up, you are, as far as you
are personally concerned, the best judge. Good-by. Send us a line to say
how you like the West. Good-by," said Mr. Brown, and smilingly accompanied
him to the front door.

Papa Brown gave his daughter the note, which ran as follows:

"MY DEAR MISS BROWN,--I am going away, and you have been so awfully kind
to me that I know you will excuse me writing to say how awfully grateful I
am to your family for receiving a stranger as they have done."

Here "I shall often think of you" was carefully scratched out, and "I
shall always remember it and the pleasant hours I have spent with them"
substituted.

"And now I have got to say a disagreeable word, which is good-by. I hope
you will have a fine hot summer and will think of me sometimes when you
are spooning tremendously at croquet,--as you know you do, though it isn't
fair. With best regards to all the members of your household, I am

"Faithfully yours,

"ARTHUR RAMSAY.

"P.S.--If I should drop into a good thing you will hear of it."

Mr. Ramsay had taken four hours to compose something that should not be
actionable or compromising, and yet that should convey some idea of the
state of his mind and feelings, and had turned out this masterpiece, which
Bijou read in bitterness of soul over and over again.

"Excuse me writing," "fine hot summer," "croquet," she quoted mentally.
"After all that has passed between us! If he had really cared for me, and
anything had separated us, he would have had the common honesty and
manliness to say so. No; he thinks me another Liverpool girl, 'hard hit.'
He is running away from _me_." At this cruel idea, so abhorrent to her
vanity, pride, affection, and general womanhood, the poor girl sank down
on her bed overwhelmed, and did not leave her room for three days,--or
rather eternities,--at the end of which time she met Mr. Ramsay by
accident on the high-road and cut him dead.

"I must pull myself together and get away out of this," said Mr. Ramsay to
Mr. Ketchum that evening. "I have bought of Albert Brown his ranch in
Colorado, near Taylorsville, and I leave in the morning."

"WHAT!" cried Mr. Ketchum. "Has he sold you that tumble-down claim on a
burnt prairie, miles from any wood or water? I know the place."

"I haven't examined the property; but he assures me it is a fine one. And,
anyway, it is settled, I am going. A thousand thanks for all your kindness,
Ketchum. An Englishman that I met in New York wants me to go huntin' with
him, and I shall join him at St. Louis and go on out from there."

"Why, I thought you had all promised to go to Niagara as my guests in a
few days. Do change your mind and stay, won't you?" urged Mr. Ketchum.

But Mr. Ramsay was obdurate, and took himself and a car-load of property
off in the direction of the setting sun by the mid-day train next morning.

"Ramsay, I want you to promise me one thing. If, owing to that skunk Brown,
you are disappointed out there, or don't get on, write or telegraph me,
and I'll stand by you to the tune of ten thousand or so. Good-by, old
fellow. Remember, I'm your _friend_," said generous Job, at the station.
And as he went home he stopped and presented Mr. Albert Brown with a piece
of his mind that any other man would only have taken in exchange for a
flogging, delivered.

"How very nice and kind of the dear duke to give Mr. Ramsay an invite to
join him!" said Mrs. Sykes, with emotion, at dinner that day.

F.C. BAYLOR.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

       *       *       *       *       *




A TEMPLE PILGRIMAGE


Sauntering down the southerly side of Fleet Street, toward the historic
spot where once stood Temple Bar, crested with its ghastly array of
pike-pierced traitors' heads, the curious itinerant comes to an arched
gate-way of Elizabethan architecture. The narrow lane which it guards is
known as Inner Temple Street, and cleaves the Temple enclosure into
unequal parts, ending at the river. Standing in the shady archway, with
the roar and rattle, the glare and glitter, of Fleet Street at our backs,
we instinctively feel that we are about to enter a new and strange
locality, the quiet atmosphere and the cloister-like walks of which seem
redolent of books and the pursuits of bookish men.

We are on the threshold of the Temple,--a spot than which none in all this
historic metropolis is more replete with memories of the storied past. Nor
does its interest consist solely in its associations with the men and
manners of a by-gone epoch. Despite its antique architecture and its
quaint observances, the Temple still maintains its reputation for
scholarship and legal acumen. Its virility is fitly symbolized in the
venerable and vigorous trees whose branching boughs wave above its walls:
sound to the core, it sends forth new scions with perennial freshness.

The gray gate-way under which we have halted is one of the two chief
entrances to the Temple. It was built in the reign of James I., being
consequently nearly three centuries old. White-aproned porters, with
numbered pewter badge on lapel, stand on either side, ready--for a
consideration--to direct our transatlantic ignorance into veritable "paths
of pleasantness and peace." Access to the Middle Temple from Fleet Street
is had by way of another gate-house, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1684,
soon after the Great Fire. It is in the style of Inigo Jones, of reddish
brick, with stone pointing. There are several other entrances,--many of
them known only to the initiated,--through intricate courts and passages
debouching on Fleet Street and the surrounding thoroughfares, and one from
the river at Temple Pier; but, chiefly because of their proximity to the
New Courts of Law, these two gate-ways are most frequented.

The boundaries of this famous abode of British wit and intellect may be
roughly sketched as follows: on the north, Fleet Street; on the south, the
Thames and the Victoria Embankment; on the east, Serjeants' Inn and the
Whitefriars region; on the west, Essex Street, Strand. These boundaries
remain substantially as they were six or seven centuries ago. The Middle
Temple lies nearest the river; the Inner Temple is nearer to Fleet Street,
and "inside"--that is, on the "city" side--of Temple Bar. Essex House and
its purlieus, once the abode of the powerful earls of that name, were
formerly a part of the Temple. It was called the Outer Temple, because
"outside" of Temple Bar.

In the reign of Henry II., about the year 1185, the ground now included in
the Temple area became the head-quarters in London of the crusading
Knights Templar. Removing from humbler quarters in Holborn, the order,
having become wealthy and ambitious, bought a tract of land extending from
the walls of Essex House to Whitefriars, and from the river to Fleet
Street. They erected a church, a priory, and other buildings clustered
around in the mediaeval fashion, and in imitation of the Temple near the
Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.

Under the first Richard and the third Henry the Templars increased in pelf,
power, and pride. After a career commenced in zeal and purity,
culminating in valor and fanaticism, and closing in corruption and
indolence, in the year 1312, when the second Edward sat on the throne of
England, the now useless order was formally abolished by Clement V., the
reigning Pontiff. The Temple domain, by grant of the crown, then passed to
Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who conveyed it to the Earl of
Lancaster, a cousin of Edward II. It was then rented to the professors and
students of the common law, who had recently become an incorporate body,
In 1333 the Temple had apparently reverted to the crown, for we find
Edward III. farming out the rents for twenty-five pounds a year.

The Knights Hospitallers of St. John, meantime, affected to be much
scandalized at what they deemed a desecration of holy ground, and claimed
the custody of the place. In 1340, in consideration of a hundred golden
guineas contributed toward the armament against France, the king made over
the Temple to the Hospitallers. They handsomely endowed the church with
lands, and gave "a thousand fagots yearly from Lillerton Wood to nourish
the church fires."

The records of the Temple date back no further than the reign of Henry
VII., so that the history of the previous period; is more or less obscure
and traditional: the precise manner in which the Temple passed from the
control of the sword to that of the wig and gown is not certain. The
Hospitallers of St. John, who already possessed a priory at Clerkenwell,
in the north of London, after having vindicated the sanctity of the church
and cloisters, are believed to have leased the buildings and the demesne
to the lawyers for the rent of ten pounds, payable yearly. Another account
says that the latter purchased the property outright. However this may
have been, in the reign of Richard II. we find the legal fraternity of the
metropolis securely domiciled in the locality they have ever since
tenaciously clung to.

Even so early as the time of Henry VI. the brotherhood of lawyers had
attained to an unwieldy growth, and it separated into two halls, the
original two halls of the Knights Templar forming the nuclei around which
the frequenters of each grouped themselves. Thus arose the Middle and
Inner Temple. Under the eighth Henry the two societies became direct
tenants of the crown once more. In 1609 James I. granted "letters patent
to the mansion of the Inner Temple," at a yearly rent of ten sovereigns;
and a like sum was exacted for the Middle Temple. The societies have not
been disturbed in their holdings since that time.

The Temple to-day comprises two of the four great Inns of Court,
--Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, Inner Temple, Middle Temple,--which, taken
collectively, constitute the backbone of the legal polity of England. Ben
Jonson described them as "the noblest nurseries of humanity and liberty in
the kingdom." They are all of great age and the recipients of rich
revenues. The income of the Middle Temple alone (not the richest of the
four) from the single item of rents is about thirteen thousand pounds
yearly; but the affairs of the Inns are so shrouded in administrative
secrecy that exact information on this topic is not easily obtained.

Until recently there was a fifth,--Serjeants' Inn, the members of which
were lawyers who had risen to the rank of serjeant, or to the bench
itself. Formerly such promotions terminated membership in the original Inn;
but since the abolishment of the rank of sergeant at the English bar
Serjeants' Inn has ceased to exist,--the name surviving only in the
locality,--and the four Inns have readmitted those of their members on
whom judicial honors were bestowed.

Each Inn possesses certain smaller or subordinate Inns, which formerly
served as preparatory schools, but which are now mere collections of
chambers. There are thus attached to the Inner Temple Clement's Inn,
Clifford's Inn, and Lyon's Inn; to the Middle Temple, New Inn.

All the Inns of Court are unincorporated voluntary societies. In our
modern nomenclature the name "inn" may seem a strange one for an
institution of learning; but the term is a literal rendering of the
ancient title _hospitia_ applied to them in the Latin records, as
distinguished from public lodging-houses (_diversoria_).

Each Inn consists of a hall, a chapel, a law-library, a set of rooms for
the benchers, and a large number of houses, divided into small suites
known as "chambers," and occupied chiefly by barristers, solicitors, and
students, though tenancy is not restricted to these classes. The quiet,
the studious environment, and the freedom from certain social obligations
unavoidable in more fashionable quarters, have at all times rendered
residence in the several Inns peculiarly attractive to that large class in
England which consists in the main of young men of good family, moderate
fortune, and no particular occupation.

The Inns possess the exclusive right of "calling students to the bar,"[A]
also of "disbarring" a barrister for questionable practices,--a right
exercised by Gray's Inn in 1864 in the case of the late erratic but
brilliant Dr. Kenealy, counsel for the notorious Tichborne "claimant."
From their decision no court, as such, can give relief. The disbarred one
has only the right of appeal to and review by certain of the judges. The
Inns neither govern nor license attorneys, who are admitted to practice by
the courts.

[Footnote A: The origin of this term dates from the venerable custom of
calling students to the bar that divided the benchers' dais from the body
of the hall to bear their part in the "meetings" or discussions on knotty
legal topics. We are informed by Lord Campbell that Sir Edward Coke "first
evinced his forensic powers when deputed by the students to make a
representation to the benchers of the Inner Temple at one of the 'moots'
respecting the poor quality of the commons served in the hall. He argued
with so much quickness of penetration and solidity of judgment that he
gave entire satisfaction to the students and was much admired by the
benchers."]

The Middle Temple affiliates with the Universities of London and Durham. A
residence of three years and the keeping of twelve "commons" entitle a
gentleman to be called to its bar, after certain qualifying examinations,
if he be above twenty-three years of age. In the Inner Temple (by far the
richest and most popular of the two societies) the candidate for admission
must have taken his B.A. or passed an examination at the Universities of
Oxford, Cambridge, or London. No one in holy orders can be called, and
none are admitted without the consent of the benchers. The candidate must
also furnish a statement in writing, outlining his rank, age, and
residence, accompanied by a voucher as to his respectability signed by a
bencher or two barristers. In short, the Inns of Court may be described as
universities "with power to grant degrees in the municipal law of England,
which constitute indispensable qualifications for practice in the superior
courts of law." To secure these ends they have from time immemorial
enjoyed the protection of the crown.

In former times the curriculum was comprehensive and the discipline
severe. The fare provided was frugal, and the chambers were sparsely
furnished. Luxury was tabooed, and the rules were rigidly enforced. From
early morning till the hour of five in the evening, when supper was served,
not an hour was wasted. Fortescue, writing in the time of Henry VI.,
gives a graphic account of these law-schools as they were in his day.
"Students resort hither in great numbers to be taught as in common
schools. Here they learn to sing and to exercise themselves in all kinds
of harmony. On the working days they study law, and on the holy days
Scripture, and their demeanor is like the behavior of such as are coupled
together in perfect amity. There is no place where are found so many
students past childhood as here." But in these degenerate days, when the
_jeunesse dorÃ©e_ decorate their "dens" with Queen Anne furniture, Turkish
rugs, and choice bric-Ã -brac, it has been jocosely said that "dining in
hall is the only legal study of Temple students." Of late years, however,
"the best professional sentiment" has strongly and successfully tended in
favor of keeping up the standard of these institutions as true seminaries
of learning. Ample courses of lectures have been introduced, also
subsequent searching examinations.

A glance at a map of the Temple shows conclusively that it has no
connected plan. Its growth has been the outcome of the needs of many
generations during the last half-dozen centuries, and it is at present a
picturesque conglomeration of buildings of all sizes and shapes and styles,
erected with no regard for architectural beauty or symmetry, and with no
very great adaptability to their past or present use. Aside from the halls
and libraries of the two societies, the Church of St. Mary, and one or two
blocks of chambers, like Paper Buildings, there is no salient feature to
impress the eye. Yet the uniform ugliness of some of the buildings
constitutes not the least of their attractions. A hard grayish stone
frequently appears, though there are a number of brick houses so mellowed
by age that it would be difficult to name their original hue.

The chambers are frequently massed around four sides of a stone-paved
court, from which direct entrance is had to the main staircases. In some
of these flagged spaces a fountain tinkles; in others, sturdy elm- or
plane-trees tower far above the red chimney-stacks; in the centre of
another is the famous Temple pump. The several courts have distinguishing
names, such as Garden Court, Pump Court, and Brick Court, and they connect
with each other sometimes by an arched passage under the houses, at two
sides of the square, or again by narrow alleys. Nor is the same level
always preserved. Small flights of time-worn steps continually surprise us
in our pilgrimage. The aggregate--barren courts, narrow passages, and
winding lanes--forms a perfect labyrinth, very trying to a stranger or to
one possessing a poor memory for localities.

The nomenclature of certain of these Temple courts possesses a breezy,
countrified sound, utterly unsuggestive of musty tomes and special
pleadings. Thus, we have Elm-Tree Court, Vine Court, Fig-Tree Court, and
Fountain Court. The reader will recall to mind the fact that it was in the
last-named locality, with its sprightly, sparkling, upward-springing
stream, that Ruth Pinch--"gentle, loving Ruth"--held tryst with her lover,
manly John Westlock. Letitia Elizabeth Landon, too, has embalmed this "pet
and plaything of the Temple" in some pleasant stanzas:

      The fountain's low singing is heard on the wind,
      Like a melody bringing sweet fancies to mind,--
      Some to grieve, some to gladden: around them they cast
      The hopes of the morrow, the dreams of the past.
      Away in the distance is heard the vast sound
      From the streets of the city that compass it round,
      Like the echo of fountains, or the ocean's deep call;
      Yet that fountain's low singing is heard over all.

Entering the houses, we find them mostly of a stereotyped pattern. A
wainscoted, dark, and generally uncarpeted staircase gives access to
landings on which abut the outer doors of the "sets," or chambers. These
consist of two, three, or at most four rooms, in the style peculiar to the
domestic architecture of the earlier years of the present century. High
corniced ceilings, wainscoted walls, and shoulder-high chimney-pieces
abound. Here and there, however, some opulent tenant has modernized his
rooms; but the structures, inside and out, remain for the most part not
materially changed from the later Georgian era of their erection,--a time
when every gentleman sported a small-sword and ladies wore hoops and
patches. The famous garden forms one of the chief charms of the Temple
enclosure, and its beauty and atmosphere of quiet repose are justly
celebrated. Here Shakespeare is believed to have sat and thought out some
of his most masterly creations; here many of the great legal luminaries of
the last few centuries walked and talked; and here the infantile footsteps
of the subsequently famous "Elia" chased butterflies across the velvety
sward. "The Temple Garden," says Mr. Walter Thornbury, "has probably been
a garden from the time the white-robed Templars first came from Holborn
and settled by the river-side." It covers an expanse of three acres, and
its gay flower-beds, umbrageous trees, and emerald turf make it a
veritable oasis to the inhabitants, and especially to the children, of
that corner of the great metropolis. A pillar sundial in the centre of the
grass bears the date 1770, and the iron gate, surmounted by a winged horse,
which guards the entrance from the terrace, was erected in 1730. East of
the sundial is a hoary old sycamore, sole survivor of three sisters,
carefully protected by railings, under whose grateful shade, says local
tradition, Johnson and Goldsmith were wont to chat. In the Middle Temple
Garden stands a venerable catalpa-tree, planted by Sir Matthew Hale, "one
of the most eminent of lawyers and excellent of men." The scene in "King
Henry the Sixth,"[A] where the partisans of the rival houses of Lancaster
and York assume the distinctive badges of the white and red rose, is laid
in the Temple Garden. "Toward evening," says Dr. Dibdin, "it was the
fashion for the leading counsel to promenade during the summer months in
the Temple Gardens. Cocked hats and ruffles, with satin small-clothes, at
that time constituted the usual evening dress." Anciently, the "moots"
were held on the terrace of the Garden at five of the clock in the long
summer evenings.

[Footnote A: Part I., act 2, scene 4.]

The great hall of the Middle Temple is one of the finest Elizabethan
structures in the metropolis. It was commenced in 1562, when the old hall
was converted into chambers, consumed a decade in building, and is of
grand proportions. It is a hundred feet long, and the massive beauty of
the glossy oaken roof, almost black with age, is alone worth an Atlantic
voyage to see. The walls and windows are decorated with the arms of
various members of the Inn, and the paintings are numerous and of great
historical interest. Over the dais is a portrait of Charles I. on
horse-back, by Vandyke, one of the three original paintings of the unhappy
monarch by that great master. Another of the trio is at Windsor, while the
third adorns Warwick Castle. There are also copies of portraits of Charles
II., James II., William III., Queen Anne, and George II., and marble busts,
by Behnes, of "Doubting" Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, the great Admiralty
judge. The screen and the music-gallery are marvels of the wood-carver's
art. Tradition says the screen was made of oak from the timbers of the
wrecked Invincible Armada; but this cannot be, inasmuch as it was set up a
dozen years before the doomed squadron sailed out of Lisbon harbor.

The Middle Temple Library, a handsome building of recent erection,
situated on the river side of the Inn, at the southwest corner of the
Temple Gardens, was opened by the Prince of Wales, October 31, 1861. While
it is of nobler proportions than the library of the Inner Temple, it does
not seem to be so well suited for the purposes of the student. Its
location, however, is far more pleasant, on the margin of the
flower-mantled garden, and within sight of the busy Victoria Embankment
and of the panoramic river scenery. From the great oriel window a noble
vista is unrolled. In the distance, the twin-towered Houses of Parliament
are outlined against the sky, while the massive proportions of the "water
front" of Somerset House, the motley groupings of the structures that
crowd the intervening water-side, and the flashing river hound by
many-arched bridges, fill the middle distance.

Aside from the lustre shed around its history by many eminent lawyers and
jurists, the Middle Temple has numbered among its students several great
poets and dramatists, notably John Ford, William Congreve, Nicholas Rowe,
Thomas Shadwell, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Moore. But, as
their literary remains prove, few or none of them prosecuted their legal
studies with that sedulous devotion which the law, proverbially a jealous
mistress, demands. Sir William Blackstone, who immortalized his name by
his "Commentaries on the Laws of England," was educated in the Middle
Temple, where he was entered as a student, November 20, 1741, and by which
he was called to the bar, April 26, 1750. In his Temple chambers, ere he
finally consecrated his massive intellect to the legal profession,
Blackstone wrote the famous "Farewell to the Muses:"

      Lull'd by the lapse of gliding floods,
      Cheer'd by the warbling of the woods,
      How blest my days, my thoughts how free,
      In sweet society with thee!
      Then all was joyous, all was young,
      And years, unheeded, roll'd along;
      But now the pleasing dream is o'er,--
      These scenes must charm me now no more.
      Lost to the field and torn from you,
      Farewell! a long, a last adieu.

Edmund Burke was entered at the Middle Temple in 1747, and kept his terms
in 1750. But the great tribune was never called to the bar. Had he been,
what a powerful advocate, what a pitiless adversary, he would have made!
Porson, the brilliant but bibulous classicist, has left behind him many
sad stories of his pranks during his residence in Essex Court, where he
had chambers immediately above those occupied by the future Baron Gurney,
whom, in one of his debauches, he came near burning in his bed. Chaucer is
believed to have entered as a student of the Middle Temple, where he is
supposed to have formed a friendship with the "moral Gower." Sir Walter
Raleigh, Sir Thomas Overbury, Sir Edward Bramston, Lord-Keeper Guildford,
Edmund Plowden,--perhaps the greatest lawyer of the Elizabethan epoch,
--"Ugly" Dunning, who afterward became Lord Ashburton, and Lord Eldon, are
among the ornaments of the British bench and bar who sprung from the
Middle Temple.

Now, however, the glories of the Middle Temple rest chiefly in the past.
It has decreased in wealth and in numbers. There is an old proverb which
says, "The Inner Temple for the rich, the Middle Temple for the poor;" and
a famous wit emphasized this saying by a happy _mot_. After one of its far
from _recherchÃ©_ dinners, he compared a gritty salad, of which he had been
unlucky enough to partake, to "eating a gravel walk and meeting an
occasional weed."

The hall of the Inner Temple is a modern building, and was opened by the
Princess Louise on May 4, 1870. More spacious than the one it replaced, it
contains a number of cosy offices and ante-rooms. There is also attached a
lunch-room for the use of members, much frequented in term-time, when at
the mid-day hour one may meet many of the great practitioners at the
English bar. Passable portraits of William and Mary, Queen Anne, Lord
Chief-Justice Coke, and Sir Thomas Littleton look upon the visitor, and
the arms of the successive treasurers of the Inn are blazoned on the walls.

The Inner Temple Library is the most attractive, quiet, and convenient of
any in the four Inns. Its plan comprises a series of book-lined apartments
leading one into another. Besides a valuable and voluminous collection of
authorities on legal topics, it possesses a unique array of works on
general subjects. It stands on the terrace, and commands a view of the
river. The noble hammer-beam roof is a fine specimen of its kind, spanning
a chamber forty-two feet wide and ninety-six feet long. One of the
stained-glass windows is emblazoned with the Templars' escutcheon. The
debating-hall is in the Tudor style, and cost not far from seventy-five
thousand dollars.

Several great jurists and a number of men equally eminent in other walks
of life were connected with the Inner Temple, pre-eminent among whom stand
Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord-Chancellor of England in 1587, and nicknamed
the "Dancing Chancellor," Lord Tenterden, "one of the greatest Englishmen
who ever sat in the seat of Gamaliel," who was admitted in 1795, and John
Selden, who took up residence in Paper Buildings in 1604. The latter were
consumed in the great fire of 1666. Audley, chancellor to the eighth Henry,
Nicholas Hare, privy councillor to the latter monarch and Master of the
Rolls under Mary, who resided in the court which now bears his name, the
eminent lawyer Littleton and his no less famous commentator Coke, Lord
Buckburst, Beaumont the poet, Sir William Follett, and Judge Jeffries of
infamous memory, were all students within the Temple precincts.

Charles Lamb, whose father, John Lamb, was clerk to Mr. Salt, a bencher of
the Inner Temple, was born in Crown Office Row. In 1809 he took chambers
at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where some of the delightful "Elia" essays
were penned. In one of these he says, "I was born and passed the first
seven years of my life in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens,
its fountains, its river, I had almost said,--for in those young years
what was the king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleasant
places?--these are of my oldest recollections. I repeat to this day no
verses more frequently or with kindlier emotion than those of Spenser
where he speaks of this spot. Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the
metropolis. What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the
first time,--the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street by
unexpected avenues into its magnificent ample squares, its classic green
recesses! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that portion of it which,
from three sides, overlooks the greater garden, that goodly pile

      Of buildings strong, albeit of paper hight,[A]

confronting with massy contrast the lighter, older, more fantastically
shrouded one named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown Office Row (place
of my kindly engendure), right opposite the stately stream which washes
the garden foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters and seems but
just weaned from Twickenham Na?es! A man would give something to have been
born in such places. What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan
hall where the fountain plays which I have made to rise and fall how many
times, to the astonishment of the young urchins my contemporaries, who,
not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were tempted to hail
the wondrous work as magic." Though its courts may have been "magnificent"
and "ample" to the contemplation of the kindly Lamb, they would scarce be
so accounted now.

[Footnote A: Paper Buildings.]

The "great Cham of Literature," Dr. Samuel Johnson, resided for some time
at No. 1, Inner Temple Lane. Indeed, it was while the doctor was living in
the Temple that the world-famous "Literary Club" was founded. The faithful
and receptive Boswell, too, as might be expected, lived within easy
distance of the object of his veneration, at the foot of Inner Temple
Lane. It was in 1763 that Boswell first made the acquaintance of the
"Great Bear" and called on him in his Temple chambers.

Cowper the poet, as the reader doubtless remembers, at first embraced the
law as his profession. He was duly articled to a solicitor of some
eminence; but with how little ardor he devoted himself to the study may be
inferred from the following candid confession: "I did actually live three
years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor,--that is to say, I slept three years
in his house, but I lived, I spent my days, in Southampton Row. Here was I
and the future Lord Chancellor [Thurlow] constantly employed from morning
till night in giggling and making giggle instead of studying law." It is
not surprising, as one of his biographers remarks, that when, at the age
of twenty-one, he proudly became the occupant of a set of chambers in the
Middle Temple, "he neither sought business nor business sought him."

While domiciled here, the hideous malady which darkened his manhood began
to cast its gloomy pall on his mind. In the year 1759 he removed from the
Middle Temple to better quarters in the Inner Temple. For a time the
change seemed beneficial, but in 1763 what had hitherto been mere morbid
melancholy became something very near the dreaded insanity. "I was struck,
" he says, "not long after my settlement in the Temple, with such
dejection of spirits as none but they who have felt the same can have the
least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in
horror and rising up in despair." His residence at the Temple extended in
all through eleven years. The year above mentioned, the last of that term,
found the poet in straitened circumstances. The twin offices of
reading-clerk and clerk of committees in the House of Lords became vacant
at this juncture, and both were at the disposal of a cousin of Cowper's.
They were duly conferred on the poet. But the duties of these positions
necessitated frequent attendance before the Peers, and to one who suffered
from a morbid nervousness this prospect was most distasteful. Hence,
almost immediately after having accepted them, Cowper resigned these posts
and took instead that of clerk of the journals. Now another difficulty
intervened. It was necessary, in order to qualify for this place, that he
should undergo an examination at the bar of the House of Peers; and thus
"the evil from which he seemed to have escaped again met him."

"A thunderbolt," he writes, "would have been as welcome to me as this
intelligence. To require my attendance at the bar of the House, that I
might there publicly entitle myself to the office, was in effect to
exclude me from it. In the mean time, the interest of my friend, the honor
of his choice, my own reputation and circumstances, all urged me forward,
all urged me to undertake what I saw to be impracticable." The mental
agony he suffered was wellnigh unbearable. He even contemplated with some
calmness the coming of mental derangement, that thereby he might have good
reason for throwing up the appointment. He made many attempts to destroy
himself. "He purchased laudanum, but threw it away. He went down to the
Custom-House Quay to throw himself into the river. He tried to stab
himself." Finally, the most desperate attempt of all to extinguish the
lamp of life took place in his Temple chambers. Thrice he essayed to hang
himself by his garter,--first on his high canopy bedstead, and then on the
door.

The public way which, starting at Fleet Street, runs between the Temple
Church and Goldsmith Buildings, is a curious thoroughfare,--street it
cannot be called. It inclines somewhat toward the river, with a very
narrow foot-walk, scarcely wide enough for two to pass abreast. On one
side is the hoary sanctuary, and on the other a row of gloomy,
flat-fronted houses, whose dirty windows blink drowsily on the flagged way
beneath.

The pavement of a part of this thoroughfare is unique. It consists of old
tombstones. In 1842, the entire available space in the churchyard being
covered with graves, the benchers decided to permit no more interments
there, and ordered it to be paved over. A path now runs directly across
the old cemetery, where rest the bones of the Knights Templar and their
dependants, and many of the sculptured stones have become paving-flags.
Worn and polished by the passage of many feet, the epitaphs are entirely
defaced. Here and there a few letters of antique cut may with difficulty
be deciphered; but soon no sign will survive to tell of this painful
desecration.

A little outside the roadway the ground is slightly elevated, and near to,
but outside of, the gilt-tipped railings which enclose the Temple Church
lies a very unpretending slab of marble. Rising but a few inches above the
level, one corner sunken and green with earth-mould, it is but a single
remove from the general decay around it. No fence protects it, children
play and fight their mimic battles thereon, and when last we saw it a
group of workmen employed near by were discussing their noontide bread and
cheese and beer in various lounging attitudes upon it. The slab is sadly
chipped, yet it is not nearly so old as the years of the century. Surely
the man whose death it commemorates departed this life

      Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

Not so. Let us scrape aside the accumulated dirt, and trace with
finger-tip the fast-vanishing inscription. It says, "Here lies Oliver
Goldsmith." This, then, is the way the world reveres its great ones. Of
what avail a monument to the poet in Westminster Abbey, dignified by the
celebrated epitaph of Dr. Johnson, when his tomb is thus relegated to the
domain of neglect and oblivion? Even the site at present indicated is
"entirely conjectural:" the precise position of the poet's grave has been
long forgotten.

Goldsmith Buildings, of course, take their name from the erratic poet and
playwright. In one of them he lived and died, just above the rooms
tenanted by the learned Blackstone, who, at that time engaged in penning
the fourth volume of his "Commentaries," was often grievously annoyed by
the dancing- and drinking-parties, the games of blind-man's-buff, and the
noisy singing of "poor Noll" and his boon companions. Goldsmith took up
residence in the Temple in the spring of the year 1764, in a very shabby
set of rooms, which he shared with Jeffs, the butler of the society. Here
Dr. Johnson visited him, says Mr. Forster, "and on prying and peering
about in them after his short-sighted fashion, flattening his face against
every object be looked at, Goldsmith's uneasy sense of their deficiencies
broke out. 'I shall soon be in better chambers, sir, than these,' he said.
'Nay, sir,' answered Johnson, 'never mind that: _nil te quaesiveris
extra_.'"

In 1765, his purse having become somewhat more plethoric, he removed to
Garden Court, then, as now, one of the choice spots in the Temple Area.
Here he sported a man-servant, and ran head over ears in debt to his
trades-people. Three years later, in 1768, we find the happy-go-lucky
spendthrift squandering four hundred of the five hundred pounds which the
partial success of "The Good-Natured Man" netted him in the purchase of a
set of chambers in No. 2 Brick Court, much to the sorrow of the studious
Blackstone, whose fellow-tenant he thus became. The nocturnal revelries of
Goldy and his intimates are happily described in Mr. Forster's biography.
Supper-parties were frequent, "preceded by blind-man's-buff, forfeits, or
games of cards, when Goldsmith, festively entertaining them all, would
make frugal supper for himself off boiled milk." He would "sing all kinds
of Irish songs," and with special enjoyment "gave them the Scotch ballad
of 'Johnny Armstrong' (his old nurse's favorite);" with great cheerfulness
"he would put the front of his wig behind, or contribute in any other way
to the general amusement;" and to an "accompaniment of uncontrolled
laughter he once danced a minuet with Mrs. Seguin," the wife of an Irish
merchant.

A volume would not contain the thrilling story of the trials and triumphs,
the struggles and successes, of the dead-and-gone generations whose feet
have polished the cool gray flags of the purlieus of the Temple. Comedy
and tragedy have been enacted within its walls; penury and prodigality
have dwelt beneath the same rafters; the versatile genius and the plodding
dullard have taken their maiden flights toward fame in its halls. Soldiers
and statesmen, poets and playwrights, courtiers, wits, and adventurers,
have herein acted their various parts. Yet, despite the checkered lives
that have run their course within its pale, and notwithstanding the lustre
shed upon its history by the many great jurists nurtured there, the Temple
gains its greatest renown from the residence therein of that famous trio,
Johnson, Goldsmith, and Lamb.

The immortal pump, so often alluded to in the Temple annals, stands in the
centre of Hare Court,--not in Pump Court, as might not unreasonably be
expected. It yields a copious supply of the coolest spring-water, and the
office-lads of the surrounding chambers make many pilgrimages hither,
stone pitcher in hand, during the sultry summertime. Charles Lamb, in an
epistle to Coleridge, in his happiest vein, says, "I have been turned out
of my chambers in the Temple by a landlord who wanted them for himself;
but I have got others at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, far more commodious and
roomy.... The rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare
Court, where there is a pump always going; just now it is dry. Hare
Court's trees come in at the window,--so that it's like living in a
garden." Again, writing from the Temple in 1810 to his friend Manning, who
is in China, Lamb says, "The household gods are slow to come, but here I
mean to live and die. Come, and bring any of your friends the mandarins
with you. My best room commands a court in which are trees and a pump, the
water of which is excellent cold--with brandy, and not very insipid
without." At about the same time we find Mary Lamb recording that her
genial brother had suddenly taken to living like an anchorite. He tabooed
all alcoholic drinks, and confined himself to cold water and cold tea. But
the beverage drawn from Hare Court did not agree with his internal
economy: he suffered in consequence from cramps and rheumatism, and his
abstention from generous fluids was, we are forced to infer, exceedingly
brief.

