Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885
Date: 2004-12-30T00:00:00+00:00
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Title: Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885

Author: Various

Release date: December 30, 2004 [eBook #14524]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE, OLD SERIES, VOL. 36—NEW SERIES, VOL. 10, JULY 1885 ***

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

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Table of Contents

- POETRY:

- LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

- ON THIS SIDE.

- A TEMPLE PILGRIMAGE

- "MEES."

- THE NEXT VACATION.

- AURORA.

- CHAPTER XXXIV.

- CHAPTER XXXV.

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

- THE PIONEERS OF THE SOUTHWEST.

- DIEU DISPOSE.

- JOSEPH J. MICKLEY.

- ROSE ROMANCE.

- THE WHITE WHATERS.

- OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

- LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE