The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by J. B. Lippencott & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.

THE ROUMI IN KABYLIA.

THIRD PAPER.

Emerging from these gloomy caflons, and passing the Beni-Mansour, the village of Thasaerth (where razors and guns are made), Arzou (full of blacksmiths), and some other towns, we enter the Beni-Aidel, where numerous white villages, wreathed with ash trees, lie crouched like nests of eggs on the summits of the primary mountains, with the [Pg 490]magnificent peaks of Atlas cut in sapphire upon the sky above them. At the back part of an amphitheatre of rocky summits, Hamet, the guide, points out a little city perched on a precipice, which is certainly the most remarkable site, outside of opera-scenery, that we have ever seen. It is Kalaa, a town of three thousand inhabitants, divided into four quarters, which contrive, in that confined situation, to be perpetually disputing with each other, although a battle would disperse the whole of [Pg 491]the tax-payers over the edges. Although apparently inaccessible but by balloon, Kalaa may be approached in passing by Bogni. It is hard to give an idea of the difficulties in climbing up from Bogni to the city, where the hardiest traveler feels vertigo in picking his way over a path often but a yard wide, with perpendiculars on either hand. Finally, after many [Pg 492]strange feelings in your head and along your spinal marrow, you thank Heaven that you are safe in Kalaa.

The inhabitants of Kalaa pass for rich, the women promenade without veils and covered with jewels, and the city is clean, which is rare in Kabylia. There are four amins (or sheikhs) in Kalaa, to one of whom we bear a letter of introduction. The anaya never fails, and we are received with cordiality, mixed with stateliness, by an imposing old man [Pg 493]in a white bornouse. "Enta amin?" asks the Roumi. He answers by a sign of the head, and reads our missive with care. Immediately we are made at home, but conversation languishes. He knows nothing but the pure Kabyle tongue, and cannot speak the mixed language of the coasts, called Sabir, which is the pigeon-French of Algiers and Philippeville.

"Makach"—"No," we reply. "Enta sabir el Ingles?"—"Canst thou speak English?"

"Makach"—"Nay," answers the beautiful old sage, after which conversation naturally languishes.

But the next morning, after the richest and most assiduous entertainment, we see the little daughter of the amin playing in the court, attended by a negress. The child-language is much the same in all nations, and in five minutes, in this land of the Barbarians, on this terrible rock, we are pleasing the infant with wiles learnt to please little English-speaking rogues across the Atlantic.

The amin's daughter, a child of six years, forms with her slave a perfect contrast. She is rosy and white, her mouth is laughing, her peeping eyes are laughing too. What strikes us particularly is the European air that she has, with her square chin, broad forehead, robust neck and sturdy body. A glance at her father by daylight reveals the same familiar type. Take away his Arab vestments, and he would almost pass for a brother of Heinrich Heine. His child might play among the towers of the Rhine or on the banks of the Moselle, and not seem to be outside her native country. We have here, in a strong presentment, the types which seem to connect some particular tribes of the Kabyles with the Vandal invaders, who, becoming too much enervated in a tropical climate to preserve their warlike fame or to care for retiring, amalgamated with the natives. The inhabitants on the slopes of the Djordjora, reasonably supposed to have descended from the warriors of Genseric, build houses which amaze the traveler by their utter unlikeness to Moorish edifices and their resemblance to European structures. They make bornouses which sell all over Algeria, Morocco, Tunis and Tripoli, and have factories like those of the Pisans in the Middle Ages.

Contrast the square and stolid Kabyle head shown in the engraving on this page with the type of the Algerian Arab on page 494. The more we study them, or even rigidly compare our Arab with the amin of Kalaa, the more distinction we shall see between the Bedouin and either of his Kabyle compatriots. The amin, although rigged out as a perfect Arab, reveals the square jaw, the firm and large-cut mouth, the breadth about the temples, of the Germanic tribes: it is a head of much distinction, but it shows a large remnant of the purely animal[Pg 494] force which entered into the strength of the Vandals and distinguished the Germans of Cæsar's day. As for the Kabyle of more vulgar position, take away his haik and his bornouse, trim the points of his beard, and we have a perfect German head. Beside these we set a representative Arab head, sketched in the streets of Algiers. See the feline characteristics, the pointed, drooping moustache and chin-tuft, the extreme retrocession of the nostrils, the thin, weak and cruel mouth, the retreating forehead, the filmed eye, the ennui, the terrestrial detachment, of the Arab. He is a dandy, a creature of alternate flash and dejection, a wearer of ornaments, a man proud of his striped hood and ornamental agraffes. The Kabyle, of sturdier stuff, hands his ragged garment to his son like a tattered flag, bidding him cherish and be proud of the rents made by Roumi bayonets.

It must be admitted that the Kabyles, with a thousand faults, are far from the fatalism, the abuse of force and that merging of individualism which are found with the Islamite wherever he appears. Whence, then, have come these more humane tendencies, charitable customs and movements of compassion? There are respectable authorities who consider them, with emotion, as feeble gleams of the great Christian light which formerly, at its purest period, illuminated Northern Africa.

It is the opinion of some who have long been conversant with the Kabyles that the deeper you dive into their social mysteries the more traces you find of their having once been a Christian people. They observe, for instance, a set of statutes derived from their ancestors, and which, on points like suppression of thefts and murders, do not agree with the Koran. We have spoken of their name for the law—kanoun: evidently the resemblance of this to [Greek: chanôn] must be more than accidental. Another sign is the mark of the cross, tattooed on the women of many of the tribes. These fleshly inscriptions are an incarnate evidence of the Christian past of some of the Kabyles, particularly such as are probably of Vandal origin. They are found especially among the tribes of the Gouraya, are probably a result of the Vandal invasion, and consist in the mark or sign of the cross, half an inch in dimension, on their forehead, cheeks and the palms of their hands. It appears that all the natives who were found to be Christians were freed from certain taxes by their Aryan conquerors; and it was arranged that they should profess their faith by making the cross on their persons, which practice was thus universalized. The tattooing is of a beautiful blue color, and is more ornamental than the patches worn by our grandmothers.[Pg 495]

Our final inference, then, is, that the Kabyles preserve strong traces of certain primitive customs, which in certain cases are attributable to a Christian origin.

A true city of romance, a Venice isolated by waves of mountains, and built upon piles whose beams are of living crystal, Kalaa, all but inaccessible, attracts the tourist as the roc's egg attracted Aladdin's wife. For ages it has been a city of refuge, a sanctuary for person and property in a land of anarchy. Nowhere else are the proud Kabyles so skillful and industrious—nowhere else are their women so much like Western women in beauty and freedom.

The Kabyle woman preserves the liberty which the female of the Orient possessed in the old times, before the jealousy of Mohammed made her a bird in a cage, or, as the Arab poet says, "an attar which must not be given to the winds." In Kabylia the women talk and gossip with the men: their villages present pretty spectacles at sunset, when groups of workers and gossipers mingled are seen laughing, chatting and singing to the accompaniment of the drum. Some of these women are really handsome, and are freely decorated, even in public, with the singular enamels which are their peculiar manufacture, and with threads of gold in their graceful cheloukas or tunics.

But Kalaa, like the picturesque "Peasant's Nest" described by Cowper in his Task, pays one natural penalty for the rare beauty of its site. It pants on a rock whose gorges of lime are the seat of a perpetual thirst. In vain have the suffering natives sunk seven basins in one alley of the town, the cleft separating the quarter of the Son of David from that of the children of Jesus (Aissa). The water only trickles by drops, and, though plentiful in winter, deserts them altogether in the season when their air-hung gardens, planted in earth brought up from the plains, need it the most. As the mellowing of the season brings with it its plague of aridity, recourse is had to the river at the bottom of the ravine, the Oued-Hamadouch. Then[Pg 496] from morning to night perpendicular chains of diminutive, shrewd donkeys are seen descending and ascending the precipice with great jars slung in network.

But the Hamadouch itself in the sultry season is but a thread of water, easily exhausted by the needs of a population counting three thousand mouths. Then the folks of Kalaa would die of thirst were it not for the foresight of a[Pg 497] marabout of celebrity, whom chance or miracle caused to discover a hidden spring at the bottom of the rock. By the aid of subscriptions among the rich he built a fountain over the sources of the spring.

It is a small Moorish structure, with two stone pilasters supporting a pointed arch. In the centre is an inscription forbidding to the pious admirers of the marabout the use of the fountain while a drop remains in the Hamadouch. To assist their fidelity, the spring is effectually closed except when all other sources have peremptorily failed, in the united opinion of three amins (Kabyle sheikhs). When the amins give permission the chains which restrain the mechanism are taken off, and the conduits are opened by means of iron handles operating on small valves of the same metal. In the great droughts the fountain of Marabout Yusef-ben-Khouia may be seen surrounded with a throng of astute, white-nosed asses, waiting in philosophic calm amid the excitement and struggle of the attendant water-bearers.

Seen hence, from the base of the precipice, where abrupt pathways trace their zigzags of white lightning down the rock, and where no vegetation relieves the harsh stone, the town of Kalaa seems some accursed city in a Dantean Inferno. Seen from the peaks of Bogni, on the contrary, the nest of white houses covered with red tiles, surmounted by a glittering minaret and by the poplars which decorate the porch of the great mosque, has an aspect as graceful as unique. In a vapory distance floats off from the eye the arid and thankless country of the Beni-Abbes. On every level spot, on[Pg 498] every plateau, is detected a clinging white town, encircled with a natural wreath of trees and hedges. They are all visible one from the other, and perk up their heads apparently to signal each other in case of sudden appeal: it is by a telegraphic system from distance to distance that the Kabyles are collected for their incorrigible revolutions. Two ruined towers are pointed out, called by the Kabyles the Bull's Horns, which in 1847 poured down from their battlements a cataract of fire on Bugeaud's chasseurs d'Orléans, who climbed to take them, singing their favorite army-catch as well as they could for want of breath:

As-tu vu la casquette, la casquette,
As-tu vu la casquette du Père Bugeaud?

Far away, at the foot of the Azrou-n'hour, an immense peak lifting its breadth of snow-capped red into the pure azure, the populous town of Azrou is spread out over a platform almost inaccessible.

What a strange landscape! And what a race, brooding over its nests in the eagles' crags! Where on earth can be found so peculiar a people, guarding their individuality from the hoariest antiquity, and snatching the arts into the clefts of the mountains, to cover the languid races of the plains with luxuries borrowed from the clouds! The jewelry and the tissues, the bornouses and haiks, the blacksmith-work and ammunition, which fill the markets of Morocco, Tunis and the countries toward the desert, are scattered from off these crags, which Nature has forbidden to man by her very strongest prohibitions.

We are now in the midst of what is known as Grand Kabylia. The coast from Algiers eastward toward Philippeville, and the relations of some of the towns through which we have passed, may be understood from the following sketch:

The scale of distances may be imagined from the fact that it is eighty-seven and a half miles by sea from Algiers to Bougie. The country known as Grand Kabylia, or Kabylia par excellence, is that part of Algeria forming the great square whose corners are Dellys, Aumale, Setif and Bougie. Though these are fictitious and not geographical limits, they are the nearest approach that can be made to fixing the nation on a map. Besides their Grand Kabylia, the ramifications of the tribe are rooted in all the habitable parts of the Atlas Mountains between Morocco and Tunis, controlling an irregular portion of Africa which it is impossible to define. It will be seen that the country of the tribe is not deprived of seaboard nor completely mountainous. The two ports of Dellys and Bougie were their sea-cities, and gave the French infinite[Pg 499] trouble: the plain between the two is the great wheat-growing country, where the Kabyle farmer reaps a painful crop with his saw-edged sickle.

In this trapezoid the fire of rebellion never sleeps long. As we write comes the report of seven hundred French troops surrounded by ten thousand natives in the southernmost or Atlas region of Algeria. The bloody lessons of last year have not taught the Kabyle submission. It seems that his nature is quite untamable. He can die, but he is in his very marrow a republican.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

OUR HOME IN THE TYROL

CHAPTER I

"Do not go to the Tyrol," said some of our friends in Rome. "You will be starved. It is a beautiful country, but with the most wretched accommodation and the worst living in the world."

"Come to Perugia, where it is always cool in summer," said a painter. "You can study Perugino's exquisite 'Annunciation' and other gems of the Umbrian school, and thus blend Art with the relaxation of Nature."

"Come rather to Zemetz in the Engadine, where good Leonhard Wohlvend of the Lion will help us to bag bears one day and glaciers the next," exclaimed a sporting friend, the possessor of the most exuberant spirits.

"But," remarked the fourth adviser, a lady, "I recommend, after all, the Tyrol. I went weak and ill last year to the Pusterthal, and returned to Rome as fresh and strong as a pony. I found the inns very clean and the prices low; and if you can live on soup, delicious trout and char, fowls, veal, puddings and fruit, you will fare famously at an outside average of five francs a day."

As this advice exactly coincided with our own inclinations, we naturally considered it the wisest of all, especially as the invitation to bear-hunts and glacier-scrambles was not particularly tempting to our party. The kind reader will perceive this for himself when he learns that it consisted of an English writer, who, still hale and hearty in spite of his threescore years and ten, regarded botany as the best rural sport; his wife, his faithful companion through many years of sunshine and shadow, who had grown old so naturally that whilst anticipating a joyful Hereafter she still clothed this present life with the poetic hues of her girlhood; their daughter, the present narrator; and their joint friend, another Margaret, who, whilst loyal to her native country, America, had created for herself, through her talent, her[Pg 500] love of true work and her self-dependence, a bright social and artistic life in Italy. As for Perugia, our happy quartette had plenty of opportunities for studying the old masters in the winter months. Now we were anxious to exchange the oppressive, leaden air of the Italian summer for the invigorating breezes of the Alps.

Yet how fresh and graceful Italy still looked as we traveled northward in the second week of June! The affluent and at the same time gentle sunshine streamed through the broad green leaves of the vines, which were flung in elegant festoons from tree to tree. It intensified the bright scarlet of the myriad poppies, which glowed amongst the brilliant green corn. It lighted up the golden water-lilies lying on the surface of the slowly-gliding streams, and brought into still greater contrast the tall amber-colored campanile or the black cypress grove cut in sharp outline against the diaphanous blue sky. We knew, however, that fever could lurk in this very luxury of beauty, while health was awaiting us in the more sombre scenes of gray mountain and green sloping pasture. We traveled on, therefore, by the quickest and easiest route, and alighting from the express-train to Munich at the Brixen station on the Brenner Pass, were shortly deposited, bag and baggage, at that comfortable and thoroughly German inn, the renowned Elephant.

We prided ourselves on being experienced travelers, and consequently immediately secured four places in the Eilwagen, which was to start from the inn at six o'clock the next morning for our destination, Bruneck. We handed over our luggage to the authorities, partook of supper and then retired contentedly to rest—in the case of the two Margarets to the soundest of slumbers—until in the morning we were suddenly awoke, not by the expected knock of the chambermaid, but by a hurrying to and fro of feet, and the sound of several eager voices resounding through the echoing corridors. Fortunately, it was not only perfectly light, but exhausted Nature had enjoyed its allotted spell of sleep; for we found, to our astonishment, that it was past five o'clock. The storm continued outside no whit abated, and in the midst of the human hubbub the father's voice sounded clear and distinct.

"The British lion is roaring," exclaimed Margaret: then, snatching at my attire, I was in the midst of the disturbance in a very few minutes.

My father stood at his door and held in his upraised hand a pair of villainous boots, old and "clouted," fit for the Gibeonites, very different from the substantial English aids to the understanding which he had placed in all good faith outside his door the previous night. A meagre-faced chambermaid was wringing her hands beside him. Two waiters vociferated, whilst a third, whose eyes were still heavy with sleep, was blindly groping at the other doors.

"My excellent London boots, made on a special last, have disappeared," said my father, trying to moderate his indignation, "and this vile rubbish has been substituted in their stead.—Where is your master?" he demanded of the sobbing woman. "Fetch either your master or my boots."

"Herr Je! Herr Je! I've hunted high and low, up stairs and down," murmured the weeping maid, "and the gracious gentleman's boots are nowhere."

"Sir," said a little round-headed man, who seemed to have his wits about him, "I know very well that these are not your boots. I cleaned your grace's boots, and placed them at your door at four o'clock. It is some beggarly Welschers who have crept up stairs and exchanged for them, unawares, their old leather hulks."

"Ah yes," said the wailing woman: "three Welschers, who came for the fair, slept in the barn, and had some bread and cheese before they left, an hour ago."

In the midst of this explanation the door of No. 2 was slightly opened, and an arm in a shirt sleeve appeared and drew in a pair of boots. Hardly, however, was the door closed when the bell of No. 2 began to ring violently.

"Heavens! another pair gone!" exclaimed[Pg 501] a waiter. Then with one accord the whole bevy of distracted servants rushed to No. 2, declaring their innocence.

"My good people, I cannot understand one word you say," replied a mild English voice. "I request you to be gone, and let one of you bring me my own proper boots."

The British lion—who, it must be owned, had reason to roar—became calmed at the evident innocence of the servants and the gentle sounds of this British lamb. He therefore went to the rescue, and explained the matter to No. 2, who in his turn meekly expostulated: "Very vexatious! Dear me! My capital boots made expressly for Alpine climbing! But we must make the best of it, my dear sir."

Maids and men still remained in an excited group, when at this juncture the head-waiter appeared, bringing with him the landlord, a respectable middle-aged man, who, bowing repeatedly, assured the gentlemen of his extreme annoyance at the whole affair, especially as it compromised the fame of his noted house. Indeed, he would gladly refund the loss were the two pairs of boots not forthcoming.

Forthcoming! How could they be forthcoming when at this moment the clock was striking six, and the Eilwagen (Margaret termed it the oil-wagon) was to start at once, and we with it, though minus breakfast? The British lamb departed hurriedly, but we were detained to be told of another complication. Not only were the boots gone, but the royal imperial post-direction of Austria, after duly weighing and measuring our luggage, had adjudged it too heavy and bulky for the roof of its mail-coach. It would, however, restore our money, and even suggest another mode of conveyance, but take us by its Eilwagen it would not.

"The delay is indeed advantageous, mein Herr," said the landlord, addressing my father, who walked about in slippers, "as time will thereby be gained for a thorough investigation of the boot question."

One trouble always modifies another. The disappearance of the boots made us bear the departure of the Eilwagen philosophically. Nay, at the conclusion of a substantial breakfast of hot coffee, ham and eggs we began greatly to enjoy ourselves. Rejected by the post-direction for the Eilwagen, we felt at liberty to choose our time of departure. For the present, therefore, acting as our own masters, we leisurely sauntered out of doors, admired the clean, attractive exterior of the roomy inn, and smiled at the fresco of the huge elephant, which, possessed of gigantic tusks and diminutive tail, carried a man, spear in hand, on his back. A giant bearing a halbert, accompanied by two youths in tunics, completed the group. An inscription informed us that this was the first elephant which had ever visited Teutschland, and that the inn derived its name from the fact of the august quadruped sleeping there on its journey, which took place in the sixteenth century. The worthy landlord had also ordered a fresco to be painted on his inn to the honor of the Virgin. She was depicted standing upon the crescent moon, and her aid was invoked by the good man in rhyme to protect the house "from lightning's rod, O thou Mother of God! From rain and fire, and sickness dire;"—but, alas! there was no mention of thieves.

We were deploring the fact when the worthy Wirth appeared in person, attended by a slim youth in blue-and-silver uniform, whom he introduced to us with considerable emphasis as representing the police. The officer of justice stepped forward and with a low bow took the length and breadth of the Welschers' offending, and promised that the Austrian government would do its best to see the distinguished, very noble Herrschaft righted. We cannot be quite certain that he promised that the emperor would seek the boots in person, but something was said about that mighty potentate. At the assurance of governmental interference how could the British lion fail of being pacified? He declared that the landlord had acted as a gentleman,[Pg 502] shook hands with him, and returning to the house exchanged his slippers for his second pair of boots—very inferior in make and comfort to the missing treasures—and then conferred with the landlord as to the best method for the continuance of our journey.

The Herr Wirth, with whom and the whole household we had now become excellent friends, declared that with our unusual amount of luggage the only plan was a "separat Eilfahrt," which means a separate express-journey to Bruneck. It had, however, its advantages: we should travel quickly and with the greatest ease. As we were willing to accede to his proposition, he handed us over to his clerks in the royal imperial post-bureau, who, having received a round sum of florins, filled in and sanded an important document, which being delivered to us conveyed the satisfactory information that we four individuals, whose ages, personal appearance and social position the head-official had magnanimously passed over with a compassionate flourish, were, on this fourteenth day of June, 1871, to be conveyed to the town of Bruneck in the caleche No. 1990; which said vehicle would be duly furnished with cloth or leather cushions, one foot-carpet, two lamps, main-braces, axletree, etc., including one portion of grease. So far, well and good, but on our inquiring when the said No. 1990 would be ready to start, the head-official merely looked over his spectacles at his subordinate, who in his turn, leaning back in his tall chair and stroking his beard, called out, "Klaus! Klaus!"—a call which was answered by a tall, stolid-looking man, also in livery, who seemed to occupy the post of official hostler.

"Klaus," demanded the second chef, "the Herrschaft ask when the vehicle will be ready."

Klaus gave an astonished stare, and articulated some rapid sounds in a dialect quite unintelligible to us.

"Precisely," returned the subordinate. "The horses are sent for, and when they arrive the Herrschaft will be expedited forthwith."

Whereupon the clerks of the post-direction became suddenly immersed in the duties of their office. We took the hint and good-naturedly retired.

It certainly looked like business when outside we perceived Klaus dragging forth with all his might and main, from a dark and dusty coach-house, a still dustier old coach. Darker it was not, for the color was that of canary, emblazoned with the black double-headed Austrian eagle. This, then, was the caleche No. 1990. It had the air of a veteran officer in the imperial army who had not seen active service for many a long day.

Klaus was too busy to pay much attention to us. He pulled the piece of antiquity into the street, and with an uneasy expression, as if he knew before-hand what he had to expect, he tried and tugged at one of the door-handles. "Sacrament!" he muttered as he at last let go and began hunting in the boot of the coach, under the driver's cushion and in secret nooks and corners, which proved, at the best, mere receptacles for fag-ends of whipcord and cobwebs.

"It is gone, sure enough, the key of the right-hand door." I am afraid it had disappeared three years before, at least, to the fellow's knowledge, for he added in an apologetic but hopeful tone, "It matters not the least, for, see you, all the inns are on the left-hand side."

A glimpse into the coach-house had convinced us of the fact of this vehicle alone being at our disposal; so we determined to manage as best we might, and bore even philosophically the smell of the musty, dust-filled cushions, which Klaus triumphantly pulled out of the open door and beat, as it were, within an inch of their lives.

Briefly, to make two long hours short after several tedious quarters of expectation, a square-set, rosy-faced and middle-aged postilion appeared round the far corner of the village street, resplendent in silver lace and yellow livery, leading three gaunt but sturdy horses. In ten minutes my father was seated on the box and we ladies inside, receiving the good wishes of Klaus, of the landlord,[Pg 503] the men and the maids, now all smiles and curtsies, and with the postilion blowing triumphantly his horn we dashed out of the quaint, dreamy little cathedral town of Brixen.

The road speedily began to ascend, and we looked down from a considerable height on the vast Augustine monastery of Neustift, with its large church, its picturesque cluster of wings, refectories and separate residences of every stage of architecture, lying snugly amongst vineyards, Spanish chestnuts and fig trees. Ever upward, by but above the waters of the rapid Brienz, until at the fortress of Mühlbach we entered the Pusterthal proper.

This old fort commands the valley and spans the road. Our driver, who, according to Austrian regulation, went on foot wherever the ascent was particularly steep, could not enter into our admiration of its romantic position. Hans—for such was his name—could not perceive any grace or beauty in a scene which had often disturbed his imagination and awakened his fear. "Ah," said he, "it is a God-forsaken spot. It is here that many slaughtered Bavarians wander about at night with candles, seeking for their bodies or their souls—I know not which. Look you! My grandmother came from Schliers in Bavaria, and the two countries speak the same language. However, in my father's day, in 1809, Emperor Franz drove the Bavarians and French out of this part of the Tyrol. It was in April, when the Austrian Schatleh came marching through the Pusterthal with his soldiers, and drove the Bavarians before him. Though these were only a handful, they would not make truce, but broke down all the bridges in their retreat. They wanted to burn the bridge at Lorenzen, only the country-folks with blunderbusses, cudgels and pitchforks protected it, and made them run; so they marched on, pursued by the Landsturm, to this fortress, where they fought like devils until many were killed, and the others, at their wits' end, managed to push on to Innsbruck. Yes, glorious days, and long may the Tyrolese cry God, Emperor and Fatherland! But those wandering spirits make my flesh creep. Ugh!"

The road now allowed of the horses being put to a lively trot, interrupting further conversation. We drove steadily on, stopping at comfortable inns in large well-to-do villages, where even the poorest appeared to enjoy in their houses unlimited space. The landlords politely demanded our journey-certificate, solemnly inserted the hour of our arrival and departure, and confirmed the important fact of our remaining exactly the same number of travelers as at the beginning of our journey. We exchange Hans for a youthful Jacobi, and Jacobi for an aged Seppl, who all agreed in their livery if not in their ages; each stage also being at a slightly higher elevation, so that by degrees we had changed the Italian vegetation, which had lingered as far as the neighborhood of Brixen, for the more northern crops of young oats and flax. Yet one prominent reminder of comparatively adjacent Italy accompanied us the greater portion of the three hours' drive. Hundreds of agile, swarthy figures were busily boring, blasting, shoveling and digging for the new railway, which is to convey next season shoals of passengers and civilization, rightly or wrongly so called, into this great yet primitive artery of Southern Tyrol, the Pusterthal already forming, by means of the Ampezzo, a highway between Venice and the Brenner Pass. As the morning advanced the busy sounds of labor ceased, and we saw groups of dark-eyed men reclining in the shade of the rocks, partaking of their frugal dinners of orange-colored polenta—plenten, as our Seppl called it.

So onward by soft slopes bordered by mountain-ridges, all scarped and twisted, having dark green draperies of pine trees cast round their strong limbs, with bees humming in the aromatic yet invigorating breeze fresh from the snow-fields, and swallows wheeling in the clear blue air, until we reached a fertile amphitheatre. A confusion of flourishing villages was scattered over its verdant meadows, and here and there on a jutting rock or mountain-spur a solitary[Pg 504] mediaeval tower or imposing castle stood forth, the most conspicuous of all being a fortress situated on a natural bulwark of rock. Half around its base a little town, which appeared stunted in its growth by the course of the river, confidingly rested. A hill covered with wood screened the other side of the castle, whilst exactly opposite a broad valley ran northward, hemmed in by lofty snow-fields and glaciers that sparkled in the noonday sun. Natural hummocks or knolls covered with wood broke the uniformity of this upland plain, which still ascended eastward to the higher, bleaker Upper Pusterthal. This valley continues to mount to yet more sterile regions, until, reaching the great watershed of the Toblacher Plain, which sends part of its streams to the Adriatic, the others to the more distant Black Sea, it gradually dips down again to the fruitful wine-regions of Lienz.

We have now, however, to do with Bruneck, where our venerable 1990 had safely deposited us at the modern inn, the Post. We might almost style it the fashionable inn, for it was kept by a gentleman of noble birth and the representative of the province, who, having a large family of growing children, had wisely let his gentility take care of itself and permitted his guests to be entertained at their own rather than at his expense. As the noble landlady was suffering from headache, the dapper waitress took charge of us, provided us with rooms, and then installed us at the early table-d'hôte, where a number of the officers of the garrison, with some other regular diners, whom we learnt to recognize in time as the town bailiff, the apothecary and the advocate, were despatching, in the midst of great clatter and bustle, the inevitable kalbsfleisch and mehlspeis.

The lady who had recommended us to go to the Pusterthal had likewise assured us that the Post at Bruneck would satisfy all our requirements. In this she was mistaken. It is true that tastes differ, especially amongst tourists, who may be divided into two classes—those who merely care for the country, let them disguise it as they will, when they can endue it with the features of their town-life; and those who love the country for the sake of Nature, and thus endeavor to carry trails of freshness back with them to town. Now, it was all artificial dust and din that we desired to get rid of. We had traveled in search of verdant meadows, brawling streams and sweet-scented woods. We could not find solace and relaxation in sitting at the windows of our respectable inn to watch every passer-by on the dusty boulevard below, in spending half the day indoors, let it be ever so comfortably, or in merely turning out in the evening to shop in the puny town, whilst we bemoaned the want of a circulating library and a brass band. It was even more intolerable, as the Post had been built perversely with its back to the fine view of the glaciers. Moreover, the whole establishment was in the hands of bricklayers, painters and glaziers, who were enlarging and repairing it for the comfort and convenience of future but certainly not of present visitors.

As trade was evidently flourishing, we had not the slightest hesitation in ringing for Maria, the kellnerin, and consulting with her about the mode of our procuring country lodgings as soon as possible. Maria was a good-natured girl and willing to serve us, but our ideas could not be so easily carried out as we had anticipated. One of us had the folly to suggest vacant rooms being to let in the castle.

"Gracious!" replied Maria, casting her eyes up to the sky. "In the castle! Why, that's crown property, and filled with the military. Really, I don't know how I can help you, since the gentlemen officers have engaged for themselves every apartment inside or outside the town."

We spoke of the many neighboring villages, which were filled with grand old houses.

Maria declared they were better outside than inside, and that the Bauers who dwelt in them could scarcely find bedding for their cattle, much less for Christian gentlefolks. "There is the Herr Apotheker's house at Unterhofen, but he will not let that. There is the Hof at Adelsheim: it's out of the question. There is also Frau Sieger's in the same village, but that is let to the Herr Major for the season. Look you! you had better go to Frau Sieger. Stay, I will send Lina with you."

Lina proved to be one of the blossoms of the noble family tree. She led my[Pg 505] mother and me to Frau Sieger, but what came of our afternoon's expedition deserves to be told in a fresh chapter.

CHAPTER II.

Now, this house-hunting was a piece of business to be got through as soon as possible. Nevertheless, three hours elapsed before we returned to the hotel. We found the father and Margaret leaning their heads out of a corridor window, and when we asked them what they were about, she replied, "We have been wishing that the grand old mansion in yonder village were only a pension, where we could obtain rooms. But have you met with any success?"

"A pension! That sounds like Meran or Switzerland, instead of this primitive Pusterthal. Only let us have tea, and we will tell you what we have done."

"Very good! We will be patient; but you do not look dissatisfied with your afternoon," said my father.

Nor in truth were we. Sipping our mild tea, we related our adventures. The little girl Lina had taken us into the town, which consisted of one narrow street in the shape of a half-moon, where houses of all ages and ranks squeezed against each other and peeped into each other's windows with the greatest familiarity. In one of the largest of these Frau Sieger lived. Her husband was the royal imperial tobacco agent, and the house was crammed full of chests of the noxious and obnoxious weed, the passages and landing being pervaded with a sweet, sickly smell of decomposing tobacco. In the parlor, however, where Frau Sieger sat drinking coffee with her lady friends, the aromatic odor of the beverage acted as a disinfectant. The hostess drew us aside, listened complacently to our message, and then graciously volunteered to let us rooms under her very roof.

We should have chosen chemical works in preference! There was, then, nothing to be done but to take leave with thanks. Accompanied by the little Lina, we passed under the town-gate,[Pg 506] and whilst sorely perplexed perceived a pleasant village, at the distance of about a mile, lying on the hillside in a wealth of orchards and great barns. The way thither led across fields of waving green corn, the point where the path diverged from the high-road being marked by a quaint mediaeval shrine, one of the many shrines which, sown broadcast over the Tyrol, are intended to act as heavenly milestones to earth-weary pilgrims.

That was the village of Adelsheim, Lina said, where their own country-house was situated, and Freieck, belonging to Frau Sieger; and there, at the farther extremity of the village, was Schönburg, where old Baron Flinkenhorn lived. The biggest house of all on the hill was the Hof, and that below, with the gables and turrets, the carpenter's.

The bare possibility of finding a resting-place in that little Arcadia made us determine to go thither. We would try the inn, and then the carpenter's.

The inn proved a little beer-shop, perfectly impracticable. A woman with a bright scarlet kerchief bound round her head, who was washing outside the carpenter's, told us in Italian that she and her husband, an overseer on the new railway, occupied with their family every vacant room, which was further confirmed by the carpenter popping his head out of an upper window, and in answer to Lina's question giving utterance to an emphatic "Na, na, I hab koan" ("No, no, I have none").

Lina was so sure that the Hofbauer would not let rooms, for he was a wealthy man and owned land for miles around, that she stayed at a respectful distance whilst we approached nearer to at least admire the grand old mansion, even if it were closed against us as a residence. The village was full of marvelous old houses rich in frescoes, oriel windows, gables and turrets, but this dwelling, standing in a dignified situation on an eminence, was a prince amongst its compeers. The architecture, which was Renaissance, might belong to a bad style, but the long slopes of roof, the jutting balconies, the rich iron-work on the oblong façade, the painted sun-dial and the coats-of-arms now fading away into oblivion, the grotesque gargoyle which in the form of a dragon's head frowned upon the world,—each detail, that had once been carefully studied, helped to form a complete whole which it was a pleasure to look upon. The grand entrance, no longer used, was guarded by a group of magnificent trees, the kings of the region. Traces of an old pleasure-garden[Pg 507] and the dried-up basin of a fountain were visible within.

At this point in the narrative Margaret exclaimed, "None other than my would-be pension! I have known it from the first, so pray do not keep me on tenterhooks. Were you or were you not successful? Yet all hope has died within me already, for such a treasure-trove we never could get."

"Well, listen," said the mother. "As we were admiring the house, a handsome, fair-haired young man, one's perfect ideal of a peasant, came along the road, bowed to us, and when we expressed our interest in the mansion said that he was the son of the house, and that we might see the rooms if we liked. Grand old rooms they are, with a great lack of furniture, but nevertheless perfectly charming. The young man, who is named Anton, thought his father would probably have no objection to let us rooms. At all events, we could all go over and see the Hofbauer at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, when he would be in: he was in his fields this afternoon. The whole, in fact, was a pastoral poem."

The next day we were as punctual as clock-work. A pleasant, comely young peasant woman, who looked as if she had lived on fresh air all her life, met us in the great stone entrance-hall. She told us that her father would soon be at liberty, and that, with our permission, she would again show us the rooms if we wished to see them. This promised well. Fetching a huge bunch of handsome iron-wrought keys, she conducted us into the great hall of the first floor, hung with large unframed pictures of the Holy Sacrament. Then unlocking a handsome door which had once been green and gold, we entered the vast reception-room, almost bereft of furniture, but possessing a pine floor of milky whiteness and a remarkably fine stove of faience eight feet high. My father measured the length of the apartment: it was forty feet, and could have seated a hundred guests. The casements were filled with old lozenge-shaped glass set in lead, and the fine old iron trellis-work on the outside of the windows gave a wonderfully mediaeval look to the apartment. There was, moreover, a magnificent bay window, which formed a little room of itself, besides a second room much less, which, with carved wood wainscot and ceiling, could have served as an oratory.

Margaret's delight was unbounded. The father smiled quietly, and we the pioneers could scarcely refrain our pride and pleasure. But there was more to be seen. Crossing the great hall once more, we entered a large and beautiful room overlooking the main entrance. This had other furniture besides its handsome porcelain stove and inlaid floor of dark wood. There was not only a comfortable modern bed, but chairs, sofa and table; a chest of drawers too, which was covered with innumerable religious knickknacks—little sacred pictures in glass frames, miniature saints, and artificial flowers in small china pots. Having dipped her finger in a holy-water shell hanging on the wall, our guide drew back a long chintz curtain which covered the end of the room, and showed us a large and handsome chapel below. A fald-stool ran along the front of the window which, with an additional lattice of gilt and carved wood, separated the room from the church. This had evidently been in old times the apartment of the lord and his lady, and here they had knelt and listened to the holy office without mingling with their dependants below. This room, if we had the good fortune to obtain lodgings in the mansion, was to belong to the poetess, for it was full of inspiration and old-world memories.

Then out again into the hall and up another flight of stone stairs, through a second great lobby into a corridor, which communicated on either side with two charming rooms, spotlessly clean and perfectly empty, if I except the stoves; but still, if we chose, these two rooms could be Margaret's and mine, and the corridor as well, with a beautiful balcony which commanded an enchanting view of the rich Pusterthal up and down, right and left, with a row of jagged, contorted dolomite mountains thrown into[Pg 508] the bargain. All this was to be ours if only the Hofbauer would have us. So down we went, casting longing looks around us—down into the entrance-hall, where a crowd of poor people were streaming out of the stube, the parlor of the family, such as in the midland counties of England would be called the house-place, and so into the grassy court in front, where we awaited with anxious hearts the fiat of the Hofbauer.

We were not long kept waiting. In another minute the master of the house stood before us, a tall, thin, elderly man, dressed in the full costume of the district—an embroidered cloth jacket, black leather breeches, which displayed a broad band of naked knee, green ribbed stockings, shoes and buckles, with a silver cord and tassel on his broad beaver hat. Saluting us with the grace and ease of a courtier, he apologized for keeping us waiting, but he had been entertaining the poor of the parish at dinner, according to an old custom of his. These simple Tyrolese dined, then, at ten o'clock in the morning!

An elderly woman, also tall and spare, now appeared in a bright blue linen apron, that half hid her thickly-plaited black woolen petticoat, which was short enough to give full effect to scarlet knit stockings and low, boat-shaped shoes. She carried in her hand a plate of large hot fat cakes, which she pressed upon us; then pitied the smallness of our appetites, and urged two apiece at least. Two mouthfuls, however, were sufficient, as the cakes were not only extremely greasy, but filled with white curds, aniseed and chives. Having received in good part this intended hospitality, we were rejoiced to hear the Hofbauer express his perfect willingness that we should take up our abode at the mansion. We need merely pay him a trifle, but we must furnish ourselves the extra bedsteads. Moidel, his daughter, could cook for us, for she understood making dishes for bettermost people, having been sent by him to Brixen for a year to learn cooking; for what was a moidel (maiden) good for that could not cook? He should not make any charge for her services. Also, if we saw any bits of furniture about the house that suited us we might take them; and lastly, we could stay until Jacobi, the 25th of July, but on that day the best bedroom must be given up, as it belonged to his son, the student, who would return from Innsbruck about that day. All this was charming. We promised to procure beds and bedding in Bruneck, and arranged to take possession of our new quarters on the following morning.