The poet Garth, who exposed the apothecaries of London to reprobation and
ridicule in his satirical poem "The Dispensary," also humorously alludes
to Hare Court's pump:

      And dare the college insolently aim
      To equal our fraternity in fame?
      Then let crabs' eyes with pearls for virtue try,
      Or Highgate Hill with lofty Pindus vie;
      So glowworms may compare with Titan's beams,
      And Hare Court pump with Aganippe's streams.

The one structure in the Temple area that overshadows all others in point
of interest is the famous round church, consecrated to St. Mary by
Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in the year 1185. This prelate's
presence in England was on an errand to invoke the assistance of Henry II.
against Saladin, who had recently inflicted several disastrous defeats on
the Templars in the Holy Land.

The church was finished about 1240. It is one of the four round churches
still remaining in England. Its plan is that of a central round tower,
supported by six beautiful clustered columns, crossed by a nave and
transepts. Notwithstanding the lapse of ages, and although its beauties
were for centuries hidden beneath a variety of hideous excrescences, it
remains to-day one of the best specimens of early Gothic architecture
extant. In 1682, 1695, 1706, 1737, and 1811 extensive repairs were made.
In 1828 the exterior was thoroughly restored and recased with stone, and
several unsightly structures that impeded the view of the church were
removed. All of these so-called restorations were, however, but partial in
extent. Many outrageous additions and much meretricious ornamentation,
added at various epochs, were allowed to remain.

Finally, in 1845, steps were taken looking to a thorough renovation and
restoration of the venerable pile. The purity of the marble columns had
been sullied by several coats of paint and whitewash, while many of the
foliated capitals of the columns supporting the "Round" bore traces of
gilding. These latter were scraped and cleaned; an eight-feet-high oak
wainscot was removed; light, movable seats were substituted for the heavy
pews of Charles II.'s time that encumbered the Round; the pavement was
lowered to its original level, thus revealing the bases of the columns;
the organ (built by the famous Father Smith in the reign of Charles II.)
was removed to its present position in the choir, and the whole interior,
by means of these and other extensive changes, was exhibited in its
pristine purity.

It is difficult to understand the crass stupidity which blocked up
exquisite Norman windows, covered carved capitals with a thick coat of
cement, closed many of the arches with wooden partitions, planted a
cumbrous pulpit and reading-desk immediately under the dome, and hid the
noble groined ceiling behind a shell of flat, whitewashed boarding. In the
course of these repairs much of the marble-work was found to require
renewal, for replacing which some old quarries in the Isle of Purbeck,
unworked for generations, were reopened.

On the pavement, immediately under the Round, are several marble effigies
of mail-clad knights,--"Associates of the Temple." Those that have been
identified represent Geoffry de Magnaville, Earl of Essex, one of the
barons who fought against King Stephen; another, having clean-cut features
and clad in chain-armor, commemorates William Marshall, who was Protector
during the reign of Henry III,; and by his side rests his son, a leader of
the Barons in their memorable struggle against King John. The effigy of
Gilbert Marshall, third son of the Protector, reposes near the western
door-way, and hard by is the figure of a warrior in the act of prayer,
supposed to be intended for Robert, Lord of Ros. Five or six other figures,
some of remarkable beauty, and all in good preservation, two of heroic
stature, are unidentified.

Service is held daily in the Temple Church, and admission is practically
free. On Sunday mornings, however, the introduction of a bencher is
requisite to secure admittance. The music is of the best of its kind, and
the organ, though of great age, is renowned as one of the purest-and
sweetest-toned instruments in London.

No account of the Temple would be complete without some mention of its
many curious sundials. Each garden possesses a plain pillar-dial. There is
one in Temple Lane with the motto, "_Pereunt et imputantur_," and
"_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_" appears on another in Essex Court. In Pump
Court, high up on the front of a house is a large, rectangular dial, with
gilt figures and stile, bearing the inscription, "Shadows we are and like
shadows depart." Over the dial is the traditional Temple lamb bearing a
cross.[A] In Brick Court there is a dial with the apt legend, "Time and
tide tarry for no man." In the year 1828 an ancient building on Inner
Temple Terrace was demolished, and with it a sundial bearing the strange
but not inappropriate inscription, "Begone about your business." The story
runs that, many years before, a crusty old bencher had promised the
dial-maker to provide a motto for the then new dial. The messenger,
however, arrived at an inopportune time, received the above curt dismissal
in answer to his request, and conveyed it to his master as the legend to
be engraved.

[Footnote A: The devices of the Middle and Inner Temple are a lamb and a
horse respectively, and they may be frequently seen blazoned on window and
wall. An irreverent wit once scrawled these lines on the Temple gate:

      As by the Templars' hold you go,
        The horse and lamb displayed
      In emblematic figures show
        The merits of their trade.

      The clients may infer from thence
        How just is their profession:
      The lamb sets forth their innocence,
        The horse their expedition.

      O happy Britons, happy isle,
        Let foreign nations say,
      Where you get justice without guile,
        And law without delay!

In answer and in ridicule of which, a second scribbler penned the
following stanzas beneath:

      Deluded men, these holds forego,
        Nor trust such cunning elves:
      These artful emblems tend to show
        Their _clients_, not _themselves_.

      'Tis all a trick; these are all shams
        By which they mean to cheat you:
      But have a care,--for you're the lambs,
        And they the wolves that eat you.

      Nor let the thought of "no delay"
        To these their courts misguide you:
      'Tis you're the showy horse, and they
        The jockeys that will ride you.]

The din and devastation of civil strife and the smoke and flame of
conflagration have more than once surged high and furious in and around
the Temple. In Wat Tyler's rebellion many of the houses were razed by the
rioters, books and parchments were carried away and fed to bonfires, and
it was the intention of the rebels to destroy the precinct and the lawyers
together, for thus, they said, they would obliterate both unjust laws and
corrupt law-makers. The "No-Popery" rioters in 1780 marched to attack the
Temple, but were awed into flight by the apparently determined front
presented by the lawyers and students, who were really in desperate fear
themselves. Street-fights with the lawless Alsatians of the adjoining
Whitefriars region were at one time frequent.[B] In 1553, and again in
1669, the mayor of the city essayed to "pass through the cloisters with
drawn sword." The Temple claimed immunity from civic control, and on both
occasions the mayor's weapon was beaten down and a bloody affray resulted.
An appeal growing out of this event was made to Charles II. by Heneage
Finch in behalf of the Temple, but the question is still unsettled. Hence
the modern Templars close their gates at ten o'clock every night, and when
the "charity children" of the adjacent parishes "beat the bounds" on
Ascension Day, redouble their vigilance. The rich rental of the property
pays no local taxes, though repeated efforts have been made to assess it.

[Footnote B: Salisbury Court, Whitefriars, enjoyed for centuries the
privilege of a sanctuary--at first for criminals, but finally for debtors
only--until 1697, when it was abolished by royal warrant. It was nicknamed
"Alsatia," in imitation of the frontier province of the same name, which
was long a cause of contention and familiarly known to English soldiers in
the long Continental wars. As Cunningham observes, "In the Temple students
were trying to keep the law, and in Alsatia, adjoining, debtors to avoid
and violate it. The Alsatians were troublesome neighbors to the Templars,
and the Templars as troublesome neighbors to the Alsatians."]

In 1666 the Great Fire of London burnt its way westward as far as the
Temple. After consuming several sets of chambers and a quantity of
title-deeds to many valuable estates, the course of the flames was stayed
just east of the Temple Church. But in 1678-79, in the mouth of January, a
large area was burned over. The fire lasted from midnight till noon of the
ensuing day. Pump Court, Vine Court, part of Brick Court, Elm-Tree Court,
Hare Court, part of Middle Temple Hall, a portion of Inner Temple Hall,
and the old cloisters, were swept away. The season was remarkable for its
severity: the Thames was frozen over, and the supply of water entirely
inadequate. So great hogsheads of ale were hoisted up from the cellars and
the liquor fed to the clumsy hand-engines of the period. When the ale gave
out, recourse was had to gunpowder,--buildings in the track of the flames
being blown up; but in this dangerous work the Temple library was
demolished. In the end, however, the Temple was the gainer by this fire:
much better structures took the place of the old rookeries, and the entire
precinct was purified.

Around the hoary walls of the Temple cluster memories of many a strange
custom or quaint observance. The revels at Yule-tide, St. Stephen's Day,
New Year's Day, and Twelfth Night were not surpassed anywhere in "merrie
England." Feasts, masques, and play-acting at various times greatly
scandalized the more sober and staid among the benchers. Stowe tells us
that the readers of his day "for upwards of three weeks kept a splendid
table, feasting the nobility, judges, bishops, principal officers of state,
and sometimes the king himself, insomuch that it has cost a reader above
one thousand pounds,"--a mint of money in those frugal days. Revelries
grew in frequency and attractiveness as the business of instruction
declined, so much so that we are compelled to believe that at one period
the qualifications for admission were merely nominal. A banquet given by
Sir Heneage Finch the year following the restoration of Charles II. lasted
from the 4th to the 17th of August, and all London was invited and made
welcome.

In one point the Templars of to-day are not a whit behind their
predecessors: they give good dinners. For centuries the benchers of the
two societies have dined in each other's company once a year in the great
hall; and to Mr. Thornbury we are indebted for the following description
of a Temple dinner of to-day:

"An Inner Temple banquet is a very grand thing. At five or half-past five
the barristers and students in their gowns follow the benchers in
procession to the dais; the steward strikes the table solemnly a mystic
three times; grace is said by the treasurer or senior bencher present, and
the men of law fall to. In former times it was the custom to blow a horn
in every court to announce the meal. The benchers observe somewhat more
style at their table than the other members do at theirs. The general
repast is a tureen of soup, a joint of meat, a tart, and cheese to each
mess, consisting of four persons, and each mess is allowed a bottle of
port wine. Dinner is served daily to the members of the Inn during
term-time,--the masters of the bench dining on the dais, and the
barristers and students at long tables extending down the hall. On grand
days the judges are present, who dine in succession with each of the four
Inns of Court. To the parliament chamber, adjoining the hall, the benchers
repair after dinner. The 'loving-cups' used on certain grand occasions are
huge silver goblets, which are passed down the table filled with a
delicious composition, immemorially termed 'sack,' consisting of sweetened
and exquisitely flavored white wine. The butler attends the progress of
the cup to replenish it, and each student is by rule restricted to a sip;
yet it is recorded that once, though the number present fell short of
seventy, thirty-six quarts of the liquid were sipped away. At the Inner
Temple, on May 29, a gold cup of sack is handed to each member, who drinks
to the happy restoration of Charles II."

The Temple has been for generations a favorite abode with men of letters
and others having no leaning toward or connection with the bar. It is a
vast bachelors' hall. Fleet Street and its immediate vicinity is the
centre of the publishing interest of London. Here many of the great
dailies are edited and printed, and "Brain Street," as George Augustus
Sala fitly nicknamed it, is midway between the "city" and the "West End,
"--the "down town" and the "up town" of London, if such a simile is
permissible as applied to a brick-and-mortar polypus whose members radiate
toward every point of the compass. No part of the Temple is more than five
minutes' walk from this centre of intellectual industry, and yet, once
within its walls, the silence and seclusion are complete. The roar and
rattle of Fleet Street and the Strand might be a thousand miles away, for
scarce a murmur penetrates beyond the Temple gates. The quiet, stone-paved
courts, the grassy nooks gemmed with a few choice blossoms, the
soft-plashing fountains, overshadowed by sturdy elm-, plane-, or fig-trees,
the cool stone archways leading from one court to another, the park-like
expanse of the Temple Garden, bounded by the bustling Embankment and the
swift-flowing river, are surroundings favorable alike to the labors of a
busy journalist, to the novelist's weavings of fiction, to the poet's
subtile creations, to the purposeful studies of the patient scholar, or to
the objectless dreamings of the mere "man about town."

HENRY FREDERIC REDDALL.

       *       *       *       *       *




"MEES."


Red-armed Annette gave a final glance at the table, and as the clock was
striking eight summoned Frau Pastorin Raben's boarders to supper. Promptly
came the two Von Ente girls, high-born and high-posed damsels, forced to
make themselves teachers. It had been a sad blow to their pride. The elder
was somewhat consoled by a huge carbuncle brooch given to her by Kaiser
Wilhelm himself. The younger was named for a very great lady; and when a
letter came from the very great lady the recipient lifted her head and
remembered that, whatever happened, she was a Von Ente.

Following them close, there entered the dining-room a woman who painted
pictures and sold them. Hedwig Vogel was about fifty, tall, angular,
hard-featured. She was reported to be very rich and very mean. Moreover,
she was an undoubted democrat; for when Elsa von Ente's lady patron came
to the house, everybody kissed the august dame's hand except Hedwig Vogel
and "the Mees." Of course "the Mees," poor thing! knew no better; but
FrÃ¤ulein Vogel!--a woman guilty of such a misdemeanor was capable of
putting dynamite in Bismarck's night-cap. She responded curtly to the
greeting given to her by the Von Entes, and then asked where the Frau
Pastorin might be.

"Here," answered a soft voice, and the plump, smiling, suave mistress of
the house entered and seated herself at the table. As she bowed her head
to invoke a blessing on the smoked herring, the raw ham, the salad, the
three kinds of bread, a tardy boarder opened the dining-room door. She
stood on the threshold for a minute, then moved swiftly to her place.

"Good-evening, Mees," said the Frau Pastorin, and "Good-evening, Mees,"
echoed the Von Entes. FrÃ¤ulein Vogel contented herself with a nod, and
attacked bread and ham in hungry silence.

"Your walk has given you a fine color," the Frau Pastorin continued
blandly. Then, turning to the artist, "You should paint the Mees,
FrÃ¤ulein. 'A Study of America.' That would sound well, would it not?"

The Study of America smiled a little disdainfully, and refused the raw ham
and the herring offered to her by Elsa von Ente. She had refused raw ham
and smoked herring at least a hundred times, but yet the Frau Pastorin
protested.

"I am sad there is nothing for you," she murmured in English,--a language
she fondly fancied she spoke.

"Oh, there is bread galore," said the Mees.

This set the hostess to thinking. Bread she understood; but what was bread
galore?

"I should like to learn some American dishes," she said. "Buckwhit cakes,
--so, is it right?--I have read of them. How you would relish them
to-night, would you not?"

"No," said Mees ungraciously.

"Not?" said the Von Entes, who talked together habitually. "But what then?"

"Beef--mutton--chickens," said Mees.

"We have them here," murmured the Frau Pastorin sweetly.

"Do you?" said Mees, quite as sweetly. And Hedwig Vogel burst out
laughing. The Frau Pastorin bit her lip, the Von Ente girls looked blank,
and Annette scuttled away, smelling danger from afar, for she knew full
well that she often received a vicarious reproof.

Supper over, the table was cleared and a big Bible laid before the Frau
Pastorin, who, as a clergyman's widow, felt that it was her duty to set a
good example to the sojourners beneath her roof. Hedwig Vogel, however,
did not stay to the reading: she went up to her bare, lonely rooms. They
were totally lacking in character, for neither the woman nor the artist
was betrayed in their appointments. Everything was scrupulously clean and
painfully neat about them. German-fashion, the square table was pushed
close to the sofa, and held a lamp and four never-opened books. Here
FrÃ¤ulein Vogel seated herself, turned up the lamp-wick, and then crossed
her long, lean, sinewy hands in her lap. The tall white porcelain stove
made the room so warm that she presently rose and set a window open a
little way. She was indeed a dangerous, unconventional creature, a
Prussian who cared neither for great ladies nor draughts. She stood there,
feeling the damp air of early spring blow in her face. From the beer-hall
near by came the sound of music; over the pavement rattled a cart drawn by
two weary dogs and followed by a yet wearier peasant-woman; with a brave
clink-clank of spurs and sword strode by a brave lieutenant. Above all
these sounds FrÃ¤ulein Vogel's quick ear caught a light foot-fall on the
bare stairs without. She crossed the parlor and flung open the door.

"Mees."

"Yes, most gracious lady."

"Ridiculous,--'gracious lady'! Come in."

Mees obeyed, and took the place of honor on the sofa beside the painter.

"I have a favor to ask," she said, with a deprecatory smile, "Don't call
me Mees, please. It does not mean anything."

"Shall I say Mees Varing?" asked the painter, with a struggle to pronounce
the name properly.

"Unless you like Kitty better," said Mees.

"Kitty--Kitty." FrÃ¤ulein Vogel repeated it gravely. "Kitty." She smiled.
"Kitty Varing, of New York. Now I have it all."

"No," said Kitty, "not quite. Of Withlacootchie, New York."

They both laughed, the Indian name was so unmanageable. Kitty finally
wrote it down, and the painter pronounced it over and over again. At last
she straightened up, and said sternly,

"But where is the picture, Mees--Kitty?"

"Ah, you don't want to see it," Kitty exclaimed; "and I don't want to show
it to you. I tell you I have no talent. I suppose, though, patience must
tell in the end," she added, half to herself.

"Yes, it will tell," said the painter grimly. "It will tell--something.
Go get your picture now."

Kitty crossed the corridor to her own little room. There was the picture,
--a sketch in oils of the best-known model in DÃ¥sseldorf, this time rigged
out as a Roman peasant. The girl looked at the picture with a frown; she
seized it as though she would dash it on the floor in scorn, but, checking
the impulse, she carried it to FrÃ¤ulein Vogel.

The successful painter looked at the sketch in silence for a full minute,
holding it off at arm's length. Finally, she laid it down on the table,
murmuring, "And after three years' hard work!"

"Only a year's real work," Kitty broke in eagerly. "I have only been here
a year, you know; and those two years at home I ought not to count, for I
did not work then as I do now."

"Why not?" asked FrÃ¤ulein Vogel sharply. And Kitty changed color.

"Ah, one must not ask questions," FrÃ¤ulein Vogel remarked; "but one can
have plenty of suspicions. I dare say you were in love, and, as love
failed, you have taken to art. So it goes with women. Everything but
marriage is a _pis-aller_."

Kitty half rose: the stray arrow had sped home, and it rankled in a new
wound.

"I am a woman myself," added FrÃ¤ulein Vogel, with a droll smile that
melted the girl's anger in an instant.

Kitty dropped down on the sofa. "Well," she said gayly, "I grant that I
was in love once on a time; but that is all past. Now I want to be a
painter. Listen: I have not much money, I have no friends,--that is,
friends such as we read about,--and I must learn to make some money. When
I am thirty I shall begin to make money; otherwise--"

"You are spending your capital," said FrÃ¤ulein Vogel.

"If I spent only my income I should either wear shoes and no clothes, or
clothes and no shoes," answered Kitty, laughing, with a little air of
recklessness that sat well on her. "Besides," she added sagely, "it is
well to burn one's ships. Sink or swim."

"But you are quite sure of swimming?" said FrÃ¤ulein Vogel, taking up the
picture again and looking at it closely.

"It is very bad," Kitty said.

"Abominable," said the painter. She drew a long breath and shook her head.
"Abominable," she repeated, almost as though such an abominable piece of
work demanded respect. "_Ach_! You leave old Zweifarbe's studio," she
exclaimed. "Send your easel over to me. You want to make some money? Good.
There are many artists here in DÃ¥sseldorf who say I cannot paint; there is
not one who will say I have not made money. Perhaps I can teach you." And
FrÃ¤ulein Vogel burst out laughing, while Kitty stared at her in blank
surprise.

"But you have never taken pupils," she stammered.

"I have never died; but I suppose I shall," was the response.

And so old Zweifarbe lost a pupil,--for Kitty's easel was straightway
borne on the back of a sturdy _dienstmann_ to FrÃ¤ulein Vogel's studio.
What a chatter, what a commotion, it caused in the nest of painters! They
chirped and gossiped and pecked each other like a flock of sparrows. The
Frau Pastorin expressed the popular sentiment when she discussed Hedwig
Vogel's eccentricities.

"How much a lesson?" she said, half closing one shrewd gray eye. "How much
a lesson? Ah, she would not take pupils,--no, no, not while she was Hedwig
Vogel; and _der liebe Gott_ knows she will never be Hedwig anything else.
But she will make an exception for our deer Mees Varing; oh, yes, an
exception! Wait till Mees Varing's rich American friends come along and
buy some of the great Vogel's pictures. You will see."

"But has the Mees any rich friends?" asked her crony the Frau Doctorin.

And then the parson's widow laughed in a worldly way.

"So pretty a girl," she said, "so fine a complexion, such little feet! And
those winning ways!"

From which it will be seen that the Frau Pastorin could admire and
appreciate a woman who was young and beautiful. So could the painters; but
that is easier to believe. And so could the tight-booted lieutenants; but
that is perfectly understood. When Kitty Waring crossed the Hof Garten,
even that old woman who years and years ago sold little Heinrich Heine
plums would point out the girl to her contemporary the venerable
under-gardener.

"_HÃ¥bsch_" the old woman would growl.

"_Aber leichtsinnig--leichtsinnig_," the old man would add,--for he was a
misogynist.

But Kitty was not quite _leichtsinnig_, although she did stroll through
the garden sometimes with Fritz Goebel, sometimes with Otho Weiss,
sometimes with her fellow-countryman Joe Buckley. They were all young, all
painters, all poor. Who cared what they did? What if they sat on a beach
under a linden-tree and played cat's-cradle like children? What if they
made little excursions to Zons or to Xanten? What if there was a supper in
Joe Buckley's studio, and Kitty Waring and Anna van der Meer--a sedate
creature from Rotterdam was she--were taught how to make a true, good
_bowl_? Who cared? In fact, all DÃ¥sseldorf cared.

One day the Frau Pastorin called Kitty into her parlor. "Dear child," she
began, "if your good mother--"

"She has been dead fifteen years," said Kitty.

"If your father--" continued the Frau Pastorin.

"He? Oh, I can't remember him at all," said Kitty.

"Have you no family?" was the question that the Frau Pastorin put squarely.

"An uncle or two somewhere in Iowa," Kitty answered. "An aunt brought me
up, and then died, poor thing!" A smile flitted across Kitty's face, and
tears sprang to her eyes; but her questioner saw only the smile. The world
is full of such purblind folk.

"Where were you last night so late?" she said acridly.

Kitty turned on the plump little woman and looked down at her.

"When Miss Smythe told me that I should find a pleasant home here, she
made a sad mistake," was the irrelevant answer that Mees gave. It puzzled
the Frau Pastorin for full a week. Then Hedwig Vogel and Mees paid their
honest debts and took up quarters with Frau Tisch, in the Rosenstrasse.

"It is much pleasanter here," cried; Kitty, as she moved about the parlor,
transforming the commonplace aspect of the room. "And it is cheap, too. I
thought Frau Tisch would ask more than Frau Raben."

"It is less because we club together," said FrÃ¤ulein Vogel.

Kitty might have suspected something if her new friend had not had the
name of being so close-fisted. Who would dream that Hedwig Vogel could be
free-handed?--she who would beat a _gemÃ¥se-frau_ out of two cents; she who
refused to subscribe to the fund for painters' widows, declaring that it
was as likely she would leave a widow as be left one. She was not
susceptible, she cared naught for sweet smiles and gentle ways. That she,
a gaunt, grim, brusque woman of fifty, could suddenly feel all the stifled
mother-love within her spring up,--that was preposterous, the vain
imagining of a romancer.

They worked together, these two, in Hedwig Vogel's studio, and Kitty
strove to make up for her lack of talent by her abundance of patience.

"Why did you decide to be a painter?" FrÃ¤ulein Vogel asked her one day.

"Because I had a start in that line," Kitty answered. "If I had had a
start in music I should have tried to play or sing. I wonder if I could
sing? They say everybody has a voice. People are just like fields: plough
'em up, plant cabbages, plant potatoes, you can raise some sort of a crop.
How do you happen to be a painter?"

Hedwig Vogel paused, palette in one hand, brush in the other. "Because I
would rather paint than eat," she answered.

"That is genius," said Kitty solemnly. "I would rather eat. That is lack
of genius. But because I want to eat I paint. That is--what would you call
that?"

"You have a daub of ochre on your nose," said FrÃ¤ulein Vogel.

"Anyway," Kitty remarked after a while, "if worse came to worst I could
teach. There is German. Now, I really speak German well, don't I? I could
teach that."

"Oh, you have the gift o' gab!" said the painter. "But you will be married,
sure."

A long silence followed. "I am twenty-four," said Kitty.

"There is no safety for you this side of the grave," said FrÃ¤ulein Vogel.

"I may be married, but I doubt it," Kitty continued. "I--" And then she
dropped her brushes, flung herself prone on the floor, and burst into
passionate tears. Hedwig Vogel did not try to comfort her, but she knelt
beside her and put her strong right arm about the girl's quivering
shoulders. At last Kitty sat up and brushed back her tangled hair.

"Every day I think of him," she said. "Every day I hope, I pray he will
come. I watch for the postman,--I have watched for him so long. He never
brings me a letter, but my heart stops beating when he draws near the
house. When he rings the bell, when the servant comes up the stairs, I
shut my eyes. I can almost believe I have the letter in my hand. I almost
see the words. But there is never a letter,--there never can be. Oh, I--"
She rose and walked to and fro. "I am to blame," she added, laying her
hand on Fraulein Vogel's shoulder. "I wronged him by my suspicion, my
petty jealousy; then I ran away from him, and expected him to roam over
Europe trying to find me. I hid myself from him, and I am eating my heart
out because he does not come."

"Suppose," said FrÃ¤ulein Vogel, "that he is seeking for you now?"

Kitty's wet eyes shone for a moment. "I am not worth that," she said.

"But if he loves you?"

"Oh, he loves me, I know!" she exclaimed. "And I doubted him. I thought
all manner of base thoughts, and I told him of them to his face,--to him,
the noblest, dearest,--and he never reproached me. Do you wonder I am
ashamed to write to him? Do you wonder I dare not ask his pardon?"

"If he loves you he would forgive anything," said FrÃ¤ulein Vogel.

The room had grown dark, and they mechanically washed their brushes,
cleaned their palettes, and made ready to go home. As they crossed the Hof
Garten, two or three young painters joined them, and the talk ran on
gayly. FrÃ¤ulein Vogel had heard Kitty's laugh ring out many a time before,
but never until now did she hear the sad note that dimmed the sweetness of
it. The young men turned away at last.

"To-morrow, then, at eight," sang out Otho Weiss.

"Until to-morrow," cried the others.

"Until to-morrow," Kitty echoed. "Always to-morrow," she added softly to
herself.

"I do not understand," said FrÃ¤ulein Vogel, going back to the talk in the
studio.

"I was jealous," Kitty answered simply. "He was above me in station--"

"I thought there was no rank in America," said FrÃ¤ulein Vogel.

"Then you cannot understand how a big tradesman scorns a little one,"
Kitty rejoined. "My aunt kept a shop, but she would never let me help her
sell pins and needles and tape. No, I must go to school with girls whose
fathers sold pins by the ton instead of by the paper,--or by the pound, as
you do here. His father sold them by the ton,--a mere matter of big and
little. The family was reconciled to me after a while. You see, the family
had to be reconciled, for Frank did not care what they said to him."

"He loved you," said FrÃ¤ulein Vogel.

"Yes, but they wanted him to love somebody else. Perhaps he would have
done so if I had not come in his way. Perhaps he would have married the
right girl,--a limp, languid creature, with money enough to build a
cathedral like the one at Cologne. She made the trouble. They said he was
tired of me, that he repented his impetuosity; and I heard it all, and I
grew jealous,--jealous of nothing. I reproached him, told him that he
wanted her and her money. Then came the crash. My aunt died. I had a
chance to come to Europe with some people, and I did not even bid him
good-by. Now I expect him to write to me--to find me."

She laughed a little as she said this. "Some day," said FrÃ¤ulein Vogel.
"If he loves you," she added.

"I doubted him," Kitty said, "and I deserve all this. Ah, if you knew him,
if you saw him, you would know what a fool I was!"

They had reached the house by this time, and, as Kitty opened the door,
she added, "I must write soon. I must hear something about him. What may
not have happened in a year? Perhaps he is dead."

She did not mention her lover again to FrÃ¤ulein Vogel, but she showed her
his portrait; and the sharp-eyed painter looked at the frank, manly face a
long time.

"Write to him, you foolish woman," she said.

"Not yet. I will wait a little longer," Kitty rejoined.

The summer wore away. In August they went for a fortnight to a little
place near Remagen,--Bad Neunahr it is called,--and here Kitty's eyes were
opened, and she suddenly awoke to the fact that her new friend was no
ordinary friend.

"You need not worry about money," said FrÃ¤ulein Vogel. "If you don't learn
how to make it, you know how to spend it. I could never learn that myself."

But in the autumn Kitty only worked the harder, believing with all her
heart that patience would make a respectable, picture-selling painter out
of a Chinese mandarin. When the gray dawn stole in at the window she
sprang out of bed, dressed, and was off to the studio for an hour before
breakfast. She begrudged the time spent for dinner, she bemoaned a dark
day, and she laid her brushes down reluctantly in the twilight. In the
evening she wanted to go to the theatre, to a concert, to a supper. Such
as she find plenty of companions, and from time to time DÃ¥sseldorf raised
its hands over her doings. FrÃ¤ulein Vogel watched and waited in a sort of
patient agony, but at last, not without deep reflection, she wrote a
letter to Kitty's sweetheart. She read his name on the back of a
photograph, she knew well how to spell the name of the town, she knew the
town was near New York, she knew New York was in North America, and she
had to buy an extra big envelope to hold the whole address. But the letter
was a terrible thing, and a happy thought came to her. She made a little
picture of Kitty,--a perfect little picture,--and beneath it she wrote
name and address. That was better than a thousand letters. Carefully she
did it up, placing tissue-paper above and beneath the cardboard, and
laying it tenderly in a white box. Surely it could not go astray, unless
all the post-office men were blind; but, to make sure, she would register
it, if that were possible. All must be done without Kitty's knowledge, and
the touch of mystery made the romance the sweeter. One fine day she
sallied forth to send the little portrait on its way. She entered the Hof
Garten, sauntered down the Linden AllÃ©e thinking all the while how
delightfully the comedy would end. Her own part, as good fairy of the play,
pleased her, too, and she smiled to herself as she strayed off from the
AllÃ©e and, seating herself on a bench that was well screened from prying
eyes, she gave herself up to revery. Of course the lover would come, of
course he would carry Kitty off; but FrÃ¤ulein Vogel did not mean to be
left far behind. She would look after Kitty, for the foolish, impetuous
creature would need at least two people to keep her out of mischief.

"Frank."

Some one uttered the name, and FrÃ¤ulein Vogel peered through the leaves.
Sitting near was a pale, sweet-faced woman, drawing figures in the gravel
with the tip of her parasol.

"Frank," she repeated, "shall we go home?"

"Do you mean Withlacootchie or the hotel?" was the answer.

The man had his back to FrÃ¤ulein Vogel, but now he turned, and she
recognized him. The portrait had lied a little, as portraits will lie, and
yet he was a handsome man enough, after all.

"Home or the hotel, dear?" His voice was very gentle, and his smile
tender. "Are you tired of wandering?" he added.

"Oh, no!" she said, "but whither shall we wander?"

"Up-stairs, down-stairs, in my ladies' chamber," he rejoined. "Last summer,
the Tyrol; last winter, Italy; this summer, Switzerland; now,--where? We
are making a long honeymoon of it."

"And are you tired?" she asked.

He gave a rapid glance up and down the AllÃ©e then stooped and kissed her.

FrÃ¤ulein Vogel had not understood all the words, the caress she saw. She
rose and went slowly homeward. In the tiny DÃ¥ssel the swans were floating
majestically, and, standing there on the bank, she tore the box and the
picture into scraps and flung them in the water. The swans hastened after
the bits of white paper; they fought and screamed over them, and the
victor proudly bore away a fragment from his envious mates, only to
discover that it was worthless.

CHARLES DUNNING.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE NEXT VACATION.


If it finds you with fifty dollars and a fortnight at your command, you
cannot do better than spend both on the Great Lakes.

You don't care for water? But the Great Lakes are not water. You follow
closely the most interesting and wonderful shore, and seven different
times stop for several hours at places on the coast.

Or perhaps you do care for water, and would not like hugging the shore?
One day, at least, on Lake Huron, you would be out of sight of land; and
if you should have a lake storm, you would have all the ocean "fun" you
would care for.

Or you were thinking of the Thousand Isles? There are a thousand isles in
the northern part of Lake Huron, just before you turn into the little
winding river that leads to the "Soo."

Or you had planned to see Lake George this year? You will see a beautiful
copy of Lake George as you leave the little town of Hancock and pass from
the narrow river into a broad expanse dotted with islands, just before
entering the canal that leads to the upper part of Lake Superior.

But you had rather go West, among the mines? What mines can you find, more
interesting than the great copper-mines of Calumet and Hecla and
Quincy?--the only place in the United States, indeed, where you can see
the curious man-engine, with its arrangement of changing-platforms for
carrying the miners up and down.

Well, you meant to go "canoeing." Some very choice canoeing and shooting
of rapids you can have during the hours at the Sault Ste. Marie, popularly
known as the "Soo," and during the two days that the steamer waits at
Duluth before the return-trip Lake Superior will prove not an unattractive
spot to paddle about in.

Add to this the interest of the magnificent new locks at the "Soo," the
historical and romantic associations with Marquette and Mackinac (for you
will not forget that Miss Woolson's "Anne" lived on the Great Lakes), and
the creature comforts of big state-rooms, with large, comfortable beds,
and running water in the basins, on admirable steamers that set an
excellent hotel-table, and you will wonder, as we did, that so few
tourists seem to know about, or care for, one of the most enjoyable
excursions in the country,--I am quite sure I can say the most enjoyable
for the little money it costs.

We took it ourselves quite by accident,--willing to go out of our way a
little on the journey to Colorado in the heat of summer for the sake of a
little trip by water to compensate for the sea-shore cottage we were
leaving behind us for the season. We did not, indeed, begin the trip, as
the steamers do, at Buffalo; for, although time and tide wait for no man
at the East, at the West there are no tides, and time was willing to make
an appointment for us to overtake the steamer at Detroit. We were glad of
an excuse for lingering at the House Beautiful in Buffalo, where we would
rather spend Sunday any time than on any lake in the world. Fortunately,
we had "been to the Falls" many times before, and had seen Niagara in
winter splendor and summer loveliness: so we were at liberty to idle away
the fleeting hours in the shades of Delaware Avenue, on charming piazzas,
till the time came when we must start on the flying trip through Canada if
we would overtake the steamer Japan.

She was just gliding into her dock at Detroit as we stepped from the cars,
and we still had three or four hours' leisure before she would start again
in which to drive about the pretty city and call on friends. Just before
midnight we embarked, and our first experience of the Great Lakes was a
night of peaceful and serene slumber.

Peaceful and serene, too, was the following day,--a patient waiting for
the scenery to begin, sitting with novels on what was facetiously known as
"the back piazza" of the Japan, out of sight of land, but gliding over a
sea so smooth that the hanging flower-baskets on the deck scarcely
stirred. If you scorn such tame delights when apparently at sea, remember
that it might have been rough as only lakes are rough in a great storm. It
was very warm. The captain's assurance that the next morning we should
want to borrow his overcoat and mittens had no effect in disguising the
fact that it was warm. The ladies dressed for dinner, many of them in
white; and the only excitement of the afternoon was the "sighting" of the
Michigan, United States man-of-war, cruising in lake-waters. A little knot
of officers on deck waved their handkerchiefs; a little knot of pretty
girls on the Japan were responding eagerly, when a severe and elderly
voice was heard to say, with distinctness, "The officers' wives are on
board the Japan. They are waving to _them_."

And in fact, as we glided past, a little child was seen at a port-hole of
the Michigan, waving a handkerchief to mamma on the Japan. It had been
seriously ill, and the mother, forbidden by the United States government
to remain with her sick child on the Michigan, preferred to leave him
there with his father, where he could have the care of the special surgeon
who understood the case, while she followed as closely as she could in one
of the lake-steamers. Ah, how interested we all were! It is recorded in
history that certain enemies of the Egyptians used to go into battle with
them with each man holding a cat in his arms. Suppose in our next war we
try the effect upon our enemies of letting each of our soldiers carry a
white-robed baby? One thing is certain, the Michigan captured the Japan
with all on board that day simply by exhibiting that little white figure
at its port-hole. The next day at the "Soo" not a murmur of dissent was
heard when the good-natured captain, who had no European mails on board,
said he would wait an extra hour for the Michigan to come up, that the
anxious mother might have twenty-four hours' later news.

On the second morning there was an entire change of weather and landscape.
The sun still shone gloriously (the thermometer that day in Chicago stood
at 94), but rugs, seal-skins, and hoods were in demand. We were no longer
out of sight of land, but were threading our way in and out among a
thousand isles, with hills that seemed almost mountains threatening to bar
our course before long if we did not turn back the way we came. No one,
the captain said, had ever been known to guess the channel correctly; but
before long we had made a sharp turn to the left at the only spot that
offered an outlet, and found the Great Lakes narrowed suddenly to a
beautiful winding river which led us in the course of another hour or two
to the "Soo." Here the steamer would wait three hours, and we could
explore the queer little town,--quite a popular resort in summer,--or
inspect the splendid locks of the great canal, or shoot the rapids. To me
it was a genuine pleasure to find at last some rapids that were visible to
the naked eye. The famous rapids of the St. Lawrence had been a severe
disappointment, but here were rapids worthy of the name. Lake Superior was
visibly above us, Lake Huron visibly below, and between ran the turbulent
little stream which of course must be flowing into Lake Huron, though we
could not have told merely by looking at it which way the current ran.

"Would we go up the rapids?" We had heard of going down the rapids, but in
reality the most wonderful part of the performance is going up. Not only
is the current fearfully swift, even close to the shore as it is necessary
to keep, but the water seems to be only a few inches deep, and the rocks
are as thick as plums in a Christmas pudding. Yet two Indians, standing
erect, one in the bow and one in the stern of the canoe, pole you up the
stream against these terrible odds as easily and surely as a Harvard
oarsman might row you across Seneca Lake. Then they pause for a moment.

"How will you have it going down? Rough?" they ask.

"Rough," we answer, wondering what in the world they can mean by speaking
as if they were the autocrats of wind and current.

But it seems there are two channels,--one near shore for the timid, and
one in mid-stream. We were not to be betrayed into any exhibition of
timidity after that first hesitating question, "Do you know the rapids
well? How many times have you taken people down?" To which the quiet reply
had been, "Three times a day, lady, for twenty years." Twenty thousand
times, by rough calculation!

So we went over in mid-stream, and were not sorry,--receiving as we
stepped ashore what is probably a part of every programme, the compliment
of being "the bravest lady that ever went over the falls."

Many a pleasant day, or week, one might undoubtedly spend at the Sault
Ste. Marie, or at Mackinac; but if you have only turned through the
straits and gone southward again to Chicago through Lake Michigan, do not
think of saying that you have taken the trip on the Great Lakes. To me the
Great Lakes will always mean Lake Superior. It is something unique in the
geography of the world, and you have the consciousness of your actual
height above the level of the sea as you rarely have on any elevated land
that is not actually a mountain. Ruskin says that for him the flowers lose
their light, the river its music, when he tries to divest any given
landscape of its associations with human struggle and endeavor. Our New
World scenery, of course, has little of that wonderful charm of
association; but there is something singularly impressive in the mere
silence and vastness of our great Northern solitudes.

We entered Lake Superior late in the afternoon, and the only event of the
evening was a magnificent aurora. Toward midnight the gorgeous tints
changed to a thin wedge of perfectly white light, against which in a
duskier white the sails of passing vessels were distinctly outlined,
though no hulls were visible.

At Marquette, in the morning, a party of Finnish emigrants on board left
the ship. Half a dozen Americanized Finns, who had evidently been the
inspiring cause of this influx of new citizens, had come to the wharf to
greet the new arrivals. They had the same short stature, the same stolid
features, as their relatives on board; but there was a difference. The
white shirt, the clean collar, the smart straw hat and vivid necktie, with
a vigorous step, alert manner, decisive tones, and a certain tendency to
help the women with their heavy boxes, distinctly individualized those who
had been awhile under American influence.

All day we basked in the sunshine on the captain's bridge. Think of being
glad to bask in the sunshine on a 4th of August! Between Marquette and
Portage River we passed but one house,--one solitary, lonely house, set on
the very edge of the "unsalted sea;" before it a vast expanse of limitless
waters, behind it an unbroken, limitless forest; no fields, no crops, no
roads, only space enough cleared for the tiny cabin and tinier shed. What
had lured people there? What kept them alive? No neighbors, no mail, no
farm, no apparent object in life, and only one small rowboat to get away
in.

Yet they had put a curtain up at the window! No human being could by any
possibility look in at that window. Even the curtain could only be
detected with an opera-glass from the steamer that passed twice a week.
But the sweet instinct of privacy and home had had its way, and every
night the little curtain that never shut out anything but the incurious
moonlight or the innocent stars was drawn as regularly as the shades of a
Fifth Avenue mansion. Later we learned that it was the Life-Saving Station
of Lake Superior.

"No nap this afternoon, ladies," said the captain as he left the
luncheon-table. "You must be on the lookout for Portage River."

All the afternoon we watched for the little river, eked out by a canal,
that enables us to cut off one hundred and twenty miles of what would be
the course around Keweena Point, besides giving what is perhaps the most
interesting part of the whole trip. So narrow is the opening of the river
that no trace of it is to be seen till we are close upon it; yet swift as
the dove from far Palmyra flying, unerring as an arrow from the bow, the
great ship sweeps across the lake to exactly the right spot. The river is
hardly the width of a canal, yet curves as no canal would ever curve, so
that the captain in giving orders has to watch both ends of the vessel to
see that neither runs aground. It would be impossible for two steamers to
pass each other in the river, and the contingency of their meeting is
guarded against by the fact that returning steamers have to go round the
Point, being too heavily laden with flour from Duluth. As it was, there
were but thirteen feet of water in the river, and the Japan drew twelve.

Once in the river, we experienced a most extraordinary transformation.
Every one knows what it is to pass in a day or two from northern snow to
southern roses, or in a few hours from valley roses to mountain snow; but
here, _in five minutes_, and remaining on precisely the same level, we
passed from October to July. The cold lake-breeze died away, and on the
little inland river the sun was actually oppressive. Seal-skins were cast
aside, and we sent hastily below for sun-umbrellas. The speed of the
steamer was slackened to four miles an hour. You heard no click of
machinery or swash of water against the sides: we were gliding on through
a green and lovely marsh, with water-lilies all about us and wild roses in
the distance. Cattle stood knee-deep in pleasant brooks, locusts hummed
and buzzed in the warm air, all sweet summer sounds and scents encompassed
us. There was even a little settlement of scattered houses; but the
expected steamer had evidently created no excitement in the inmates. It
would not stop; it brought them neither mail nor summer boarder: why
should they care just to see it pass? One man, painting the window-sashes
of his house with his back to the steamer, never even turned or paused
from his work, though we were so near that he might have heard what was
said about him on the deck. It is not the dweller in the wilderness, but
the denizen of cities, that longs for something to happen.

At Hancock the steamer waits several hours, giving an opportunity to visit
the wonderful copper-mines. We chanced to be there just at the hour to see
one of the unique sights of America,--the working of the man-engine that
brings the miners up from their work. Even by machinery it takes them half
an hour to reach daylight. The mine is worked to the depth of fifteen
hundred feet, and for five hundred we could gaze down into the dark and
awful shaft, lit for us by the candles burning in the miners' caps. Two
long beams, to which are attached at right angles little platforms at
intervals of eight feet, each platform holding one man, work up and down.
As each man reaches the level of the platform above on the opposite beam
the engine stops just long enough for him to step from one to the other.
The long, silent, spectral procession, moving with such shadowy precision
and constant motion, with the glimmering lights changing, not fitfully,
but with the regularity of well-trained will-o'-the-wisps, made a panorama
not easily forgotten. Every minute or two, as the engine paused, the miner
whose platform had reached the top sprang suddenly, like a jack-in-the-box,
out of the opening into which we were gazing, touched his hat, and
disappeared into the town. Long as we waited, the procession was not yet
ended when we had to go back to the Japan.

It is just beyond Hancock that the river broadens into the beautiful
expanse so like Lake George. As we glided away from the wharf in the light
of a splendid sunset, it was curious to look back at the simple little
town, so remote from luxury, even from civilization, so humble in its own
wants and pleasures, yet pouring such vast sources of supply into the
great world of which it knew nothing and asked nothing, save the privilege
of enriching it.

At twilight we entered the canal. I have been up the Saguenay, I have been
over the Marshall Pass and through the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas, and I
have seen many noble scenes in Europe, but no scenery has ever impressed
me with such solemnity as the landscape on that canal in the twilight of
an August afternoon. Nor was it merely a personal impression. There were
two hundred souls on board, with the usual proportion of giddy young girls
and talkative youths; the negro waiters as we entered the canal were
singing and playing their violins; but in an instant, as the speed of the
steamer was again checked to four miles an hour, every sound was hushed on
board. During the hour that was occupied in going through the canal, it is
a literal fact that not a sound was heard on the great steamer but the low
impressive orders of the captain and--if you chanced to be on the
captain's bridge--_the ticking of the clock in the wheel-house._ People
spoke in whispers, if they spoke at all, quite unconscious of it till they
remembered it afterward. What made it so impressive? I am sure I do not
know. Certainly there was nothing awful in the scenery, and we never were
in less danger in our lives. We were moving peacefully through a long,
narrow sheet of perfectly calm water, stretching straight as a die from
the river to the upper lake. If anything had happened, we could have
jumped ashore on either side, and another steamer from Buffalo would have
come through in a day or two and picked us up. The only thing possible to
fear was that we might ground in the shallow water, an emergency from
which we could only be relieved, as there are no tides in the lakes, by
the tedious process of lightening the cargo. It was a perfectly clear
evening after a most beautiful day. But on either side of us, far as the
eye could reach, stretched an apparently unbroken forest. Through the
narrow vista cleared for our silvery pathway a slow and stately twilight
came solemnly to fold us in its embrace, as we advanced solemnly and
slowly from vast and awful solitudes to solitudes more vast and awful
still. As we drew near the lake again, a little light-house gleamed, and,
as we swept past it out into the broad expanse of limitless waters, the
cheerful throb of the machinery quickened again upon the sea, the pleasant
swish of the water against the ship greeted us once more, life, movement,
and gayety sprang out again on board, and in an instant the entire steamer
had burst into laughter and chat and song. We were really in far more
danger, from storm or collision or fire, out on the great lake; but the
sense of awe had been lifted from us.

We were due at Duluth at four o'clock of the following afternoon. What
would she be like, this "zenith city of the unsalted seas," with such a
stately avenue of approach? At three o'clock we began to see in the
distance what seemed to be her cloud-capped towers and domes and palaces;
at half-past three a beautiful little humming-bird, blown from the shore,
lit on my scarlet necktie and pecked at this strange flower from the East;
at four we were at the wharf.

"I think," said my companion slowly, gazing sorrowfully at the shanties
that had made such splendid domes in the distance, "I think I should have
called it Delusion, instead of Duluth. It looks like a town in Dickens's
'American Notes' illustrated by Dor?

Surely never was there a more forlorn little town, trying to scramble up a
hillside covered with the tall trunks of dead trees and blackened stumps,
shut out from one world by the waste of waters before it, shut in from
another by dreary, verdureless hills. Surely nobody _lived_ there; those
could not be _homes,_ those desolate frame houses where people were
"staying" awhile. It seemed as if the whole town, like "Poor Joe," would
soon be told by a vigilant policeman to "move on."

And we, who were looking forward to Colorado, needed no policeman to urge
us to "move on" by the earliest train to St. Paul.

ALICE WELLINGTON ROLLINS.

       *       *       *       *       *




AURORA.


CHAPTER XXXIV.

ROSE AND GOLD.


Aurora wrote to the address given her by the Duke of Sassovivo, and
received an immediate reply. The tone of her letter might be described as
dutiful. She could assume no other. That pale face and weary voice were
ever before her. She wrote much as she might have written to Fra Antonio,
though with less ease; and the reply was not calculated to change this new
position in which the two stood to each other. D'Rubiera wrote freely of
his movements and plans, and of his son, but made no reference to his
feelings, and did not mention the past, or any future beyond his travels.

"I trust that you will not leave me in ignorance of any contemplated
change in your mode of life," he concluded, "and that you will come to no
decision on any subject of importance without giving me the privilege of
offering my advice, even if you should think best not to follow it."

The letter included a note to Mrs. Lindsay, which she answered; and her
answer called forth a letter addressed to herself. There seemed to be no
reason why Aurora should write again, and, by the tacit consent of all,
the correspondence fell into Mrs. Lindsay's hands. Sometimes Aurora did
not see these letters, or saw but a part of them,--though her friend
always told her the duke's movements and plans and read her out some
message from him to herself.

Possibly the reason of this reserve lay in the fact that Mrs. Lindsay made
Aurora the principal theme of her letters. Her triumphs, her beauty, her
goodness, her admirers, her acts, her sayings, even her little whims, were
all recounted.

The lady was a good letter-writer. She wrote in a simple, self-colored way
a clear narrative of their life in Venice, ignoring sentiment and
reflections; yet the many little incidents and phrases which she set down
were like so many touches with a full brush, and gave life to what she
told.

The duke remained in England but a short time. Robertino was perfectly
contented, he wrote, and better without him. He crossed the ocean, and
threw himself into the life of the New World, going east, west, north, and
south, glancing at the agriculture, commerce, and manufactures of that
prodigious country, which astonished him. The magnificent strength and
vitality of it all braced him, waked him up, and dispelled his miasmas.
Back to England; and, before they knew that he was there, off to Spain;
and when they thought of him as in Spain, he had returned to England.

And here at length he took a brief repose. He began to go into society,
and wrote Mrs. Lindsay the names of persons he met and whom she might
know. Among those whom he saw constantly was Lady Maud Churchill, whom he
pronounced exquisitely beautiful.

Mr. Edward Churchill was with them when the letters were brought, and
Mrs. Lindsay read out this compliment to him.

"Lady Maud is my cousin," he said. "She is a woman carved in alabaster."

Mrs. Lindsay gave Aurora the letter to read when she went to her room, and
she sat there by her window after having read it, the open sheet in her
lap.

"Exquisitely beautiful," she repeated, looking down at the words. "He will
marry her. I am glad that he is going to marry an Englishwoman. She must
be good, if she is like her cousin."

She looked out at the bright April sunlight dreamily, and for a long time
without stirring. She was considering if she had not better accept Mrs.
Lindsay's invitation to accompany them to America in June. She would like
to see that wonderful golden land where nobody is ragged and nobody poor,
--to see its prairies and forests, its cities sprung up since yesterday,
its wide, clean streets with trees in them, its people, unresting,
truth-telling, generous and courageous, if not always polite.

"Fancy a country where the people drink water!" exclaimed a Frenchman, on
seeing water sold in the streets of Seville.

"Fancy a nation where the people are for the most part truthful!" thought
this Italian, sitting in the window of a Venetian palace and looking out
into the Canal Grande.

"I had better go," she said. "I shall never again have so good an
opportunity. And I really do not know what else to do. There is nothing to
keep me here."

And then, with the thought that she might indeed go to the ends of the
earth and never come back, for any tie that held her, came the bitter
remembrance of her losses.

"Oh, mamma!" she whispered, and began to cry,--not with the passion of her
first sorrow, but piteously and low, with a sense of desolation.

The next day Mrs. Lindsay wrote the duke, "A name you mention in your
letter opens the way to a story I have to tell you. Lady Maud Churchill
has a cousin in Venice who is a frequent visitor of ours, and more than an
admirer of Aurora's. It has been on my mind, to write you of this
gentleman, but I always put off doing so with the expectation of having
something of importance to communicate concerning him the next time. Last
evening he confided to me that he offered himself to Aurora a month ago,
and was refused, but so kindly that he could not give up all hope. She
told him that she was free, and had a sincere regard for him, but that she
did not mean to marry any one.

"Of course no man would believe his case hopeless with such a reply; and
Mr. Churchill seems to think that Aurora is softening toward him. It
really seems so to me also. Last evening she sat apart and talked with
him nearly two hours; and this morning, as we sat alone, she suddenly
exclaimed, 'I wish that Mr. Churchill would come in!'

"It is true that, having refused him once, she may feel free to show that
she likes him as a friend. However it may turn out, I hope that she may be
as happy as she deserves. For my part, I could not wish her a more
honorable and devoted lover. He is a man calculated to win affection and
esteem."

This letter was brought to the duke just as he was going out to a ball. He
went back to his room to read it; and, having read it, he flung it angrily
into the lighted grate.

"What does the woman mean! I'll shoot the fellow if he dares to wring a
promise out of Aurora. And this stuff about Lady Maud. What did I write?
Do they fancy that I care for her? I like her as I like Wenham ice. Aurora
'softening' toward this impudent Englishman! She would soften toward a cat
if it cried. Mr. Edward Churchill her devoted lover! _Arcidiavolo!_"

With this growl of rage, rolling and deep-drawn, the Italian went to his
_escritori_, and wrote, "Aurora should not think of marrying an
Englishman. Sooner or later he is sure to return to England; and what
would she do here? I do not at all approve of the match; and I hope that
you will do all that you can to prevent it. Above all, do not let anything
be concluded in haste."

An event of importance in Mrs. Lindsay's family prevented her replying to
this note. Shortly after its reception her first child was laid in her
arms. Nor did she show the note to Aurora, though she requested her to
write a line to the duke, informing him that a young lady of the most
tender age but obstinate will had placed a veto on her writing at present.

It would be impossible to say whether father or mother was more happy and
proud over the advent of this little girl, but there could be no doubt
that the mother was the more peremptory and authoritative concerning it.
If Mrs. Lindsay had been queen of the household before, she was empress
now, and that in her own right.

"You are only prince consort, John," she remarked to her husband, when he
suggested that the child might be baptized in the house by the resident
Protestant minister. "I am regnant. My daughter may be baptized by a
Protestant minister, and welcome, if--but she is going to be baptized in
San Marco, and Aurora Coronari is to be her godmother and Prince P---- her
godfather. If you can reconcile that with your minister, do so."

The prince consort bowed his head meekly. "I have no particular objection
that a priest should baptize her," he said. "I am very much pleased to
have the prince and Aurora stand sponsors for her. Of course it doesn't
make any difference what they promise for her now. She will be sure to do
as she pleases when she grows up,--if she should turn out to be like her
mother."

The baptism took place on the first day of May, in the morning; and the
company invited to assist were to return to Palazzo Pesaro to breakfast in
honor of the event.

Mrs. Lindsay had her gondola--the baby's gondola _pro tem._.--decorated
for the occasion. An immense white umbrella, lined with gold-colored silk,
was fixed to cover the seats, and the whole gondola was lined and carpeted
with white and pale blue. A blue fringe fell over the edge almost to the
water, and bouquets of flowers were bespoken.

Not only this: she had made a pact with Aurora, who declared that a girl
baptized in the month of May should have Mary for one of her names. Mrs.
Lindsay would include the name if Aurora would attend the ceremony dressed
like the Madonna of an ancient picture of hers, she herself to furnish the
dress; and Aurora consented.

This Madonna on a sparkling gold ground had a long veil of dim blue
falling over her head and shoulders, and wore a dress of dull-red wool
with faint golden reflection. It was a Raphael dress, and had a band of
fine gold embroidery across the neck and round the wrists.

The dress came home the evening before, and was tried on and displayed to
the family, with whom was Mr. Edward Churchill.

"There! wasn't I right?" exclaimed Mrs. Lindsay in triumph.

"Suppose we should scrape out the Madonna and have Aurora painted in her
place," Mr. Lindsay proposed, with perfect seriousness.

"The Madonna is an antiquity," his wife said, with dignity.

"But her eyes are turned like a Chinese's," the gentleman persisted.
"And her expression is cross."

"I wouldn't do it for the world," Aurora declared. "I feel almost wicked
in assuming her dress."

"Well," Mr. Lindsay sighed. "Only don't assume her squint, and I think you
will be forgiven the clothes."

Every night when Aurora went to her room she extinguished her candle and
sat awhile by the open window. The custom had at first been a poetical one,
it was now a sign of trouble. She had seen that evening but too clearly
that one refusal was not enough for Mr. Edward Churchill.

"It is another reason for going away," she thought. "I must take myself
out of his sight. And yet I like him so! Why cannot he be friendly and
nothing more?"

The canal was almost deserted, though the Lagoon below was alive with
boats. The water was a dark mirror below. She could see the stars in it,
and the sound of its liquid touch to step and mooring-post was almost
inaudible.

As she sat there, a gondola slid along inside the posts and stopped under
her window. A moment after, a chord was struck on the strings of a
mandolin.

Ah! a serenade! It was not her first one by far, and she leaned forward
with pleasure to hear it. The scene was well set for music. But as the
first words fell on her ear she shrank back again. It was Edward
Churchill's mellow voice, and he sang a serenade of Mrs. Norton's, in
English:

      Soft o'er the fountain,
        Lingering, shines the southern moon;
      Far o'er the mountain
        Breaks the day,--too soon.
      In thy dark eyes' splendor,
        Where the warm light loves to dwell,
      Weary looks, yet tender,
        Speak their fond farewell.
  Nita, Juanita, ask thy soul if we should part!
  Nita, Juanita, lean thou on my heart!

      When, in thy dreaming,
        Hours li'ke these shall shine again,
      And morning beaming
        Prove thy dream is vain,
      Wilt thou not, relenting,
        For thine absent lover sigh,
      In thy heart consenting
        To a prayer gone by?
  Nita, Juanita, let me linger by thy side!
  Nita, Juanita, be my own dear bride!

Silence fell, continued, and pressed. There was no note of music from
below, no response from above. Then there was a stroke of oars lightly
falling, then ceasing, and again silence. Not a sign of response. Slowly
the gondola glided away and disappeared in the night.

"I am so sorry for him!" Aurora murmured, and softly closed her window.
"So sorry!"

She recollected what Mrs. Lindsay had said of the fascination of this
serenade: "If the woman who hears this sung to her--well sung--on a
beautiful night does not at once accept the singer, it is because she is
in love with some one else."

"I am in love with freedom and with poetry," Aurora exclaimed, and hastily
put the subject away.

The cortège that accompanied the babe to church the next morning was a
picturesque one. A dozen gondolas brought their loads to the palace steps,
and the company entered and paid their respects to the mother while
waiting for the procession from the nursery.

Mrs. Lindsay, on this her first appearance, received in one of the front
_salons_,--a room lined with gold-colored satin, with sofas and chairs
covered with maroon velvet flowers on a gold satin ground. She wore a
marvellous toilet, which looked like sea-foam, so covered was it with
laces.

"The difficulty with these rooms is that they extinguish almost anything
that you can wear," she said. "Nothing looks well against these draperies
but old point-lace. That asserts itself anywhere."

She certainly contrived to make herself a very lovely and interesting
object seen against those rich cushions. No color reflected upon her but
light, in her slight languor and pallor of convalescence, her cheeks
delicately thinned, she was like a white rose drooping in the heat of
noonday.

The nursery sent down its treasure. First came Aurora in her Madonna dress,
and was received with acclamations. Then came a footman, then two
wondrously-dressed nurses, with their heads a halo of silver filigree pins,
one of the nurses bearing the lace-wrapped infant in a white embroidered
mantle that fell almost to the floor. Two maids followed.

This little company filled the babe's gondola, that swept out, the others
following and surrounding it as they glided down to San Marco. The place
of honor was the infant's, and Aurora sat at her left hand, and bent to
talk to her and keep her in good humor.

"She looks at you, Donna Aurora," the nurse said. "And, see! she smiles."

In fact, it had been found that Aurora had the right magic "Coo-coo!" and
the cunning hand and soothing cheek which babies require.

At starting, she had observed a covered gondola at rest opposite the house,
and saw that some one was watching them from its curtained window. It was
not surprising, for their little pageant was pretty. But she was surprised
when the gondola slipped forward beside her own and became almost
entangled with their followers. For a moment she thought that it might be
Mr. Churchill, but a swift, stolen glance showed her that the arm which
rested by the window wore a military sleeve.

"Some officer who knows the family," she concluded. They knew a good many
officers.

The entanglement was but momentary, and might have been accidental, the
person inside having evidently given orders to let them pass. Leaning on
his oar against the out-flowing tide, the gondolier took his hat off and
bowed lowly, smiling at the babe.

"_E riverita, Madama Innocenza_!" he said.

Aurora gave him a kind glance. "But you will be more innocent still in a
few minutes," she said to the infant.

They reached the landing, and walked across the piazza to Saint Mark's,
and entered the baptistery. A good many people gathered about the door
during the ceremony, and among them Aurora was aware of a military officer
who stood leaning against the grating. She did not look at him, or she
would have known that his eyes were fixed on her alone.

When, after holding the infant at the font, and giving it a string of
names as long as a rosary, she turned to restore it to its nurse, and bent
to kiss its rosy face as she released it, the officer smiled, gazing
earnestly at her downcast eyes. He saw her lips move in a whisper.

She was repeating the gondolier's salutation: "_E riverita, Madama
Innocenza!_"

As they went out, her veil brushed the gold-banded sleeve, and she heard a
faint sigh from the wearer. It required a force not to look at him, not to
show that she was conscious of his presence and pleased by it. Any one who
wore a soldier's dress touched her heart, from general down to orderly.

Home through the sunshine, in through the shaded court, up the stair with
its painted lords and ladies looking down upon them from the painted
arcade.

Mrs. Lindsay came out to the stair to receive them, and to embrace her
infant before dismissing it to the nursery.

Mr. Churchill had joined them at Saint Mark's, and returned with them,
sitting beside Aurora at breakfast. Both ignored the serenade as if it had
never been.

"My cousin Edith and Mrs. Graham arrived last evening," he said. "They
will stop here a week or two before returning to England."

"Oh, I should like to see them!" Aurora said cordially. "Tell me where
they are, and I will leave a card today. I am sure, too, that Mrs. Lindsay
will wish to make their acquaintance."

The breakfast ended with coffee in the beautiful garden the dining-room
windows looked into; then one by one the company departed. Mr. Churchill
lingered a few minutes after the others, then went, seeing no hope of an
interview with Aurora.

As soon as he had left the room, Mr. Lindsay accompanying him, Mrs.
Lindsay turned with an almost impatient vivacity to Aurora. "At last I can
tell you!" she exclaimed. "Do you know who is in Venice, who sent me a
note while you were at church, and who will dine with us this evening?"

She looked triumphant and joyful.

Aurora was silent a moment. "I can guess," she said. "And yet--"

"D'Rubiera has come!" Madama announced. "What other coming could be so
joyful to us? He has left the boy in England, has himself been to Rome on
a flying visit for business purposes, and is come back to see us. Is it
not delightful? That was all I needed to make this the loveliest day of my
life."

"Did you see him?" Aurora asked.

"Why, no! His note was left immediately after you started. I sent a reply
instantly to his hotel, asking him to dine with us. His acceptance was
handed me while we were taking coffee. Did you not see Febiano present the
note? It was a comedy. That man cannot resign the idea that we are
official people, I and John both, and he never lets a note wait, whoever
may be with me. He comes with a solemn, gliding discretion, a sort of
secret-stairway manner, and half presents, half slides the note to me, as
if it were a call to a council of inquisitors in the ducal palace."

"I hope that the duke is not so unhappy as he was when last I saw him,"
Aurora said gravely.

"What should he be unhappy about?" demanded Madama, who seemed indeed to
be in the highest of spirits. "He has youth, health, wealth, rank, a
character worthy all these blessings, and a beautiful boy. Do you imagine
that he is going to mourn forever for a woman whom he never really loved,
and who disgraced and tormented him? Poor thing! let her rest. It is
almost a year since she died, and he has paid sufficient respect to her
memory. I take it for granted that the duke is as full of life and spirit
and joy as a man can be."

"Madama Teresa mia," said Aurora, "whom are you scolding? Allow me to
remind you that I expressed a wish that the duke would _not_ prove to be
unhappy."

"And the wish implied a doubt," her friend retorted. "And your reference
to the past was a shadow. And I will have no shadows to-day. Now I am
going to have my repose, and I advise you to do the same. And you will
wear the same dress at dinner, will you not? It is so pretty. Besides, you
are looking rather pale, and it gives you a glow."

She went; and Aurora, instead of following her advice to go to rest, took
refuge in the ball-room, which was her in-door promenade. She was never
interrupted there. When she was in the ball-room, and they heard her light
step going to and fro, it was taken for granted that she was composing,
and the room became a sanctuary. No profane foot must cross the threshold.

She was very far from composing verses on this May afternoon. She was
trying to tranquillize her mind, which Mrs. Lindsay's news had disturbed.
She would be glad to see the duke, surely, dear kind friend that he was!
Yet what meant the shrinking which accompanied that pleasant anticipation?
She felt that she should tremble at his approach, and that her voice would
falter. It would be a strange folly; and yet she feared that it would be
impossible to control herself.