I will not enter into the rashness of our promise respecting the bedsteads, merely hinting at the difficulties and complications which beset us. Some of these can be imagined when it is known that, firstly, there proved not to be an upholsterer, nor even a seller of old furniture, at Bruneck; and that, secondly, the officers and soldiers of the garrison now quartered there occupied by night every available spare bed in the township. So it seemed until in our embarrassment the landlady of the Post arose from her bed to help us to procure some. The interview ended again with the prudent advice, "Go to Frau Sieger." We went, and that incomparable lady, who bore us no malice for refusing her rooms, generously provided for a small sum three bedsteads and an amazing, and what appeared to us superfluous, amount of bolsters, pillows, feather beds, winter counterpanes; but she would hear no nay, declaring, "It often turned very chilly in the Pusterthal, and at such times a warm bed was a godsend."

We now began to dream of beds of roses, but we were mistaken: we were crying before we were out of the wood. We arrived at the Hof the following afternoon with our bag and baggage, and found Moidel, otherwise Maria, busily preparing the newly-erected bed in the state-room. She received us cordially, until my mother, laying her shawl on the bedstead belonging to the house, remarked that she wished that for herself.

Maria seemed suddenly thunderstruck. She turned a deep red, and with a gesture of astonishment let drop a pillow, exclaiming, "Heavens alive! that is the Herr Student's bed!"[Pg 509]

She fled from the chamber, bringing back her aunt to the rescue. The latter looked stern and aggrieved. "Never, never! no one must lay his head on that pillow but the student," she cried. Had my mother asked to repose on the altar of the chapel they could not have been more dumbfoundered.

As Frau Sieger's beds were truly spare, and as she could merely provide three, this second complication ended in the family giving up a bed of their own—one which was adorned at the head and foot with a cross, a bleeding heart and sacred monogram—one, in fact, which bore more marks of sanctity about it than the sacred bed of the student. It was obvious that this mysterious individual was consecrated to the Church, and that even before his ordination all that he touched was holy.

The storm had again given place to sunshine, and the two quiet women passed gently to and fro with coarse but sweet-scented linen, which they fetched from an old chest adorned with red tulips, a crown of thorns and the legend "K. M., 1820," on a bright blue ground. Good old Kaetana! That chest had once been crammed full to overflowing with linen which, like other young women, she had spun for her own dowry, but when the Hofbauerin died Kathi became the housekeeper and mother to the little children. Thus the contents of the chest had gradually decreased, until the maiden aunt drew forth the four last pair of new sheets for these passing strangers. She felt it no sacrifice. It would have grieved her more to touch the piles of fine new linen which she and Moidel had spun through many a long winter evening, and which were now safely hidden away in the great mahogany wardrobe, which the Hofbauer, in harmony with the more luxurious ideas of the age, had given to his daughter. It occupied the place of honor in the great saloon, having three companion chests of drawers of lesser dimensions, which the father at the same time had presented to each of his sons. That of the eldest, Anton, was emptied by the owner and placed by him at our disposal; that of the second, the student, was carefully guarded from the sun by a covering formed of newspapers; the third, belonging to Jacobi, the youngest, appeared to us filled with books. Jacob was shy, and some days elapsed before we became acquainted. Anton, however, appeared modestly ready to attend to our least beck and call. The first evening, perceiving that we had no candlesticks, we conferred with Anton.

"Freilich," he said. "We have none of our own, but I am sure that, as you will take care of them, there can be no great harm in lending you some of the Virgin's." We demurred at first, but with a smile on his open, ingenuous face he added, "The Herrschaft may be quite sure that I would not sin against my conscience." He then brought half a dozen plated candlesticks from the little sacristy, which he committed to our care.

The reader must not suppose that this was a disused chapel: far from it. In the dusk of the summer evening a murmuring chant like the musical hum of bees pervaded the vast old mansion, which was otherwise hushed in perfect silence. It was the Rosenkranz (or rosary) repeated by the household in the chapel. The Hofbauer knelt on one side near the altar, and led the service, his two sons, the four men-servants, the aunt and Moidel, with the three maid-servants, reciting the responses on their respective sides. The even-song over, the household quietly retired to rest.

Chance had graciously brought us to the Hof in the midst of preparations for the festival of the Holy Father. On Sunday, June 18, the whole Catholic world was to celebrate the astounding fact of Pio Nono having exceeded the days of Saint Peter. We, who had come from Rome, where thirty upstart papers were denouncing time-honored usages and formulas, where many of the people had begun to sneer at the Papacy and to take gloomy views of the Church, were not prepared for the religious fervor and devotion to the Papal See which greeted us in the Tyrol, especially at Bruneck, where from time immemorial a race of[Pg 510] the staunchest adherents to Rome had flourished. The mere fact that we came from the Eternal City clothed us with brilliant but false colors. Endless were the questions put to us about the health and looks of the Holy Father, whom they believed to be kept in a dungeon and fed on bread and water—a diet, however, turned into heavenly food by the angels. Perhaps the most perplexing question of all was, whether the Herr Baron Flinkenhorn, who had been born in exactly the same year as the Holy Father, bore the faintest resemblance to that saintly martyr. We could but shake our heads as the old nobleman was pointed out to us on the morning of the festival. Decrepit and bent with age, he shuffled along by the side of his old tottering sister, an antiquated couple dressed in the French fashions of 1810. They hardly perceived, so blind and old were they, the bows and greetings which they received. They knew, however, that it was Pio's festival, and they made great offerings to the Church and to the poor.

Deafness even has its compensations. Thus this old couple had not been kept awake all night by the ringing of bells and the firing of small cannon, which had continued incessantly since the setting of the sun had ushered in the festival on the previous evening. The firing lasted all day—a popular but very startling and disturbing mode of expressing joy and satisfaction. Bruneck wreathed and flagged its houses: there were processions, the prettiest being considered that of the female pupils of the convent of the Sacred Heart, who walked in white, bearing lilies. At night the good Sisters made a grand display of sacred transparencies in their convent windows—rhymes about the age of Saint Peter and the Pope; the Virgin rescuing the sinking vessel of the Church; Saint Peter seated on his emblematic rock, with his present successor at his side; and so forth—all wondered, gaped at and admired by the people, until the great spectacle of the evening commenced. As soon as night had fairly set in a hundred fires blazed upon the mountains—far as the eye could reach, for miles and many miles, one dazzling gigantic illumination. Papal monograms, crosses, tiaras shone forth in startling proportions. High up, far from any human habitation, on the verge of the snow, in clearings of the mountain forests, on Alpine pastures, these fiery letters had been patiently traced by toiling men and lads. Anton and Jacobi were not behind-hand, and by means of two hundred little bonfires had devised the papal initials on the upland common behind the house. The illumination, however, had not begun to reach its full splendor when one quick flash of lightning succeeded another, followed by a rolling artillery of thunder, the precursors of heavy down-pouring rain. In five minutes the storm had extinguished every bright emblem, and plunged the illuminated mountains into impenetrable blackness. The weather, grimly triumphant, drove lads and lasses drenched to their homes. So ended the festival, but in the morning, in dry clothes, every one had the pleasure of imagining how beautiful the spectacle would have been but for the rain.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

WILMINGTON AND ITS INDUSTRIES.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

We have pointed out the metropolis of Delaware as being a distinctly Northern city, planted in the distinct South. Among other things, this complication has led to some singularities in its settlement. As a community regulated by the most liberal traditions of Penn, but placed under the legal conditions of a slave State, it has held a position perfectly anomalous. No other spot could be indicated where the contrasts of North and South came to so sharp an edge; and there are few where a skilled pen could set down so many curiosities of folk-lore and confusions of race. The Dutch, the Swedes and the English Quakers formed the substratum, upon which were poured the émigrés of the French Revolution and the fugitives from Santo Domingo. The latter sometimes brought slaves who had continued faithful, and who retained their serfdom under the laws of Delaware. The French bonnes stood on washing-benches in the Brandywine, and taught the amazed Quaker wives that laundry-work could be done in cold water. The names of grand old French families, prefaced by the proprietarial forms of le and du, became mixed by marriage with such Swedish names as Svensson and such Dutch names as Staelkappe. (The first Staelkappe was a ship's cook, nicknamed from his oily and glossy bonnet.) As for the refugees from Santo Domingo, they absolutely invaded Wilmington, so that the price of butter and eggs was just doubled in 1791, and house-rents rose in proportion. They found themselves with rapture where the hills were rosy with peach-blossoms, and where every summer was simply an extract from Paradise.

We cannot linger, as we fain would[Pg 512] do, over the quaint and amusing Paris en Amerique which reigned here for a period following the events of '93. At Sixth and French streets lived a marchioness in a cot, which she adorned with the manners of Versailles, the temper of the Faubourg St. Germain and the pride of Lucifer. This Marquise de Sourci was maintained by her son, who made pretty boxes of gourds, and afterward boats, in one of which he was subsequently wrecked on the Delaware, before the young marquis was of age to claim his title. In a farm-house, whose rooms he lined with painted canvas, lived Colonel de Tousard. On Long Hook Farm resided, in honor and comfort, Major Pierre Jaquette, son of a Huguenot refugee who married a Swedish girl, and became a Methodist after one of Whitefield's orations: as for the son, he served in thirty-two pitched battles during our Revolution. Good Joseph Isambrie, the blacksmith, used to tell in provincial French the story of his service with Bonaparte in Egypt, while his wife blew the forge-bellows. Le Docteur Bayard, a rich physician, cured his compatriots for nothing, and Doctor Capelle, one of Louis XVI.'s army-surgeons, set their poor homesick old bones for them when necessary. Monsieur Bergerac, afterward professor in St. Mary's College, Baltimore, was a teacher: another preceptor, M. Michel Martel, an émigré of 1780, was proficient in fifteen languages, five of which he had imparted to the lovely and talented Theodosia Burr. Aaron Burr happened to visit Wilmington when the man who had trained his daughter's intellect was lying in the almshouse, wrecked and paralytic, with the memory of all his many tongues gone, except the French. Some benevolent Wilmingtonians approached Burr in his behalf, showing the colonel's own letter which had introduced him to the town.

"I wrote that letter when I knew him," said the diplomatic Colonel Burr, "but I know him no more."

The day quickly came when Burr's speech of denial was reflected upon himself, and those who then honored him "knew him no more."

Another French teacher, by the by, was not of Gallic race, but that of Albion le perfide: this was none other than William Cobbett, with his reputation all before him, known only to the Wilmington millers for the French lessons he[Pg 513] gave their daughters and the French grammar he had published. He lived on "Quaker Hill" from 1794 to 1796. He then went to Philadelphia, and began to publish Peter Porcupine's Gazette. "I mean to shoot my quills," said Cobbett, "wherever I can catch game." With the sinews of Wilmington money he soon made his way back to England, became a philosopher, and sat in the House of Commons. Another British exile was Archibald Hamilton Rowan, an Irish patriot, and one of the "United Irishmen" of 1797. Escaping from a Dublin jail in woman's clothes, he found his way to Wilmington after adventures like those of Boucicault's heroes; lived here several years in garrets and cottages, carrying fascination and laughter wherever he went among his staid neighbors; and after some years flew back to Ireland, glorious as a phoenix, resuming the habits proper to his income of thirty thousand pounds a year.

A familiar figure on the wharves of Wilmington was the gigantic one of Captain Paul Cuffee, looking like a character in a masquerade. His athletic limbs forced into the narrow garments of the Quakers, and a brim of superior development shading his dark negro face, he talked sea-lingo among the trading captains, mixed with phrases from Robert Barclay and gutturals picked up on the coast of Sierra Leone. Captain Cuffee owned several vessels, manned by sailors as black as shoemaker's wax, and he conducted one of his ships habitually to the African ports. Coming back rich from Africa, this figure of darkness has often led its crew of shadows into port at the Brandywine mouth, passing modestly amongst the whalers and wheat-shallops, dim as the Flying Dutchman and mum as Friends' meeting. It is possible that from some visit of his arose the legend that Blackbeard, the terrible pirate, who always hid his booty on the margins of streams, had used the Brandywine for this purpose. At any rate, some clairvoyants, in their dreams, saw in 1812 the glittering pots of Blackbeard's gold lying beneath the rocks of Harvey's waste-land, next to Vincent Gilpin's mill. They paid forty thousand dollars for a small tract, and searched[Pg 514] and found nothing; but Job Harvey hugged his purchase money.

Latrobe the architect lived here in the first quarter of the century, midway between Philadelphia (where he was building waterworks and banks) and Washington (where he was seating a young nation in legislative halls worthy of its greatness); using Wilmington meanwhile as a pleasant retirement, where he could wear his thinking-cap, educate his beautiful young daughter, and mix with the French and other cultured society of the place. Here, too, about fifty years ago, a pretty French girl used to play and eat peaches, maintained by funds mysteriously supplied from Louisiana, and ignorant of all connections except a peculating guardian. It was little Myra Clark (now Mrs. Gaines), who woke up one day to find herself the heroine of the greatest of modern lawsuits, and the credited possessor of a large part of New Orleans—the same who has recently gained a million, while she expects to gain a million more, and to be richer than Lady Burdett-Coutts.

Thus has the pretty city ever played its part as a storing-house where things and people and ideas might be set by to ripen. It is not wonderful that it now and then found itself, quite unintentionally, a museum, where the far-brought rarities were living souls. In a heavenly climate, just where the winged songsters of the South held tryst with those of the North, and where the plants of both latitudes embowered the gardens together, Nature arranged a new garden wherein were brought together almost all the races that had diverged from Babel.

The antiquities we have been examining, however, yield in age to the venerable walls which were built to shelter a worship no longer promulgated among us. The Swedes' churches of Philadelphia and Wilmington are among the oldest civilized fabrics to be found in this new country of ours. That of Wilmington was built in 1698, and that at Wicaco in Philadelphia in 1700. Rudman, a missionary from Sweden, preached the first sermon to the Wilmingtonians in May, 1699; and after him a succession of Swedish apostles arrived, trembling at their own courage, and feeling as our preachers would do if assigned to posts in Nova Zembla or Patagonia. The salary offered was a hundred rixdollars, with house and glebe, and the creed was the Lutheran doctrines according to "the Augsburg Confession of Faith, free from all human superstition and tradition." Dutch ministers alternated peaceably with the Swedish ones, who bore such Latinized names as Torkillus, Lokenius, Fabricius, Hesselius, Acrelius. The last wrote in his own language an excellent history of the Swedish settlements on the Delaware, only a part of which has been rendered into English by the New York Historical Society. William Penn proved his tolerance by giving the little church a folio Bible and[Pg 515] a shelf of pious books, together with a bill of fifty pounds sterling. The building was planted half a mile away from the then city, in the village of Christinaham. Its site was on the banks of the Christine, and its congregation, in the comparative absence of roads, came in boats or sleighs, according to the season. The church was well built of hard gray stone, with fir pews and a cedar roof: iron letters fixed in the walls spelled out such holy mottoes as "Lux L. I. Tenebr. oriens ex Alto," and "Si de. pro Nobis Quis contra Nos," and commemorated side by side the names of William III., king of England, William Penn, proprietary, and Charles XI. of Sweden. Swedish services were continued up to about the epoch of the Revolution, when, the language being no longer intelligible in the colony, they were merged into English ones: the last Swedish commissary, Girelius, returned by order of the archbishop in 1786, and the intercourse between the American Swedish churches and the ecclesiastical see in the fatherland ceased for ever. The oldest headstone in the churchyard is that of William Vandevere, who died in 1719. Service was long celebrated by means of the chalice and plate sent over by the Swedish copper-miners to Biorch, the first missionary at Cranehook, and the Bible given[Pg 516] by Queen Anne in 1712. The sexes sat separately. In our grandfathers' day the old sanctuary used to be dressed for Christmas by the sexton, Peter Davis: he was a Hessian deserter, with a powder-marked face and murderous habits toward the English language. Descending from their sledges and jumpers, the congregation would crowd toward the bed of coals raked out in the middle of the brick floor from the old cannon stove: to do this they must brush by the cedars which "Old Powderproof" had covered with flour, in imitation of snow; and then Dutch Peter, as they complimented him on his efforts, would whisper the astonishing invocation, "God be tankful for all dish plessins and tings!"

Modern improvement has a particular spite against the landmarks of antiquity. The railroad to Baltimore slices off a part of the Swedish graveyard—an institution much more ancient than the church which stands on it. And the rock by old Fort Christina, upon which Governor Stuyvesant—Irving's Stuyvesant—stood on his silver leg and took the surrender of the Swedish governor-general, is now quarried out and reconstructed into Delaware Breakwater.

Doubtless we dwell too fondly on the old memories, but it appears that the souvenirs of this region are somewhat remarkable for their contrast of nationalities. Perhaps the colonization of other spots would yield better romances than any we have to offer; yet we cannot help feeling that a better pen than ours would find brilliant matter for literary effects in the paradise revealed to good Elizabeth Shipley by her dream-guide.

Delawarean Wilmington is perhaps hardly known to the general public except through two of its products. Everybody buys Wilmington matches, and everybody knows that Du Pont's powder is made in the vicinity. Ignoring the foundries and shipyards, the popular imagination recognizes but these two commodities—the powder which could[Pg 517] blow up the obstructions to all the American harbors, and the match which could touch off the train. A million dollars' worth of gunpowder and three hundred thousand dollars' worth of matches are the annual product.

Eleuthère Irenée Du Pont, a French gentleman of honorable family, appeared in Wilmington in 1802. The town had at that time hardly three thousand inhabitants. He amazed all the quidnuncs by buying, for fifty thousand dollars, Rumford Dawes' old tract of rocks on the Brandywine, which everybody knew was perfectly useless. The stranger was pitied as he began to blast away the stone. Out of a single rock, separated into fragments, he built a cottage: it was a lonely spot, and the snakes from the fissures were in the habit of sharing the contents of his well-bucket. Such was the beginning of the Eleuthère Powder-works. M. Du Pont, who died some forty years ago, was much beloved for his benevolence and probity. In 1825, La Fayette, during his celebrated visit of reminiscence, was the guest of the brave old Frenchman for several days, during which he examined the battle-ground of Brandywine. He here received the ball with which he got his wound in that battle, from the hands of Bell McClosky, a kind of camp-follower and nurse, who had extracted the bullet with her[Pg 518] scissors and preserved it. The general wrote in the album of Mademoiselle Du Pont the following graceful sentiment:

"La Fayette.
"July 25, 1825."

While on a Revolutionary topic we may mention that among a great many relics of '76 preserved in the town is the sword of General Wayne—"Mad Anthony"—a straight, light blade in leather scabbard, possessed by Mr. W. H. Naff.

The citizens of this pleasant town have ever been orderly and pious, just as they have ever been loyal. Their religious institutions have grown and flourished. Godfearing and unspeculative, they have attached themselves to such creeds as appealed most powerfully to the heart with the least possible admixture of form. "The words Fear God" says Joubert, "have made many men pious: proofs of the existence of God have made many men atheists." Since the day when Whitefield poured out his eloquence among the Brandywine valleys and touched the hearts of the French exiles, Methodism, with its almost entire absence of dogma, has had great success in the community. This success is now indicated by a rich congregation, and a church-building that would be called noble in any city. Grace Church, on Ninth and West streets, is a large Gothic temple, seating nearly eight hundred persons—warmed, frescoed and heavily carpeted inside, and walled externally with brownstone mixed with the delicate pea-green serpentine of Chadd's Ford. The architect was a native Wilmingtonian—Thomas Dixon—now of Baltimore. The windows, including a very brilliant oriel, are finely stained: the font is a delicate piece of carving, the organ is grand, and the accommodations for Sunday-schools and lectures are of singular perfection. Few shrines in this country show better the modern movement of Methodism toward luxury and elegance, as compared with the repellant humiliations of Wesley's day.[Pg 519]

It is to be hoped that this advance in attractiveness does not indicate any lapse in the more solid qualities of spiritual earnestness. "Whenever this altar," well said Bishop Simpson in dedicating the building on the centenary anniversary of the rise of Methodism—"whenever this altar shall be too fine for the poorest penitent sinner to kneel here, the Spirit of God will depart, and that of Ichabod will come in."