"It is because of all that happened before I left Sassovivo," she murmured
to herself. "I have got him tangled up in my mind with those miserable
affairs. I am certainly growing nervous, and it will never do. Away with
all that has passed since he became Duke of Sassovivo! _Su_, Rubiera, whom
I knew a soldier years ago, who bade me sing, and laid your drawn sword
across the keys of my piano-forte for a motive, --Rubiera, who came across
a chasm to me as I stood clinging to the broken wall, and smiled courage
into my sinking heart. _Su_, Rubiera, who divided the olive-twig with me,
promising to challenge me when we met again with _Fuori il verde!_ It was
I who showed the green and gave the challenge when we met, and I have the
three leaves yet." She drew a locket from her breast, and opened it to
look at the memento, and at her mother's miniature enclosed with it.

She was smiling now. That bright past had thrust aside all painful
recollections, and the old cordial, loving confidence was coming up again.

The sun, declining to the palace roofs opposite, flooded the room with
light. It made Aurora's red dress brilliant, and played and sparkled on
the gold she wore. Twenty little golden chains of Venice hung around her
neck, slender thread after thread from throat to girdle, invisible now
with fineness, and now showing a misty flash in the sun. There was a gold
filigree rose in her hair, which at certain movements changed to a red
rose, and then to a pallid flame, and in the shadow it had all the
softness of a yellow rose just blown.

Aurora walked to and fro in the light, a brilliant figure, counting over
the treasures of her memory.

"I wonder what I sang that night!" she murmured. "I never copied it. It
was something about my country. When I ended they crossed their swords
above my head, D'Rubiera and General Pampara. What did I sing? I wish I
could remember."

She was so absorbed that a step crossing the next room failed to attract
her attention. She did not even hear the light tap at the door. But when
it opened, and some one entered, closing the door behind him, she turned
abruptly and faced the intruder, fully conscious now.

He was an officer, who tossed his cap away at sight of her, and he had the
face she had been thinking of,--the same face, full of life, and more full
of joyous excitement than she had ever seen it.

They stood so for a moment, the length of the room between them, gazing at
each other, with some sense of floating in all that light, as if they were
far up in the sky, they two alone, on their way to heaven.

Then the soldier held up some tiny object in his hand, and came rapidly
forward.

"_Fuori il verde!_!" he cried out.

As in a dream, as though they were indeed being sucked up through the blue
unsteady air, Aurora tried to pull the locket from her bosom, and desisted,
for, throwing aside the faded leaf, D'Rubiera extended his arms with an
"Aurora!" which held all pleading and all command, all passion and all
delight, that love can give to the human voice.

Light as a gazelle she rushed into his embrace, pressing her cheek to his.

"Oh, my soldier! my soldier!" she murmured. "My soldier and my Love!"

"What a circuit I have made to reach you!" D'Rubiera said at length,
holding her back at arm's length to look at her. "Are you glad to have me
back, signora duchessa? Are you happy, my red rose?"

"And to think that you have entered the army again!" she said, drawing a
caressing finger-tip along the gold-work on his sleeve.

"I did it to please you," he declared.

The sudden tide of joy and surprise made speech and thought almost
impossible.

"I do not believe it all," Aurora said. "It is a dream I have been
conjuring up." She withdrew from him. "Stay here, vision of a soldier. Do
not stir. I am going to get my reason back." She turned, and walked slowly
away the length of the room. "He is not here: it was a dream," she said,
then turned again, uttered a sweet cry of joy, and, holding her arms out,
met him half-way, and dropped against his breast again.

"I feel the motions of the earth as it flies around the sun and turns on
itself," she said,--"two dizzinesses in one. As at first, so now, and so
forever, without you I fall, D'Rubiera."




CHAPTER XXXV.

A FOUNTAIN.


That evening Mr. Churchill dined with his cousin and Mrs. Graham at their
hotel, and afterward sat with his cousin in their balcony.

He found Edith wonderfully improved. She was either prettier, or her
educated taste made her look so. She knew how to dress now, and her manner
was better. She was cheerful, and she carried her head higher. The hair he
once had thought red he knew now was the color the Venetian painters loved,
and he looked admiringly at the rich coils that crowned her graceful head.

Besides, there was no sign of that too evident love which had driven him
from her. She looked at him calmly, and spoke with a familiarity which had
an undefined coolness in it.

While they sat there alone, talking pleasantly, a servant brought a note
for Mr. Churchill. It had been taken to his house and forwarded to him.
Excusing himself, he went into the room to read it by the shaded lamp.

His cousin turned her head, and watched him unseen. She saw his face grow
crimson as he read, the veins standing out on his forehead, then grow pale
again. She had thought while they sat at dinner that he was looking pale.

He stood bent down, with his eyes fixed on the page, and, without turning
the leaf, gazing at what he had read as if he did not understand it.

"My dear friend," Mrs. Lindsay had written, "after a certain conversation
which we had some time ago, I think I ought to tell you my news without
delay. The Duke of Sassovivo is with us, and this evening he has presented
Aurora to us as his future wife."

He stood so long gazing at the words that his cousin went to him.

"Excuse me, Edith, I must go out," he said, in a stifled voice.

"Good-night, Edward," she said, and asked no questions, but held out her
hand.

The hand that took hers was cold, and her good-night received not a word
of response.

He went out and called a gondola.

"Where to?" the gondolier asked.

"Anywhere!"

They went up and down, and across to the Giudecca, and down again, and
turned the point of the Public Garden, and the gondolier was about
returning, when for the first time his passenger spoke:

"Go round by San Pietro and inside by San Daniele. Go where it is dark."

"He is disappointed in love, or jealous," the man thought as they threaded
the inner ways of the city, now by a lighted piazza, now under shadowing
bridges, or along the gloomy, silent walls of palaces that shut them in.

"Where shall I go now?" he ventured to ask, when they had gone the whole
length of the city. "We are in the Cannareggio."

The passenger raised himself. He had sat all the time with his head bowed
down. "Let her drop down the canal," he said, his voice grown gentler.
"Keep well to the left."

They went out into the canal and downward. Passing under the Rialto, there
rose a deep sigh from the gondola, and the echoing arch whispered back a
sigh.

The passenger was alert now, looking at all the palaces at the left, as
though he had never seen them before. As they passed Palazzo Pesaro a
gondola touched its steps, and a lady and gentleman got out and walked up
to the portone. The moonlight sparkled on, the uniform of one and on the
gilded fan of the other. They had been out together, and alone, drawing
sweetness from the same air where he had breathed in bitterness.

"Well, it is fitting," he sighed. "Her head was made to wear a coronet.
God bless her!--and him."

He looked at them standing in the archway of the palace saying good-night
till distance hid them from him. He was in front of his cousin's hotel,
and, looking up, he saw her still sitting in the balcony where he had left
her.

Late as it was, he landed and went up to her again. She recognized him
when he stepped out of the gondola, and was not too much surprised when he
appeared. He seated himself beside her, and looked out over the water
without saying a word.

"Are you not well?" she asked at length, timidly.

He started. "Why do you ask?"

"You look pale," she answered.

For a moment he did not speak. Then he said, "I have had a disappointment,
Edith."

She leaned toward him with a sigh and a hand half extended, compassion in
all her attitude.

He took the hand, and rose. "Let me tell you all, dear," he said. "I need
comfort. Come and let me tell you,--if it will not be a bore,"

She went at once, pain and delight struggling together in her heart. He
led her to the sofa, and sank down to the cushion at her feet, bowing his
head to her knees. And there he poured out his whole story, sparing her
nothing.

Perhaps an instinct of justice and mercy ran through his passion. Perhaps,
guessing in the soft, tremulous, soothing hands that touched his hair and
forehead the love that he had believed to be dead, and with an unconscious
feeling that she was to be the consoler and companion of his future life,
he felt also that all the pain she was to suffer for this love of his must
be gone through with now.

He could not understand that her only pain was for him, and that for
herself she was blest. For she had his confidence, and she could console
him.

From that night he became her constant escort and companion. He wrote a
brief note in answer to Mrs. Lindsay's, and then he seemed to forget that
he knew any one in Palazzo Pesaro.

"For the present I am _de trop_" he wrote, "but I will see you before you
go away. All happiness to Aurora and her chosen husband."

Impossibility is a wonderful extinguisher of desire; and what suffering
was left to him was not so much a sickness as the languor of
convalescence. He saw Aurora but seldom, and always at a distance; but he
knew that Venetian society was rejoicing over the engagement, and that the
duke was a devoted lover.

Once, in passing by, he glanced involuntarily at the windows, and saw a
group inside, the sight of which gave him a momentary pang. D'Rubiera
seemed to be placing something on Aurora's head, and Mrs. Lindsay clapped
her hands.

The duke was, in fact, trying a coronet on his future wife. He had sent
for the family jewels, and was to have them reset, and Mrs. Lindsay
clapped her hands at seeing the diamonds on Aurora's hair.

D'Rubiera was an impatient and peremptory wooer, and he won the day. They
were to be married in June; and the Lindsays would stay in Venice a month
longer to witness the ceremony.

Fra Antonio came from Sassovivo and joined their hands in Saint Mark's,
gold and rank smoothing away all obstacles. Then they went to England for
the boy, and came back in time for a week at Bellmar. After Bellmar, they
went to Sassovivo, unannounced, to break open the walled-up gate and carry
jubilee into the castle, the duke said.

In fact, they spent a whole day long in the castle, tranquilly watching
from its windows the visitors who went to the villa in vain to
_ossequiare_ the master and his new duchess. It was the last time that
they would enter the castle as master and mistress; for the Signora Paula
and Martina were coming to live there,--forever, if they pleased.

The Signora Paula had found herself _de trop_ in her brother's house. The
Count Clemente had offered himself to the younger of his two first lodgers,
the girl of fifty, and been beamingly accepted; and, though months must
elapse before all the necessary preparations could be made for their
marriage, the Sposa was now mistress of the house. She smiled as before,
but she had her way. The sacred dirt of centuries was being cleaned out,
and immemorial grime was growing pale before the soap and sand of a
civilization to which the Signora Paula was a stranger. Where duchesses
had swept their silks in uncomplaining tranquillity, the smiling Americana
walked on tiptoe with her skirts upheld, and pointed out her orders to the
wondering scrubbers with the toe of her slipper, both hands being employed.

In all these innovations every care was taken that the count should not be
disturbed. But he had his cross, and an unexpected one. When it became
time to talk of settlements, and it had to be owned that the gentleman had
nothing to settle on his wife but the shadow of a coronet, of which she
would have to buy the substance if she ever wore it, the lady announced
blandly that she would pay all their living-expenses and give her husband
five hundred dollars a year spending-money if he would pay the rent to the
duke,--this arrangement to hold as long as they should live together.

"But we shall always live together," said the count, with a contortion
meant for a smile.

"If we should live," the lady said. "But life is uncertain."

"Oh, in case of death, one makes different arrangements," the count said,
somewhat impatiently. "That is another question."

"But I want it so," persisted the lady coquettishly; "and I must have my
way. I have always had my way."

And, ever smiling, never appearing to dream that he was in earnest or to
suspect the rage that was gnawing his heart, she had her way. She smiled
at his coarse and open grasping, smiled at his scarcely hidden anger, and
smiled at the half-insulting consent he flung at her, as if it were all a
jest. And he believed her the simpleton she seemed, and did not know that
he had found a mistress who would rule him with a rod of iron.

On the second day of their stay in Sassovivo the duke and duchess drove
down early in the morning to the campagna, and left another brewing of
_ossequii_ to fizz itself out in unresponsive air.

Aurora was going to erect a memorial fountain to her mother in the midst
of the long, hot, dusty road to the station. A wild spring of delicious
water lay back in a rocky pasture. This was to be brought forward and run
into marble basins for man and beast. Above should be a carved relief of
Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well, with, underneath, "And the
woman said, Lord, give me of this water to drink, that I may never thirst
again."

An artist had come out from Rome to see the place and make suggestions;
and they walked over the green grass, and visited the spring in its own
home, and drank of its sparkling tide.

"Would you like to be a missionary, little spring?" Aurora asked, bending
toward it. "Many will call you blessed, and the image of your Master will
forever look down upon you."

The artist looked at her in surprise and smiling admiration. He had found
her a very dignified lady, and this unexpected turn reminded him that she
was a poetess as well as a duchess.

"What does it say?" D'Rubiera asked.

She took his arm, smiled into his face, but made no answer.

They went back to the carriage, took leave of their artist, and drove
slowly to the town.

"I hope that mamma likes the idea of the fountain," the duchess said
thoughtfully.

MARY AGNES TINCKER.

[THE END.]

       *       *       *       *       *




EPITAPH WRITTEN IN THE SAND ON A BUTTERFLY DROWNED IN THE SEA.


  Poor Psyche, to a Power supernal wed,
    How strong a fate on this thy frailness fell!
  What strange ironic word shall here be read?
    Dead sign of immortality, farewell!

  I sigh not that the summer fields have lost
    One flying flower: who counts the butterflies?
  I sigh not that thy sunny hour was crossed:
    The self-same Shadow surely waits mine eyes,

  Thy piteous terror of the appointed end,
    For this I sigh! The billow, poised above,
  Fell on thee like a beast that leaps to rend:
    Thou couldst not know thy bridegroom Death was Love!

  How otherwise thy sister, yea, the Soul,
    Bent brooding o'er these broken wings of thine!
  Through all her house of mystery once she stole
    To the inmost room, and found a Face benign.

  Now whirl her where ye must, ye waves of Law,--
    Ay, tear her vans, her painted hopes, apart!
  She cannot fear, remembering what she saw:
    Dark bridegroom Death, she knows thee who thou art!

HELEN GRAY CONE.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE PIONEERS OF THE SOUTHWEST.

TWO PAPERS.--I.


It is related of Daniel Boone that when (in 1764) he climbed to the summit
of the Alleghanies and looked down upon the vast herds of deer and buffalo
that were grazing at his feet, he said to his companion Callaway, "I am
richer than the man in Scripture who owned the cattle on a thousand hills:
I own the wild beasts in a thousand valleys."

It may be questioned if Boone had an adequate conception of the stupendous
possessions of the "man in Scripture," but he was certainly justified in
boasting of the wide magnificence of this domain which, by right of
discovery, he claimed as his own. An Indian might have told him that it
would require "three moons, two paddles, and two stout braves" to skirt
its southern and western boundaries and reach its northern limit on the
Ohio; but no phraseology known to the Red Man could have expressed the
boundless wealth, animate and inanimate, that lay hidden in its unexplored
recesses. By the leaves on the trees, or the stars in a cloudless night,
he might have indicated the countless herds of wild animals that roamed
upon it; but how would he picture the leafy magnificence of its forests,
or the grassy luxuriance of the many "openings" that everywhere dotted its
surface?

It was a tract of country larger than the combined kingdoms of England and
Scotland, and, from the exceeding richness of its soil, it was capable of
sustaining a far denser population than now inhabits the British Islands.
And yet throughout its entire extent there was at this period not a single
human habitation, not the solitary hut of a white settler nor the smoky
wigwam of a roving Indian. It was the hunting-ground and battle-field of
the Indians, claimed by hostile tribes, but occupied by none, and hence
the more inviting as a field for civilized settlement.

It is difficult for us to conceive of the enthusiasm which this new
country awoke in the mind of the primitive explorer. To him it was a new
world, more genial in climate, more beautiful in scenery, and more
magnificent in extent than any he had ever beheld; and it is not
surprising that the glowing accounts he gave of it on his return were
received with wondering incredulity by the simple farmers on the sterile
banks of the Yadkin. Accustomed to a sandy soil a few inches in thickness
and covered with a scanty growth of slender pines, how could they believe
in a yellow loam four feet or more in depth, and supporting dense forests
of oak and poplar ten feet in diameter and towering aloft a hundred feet
before they broke into branches? The tale was incredible, and it was years
before the wonderful story was believed among the rural population of
North Carolina, and then not until it was confirmed by the report of one
of their number,--a young farmer, selected by themselves to accompany
Boone on his third exploration, in 1769.

This young man was James Robertson, of Wake County, North Carolina, and,
as he was to become a principal agent in the settlement of the Southwest,
he requires here a few words of description. He was at this time about
twenty-seven years of age, a little above the medium height, and of a
well-knit, robust, manly frame. He had prominent features, and thick dark
hair falling loosely over a square, full forehead which rose in the
coronal region into an almost abnormal development. His eyes were large,
of a light blue, and shaded by heavy dark eyebrows; and they had an
habitual look of introspection, showing a mind of more than common
thoughtfulness. He was grave, earnest, self-contained, with the quiet
consciousness of power which is natural to a born leader of men. And yet
there was in his manner no self-assumption or arrogance. On the contrary,
he was courteous and conciliatory, and had that rare blending of
self-respect and deference for others which, while it repelled undue
familiarity, put the rudest at his ease, and extracted from an old
Cherokee chieftain, who all his life had been the enemy of the white race,
the unwilling praise, "He has winning ways, and he makes no fuss."

Though clad in homespun, and too much absorbed in things of greater moment
to be over-careful of his personal appearance, he was a man of so marked a
character that he would have attracted attention in almost any assemblage.
Cautious, careful of consequences, and watchful of danger, he was at the
same time bold, fearless, and ever ready to undertake enterprises which
would stagger men of fewer mental resources. So exactly was he fitted to
the time and the circumstances in which he was placed, that the conclusion
is irresistible that he was a providential man, especially appointed to
his work by a Higher Power.

This was his own conviction, but he came to it at a later time, when
experience had shown that he bore a charmed life, and he had realized what
his single arm and brain might accomplish. But now, in his own eyes, as in
those of others, he was a simple countryman, able to "read, write, and
cipher" and to do small jobs of surveying, but with little knowledge of
any book except the Bible, though in that so deeply versed that it moulded
his speech and regulated his every action. His nature was deeply religious,
but he had, as yet, no higher aim in life than to make a home for himself,
his wife and child in some new region, where he might acquire a competence,
and rise, perhaps, to a station of some little influence and consideration.

And now, merely stating that he was born in Brunswick County, Virginia, of
Scotch-Irish parentage, on the 28th of June, 1742, and that at the age of
twenty-five he had married Charlotte B. Reeves, a woman nine years younger
than himself, but everyway worthy to be his wife, I will go on with him
and Boone in his first journey over the Alleghanies.

His equipment was a horse, a blanket, a hatchet, and a hunting-knife. Over
his shoulder were slung a long Deckard rifle, a powder-horn, and a bag of
bullets; and on the horse behind him were balanced a sack well filled with
parched corn, a package of salt, and a tin cup for drinking purposes. This
was his entire outfit. On the parched corn and the game to be procured by
his rifle he was to subsist on his journey.

There were half a dozen in the party, and they followed the trail hitherto
taken by Boone, for there was no road, nor even a bridle-path. After
leaving the settlements their way lay through an almost unbroken forest;
but there was no difficulty in keeping the trail, for it had been
carefully blazed by Boone on his previous journeys. At night they encamped
under some spreading tree, and, tethering their horses among the timbers,
lighted a fire with the extra flint which each one carried in his
bullet-pouch. Their mode of lighting a fire is peculiar to the
backwoodsman. A handful of dry grass or leaves is gathered, then twisted
into a nest, in which is placed a piece of ignited punk; then the grass is
closed over the punk, and the ball is waved, in the air till it breaks
into a blaze, when it readily ignites the bundle of dry sticks with which
the fire is kindled. Then the limbs of dead trees are heaped upon the
blaze, and one of the travellers sets about preparing supper for the whole
party. It is probably of venison, for there are plenty of deer in that
region. As soon as the burning logs have deposited a good bed of ashes, a
hole is scooped in them, and in it is deposited the haunch or other
portion. When sufficiently done, it is taken out, the ashes are knocked
away, and then--no civilized man, whose appetite has never been sharpened
by open-air exposure in the woods, can understand the keen avidity with
which the delicious viand is consumed.

Supper over, each traveller lights his pipe of fragrant "Honey-Dew," or
still more fragrant "Kinnikinnick"; and the evening is most likely whiled
away in pleasant talk and narrative of "moving accidents" by field and
forest. Boone was a good narrator, and, though but five years the senior
of Robertson, had already a large experience of thrilling adventure. At
last, heaping fresh logs upon the fire, to keep up the blaze till morning
and scare away the wolves and panthers that might be attracted by the
scent of the venison, the travellers would spread their blankets upon the
ground, turn their feet to the fire, and sink into slumber.

Thus they encamped by night and journeyed by day, till they reached the
summit of the Stone Mountains, the northerly portion of the long range
which is now the boundary between Tennessee and North Carolina. And here a
view broke upon them such as Robertson, accustomed as he was to the
comparatively tame scenery of Wake County, had never beheld. Spread out at
their feet was a beautiful valley, some thirty miles in length by twenty
in width, and covered by a luxuriant forest, broken here and there by
grassy openings, one of which, larger than the rest, was the "Watauga Old
Fields" of the Pioneers. Some twenty miles away, two small rivers united
their currents and flowed together to the west through a gap in the
encircling mountains. Tracing their courses up among the hills, the
explorers would catch glimpses of numerous smaller streams, which feed the
larger ones and water the whole of this enchanting region.

The valley, which is itself two thousand feet above the sea, is hemmed in
by huge mountain-ranges,--the Holston on the north and west, and the Iron
and Stone Mountains on the south and east,--which break into peaks--the
White-Top, the Bald, and the Roan--the lowest of which towers more than a
mile into the air. These mountains protect the valley from the chill winds
of winter, and temper the summer breezes to a delicious coolness, making
the atmosphere the most delightful that can be imagined. The bottoms along
the rivers are wide and productive, bearing then a thick crop of tall
grass, on which multitudes of deer, elk, and buffalo were browsing. The
soil of the bottoms is a deep, dark loam, capable of yielding immense
crops of wheat and Indian corn, while the higher and less fertile land
along the base of the mountain will produce fruits of the most delicate
flavor and in astonishing abundance.

Altogether, the scene is picturesque beyond description,--a charming
valley, threaded by limpid streams, and dotted with dense forests of oak,
pine, poplar, cherry, and walnut, the whole encircled by huge sandstone
ridges, their loftier peaks capped by the clouds, and standing there grim,
silent, and sublime, like giant sentinels guarding the gates of an earthly
paradise. Years afterward, speaking of the scene as it then broke upon him,
Robertson said, "It seemed to me the Promised Land."

As the explorers prepared to descend into the valley, they noticed a few
miles away, at the north, a slight smoke curling up from among the trees
near the banks of what is now known as Boone's Creek, a small tributary of
the Watauga. Was it from the encampment of some Indian hunter, or the
cabin of a white man who had settled there since the visit of Boone, five
years before? With the caution of old hunters they descended the mountain
and approached the spot whence the smoke issued. It was a log hut, newly
built, and around it, in the stacked corn and the cattle browsing near,
were evidences of a white inhabitant. He was a former comrade of Boone,
his companion during his visit here in 1760, and he had returned during
the previous summer and built a home for his family. His name was William
Bean, and he was the first white settler west of the Alleghanies.

The explorers were hospitably entertained by Bean and his wife, but, after
a few days spent in piloting Robertson about the valley, Boone set out on
his first long tramp through Kentucky. Robertson remained behind, and was
not long in deciding that he had happened upon the right spot for a
settlement. This decided on, he set about making preparations for the
incoming settlers. Selecting a spot of fertile soil, he broke it up and
planted a crop of corn,--enough to carry the expected colonists through
another season,--meanwhile making his home with Bean, the hospitable first
settler.

It was autumn before his corn was gathered, and the rainy season had set
in when he started to return to North Carolina. He had carefully husbanded
his small stock of powder and lead, and with what remained, and enough
parched corn and jerked venison to last, with what game he might kill, for
ten or more days, he set out on his solitary journey homeward. There soon
came on a heavy rain, which drenched him completely, and, worse than this,
wet through and through every ounce of his powder. Wrapping his blanket
closely about him, he tried to dry the powder with the warmth of his naked
flesh; but all his efforts were unavailing: the precious grains had
totally lost the power of ignition. Reduced now to his prepared food, he
determined to push on with all speed, and, before his supply should be
exhausted, reach the settlements on the other side of the mountains.

On the westerly part of the route the explorers had neglected to blaze the
way, and now, day after day, the sun was hidden by thick clouds. Robertson
had no difficulty so long as he could take his bearings by the course of
the Watauga, but when he had passed the sources of that stream he was all
at sea, with neither sun nor star nor compass to guide him. He scanned the
heavens with anxious eye, but they disclosed no glimpse of the blessed
sun: all was mist and rain by day, and by night the blackest of darkness.
Tired, drenched, bewildered, he wandered aimlessly on, lost, completely
lost, in an almost interminable forest. His food, too, was fast running
low, and the scant herbage still left among the trees would no longer
sustain his jaded animal. Then he turned the trusty beast adrift, to find
its own way out of starvation.

He had eked out his scanty provisions with the nuts of the beech and
chestnut, but now this resource was exhausted; the last handful of corn
was consumed, and he was in a region of rocks and precipices (probably
near the western base of the mountain), where nothing grew that would
sustain life. Exhausted nature could hold out no longer. His strength was
gone, he could not articulate above a whisper, and, sinking down at the
foot of a cliff, he resigned himself to the inevitable.

How long he lay there he never told, and perhaps never knew; but at last,
when his senses were nearly gone, he heard voices, and then approaching
footsteps. They were two hunters, probably the only two human beings
within a radius of a hundred miles. They came directly to the spot where
he was lying, but did not see him till actually upon him. Dismounting from
their horses, they lifted him in their arms, revived him with some spirits,
and then, sparingly at first, ministered to him of the food in their
knapsacks. Slowly his strength returned, but they stayed by him, and, when
he was able to mount, seated him on one of their horses, and then guided
him out of the mountain and for more than fifty miles on his way to the
settlements. Then the good Samaritans went as they came, into the wide
forest, leaving not even their names to a wondering tradition.

His friends and neighbors were enraptured with the description Robertson
gave of the country he had discovered. To them the sterile plains and
rocky uplands of Wake County lost their attractions when compared with the
fertile valley which he pictured, and sixteen families prepared to go with
him in the following spring to a new home west of the mountains.

When the April rains were over, they set out, about eighty souls, men,
women, and children. They journeyed slowly, the men mostly on foot, the
women on pack-horses, with the younger children in their arms or strapped
upon the horses behind them, and the older ones trudging along by the side
of their fathers, or aiding to drive the neat cattle, a score or more of
which were the advance-guard of the cavalcade. The outfit of the party was
simple. The men carried the usual equipment of the hunter, the women some
light articles of clothing; and loaded on several led horses were such
bedding and kitchen-utensils as would be needed at the end of the journey.
They followed the route taken by the explorers, sleeping at night on the
ground, beneath the open air, or sheltered by an improvised tent made of
two forked poles thrust into the ground and supporting a longer pole, over
which was stretched a heavy blanket. Should it rain, these tents were
quickly pitched and all the travellers were soon under shelter. At the
halting-place for the night a fire was built, the cows were milked, the
journey-boards unpacked, and the delicious journey-cake (misnamed
"Johnny-cake") was set before the fire or baked in the ashes. To this was
added the deer or wild turkey shot by the men during the day, and they had
a repast "fit to set before a king." The same was done before setting out
in the morning; but at noon only a short halt was made for a cold lunch
from the remains of the breakfast.

Thus they journeyed for about ten days, until they reached the base of
Stone Mountain. Here they struck into a cove which breaks into the
mountainside, and climbed by a winding route, but by easy stages, to the
summit. Robertson rode by the side of his wife, and in front of her,
astride of the pommel of the saddle, was their child, now a bright little
fellow of two or three years. Later on he will appear again in our pages,
and then disappear forever from human history.

As they wearily climbed the toilsome way, and paused to rest, as they
probably did, at the summit, did not that young wife and mother look back,
to gaze again upon the scenes she was leaving behind her? What girlhood
associations she had I do not know, but she was leaving them all, and the
old roof-tree beneath which she had spent her young days: all were about
to pass out of her life forever. As she glanced forward into the tangled
wilderness, would she not have turned back had a vision come to her of the
hardships and dangers and death that lay before her?--her life at first
buried amid the solitudes and dangers of Watauga, and then consigned to a
frail boat which was to bear her a thousand miles, through untold perils,
to a still more distant wilderness, where her home would be encircled with
savage fire and the babe at her breast would be laid scalped and dying at
her feet!

As they began the descent of the western slope of the mountain, an
unexpected scene met the eyes of Robertson. When he left it in the
previous autumn, the valley was an almost unbroken solitude; now the smoke
was rising from a score of cabins, about which were many evidences of
civilization. Nearly a hundred settlers were there, and the place was
already a busy community.

There was not house-room for the large influx of strangers, but the spring
weather was mild and genial, and they could encamp under the spreading
trees until half-faced cabins were erected for their temporary shelter.
These cabins were built of split saplings, one end resting on the ground,
the other supported by a frame of forked poles about high enough for a man
to enter standing upright. They were open at the front, but the sides and
rear were covered with thick blankets, so as to afford shelter and
privacy. Of no recognized order of civilized architecture, they would
still serve to keep out the wind and the rain, and under them, on blankets,
or now and then on the precious feather bed, spread on the ground, the
tired immigrants might sleep as soundly as the renowned Sancho Panza of
sleepy memory.

Their food was supplied from the corn planted and harvested by Robertson
on his previous visit, and from the deer, buffalo, or wild turkey brought
down by the unerring riflemen among them. On deer and wild turkey they had
regaled before, but buffalo-meat was a delicacy with which they were not
acquainted, and, its rich, juicy, tender steak once tasted, all other meat
lost its flavor. None of them had ever even seen the animal, and we may
imagine the wonder with which they first beheld the vast herds that almost
darkened the valley. Lolling in the shade of the trees, or cropping
leisurely the thick grass of the "openings," their coal-black beards
sweeping the ground, and their long tails lashing their sleek dun sides,
the noble beasts would gaze unconcernedly on the intruder, totally
unconscious that this slender biped, with the slim smoke-breathing tube he
bore in his hand, was ere long to wellnigh exterminate the lordly race and
drive its scanty remnant far west of the Rocky Mountains. They were an
easy prey to the early hunter, and thus the rude larders of the first
settlers were filled to abundance.

Their wives and children provided with temporary shelter, the immigrants
looked about for locations for more permanent dwellings, Virginia offered
to every actual settler who should erect a log cabin and cultivate a small
patch of ground four hundred acres so located as to include his
improvements, together with the right to buy a thousand acres adjoining,
at a price scarcely more than enough to cover the cost of surveying. The
immigrants knew they were near the North Carolina boundary, but they
supposed they were north of the line which starts "at a white stake on the
Atlantic Ocean, at north 39° 20', and runs thence west to the South Seas,"
and thus were within the limits of Virginia and entitled to avail
themselves of its cheap munificence,--cheap, because the whole territory
had been bought by King George from the Six Nations for a few trinkets the
total value of which did not exceed the cost of the wedding-outfit of a
modern lady of fashion.

This line, "west to the South Seas," had not then been run farther west
than the "Steep Rock," near the White-Top Mountain. When it was
subsequently extended, the settlers found themselves within the limits of
North Carolina and not entitled to the benefit of the Virginia law. But of
this more hereafter. Now they were unconscious of encroaching on any
rights of white man or red, and went on with their improvements, confident
that they were acquiring an indefeasible title to their new possessions.

Nearly all the settlers whom Robertson found at Watauga were from Fairfax
County, Virginia, and they had been attracted to the country by the report
given of it by Dr. Thomas Walker, who with other gentlemen had made a
hunting and exploring-tour through it as early as 1748. They were mostly
from the farming population, somewhat uncouth in manner, and not much
acquainted with books, but not illiterate, for in a document subscribed
soon afterward by upward of a hundred of them only two names are signed
with a cross. They had but little wealth; but they had what in a new
community is far better,--frugal and industrious habits, enterprise, firm
self-reliance, and the cool intrepidity which is fostered by frequent
exposure to danger. No better material could have been selected to subdue
the wilderness to the purposes of agriculture.

Among them, however, were some who had received the best education then
afforded by the colonies. Prominent among these were the Seviers,--a
father and four sons, who some time before had emigrated from Shenandoah
County, Virginia, and settled about thirty miles farther north, near what
is now Bristol, in Tennessee. There they were neighbors to the Shelbys,
--another father and four sons,--who also have left an heroic record in
the history of the Revolution.

Some of the younger Seviers, coming upon this valley on a
hunting-expedition, had induced their father to remove to it; and here,
"higher up the river, on its north side, and near the closing in of a
ridge," he had built a roomy log mansion, a portion of which was still
standing in 1844. The sons had erected dwellings lower down the river, and
nearer the "Watauga Old Fields."

The Seviers were of French descent. The family name in France was Xavier,
and they originally came from Xavier, a town at the foot of the Pyrenees,
in Navarre, which was the birthplace of the famous ecclesiastic and
missionary St. Francis Xavier. After the death of the saint the family
became Huguenots, and on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 the
direct ancestor of the Seviers of whom I am writing fled from France and
settled in London, where he is said to have engaged in trade and
prospered. The grandson of this man, Valentine Sevier, emigrated to
Shenandoah County, Virginia, shortly prior to 1740; and this is the
gentleman who, with his four sons, had now settled in the valley of the
Watauga.

Each of these young men displayed qualities in after-life that would have
rendered him worthy of notice in the annals of any community; but the
oldest, John, born in 1744, is the one whose life and exploits will demand
much the larger space in the following pages. Though so young, he had
already acquired some distinction in his native State, for he had been
appointed a captain in the "Virginia line" by the Earl of Dunmore, the
last royalist governor of Virginia. In that capacity he had come in
contact with Washington, who was a colonel in the same service; and it was
doubtless owing to their early association that twenty years afterward,
when Sevier was under the ban of outlawry by North Carolina, Washington
appointed him to the military command of East Tennessee.

This young man was destined to become one of the most unique characters in
American history. I know of no other of whom it can be said that he was
loved by both his friends and his enemies. Indian mothers were wont to
hush their children to sleep with the terror of his name, but Indian
chieftains were known to plead when in distress, "Send us John Sevier. He
is a good man, and he will do us right." In the times that "tried men's
souls" to the uttermost he was to stand firm when most men faltered. He
was to be "the rear-guard of the Revolution," and in its darkest days was
to throw his sword into the trembling scale and turn it to final victory
at King's Mountain.

At this time he was about twenty-six years of age, nearly six feet in
height, and of a slender but wiry and athletic figure. His carriage was
erect, his movements quick and energetic, and his bearing commanding. He
had light hair, a fair skin, and a ruddy complexion, and his large
dark-blue eyes were singularly expressive of vivacity, good feeling, and
fearlessness. He had handsome features, a lofty forehead, a prominent nose,
and a mouth and chin of absolute perfection. His manners were exceedingly
winning, and he had about him a sort of magnetic force that would convert
into a friend the most stubborn of enemies. However, it is doubtful if,
with but one exception, he ever had an enemy. His individuality was so
marked that, if told John Sevier was present, any stranger could have
pointed him out in the most crowded assemblage. His career will read more
like romance than history, but it was entirely in keeping with the man,
who was altogether great, unselfish, heroic, one of those choice spirits
who are now and then sent into the world to show us of what our human
nature is capable. Next to the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, the
coming together of those two bodies of emigrants on the Watauga was the
most important event which up to that time had occurred in American
history; but it was no more important than the meeting there of John
Sevier and James Robertson, for, humanly speaking, had those two men not
met, and acted thereafter in harmony together, the civilization there
planted could never have survived the struggle it was destined to
encounter with savage foes and fratricidal enemies.

There were now between thirty and forty men in the settlement, and, the
location of the new-comers being decided on, they all set about the
erection of their dwellings. Trees were felled, cut into logs, hewn into
joists, split into flooring, and rived into shingles, and in an incredibly
short time the various families were domiciled in their new abodes. These
were generally one and a half stories high, about twenty feet square, and
built of rough logs, chamfered at the ends, so as to fit closely together.
They had a solid plank door, hung on wooden hinges, and two or three small
windows, formed by sawing through one or two of the outer logs. The
windows were entirely open, or closed only with a stout blind, and glazed
with thick paper saturated with bear's grease to render it transparent;
but the larger number of the cabins, if destitute of glazing, were
furnished with blinds, which were necessary as a protection against
intruders. The roof was covered with large split shingles, held down by
long weight-poles, and the floors were of puncheons,--wide pieces of oak
or poplar, two or three inches thick, split and hewn with an axe, and laid
upon sleepers. If the hewing is well done, such floors are as level and
smooth as if fashioned of machine-made material. The chimney was of sticks
or stones, laid up in clay, and it went up on the outside in a pyramidal
form, and of a size totally disproportioned to the dwelling, for these
people were fond of a wide roaring fire in winter, and in summer the huge
flue was the best of all ventilators. If it is added that the roof of some
of these cabins was extended in front so as to cover a wide veranda, that
the bark and moss were left clinging to the logs, which by another season
would be covered with honeysuckles and the Virginia creeper, we shall see
that they must have presented no unpicturesque appearance.

The interiors need only a brief description. There were generally but two
rooms, one below, the other above, approached by a ladder in a corner. The
lower floor was parlor, kitchen, and often bedroom. The fireplace was deep
and wide, surmounted, perhaps, by a broad mantel of unpainted oak, on
which were a few trinkets and the violin so precious to the backwoodsman.
In one corner was a spinning-jenny, in another an uncushioned settle, and
opposite the fireplace a bureau or chest of drawers of native wood and
home manufacture. These, with a small table, a few chairs with rustic
frames and deerskin coverings, also of home manufacture, and a couple of
forked sticks nailed to one of the logs and supporting the trusty rifle,
would probably complete the furniture of the apartment.

This is a description of the smaller houses. Others, adapted to larger
families, were what were termed "double-barrelled" cabins, having two
rooms on the ground-floor, separated by an open passage-way, and a
"lean-to" in the rear to serve as a kitchen. Still others, it may be, were
like the mansion of the elder Sevier,--half a dozen single cabins tacked
one upon the other and covering space enough to serve for the foundation
of a cathedral.

From these details we can easily form for ourselves a picture of the first
civilized settlement beyond the Alleghanies. A score or more of these
cabins were scattered here and there in the very heart of the forest, the
great trees crowding so closely around them as often to overhang their
very roofs. Near them horses and cattle were grazing on the thick native
grass that grows among the trees, or housed in rude sheds at the rear of
the dwellings, while farther away, along the margin of the many streams,
deer and elk and buffalo were browsing. Glimpses of foot-paths leading
from one widely-separated dwelling to another might be here and there seen;
but there were no roads, for no wheeled vehicle had yet invaded the
sylvan solitude.

Their families being properly housed, the settlers began to think of a
school for the instruction of their children. Books were scarce among them,
especially such as were suited to the instruction of the young. Paper,
ink, slates, and pencils, also, were not easily procured. Even years later
important letters and despatches were often written with ink made of
gunpowder and on a blank leaf torn from a family Bible. But books and
writing-implements were now imported from Virginia, and, a teacher being
selected from among the better educated of the settlers, a school was
opened, and the young ideas were taught to shoot in the right direction.

The people now numbered, all told, about two hundred souls, not more than
forty of whom were able to bear arms. On the east a mountain barrier shut
them off from all civilized aid and succor, and on every other side they
were exposed to savage tribes, at least a hundred thousand strong, of whom
not less than fifteen thousand were warriors. Three thousand of these, and
those nearest the settlement, were Cherokees, a fierce, warlike race, by
instinct and tradition the foe of the white man. How this handful of
pioneers came to venture upon such dangerous ground, or, being there,
escaped total extermination, may well excite our wonder. They understood
their exposed situation, but they went peacefully about their daily
pursuits, tilling the soil, planting and harvesting, and "gathering into
barns," or, more correctly, into ricks,--for as yet there were no barns
among them,--unmolested by the Indians, and in harmony with one another,
for two full years of genuine prosperity. They send accounts of their
prosperity to the friends they have left beyond the mountains, and new
immigrants come to the settlement, some of them men of means, who aid
materially in its development. However, they are an abnormal community.
Two colonies claim jurisdiction over them, but the claim is never enforced,
and never extends beyond a discussion in State papers; so they are
without law or anything to assert its majesty. There is no power to
enforce a right or punish a wrong, and not a solitary lawyer in the
settlement. Every man is a law unto himself, but, strange to say, not a
single crime is committed among them.

The new-comers spread, in search of choice locations, west as far as the
Chimney-Top Mountain, and south to the fertile valley of the Nolachucky.
The more remote settlers were therefore in a very exposed position,
--almost alone, and beyond them a wide wilderness,--but they had no fear
from the Indians. The few who came to the settlements were friendly, and,
after smoking and eating with the settler, they would go away, grasping
his hand and assuring him that the red man was his brother. Those were
halcyon days; but Satan entered into Paradise, and one of his legitimate
children,--a Scotchman named Cameron,--in the early spring of 1772,
invaded this Eden on the Watauga.

He was the British agent residing among the Cherokees; and he came with
several of the chieftains to warn the settlers that they had encroached
upon the Indian lands, and must move off, or be removed by the British
soldiery. However, he whispered into the ear of Sevier and Robertson that
for a reasonable consideration paid to him--the representative of the
British government--the settlers would be permitted to remain undisturbed
in their possessions.

Unfortunately, the Indian agent was right. Virginia had left her exposed
citizens to the tender mercy of the Cherokees by admitting that they had
settled upon Indian territory. By a treaty made with the tribe only a
short time before, the State had acknowledged the Cherokee title to the
entire region lying south of a line running due west from the White-Top
Mountain. It was idle for the white settlers to say that the Six Nations,
who had been the original owners of the soil, had in 1768 transferred it
to the government by treaty, and that the Cherokees had never before
claimed any right to it but as a hunting-ground. The parent colony had
acknowledged in the Cherokees a right to the soil, and hence, as the
settlers were south of the treaty-line, had made them trespassers upon the
Cherokee territory. It was an unfortunate and dangerous position; but
Robertson and Sevier were not disposed to purchase security by bribery.
They spurned the overtures of the British agent, and decided to negotiate
directly with the Indians.

Some of the visiting Indians expressed a desire that the order of the
British agent should not be enforced; others were willing that the
settlers should remain, provided they made no further encroachments. But
Robertson and Sevier were not willing to occupy their homes by any title
so precarious as the word of a few Indian warriors. They determined, while
they ignored the British agent, to recognize the Indian title, but to
treat for their lands with the whole Cherokee nation. Accordingly, they
requested the visiting chiefs to call together the head-men of the tribe
in a friendly council at the "Watauga Old Fields."

They came at the appointed time,--six hundred half-naked red men, clad in
buckskin leggings and hunting--shirts and head-dress of turkey-feathers,
and all the male settlers, now nearly a hundred, together with all the
women and children in the near-by plantations, assembled to receive them.
Robertson, from his "winning ways," had been appointed master of
ceremonies, and he resorted to every device to placate and amuse the
savage gentlemen. Dances, ball-plays, and foot-races were improvised, in
which the young men of both races joined in good-natured rivalry; but,
while attending to the festivities, Robertson did not forget the real
object of the gathering. For the consideration of five thousand dollars,
to be paid in powder, lead, muskets, and other goods of value to the
Indians, he obtained from them a ten years' lease of all the lands on the
Watauga and tributary streams. This lease was executed by the head-king,
Oconostota, and other leading men of the tribe, and it was supposed that
it would remove for a long time to come all difficulty with the Cherokees.
But this dream was only the next day rudely dispelled by a most
unfortunate occurrence.

It was the last day of the convocation, and it had been arranged that a
great foot-race should take place on the open ground near the river,
between the younger braves and the young men of the settlement. The race
was in full progress, and among the younger men all was mirth, hilarity,
and good-natured emulation, while even the older chiefs, catching the
spirit of the occasion, had relaxed from their habitual gravity and were
cheering on the contestants, when suddenly a musket-shot echoed over the
grounds, and one of the young Indians--a near kinsman of a chief--fell in
his tracks lifeless. The smoke came from the woods near the race-ground,
and pursuit failed to discover the assassin, but he was evidently a white
man.

It was as if the shot had been fired into a magazine of gunpowder. The
Indians had come without arms, or there might have followed a bloody
tragedy. As it was, they gathered their blankets about them, and, with
threatening gestures and faces presaging a terrible revenge, silently
stole away into the forest.

It was afterward learned that the murderer was a man named Crabtree, from
the Wolf Hills, now Abingdon, in Virginia. A brother of his had been
killed by the Shawnees a short time before while exploring with Boone in
Kentucky, and, lurking in the woods near by, he had taken this inopportune
time to wreak a bloody revenge.

The Indians had left hastily, giving no time for explanation or parley.
Revenge--blood for blood--was the cardinal doctrine of their theology, and,
unless something were done to avert it, war, bloody and exterminating,
would soon be upon the white settlers.

But what could be done? To flee the country was only to invite pursuit; to
remain would be to invite a conflict with three thousand infuriated
savages. Hastily they gathered in council; and then it was that Robertson
volunteered, like Curtius, to ride into the breach,--at the peril of his
life to visit and endeavor to pacify the Indians. It was a journey of a
hundred and fifty miles through an unbroken forest, and death might lurk
behind every bush and tree on the way; but what was one life perilled to
save perhaps five hundred? Thus Robertson reasoned with his friends and
neighbors, and then, mounting his horse and giving a parting kiss to his
wife and child, he rode off into the wilderness.

EDMUND KIRKE.

       *       *       *       *       *




DIEU DISPOSE.


Edward Lindsay and his wife were unmistakably favorites of Fortune. They
were happily married, their love for each other being firmly established
on a basis of sympathy and respect; they were young and blessed with sound
health; they were very popular among their friends, of whom they had many;
they were clever, Edward in a literary, his wife in an artistic way; they
were prosperous, far beyond the expectations they had formed when, shortly
before their marriage, Edward left his position in the Crescent Bank and
went into real estate on his own account. It is hardly to be wondered at
that they were regarded with envy by more than a few of their
acquaintances in the comfortable city of St. Louis.

But there was, after all, a cloud that cast a shadow upon the happiness of
the Lindsays,--a cloud of which they rarely spoke, but about which each of
them thought a great deal: they were childless. In the early months of
their married life they had been wont to talk of their prospective
children, and to say what they would do and what they would not do when
_they_ had a child; but when the months lengthened into years, and still
there was neither son nor daughter to carry out their plans, they
gradually left off alluding to these things, though they never ceased to
hope that they might some day have a child.

At first the cloud was very small, so that they refused to recognize its
presence; but every day it lengthened and broadened, until at last it
darkened the brightest moments of their life. For each knew that the
thoughts of the other ran much upon this one thing, and each was troubled
that the other should brood upon it. And then, in course of time, they
grew to be a little morbid. It seemed to them as if by their friends who
had children they were regarded with an ill-concealed, patronizing pity.
They felt an unreasonable antipathy toward young parents who loved to
discourse of the ailments and accomplishments of their babies, and they
even avoided the houses of many acquaintances wherein, they knew from
experience, the conversation must be principally devoted to some young
hopeful.

But after three winters had come and gone since their marriage, Edward
began to reflect more and more seriously upon a scheme of which he had
often thought as a relief from this unsatisfactory state of things, and
one April morning he broached it at the breakfast-table.

"Ellen," he asked abruptly, "how would you like to adopt a child?"

His wife arrested the coffee-pot over a half-filled cup and gazed at him
with sparkling eyes.

"Oh, Edward!" she exclaimed, as if a reply were quite unnecessary. "Why
have we never thought of that before?"

"I can't imagine," he rejoined shamelessly. "But I happened to think
yesterday of the unlimited possibilities before such a child as we should
adopt. You see, we could make sure of a vigorous constitution, of sturdy
and respectable parents, of physical beauty, of any combination of good
qualities, if we only exercised proper care in our selection. And then,
with the training and education we should give a child of ours--"

"Of course we should always consider it our own child," said Ellen.

"Of course," assented her husband. "Perhaps," he added, "it would be
better that he should never know the facts of the case."

"Oh, no! I should never be happy myself if I felt I was deceiving the
child," she protested.

"Well, it would be rather a difficult thing to manage, anyway, his--"

"Or her," interrupted Ellen.

"Whichever you may prefer," Edward returned, with prompt liberality. "I
was thinking of a boy, simply because I realize that a boy's chances of
reaching distinction are much greater than a girl's."

His wife sent him a glance of obviously feigned reproach, and thereupon
confessed that she should be as happy with one as with the other. But
Edward felt that he ought to represent the matter in its proper light, and
affirmed that every girl anxious to work goes into life handicapped, and
that nine times out of ten when a girl marries she reaches the goal of her
ambition. In adopting a girl, therefore, while they might contribute much
to their own happiness, they could not reasonably hope to enrich the world
greatly. On the other hand, from a boy properly selected, carefully reared,
and soundly educated, they might with good reason expect the very highest
results. Ellen took some mental exceptions to this argument, on behalf of
her sex, but she deemed it unnecessary to express them. | She entered
enthusiastically into his project, and they speedily agreed that Dr.
Kreiss, their titular family physician,--they had never yet had occasion
to consult him,--should be requested to look about for a suitable boy.

Edward hailed the doctor on Fourth Street the next day, and presented his
case.

"I see exactly what you want, said the doctor. "Must be 'young, sound, and
kind,' I reckon we can fill the bill. You would rather have an orphan, I
suppose?"

"Oh, by all means! There might be some unpleasant results otherwise."

"Likely enough," replied the doctor. "But it will not be so easy to lay
our hands on a first-class orphan _baby_. I could get you plenty of boys
four or five years old."

But Edward explained that infancy was a _sine qua non_. They especially
wished that the child should be too young to have acquired tastes or
habits of any kind, whether good or the reverse. They did not seek to
gratify a mere whim of the moment,--simply to provide themselves with a
plaything,--but hoped to aid in shaping a life of more than ordinary
usefulness and worth. The doctor made answer that he would gladly do his
best to find such a child as they wished, that he had no doubt of ultimate
success, but that they must be prepared to wait.

This interview having been reported to Ellen, the life of the Lindsays at
once assumed a brighter character. Edward went to his business with
greater zest, and in his wife's eyes was a light he had not seen there for
many a day. They now revived their old-time theories of education and
physical training. They dispassionately reviewed the respective advantages
of European and American universities. They spent a good deal of time in
discussing the eligibility of the professions as well as of the sciences
and arts. Edward argued that business of any kind was practically out of
the question, because, with real estate in its present favorable condition,
a few more years would render mere money-getting wholly unnecessary for a
child of theirs. They speculated, of course, upon the personal appearance
of their expected heir, but they wisely deferred any expression of
preference in this respect to the time of his arrival. Names were debated
upon daily, until, after many discussions, they made choice of "John," a
title which had done honorable service in Ellen's family, and which,
Edward said, commended itself as being simple and strong. Meanwhile,
though a month passed away without word from the doctor, they waited in
confidence. They had no wish, they told each other, that he should act
hastily: it was merely a question of time; they could afford to be
patient. And at last the doctor sent them a laconic note,--"Come and see
me."

Dr. Kreiss had a deservedly large practice, and when the Lindsays
presented themselves at his office they were obliged to wait until the
numerous company of invalids that preceded them could be attended to. A
dead silence prevailed in the room, and both Edward and his wife began to
feel uncomfortable after a few minutes had elapsed. They endeavored to
amuse themselves by studying the faces of the doctor's patients and
guessing at their complaints; but this was not enlivening, and Edward at
last essayed conversation. He whispered several things which he thought
quite bright and appropriate, but Ellen took them all very seriously and
vouchsafed only monosyllables in reply. It being evident that she was not
in a mood for pleasantry, he relapsed into silence. But he went on to
think of sundry occasions upon which he had waited in a certain dark
little anteroom at Primary No.--until the principal might find leisure to
flog him. Having exhausted this subject, he looked about for something to
read, and descried some books on a table at the farther end of the room.
He shrank, however, from the idea of walking over to them and back again
in a pair of shoes which he knew very well would squeak. After vainly
searching his pockets for a newspaper, he resigned himself to the
inevitable, and occupied himself with his watch-chain and in tracing
figures on the carpet with his cane.

Finally the doctor got through with the patients who were before them, and
the Lindsays were ushered into his presence.

"I've got you a splendid boy," he said, with enthusiasm; whereat they
glanced furtively about the room. "Oh, he isn't here," he laughed, "but
ready for delivery whenever you say the final word. I only wish to make
sure that you are satisfied with the prospect. It's a short story. The
mother died at the child's birth, about a year and a half ago. Less than a
week ago the father, who was a fine, broad shouldered young fellow engaged
in some sort of a shipping business, got an ugly fall on one of the
steamers and used himself up pretty thoroughly. I was called to attend the
case, and did my best for the poor fellow; but it was no use. He died
yesterday morning."

The doctor paused, as if for a leading question. Ellen was mute, and
Edward felt constrained to say something: so he asked, "Did you know the
mother?"

"Very well," answered the doctor, "She was one of the sweetest girls I
ever met anywhere. She was a teacher in one of the public schools before
she married, but she was capable of better work than school-teaching, and
if she had lived she would have proved it. She had some very bright ideas,
I assure you. She was uncommonly pretty, too, with a lot of dark-brown
hair, fine eyes, and rather classical features. You'll see it all in the
boy. He's his mother from head to heels."

"How does it happen that his relatives are willing to part with him?"
Edward asked.

"Because his father was an orphan himself, and his mother's family is so
poor that the child would be a serious burden to them. For all that, I had
to make use of some eloquence to get possession of the baby, and only
succeeded after representing the many excellencies of the young people who
wish to adopt him."

The doctor bowed gracefully. Ellen then found words to say that he had
been more than kind, and that if he was satisfied of the child's good
health there was no reason for hesitation. Edward, who wished to terminate
these preliminaries as speedily as possible, added, "Most certainly not."

"Very well, then," said the doctor: "we will consider the thing settled.
The boy is as sound as a dollar, has a splendid digestion, sleeps like a
top, and cuts his teeth as if he enjoyed it. Now, if you will call with a
carriage to-morrow about this time, I will go with you--for that will be
necessary--to get the little fellow."

But Ellen would not take Edward from his business again the next day,
and--to his relief, it must be admitted--declared that she could attend to
further arrangements without his assistance. This she did, and Edward
found her in an ecstatic state when he came home to his dinner in the
evening.

"We can never thank the doctor enough," she exclaimed _imprimis_, meeting
her husband at the door. "I have never seen such a beautiful baby. _Such_
a sweet little face, and such dear little ways! You must come up into the
nursery immediately. I should have brought him down to welcome you, but it
is just his supper-time, and Mrs. Doly thought he'd better not wait."

And Edward was forthwith hurried up-stairs into the room which his wife
composedly designated as "the nursery," where, in the arms of a
middle-aged, motherly-looking woman, reposed the little waif chance had
intrusted to his care. He was certainly a very handsome boy, and his fine
head, big blue eyes, and clear, rosy complexion justified enthusiasm. As
Edward appeared in the door-way, the child regarded him intently for a
moment, and then, whether by accident or by some working of intelligence,
with a little jump of emphasis ejaculated, "Da-da," which everybody knows
to be early English for "papa." Of course Edward capitulated on the spot,
and, like a child with a new toy, he could scarcely be torn away at the
sound of the dinner-bell.

"Little John," as they came to call him,--because his grave and dignified
manners seemed to render inappropriate both "Johnny" and "Jack,"--had
securely established himself in the affections of his foster-parents
before the end of a week. He was a mine of entertainment. Literature and
art languished in the house, while the Lindsays amused themselves in
playing with their baby or in discussing his good qualities and in
planning for his future. And now when they went about among their married
friends they not only felt themselves _en rapport_, but considered that
they occupied a position of decided superiority, for everybody conceded
that there was no more lovely and winning child in St. Louis than little
John Lindsay; and when people spoke only of other children than their own,
they frankly admitted that they never had seen such a wonderful boy. It
was one of his characteristics that he never cried in good, sober earnest.
Upon rare occasions he would sob a little over a delayed repast, a bumped
nose, or some other tribulation incident to his age, but he was extremely
susceptible to argument, and could always be restored to his normal
tranquillity by a proper explanation of the case. To be sure, he was a
picture of health, and seldom had occasion for tears on the score of
ailments; but it should be remembered, as Mrs, Doly, the nurse, proudly
claimed, that babies are very apt to cry when there is nothing the matter
with them.

"Oh, Mrs. Doly," Ellen exclaimed one morning, when by some means or other
Little John had specially excited her admiration, "what a lovely woman his
mother must have been! How I wish I might have known her before she died!
Sometimes I feel as if it cannot be right for me to have this dear little
baby without her consent."

Not long after this it suddenly occurred to her that some legal steps
ought probably to be taken in order that Little John might be secure
against all demands. She went to Edward in alarm, and felt no peace again
until he reported compliance with every necessary formality.

When hot weather arrived, Edward decided to allow himself a short vacation,
--an indulgence which the exactions of business had hitherto prohibited
every year since his marriage. As to where the precious time should be
spent there was but one opinion in the Lindsay household: they would go
East and rent a little cottage on the sea-shore at Marant, where they had
passed several summers as children, and where the salt air would do much
for Little John's development, as it had done for their own not so very
many years ago. Edward wrote to one of his correspondents at Boston,
requesting him to secure suitable quarters; and, when June was a fortnight
old, they moved into a comfortable cottage at Marant, after a flying trip
without incident from St. Louis.

Little John fell in love with the sea at first sight, and his constancy
never wavered so long as he remained at Marant. He was at his happiest
when his perambulator was pushed to the edge of the water so that the
waves flowed about the wheels. In such a position he would remain
perfectly content for hours, usually in silence, but at times softly
soliloquizing or addressing the waves in earnest but incomprehensible
baby-language. In the mean time, Mrs. Doly, seated in a camp-chair behind,
could devote an almost uninterrupted attention to her knitting, rising
only at intervals to see that the carriage occupied a proper position with
respect to the movements of the tide, while Ellen reclined in idleness
upon the sand. To so great an extent was her office a sinecure that once,
when the water was very calm, Mrs. Doly fell asleep in the warm sun,
during Ellen's temporary absence, and awoke as the water wetted her toes
to find Little John completely surrounded and pretty nearly in his element
literally. Far from being alarmed, however, he was in a state of exalted
bliss, and emphatically protested against being removed to a more secure
position. But when the tide was going out he was not so content to remain
_in statu quo_, and, partly rising to his feet, would indicate by most
forcible remarks and gesticulations that he wished to be moved farther
down the beach. He manifested an ardent desire to accompany Edward on his
rowing expeditions, whenever he witnessed the start; but Ellen would not
consent to this, and Little John was never initiated into the charms of
boating.

It was not long before Ellen's fears were aroused that her boy might grow
up with nautical tastes.

"Ought we to permit him to become so infatuated?" she asked Edward.

"Why, what can we do?" he returned.

"We can give up Marant and spend the rest of your vacation at the
mountains."

"That would be useless, dear, granting that Little John has been born with
a taste for the sea. You can't eradicate an inborn proclivity."

"But, Edward, you surely do not wish--would not permit Little John to go
to sea?"

"I should never attempt to prevent him from doing so if he wished to. A
born sailor can't make a good lawyer, or a doctor, or anything else,--at
least until he has satiated himself with the sea. All the evidence of
history shows that, you know. Of course we both hope that Little John will
not develop a sailor's taste, and I don't think there is any reason to
fear that he will: all babies are fond of the sea."

"Yes, Edward; but," tremulously, "you know Dr. Kreiss said his father was
in a shipping business."

"Very true: some sort of a broker or agent, probably. They never go to sea;
and it isn't to be expected that the child inherits any taste for it from
_him._ Still, we mustn't forget, Ellen, that none of our wishes are
perfectly sure to be realized. We will do our best to further them, but,
after all, you know, _Dieu dispose_"

Ellen had never brought herself fully to realize the application of this
trite saying to the case of Little John, but she now went away to her room
and thought the whole question through. She saw all at once the long
series of temptations to which he must be subjected before he became a
man. Yes, it was possible that this sweet child might grow up to
disappoint her bitterly, to be far worse than an honest sailor,--a useless
idler, or even a criminal. She shuddered at the very thought of the last,
and with a great leaping of the heart she resolved that, if God should see
fit to spare the child, her own life should be devoted to shaping his. She
would forget herself entirely; her little ambitious projects should be
wholly thrown aside, that no effort might be spared for the accomplishment
of her one great duty. Tenderness and sympathy and example should do their
utmost, but she would not spoil her boy: there should be sternness if it
were needed; and she felt that this would try her devotion most of all.

Life at Marant thoroughly agreed with Little John. Every day left upon him
its mark of development and improvement. Other babies in the neighborhood
suffered more or less from "prickly heat," whooping-cough, and cholera
morbus, and ailed upon the advent of teeth. Not so Little John. He seemed
proof against everything. One day Ellen was called from the beach to
attend to some detail of housekeeping, and upon her return was horrified
to find the child playing with some poison ivy, which Mrs. Doly, in
metropolitan ignorance of its qualities, had gathered from the adjacent
bluff. He had rubbed it all over his face and crushed it between his hands,
and was in the act of stuffing some of it down the back of his neck. With
her gloved hands Ellen snatched the leaves away, upbraided poor Mrs. Doly,
subjected Little John to violent ablution, and then sat down to await
disaster. But it never came. The only inconvenience Little John ever
experienced from the incident was the loss of a certain degree of liberty;
for thence-forth Ellen would not suffer him to be separated from her for
an instant. Mrs. Doly, however, did not escape so easily. The noxious
_Rhus_ produced its most evil effects upon her face and hands, and for a
week she led a life of physical torture enhanced by humiliation of spirit.
Upon another occasion a neighbor's child dropped a small marble in front
of Little John, who unhesitatingly picked it up, put it into his mouth,
and swallowed it before anybody could interfere. Again was Ellen aroused
to the highest degree of alarm; but this time, expecting nothing less than
speedy death for the unfortunate baby, she despatched the entire household
in search of a physician. None was to be found at Marant, the sole local
practitioner having gone to Boston for the day. With great presence of
mind, Ellen then instituted a course of treatment herself, up to the
successful termination of which Little John maintained his usual excellent
spirits.

He was backward both in walking and in talking. Twenty months had passed
over his curly head before he could fairly stand alone; and then his
vocabulary was much more limited than is usual with children of that age.
But Edward construed this into a favorable sign. "Your precocious children
rarely amount to anything," he said. "They wear themselves out before they
come to the real work of life. I should really feel disappointed if Little
John should grow up a model school-boy. He would be sure to develop into a
pedagogue, or a book-worm, or something of the sort. Thanks to Providence,
he promises better."

His foster-parents rarely thought of him as an adopted child, so
effectually had he possessed himself of their love. From time to time,
however, in some moment of enthusiasm, Edward would declare that the more
he thought about it the more he was led to believe that it was better to
have found Little John than to have had a child of their own. "You see,
Ellen," he would say, "we both have an active, nervous temperament. A
child would be very apt to inherit this in an exaggerated degree, and
consequently to lead a life unhappy in itself, besides causing us a great
deal of sorrow and disappointment. But what a wonderful reserve of
nerve-force Little John has! Whether he turns out a judge, an artist, or a
sailor, it will count for more than his _physique_, and _that_ is
priceless." And then Ellen would smile contentedly. In those days the
Lindsays were very happy indeed.

The charms of Marant are well known, and it is not surprising that the
Lindsays should have protracted their stay to the utmost, and that autumn
should have arrived before they turned their faces westward. Doubtless
Little John would have strongly protested against quitting the sea-side,
had he been aware that he was about to do so. For several days after
returning to St. Louis he was certainly almost inconsolable. He begged
constantly, in his peculiar, abbreviated language, for the beach and the
ocean, with especial earnestness whenever he was taken for a promenade in
his perambulator. But in time, of course, the grand impression faded from
his memory,--to the secret delight of Ellen, who had never become quite
reconciled to his adoration of the sea.

As the child acquired words and accomplishments, he lost nothing of his
sweetness and strangely mature dignity. When the tan disappeared from his
cheeks, he looked a little less robust; but this was to have been
expected. Such confidence had the Lindsays in the invulnerability of his
constitution that they were not alarmed when he experienced his inevitable
first indisposition of a serious character. Mrs. Doly and Ellen agreed
that it was a natural consequence of the change in his diet and mode of
life since they had come back to the city, and Dr. Kreiss, who was at once
summoned, substantiated the theory. But the next day Little John was no
better, and at night so decidedly worse that Edward sent for the doctor
again. The man of medicine looked grave this time. He stayed with the
little sufferer for several hours. Before midnight he came once more; and
when he went away Little John was dead.

The blow fell upon the Lindsays with the more crushing force from its
terrible suddenness. Among all the contingencies to which they had looked
forward they had never seriously considered the possibility of this. They
had prepared themselves for disappointment, but not for bereavement. For
the first time they realized how thoroughly their adopted child had become
a part of their life. Hours that had been the brightest in the day now
dragged along wearisomely, and they often sat in silence together, because
they knew that if they spoke at all It must be of Little John. After a
time they saw, as many young parents have seen after their first great
loss, that the world could never be quite the old world to them again. But
they felt their love for each other to be all the stronger, and they tried
hard to lighten each other's sorrow by being cheerful and brave. It was
saddest, of course, for Ellen. All day she was alone in the house, and,
though she might busy her hands over a watercolor or an etching, her
thoughts would often stray away and send the tears to her eyes.
Occasionally she yielded to impulse and paid furtive visits to the nursery,
where, with a little dress or some other memento of her lost child laid
upon her knees, she would sit in long revery. By and by Edward noticed
that her face had taken upon itself a constant expression of sadness,
which even her smiles could not disguise. He began to think about a
European tour. From girlhood Ellen had looked forward to spending a year
in study abroad, and it seemed to him that no time could be better than
the present. It would be hard to leave his business; he could not do so
before spring anyway; but everything should be sacrificed to Ellen's
happiness, and, with her assent, he resolved, they should go at that
season. Just now his business was unusually exacting. He became every day
more alive to the fact that, unless he chose to lose a valuable portion of
his _client?_, he must spend a few weeks in the Southwest. Many St. Louis
capitalists were anxious to buy land in Texas at this unparalleled period
of her prosperity, and many commissions as well as opportunities for
private investment in the State demanded his attention at once. But could
he and ought he to leave Ellen now? He could not decide. When he was at
home he refused to consider the question at all; but at his office it
constantly forced itself upon his attention. Finally, after a great deal
of exasperatingly unsatisfactory correspondence with agents in Austin and
Galveston, he went to Ellen.