We have indicated the Swedish Lutheran missionaries exhorting under the roof of their antique church in a language which their congregations were beginning to forget, and afterward in a broken English hardly more intelligible. Their place is largely taken now by predicators of the faith of John Knox, with a plentiful following of pious believers. Among the family of Presbyterian kirks in Wilmington the youngest is a large brick edifice built in 1871, for sixty-one thousand dollars, on Eighth and Washington streets, able to seat nearly a thousand persons, most comfortably and invitingly furnished, and supplied with lecture-, infant- and Sunday-school-rooms, together with a huge kitchen, suggesting the agapæ or love-feasts of the primitive Christians. Meantime, Anglicanism does not lack supporters. The descendants of Monsieur Du Pont, cultured and influential, have done much to advance the creed, and about fifteen years ago Mr. Alexis I. Du Pont, pulling down a low tavern in the suburbs, prepared to erect a church upon the site, to be built mainly through his own liberality. Unhappily, Mr. Du Pont died from the effects of an explosion at the powder-works ten weeks after the laying of the corner-stone; but the building was soon completed through the pious munificence of his widow, and the Bible of St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church now rests on its lectern upon the site of the old liquor-bar, and the gambling-den of former days is replaced by its pews. The rector is Mr. T. Gardiner Littell, a man of eminent goodness and intelligence. St. John's has a beautiful open roof, stained windows and a fine organ: it can offer seats to seven hundred worshipers.

These few specimen churches—and especially the last, which blots out a grogshop—are good instances, with the large congregations they accommodate, of the way in which a sane, flourishing manufacturing community provides for the spiritual needs of its members. The tone and moral well-being which Boz found, or thought he found, among the operatives at Lowell are largely realized here. But our picture of Wilmington as a hive of industry is not yet complete, and before we enter upon the highly-interesting[Pg 520] problem of its dealings with its working family, we should enter a few more of its sample manufactories.

Take car-building, for an example, in which the reputation of this town is known to the initiated of all the States and many foreign countries. Travelers are at this moment spinning in Wilmington-made railway-carriages over the extremest parts of North and South America, admiring, through Wilmington-made windows, every possible variety of winter and tropical scenery, on which they comment in English, German, French, Spanish and all civilized languages. Such a migratory product as a rail-car is an active messenger of fame for the place of its fabrication. We examine, as a fair type, the Jackson and Sharp Company's works, claimed to be the largest in the New World, and only exceeded by a few British and Continental establishments. The buildings have frontage upon the Brandywine and Christine streams, as well as on the principal railroad. Here are a congeries of two-story buildings, which are together fifteen hundred feet in length by a width of seventy feet. Five miles of heating-pipes warm the rooms for a thousand workmen. There is something logical and consecutive in the arrangement here, which makes it the best spot on the face of the earth for an enthusiast who should wish to demonstrate, what all loyal Americans believe in, the vast superiority of our form of railway-carriage. The cars proceed, in perfectly regular order, from raw material to completion with the progressive march of a quadratic equation in algebra. They seem to be arranged to demonstrate a theory. First the visitor sees lumber in stock, a million feet of it; then, across one end of a long room, the mere sketch or transparent diagram of a car; then, a car broadly filled in; and so on, up to the last glorious result, upholstered with velvet and smelling of varnish. The cars are on rails, upon which they move, side on, as if by a principle of growth, the undeveloped ones perpetually pushing up their more forward predecessors, until the last perfect carriage is ejected from the fifteen-hundredth foot of the building's length. Each one, gathering material and ornament as it rolls steadily along in its crablike side-fashion, becomes at last a vehicle of perfect luxury; and then, with one final plunge into the open air, it leaves its diversely-destined neighbors, and changes for ever its sidelong motion for the forward roll which will[Pg 521] carry it through a long existence. A very large proportion of this company's work is on "palace" cars of the Pullman type, those extravagances of luxury of which Europe is just now applying to Wilmington to learn the lesson. Narrow-gauge cars for the West, in supplying which they are the pioneers, gaudy cars for South America, and sturdy, solid ones for Canada, are all gently riding forward, side to side, in this inexorable chain of destiny, and diverging at the front door on their widely-different errands. Besides the manufacture of cars, the company builds every sort of coasters and steamers. The class of workmen it employs is often of a particularly high grade. German painters quote Kotzebue and sing the songs of Uhland as they weave their graceful harmonies of line and color over the panels; and the sculptors who carve antique heads over the doorways of palace cars make the place merry with studio jokes from the Berlin Academy. It is evident that a community of artists like this, furnishing the æsthetic department to an immense manufactory, will also elevate the tone of the industrial society outside, if they can but be kept free from vice and supplied with means of culture; more of which anon. Meantime, as a kind of standard of what the manufacturers themselves arrive at in prosecuting the amenities of life, we will quote the fine residence of Mr. Job Jackson, a magnate of the company.

The wheel on which the car is mounted is of course another specialty, turned off in another manufactory. We leave the rooms where the work goes on with easy smoothness like a demonstration in a lecture-hall, and come to raging, roaring, deafening furnaces and hammers. The hollow-chested artists give way to cyclops. Here we are in the Lobdell Car-wheel Company's premises. Negligently leaning up against each other, like wafers in the tray of an ink-stand, are wheels that will presently whiz over the landscapes of Russia, of Mexico, of England; wheels that will behave rashly and heat their axles; wheels that will lie turned up in the air at the bottoms of viaducts; and wheels that in various ways will see astonishing adventures, because in railway-transit there are telescopings and wheels within wheels. The English and the foreign trade of the Lobdell Company is due to its manufacture of wheels in the material or process lately known as chilled iron. This manufacture has not yet penetrated the British intellect. Take the foreman of an English car-manufactory, tell him that you will supply him a wheel about as durable as a wheel with a steel tire at less than half the cost, and he will laugh at you for an impudent idiot. But they use our wheels. The "chilling" of iron, when poured into a mould partly iron-faced, is very singular: as the melted metal hardens against the metallic boundary, its granulation changes to a certain depth, and[Pg 522] the outside becomes excessively strong: species of crystals seem to form, presenting their ends to the surface, and meeting the wear and tear there to be experienced. The use of this fact secures, in many manufactures, a hardness approaching that of steel, without increase of cost. This company employs the process both for car-wheels and for the large cylinders (or "rolls") used in paper-mills. It is not to be supposed that the work is all rude and rough, like ordinary iron casting. The polishing of the large cylinders almost suggests diamond-cutting, it is so fine. So true is the finish that a pair of these broad rolls, perhaps five feet across, may be approached so near each other that the light showing between them is decomposed: a blade of blue or violet light, inexpressibly thin and of the width of the cylinders, passes through the entire distance. As for the "chilling" of iron, it was applied first to wheels in Baltimore, in 1833, by Mr. Ross Winans; and then, during the same year, Mr. Bonney and his nephew, George G. Lobdell, established the business we see, which has gradually grown to its present capacity of three hundred wheels per day.

The use of such cylinders as we have just seen under the difficult process of polishing is only understood when we explore some large paper-mill, where they take the place of the old-fashioned frame of wire gauze which produced the hand-made paper. We may select the splendid works of Messrs. Jessup & Moore on the Brandywine. Our welcome is sure to be a cordial one, for among the largest customers of the firm are the publishers of Lippincott's Magazine. The process of paper-making by the Fourdrinier machine was so fully explained in our Number for last November that it is useless now to repeat the details. But it would never do to leave the Brandywine without a glance at least at one of its principal manufactures. The mill of Jessup & Moore uses the strength of the torrent as an auxiliary to its steam-power of seven hundred and fifty horses. The machinery is made by Pusey, Jones & Co., whose iron ships and machine-shops we have already examined: the rolls of admirable accuracy are from the shops of J. Morton Poole & Co. The paper-making process—the vast revolving boiler of twelve feet by twenty-six; the countless sacks of filthy rags, that have clothed peasants of the Black Forest, beggars on the steps of St. Peter's and Egyptian fellahs; their reduction to purity, and hardening from pulp to snowy continuities of endless, marginless paper,—all this is of rare interest in the watching, but has been told until the public is satiated. We leave the banks of the Brandywine and the wharves of Christine, and try to lose ourselves in the thickly-built heart of the city.

Even here the implacable business spirit exhibits itself at every turn. In place of the placid millers and quaint refugees of the last century at their[Pg 523] doors, we see the shops, the storehouses of manufacturers' supplies, the hotel and the theatre; and, pervading all, the vast throng of artisans, providing such problems of local government and education as the last century never dreamed of.

In almost all the industries of the city you are struck by the ancestral aspect of the trades, the continuance of a business from father to son, or the gradual change of firms by the absorption of partners. Boughman, Thomas & Co., established in a handsome, modern-looking bookstore, represent a business as old as 1793, uninterrupted since the time when the founder, James Wilson, hung the sign of Shakespeare at his door. The young girl of the period, who goes to their place from one of the model seminaries of which Wilmington is so full to buy a little paper for confidential notes or perhaps a delicate valentine, sees the old brown advertisement framed against the wall, and behind it, in sign-painting of her great-grandfather's time, the head of him who wrote Romeo and Juliet.

While in this literary vein we would say a word of the newspapers. These, the true finger-posts of thought in a community, are apt in manufacturing cities to be conservative and timid, as trade is timid. The very special attitude of Wilmington, however—a Yankee town in perpetual protest with a Bourbon State—has inspired its press with peculiar political energy. No more vehement Republican organ can be found in the land, for instance, than the Wilmington Commercial: it is not in its columns that you will see ingenious defences of the whipping-post at Newcastle or of the crushing taxes levied at Dover, whereby a lazy State feeds greedily upon a hard-working metropolis. The Commercial (Jenkins & Atkinson) is a staunch Administration sheet, sound on the subject of industrial protection, and highly appreciated by the manufacturers. Founded in 1866, it was, we believe, the sole[Pg 524] daily until eighteen months ago, when some of the sober-sided weeklies began to understand that they must bestir themselves and put forth a diurnal appearance. The Gazette (C. P. Johnson), a paper nearly one hundred years old, now appears daily, and expresses the opinions of the State Assembly, where the Senate has but a single Republican member, and the House of Representatives stands fourteen Democrats to seven Republicans. Here the conservative thought of Kent and Sussex counties is kneaded up into the requisite coherency and eloquence. Every Evening (Croasdale & Cameron), a smart paper without political bias, flies around the city as the shadows begin to lengthen, selling at one cent a sheet, and liked by everybody.

To be candid, however, we do not suspect that this unique old city thinks through its newspapers. The circumstances here are so peculiar, the neighborhood so close, activity so concentrated, and the circumjacent neighborhood so little congenial, that an order of things has been established unusual in modern times. Mind acts on mind by personal contact; the strong men meet and support each other; the Board of Trade assembles daily in beautiful rooms, and discusses every interest as quickly as it arises. It is like the order of things of old, ere the press and telegraph undertook to express our views before we had formed them ourselves. We are reminded of the guilds of labor in ancient Flanders or the fondachi of Venice. The State of Delaware, meanwhile, comes up and looks in at the windows, only half satisfied with the rapid fortunes making by the civic trades. What the Delaware yeomen know is, that they have broad acres of sunny land, on which they are perpetually[Pg 525] wanting advances of money. They therefore instruct their legislators to fix a legal rate of interest, and to fix it low. The abuse which naturally follows on this blind policy is, that the wealth created by the splendid industries of Wilmington is constantly leaving the State to seek investment where usury is not kept down by old-fashioned legislation. Richard Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy, saw a somewhat similar state of things among the unproductive and ale-tippling scholars with whom he lived at Oxford, but he was keen enough to feel an envy of the livelier marts of commerce. "How many goodly cities could I reckon up," says Burton, "that thrive wholly by trade, where thousands of inhabitants live singular well by their fingers' ends! As Florence in Italy by making cloth of gold; great Milan by silk and all curious works; Arras in Artois by those fair hangings; many cities in Spain, many in France, Germany, have none other maintenance, especially those within the land.... In most of our cities" (continues the mortified Englishman), "some few excepted, we live wholly by tippling-inns and ale-houses."

The average Delawarean of 1873 is the average Oxford gossip of 1620, with the scholarship left out. But he has the unfortunate advantage for mischief that he is in a position to enact laws over the producers of "all curious works." These anomalies, however, must soon pass away with the march of the age, leaving Wilmington less individual perhaps, but more free.

How deftly, by the by, Burton picks up the distinction between an inland city, living by handicraft, and a port city, handling weighty materials and feeding freely on commerce! His livers by their finger-ends are especially "those within the land." Just so the great capital of France, arbitrarily concentred amongst her provinces, and deprived of[Pg 526] a port, can only thrive by her exceptional genius in fine and easily-moved articles de Paris. The site now under our consideration, however, means to have no such one-sided success. If her horoscope be not cast amiss, this American Glasgow will both make whatever human ingenuity can make, and she will also distribute. One of the first things she intends to do is to tap the stream of food, fuel and lumber destined for the South, and now laid up in the winter in Philadelphia by the closing of the Delaware, and send it to the Southern consumer by her cheap water-transport. Connected with this enterprise will be the multiplication of her steam colliers, ultimately scattering the crop of breadstuffs to the South Atlantic and Gulf States (if not the Eastern), and coming home with ballast of the varied iron ores those States abound in. When Delaware Bay begins to be whitened with the sails of returning coal-vessels, or lashed with the wheels of steam carriers, bringing in the oxides and magnetite ores of North Carolina and the hematite and other varieties of the extreme South, to mix with the rail-brought ores of interior localities, then Wilmington proposes to be the chosen centre of industry in cast iron. This production, it is now well understood, is no longer carried on most advantageously in the neighborhood of any one great natural deposit of ore. The important thing is to be at a meeting of all varieties of the metal: chemistry then selects the proportions for mixture, and the best stock is produced with scarcely any greater expense than the lowest grade. The situation at the head of Delaware Bay is one where every choice of the ores can be easily swept together by rail or water. It also controls fuel, by both means of carriage, from either of the great anthracite regions—a matter of special importance in this time of "strikes," as the operatives of both districts rarely throw up work at the same time. Wilmington[Pg 527] thus proposes to obtain its iron at three dollars per ton less than Pittsburg.

To properly digest these advantages, the city needs a large furnace, centrally located, to work for all the foundries and forges of the place. This construction is now being earnestly advocated, and will doubtless soon take form.

Thus we see the northernmost of the slave-State cities leaping up to catch first the advantages of perfect commercial union under the new regime. Affiliated with the South, inspired by the North, we should watch her as a standard and a type.

Meantime, her labor problem, as a city crammed with proletarians, she meets with consummate tranquillity. The paternal relations between the good old Brandywine millers and their journeymen are continued through the immense operations of the present day. A singular harmony has thus far subsisted between employers and employed: the prosperity and calm which travelers used to praise among the operatives of New England mills are perhaps now best seen here. To this result both Nature and man contribute. The country round about is so bounteous, is such a garden, that the pay of the workman represents a far higher grade of social life than anywhere else in manufacturing regions. Rents so far are low, but a beneficent system is in active operation amongst the working-classes which helps a man to own his own house, and avoid the teasing periodical drain of rent.

This is the associative system, here in faultless operation, by which the fragments of a large piece of ground are paid for by degrees and cleared of all incumbrance in eight or nine years by the profit on the contributed moneys. This plan is assisted by the best men in the town, who participate in the associations, receive themselves a reasonable profit, and supply the credit and advantages[Pg 528] necessary for the safety of wholesale enterprises. They have thus far worked with their workmen for the latter's profit, with perfect honor and without a stain of scandal. The great advantage, after all, is to themselves; for a workman owning his own home, accumulating comforts and a family, is indissolubly tied to the city and its peaceful order.

Various plans for the improvement of the workmen are afoot, including a "Holly-Tree Inn" for the supply of harmless refreshment and evening relaxation, the ground for which is bought and a stock-company forming. A public park, for which a beautiful stretch of the Brandywine, on Adams street and north of Levering Avenue, is recommended, is already engaging the attention of the citizens as a necessary provision. A "fountain society" is in active operation, offering cool, wholesome drink to the thirsty workman and the tired beast: the principal of its fountain-structures forms a memorial monument to a young gentleman who had distinguished himself by his liberality in preparing scientific lectures for the free entertainment of the working public. Shut up in the public hall among the materials of his lecture, he was found dead from the result of some solitary experiment—slain by his own kindness. A rich monument to the soldiers and sailors slain in the civil war was unveiled in 1871: it is formed of a pillar from the old United States Bank, surmounted by an eagle cast from captured cannon.

But the best thing a manufacturing town can do for her workman is to educate his children. During the old aristocratic days of Wilmington she was satisfied with the reputation of her private tutors and of her young ladies' seminaries, where "sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair" cultivated cheeks like the surrounding peaches, while they learned Shakespeare, musical glasses and the use of the globes. It was not until 1852 that the Delaware Legislature chartered a board of education for the town. In these twenty years fifteen schools have been put up, with five thousand attenders. Schoolhouse No. 1, shown in the illustration, accommodates four hundred and thirty-six pupils, and furnishes an education, in the words of the late Bishop Potter, "good enough for the richest and cheap enough for the poorest."

The choice streets of the city are filling up with tasteful residences. As a specimen we present the house of Colonel McComb, an old favorite of Wilmington, where his familiar appellation of "Harry McComb" is as often uttered day by day as it was at Washington during the exposure by its owner of Congressional honesty and piety—or magpiety.

A hotel of the first class has been erected, and baptized with the commemorative name of the Clayton House. It has one hundred and five chambers and every improvement. A very characteristic fact, showing the spirit of integrity and goodness which here travels hand in hand with modern enterprise, is that the owners sacrificed full three-quarters of the rent they could have obtained, in order to keep it pledged as a temperance house. Another elegant building has been put up by the Masonic fraternity for their own purposes and those of the Board of Trade, etc., including a handsome opera-house on the ground floor. The auditorium is praised for its acoustic properties by Parepa-Rosa, Wallack, Davenport and other performers, seats about fifteen hundred, and is furnished with the inevitable drop-curtain by Russell Smith. Faced with iron painted white, and very rich in mouldings and ornaments, the building presents as cheery a front to enter as any similar place of attraction known to the American tourist. The Masonic rooms above, and those of the Board of Trade, Historical Society, etc., are provided with every beauty and comfort.

Here are the indications of a prospering, laboring, thinking, virtuous city of the New World. We have tried to sketch it both as a city with a past and a city with a future. Could we have selected one for illustration that would be a better or sharper concentration of all that is good in American life?[Pg 529]

MARIE FAMETTE AND HER LOVERS.

Marie Famette is the prettiest girl in the market-place of Aubette. Her eyes are of such a sweet, soft blue, deeply shaded by long black lashes: her eyebrows are not black, but they are of a much darker tint than her hair, which (so much of it as can be seen under her full white cap-border) is a golden yellow. But it is not her eyes and her hair that make Marie so attractive: she has charmed young and old alike ever since she came, a toddling damsel of two years, and took her place beside her mother in the market-place of Aubette.