"I will give the whole thing up, if you say so," he declared.

"But you think it very necessary for you to go?" she asked.

"From a business point of view, absolutely necessary. It is a question of
improving or failing to improve a chance to make a good many thousand
dollars. There is no middle course: I can't send anybody who could do the
business for me. Still, if you are as unwilling to have me go as I am to
leave you, I shall stay at home."

This was hardly fair, and Ellen was sorely tempted; but she was too brave
and too true to yield to what she believed a selfish impulse. She wound
her arms about her husband's neck and effectively testified her reluctance
to permit the separation. She declared, however, that she would not
countenance his staying at home,--that it was plainly his duty to go. She
begged only that he would return at the earliest moment he could do so
conscientiously. He earnestly assured her that she need have no doubt of
that, and that a word from her would bring him home at any time.

"But if I am to go," he continued, "you must have somebody to stay with
you while I am away. Why not ask Bertha Terry? You used to be always out
sketching together, and I know she would be delighted to come."

"Bertha is a lovely girl, but--I--"

She paused, with trembling lips.

"But what, Ellen? Of course I wish you to have whomever you may prefer."

To his surprise and concern, his wife burst into a flood of tears.

"Ellen," he said very tenderly, "I am afraid you are not well. If this is
so, I certainly cannot leave you."

"Oh, no! oh, no!" she cried between her sobs. "It is only because I shall
miss you so,--and because I have tried not to cry for so long that I
_must_ now,--and because--because I have a terrible feeling that I may
never see you again."

Edward permitted her tears to exhaust themselves to some extent before he
spoke. Then with gentleness and tact he introduced the subject of the
European tour, upon which, he said, they might start very soon if the trip
to Texas should be brought to a successful close. He alluded to the
priceless art-treasures which they would examine together, and which she
would reproduce. He dwelt upon the glories of the Alps, the charms of
Italy, the wonders of Paris, with such good effect that Ellen presently
dried her eyes and found her smiles again.

A few days later, on a raw October evening, Edward yielded to the urgent
demands of his business and set out for the South. It was at the time when
the "boom" in the grazing-lands and real estate generally of Texas was at
its height. Railways were pushing out in all directions, opening new and
profitable fields for investment, and immigrants were pouring into the
State in unexampled numbers. It was a period rich in opportunities that
could never come again. Edward set to work to make the most of them. In
the first place, he carefully attended to his commissions, resolutely
repelling the swarm of speculators who hovered about every man supposed to
possess a little capital, but all the time watchful and reflecting. Then
he began to make investments for himself. He bought, sold, and bought
again, until his funds were exhausted, and after that he wrote to St.
Louis and borrowed money. He was constantly on the move, much of the time
in camp, making and saving many a dollar by acting as his own agent. The
only respite he allowed himself was the time devoted to correspondence
with his wife. He sent her minute accounts of his work, and received long
and loving letters in return. But time passed, like the Northers
themselves. Four, five, six weeks were gone almost before he had counted
them, extending his absence decidedly beyond the date he had originally
set for his return, and still there was much to be done. He had not borne
the separation from his wife without pain, and he looked forward to
prolonging it with much more than reluctance; but he felt that to leave
now would be to spurn the hand of Providence, the more so because, though
Ellen had many times anxiously inquired for the date of his return, she
had never failed, whenever she wrote, to assure him of her own content so
long as he was successful and happy. He therefore sent her an elaborate
statement of the situation, reiterated his readiness to return if she
desired it, and begged her to decide for him whether he should remain
longer or not. Why could she not come down and spend a few weeks at Waco?
he asked. She would find pleasant people there, and he could then see her
at least once in a while. He would go back to St. Louis to bring her down.
In any event, he said, he would run up and spend a day or two with her if
his stay were to be prolonged. She wrote in reply that she dreaded to
experience the wild life he had so graphically described, and that she
could not persuade herself to go down into that primitive country unless
she might be with him always. This she knew to be impossible; and she was
convinced also that her presence at any time would prove a hinderance to
him in his business. But if he could come home for a short visit it would
make her very happy. She hoped that he might come very soon indeed. Still,
she added, with her old bravery, he must make no sacrifice to gratify her
wishes. She trusted him implicitly; she knew that he was as impatient to
return as she was that he should do so. He must stay as long as he deemed
it best; and even his proposed visit must be given up, if need be.

And so Edward stayed. The visit to St. Louis was postponed once or twice,
and then put off indefinitely. New commissions were intrusted to him, new
opportunities disclosed themselves, new schemes were projected. He
extended his field of work into remote sections of the State, and once
made his way as far as the valley of the Rio Grande. Even in his busiest
moments Ellen was never wholly absent from his thoughts, and he never
ended a day without the reflection that his return was so much the nearer.
But week followed week into the past, the holidays slipped by, and spring
itself overtook him before he could see any definite prospect of getting
away. At last, one morning early in March, he wrote to Ellen from Denison
that he should be at home before the end of a week. The letter had hardly
been mailed when he received one from his wife evincing a depression she
had never permitted herself to acknowledge before. She wrote briefly, and,
with vague allusions to her health and an avowal of what she called her
"lack of firmness," besought him to return.

The indefiniteness of this letter troubled Edward. He was disposed to
think that it meant much more than it expressed. He knew his wife's
excellent constitution so well, and reposed so much trust in her frankness,
that he did not believe she was seriously ill; but he did fear that his
prolonged absence had tried her cruelly, for he realized that she must
have gone through with many a struggle before she could have brought
herself to recall him. While he was debating, still under the spell of
business, whether to start for home at once or first to settle some
important matters at Denison, a telegraph-boy entered the office of the
hotel where he was sitting, and handed a despatch to the clerk.

"For the gentleman at the window," said the young man.

Edward opened the missive with the calmness of an honest and solvent man,
but with a pang of fear for Ellen. He read as follows:

"We think you had better return at once.
BERTHA TERRY."

For an instant he sat with his brain in a whirl. Then a curse upon
Providence rose to his lips; he repressed it, and began to load himself
with reproaches. A moment before, he had been in the satisfied mood of a
man who has his own approbation for work well done. He now looked upon his
course during the past winter with both abhorrence and wonder. He told
himself that it was heartless to have left Ellen at all; to have stayed
away for so many months was simply inhuman. It was all plain enough now;
and that he should have been so blind to the truth he could not conceive.
Suddenly he bethought himself that there was yet time to catch the Austin
Express for St. Louis, and that if he did not succeed in doing this a
whole day would be lost. He quickly wrote and forwarded a despatch to
Bertha, requesting her to telegraph to him at Vinita without reserve, and
then, regardless of his unfulfilled engagements, hurried to the station.
He was just in season: as he stepped upon the platform he heard the
whistle of the approaching train. Once on board, he experienced a
momentary sensation of relief: he was rapidly moving homeward, and at
Vinita he would at least be freed from suspense. He tried to convince
himself that the case could not be a serious one. But if it was? A
terrible fear took possession of him. He attempted in vain to put it
aside. It rendered it impossible for him to sit down alone with his
thoughts for a moment, and he passed away the day in wandering back and
forth through the cars, making an effort now and then to get up a
conversation with some fellow-passenger, counting the hours before the
train would reach Vinita, and constantly execrating himself.

But, Vinita reached, there was no telegram. The operator thought it must
have gone to Vineton, a town far to the southeast, on the Iron Mountain
Railway. He could telegraph for it, of course, he said, and send it on to
any given point, but he believed that Edward would get word more quickly
by forwarding another message to St. Louis. He suggested that the reply be
sent to Sedalia, where it would undoubtedly be delivered, even at the late
hour at which the train would arrive.

Edward listened to these remarks in dull despair. It was true that he
might receive news from Ellen at Sedalia, but Sedalia would not be reached
before the small hours of the following morning, when his journey would be
practically ended. Nor was there any nearer town, large enough to support
a night telegraph-office, where he could expect a message to be received
in season to reach him. He thanked the operator for his suggestions, and
returned sorrowfully to the train, to pass a night of suffering, from
which his short snatches of sleep gave him little relief. Poor fellow! His
sadness and remorse were cruelly enhanced by the suspense he was called
upon to endure. He vowed many times to himself that, if Ellen were spared
until his return, no pressure of the world should ever separate him from
her again. When the sun began to make known its coming in the east, he
breathed a prayer of thanks that his agony of waiting was almost over.

Toward the middle of the forenoon the train rolled into the Union Dépôt at
St. Louis. Edward stood upon the platform of the foremost car. Long before
it came to a stop, he leaped from the steps and ran along toward the
hackmen's stand. A babel of voices greeted him. Quickly selecting a man
whose face was familiar, he pressed a _douceur_ into his hand, and, in a
voice that broke in spite of his efforts to control it, asked to be driven
home immediately and as fast as possible. The hackman looked upon Edward's
haggard face with silent sympathy, divining, perhaps, something of the
truth, and hastily led the way to his vehicle.

The train was hardly at a stand-still when the carriage rattled away from
the station. The driver plied his whip freely, and soon left the business
section of the city behind. As they sped along Washington Avenue, Edward
endeavored to prepare himself for the worst, but he was incapable of
calmness and reflection: his whole being rebelled against the supposition
that he might be too late.

There was a carriage, which he recognized as Dr. Kreiss's, drawn up before
his house. Fairly unmanned by emotion, he sprang up the steps, threw open
the door, and met the doctor face to face.

The physician maintained a professional composure.

"Good-morning, Mr. Lindsay," he said. "I regret to say that you have not
arrived quite soon enough."

"Great God, doctor! Is it possible?" faltered Edward, whilst the tears
sprang to his eyes.

The doctor looked at him curiously.

"Go up-stairs and see your wife and baby," he said, with considerate
brevity. He added to himself, as Edward vanished up the stairway, "A case
of special providence that it's a boy."

NATHAN CLIFFORD BROWN.

       *       *       *       *       *




JOSEPH J. MICKLEY.


Not many years ago there were several substantial old houses standing on
the north side of Market Street, east of Tenth, in the city of
Philadelphia. These structures, which then wore an air of respectable old
age, have been in recent years either totally destroyed or so extensively
altered that the serene atmosphere of antiquated gentility no longer
lingers about their busy exteriors.

On a morning in April, 1869, the present writer had occasion to call at
one of these buildings,--No. 927. Several broad and weather-stained marble
steps led up to an old-fashioned doorway, where the modern bell-pull and
the antique brass knocker contended for recognition. Alike rusty as these
were, it became a problem as to which would best secure communication with
the interior. While the matter still seemed indefinite, it was set at rest
by the advice of an obliging street-urchin, who volunteered his
information with appropriate brevity and directness:

"Try the door. If it's loose, Daddy Mickley's home, sure. If it's locked,
'taint no use of knockin', for he's out."

Thus instructed, I tried the door. It happened to be "loose," and ushered
me into a long dark entry, at the farther end of which a wide flight of
heavy oak stairs led to the upper rooms in the rear of the building. Among
these rooms, one of the first to be reached was evidently a workshop; and
here was encountered the only living being as yet visible in the spacious
old mansion. Upon entering, I was met by a dignified and placid old
gentleman, whose appearance was very much in keeping with the house in
which he dwelt. He was quite evidently of the old school, and his pleasant
voice gave me an old-school welcome. A fine broad forehead rested above a
pair of the most kindly eyes that can be imagined, and belonged to a
splendidly-shaped head, which was totally bald, save for a slight fringe
of white hairs about either temple. The mouth was, in its expression, even
more prepossessing than the eyes, and the whole bearing of the old
gentleman--who had evidently reached his three-score and ten, but who, as
was equally apparent, carried the warmth and vigor of youth still with
him--was calculated to please and impress the least observant visitor.

The late Joseph J. Mickley comprised qualities at once more attractive and
more unusual than are often met with in one person. He was distinguished
throughout the world, during more than a generation, for the diligence and
success of his numismatic researches, and his collection of rare coins was
for a long time the most valuable in this country. As a collector of
scarce books and autographs he was hardly less noted or less successful.
But in Philadelphia he was most of all admired for his delightful social
qualities and his extensive information on a surprising variety of topics.
During forty years his house was a rendezvous for a numerous group of
specialists,--not alone in his own favorite pursuits, which, indeed, were
both many and diverse, but in any and every department of art or learning.
Coin-hunters, autograph-dealers, historical students, philosophers,
musical-instrument-makers, noted performers, and performers of less note,
all the way down to "scratch-clubs," were his constant visitors for years.
It is probable that no private house in Philadelphia has entertained a
greater number of intellectually distinguished people than the old mansion
just referred to, where Mickley resided from 1842 to 1869. Musical
celebrities from every country hastened to make his acquaintance, and such
was the magnetism of his personality that acquaintances thus formed seem
never to have been lost sight of by either host or guest. During his
European tour, which lasted from 1869 to 1872, the then venerable
traveller was continually meeting friends among persons who had called
upon him at various times, dating back in one case as long before as 1820.
They always appeared to have known beforehand of his coming, and he always
remembered them and the circumstances under which he had first met them.

The social reunions at Mickley's were informal to the last degree, and the
accommodations correspondingly primitive. They usually took place in his
workshop. Crazy stools or empty piano-boxes generally served for seats.
The surrounding furniture comprised barrels, cases, and chests, filled to
overflowing with the host's ever-increasing antiquarian treasures. If a
quartette were assembled,--and many times the musical party was enlarged
to a quintette or a septette,--an adjournment was necessary to a room less
crowded, but equally sparse of conventional furniture.

Mr. Mickley was always happy to join in these impromptu musical assemblies,
when occasion offered, although performing music was one of the few
things which he never succeeded in doing well. He invariably played the
viola on these occasions,--perhaps, as Schindler hints about Beethoven,
because indifferent playing on the viola is not so noticeable as on other
instruments. As was to have been expected from so pronounced an
antiquarian, he had small sympathy for modern music. He even rebelled
against the gentle innovations of Mendelssohn, contending, not without an
approach to accurate judgment, that Haydn and Mozart had completely
covered the field of chamber-music. While in the midst of numerous and
always congenial pursuits during his long life, quartette-playing remained
a favorite pastime of very many days in very many years.

Mr. Mickley's intellect was so many-sided and so evenly balanced that it
is difficult to name his predominant bias. It is very nearly safe, however,
to say that this was his historic faculty. In the writings, still chiefly
unprinted, which were left behind him, he was at once the most minute and
the most compact of historians. Emerson never condensed his rare thoughts
into smaller compass, not even in his "English Traits," than Mr, Mickley
has condensed his facts and observations. There is a small pamphlet extant,
the manuscript of which was read by him in 1863 on the occasion of the
centennial anniversary of a noted Indian massacre in Northampton County,
Pennsylvania, where several of his ancestors perished. It contains
historic material enough for a volume. To indicate his early passion for
amassing reliable data, the same sketch shows that a portion of its facts
had been obtained, while he was still a boy, from then aged eye-witnesses
of the affair, nearly fifty years before its story was thus put into
permanent shape.

He mastered the Swedish language, after having passed his seventieth year,
chiefly that he might write a correct history of the first settlement of
Swedes on the Delaware River below Philadelphia. At the age of seventy-two
he spent several months in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, and while
there placed himself in communication with every prominent librarian of
the country, besides scholars in Denmark, Holland, and Germany. He
personally inspected a great mass of documents and ancient volumes. Yet
the result of all this is contained in a manuscript of less than thirty
large folio pages, literally crowded with invaluable data. This was read
before the Historical Society of the State of Delaware in 1874. It has
never been put in type, and is almost wholly made up of material which has
no existence elsewhere in the English language.

A single instance will serve to show the minuteness and persistence of his
investigations. In one of the public libraries of Stockholm Mickley
discovered an ancient Dutch manuscript signed by Peter Minuit. No scholar
within reach could master its contents. The private secretary of the
ambassador from Holland, who was appealed to, asserted beforehand that he
"could read anything that ever was written in Dutch." Yet, after a long
inspection, he frankly owned his inability to decipher a single word of
it. Mr. Mickley was determined to ascertain the contents. As the document
could not be bought at any price, and could not even be removed over-night
from its place of keeping, he caused photographs to be taken of it. One
such copy was sent to a very learned acquaintance in Amsterdam, and
another to a noted scholar at Leipsic. In the course of subsequent travels
he found accurate translations awaiting him from both sources. The
importance of the manuscript in this connection will be the more
appreciated when it is remembered that Peter Minuit commanded the first
expedition ever sent to the shores of the Delaware River.

Being thus by nature an historian, it is but natural that Mr. Mickley
should have left behind him ample materials for telling the story of his
own life. From these we learn that the family name was originally
Michelet. It dates back to the French Huguenots who, after the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes, settled in Zweibrcken, a Grerman province. The
first foothold of the family in this country was established in that
portion of Pennsylvania which has for more than a century been thickly
peopled by that enlightened and art-fostering sect, the Moravians. It was
from the Moravian influence that Joseph J. Mickley first experienced a
fondness for music and its appropriate artistic surroundings. He was born
March 24, 1799, at South Whitehall, a township then in Lehigh County, but
originally comprised in Northampton. At the age of seventeen he went to
Philadelphia as apprentice to a piano-maker. At that time the method of
building a piano-forte was as different from the advanced art of these
days as was the instrument itself. The piano-maker had then to work from
the legs upward. His necessary duties demanded knowledge which is now
distributed among several entirely distinct sets of artificers. That young
Mickley satisfactorily completed his apprenticeship may be inferred from
two facts: he started in business for himself in August, 1822, and in
October, 1831, the Franklin Institute awarded him a prize for skill in the
manufacture of pianos.

From this time on, his business life, though of long duration, was
uneventful, and may be summed up in very few words. From his original
starting-place at No. 67 North Third Street, he removed, four years later,
to a store on the site now occupied by a portion of the publishing house
of J.B. Lippincott Company. Here he remained until 1842, and then
established himself in the building mentioned at the beginning of this
article, where he continued to live until the final closing up of his
business in 1869.

It does not appear that Mr. Mickley was ever actively engaged in the
manufacture of piano-fortes. He continued, however, to tune pianos to the
end of his life; and it is reported that he could never be induced to
alter his terms from the original fee of one dollar which was customary
forty years ago. He also became noted far and wide as a repairer of
violins and other stringed instruments. At one time, a violin which had
belonged to George Washington was sent to him for this purpose. Ole Bull,
who happened to be in town at the time, hearing of the circumstance,
hastened to the shop for the purpose of examining and playing upon the
historic instrument. Mickley also became an authority in regard to the
value and authenticity of these instruments, although he never indulged in
the passion of making collections in this field. His minuteness of
observation was frequently manifested. While stopping at Venice in 1870 he
notes down in his diary, "A man came to the hotel with some violins for
sale. Among them was a Hieronymus Amati. It was a good one, but the head
and neck were not genuine." At another time, a violin was sent to his
place from a distant locality for repairs. The instrument was preceded by
a lengthy letter beseeching his special care for its welfare, and setting
forth in extravagant terms its great intrinsic value and its peculiarly
interesting "belongings." Anticipating a treasure, Mr. Mickley sent for
some violin-connoisseurs to enjoy with him a first sight of the precious
instrument. On opening the express-package a very worthless "fiddle" was
revealed. After the laugh had gone round, he said dryly, "I think the
value of this must be in its 'belongings.'"

In the old house on Market Street Mr. Mickley was not alone popular among
prominent people from afar. He was equally loved by his neighbors on all
sides. Many of the more unconventional of these knew him best by the
familiar title of "Daddy." To the better-educated class of young musicians
he was almost as much a father as a friend. Nor were his close friendships
confined to the young. Among his most steadfast admirers was an
old-bachelor German musician by the name of Plich. Herr Plich was a
piano-teacher, and it was under his tuition that the afterward favorite
prima-donna Caroline Richings made her first public appearance as a
pianist in 1847. This old teacher induced Mickley to take him as a boarder,
and he lived for a number of years in one of the upper back rooms of No.
927. One night a fire broke out in a building directly contiguous with the
rear of the Mickley mansion. There was great consternation, of course, and
busy efforts on the owner's part to gather together the manifold contents
of his treasure-house. When all had been at length secured in a place of
safety, he bethought himself of Herr Plich. Hastening to the upper room,
he discovered the old man in a state of semi-insanity, marching up and
down the apartment, and carrying in his hands only a valuable viola. So
confused was he with fright that main force was required to get him out of
the room. After seeing him safely out of the front door, Mickley went back
and secured a considerable sum of paper money which had been totally
overlooked for the sake of the beloved viola. Plich at his death
bequeathed the viola to Mickley, and it was the only instrument which the
latter always refused to part with during his lifetime. The entire savings
of Plich were also left in trust to Mickley, to be distributed for such
charitable objects as he should consider most worthy, and for about
twenty-seven years Mr. Mickley carefully administered this trust.

Mr. Mickley's most remarkable success in life was obtained as a
numismatist. His habit of collecting coins began almost in childhood. It
has been stated that at the age of seventeen he first became interested in
coin-hunting, owing to his difficulty in finding a copper cent coined in
1799, the year of his birth. Every student of numismatism knows that this
piece is exceedingly rare. The one sold in Mr. Mickley's collection after
his decease brought no less than forty dollars. The taste thus formed
continued a prevailing one for sixty years. It is surprising to find how
speedily he became a leading and recognized authority. Although as
guileless as a child and the easy victim of numerous thefts throughout his
life, he was scarcely ever deceived in the value of a coin, token, or
medal. Once, at Stockholm, in 1871, he visited a museum where rare coins
were exhibited. "The collection," says his diary, "is very, very rich in
Greek and Roman, but particularly in Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon. There
are not many United States coins, but among them I was astonished to find
a very fine half-eagle of 1815." The known rarity of this coin thus on
exhibition in a far country very naturally attracted the keen eyes of the
aged collector.

These researches, continuing year after year, grew to be more and more
valuable, until they became widely celebrated. By the time he had reached
middle age he was as well known among the guild of antiquarians as a
Quaker is known by his costume. Before his death he had been elected a
member of all the prominent societies in numismatics, history, and
archaeology throughout the world. The last honor of this kind, which
reached him in his eightieth year, was a notice of his election to
membership in the Société Française de Numismatique et d'Archéologie. His
great collections in this department of knowledge were not confined to
coins, but extended also to the literature of the subject. This was
splendidly illustrated in his famous library, which comprised many works
of the utmost value and scarcity.

A taste thus developed in early youth naturally became in the course of
years a habit, a sentiment, a leading passion of Mickley's nature. By the
year 1867 his coin-collection had become the most extensive in this
country. By this time also the entertainment of curious visitors absorbed
a good share of the collector's daily duties. He was naturally proud of
his treasures, and took a great delight in showing them to all who came.
Utterly devoid of suspicion, he was a ready victim to designing persons.
The following memorandum, which was found among his later papers, will
show how he suffered from this source:

"I have become rather indifferent about numismatics, or, at least, about
collecting coins. It was a great source of amusement for a period of over
fifty years. But, having been so unfortunate at different times with my
coins, it is, as it were, a warning to desist from collecting any more. In
the year 1827 the United States dollars from 1794 to 1803, all good
specimens, together with some foreign coins, were stolen. In 1848 about
twenty half-dollars were taken. In 1854, after showing my collection to
three Southern gentlemen (as they called themselves) I missed three very
scarce half-eagles. The great robbery was in 1867. In Jaffa, Palestine, a
small lot, worth about one thousand francs, with a collection of Egyptian
curiosities, was stolen at the hotel; and, finally, last winter, at
Seville, Spain, some old Spanish coins were missing while I was showing
them to some persons."

The "great robbery" above alluded to occurred on the evening of April 13,
1867. It was of such magnitude as to cause a wide sensation at the time,
and enlisted the sympathies of his coin-hunting brethren the world over.
Mr. Mickley's chief precautions, notwithstanding his previous warnings of
danger from another source, had been against fire. In a third-story room
was his cabinet. This had been long since filled, chiefly with an unbroken
and historic list of American coins. The additional accumulations of years,
nearly all foreign, and many of great rarity, had been stored in an old
piano-case in his bedroom, where, as he said, in the event of fire they
would be close at hand. On the evening in question Mickley was alone in
his workshop, engaged in repairing a musical instrument. He had then been
living entirely alone for a number of years. A single servant, who
provided his meals, had gone home. About nine o'clock the loud barking of
his dog in the yard below called him to the window. It was afterward found
that a pair of old shoes thrown from an upper room by the burglars had
thus called away the attention both of dog and master from what was going
on inside. An hour later a caller discovered several pieces of money lying
in the hall. An investigation disclosed the startling loss which he had
sustained. The entire contents of the piano-box had been carried off. A
private desk had also been broken open and despoiled of a few medals,
although its chief contents were intact. A gold pencil, the gift of Ole
Bull, and other keepsakes, remained undisturbed. But the larger portion of
a collection of foreign coins, one of the most complete in the world, and
the product of a lifetime's intelligent research, was gone!

It was a heavy calamity, and one from which the old collector never fully
recovered. Sir Isaac Newton's historic Fido did not do nearly the amount
of irremediable damage when he overturned the lamp upon his master's
papers. The actual pecuniary loss, reckoning at cost prices, was in the
neighborhood of nineteen thousand dollars. The market value of such a
collection was of course vastly greater, and increasing all the time at a
good deal faster rate than compound interest. It was somewhat of a
coincidence that Mr. Mickley had received and refused what he records as a
"tempting offer", for the entire collection only a short time before the
robbery.

The ardent passion of a lifetime was now chilled, and his one desire
seemed to be to get rid of his remaining coins and of the responsibility
which keeping them entailed. Such, however, was the completeness of
Mickley's literary methods of condensing, that an entry of three or four
lines made in his diary on the night of the robbery is all that he had to
write about the appalling loss. A week or two afterward he records in the
same volume the disposal of all the remaining coins, with an air of great
relief, as he adds, "I do not doubt I should be robbed again if I kept
them." A large box full of the most valuable had been taken, for
safe-keeping, to the Mint just after the robbery; but these were sold with
the rest. It is understood that this remnant of the original lot was
disposed of for about sixteen thousand dollars, the largest purchaser
being Mr, Woodward, of Roxbury, Massachusetts. The dollar of 1804 went to
a New York collector for the enormous sum of seven hundred and fifty
dollars.

Efforts to restore the lost treasure were not wanting. It might be
supposed that the possession of such rare tokens of value would have
speedily led to the discovery of their whereabouts. Mr. Mickley himself
intimated that he suspected the quarter from which the depredation had
come. Yet from that day until the present the secret has been as securely
kept as that of the rifling of Lord Byron's letter from a vase at
Abbotsford, or of the Duchess of Devonshire's portrait from the London
Art-Gallery. In fact, the same mild generosity which had always
characterized Mr. Mickley still came uppermost in the face of this trying
disaster. He frequently sought to overlook the misdoings of petty thieves.
A London pickpocket who had successfully practised upon him Oliver Twist's
little game was only prosecuted because his testimony was insisted upon by
the authorities. At the foot of the Pyramids he deplored the chastisement
inflicted by an Arab sheik upon one of his native servants who had
committed a similar depredation. His life-long friend the late William E.
Dubois, of the United States Mint, has stated that "eight or nine years
after the robbery a few very fine gold pieces of English coinage were
offered for sale at the Mint cabinet-rooms. I was so well convinced that
the labels were in his handwriting that I sent for him to come and see
them. He could not deny the likeness, but seemed reluctant to entertain
the subject at all."

During these years of study and research Mr. Mickley must not be thought
of as a strict specialist. Side by side with his fascinating collection of
coins there was an ever-growing library, the extent and value of which
were never appreciated until his death. This accumulation was in itself an
example of his cosmopolitan tastes. It was copious in local history, in
biography, in music, in general literature, in costly and well-preserved
black-letter editions, in illuminated missals dating back to the
thirteenth century, and, above all else, in autographs. Of the latter,
space cannot be spared here for anything approaching a full description.
As some indication of their value, it may be mentioned that a letter of
George Washington (the last he was known to write), dated six days before
his death, was bought by George W. Childs, Esq., for one hundred and
fifteen dollars. A letter of Abraham Lincoln to General McClellan fetched
nearly one hundred dollars. There were also signed autograph letters of
all the governors of Pennsylvania, of all the Presidents, and of all the
signers of the Declaration of Independence. The latter group is rarely met
with complete; and three of the scarcest names alone sold for as much as
all the others put together. There were signatures also of about forty
generals of the Revolutionary war, of both the British and American armies,
and including Lafayette and Kosciusko. Both Napoleon and Josephine were
represented; and the lovers of poetic justice will be glad to know that
the latter name brought double that of the great emperor. In autographs of
literary and musical celebrities the collection was extraordinarily rich,
those of Goethe and Schiller, Beethoven and Mozart, being conspicuous. But
the chief rarity was a large album formerly owned by Babet von Ployer.
This contained, among other treasures, a manuscript of Haydn, believed to
be the only one ever offered for sale in this country. It also contained
an India-ink sketch of Mozart, drawn by his wife Constance. At the sale in
1878 this album was knocked down for one hundred and twenty-six dollars,
although three hundred dollars had been previously refused for it. The
Mozart letter, a particularly interesting specimen, was sold for fifty-two
dollars to M.H. Cross, Esq.

Turning from the autographs to the books, we find still greater value and
variety. The historical portion, especially where it referred to local
subjects, was almost phenomenal. One precious lot comprised a complete set
of the first daily newspaper of the United States, beginning with the
"Pennsylvania Packet" in 1771, and continuing unbroken, through several
changes of title and proprietorship, for one hundred and seven years. An
amusing incident is related in connection with Mr. Mickley's purchase of
the larger portion of this series,--"Poulson's Advertiser" from 1800 to
1840. When the wagon was driven to his door, loaded with the purchase, the
housekeeper exclaimed, "What ever is to be done with all this truck?" Yet
this "truck," a mine of wealth to the future historian, was sold after
Mickley's death for eight hundred dollars. There were city directories of
several editions for ninety-three years. The black-letter list was quite
large, and there were more than thirty editions of the Bible, some of
great rarity, and nearly all in a fine state of preservation.

From the time of the coin-robbery the older acquaintances of Mr. Mickley
noticed a decided change in him. On the subject of coins, once so voluble,
he grew very reticent. His business, which had for many years appeared
rather a pastime than a task to him, grew irksome. After a period of
uncertainty, he finally decided to close up his affairs and spend some
years in foreign travel. In spite of advanced age, he was both physically
and mentally well equipped for such a journey. His health had always been
good. His temper seemed never to be ruffled. Of the French and German
languages he was a master, and he had some knowledge of the Spanish,
Italian, and Swedish. His previous extensive acquaintance with men of many
nations and habits was kept fresh in mind by a remarkable memory. With all
these advantages, the period of his travels was the most interesting of
his life.

Mr. Mickley set sail on the 5th of June, 1869, being at that time a few
months past his seventieth year. He remained abroad for three years,
visiting every country in Europe, ascending the Nile to the first cataract,
passing through the Suez Canal, and across a portion of Asia Minor and
Palestine. He made two trips to Northern Sweden to behold the spectacle of
the midnight sun. Being a week too late on the first season, he tried it
again the following year. Passing through the entire length of the Gulf of
Bothnia, and ascending the Tornea River, he entered Lapland, crossing the
Arctic circle and penetrating the Arctic zone in a sledge-journey of
seventy miles. The indomitable old traveller pushed on until he reached a
small lumber-village named Pajala. On the night of June 23, 1871, crossing
the river with a small party of Swedes and Finns, he ascended Mount
Avasaxa, in Finland. At this altitude, he says, "the sky happened to be
clear in the direction of the sun, and he shone in all his glory as the
clock struck twelve."

During this prolonged absence he visited almost every considerable town in
Germany, Holland, Italy, and England. The instant that he arrived at a
town, he seemed to know the shortest cut to its museum. If there was an
antiquarian in the place, he knew of it beforehand, and hastened either to
make or renew an acquaintance. In the larger cities he was surrounded by
these people, and he expressed unaffected surprise and pleasure at their
attentions. He made visits of inspection to nearly every mint in Europe,
having been commissioned by the Philadelphia Mint to make purchases of
rare coins for its cabinet. Here the old passion appears to have blazed up
again for a little while. It was an entire surprise to his family to
discover among his possessions at his death the nucleus of a new
collection, which was sold for about two thousand dollars.

Mr. Mickley made at this period some valued acquaintances. Among these was
the Italian composer Mercadante. At the time of Mickley's visit, in April,
1870, the composer, who was also president of the Conservatoire in Naples,
had been blind for eight years. "The old gentleman," says Mickley (who, by
the way, was only two years his junior), "held out his hand and bade me
welcome. I told him it would be a lasting pleasure to have shaken hands
with so highly distinguished a man, whose name had long since been
favorably known in America. At this his face brightened; he arose from the
sofa, shook my hand cordially, wishing me health, happiness, and a safe
voyage." Later, at Brussels, he called on M. Fétiss, the famous French
musical critic and biographer. At that time, in his eighty-eighth year,
Fétis was a fugitive from Paris, owing to the troubles of the
Franco-Prussian war. Mr. Mickley's picture of the veteran _littérateur_
and critic is an engaging one. He says, "Considering his great age, Mr.
Fetis is very active. He climbed up the stepladder to get books and to
show me such as he considered the most rare and interesting. He is not
only active in body, but he retains all the faculties of his mind. He
appears to have a very happy disposition. While I was with him a continual
smile was on his face, and it seemed to give him great pleasure to show me
his books. He has been engaged in collecting them for over fifty years,
and they have cost him a sum equal to three hundred thousand dollars,
exclusive of a great many presents. The first book on music was printed in
1480." At Trieste he spent some time with the United States consul there,
Mr. Thayer, of Boston, best known to musical and literary people as the
author of an exhaustive Life of Beethoven, which has been under way for
nearly thirty years and is not yet finished. Mr. Thayer showed his visitor
all the historic data and personal relics which he had collected for the
book, of which at that date only one volume had been published. Since then
Mercadante and F?s have been gathered to their fathers. Their genial guest
is also gone. The industrious Mr. Thayer lives, with three volumes of the
Life completed, and every American, either literary or musical, will wish
him well on to the conclusion of his _magnum opus_.

Mr. Mickley's plain personal habits remained almost unchanged by the many
unforeseen exigencies of foreign travel. Once, at Rouen, six months after
leaving home, he says, "Tasted wine for the first time in Europe, as the
water here did not agree with me." A little later, at Munich, he remarks,
"Drank beer for the first time." His pockets remained as accessible as
heretofore to the nimble-fingered gentry. Upon his first visit to Naples,
he records very naïvely, "Three silk handkerchiefs have been stolen from
me here,--which is one more than in London." At Jaffa, on his way from
Egypt to Palestine, besides the robbery of coins alluded to some time back,
he lost a choice autograph manuscript of Mozart which had cost him two
hundred and fifty francs at Salzburg. If careless in these particulars, he
was very watchful and jealous of opportunities to uphold America's
position in the world. He took special pains to inform the mint-masters at
various points concerning the superior appliances and machinery of the
Philadelphia Mint. On the way back from Lapland, while steaming southward
along the upper waters of the Gulf of Bothnia, he writes, under date of
July 4, 1871, "This being our national holiday, I put up my flag on the
door of my berth, but was obliged to explain the meaning of the holiday to
nearly all the passengers." While in England, he met at Manchester a
barrister who had formerly been his guest in Philadelphia. This gentleman
proposed to introduce him to an American lawyer then practising there. "I
asked the name. He said it was Judah P. Benjamin. I declined the
invitation."

Wherever Mr. Mickley journeyed, so long as any fresh acquisition of
knowledge was to be gained the old traveller appeared insensible to
fatigue. When halfway up the Great Pyramid an English group who were in
his company stopped and insisted upon going no farther. He resolutely
continued, and they, unwilling to see so aged a man out-distance them,
followed reluctantly, until all reached the summit and congratulated each
other on the famous view. In St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other Russian
cities, which he visited in the winter season, he was equally untiring and
undaunted. As a specimen of his accuracy of observation, he writes during
his first journey in Italy, "I counted forty-six tunnels between Pisa and
Bologna." Several severe accidents fell to his lot. In Rome, while
exploring a dark, arched passage, he fell into "Cicero's Well," receiving
severe bruises. In a street in Constantinople, where there are no
sidewalks, he was knocked down by a runaway horse and taken up for dead,
remaining insensible for several hours. The former of these mishaps
occupies three lines in his diary; the latter, twelve lines. On his third
visit to Leipsic he was confined in his room for several weeks with an
attack of smallpox. But in regard to none of these accidents, although an
aged man, thousands of miles from home, and entirely alone, does he betray
any symptoms of apprehension. He merely adds, on the date of his recovery
from the attack at Leipsic, "This sickness has detained me much longer
than I had expected to stay."

In one of Mickley's trips he made a not unimportant contribution to
musical history. Almost every student of instrumental music is acquainted
with the name of Jacob Steiner or Stainer, the most successful of
violin-makers outside of the Cremonese school of workmen. Of Steiner's
life but little is known, and no biography of him extant in either French,
German, or English contains either the date or place of his death. The
account commonly given is that he separated from his wife and died in a
convent. Mr. Mickley, with his accustomed perseverance, started out to see
if this matter might not be cleared up. At Innspruck he inquired in vain
for information. As Fétis and Forster both fixed his birthplace at Absom,
a small village some twelve miles from Innspruck, Mickley repaired
thither. For some time his errand was fruitless. He stopped in at a little
shop where an old woman sold photographs, etc. "I asked her, 'Did you
never hear of Jacob Steiner, the violin-maker?' She replied, 'There is no
Steiner nor violin-maker living in this town.' I then said that a
celebrated violin-maker of that name, of whom I desired some information,
had lived there two hundred years before. She replied, quite seriously, 'I
am not two hundred years old.'" A few minutes later, in the course of his
walk, his eye fell upon an old church, the outer wall of which contained a
number of stone tablets with inscriptions. A search of five minutes
revealed the desired information. On a plain tablet Steiner's name was
found, together with the information, given in very old-fashioned German,
that he had died there in 1683, "at the rising of the sun."

The closing field of Mr. Mickley's travels covered Southern France and
Spain, Lisbon, where he passed the winter of 1871-72, and Madrid. The
weather being very severe, he was detained two months at Lisbon, where he
engaged a teacher and took daily lessons in Portuguese. He had done the
same at Stockholm the previous winter with the Swedish language, which he
mastered pretty thoroughly. At Madrid he examined what he emphatically
pronounced the finest collection of coins in the world, numbering one
hundred and fifty thousand specimens. He adds, "This is the only place in
Europe where the subject is properly understood. Alfonzo V., King of
Aragon, in the fifteenth century, was the first person known to have
collected coins for study or amusement, and Augustin, Archbishop of
Tarragona, was the first writer on the subject. The science of numismatics
is, therefore, of Spanish origin."

Mr, Mickley left Madrid in March, crossing the Pyrenees and arriving in
Paris on the 24th of that month, his seventy-third birthday. He "made the
tour of three hundred and sixty-three miles in twelve hours, without being
in the least fatigued." After a few weeks passed in Paris and in
revisiting friends in England, he sailed for home, arriving in
Philadelphia June 5, 1872, exactly three years from the date of his
departure.

It was surprising to his friends how little change the lapse of years and
the somewhat rugged incidents of travel had made in Mr. Mickley. He
quickly settled down, and, as nearly as possible, resumed his old habits.
He bought himself a residence, but followed the Paris custom of taking his
meals elsewhere. In the house he was entirely alone, even without a
servant. After a time he showed some disposition to concede to "luxuries"
which he had previously ignored. Carpets he had never used in his life,
but he now admitted that they were very pleasant and comfortable, and
ordered his house to be carpeted throughout. The arrangement of his
library in the new quarters was a great pleasure, and took some time. Mr.
Mickley was in no sense of the word a politician, but he voted pretty
regularly. An incident connected with his last visit to the polls was
amusing. Having been three years absent, a patriotic Hibernian, who kept
the window-book and knew nothing of him, demanded to see his tax-receipt.
The old gentleman went quietly home and brought back the desired document.
He was next asked if he could read and write, which question, however, was
not pressed. The last scene in Mr. Mickley's life was as quiet and
peaceful as its whole tenor had been. On the afternoon of February 15,
1878, Mr. Carl Plagemann, the well-known musician and a friend of many
years' standing, called at his house. While he waited, Mr. Mickley wrapped
for him some violin-strings, the last work of his hands. He requested Mr.
Plagemann to go with him that evening to visit another old friend,--Oliver
Hopkinson, Esq., at whose house there were to be some quartettes. "I have
a letter," he said, "from the Russian ambassador, a part of which I am
unable to translate. A Russian lady is to play the piano there this
evening, and I shall ask her to help me out." Mr. Plagemann could not go,
and, as so often before, Mr. Mickley started out alone. Just before
reaching the house of Mr. Hopkinson he was taken suddenly ill, and,
chancing to be close by the residence of his physician, Dr. Meigs, he
stopped there and rang the bell. As the door opened, he said in husky
tones, "I am suffocating." He walked in and ascended the stairs without
assistance. Then he said, "Take me to a window." As this was being done,
he fell back insensible into the arms of the attendants, and, a few
minutes later, breathed his last.

Thus, on the very western edge of fourscore years, ended this long and
industrious, this peaceful and beautiful life. In our land of busy and
constant action there have been few like it,--surely none happier. Serene
at the close as it was placid in its course, its lot had been cast ever
between quiet shores, which it enriched on either hand with its
accumulated gifts of knowledge and of taste. And at the close of it all
there could be no happier eulogy than the one modestly yet comprehensively
delivered by his old and congenial friend William E. Dubois, himself since
summoned to take the same mysterious journey. "In fine," says he, "Mr.
Mickley seemed superior to any meanness; free from vulgar passions and
habits, from pride and vanity, from evil speaking and harsh judging. He
was eminently sincere, affable, kind, and gentle: in the best sense of the
word he was a gentleman."

J. BUNTING.

       *       *       *       *       *




ROSE ROMANCE.


Two roses, freshly sweet and rare,
  Bloomed in the dewy morning
On neighboring bushes green and fair,
  One garden-bed adorning.
"Ah!" sighed the pair, "what joy, what pride.
  If on one branch together
We two were growing side by side
  Through all this golden weather!"

There came a youth who roughly tore
  The roses from their bowers,
And to his sweetheart proudly bore
  The two fair, fragrant flowers.
Upon her bosom with delight
  They bloomed,--but not forever:
They faded--ah! but, rapture bright,
  They faded there together.

ADA NICHOLS.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE WHITE WHATERS.


"Down with her! Hard!" came hoarsely through the mist.

An oil-skinned figure threw himself heavily upon the oar; the little craft
rounded tremblingly up into the wind, hurling clouds of spray and foam
aloft that were borne far away by the whistling breeze. For a moment the
sail beat furiously, as if in protest at this infringement upon its
privileges, then a second oil-skin--the cause of all this
commotion--raised his arms, a steel spear flashed, a willowy pole trembled
in the air, a quick movement, a roar of rushing waters, a shower of spray
that drenched the craft, a sound of escaping steam or hissing rope, and a
white whale had been struck by Captain Sol Gillis, of Bic.

Captain Gillis, as might be assumed, was not a native of the province of
Quebec, but merely a carpet-bagger, who moved north in the summer and
returned in early autumn about the time the wild geese went south, and all
for reasons known only to himself. He hailed from down East, and voted in
a small town not many miles from the historic shell-heaps and the ancient
city of Pemaquid.

Our meeting with the down-East skipper was entirely one of accident.
Wandering along the beach at Bic, we had come upon a boat, half dory, half
nondescript, which from the possession of certain peculiarities was
claimed by one of the party to be of Maine origin, and, to settle the
dispute, a little house a few hundred yards higher up was visited.

It was like many others along shore,--single-storied, painted white, with
green blinds, with a small garden in the rear, in which grew old-fashioned
flowers and an abundance of "yarbs" that bespoke a mistress of Thompsonian
leanings. A stack of oars, seine-sticks, and harpoon-handles leaned
against the roof; gill-nets festooned the little piazza, while a great
iron caldron, that had evidently done service on a New Bedford whaler, had
been utilized by the good housewife to capture the rain-water from the
shingled roof.

"Mornin' to ye, gentlemen. Been lookin' at the bot?" queried a tall, thin,
red-faced man, with an unusually jolly expression, stepping out from a
shed.

"Yes. We thought she was of Maine build," replied the disputant.

"Wall, so she is," said the mariner,--"so she is; and there ain't none
like her within forty mile of Bic. I'm of Maine build myself," he added.
"But I ain't owner. I'm sorter second mate to Sol Grillis; sailed with him
forty year come Christmas. Don't ye know him? What! don't know Sol
Gillis!" And a look of incredulity crept into the old man's eye. "Why, I
thought Sol was knowed from Bic to Boothbay all along shore. But come in,
do. I know ye're parched," continued the friend of the skipper, dropping
his palm and needle and motioning the visitors toward the little
sitting-room. "Mother," he called, "here's some folks from daown aour way."

As the old man spoke, a large-framed woman appeared in the door-way,
holding on to the sides for support, and bade us welcome. Her eyes were
turned upward, and had a far-away look, as if from long habit of gazing
out to sea, but, as we drew nearer, we saw that she was blind.

Leading the way into the kitchen, which was resplendent with shining pans
and a glistening stove, all the work of the thrifty but blind housewife,
she began to entertain us in her simple manner, and described a model of a
full-rigged ship that rested on a table, though she had never seen it,
with an exactness that would have done credit to many a sailor: even the
ropes and rigging were pointed out, and all their uses dwelt upon with a
tenderness strangely foreign to the subject.

"And Captain Sam built it?" we asked.

"No, no," replied the old lady, turning her head to hide a tear that stole
from the sightless eyes. "It's all we've got to remember aour boy John. He
built her and rigged her. He was his mother's boy, but--"

"He went down on the Grand Banks in the gale of '75," broke in her husband
hoarsely.

"Yes," continued the wife, "me and Sam's all alone. It's all we've got,
and Sam brings it up every summer as sorter company like. Ye're friends of
Captain Sol, I guess," she said, brightening up after a moment. "No?" and
she looked in the direction of the captain, as if for a solution of the
mystery. "Naow, ye don't tell me that ye ain't acquainted with Captain Sol,
and ye're from aour way, too? Why," she continued earnestly, "Sol's been
hog-reeve in aour taown ten years runnin'; and as for selec'-man, he'll
die in office. Positions of trust come jest as nat'ral to him as reefin'
in a gale of wind. Him and my man tuck to one another from the first."

"Then you were not townsmen always," we suggested.

"No, we wa'n't," was the reply.

"My man and Sol met under kinder unusual circumstances. Tell 'em haow it
was, Sam."

The old sailor was sitting on the wood-box, shaping a row-lock from a
piece of white pine, and, when thus addressed, looked up with a blank
expression, as if he had been on a long search for ideas and had returned
without them.

"He gits wanderin' in his ideas when he sets his mind on the '75 gale,"
whispered the old lady. "Tell 'em abaout yer meetin' Captain Sol, Sam,"
she repeated.

"Me and Sol met kinder cur'us," began the captain. "That year I was first
mate of the Marthy Dutton, of Kennebec; and on this identical v'yage we
was baound daown along with a load of coal. In them days three was a
full-handed crew for a fore-an'-after, and that's all we had,--captain,
mate, and cook, and a dog and cat. One evenin',--I reckon we was ten miles
to the south'ard of Boon Island,--it was my trick at the wheel, and all
hands had turned in. It was blowin' fresh from the east'ard, and I had
everything on her I could git. I reckon it was nigh on ter two o'clock,
and as clear as it is to-day, when the fust thing I knowed the schooner
was on her beam ends. She gave a kind of groan like, pitched for'ard, and
down she went, takin' everything with her; and, afore I knowed what was
the matter, I found myself floatin' ten miles from shore. I see it was no
use, but I thought I'd make a break for it: so I got off my boots and
ile-skins in the water, and struck aout for shore, that I could see every
once in a while on a rise.

"Wall, to make a long story short, I reckon I was in the water a matter o'
four hours, when I see the lights of a schooner comin' daown on me. I
hailed, and she heard me, ran up in the wind, put aout a bot, and Sol
Gillis, the skipper, yanked me in. I couldn't have held aout ten minutes
longer. So Sol and me has been tol'able thick ever since."

"Here he comes naow," said the matron, whose quick ear had caught the
sound of approaching footsteps. "Sam, set aout my pennyroyal, will ye? Ye
see," she added apologetically, "Sol is literary, and when he comes raound
he gives us all the news, and there is sech goin's on in the papers
nowadays that it jest upsots my nerves to hear him and Sam talkin' 'em
over. Sech murders, riots, wrackin', and killin' of folks! If it wa'n't
for a dish of tea I 'low I couldn't hear to it." And the good woman held
out her hand to a burly fisherman in a full suit of oil-skins, and
presented him to the visitors as Sam's friend, Captain Sol Gillis.

"I'm a white-whaler at present, gentlemen," said the captain, with a
hearty laugh that was so contagious that all hands joined in, scarcely
knowing why.

He was a tall, robust specimen of a down-Easter, his open face reddened by
long battling with wind and weather, and shaved close except beneath the
chin, from which depended an enormous beard that served as a scarf in
winter and even now was tucked into his jacket.

"It's a curious thing, naow, for the captain and mate of a coaster to be
in furrin parts a-whalin'; but we find it pays,--eh, Sam?" And Captain Sol
closed one eye and looked wisely for a second at his friend, upon which
the two broke into hearty laughter that had a ring of smuggled brandy and
kerosene in it, though perhaps it was only a ring, after all.

"Kin yaou go whalin'?" said the captain in reply to a question of one of
the visitors. "Why, sartin. White-whalin's gittin' fashionable. There's
heaps o' chaps come daown here from Montreal and Quebec and want to go
aout: so I take 'em. Some shoots, and some harpoons, and abaout the only
thing I've seen 'em ketch yet is a bad cold; but there's excitement in it,
--heaps of it: ain't there, Sam?"

"I ain't denyin' of it," replied the latter. "What's sport for some is
hard work for others. Work I calls it."

"Wall, as I say," continued the skipper, "white-whalin' is gittin'
fashionable, so in course there ain't no hard work abaout it; and if yaou
will go, why, I'm goin' aout now, me and Sam. The only thing, it's dampish
like; but perhaps mother here kin rig yaou aout."

Half an hour later the two landsmen were metamorphosed into very
respectable whalers, and, with the two captains, were running the
whale-boat down the sands of Bic into the dark waters of the St. Lawrence.
The light sail was set, and soon we were bounding away in the direction of
Mille Vaches, Captain Sam at the oar that constituted the helm, and
Captain Sol in the bow, with harpoon at hand, ready for the appearance of
game.

The white whale, or Beluga, is extremely common at the mouth of the St.
Lawrence, and is found a considerable distance up the river beyond
Tadousac. The oil is in constant demand for delicate machinery, and Beluga
leather, made from the tanned hide, is manufactured into a great variety
of articles of necessity and luxury.

In appearance these whales are the most attractive of all the cetaceans.
They are rarely over twenty feet in length, more commonly fifteen, of a
pure creamy color, sometimes shaded with a blue tint, but in the dark
water they appear perfectly white, perhaps by contrast, and seem the very
ghosts of whales, darting about, or rising suddenly, showing only the
rounded, dome-shaped head.

The Beluga is a toothed whale, in contradistinction to those that are
supplied with the whalebone-like arrangement that characterizes the right
whales: consequently its food consists of fish and perhaps squid. To
enable it to capture such prey it must be endowed with remarkable powers
of speed. The motor is the great horizontal tail, powerful strokes of
which force the animal; through the water and enable it to leap high into
the air in its gambols. The pectoral fins are small and of little use in
swimming. The head is the most remarkable feature. It is the only instance
in this group of animals where this organ appears at all distinct from the
body. By viewing the creature in profile, a suggestion of neck may be seen,
and it is claimed that there is more or less lateral motion,--that the
head can be moved from side to side to a limited extent. The outlines of
the face are shapely, the forehead rising in a dome-like projection and
rounding off in graceful lines, so that the head resembles to some extent
that of our common _Balaena Cisarctica_.

In their movements the Belugas are remarkably active, and are very playful,
--leaping into the air in their love-antics, rolling over and over,
chasing each other, and displaying in many ways their wonderful agility.
They often follow vessels in schools of forty and fifty, and old whalers
claim that they utter a whistling sound that can be heard distinctly above
the water. The young, sometimes two, but generally one, are at first brown
in color, later assuming a leaden hue, then becoming mottled, and finally
attaining the cream-white tint of the adult. The calves are frequently
seen nursing,--the mother lying upon the surface and rolling gently.

The Beluga has a wide geographical range, being found upon our northern
and northwestern shores in great numbers. Their southern limit seems to be
the St. Lawrence, and in search of food they venture up this river beyond
the mouth of the Saguenay, and often in water but little over their own
depth. On the western coast they also enter the great rivers, and have
been captured up the Yukon seven hundred miles from its mouth. In their
columnar movements they somewhat resemble the porpoise,--long processions
being frequently seen, composed of three in a row, perhaps led by a single
whale.

Among the Samoyeds, at Chabanova, on the Siberian coast, the white-whale
fisheries amount to fifteen hundred or two thousand pood of train-oil a
year. On the coasts of Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen they are captured by
enormous nets made of very stout material; and the Tromsoe vessels alone
have taken in a single season over two thousand one hundred and
sixty-seven white whales, valued at about thirty thousand dollars.
Magdalen a Bay is a favorite place for them, and often three hundred are
taken at a single haul in the powerful nets. Here and in most of the
northern localities the entire body is utilized,--the carcass being used
in the manufacture of guano. So perfectly are the bodies preserved by the
cold of these northern regions that if they cannot be removed at the time
of capture they are secured in the ensuing season.

As the boat reached mid-stream, where the wind was blowing against the
current, great rollers were met with, that tossed the light craft about
like a ball. But this was evidently the play-ground of the Beluga, and
dead ahead the white forms were seen darting about in the inky water with
startling distinctness, while faint puffs were occasionally borne down on
the wind.

Gradually we neared them, and suddenly a white dome appeared on the
weather bow. Then came the command and ensuing scene chronicled at the
commencement of this paper.

We were perfectly familiar with whaling-terms, and as the game was struck
we construed Captain Sam's impressive "git aft" to mean "starn all," and
even in that moment of stumbling and drenching felt a sense of
disappointment in the suppression of a time-honored term. To omit "There
she blows!" was enough; but to substitute "git aft" for "starn all" was a
libel on the chroniclers of the "Whaler's Own Book."

There was little time, however, for regrets. Our combined weight had
raised the bow a trifle, yet not enough to prevent the sea from coming in;
and, as the skipper, who was laboring with the steering-oar, said, the
small whaler was "hoopin' along, takin' everything as it came, and askin'
no questions." Now by the slight slacking of the line we were high on a
wave, the crest of which was dashed in our faces in the mad race; now down
in a hollow, taking the next sea bodily and plunging through it, causing
the oars and harpoons to rattle as if they were the very bones of the boat
shaking in fear and terror.

In a short time she was a third full of water, and the amateur whalers
were invited to man the pumps--namely, two tin basins--and bale the St.
Lawrence out as fast as it came in. The maddened animal soon carried us
beyond the area of heavy seas, and preparations were made for taking in
the slack. The boat was still rushing along at an eight-knot rate; and, as
the whale showed no signs of weakening, it was Captain Sam's opinion that
nothing short of the lance would stop him.

"Jest lay holt of the line, will ye?" sung out Captain Sol, passing the
slack aft, and four pairs of arms hauled the boat nearer the game, that
was far ahead. At first this only spurred the creature to further
endeavors; but the steady pull soon told, and, after an amount of labor
that can only be compared to sawing a cord of wood with a dull implement,
the white head of the Beluga came in sight.

"Steady, now!" shouted Captain Sol, releasing his hold and picking up the
lance. "Now, then, work her ahead."

A final haul, and the boat was fairly alongside of the fleeing animal,
careening violently under its rapid rushes; and, in response to the order
"Git to wind'ard," we sprang to the weather rail. A moment of suspense, a
quick motion of the lance, and the great white body of the whale rose from
the water and fell heavily back, beating it into foam in its convulsive
struggles.

"She dies hard," said Captain Sol, shaking the water from the creases of
his oil-skin as the boat rounded to at a safe distance from the dying
whale. "But," he continued, lighting a match by biting the sulphur and
puffing violently at a short, black pipe, "that ain't nothing to what they
do sometimes: is it, Sam?"

"I ain't denyin' of it," was the reply of that individual, who was now
sculling the boat about the whale in a great circle.

"I've seen," continued the skipper, "a white whale smash a bot so clean
that ye'd thought it had been through a mill; and it was a caution haow we
didn't go with it. That was a curious year," he added. "Something happened
to drive the whales up here so thick that the hull river was alive with
'em, and of course we was for reapin' the harvest. When we struck the
rip-rap--as they call the tide agin' the wind--it was jest alive with 'em,
puffin' and snortin' on all sides. I had three harpoons aboard, besides a
rifle, and in a minute I had two foul, with buoys after 'em, and as one
big feller came up alongside to blow I let him have it with the rifle.

"Naow," he went on, "whether they heard it or not I can't say, but I heard
a yell from Sam jest in time to look and see a whale rise I'll 'low twenty
foot clean out of the water. Then there was a kind of a rush, and Sam and
me went down, and when we riz it was gone. The critter had hopped clean
over that bot as slick as nothing. That kinder tuck the peartness aout of
us, so to speak; but later in the day I got aout the gun ag'in, havin'
broke the lance, and in killin' the critter she jumped on the bot,
and--wall, Sam and me we lit aout, and was picked up after a spell; but
that bot, there wasn't enough of her to make kindlin'-wood of.

"They ain't vicious like," continued the skipper, "but clumsy, and if yaou
git in the way ye're bound to git hurted. Round the bend at Bic Island one
came ashore one time and got left every tide, so she was aout of water an
hour or so every day. Heaps of city folks went to see her, and one chap
came along and let on haow she couldn't be alive aout of water, and poked
her like with a stick. Wall, it ain't for me to say haow many feet she
knocked him, but when she fetched him with her flukes it was a Tuesday,
and I guess he thought he'd reached the turnin'-p'int of Friday when he
hauled himself aout of the mud.

"No, they won't exactly live aout of water, but they'll stand it a like of
three weeks if yaou splash 'em every hour or so. They sent one to England
that way. They ain't fish. Whales' milk's good, if cream is.

"But the best bit of whalin'," continued the communicative Captain Sol,
"that I ever see in these 'ere parts was done by that identical old chap
in the starn there."

"When Sol ain't talkin', gentlemen," retorted the person thus alluded to,
"ye'll know he's sick,"

"Wall," said Captain Sol, laughing, "I'll spin the yarn, and yaou kin go
back on it if yaou kin. As I was sayin', we was aout one day I think a
couple o' miles below Barnaby Island. I was a-mummin' for'ard, kinder
sleep-in' on and by, and Sam at the helm, when we see a bot a-slidin' into
the ripple right ahead of us, and in a minute a couple of white heads was
dodgin' up a little to the wind'ard. Sam trimmed the sheet and hauled the
Howlin' Mary--that's what we called the bot---on the wind, and the other
bot did the same, both of us makin' for the same spot. I see it was nip
and tuck; and, knowin' that Sam was a master-hand, I says. ' Sam, yaou
take the iron.' So we shifted.

"The other bot had a trifle the weather-gage of us, but both of us, mind
ye, makin' for where we thought the critter was comin' up to blow, and in
a minute, sure enough, up it come. This 'ere other bot shot right across
aour bows; but, Lord bless ye, it would take a proper good Injun to beat
Sam, for he up, hauls back, and let fly the harpoon clean over the other
hot, takin' the critter right alongside the blow-hole so neat that the
line fell across the other bot.--Naow, deny it if yaou kin," said Captain
Sol, turning to his friend.

"Ye're a master-hand at talkin'," retorted Captain Sam. "I ain't denyin'
of it; but it was luck, good luck, that's all."

By this time the white whale had succumbed, and lay upon the surface
motionless and dead; and upon the boat being hauled alongside the huge
creature was taken in tow and soon stranded upon the beach, where the
valuable parts were secured,--the liver and blubber for the oil, and the
thick, white skin that was to be tanned and made into leather or used in
the manufacture of various articles.

The evening following, upon invitation, we visited the cabin of Captain
Sol, who was a widower and kept bachelor's hall, so to speak. We found him
seated on a keg, by the side of an enormous caldron that might have
contained the witches' compound, judging from the strange forms of steam
that arose from it, while the lurid flames beneath, fed by the oily
drippings, lent a still greater weirdness to the scene.

"Good-evenin', gentlemen," said the captain, rising quickly as we entered.
"I was settin' here in a sog like, and didn't hear ye. It's a master-night,
and we're goin' to have good weather to-morrow. If yaou want to try it
ag'in, ye're welcome.

"Sam? Sartin; he's goin'. Him and me's jest like the figger ten: if yaou
haul off the one we ain't good for nothin'. If yaou want to see a faithful
friend, jest clap yer eyes on Sam Whittlefield. And that ain't all,"
continued the skipper, looking around and speaking low. "Ye might not
think it, for he's master-modest, but Sam's got larn-in' that there ain't
many in aonr taown kin grapple with. Yaou oughter see his lib'ry. A full
set o' the records of Congress from 1847 up to 1861; and he'd have had 'em
all, only he jined the navy and couldn't keep 'em up. Then there's a
history by Mister Parley, and a hull secretaryfull of books of all kinds.
Oh, Sam's literary; there ain't no gittin' raound that.

"Yaou might hear him speak of their son John? Wall, he was a chip o' the
old block. He was as wild a yonker as they make 'em; but Sam never laid
the whip on him; he argued with him and eddicated him on a literary
principle. When John did anything reckless like, the old lady'd fetch aout
a sartin book, called 'The Terrible Suffering of Sary Perbeck,'--like
enough ye've heard on it,--and I tell ye that tuck the conceit aout of
him. She belonged to old Quaker stock of Paris, Maine, and she kept it up
till John was a man grown and she lost her eyesight. She made a good boy
of him; but the poor feller went down with the rest in the gale of 1875,
on the Grand Banks. John had hard luck. The first v'yage he made, the
schooner was struck by a sea on the Banks, capsized, and rolled completely
under, comin' up the other side, so't the men below dropped out of their
bunks on ter the ceilin', and then back ag'in as she righted.[A] The
hatches were battened down, and they found John lashed to the wheel, half
drowned. The next trip all hands foundered. They reckoned she went down at
the anchorage.

[Footnote A: The schooner Daniel A. Burnam had a similar experience in
1877. She rolled completely over and righted herself without the loss of a
man.]

"Have some beans, won't ye?" asked the skipper abruptly, as if he had been
deluded by some trick into a gloomy frame of mind and was determined to
shake it off then and there. "Them is the real New England beans," he
continued, taking a black bean-pot with a wooden spoon from the ashes.
"There's the bone and sinner of New England's sons right here. I'm
master-fond of 'em; never sails withaout a pot or so. Every time I see a
pot it makes me think of old Joe Muggridge, a deacon of aour taown. He
beat me once years ago in 'lection for hog-reeve; but I don't bear no ill
feelin'. He was deacon of the First Baptist, and captain of one of the
biggest coasters in aour parts, and that fond of beans that folks believed
he'd 'a' died if he couldn't have had 'em. Wall, it so happened one fall
that there came on a powerful gale on the Georges, and a power of hands
was lost. A good many bots got carried away from the schooners, and one
dory with two men from Boothbay was picked up by one of these
ocean-steamers bound in for New York, and that's the way the yarn got
told. They'd been withaout food and water for three days, and were abaout
givin' up; but the steamer-folks tuck 'em in and steamed for port.

"The next mornin' it was blowin' fresh and lively, and the lookout sighted
a schooner lyin' to a couple of miles to the lew'ard, reefed daown close,
and a flag flyin', union down,--signal of distress. Thinkin' they were
sinkin', the captain of the steamer put towards her, and rounded to half a
mile off and called for volunteers to git aout the bot. Half a dozen brave
fellers sprang to the davits, and among 'em aour Boothbay boys. They'd
been in a fix, ye see, and was eager to help the rest of sufferin'
humanity. She was rollin' so that it tuck 'em nigh an hour to git the bot
over, and then two men fell overboard; but finally they got off toward the
schooner, all hands givin' 'em three cheers.

"It was a hard pull, and a nasty sea, but they kept at it, and in half an
hour was within hailin'-distance. Then the third officer of the steamer
stood up and sung aout, 'Schooner ahoy!' 'Ay, ay!' says a man in the
schooner's fore-riggin', and the men see naow that she was ridin' like a
duck and as dry as a sojer. 'Are ye in distress?' sung aout the officer.
'Yas,' came from the man in the riggin'. 'Flounderin'?' shouted the
officer ag'in. 'No,' sung out old man Muggridge, for it was him: 'next
thing to it. We're aout o' beans. Kin ye spare a pot?'

"Wall," continued Captain Sol, reddening with the roar of laughter that
accompanied the recollection, "it ain't for me, bein' a perfesser of
religion, to let on what the men in the bot said, but it had a
master-effect on the deacon, for afore them rescuers got back to the
steamer he'd shook aout his reefs and was haulin' to the east'ard.

"Wall," said the old skipper, banking the fire with a shovelful of sand,
as his visitors rose to go, "to-morrow, then, at early flood, sharp."

The early flood was that dismal time when the phantom mists of night still
cling to the earth, and low-lying clouds of fog cover the river, only to
be dispersed by the coming day. Cold and cheerless as it was, it found us
again launching the whale-boat, and, when the sail was trimmed aft and
pipes lighted, we rushed into the fog and headed down the river to meet
the rising sun.