Madame Famette's was the best fruit-stall of the market. No one else could show such baskets of peaches and hampers of pears; and as to the citrouilles and potirons, their reputation was so established that by ten o'clock there was little to be seen of them among the glowing vegetables which decked the stall. Such radishes were not to be seen elsewhere—white and purple, as thick as carrots; and the carrots themselves like lumps of red gold, lying nestling beneath their feathered tops or setting off the creamy whiteness of the cauliflowers ranged in a formal row in front of them.

But Marie had always eclipsed all other beauty in the stall, and now that she had grown too big to be patted on the cheek and kissed by grown-up admirers, she had a host of victims in the sturdy young countrymen who came in to Aubette—either to bring mothers and sisters with their produce or to purchase for themselves.

Madame Famette has weak health, and lately Marie comes often to the market by herself, and is able to flirt to her heart's content, unchecked by her mother's presence. She is so bright, so arch, so ready with a sparkling answer, that it is no wonder her stall is always thronged and that her fruit and her vegetables disappear so rapidly.

There is an extra buzz in the market to-day. It is September, the epoch of the Mascaret, for the dreaded flood-tide seldom visits the Seine more than twice a year, and always draws dwellers in the neighboring towns to see its autumn fury. There is an influx of strange faces in the little place beneath the richly-sculptured spire of Notre Dame—the cathedral of Aubette, as strangers call it, although it is only the parish church of the quaint little town—and a certain extra excitement is communicated to the settlers under the canvas-covered booths and to the humbler sellers of wares in baskets. Mademoiselle Lesage, a short, plump young woman dressed in black, flits in and out of the chattering crowd more busily than usual. Mademoiselle holds herself of a rank above the country-folk who bring in their poultry and garden produce to Aubette. In token of this she wears a round black mushroom-shaped hat, and a holland apron with two deep pockets in virtue of her office; for Mademoiselle Lesage has an enterprising spirit. She found herself at thirty years old left alone in the world with an ugly face and with an insufficient "dot." Mademoiselle Lesage is ambitious: she does not care to marry a very poor man, and she has managed to give the town council of Aubette such security that it allows her to farm the market yearly for some hundreds of francs. Watch her collecting her dues. She goes rapidly from stall to stall, jingling her pockets, laughing and chatting with the farmers' wives, all the time keeping a hawk's eye on the basket-carriers, not one of whom may presume to sell so much as an onion without the weekly toll of one sou. She darts in and out among them, and her pockets swell out in front as if they were stuffed with apples.

She has left Marie Famette's stall till the last. She crosses over to it now as quickly as she can go, but there is no[Pg 530] means of darting in and out here, as there was just now among the basket-women. Old Floris Marceau has covered a good-sized space with his heap of green and yellow melons, and he stands behind these marchandéing, gesticulating, brandishing the knife with which he slices his citrouilles and inveighing against the folly of his customers. "Will mam'selle believe," he says, addressing her as she approaches, and wiping his knife on his often-patched blouse, "they come to buy fruit of a respectable vegetable-seller and they don't know the price of a melon? Ten sous for a cantaloupe like that!" His blue eyes gleamed furiously under his frowning gray eyebrows. "Ten sous! I told them to be off and buy chickens." He broke into a laugh, and pointed to a tall, bent old gentleman, who seemed covered with confusion at this public rebuke, and sidled his way out of the throng without attempting an answer.

"Buy a turkey, m'sieur?" A smiling, dark-eyed woman in a close-setting white cap went on with the joke and pointed to her basket, but the old gentleman had had enough: he hurried away with a rueful glance at the basket in which, divided only by the handle, sat two fat turkey poults and two chickens. One of the turkeys stirred and got a wing free, but it was remorselessly tucked in again and reduced to passive endurance, with "Keep quiet then, ne soyez pas bête."

Mademoiselle Lesage approaches Marie's stall at a leisurely pace: she wishes to see her ground before she speaks. By the extra sweetness of her smile one might suppose that mademoiselle loved the gay little beauty: "Bonjour, Marie. Madame Famette trusts you alone again, I see?"

Marie does exactly that which Mademoiselle Lesage intended to make her do: she starts violently and she looks annoyed.

Elise Lesage glances quickly from Marie to the two young men who stand beside her. One of these, tall, well-dressed, with a Jewish face, and a sparkling pin in his brilliant blue scarf, is Alphonse Poiseau, the son of Monsieur Poiseau of the large clockmaker's and jeweler's shop at the corner of the place next the church: the other is Nicolas Marais, a handsome, gypsy-looking fellow with no decided occupation. He is sometimes at work on his uncle's farm at Vatteville, and when he falls out with his uncle and tires of Vatteville he comes across the Seine and gets employed by Léon Roussel, the chief timber-merchant of Aubette.

People say that old Marais, the miser of Vatteville, means to make Nicolas his heir; but Nicolas takes no pains to please the old man: he goes here and there at his pleasure, a favorite wherever he shows his handsome dark eyes and his saucy smile. The men like him as much as the women do, he has such a ready, amusing tongue, and he never says a spiteful word; so that more than one of the keen, observant poultry-sellers standing beside their baskets near Marie's stall have commented on the scowl with which for full five minutes Léon Roussel has regarded Nicolas. Léon Roussel is a middle-sized, in no way remarkable-looking person, with honest brown eyes and a square, sensible face. His father, the wealthy timber-merchant on the Yvetôt road, died when he was a boy, and Léon is one of the most prosperous citizens of Aubette, and well thought of by all. Léon is ostensibly in consultation with Monsieur Houlard, tailor and town councillor, but as he stands at the worthy's shop-door he is raised above the level of the place, and is exactly opposite the stall of Marie Famette.

"Nicolas is out of favor with Monsieur Roussel: he has worked badly in the lumber-yard," says La Mère Robillard.

"Chut! chut!" says her gossip, Madelaine Manget, and she gives at the same time a pat to a refractory chicken. "Nicolas looks too hard at Marie Famette. Ma foi! there are men in the manger as well as dogs. If Monsieur Léon wants Marie to be for his eyes only, why does he not ask for her and marry her, the proud simpleton?"

"Ah, but look you, Madelaine, Léon[Pg 531] is not proud: he never turns a poor man from his door without a morsel to quiet hunger, and he must be clever or his business would not prosper."

La Mère Manget shrugs her shoulders. "Will you then not buy turkeys at eleven francs the couple, ma belle dame?" she cries shrilly to a passer-by.

While Marie Famette recovers herself, Nicolas answers Mam'selle Lesage. "Pardon, Mam'selle Lesage, but Mam'selle Marie is not alone," he says, raising his hat with exquisite politeness—Alphonse Poiseau tries to follow suit, but his bow is stiff and pompous—"the whole market is her body-guard, and she permits Monsieur Poiseau and myself to act as sentinels." He throws an insinuating glance at Marie, which deepens the gloom on Léon Roussel's face.

Elise Lesage has taken in the whole situation, and she knows exactly where to look for the timber-merchant. An uneasy consciousness makes Marie follow her glance: she looks red and confused when she sees Léon's stern, disapproving face. His eyes are fixed on her as she looks across, but he withdraws them instantly and turns to Monsieur Houlard.

Marie bites her pretty red under-lip: she can hardly keep from crying: "If we were alone and he scolded me, I would not mind; but he has no right to frown at me before the whole town. It is enough to compromise me. It will be said presently that I am a bold girl, while I only amuse myself, and never move a step from my stall to speak to any one. It is too bad!"

She gulps down a lump in her throat, and gives Nicolas Marais a smile that makes the clockmaker long to knock his rival's head against the gray buttress of the old church.

"Sentinels!" Elise Lesage laughs. "Is Marie afraid, then, that some one will steal her?"

"Marie is afraid of nothing, Mademoiselle Lesage." The little beauty is glad to be able to vent her vexation on some one. "What right has she to call me Marie?" she says to Nicolas in a very audible under-tone.

Mademoiselle's black eyes close till they look like lines: Marie does not see her face, but Nicolas Marais shivers, he hardly knows why.

A restraint has come over the merry trio, and Nicolas abhors restraint. "Tiens!" he says carelessly, "there is a fresh bevy of basket-women, Mam'selle Lesage."

Elise darts off like a greyhound, and Marie forgets her vexation and laughs out merrily at Nicolas's ruse: "She is such a busybody!" The girl glances across to see what has become of Léon: he is talking to Mademoiselle Lesage.

Alphonse Poiseau has kept silence, but he has observed. "I should not like to offend mam'selle," he says, "her eyes are so like a snake's."

II.

Market has come and gone again. Marie Famette was not happy as she went home last Saturday, but to-day her heart aches sorely as she goes along the dusty road to St. Gertrude. Last Saturday was the first market-day this year that Léon Roussel has not helped her into her cart and taken a friendly leave of her; but he disappeared before market was over, and to-day he was not there at all.

"And he might have walked home with me!" Tears are in poor little Marie's eyes. Léon Roussel has seemed her own special property, and he has not been to her mother's house for a fortnight. "And if he had been at market to-day, he would have been content with me: poor Nicolas must be ill indeed to stay away from market. Ma foi! I have been dull alone. Elise Lesage was civil, for a wonder: I hope she will give old Marais's note safely to his nephew. I wonder why she goes to see Nicolas?"

As she says the word a strange foreboding seizes Marie: she cannot tell what causes it, but her old dislike to Elise rises up, mingled with a kind of fear. "I ought to have given Nicolas the note myself; and yet—"

The road is very long and very dusty to-day: it is never an interesting way[Pg 532] out of Aubette, except that being cut on the hillside it is raised high, the little river meandering through the osier meadows on the left, and also commands a fine view of the beautiful old church. But Marie does not turn back to look at the church: her heart is too heavy to take interest in anything out of herself. She has left the cart behind to bring out crockery and some new chairs which she has purchased for her mother, and she wishes she had stayed in Aubette till her cargo was packed. All at once a new thought comes, and her eyes brighten. A wood clothes the hilly side of the road, but on the left there is a steep descent into the valley, and the road is bordered either by scattered cottages or by an irregular hawthorn hedge. A little way on there is a gap in this hedge, and looking down there is a long steep flight of steps with wooden edges. At the foot stands a good-sized house divided now into several cottages. The walls are half-timbered with wood set crosswise in the plaster between two straight rows. Ladders, iron hoops and a bird-cage hang against the wall, and over the door is a wooden shelf with scarlet geraniums. There is a desolate garden divided into three by a criss-cross fence and a hedge, and over the last a huge orange citrouille has clambered and lies perched on the top.

Marie knows that Nicolas Marais sometimes lodges in one of the cottages, but she knows too that the property belongs to Léon Roussel, and that he lives close by. A blush comes to the girl's cheeks: she may see Léon there. She stops and looks down: Elise Lesage is coming out of the doorway, but she is talking over her shoulder to some one behind her. Marie sees her put her fingers into one of the brown holland pockets, pull out a note and give it to her companion.

Marie draws a deep breath: "How I wronged her! Ever since I gave her that note I have felt anxious and troubled. She seems so spiteful to me that I feared she might somehow get me into trouble with it, and yet I don't know how."

There were footsteps coming along the road, but Marie did not look round: in the quick revulsion of feeling toward Elise she was eager to make atonement. She leaned on the hand-rail that went down the steps, waiting for Mademoiselle Lesage: if she had listened she would have noticed that the footsteps had come nearer and had suddenly ceased.

Nicolas Marais came forward out of the cottage, and then Elise looked up and saw Marie. She smiled and nodded. "I am coming," she called up in her rasping voice; and she did seem in high haste to get to Marie Famette, but Marie saw that she looked beyond her at some one or something else. The girl looked over her shoulder, and there was Léon Roussel, but he did not care to look at her. His eyes were fixed sternly on Nicolas Marais, but Nicolas did not seem to care for his employer's anger: he was smiling rapturously up at Marie, and as she now looked at him he first kissed his hand and then put the note to his lips and kissed it twice.

Marie grew crimson. Elise, who had just reached the top of the steps, laughed, and Léon Roussel stood an instant pale and defiant, and then turned back toward Aubette.

"Stay, stay, Monsieur Léon!" Elise darted after him; then, stopping suddenly, she nodded back at Marie: "Stop and talk to Nicolas, mon enfant: I will make it all right for you with Monsieur Roussel;" and she hurried on in pursuit.

But Marie was too angry with Nicolas to give him even a moment: "How dare he kiss his hand to me? And oh, Léon will think that I wrote that note to him, and how can I ever tell him the truth? Will Elise Lesage tell him?"

She had just a faint hope; and then she reproached herself. Why should not Mademoiselle Lesage tell the truth? She was cross and spiteful, but then, poor thing! she was old and ugly. "And it may be," Marie thought, "that one is not half thankful enough for one's gifts, and that it is very irritating to be plain. It is Alphonse Poiseau who has made me think evil of Elise, and one should not cherish evil thoughts."

Marie went home happier and lighter-hearted:[Pg 533] that little glimpse of Léon had quieted the sore longing at her heart, and at first the joy of having seen him made her dwell less on his stern looks and his avoidance of herself.

She came to the broad grassed turning that leads off the main road to St. Gertrude. A saddled donkey was grazing on one side, and on the other an old woman sat on a stone post. She jumped up when she saw Marie. She had looked tall as she sat: she was as broad as she was long now she stood erect in her dark striped gown and black jacket, and white cap with its plain border and lappets pinned together over her forehead.

"Well, well, well!" She spoke in a short bustling voice—a voice that would have been cheering if it had been less restless. "Hast thou then seen Léon Roussel, Marie? Hast thou learned the reason of his absence?"

Marie's tender, sweet look vanished: she tossed her pretty head and pouted: "Léon was not at the market, but I saw him as I came home; only he was not close to me, so we did not speak."

Marie blushed, and her mother burst out into angry words: "Foolish, trifling child that thou art! thou lovest that black-eyed gypsy boy; and for him, the idle vagabond, thou hast flung away the best parti in Aubette. Ciel! what do I say? In Bolbec itself there is no one with better prospects than Léon Roussel." Madame Famette always failed in managing her daughter.

Marie smiled and kept down her indignation. "I hardly know that," she said: "old Marais will make Nicolas his heir, and there is no saying how rich a miser is." She crossed the road, caught the donkey by the bridle, and held him ready for her mother to mount.

Madame Famette went on grumbling, but Mouton the donkey soon drew her anger on himself; and by the time the three reached the triangle of gray, half-timbered cottages which surround the old church of St. Gertrude, the easy, sieve-like nature of the woman had recovered from its vexation.

"Holà, Jeanne, Jeanne! run there and take Mouton from Mam'selle Marie, who is tired with the market. Come, thou, mon cher, and tell me the news." Madame Famette rolled off her donkey, and then rolled on into the house.

III.

"I will go. Do not vex thyself, my child, and I will see our good doctor and bring thee back a tisane." The bustling woman, with her blue eyes and light eyelashes, bent down and kissed Marie's forehead, and then departed.

"A tisane!" The bright blue eyes were so dull and languid now, half closed by the heavy white eyelids. "I wonder if even Doctor Guéroult is wise enough to cure the heart when it aches like mine? Ah, Léon, I did not think you could be so hard, so cruel; and how could he know, how could he see into my heart, while I stood laughing so foolishly with Nicolas and Monsieur Poiseau? If Elise Lesage had not teased me about Léon, it might have been different, but I could not let her think I cared for him after what she said." She leaned back her head and cried bitterly.

Madame Famette was more serious than usual on her way to the market. Matters were getting tangled, she thought. Léon Roussel had begun to be a regular Sunday visitor at the cottage, and now three weeks and more had gone by and he had not come; and a gossip who had walked home from church with her overnight had told Madame Famette that Mam'selle Lesage was going to marry a Monsieur Roussel: whether it was Léon or a Monsieur Roussel of some other place than Aubette her gossip could not affirm; and in this uncertainty the mother's heart was troubled. She was very proud of Marie's beauty and graceful ways, and she had thought it a just tribute when the young timber-merchant had asked her permission to call at the cottage; and now, just when she had been expecting that his aunt, La Mère Thérèse, the superior of the Convent du Sacré Coeur in Aubette, would send for[Pg 534] her in order that the demand for her daughter's hand and the preliminaries of the marriage might be settled, had come first Léon Roussel's strange absence and the visits of Nicolas Marais, and now the gossip about Elise Lesage.

"I will know the right of it to-day," Madame Famette thinks, and she lashes out at Mouton in an unusual fashion.

The first customer at her stall is Madame Houlard, the wife of the tailor and town councillor. "How is Marie?" she says: "the market does not seem itself without Marie Famette."

Madame Famette smiles, but she sighs too: "My poor little girl is ill;" and then her eyes rove round the market, and fix on Mademoiselle Lesage bustling in and out among her clients. "Have you then heard that Elise Lesage is to be married?" she says in a low, cautious voice.

Madame Houlard's flat, good-tempered face grows troubled: "Ah yes, I have heard some talk; and listen to that noisy fellow;" then she points to Floris Marceau, who is gesticulating and vehement as usual.

She is surprised to find her arm tightly grasped by the large hand of the fruit-seller: "Madame Houlard, tell me the truth: who is to marry with Elise Lesage?"

Madame Houlard leads a very tranquil life: her husband is the most placid man in Aubette, and she has never had any children to disturb the calm of existence. She is ruffled and shocked by Madame Famette's vehemence. She bridles and releases her plump arm: "Ma foi, my friend! what will you? Gossip comes, and gossip goes. I believe all I hear—that is but convenable—but then, look you, I am quite as willing to believe in the contradiction which so frequently follows. One should never excite one's self about anything: be sure of this, my friend, it is bad for the nerves. What is salsify a bundle to-day?"

Madame Famette, as has been said, has a sieve-like nature with regard to the passing away of wrath, but still her anger is easily roused. "It would be simpler to tell me what you have heard," she says in a very snappish accent. "When I want a lecture I can get it from monsieur le curé."

Madame Houlard had felt unwilling to tell her news, but this aggravating sentence goaded it out of her mouth: "It is to Monsieur Roussel, the timber-merchant, that Elise Lesage is to be married: see, he is talking to her now." There is a slight tone of satisfaction in Madame Houlard's smooth voice, and yet in her heart she is sorry for her friend's disappointment. All the market-place of Aubette had given Léon Roussel to the charming Marie.

"Léon Roussel! Why, she is as old as he is—older; and, ma foi! how ugly! and her parents—no one knows where they came from; and she—she is nothing but a money-grubber."

The day was tedious to Madame Famette. She tried to speak to Léon, but he avoided her with a distant bow. There was not even Alphonse Poiseau to help her: only little Pierre Trotin came and carried her baskets to the donkey-cart. She called at the doctor's house, but she could not see him. Madame Famette's heart had not been so heavy since her husband died. "It is that serpent"—she wiped her eyes on a huge blue-and-yellow pocket handkerchief—"who has done it all; and my poor unsuspecting child has flirted with Nicolas, and made the way easy. Ciel! what do I know? It is possible that Marie loves Nicolas, and is willing to throw herself away on a vaurien with a pair of dark eyes; and the news will not grieve her as it has grieved me."