The mist was so dense that only the glimmer of Captain Sol's pipe could be
seen for'ard, appearing like an intermittent eye gleaming through the fog
that settled upon our oil-skins in crystal drops and ran in tiny rivulets
down the creases into the boat. For a mile we scudded along before the
west wind through the gloom, and then a wondrous change commenced. Soft
gleams of light shot from the horizon upward, the dark-blue heavens
assumed a lighter tint, the pencilled rays growing broader and fusing
together, producing a strange and rapidly-spreading nebulous light. The
cloud of low-lying mist now became a brassy hue, seemingly heated to
ignition, and then from its very substance appeared to rise a fiery,
glowing mass that flooded the river with a golden radiance.

"It's a master-sight," quoth Captain Sol between the puffs, as the change
went on and the fog began to break before the rising sun. "I ain't no
likin' for fogs. Ye see----" But here the skipper stopped, as a peculiar
sound and then another, the puffing of the white whale, was heard.

The boat was hauled on the wind, the mast unshipped, and, harpoon in hand,
Captain Sol stood braced for the affray. The ripple seemed alive with the
ghostly creatures, their white forms darting here and there, while the
puffing came fast and furious.

"Stand by to git aft!" whispered the harpooner, and that moment, instead
of a white head, the entire body of a Beluga rose in front of the boat,
clearing the water in a graceful leap.

Quick as thought the skipper hurled his weapon. It struck with a sounding
thud, a wing shot, and the great creature fell heavily, impaled in mid-air,
to rush away, bearing boat and white-whalers far down the river toward
the sea.

C.F. HOLDER.

       *       *       *       *       *




OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A Virginia Lady of the Old School.


Among the many beautiful and fascinating women who adorned Richmond
society at the beginning of the present century there were few more
remarkable and interesting than Mrs. Mayo, the wife of Colonel John Mayo,
founder of the bridge at Richmond that bears his name. She was the
daughter of John De Hart, of New Jersey, an eminent lawyer and a member of
the first Continental Congress. Bellville, the home of Colonel and Mrs.
Mayo, in the suburbs of Richmond, was the seat of elegant and boundless
hospitality. No person of distinction ever came to Richmond without
calling at Bellville, the _entrée_ to which was an unquestioned passport
to the best society of the city.

Mrs. Mayo's eldest daughter, Maria, was the most celebrated Virginia belle
of her day. She never gave a decided answer to any of her numerous suitors,
and the story goes that one evening three gentlemen met at her house, and
after a very pleasant visit they returned to Richmond together. One of
them asked the others why they went there, as he was engaged to Miss Mayo
and expected shortly to marry her. The other gentlemen also said they had
hopes of winning the fair lady. The first gentleman determined to have the
matter settled, and accordingly went to her house the following day and
sought an interview with Mrs. Mayo. He told her he had her daughter's
consent, and asked hers. Mrs. Mayo replied she was sorry she could not
give her consent, and the gentleman then understood that the mother and
daughter were in perfect accord in the matter of the young lady's
love-affairs. In this way Miss Mayo kept on hand a regiment of admirers,
who formed a sort of reserve-corps. When John Howard Payne, the author of
"Home, Sweet Home," visited Richmond, he was a frequent guest at the Mayo
mansion. He wrote a poem, in which he described himself as falling asleep
in a grove and all the months of the year appearing to him. The month of
June was the first, and he finally winds up with May, which he described
in very glowing language, ending with the line,--

      Sweet May, oh, I could love thee ever.

Maria Mayo is said to have refused more than a hundred suitors before she
accepted General Winfield Scott, who courted her when he was a member of
the Richmond bar as Mr. Scott. After entering the army he continued his
addresses, and was refused successively as Captain Scott and Colonel Scott,
and it was only as General Scott, the victorious hero of Lundy's Lane,
that he at last won the hand of the much-admired belle.

Mr. William Henry Haxall, a very agreeable gentleman of Richmond, relates
that on one occasion he visited Mrs. Scott soon after one of her trips to
Europe. He went in the evening at nine o'clock, and after some time, when
he thought he had paid a call sufficiently long, he slyly looked at his
watch, and, to his amazement, found it was one o'clock. On his apologizing
for the length of his visit, Mrs. Scott assured him she never retired
before one or two o'clock, but that she had no idea it was so late, Mr.
Haxall being one of the most agreeable gentlemen she had ever met, when in
fact he had not spoken a dozen words, but was a charmed listener to her
interesting description of her travels abroad.

In 1828, Mrs. Mayo, in the sixty-eighth year of her age, undertook a
voyage to Europe in a sailing-vessel. After her arrival, she passed most
of her time in Paris, where she was the recipient of very flattering
attentions and the intimate friend and guest of some of the best families
of the nobility, especially those of General La Fayette and his son George
Washington, of the Count de Ségur, and of M. de Neuville, minister of
marine, of whom Mrs. Mayo wrote, January 10, 1829, "He lives in one of the
palaces in grand style, and we see there all the people of the court as
often as it suits us." She renewed also her friendship with many French
families whom she had known in Richmond as refugees during the French
Revolution, and their attentions and evident pleasure at the reunion seem
to have been peculiarly gratifying to her. She returned to Richmond in
1829, and lived at Bellville until that elegant mansion was destroyed by
fire in 1842. After her return, she confined her entertainments almost
exclusively to handsome dinner-parties, at which she presided with
exceeding grace and elegance, and where it was said that, though the wines
were fine, the flavor and brilliancy of the conversation were far
superior. She never retired without a candle and writing-materials at her
bedside, and if during the night any new idea or bright thought arose, she
would immediately strike a light and jot it down. She retained her mental
vigor and personal attractions until her death in 1843, in the
eighty-second year of her age.

The following instances will serve to illustrate Mrs. Mayo's great nerve
and self-possession. She was accustomed to drive daily to the bridge to
collect the toll of the preceding day, consisting generally of silver of
various denominations, which she put in a bag and deposited in the bank.
Her driver Moses was a favorite negro, who had a weakness for drink: he
had several times tried her fortitude and temper severely by upsetting her
into a gully by the roadside leading to Bellville, fortunately with no
serious consequences to her, unfortunately with none to himself. On one
occasion, Mrs. Mayo, being too late for the bank, and intending to pass
the night at the residence of her daughter Mrs. Cabell, took the bag of
silver and placed it in a closet in her room, which was at the back of the
house and opening on a porch. During the night she was awakened by a noise,
and perceived the figure of a man in her room. Pretending sleep, she
quietly watched his movements until she saw him enter the closet, when she
arose quickly, and, rushing rapidly across the room, shut and locked the
closet door in an instant, and called loudly for her son-in-law Dr. Cabell,
who was in the adjoining room. On his hurried entrance, she informed him
that she had a man in the closet, and that he must go for a policeman,
--which was done, and the door opened, when, to their astonishment, there
stood the trusted Moses. Mrs. Mayo, horrified, exclaimed, "Oh, Moses, how
could you try to rob me!" Moses, hanging his head, dropped on his knees,
and, in beseeching tones, replied, "Misses, it warn't Moses: it was the
debbil;" and the old lady forgave him.

At a time when the whole State was in consternation from an apprehended
insurrection of the slaves, when families far and near were flocking to
the cities for protection, and patrols were scouring the country day and
night, Mrs. Mayo was entirely alone at Bellville, with no white person in
the neighborhood. Her friends in vain besought her to go to Richmond. At
length matters became so threatening that some gentlemen, discussing the
subject one night, concluded that it was too unsafe for Mrs. Mayo, and
determined to ride out and insist upon her returning with them to the
city. They reached Bellville about midnight, and, as they rode up, a
window was raised, showing that the brave proprietress was on the _qui
vive_. She demanded, in a quiet, fearless voice, "Who is there?" They
explained the object of their visit, but pleaded and remonstrated
ineffectually. She refused to accompany them, saying she had no fear, and
could protect herself; which she did boldly and safely until the danger
and alarm had passed away.

E.L.D.




Mystifications of Authoresses.


"Don't you think," wrote the author of "Evelina" to her sister, "there
must be some wager depending among the little curled imps who hover over
us mortals, of how much flummery goes to turn the head of an authoress?"
For at that time little Fanny Burney, twenty-six years of age, was
enjoying such an ovation as had never before come within the experience of
woman. She had written a book which all London was reading, quoting, and
discussing admiringly without the least idea of the author's identity; and
Fanny could not meet an acquaintance, could not receive a letter, could
not attend a party of friends, without being asked, "Have you read
'Evelina'? Is it not charming?" Anonymity was in this case the cleverest
_ruse_ for an absolute enjoyment of the results of her work. One after
another her family and outside friends, from the great Dr. Johnson down,
were admitted to a share of the delightful secret. All who knew that
"Little Burney" was at the bottom of this fascinating mystery were as
eager as she herself for nattering comments and conjectures, and there
were nudgings of elbows, "nods and becks and wreathed smiles," when
"Evelina" was mentioned. It would have been no wonder if the little girl's
head had been turned as she hugged her surprise and happiness to her
swelling little heart. When the murder was out, and she was _fêted_ and
honored, called to court and compelled to courtesy thankfully at the
ponderous compliments of great personages, she must have felt that the
bloom of the peach was rubbed off and the bubble of the champagne departed.

In most cases strangers may not intermeddle with the joy of authorship.
Spoken praise carries off the rose and puts a thorn in its place. One of
our famous novelists, whom we will call Brown, happened to catch sight in
a strange city of the sign, "Autographs of distinguished authors for
sale," He thought to himself he would test his own market value, and
accordingly entered the shop.

"Have you the autograph of Mr. Brown?" he inquired.

"Oh, yes."

"What is the price?" he asked.

"One for two cents, or two for three cents," was the reply.

He was in the habit of declaring afterward that he could have borne the
one for two cents, but that the two for three cents stung him bitterly.
Such is fame; and no wonder that young authoresses often begrudge a
complete surrender of their identity to the Juggernaut car of public
curiosity and criticism, and begin either anonymously or with a
pseudonyme. A masculine _nom de plume_ has of late been a favorite device
with the fair sex, partly for the reason that it is supposed to confer an
ampler ease, and partly from an idea that male writers command a readier
hearing and higher prices than female. We see a great many Henris, Georges,
and the like on the title-pages of books which are a flimsy veil to
conceal the pretty feminine figure behind.

After Miss Burney had set the fashion, women pressed boldly forward into
literary ranks, although the author of "Waverley" absorbed in a great
degree the curiosity of the reading public. Miss Austen, whose work is
destined, in the opinion of good judges, to survive with the language,
made her first venture, like the author of "Evelina," anonymously; but it
created no such furore. This was "Sense and Sensibility," published in
1811; but she had already written "Northanger Abbey" and "Pride and
Prejudice," although they were not published until years afterward. No one
supposed her to be more than an every-day bright and observant young lady.
Like other English girls of her class, it was her habit to sit in the
drawing-room with the ladies of the family after eleven o'clock each day,
ready to receive visitors. Instead of having needle-work in her hand, Jane
had a pen, which was often dropped just in the midst of one of her clear,
incisive pictures of the Woodhouses, Knightleys, and Bennets, as neighbors
who might have served for the originals of those characters were
announced. Feminine tact instantly obliterated every sign of literary
occupation: the quill was thrown aside, and her sister's canvases and
embroidery were strewn over the writing-table to cover every scrap of
paper.

The famous pseudonyme of George Sand, which seems so characteristic of the
writer, was a matter of accident. When Madame Dudevant, tired of her
domestic _rôle_, went to Paris to take up a literary career, her
mother-in-law, Baroness Dudevant, said to her, with incredulous horror,--

"Is it true that it is your intention _to print books_?"

"Yes, madame."

"Well, I call that an odd notion."

"Yes, madame."

"That is all very good and very fine; but I hope you are not going to put
the name that I bear on the _covers of printed books_."

"Oh, certainly not, madame: there is no danger."

When the publisher wanted a signature for "Indiana" which should show that
it was by one of the authors of "Rose et Blanche," which she had written
in collaboration with Sandeau under the name of Jules Sand, the author
retained the Sand and prefixed George to it as a simple and rustic title.

The Brontés when about to publish their poems took the names "Currer,
Ellis, and Acton Bell," each keeping her initials. This choice, wrote
Charlotte, was "dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming
names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves
women, because, without at the time suspecting that our mode of writing
and thinking was not what is called 'feminine,' we had a vague impression
that authoresses were likely to be looked on with prejudice." The London
"Athenaeum," which was one of the few papers that noticed the little book,
spoke of the work of the three "brothers." Even after "Jane Eyre,"
"Wuthering Heights," and "Agnes Grey" were printed, the secret of the
triple identity was jealously kept, until a vexatious tangle of their
names, and a claim from certain publishers that the three authors of the
three books were one person and that all the novels were by the author of
"Jane Eyre," roused Charlotte and Anne Bronte to the point of setting off
for London to show Smith and Elder that they were honest and fair. Up to
this time the publishers had not known whether they were women or men. "On
reaching Mr. Smith's," writes Mrs. Gaskell, "Charlotte put his own letter
into his hands,--the same letter which had excited so much disturbance at
Haworth Parsonage only twenty-four hours before. 'Where did you get this?'
said he, as if he could not believe that the two young ladies dressed in
black, of slight figures, looking pleased yet agitated, could be the
embodied Currer and Acton Bell for whom curiosity had been hunting so
eagerly in vain." The secret, however, was not disclosed, except to the
publishers. Until "Shirley" was published, opinion was much divided as to
the probable sex of Currer Bell, but "Shirley" was declared to be written
by a woman; and, this suggestion once started, questions of identity soon
settled themselves. Charlotte went to London again, and this time was
introduced to all the literary people in the town. It was not until her
third visit, however, that she attended a lecture of Thackeray's, and at
the close found that the audience, instead of withdrawing, had formed
themselves into two lines and drawn back to see the famous authoress as
she passed out. "During this passage through the 'cream of society,' Miss
Bronté's hand trembled to such a degree that her companion feared lest she
should turn faint and be unable to proceed." Ellis and Acton Bell were in
their early graves, and all the splendor of her fame could hardly lighten
by a breath the weight of that lonely sorrow of Charlotte.

The story of George Eliot's pseudonyme has been too recently told to
require allusion, except to point out its practical value to herself,
shielding as it did her susceptibilities,--in fact, guarding like a
chrysalis the first strivings, the flutter into full life, of that
immortal winged thing it concealed.

Several of our own female writers have chosen a masculine _nom de plume_,
and guarded it consistently, like Saxe Holm, etc. Miss Murfree is, we
believe, the first whose disguise editors as well as the general public
failed to pierce. Now that the critical faculty begins to play more surely
upon the works of Charles Egbert Craddock, it may be said that a woman's
love of romance and picturesqueness shades off into haze and unreality
some of the pictures of life which a man's experience and surer knowledge
would have made vivid by fewer and more vigorous strokes. However, as long
as she chose, Miss Murfree held her secret beyond the reach of discovery,
because nobody questioned it; her disclosure was piquant, and the state of
surprise into which she threw her admirers was so utter that the full
story of it ought to be told, although we are not empowered to tell it
here.

L.W.




The Abuse of Adjectives.


It is a great pity that the fairy willow whistle which blew everything
into its proper place should have burst with its first note, for there
would be such ample opportunity nowadays for the display of its peculiar
functions. Why, for instance, should modern novel-writers turn the patient
adjective into an overworked little drudge, and compel it to do thrice the
labor that it can effectually perform? Fifty years ago it led a life of
respected ease, and was only called on when it could be of some real use
to the author; now it knows no respite from its ever-increasing tasks, and
too often bears upon its weak shoulders the real burden of the book.
Formerly we were told that Tilburina had golden hair and blue eyes, or
raven hair and black eyes, as the case might be; and, that matter being
settled, we heard little more upon the subject. Now the hair and eyes
appear anew on every page, and are apparently considered the most
important element in the story.

Who has not been struck with the slighting manner in which Sir Walter
describes his heroines' charms? Edith Bellenden, we are asked to believe,
was fair without insipidity; Julia Mannering, who is to Waverley what
Rosalind is to Shakespeare, is hardly credited with being beautiful at all;
 while when it comes to his heroes Sir Walter is even more strikingly
ineloquent. "A slender young man," or "a young man of genteel appearance,"
is sometimes all that is vouchsafed to us, the rest being happily left to
our imagination. Among modern writers, Trollope alone manifests this
curious indifference to the hair, eyes, noses, and mouths of his _dramatis
personae_. What was the color of Grace Crawley's hair, or of Lily Dale's
eyes? What did Archdeacon Grantby look like, or who shall venture to
describe the immortal Mrs. Proudie? George Eliot, on the contrary,
inclines, especially in her later books, to a lavish use of adjectives;
and the aspiring authoress of to-day may cite Gwendolen's "long brown
glance" as being quite as strained as any effort of her own. But then we
can no more approach George Eliot by copying a few of her mannerisms than
we can become Napoleons by wearing an old coat, or William the Thirds by
cultivating an inordinate taste for green peas.

To all, however, who wish to behold this tendency in its fullest and
freest development, we would recommend the perusal of a novel by Rhoda
Broughton, called "Second Thoughts,"--a bright, vivacious, almost witty
little book, marred only by its ineradicable defects of style. The heroine,
Gillian Latimer, is described over and over again, with as much emphasis
on every feature as if she were one of Madame Tussaud's pet creations and
had nothing but her outward appearance to suggest the real woman she
aspires to be. On her eyes alone more adjectives are brought to bear than
would have sufficed Scott for all the orbs in Waverley. They are "gray
eyes," "great gray eyes," "angry gray eyes," "steel-gray eyes," and
"displeased gray eyes;" also "grave eyes," "sparkling eyes," "clear eyes,"
"blazing eyes," "proud eyes," "great eyes," "aching eyes," "large bright
eyes," "drooped eyes," "eager young eyes," "angry eyes," "steel-colored
eyes." "sad, leave-taking eyes," "flashing eyes," and "proud, dewy eyes."
Upon one occasion she "lifts the fair stars of her gray eyes" into her
lover's face; on another, she scorches him badly with "gray eyes like
furious fires." The hero himself, a most quiet, commonplace young doctor,
is not above a little eye-work on his own account. He has alternately
"serious eyes," "cross eyes," "quiet, shrewd eyes," "coldly just, bright
eyes," "steady eyes," "calm eyes," "fiery eyes," "town-tired eyes,"--which
is quite a novelty in the list,--and "eyes of burning choler," to say
nothing of eyes that "burn like fire," while he "grows pale as ashes,"
which must have given him the effect of a conflagration, especially as he
stands once "all beflamed with sunset."

Next to the supreme question of eyes we hear most about Gillian's "blonde
head," and her "flaxen head," her "flax head," her "bowed flax head," her
"tossed head," her "wilful head," her "fair head," and her "well-poised
head," while to match these maidenly attributes she has a "fair Sphinx
face," a "tragic pale face," a "serious face," a "humiliated white face,"
a "flaming face," a "hotly-flushed face," a "sweetly apologetic face," and
a "flower-textured face." Moreover, being a very remarkable girl, she is
endowed with a "severe young figure," and a "gracious figure," whatever
that may mean, while her "lily-fair" and "delicate-cold" hands have
"satiny backs," and are "small and capable" as well. She is never merely
pretty like other women, but she has "ripe June beauty." and a "robust yet
delicate beauty." If she loses her temper, which happens rather often in
the course of the story, she manifests the same by the "red scorn of her
look," or by her "beautiful vexed eyes," which resemble a "sudden angry
gray arrow,"--imagine an angry gray arrow,--or by "flaming out into
crimson anger," or "with wreathed neck and flaming cheek," or "with
enkindled eye and vermeil cheek," both of which expressions we would
recommend to lovers of simplicity.

If she is sad, however, she "lifts the drowned stars of her impatient,
suffering eyes," or lowers them with a "moist look;" or she strays in
"confused red misery," or in a "passionate scarlet hurry," which is as
extraordinary in its way as an angry gray arrow. When her father dies, she
stands "long and craped," with a "black elbow" resting on the
chimney-place; while her various methods of blushing take up half the
volume. Never, indeed, was there a heroine who blushed so much about so
little. Sometimes it is merely a matter of "flaming cheeks," or of the
"young roses of her cheeks," or of the "mortified carmine of her cheeks,"
or of her "hot bloom," or of her "beautiful hot red roses." Sometimes it
is the "deep color of mingled shame and joy;" while on more especial
occasions we are assured that her face is "made all of poppies," that it
"changes from poppy-color to milk, and back from milk to poppy-color,"
that it "keeps shifting from frightened white to mortified red, and back
again," and, better than all, that "cheek and chin and pearl-fair throat
grow all one rose-red flame," with which triumph of compound adjectives we
will close our quotations, only remarking that Gillian's blushing chin
rivals the achievement of Ursula in "John Halifax," who, we are gravely
told, colored over her throat, neck, and arms.

All honor to the lady Olivia, who has taught us how to make a rational
inventory of a woman's charms! "Item, two lips indifferent red; item, two
gray eyes with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth." To
these let us add, item, one blush indifferent rosy, and then have done
with the subject forever.

A.R.

       *       *       *       *       *




LITERATURE OF THE DAY.


"Nathaniel Parker Willis." By Henry A.Beers.
"Edgar Allan Poe." By George E. Woodbury.
(American Men of Letters Series.)
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.


The American Men of Letters Series is giving us some excellent biographies,
well written, the facts well assimilated and grouped, and the whole
treatment so accurate and graphic as to be full not only of instruction
but of entertainment. Formerly American biography was so deficient in just
those qualities which endear English biographical literature to us, that
we were inclined to believe that the fault was inherent in Americans and
American life, that our days and works lacked picturesqueness and color
and left no salient points for the chronicler to seize. We now see that
the meagre harvests of former biographers were due to their hasty and
superficial generalizations. For at least three of the volumes in this
series--the life of James Fenimore Cooper and the two now before us--may
be favorably compared with the best work in the English Men of Letters
Series, which is indeed high praise. Unusual and striking as were the
incidents in the life of Cooper, they had completely dropped out of sight
of the present generation. The biographers of Willis and Poe had no such
advantage. Willis is still remembered, not only as a _litt?teur_ and
journalist, but as a man about town, while legend has never ceased to be
busy with the memory of Poe, so that the traditions of his strange career
are curiously linked to and incorporated with his best-known works.

The present estimate of Willis as a literary man is so slight that it
seems almost like impaling a butterfly to apply critical tests to his
writings. Professor Beers has nevertheless made it a profitable and
interesting study to follow him through his career, which was, upon the
whole, singularly fortunate. Few authors have possessed so happy a knack
of making the present moment both enjoyable and profitable. His personal
endowments were all in his favor, and no sooner was he launched in Europe
than he gained a great social success. England, in particular, opened some
of its pleasantest circles to him. Not only did Lady Blessington take him
up, but he became a favorite with many of the most lofty and exclusive
members of the aristocracy. Never was opportunity more auspicious, for
Willis was a born worshipper of refinements and luxuries. He had starved
in America for beauty and color, and dear to him were all these adjuncts
of a highly-civilized life. It was his mission to reproduce for Americans
lively impressions in letters to newspapers at home, and in stories and
sketches, in which he drew freely not only upon his own experiences, but
upon all the hints and suggestions he could pick up. His industry and
ingenious expedients were well rewarded: in fact, one is a little
surprised to find that in 1842 he was writing four articles monthly for
four magazines, and receiving one hundred dollars for each, which makes a
sum total of almost five thousand a year. He was, besides, handsomely paid
for his books both in England and at home, and had generally on hand some
writing for illustrated volumes of travel, so that for many years he may
easily be said to have made seven or eight thousand a year.

No greater contrast to Willis--the man of the world, who knew how to turn
every habit, talent, and instinct to account--could be found than poor Poe,
all whose opportunities were wasted, spoiled, or flung away. It is the
most difficult thing in the world to arrive at anything like a complete
idea of the identity of so fantastic a man as the author of the "Raven."
The faults, inconsistencies, and contradictions of his character perplex
and dismay one the more closely one looks into his letters and the minor
incidents of his career. Mr. Woodbury has, however, acquitted himself well
in this difficult task, and has in many cases separated truth from
long-accepted fiction and given us a clear picture of what has hitherto
been blurred and distorted by unfaithful friends and foes. The story is a
most hopeless and pitiful one, its gloom brightened and its bitterness
sweetened by but few of the consolations which belong to average human
lives. The causes of this are apparent enough: they were constituents of
Poe's brain and heart; but for him to have been otherwise organized would
have been for his unique work to have had no existence.




Recent Fiction.


"Troubled Waters: A Problem of To-Day." By Beverley Ellison Warner.
Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company.

"A Marsh Island," By Sarah Orne Jewett. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

"The Duchess Emilia." By Barrett Wendell. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

"Across the Chasm." "Within the Capes." New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

"One of the Duanes." By Alice King Hamilton. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott
Company.

"Tales from Many Sources." Vols. I. and II. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.

There is a generous use of good material in Mr. Warner's novel, the scene
of which is laid in a New England manufacturing town, with all the sharp
and diversified social contrasts, the eager strifes and competitions, that
belong to such a community, clearly portrayed. The author calls his story
"A Problem of To-Day," and it is his study to press home to the
consciousness of the reader the series of dull and wearing miseries, the
bitter discouragements and pathetic misfortunes, which pursue the
working-man whose most faithful labor insures him no secure hold upon
future comfort and prosperity. It is both the strength and the weakness of
the book that its most prominent figure, Richard Wilton, is a wealthy
mill-owner who has risen to his position in a way which makes him an
unfair representative of the class of capitalists. A man without intellect
or humanity, without faith, without law, a robber of the dead, a despoiler
of the widow and orphan, a successful impostor, a remorseless brute who
takes pleasure in outraging and crushing his subordinates, would naturally
be a bad master and make his work-people miserable by heaped-up tyrannies.
His faults are not the inevitable outgrowth of a position of power and the
conflict between capital and labor, but are the result of his own
individual depravity. But this man's personality is a powerful one, and
his personality is the motive of most of the dramatic events which crowd
the pages. The history of the "strike" which follows the reduction of
wages at Trade Lawn Mills is faithfully and vigorously given. Mr. Warner
evidently knows the temper of workingmen, their patience and impatience,
their trials, temptations, and weaknesses. He gauges with pitiful fidelity
the faults of character and purpose which make almost every "strike"
contain within itself the germs of collapse and failure. The plot is
cleverly conceived and successfully carried out. That the bubble which has
for a time floated Richard Wilton's frauds and crimes bursts at last, and
that the villain is brought to well-merited disgrace, is a matter of
course. Trade Lawn Mills pass into the hands of their rightful owners, and
certain co-operative ideas which are an essential ingredient of the story
and its applied moral are carried out. The author attaches high importance
to co-operative schemes, and finds in them the clear solution of the
vexing questions concerning the future of the workingman. As an offset to
the somewhat dark and troubled pictures of life which the story presents,
there are sunny and pleasant passages in which a High-Church clergyman and
a young lady by the name of Sydney Worthington figure. The whole book is,
in fact, inspired by a spirit of hopefulness and a sure belief that divine
order overrules the efforts, successes, and failures of the humblest human
being and that a way of deliverance is sure to come.

If "A Marsh Island" shows no distinct advance upon Miss Jewett's earlier
work, it is yet a pretty, artistic product which delicately emphasizes the
author's best points and gives us her distinct charm without any waste of
effects. Her feeling for rural life and her clear comprehension of rural
people were never better displayed than in this little story. A generous
play of late-summer and autumn radiance lights up its every nook and
corner; it is mellow with warm color and odorous of late fruits and
flowers. We cannot help finding the artist visitor, that product of the
bloom of Boston civilization, a little hackneyed and time-worn. He has
surely done his part in literature, and may retire to the heaven of the
dilettante. But all the inhabitants of Marsh Island are human and
attractive, and the untiring industries of the well-ordered household
soothe one like the rhythm of a song. The bizarre, incongruous, but, upon
the whole, satisfactory specimen of New England "help" which Miss Jewett
generally introduces finds an excellent example here in the person of
Temperance Kipp. Squire Owen is a genial man, so overflowing with generous
nature that he can afford to fill out the more meagre humanities of his
wife, who has susceptibilities, tempers, and moods. "They used to tell a
story," he one day remarks to Mrs. Owen, with great satisfaction, when she
has a distinct grievance about clothes,--"I do' know but you've heard it,
--about old Sergeant Copp an' his wife, that was always quarrellin'.
Somebody heard her goin' on one day. Says she, 'I do wish somebody'd give
me a lift as fur as Westmarket. I do feel's if I ought to buy me a cap. I
ain't got a decent cap to my back: if I was to die to-morrow, I ain't got
no cap that's fit to lay me out in.' 'Blast ye,' says he, 'why didn't ye
die when ye had a cap?'" The more impassioned side of life does not suit
Miss Jewett so well as the humorous and pastoral; but each detail about
her heroine is attractive, and nothing in recent fiction, is more true,
touching, and womanly than Doris's journey to Westmarket in the autumnal
dawn to keep her lover at home from the fishing-banks.

"The Duchess Emilia" is one of those stories which ought to be withdrawn
from the province of criticism by the fact of their being the delight of
the reader, thrilling him with their weirdness and firing his imagination
by their splendid audacity. If the attention is so feebly grasped as to
permit one to reason about an impossible situation, it becomes at once
extravagant and absurd. One would require to be considerably carried away
by illusion to be moved by Mr. Wendell's story. The hero is a
New-Englander, born of mad parents (they met while both were patients in
an insane asylum); and this inherited curse would seem to be enough for
any hero to totter under. It becomes unimportant, however, when we
discover that he has furthermore been taken possession of at birth by the
spirit of a wicked and fascinating Italian duchess, who wishes to expiate
her crimes before leaving this mundane sphere. One might readily expect
some startling effects from the development of a plot thus removed from
the haven of probabilities and set afloat in a sea of the wildest romance.
The Duchess Emilia's repentance, however, seems to have ended the interest
of her career, and her good deeds are appallingly dull; in fact, her whole
personality thins away into insignificance.

"Across the Chasm" opens with fair promise, and our introduction to
Virginia life and a talkative old negro "somewhar up in de nineties" is
one which we should be glad to follow up by further acquaintance. This
serves, however, merely as preamble, and in the next chapter we are
transported to a city called Washington, although for characteristic
flavor it might as well be any other place, and we enter upon the events
attending a young lady's entrance into society. This might all be very
pretty and pleasant, except for the deadly seriousness of the author. It
is entirely frivolous and unimportant, but frivolity may be made charming
and full of suggestion. Points of etiquette and behavior engage the minds,
hearts, and passions of the personages of the story. It is a sort of
animated illustration of the little book called "Don't." For example,
"_Don't_ leave your overcoat and rubbers in the hall when you go to make a
call on a lady for the first time," receives practical exemplification
when Major King, a high-toned Southerner, with unbuttoned frock-coat and
baggy trousers, pays a visit to the heroine. He not only takes off his
overcoat and rubbers, but tilts his chair, stays till midnight, and in
every way calls down the wrath of that accomplished prig Mr. Louis Gaston,
who is a high-toned Northerner. This yawning gulf between the generous
faults of the South and the fastidious Phariseeism of the North is the
problem of the book. The story is slight, wholly conventional, and rather
commonplace, but it is gracefully told, and the conversations are not
without interest.

Mr. Howard Pyle's "Within the Capes" belongs to a widely different
category from the pretty feminine Southern sketch, and is quite equal to
the most insatiable requirements, containing half a dozen successful kinds
of fiction in itself. As a love-story, it is charming; as a sea- and
shipwreck- and treasure-finding-story, it offers a fair challenge not only
to Russell, but to Stevenson himself; while as a detective-story it is as
good as most. The adventures are related by the hero, one Captain Tom
Granger, who toward the end of his long life feels a desire to have his
strange history live in his own version, and not in the fables of the
gossips. A characteristic quaintness of expression gives validity to the
narrative, with plenty of homely enforcement of Tom Granger's wit and
wisdom.

"One of the Duanes" offers a vivid picture of the life which goes on among
the officers and officers' wives and daughters who make up a little world
within a world at our army and naval stations. Mrs. Hamilton has depicted
the interests and excitements, the gossip and the scandals, in a way which
impresses the reader as being faithful and without exaggeration. The story
is interesting, and the book is thoroughly readable and enjoyable.

Two or three little volumes containing the best short stories that have
been published ought to be a desirable addition to any library-table, to
be picked up by a chance caller or read aloud on a rainy evening. And
"Tales from all Sources" fairly well answer one's requirements of what
such collections should contain, being grave and gay, bizarre and
frivolous, to suit the various tastes. We should be glad to see Bulwer's
"The Haunted and the Haunters" (called in some editions "The House and the
Brain") reproduced in such a collection. The fault of this series, if it
be a fault, is that most of the stories are well within the recollection
of any one who has read the English magazines for the past few years,
--"The Black Poodle," for example, and "The Pavilion on the Links," being
matters of yesterday. However, both are sufficiently good to command a
second reading.

END