She met her servant Jeanne at the entrance of the road, and gave up the donkey-cart to her care. Then she went on sorrowfully and silently to find Marie. The door stood ajar, just as she had left it. She went in more quietly than usual, but Marie heard her. The girl sat just where her mother had left her: the loaf of bread lay untouched. It was plain that Marie had gone without breakfast. Her face was very pale, and her eyes fixed strainingly on her mother, but she did not speak.[Pg 535]

Madame Famette's vexation had made her cross, and Marie's pale face increased her trouble: "How naughty thou art then, Marie! I set thee a knife and a plate: thou hadst but to stretch out thy hand. Ciel! but the market tires!" She cut a slice of bread for her daughter, and then she seated herself.

"Mother"—Marie bent forward and shaded her eyes with her hand—"didst thou see Léon Roussel?"

Madame's shoulders went up to her ears in a heave of disgust: "Thou mayest as well know it, Marie: Léon Roussel is promised to Elise Lesage, and they were together in the market. See what thy folly has caused!"

But Marie scarcely heard her mother's reproaches. The blood flew up to her face, and then it left her paler than before. She bent lower—lower yet, until she overbalanced and fell like a crushed lily at her mother's feet.

IV.

"How is Marie Famette?" Monsieur Houlard the tailor asks of Monsieur Guéroult the doctor of Aubette, as he meets him hurrying through the Rue de la Boucherie.

"She is better, the poor child! but she must be careful this winter." Then, seeing Houlard look anxious, the good doctor says, "But she is so far better that I have discontinued my visits: I have given Marie leave to come to Aubette."

"That is good news," says Houlard as the doctor shoots past him, and the tailor tells the next person he meets that Marie Famette is as well as ever, and is coming to market as usual.

It is Léon Roussel to whom he tells this, and Monsieur Houlard is pained at the young man's want of interest.

"One would have thought," he says to his wife when he reaches his shop, "that Roussel was displeased with Marie for recovering her health."

"Perhaps he thinks she will make a fool of herself, now she is well again, by marrying Nicolas Marais: I hear they are lovers."

"It is a pity," says the dutiful husband. "Girls should not choose for themselves. You did not, my dear, and that is why our life has gone so easily."

But Marie is not really as strong as the doctor pronounces her to be: her cheeks are hollow, and the color on them is feverish and uncertain. If she could get away from home she would have more chance of mending. Madame Famette's sorrow at her daughter's changed looks expands itself in querulous remonstrance on the folly of flirting and on the good-for-nothing qualities of Nicolas Marais. Nicolas has come to inquire for Marie, but Madame Famette has received him so uncourteously that the poor fellow contents himself with hovering about on the chance of meeting Marie alone. But he never sees her, although the rumor grows strong in St. Gertrude, and is wafted on to Aubette, that Nicolas and Marie will be married as soon as she gets well enough to see about wedding-clothes.

It is the beginning of October, a bright clear morning. The red and yellow leaves come swiftly to the ground with a sudden snap from the twigs that held them: the rabbits move about briskly, and a couple of field-mice in search of winter stores run across the road nearly under Marie's feet. Marie's cheeks are rosy with the fresh, crisp air, but she does not look gay or happy. Life seems to have got into a hard knot which the poor little girl finds no power to untie. Market-day used to be a fête to Marie, but to-day she considers it a penance to be sent in to Aubette. She is not going to hold her stall—ah no, she is not nearly strong enough for such a task—but Madame Famette has a severe attack of rheumatism, and Jeanne cannot be trusted to buy the weekly provision of groceries. Marie shrinks as she goes along at the thought of meeting Léon Roussel. There is another thought, which she will not face—that it is possible Léon and Elise Lesage will be together in the market-place. "I need not go into the Grande Place at all," the poor child says. "I can get all I want in the Rue des Bons Enfants;" and she goes there when she reaches Aubette.

But Marie has miscalculated her[Pg 536] strength. She grows suddenly so white that Monsieur le Blanc, the épicier of the Rue des Bons Enfants, takes her into his daughter's room and makes her lie down on the little sofa. Marie lies there with widely-opened eyes, wondering how she shall get back to St. Gertrude.

"You are to lie still till Thérèse comes back from market," the old man says, "and then she will arrange about your going home."

Marie lies gazing dreamily at the blue-papered ceiling. "I used to think Thérèse le Blanc a cross old maid," she ponders: "shall I be a cross old maid too?" And then the pale, stricken girl holds up her thin hand and sighs: "I shall not be old: I shall die soon. Poor mother! she will forgive Nicolas when I am gone away."

There is a bustle in the shop, but Marie does not heed it. She smiles when Thérèse comes in, but she is too weak to talk—too weak to make any objection when she hears that a farmer who lives some miles beyond St. Gertrude has undertaken to convey her in his huge green-hooded wagon as far as the cross-road.

Thérèse stands over her while she eats a piece of bread and drinks a glass of wine, and then the farmer, a stout old Norman in a gray blouse, helps her into the back of the wagon, and makes a resting-place for her on some of the hay still left unsold, under the lofty arched roof.

"Get up my friend, get up: you will reach Yvetôt sooner if I give you a lift than if you wait. The diligence does not leave Aubette till six o'clock, remember, and my old horses get over the ground surely if not quickly."

Marie rouses from a sort of doze, but she cannot see the farmer or the wayfarer to whom he speaks: a pile of new fruit-baskets fills up the middle of the huge vehicle, and makes a wall between Marie and the driving-seat.

"Well, mon gars, it is a long time since I saw you, and the town-gossip of Aubette tells me more of your affairs than you ever condescend to inform your cousin of. Your mother was different, Léon. Dame! I could never pass her door after your father died but she would stop my wagon and ask me for just five minutes' counsel. But you young ones are all alike: the world has got a new pivot, it seems, for this generation, and it will move round more easily when we graybeards are all kicked out."

"I don't think so, for one." Marie had known she must hear Léon Roussel's voice, and yet her heart throbbed at his first words. "But, my cousin, what is the news that thou hast learned about me in Aubette?"

"Well, the news varies: sometimes I hear thee coupled with one girl, and then again with another, till I do not know what to think, Léon. I am afraid thou art fickle."

There was a pause. Marie raised herself on one elbow and listened breathlessly: it never came to her mind that she was listening to talk not intended for her ears.

"Well, man"—the farmer seemed nettled—"why not speak out and say thou art promised to old Lesage's daughter?"

Marie stifled a sob. It seemed as if her heart could not much longer hold in its agitation, she longed so intensely for the farmer's next question and for Léon's answer.

There was no pause this time. Léon's words came out rapidly with bitter emphasis: "Marie Famette is going to marry Marais of Vatteville."

"Marry! Ma foi! I hear the girl is very ill. I forget—there is a sick girl in the wagon now."

It seemed to the listener that Léon spoke heedless of the farmer's last words: "Once again the town-gossip has deceived you, Michel. I heard a week ago, and Houlard had just learned it from the Doctor Guéroult, that Marie Famette is as well and gay as ever. I believe she has come back to the market."[Pg 537]

No reply. The silence that followed oppressed Marie: a sense of guilt stole over her. It was not likely that old Michel Roussel knew who she was when he helped her into the wagon: she remembered now that Léon had told her of his rich cousin at Yvetôt; she knew she must get out soon, and then Léon would see her and know that she had heard him. She felt sick with shame. Would it not have been more honest to have betrayed her presence? It was too late now. "And I could not—I have not the courage." Marie crouched closer under the wall of baskets.

The wagon stopped. Marie heard farewells exchanged, and then on they jogged again to St. Gertrude.

Marie's heart was suddenly stilled: its painful throbbing and fluttering had subsided—it sank like lead. Léon was gone, and she had flung away her only chance of telling him that Nicolas Marais never had been—never could be—more to her than a friend.

"Oh what a fool I am! I may often see him, but how can I say this? And just now the way was open!"

When Farmer Roussel stopped the wagon again, and came round to the back to help Marie out, he found her sobbing bitterly.

"Here we are at St. Gertrude, but—Ma foi! but this is childish, ma belle," he said kindly, "to go spoiling your pretty eyes because you feel ill. Courage! you will soon be well if you eat and drink and keep a light heart." He helped her down tenderly, and shook both her hands in his before he let her go. "Well," he said as he rolled up on to the seat, "I wonder I had not asked for a kiss. She is rarely pretty, poor child!"

Marie stood still just where she had found her mother seated on that evening which it seemed to the girl had begun all her misery; but till now through all there had been hope—the hope given by disbelief in Léon's engagement to Elise Lesage. Now there was the sad, terrible certainty that Léon believed her false. Marie knew that though she had never pledged faith, still her eyes had shown Léon feelings which no other man had seen in them. For a moment she felt nerved to a kind of desperation: she would go and seek Léon, and tell him the truth that some one had set on foot this false report of her promise to Nicolas Marais. She turned again toward the high-road, and then her heart sank. How could she seek Léon? He did not love her, and if she made this confession would it not be a tacit owning of love for himself? The weight at her heart seemed to burden her limbs: she dragged on toward home wearily and slowly.

The road turns suddenly into St. Gertrude, and takes a breathing-space at a sharp angle with a breadth of grass, bordered by a clump of nut trees. Before Marie reached the nut trees she saw Léon Roussel standing beside them. She stopped, but he had been waiting for her coming: he came forward to meet her.

When he saw her face he looked grieved, but he spoke very coldly: "I have been to your cottage to inquire for you"—he raised his hat, but he made no effort to take her hand—"and then I heard you were expected home from Aubette. I did not know how ill you had been till to-day, Marie: I had been told you were quite recovered."

His cold, hard manner wounded her: "Oh, I am better, thank you;" but as she spoke her sight grew dizzy: she would have fallen if Léon had not caught her in his arms. She felt that he clasped her closely for an instant, and then he loosed his hold.

"Thank you!" She freed herself. "I am better. I will go home now, Monsieur Roussel."

But she did not move: she had no power to go forward. An impulse stronger than her will was holding her. She looked round: Léon had not moved—he stood with his eyes fixed on the ground.

"I must tell you something," she said. Léon started: he had never heard Marie[Pg 538] speak in such a humble tone. "I was in the wagon just now, and I listened to your talk with Monsieur Michel." Her cheeks grew crimson. "But, Monsieur Roussel, you are in error about me. Nicolas Marais is my friend"—Léon's face grew so stern that her eyes drooped and her voice faltered—"but he will never be more to me. He has always been my friend."

Léon came close to her and took her hand: "Marie"—his voice was so harsh and severe that she shrunk from him—"you must tell the truth, and you must not be angry if I doubt you. My child, did I not see Nicolas kiss the letter you sent him, and look at you as he kissed it?"

"Did Elise Lesage tell you I wrote that letter?" But Marie's fear had left her. She smiled up at her lover, once more his own arch, bright Marie: "How dared you believe her, Léon? I have a great mind not to tell you the truth."

But Léon Roussel was satisfied, for while she spoke his arm had folded round her again, and he was much too happy to trouble himself about Nicolas Marais.

Léon and Marie are to be married in November, and Mam'selle Lesage has been so indisposed that for two consecutive Saturdays she has sent a deputy to collect sous in the market of Aubette.

SALMON FISHING IN CANADA.

Fifty years ago, when the manners and habits of the Americans were very different from what they now are, there lived in Boston two gentlemen so far in advance of their age as to devote much time to shooting and fishing. These pursuits were denounced by the Puritans and their descendants as a sinful waste of time, and there is a letter extant from one of the early Massachusetts governors, in which he reproaches himself for indulging in "fowling," the rather because, as he confesses, he failed to get any game. These two bold Bostonians were wont to go to Scotland for salmon-fishing, having a belief that the salmon of the American rivers were too uncultivated in their taste to rise at a fly. However this may have been in 1820, the salmon of the Dominion are to-day as open to the attractions of a well-tied combination of feathers and pig's-wool, as those of the rivers of Norway or Scotland; and as, under the protection which the Canadian rivers now enjoy, the fish are becoming plentiful, sport is offered in the numerous streams which flow into the St. Lawrence, the Bays of Chaleur and Miramichi, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, probably superior to any now to be found elsewhere.

Having last year paid a visit to one of these beautiful rivers, I propose to give an account of my introduction to the art and mystery of salmon-fishing, to the end that other anglers, whose exploits have hitherto been confined to the capture of a pound trout or a four-pound pickerel, may know the joy of feeling the rush of a twenty-pound salmon fresh run from the sea—the most brilliant, active and vigorous of the finny tribes, the king of the river, using the term in its original sense—the strongest, the ablest, the most cunning. A late writer on English field-sports says: "I assert that there is no single moment with horse or gun into which is concentrated such a thrill of hope, fear, expectation and exultation as that of the rise and successful striking of a heavy salmon."

And first, let me say something of the system of protection to these fisheries adopted by the Canadian government,[Pg 539] which renders this sport possible. Finding that under the constant slaughter of salmon and trout, by the Indians with spears and by the whites with nets, the fish were becoming not only scarce, but in danger of extinction, the government interfered, and a few years ago passed laws the effects of which are already apparent. Certainly, a paternal government is sometimes a good thing. On our side the line a ring of wealthy men, with a large capital in nets, seines, pounds, etc., will, as has been seen in Rhode Island, depopulate a coast in a few years of its food-fishes, leaving nothing for increase; and when the poor fishermen, whose living depends on these free gifts of God, ask for protection from the legislature, the ring is too powerful, one of its members being perhaps governor of the State.

In the year 1858 the colonial government resumed possession of all the salmon and sea-trout fisheries in Lower Canada, and after the enactment of a protective law offered them for lease by public tender. A list is given of sixty-seven salmon rivers which flow into the St. Lawrence and the Saguenay, and of nine which flow into the Bay of Chaleur. There are also tributaries of these, making over one hundred rivers which by this time contain salmon, and many of them in great abundance. Licenses are granted by the government for rod-fishing in these rivers on payment of sums ranging from one hundred to five hundred dollars the season for a river, according to its size, accessibility, etc. These rivers are generally taken by parties of anglers, but of late I learn that licenses for single rods have been granted, so that all may be accommodated. Applications for a river or part of one can be made to Mr. William F. Whitcher of Ottawa, who is at the head of the Fisheries Department. Our party of four persons had obtained, through the courtesy of Messrs. Brydges and Fleming of the Intercolonial Railway of Canada, the upper part of the Restigouche, a river flowing into the Bay of Chaleur, and one of the best in the Dominion. Three of us had never killed a salmon, though we were familiar with other kinds of fishing. We had, however, for teacher one who for fifty years had been a salmon-fisher—first as a boy in Ireland, and since that for many years in Canada, in most of whose rivers he had killed salmon. As an angler he was a thorough artist, as a woodsman he was an expert, and as a companion he was most agreeable. Among the Indians, who have the habit of naming every person from some personal trait, he was known as "the Kingfisher," and by that name I shall call him. The second of our party, who procured the right of fishing the Restigouche, and made up the party, I shall call Rodman, which suits him both as fisherman and in his professional character of engineer. The third, being a tall man of rather military aspect, we knew as "the Colonel;" and the fourth, who writes this narrative, shall be called "the Scribe."

Behold us, then, at Quebec in the last week of June, making our preparations—laying in stores for camping out, and buying fishing-tackle, which for this kind of sport is best procured in Canada. On the 25th of June our thirty-one packages were on board the steamer Miramichi, piled on the upper deck, with many more of the same appearance—tents, buffalo robes, camp-chests, salmon-rods and gaff-handles—belonging to other parties bound on the same errand as ourselves. Three were British officers going to the Upsalquitch, men of the long-whiskered, Dundreary type, who soon let us know with many haw-haws that they had fished in Norway, and had killed salmon on the estate of my Lord Knowswho in Scotland, while guests of that nobleman. There were two Londoners in full suits of tweed, with Glengarry bonnets, who were bound to the Cascapediac: they tried to imitate the bearing of the military men; and why not? As Thackeray says, "Am I not a snob and a brother?" There was a party of Americans on their way to a Gaspé river—veteran anglers, who had frequented these rivers for some years. The rest of the company was made up of Canadians from Montreal and Quebec,[Pg 540] many of them pleasure-seekers—stout elderly men, with equally full-fed, comfortable-looking wives, and rosy-faced daughters with straight, slender figures, by and by to emulate the rounded proportions of their mammas. The young men were mostly equipped with white canvas shoes and veils twisted round their hats—for what purpose I have not been able to discover, but it seems to be the correct thing for the Canadian tourist.

Four hundred and fifty miles from Quebec we reach the entrance of Gaspé Bay, at the head of which fine sheet of water, in a landlocked harbor, stands the town of Gaspé, distinguished as the place where Jacques Cartier landed in 1534. It is now a great fishing-station, employing thousands of men along the coast in the cod-fishery. Here are fine scenery, clear bracing air, good sea-bathing, excellent salmon- and trout-fishing and a comfortable hotel. What more can a well-regulated mind desire? Into Gaspé Bay flow the Dartmouth, the York and the St. John—good salmon-rivers, while both they and the smaller streams abound with sea-trout and brook-trout. Thirty miles south of Gaspé is the little town of Perce, also a fishing-station. Near this stands a rock of red sandstone, five hundred feet long and three hundred high, with an open arch leading through it, under which a boat can pass. It stands a mile from the shore in deep water, and its top affords a secure breeding-place for hundreds of sea-fowl.

South of Gaspé Bay we pass the mouths of the Bonaventure and the Grand and Little Cascapediac—rivers well stocked with salmon—and reach Dalhousie on the Bay of Chaleur about midnight on the 28th. We land in a small boat in the darkness, and soon find ourselves at the comfortable tavern of William Murphy, where we breakfast the next morning on salmon-trout and wild strawberries. The town contains about six hundred inhabitants, and has a pleasant seat along the bay. Its principal industry seems to be lumber, or deals, which mean three-inch plank, in which shape most of the pine and spruce exported from the Dominion find their way to England. Here they also put up salmon and lobsters for the American market—America meaning the United States. Two steamers touch here weekly, and there is a daily mail and telegraphic communication with the outside world. A few tourists, mostly from Montreal and Quebec, fill two or three small boarding-houses.

The next morning we started in wagons for Matapedia, thirty miles up the river, where we expected to secure canoes and Indians for our trip to the upper waters of the Restigouche. Our road was good, following a terrace about fifty feet above the river, which here is about a mile in width, and flows placidly through a wide valley, with high hills on both sides covered with a growth of spruce and cedar. Fifteen miles above Dalhousie, at the head of navigation for large vessels, lies the village of Campbellton. Here the character of the river changes: it becomes more narrow and rapid, the hills come down closer to the shore, and it assumes the features of a true salmon-river. It was formerly one of the most famous in the provinces, and the late Robert Christie, for many years member for Gaspé, used to take two thousand tierces of salmon annually from the Restigouche.

Here we fall in with the Intercolonial Railway, which has its western terminus at Rivière du Loup, below Quebec, and its eastern at Halifax. The line is to cross the river at Matapedia on an iron bridge, and follow down the valley. About 1 p. m. we crossed the ferry in a row-boat, just below Fraser's hotel. The river is deep, swift and very clear, with a rocky bank, from which they are getting out stone for the abutments of the bridge. This bridge, and another similar one where the line crosses the Miramichi, are building at Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, and we saw at Campbellton a large bark discharging her cargo, consisting of the bridge-work ready to set up.

We arrived at Fraser's in time to partake of a fine boiled salmon, and we observe a constant improvement in this fish. Those in Montreal were better[Pg 541] than those in the States; those in Quebec still better; those we ate on board the Gulf steamer a shade finer still. At Dalbousie we thought that salmon had reached perfection, but were undeceived by those upon Fraser's table, which far surpassed all that we had yet tasted in succulence and flavor.

We had hoped to go up the river on the morrow, Saturday, but found it was a great festival of the Catholic Church, and the Indians would not start till Monday. Great was the indignation of the British officers who were preparing to go up the other river. To be delayed by the religious scruples of an Indian was too absurd. But even the "superior race" had to submit. So the next day we all went down the river trout-fishing.

I went about two miles to the "flat lands," and fished some pretty pools and rapids: the day was very bright and hot, so that I thought the trout would not rise to a fly, and I put on a small spoon, which I dropped into the rapids at the end of a long rod. After catching three or four they grew suspicious, and I changed my lure for an artificial minnow, and with it I had better success, though I have often tried it in Western trout-streams ineffectually. I got about a dozen, from four ounces to a pound weight: they were sea-trout, Salmo Canadensis, and the first of that species that I ever saw. They are handsome and active fish, lighter in color than the brook-trout, with silvery sides and belly. The flesh is red like a salmon, and is of higher flavor, I think, than that of Salmo fontinalis. My companions, Rodman and Kingfisher, both used the fly, and got, I think, more fish than I did.

The next day, June 30th, was Sunday, and the law of the Dominion prohibits fishing on that day. The weather was intensely hot, and we stayed in the house and enjoyed the fine scenery all about us. At night a heavy thunder-storm cooled the air for our next day's journey.

July 1. Our canoes and Indians arrived this morning about ten o'clock, and instead of being shepherds of the forest, with their blankets tied with yellow strings, they had no blankets at all, but wore coats and trowsers—yea, even boots, which I had always been told had no business in a canoe. There were four bark canoes and eight Mic-macs—one boat for each of us—and as we had a large amount of baggage and provisions, it was thought best to send off the canoes with these, while we went in wagons across a great bend of the river to the house of Mr. John Mowatt, the river overseer. We crossed the Matapediac in a dug-out: this is a tributary of the Restigouche, which comes in at Fraser's. On the other side we found wagons which took us to Mowatt's, seven miles over the hills, arriving at 4 p. m. The canoes arrived about sunset, having come twelve miles since noon against a strong current.

July 2. Starting in the morning at sunrise, the canoes took us six miles by seven o'clock, when we stopped in the woods for breakfast. The river has a very strong current, and from two to three miles an hour is all that can be done against it with setting-poles when there is a heavy load in the canoe. In places the water was too shallow even for a bark, and the men stepped over-board and lifted her along. The Restigouche is a beautiful river, with few islands or obstructions of any kind: the water is perfectly transparent, and very cold—the chosen haunt of the salmon. We see few houses or farms: rounded hills, from three to nine hundred feet high, border the stream, leaving only a narrow strip of beach, which is free from bushes or fallen trees. These are probably all swept away by the ice in the spring freshets. The hills somewhat resemble those on the Upper Mississippi, except that here there are none of those cliffs of yellow limestone which are remarkable on the great river of the West. About eight miles farther on we stopped for dinner near a cold brook, from which I took half a dozen trout. In the afternoon we proceeded five or six miles, and then camped for the night upon a rocky beach, and, though somewhat annoyed by the sand-flies, we slept well upon our beds of spruce boughs.

July 3. Broke camp at 5 a. m., and[Pg 542] went up six miles to a place called Tom's Brook, where we breakfasted. Here I killed a dozen trout with the spoon. Six miles from Tom's Brook we came to the first salmon-pool, of which there were six in the portion of the river assigned to us—viz.: First, Big Cross Pool; second, Lower Indian-house Pool; third, Upper Indian-house Pool; fourth, Patapediac Pool, called by the Indians Paddypajaw; fifth, Red Bank Pool; sixth, Little Cross Pool. These pools are the places where the salmon rest in their journey from the sea to the headwaters of the river. They are usually in spots where there is a strong but not violent current, perhaps six or eight feet deep, running off to shoal water on one side of the river. The pools have been found by the Indians, who search for them by night with torches, which show the fish as they lie near the bottom, and they do not differ materially in appearance from other parts of the river where no salmon are to be found.

The salmon is what is called anadromous—that is, though an inhabitant of the ocean for most of the year, it ascends the fresh-water rivers in summer to spawn. In this function it is guided by curious instincts. The female deposits her eggs in swift shallow water at the heads of streams, in trenches dug by herself and the male fish in the gravelly bottom; but it must not be fresh gravel: it must have been exposed to the action of water for at least two years, or they will have none of it; and if a freshet should bring new gravel from the banks, they will abandon the place and seek for new spawning-grounds. It is only when the salmon are resting in these pools that they will take a fly.

The first pool was at a point where the river made a short turn around a large rock: the current was swift, with a hole at the foot of the rapid perhaps twenty feet deep, with a rock bottom. Here our leader, Kingfisher, rigged his salmon-rod, put on two flies and began to cast. I trolled in the swift water as we proceeded, and with my spoon took a few small trout. A salmon rose to the fly of Kingfisher, but was not hooked; this was the first fish that we saw. (The term "fish" is always applied to the salmon by anglers: other inhabitants of the water are spoken of as "trout" or "bass;" a salmon is a "fish.") Although we had seen none before, our keen-eyed Indians had seen many as we came up the river.

We then went on to the Lower Indian-house Pool, two miles farther, and Kingfisher made a few casts; but raising no fish, we went up a mile farther to our camping-ground, an island between the two pools, having plenty of wood upon it, with a cold spring brook close by—an old and famous camping-place for salmon-fishers—and here we intended to make our permanent quarters. We had four tents—one to sleep in, fitted with mosquito-bars; one for an eating-tent, with canvas top and sides of netting: in it was a rough table and two benches, hewed out with an axe by one of our men. There was also a tent for storing provisions and for the cook, for we had brought with us a man for this important office. A fourth tent for the Indians, and a cooking-stove with camp-chests and equipage, completed our outfit, which all belonged to Kingfisher, and represented the results of many years' experience in camping out. The cooking-stove is made of sheet iron and packs in a box, and is one of the most valuable utensils in the woods.

It took the rest of the day to make the camp, and in the evening Kingfisher and the Colonel went in their canoe to the lower pool, and the former killed two salmon, weighing eighteen and twenty-two pounds. These, our first fish, were objects of much interest to us new hands. The Colonel took his first lesson in salmon-fishing, and thought he could do it himself.

July 4. We proposed to celebrate this day by each of us killing a salmon, but I thought it would be prudent first to go out with Kingfisher and see how he did it, before attempting it myself. So I got into his canoe, and the Indians paddled us to Upper Pool, within sight of our camp but for a bend in the river. Kingfisher had the canoe anchored within[Pg 543] casting distance of the channel, and there, as he sat in the bottom of the boat, he made his casts with a nineteen-foot rod, first about twenty-five feet, and rapidly letting out more line he increased the length of his casts to sixty feet perhaps, the big salmon-flies falling lightly on the water, first across the channel to the right; then letting the current take the flies down to the end of the line, he drew them round to the left in a circle; then raising them slowly from the water, he repeated the process, thus fishing over all the water within his reach. Now the Indians raise the anchor and let the canoe drop down a few feet. At the first cast after this change of ground a bulge in the water showed where a salmon had risen at the fly and missed it. "We will rest him for five minutes," said Kingfisher, and lighted his pipe for a smoke. Then he changed his fly for a larger and more brilliant one, and at the first cast a big fish rolled over at the fly and went off with a rush, making the reel whiz.

"I've got him," said Kingfisher, calmly putting up his pipe and bringing his rod to a nearly perpendicular position, which threw a great strain on the mouth of the salmon from the spring of the rod. He ran about twenty-five yards, and then leaped six feet into the air. Kingfisher dropped the point of his rod as the fish leaped, and then raised it as the salmon went away with twenty yards more of line.

"Up anchor, Hughey: we must follow him." So they plied their paddles after the salmon, who was making down stream, Kingfisher reeling up his line as fast as possible. Up went the salmon again, striking at the line with his tail as he came down; but this trick failed, and he then sulked, by diving into the depths of the river and remaining there motionless for half an hour. Suddenly he rose and made for the heavy current, from which Kingfisher tried to steer him into the still water near the shore, where it was about three feet deep, and where he could be played with more safety. After about forty minutes' play the fish was coaxed alongside the canoe, evidently tired out and having lost his force and fury, when Hughey struck the gaff into him near the tail, and lifted him into the canoe, where he struggled very little, so nearly beaten was he.

"About nineteen pounds, I think," said Kingfisher, who from long experience could name the weight of a fish very correctly.

Returning to the spot where he had hooked the fish, Kingfisher after a few casts rose and hooked another, which he killed in twenty-five minutes—a fish of twelve pounds. After seeing the method of this artist I was presumptuous enough to suppose that I could do it also, and I determined to open the campaign the next day.

July 5. Bent on salmon-killing, I was off this morning at five, hoping to bring home a fish for breakfast. The Upper Indian-house Pool is for Rodman and me to-day, the others going to Patapedia, three miles above. Kingfisher fitted me out with a Castle Connell rod, quite light and pliable, with which he has killed many a fish; a click reel, which obliges the fish to use some force in getting out the line: of this I have one hundred yards of oiled silk, with a twelve-feet gut casting-line, to the end of which is looped a brilliant creature almost as large as a humming-bird—certainly the likeness of nothing inhabiting earth, air or water. Mike and Peter, my Indians, took me to the pool, and I began casting at the place where Kingfisher got his salmon yesterday, while Rodman took the upper end of the pool, which was three or four hundred yards in length. I had fished for trout in a bark canoe, and knew how crank a vessel it is; so I did not attempt to stand up and cast, but seated myself upon the middle cross-bar with my face turned down stream, and began to imitate the casting of Kingfisher as well as I could. I had fished but a few yards of water when the quick-eyed Peter cried, "Lameau!" which is Mic-mac for salmon. He had seen the rise of the fish, which I had not. And here I may observe that good eyes are necessary to make a salmon-fisher, and a near-sighted person like the Scribe can[Pg 544] never greatly excel in this pursuit. All the salmon which I hooked fastened themselves: I had only this part in it, that I was the fool at one end of the rod. I waited five minutes, according to rule, and cast again. "Habet!" There can be no mistake this time: my eyes were good enough to see the savage rush with which he seized my fly and plunged with it down to the depths.

"Hold up your rod!" cries Peter, who saw that, taken by surprise, I was dropping the point of it. I raised it nearly upright, and this, with the friction of the reel, caused the fish, which had started to run after he felt the prick of the hook, to stop when he had gone half across the river, and make his leap or somersault.

When he leaped I ought to have dropped my point, so that he should not fall on the line, but I did nothing of the sort. I felt much as I once did in the woods of Wisconsin when a dozen deer suddenly jumped up from the long grass all about me, and I forgot that I had a gun in my hands. I had so much line out that, as it happened, no bad consequences followed, and the fish started for another run, at the end of which he made his leap, and coming down he struck my line with his tail, and was gone! Slowly and sadly I wound up my line, and found the gut broken close to the hook, and my beautiful "Fairy" vanished.

Then I looped on another insect phenomenon, and went on casting. Rodman, I perceived, was engaged with a salmon on the other bank. Presently I raise and hook another, but he directly shakes out the hook.

I move slowly down the pool, casting on each side—which I find is hard work for the back and shoulders—when, just opposite the big rock where Kingfisher raised his second fish yesterday, I feel a pluck at my fly and see a boil in the water. The robber runs away twenty yards and leaps, then turns short round and comes at me, as if to run down the canoe and drown us all. I wind up my line as fast as possible, but, alas! it comes in, yard after yard, so easily that I perceive all connection between the fish and me is at an end.

By this time it was seven o'clock, and I returned home to breakfast with what appetite I had, a sadder if not a wiser man. Rodman brought in a nine-pound fish, and Kingfisher had three—thirteen, ten and twenty-one pounds. The Colonel had made a successful début with a fifteen-pound fish.

As we sat at breakfast Rodman asked, "How many salmon did you ever kill in a day, Kingfisher?"

Kingfisher. "I once killed thirty-three in one day: that was in the Mingan, a North Shore river, where the fish are very numerous, but small—not over ten pounds on an average. I knew a man once to kill forty-two in a day there, but he had extra strong tackle, with double and treble gut, and being a big strong fellow he used to drag them out by main force."

The Colonel. "If he had played his fish as you do here, there would not have been time in the longest day to kill forty-two. You average half an hour to a salmon, which would have taken twenty-one hours for his day's work."

Kingfisher. "True enough, but those little fellows in the Mingan can be killed in ten or fifteen minutes."

Kingfisher. "Once fishing in the Moisie, where the fish are very large, I hooked a salmon at five in the morning and lost him at six in the evening: he was on for thirteen hours, but he sulked at the bottom most of the time, and I never saw him at all."

Kingfisher. "It might have been a seal, but Sir Edmund Head, who was with me, and I myself, thought it was a very large salmon and hooked foul, so that I could not drown him. I think from his play that it was a salmon: he ran many times round the pool, but swam deep, as heavy fish are apt to do. How do you like the cooking of this salmon?"[Pg 545]

Scribe. "I think it is perfect. The salmon have been growing better ever since we entered the Dominion, but we have reached perfection now. Is this the Tweedside method?"

Kingfisher. "It is. Put your fish in boiling water, well salted, boil a minute to a pound, and when done serve it with some of the water it was boiled in for sauce. You can't improve a fresh-caught salmon with Worcestershire or Harvey."

The day proving very hot, we stayed in camp till evening, when Kingfisher and the others went to the nearest pool for salmon, and I went trout-fishing to the little rapids and took a dozen of moderate size. Kingfisher brought in four fish—seven, ten, seventeen and eighteen pounds; Rodman got two—twelve and sixteen pounds; the Colonel failed to secure one which he had hooked.

July 6. To-day Kingfisher and the Colonel take the Upper Indian-house Pool, and Rodman and I go to the Patapedia. We start at 4 a. m., so as to get the early fishing, always the best. It takes an hour to pole up the three miles, the current being very strong, and when we arrive the pool is yet white with the morning mist. It is a long smooth rapid, with a channel on one side running close to the high gravelly bank, evidently cut away by spring freshets. On the other side comes in a rushing brook or small river called the Patapedia. Rodman took the head of the pool, and I the middle ground. I fished down some fifty yards without moving anything, when, as I was bringing home my fly after a cast, it was taken by a good fish. Away he went with a wicked rush full forty yards, in spite of all I could do, then made a somersault, showing us his huge proportions. A second and a third time he leaped, and then darted away, I urging my men to follow with the canoe, which they did, but not quickly enough. This was a terribly strong fish: though I was giving him all the spring of the rod, I could not check him. When he stopped running he began to shake his head, or, as the English fishing-books say, "to jigger." In two minutes he jiggered out the hook and departed.

I had changed rods and lines to-day, having borrowed one from Rodman—a Montreal rod, larger and stiffer than the other: although heavier, I could cast better with it than with the Irish rod. Unluckily, there were only about seventy yards of line on the reel, and the next fish I hooked proved to be the most furious of all, for he first ran out forty yards of line, and before I could get much of it wound up again, he made another and a longer run, taking out all my line to the end, where it was tied to the reel: of course he broke loose, taking away my fly and two feet of casting-line. By this time the sun was high in the heavens, and we returned to camp—Rodman with a salmon of seventeen pounds and a grilse of five pounds.

A salmon has properly four stages of existence. The first is as a "parr," a small bright-looking fish, four or five inches long, with dark-colored bars across the sides and a row of red spots. It is always found in the fresh water, looks something like a trout, and will take a fly or bait eagerly. The second stage is when it puts on the silvery coat previous to going to sea for the first time: it is then called a "smolt," and is from six to eight inches long, still living in the river where it was hatched. In the third stage, after its return from the sea to its native river, it is called a "grilse," and weighs from three to six pounds. It can be distinguished from a salmon, even of the same size, by its forked tail (that of the salmon being square) and the slight adhesion of the scales. The grilse is wonderfully active and spirited, and will often give as much play as a salmon of three times his size. After the second visit of the fish to the sea he returns a salmon, mature, brilliant and vigorous, and increases in weight every time he revisits the ocean, where most of his food is found, consisting of small fish and crustacea.

As we dropped down the stream toward the camp we saw a squirrel swimming across the river. Paddling toward[Pg 546] him, Peter reached out his pole, and the squirrel took refuge upon it and was lifted on board—a pretty little creature, gray and red, about half the size of the common gray squirrel of the States. He ran about the canoe so fearlessly that I think he must have been unacquainted with mankind. He skipped over us as if we had been logs, with his bead-like eyes almost starting from his head with astonishment, and then mounting the prow of the canoe,

On the bows, with tail erected,
Sat the squirrel, Adjidaumo.

Presently we paddled toward the shore, and he jumped off and disappeared in the bushes, with a fine story to tell to his friends of having been ferried across by strange and friendly monsters. Kingfisher got eleven salmon to-day, and the Colonel one.

July 7 was Sunday, and the pools were rested, as well as ourselves, from the fatigues of the week. Kingfisher brought out his materials and tied a few flies, such as he thought would suit the river. This he does very neatly, and I think he belongs to the old school of anglers, who believe in a great variety of flies.

It may not perhaps be generally known that there are two schools among fly-fishers. The "formalists" or entomologists hold that the natural flies actually on the water should be studied and imitated by the fly-maker, down to the most minute particulars. This is the old theory, and whole libraries have been written to prove and illustrate it, from the Boke of St. Albans, written by the Dame Juliana Berners in 1486, down to the present day. The number of insects which we are directed to imitate is legion, and the materials necessary for their manufacture are of immense variety and difficult to procure. These teachers are the conservatives, who adhere to old tradition. On the other side are the "colorists," who think color everything, and form nothing: they are but a section, though an increasing one, of the fly-fishing community. Their theory is, that all that a fish can distinguish through the watery medium is the size and color of the fly. These are the radicals, and they go so far as to discard the thousand different flies described in the books, and confine themselves to half a dozen typical varieties, both in salmon- and trout-fishing. Where learned doctors disagree, I, for one, do not venture to decide; but when I remember that on some days no fly in my book would tempt the trout, and that at other times they would rise at any or all flies, it seems to me that the principal question is, Are the trout feeding or not? If they are, they will take almost anything; if not, the most skillful hand may fail of tempting them to rise. As to salmon, I think no one will pretend that the salmon-flies commonly used are like anything in Nature, and it is difficult to understand what the keen-eyed salmon takes them for. Until, then, we can put ourselves in the place of the salmon and see with his eyes, we must continue to evolve our flies from our own consciousness. My small experience seems to show me that in a salmon-fly color is the main thing to be studied.

But to return to Kingfisher, who has been all this time softening some silk-worm gut in his mouth, and now says in a thick voice, "Do you know, colonel, I lost my chance of a wife once in this way?"

Kingfisher. "No, it was in this way: I was a lad of about seventeen, but I had a sweetheart. I was at college, and had but little time for fishing, of which I was as fond as I am now. One evening I was hastening toward the river with my rod, with my mouth full of flies and gut, which I was softening as I am now. Turning the corner of a narrow lane, I met my beloved and her mother, both of whom were precise persons who could not take a joke. Of course I had to stop and speak to them, but my mouth was full of hooks and gut, and the hooks stuck in my tongue, and I only mumbled. They looked astonished. Perhaps they thought I was drunk: anyway, the young lady asked what was the matter. 'My m—m—mouth is full of guts,' was[Pg 547] all that I could say; and the girl would never speak to me afterward."

Rodman. "That was lucky, for you got a wife better able to bear with your little foibles."

July 8. Rodman and I were to take the Upper Indian-house Pool to-day, the others going to the Patapedia. Kingfisher and I exchanged Indians: he, having a man who was a better fisherman than either of mine, kindly lent him to me, that I might have a better chance of killing a salmon, I being the only one of the party who had not succeeded in doing so. I found in my book a casting-line of double gut: it was only two yards long, but I thought I had better trust to it than the single gut which the fish had been breaking for me the last two days. I also found in my book a few large showy salmon-flies tied on double gut: with these I started, determined to do or die. I was on the pool at 5 a. m., and had raised two salmon, and caught two large trout, which often took our flies when we were casting for bigger fish. At 6.30 I raised and hooked a big fish, which ran out twenty yards of line, and then stopped. I determined to try the waiting method this time, and not to lose my fish by too much haste; so I let him have his own way, only holding him with a tight hand. Joe, I soon saw, understood his part of the business: he kept the canoe close behind the fish, so that I should always have a reserve of line upon my reel. My salmon made two runs without showing himself: he pulled hard, and was evidently a strong fish. He now tried to work himself across the river into the heavy current. I resisted this, but to no purpose: I could not hold him, and I thought he was going down the little rapid, where I could not have followed, when he steered down through the still and deep water, and went to the bottom near the camp. There he stayed, sulking, for more than an hour, and I could not start him. The cook came down from his fire to see the conflict; Joe lighted his pipe and smoked it out; old Captain Merrill, who lived on the opposite bank, came out and hailed me, "Reckon you've got a big one this time, judge;" and still my line pointed to the bottom of the river, and my hands grew numb with holding the rod.

They have tied me to the stake: I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the course.

Suddenly, up from the depths came the salmon, and made off at full speed down the river, making his first leap as he went, which showed him to be a twenty-pounder at least. We followed with the canoe. On the west side of the island ran the main channel, wide and deep, gradually increasing in swiftness till it became a boiling torrent. Into this my fish plunged, in spite of all my resistance, and all we could do was to follow. But I soon lost track of him and control of him: sometimes he was ahead, and I could feel him; sometimes he was alongside, and the line was slack and dragging on the water, most dangerous of positions; sometimes the canoe went fastest, and the salmon was behind me. My men handled the canoe admirably, and brought me through safe, fish and all; for when we emerged into the still pool below, and I was able to reel up, I felt him still on the hook, but unsubdued, for he made another run of thirty yards, and leaped twice.

For the first two hours of the struggle the fish had been quiet, and so had saved his strength, but now he began to race up and down the pool, trying for slack line. But Joe followed him up sharply and kept him well in hand. Now the fish began to jigger, and shook his head so hard and so long that I thought something must give way—either my line or his spinal column. After about an hour of this kind of work I called to Rodman, who was fishing not far off, and asked him to come alongside and play my fish for a few minutes, so that I might rest my hands, which were cramped with holding the rod so long; which he did, and gave me fifteen minutes' rest, when I resumed the rod. The fish now seemed somewhat spent, for he came to the surface and flounced[Pg 548] about, so that we could see his large proportions. Still, I could not get him alongside, and I told Joe to try to paddle up to him, but he immediately darted away from us and headed up stream, keeping a parallel course about fifty feet off, so that we could see him perfectly through the clear water. After many efforts, however, he grew more tame, and Louis paddled the canoe very carefully up to him, while Joe stood watching his chance with the gaff, which he put deep in the water. At last I got the fish over it, when with a sudden pull the gaff was driven into him just behind the dorsal fin; but he was so strong that I thought he would have taken the man out of the canoe. The water flew in showers, and the big salmon lay in the bottom of the boat!

I could hardly believe my eyes. That tremendous creature caught with a line no thicker than a lady's hair-pin! I looked at my watch: it was eleven o'clock, just four hours and a half. "Well, I have done enough for to-day, Joe: let us go home to breakfast." Arrived at the camp, we weighed the salmon and measured him—twenty-four pounds, and forty inches long—a male fish, fresh run from the sea, the strongest and most active of his kind. It had been my luck to hook these big ones: I wished that my first encounters should be with fish of ten or twelve pounds. Rodman came in with two—fourteen and sixteen pounds.

That evening I went again to the same pool, and soon hooked another good fish with the same fly; but though he was nearly as large as the first, weighing twenty-two pounds, I killed him in thirty minutes. He fought hard from the very first, running and vaulting by turns without any stop, so that he soon tired himself out. Rodman got another this evening, and Kingfisher brought seven from the Patapedia, and the Colonel one. Thirteen is our score to-day.

July 9. Rodman and I went this morning to the Patapedia, but raised no salmon. Either some one had been netting the pool that night, or Kingfisher had killed all the fish yesterday. I got a grilse of four pounds, which made a smart fight for fifteen minutes, and Rodman hooked another, but lost him. That evening we went again to the pool, and I killed a small but very active salmon of nine pounds, which fought me nearly an hour: Rodman got a grilse of five pounds. Strange to say, neither Kingfisher nor the Colonel killed a fish to-day, so that I was for once "high line."

Having killed four salmon, I concluded to retire. I found the work too hard, and determined to go to Dalhousie and try the sea-trout fishing in that vicinity. So, after an hour's fly-fishing at the mouth of the brook opposite our camp, in which I got a couple of dozen, hooking two at a cast twice, and twice three at a cast, I started at seven o'clock on the 10th, and ran down with the current and paddles forty miles to Fraser's in seven hours—the same distance which it took us two days and a half to make going up stream.

Of all modes of traveling, to float down a swift river in a bark canoe is the most agreeable; and when paddled by Indians the canoe is the perfection of a vessel for smooth-water navigation. Where there are three inches of water she can go—where there is none, a man can carry her round the portage on his back. Her buoyancy enables her to carry a heavy load, and, though frail, the elasticity of her material admits of many a blow and pinch which would seriously damage a heavier vessel. The rifle and axe of the backwoodsman, the canoe and the weapons of the Indian, are the result of long years of experiment, and perfectly meet their necessities.

The rest of the party remained and fished five days more, making ten days in all, and the score was eighty-five salmon and five grilse, the united weight of which was fourteen hundred and twenty-three pounds. The salmon averaged sixteen and a half pounds each: the three largest weighed thirty, thirty, and thirty-three pounds. Nearly two-thirds of the whole were taken by Kingfisher, and our average for three rods was three fish per day each.[Pg 549]

It is asserted by Norris in the American Angler's Book that the salmon of the American rivers are smaller than those of Europe, that in the Scottish rivers many are still taken of twenty and twenty-five pounds weight, and that on this side of the Atlantic it is as rare to take them with the rod over fifteen pounds. If this statement was correct when Norris wrote, ten years ago, then the Canadian rivers have improved under the system of protection, for, as above stated, our catch in the Restigouche averaged over sixteen pounds, and nearly one-third of our fish were of twenty pounds or over.

Yarrel, in his work on British fishes, says that in 1835 he saw 10 salmon in the London market weighing from 38 to 40 pounds each. Sir Humphry Davy is said to have killed a salmon in the Tweed that weighed 42 pounds: this was about 1825. The largest salmon ever seen in London was sold there in 1821: it weighed 83 pounds. But with diminished numbers the size of the salmon in Scottish waters has also diminished. In the Field newspaper for August and September, 1872, I find the following report of the fishing in some of those rivers: The Severn—average size of catch (considered very large) is 16 pounds; fish of 30, 40 and 50 pounds have been taken. The Tay—one rod, one day in August, 7 fish; average weight, 18 pounds. The Tweed—two rods, one day's fishing, 12 fish; average, 20 pounds. The Eaine—fish run from 12 to 20 pounds.

In Lloyd's book on the Sports of Norway we find the following reports of the salmon-fishing in that country, where the fish are supposed to be very large: In the river Namsen, Sir Hyde Parker in 1836 killed in one day 10 salmon weighing from 30 to 60 pounds. This is considered the best of the Norwegian rivers, both for number and size of fish. The Alten—Mr. Brettle in 1838 killed in fifteen days 194 fish; average, 15 pounds; largest fish, 40 pounds. Sir Charles Blois, the most successful angler, in the season of 1843 killed in the Alten 368 fish; average, 15 pounds: largest fish, 50 pounds. The Steenkjaw—one rod killed in twenty days 80 salmon; average, 14 pounds. The Mandall—one rod killed 35 fish in one day. The Nid—two rods killed in one day 19 fish; largest fish, 38 pounds.

The following records are from Canadian rivers prior to 1871: Moisie—two rods in twenty-five days, 318 fish; average 15-1/7 pounds; three largest, 29, 29 and 32 pounds. Godbout—three rods in forty days, 194 fish; average, 11-1/8 pounds; three largest, 18, 19 and 20 pounds. St. John—two rods in twenty-two days, 199 fish; average, 10 pounds. Nipisiquit—two rods, 76 fish; average, 9-1/2 pounds. Mingan—three rods in thirty-two days, 218 fish; average, 10-1/5 pounds. Restigouche, 1872—three rods in ten days, 85 fish; average, 16-1/2 pounds; three largest, 30, 30 and 33 pounds.

The greatest kill of salmon ever recorded was that of Allan Gilmour, Esq., of Ottawa, who killed in the Godbout in 1867, in one day, 46 salmon, averaging 11-1/2 pounds, or one fish about every fifteen minutes.

The largest salmon taken with the fly in an American river have been out of the Grand Cascapediac, on the north shore of the Bay of Chaleur. In 1871, by the government report, there were 44 salmon killed with the fly—two of 40 pounds, one of 38, and four others of over 30 pounds; average weight, 23 pounds. In the same river in 1872, Mr. John Medden of Toronto, with three other rods, killed 2 fish of 45 pounds, 4 of between 40 and 45, 5 of between 35 and 40 pounds, 7 of between 30 and 35 pounds, 15 of between 25 and 30 pounds, 16 of between 20 and 25, besides smaller ones not enumerated.

From these data it would seem that the average size of the Canadian salmon is as great as those of Norway, and very nearly equal to those of the Scottish rivers; while the number of fish taken in a day in the Canadian rivers, particularly in those on the north shore of the St. Lawrence, surpasses the best catch of either the Scottish or Norwegian rivers.

A PRINCESS OF THULE.

BY WILLIAM BLACK.

CHAPTER VI.

AT BARVAS BRIDGE.

Very soon, indeed, Ingram began to see that his friend had spoken to him quite frankly, and that he was really bent on asking Sheila to become his wife. Ingram contemplated this prospect with some dismay, and with some vague consciousness that he was himself responsible for what he could not help regarding as a disaster. He had half expected that Frank Lavender would, in his ordinary fashion, fall in love with Sheila—for about a fortnight. He had joked him about it even before they came within sight of Sheila's home. He had listened with a grim humor to Lavender's outbursts of admiration, and only asked himself how many times he had heard the same phrases before. But now things were looking more serious, for the young man had thrown himself into the prosecution of his new project with all the generous poetic enthusiasm of a highly impulsive nature. Ingram saw that everything a young man could do to win the heart of a young girl Lavender would do; and Nature had dowered him richly with various means of fascination. Most dangerous of all of these was a gift of sincerity that deceived himself. He could assume an opinion or express an emotion at will, with such a genuine fervor that he himself forgot how recently he had acquired it, and was able to convince his companion for the moment that it was a revelation of his inmost soul. It was this charm of impetuous sincerity which had fascinated Ingram himself years before, and made him cultivate the acquaintance of a young man whom he at first regarded as a somewhat facile, talkative and histrionic person. Ingram perceived, for example, that young Lavender had so little regard for public affairs that he would have been quite content to see our Indian empire go for the sake of eliciting a sarcasm from Lord Westbury; but at the same time, if you had appealed to his nobler instincts, and placed before him the condition of a certain populace suffering from starvation, he would have done all in his power to aid them: he would have written letters to the newspapers, would have headed subscriptions, and would have ended by believing that he had been the constant friend of the people of India throughout his life, and was bound to stick to them to the end of it.

As often as not he borrowed his fancies and opinions from Edward Ingram himself, who was amused and gratified at the same time to find his humdrum notions receive a dozen new lights and colors when transferred to the warmer atmosphere of his friend's imagination. Ingram would even consent to receive from his younger companion advice, impetuously urged and richly illustrated, which he had himself offered in simpler terms months before. At this very moment he could see that much of Lavender's romantic conceptions of Sheila's character was only an exaggeration of some passing hints he, Ingram, had dropped as the Clansman was steaming into Stornoway. But then they were ever so much more beautiful. Ingram held to his conviction that he himself was a distinctly commonplace person. He had grown reconciled to the ordinary grooves of life. But young Lavender was not commonplace: he fancied he could see in him an occasional flash of something that looked like genius; and many and many a time, in regarding the brilliant and facile powers, the generous impulses and the occasional ambitions of his companion, he wondered whether these would ever lead to anything in the way of production, or even of consolidation of character, or whether[Pg 551] would merely remain the passing sensations of an indifferent idler. Sometimes, indeed, he devoutly wished that Lavender had been born a stonemason.

But all these pleasant and graceful qualities, which had made the young man an agreeable companion, were a serious danger now; for was it not but too probable that Sheila, accustomed to the rude and homely ways of the islanders, would be attracted and pleased and fascinated by one who had about him so much of a soft and southern brightness with which she was wholly unfamiliar? This open-hearted frankness of his placed all his best qualities in the sunshine, as it were: she could not fail to see the singular modesty and courtesy of his bearing toward women, his gentle manners, his light-heartedness, his passionate admiration of the self-sacrifice of others, and his sympathy with their sufferings. Ingram would not have minded much if Lavender alone had been concerned in the dilemma now growing imminent: he would have left him to flounder out of it as he had got out of previous ones. But he had been surprised and pained, and even frightened, to detect in Sheila's manner some faint indications—so faint that he was doubtful what construction to put on them—of a special interest in the young stranger whom he had brought with him to Borva.

What could he do in the matter, supposing his suspicions were correct? Caution Sheila?—it would be an insult. Warn Mackenzie?—the King of Borva would fly into a passion with everybody concerned, and bring endless humiliation on his daughter, who had probably never dreamed of regarding Lavender except as a chance acquaintance. Insist upon Lavender going south at once?—that would merely goad the young man into obstinacy. Ingram found himself in a grievous difficulty, afraid to say how much of it was of his own creation. He had no selfish sentiments of his own to consult: if it were to become evident that the happiness of Sheila and of his friend depended on their marrying each other, he was ready to forward such a project with all the influence at his command. But there were a hundred reasons why he should dread such a marriage. He had already mentioned several of them to Lavender in trying to dissuade the young man from his purpose. A few days had passed since then, and it was clear that Lavender had abandoned all notion of fulfilling those resolutions he had vaguely formed. But the more Ingram thought over the matter, and the further he recalled all the ancient proverbs and stories about the fate of intermeddlers, the more evident it became to him that he could take no immediate action in the affair. He would trust to the chapter of accidents to save Sheila from what he considered a disastrous fate. Perhaps Lavender would repent. Perhaps Mackenzie, continually on the watch for small secrets, would discover something, and bid his daughter stay in Borva while his guests proceeded on their tour through Lewis. In any case, it was not at all certain that Lavender would be successful in his suit. Was the heart of a proud-spirited, intelligent and busily-occupied girl to be won in a matter of three weeks or a month? Lavender would go south, and no more would be heard of it.

This tour round the island of Lewis, however, was not likely to favor much any such easy escape from the difficulty. On a certain morning the larger of Mr. Mackenzie's boats carried the holiday party away from Borva; and even at this early stage, as they sat at the stern of the heavy craft, Lavender had arrogated to himself the exclusive right of waiting upon Sheila. He had constituted himself her companion in all their excursions about Borva which they had undertaken, and now, on this longer journey, they were to be once more thrown together. It did seem a little hard that Ingram should be relegated to Mackenzie and his theories of government; but did he not profess to prefer that? Like most men who have got beyond five-and-thirty, he was rather proud of considering himself an observer of life. He stood aside as a spectator, and let other people, engaged in all manner of[Pg 552] eager pursuits, pass before him for review. Toward young folks, indeed, he assumed a good-naturedly paternal air, as if they were but as shy-faced children to be humored. Were not their love-affairs a pretty spectacle? As for himself, he was far beyond all that. The illusions of love-making, the devotion and ambition and dreams of courtship, were no longer possible to him, but did they not constitute on the whole a beautiful and charming study, that had about it at times some little touches of pathos? At odd moments, when he saw Sheila and Lavender walking together in the evening, he was himself half inclined to wish that something might come of the young man's determination. It would be so pleasant to play the part of a friendly counselor, to humor the follies of the young folks, to make jokes at their expense, and then, in the midst of their embarrassment and resentment, to go forward and pet them a little, and assure them of a real and earnest sympathy.

"Your time is to come," Lavender said to him suddenly after he had been exhibiting some of his paternal forbearance and consideration: "you will get a dreadful twist some day, my boy. You have been doing nothing but dreaming about women, but some day or other you will wake up to find yourself captured and fascinated beyond anything you have ever seen in other people, and then you will discover what a desperately real thing it is."

Ingram had a misty impression that he had heard something like this before. Had he not given Lavender some warning of the same kind? But he was so much accustomed to hear those vague repetitions of his own remarks, and was, on the whole, so well pleased to think that his commonplace notions should take root and flourish in this goodly soil, that he never thought of asking Lavender to quote his authority for those profound observations on men and things.

"Now, Miss Mackenzie," said the young man as the big boat was drawing near to Callernish, "what is to be our first sketch in Lewis?"

"The Callernish Stones, of course," said Mackenzie himself: "it iss more than one hass come to the Lewis to see the Callernish Stones."

Lavender had promised to the King of Borva a series of water-color drawings of Lewis, and Sheila was to choose the subjects from day to day. Mackenzie was gratified by this proposal, and accepted it with much magnanimity; but Sheila knew that before the offer was made Lavender had come to her and asked her if she cared about sketches, and whether he might be allowed to take a few on this journey and present them to her. She was very grateful, but suggested that it might please her papa if they were given to him. Would she superintend them, then, and choose the topics for illustration? Yes, she would do that; and so the young man was furnished with a roving commission.

He brought her a little sepia sketch of Borvabost, its huts, its bay, and its upturned boats on the beach. Sheila's expressions of praise, the admiration and pleasure that shone in her eyes, would have turned any young man's head. But her papa looked at the picture with a critical eye, and remarked, "Oh yes, it is ferry good, but it is not the color of Loch Roag at all. It is the color of a river when there is a flood of rain. I have neffer at all seen Loch Roag a brown color—neffer at all."

It was clear, then, that the subsequent sketches could not be taken in sepia, and so Lavender proposed to make a series of pencil-drawings, which could be washed in with color afterward. There was one subject, indeed, which since his arrival in Lewis he had tried to fix on paper by every conceivable means in his power, and that was Sheila herself. He had spoiled innumerable sheets of paper in trying to get some likeness of her which would satisfy himself, but all his usual skill seemed somehow to have gone from him. He could not understand it. In ordinary circumstances he could have traced in a dozen lines a portrait that would at least have shown a superficial likeness: he could have multiplied portraits by the dozen of old Mackenzie or Ingram or Duncan,[Pg 553] but here he seemed to fail utterly. He invited no criticism, certainly. These efforts were made in his own room, and he asked no one's opinion as to the likeness. He could, indeed, certify to himself that the drawing of the features was correct enough. There was the sweet and placid forehead with its low masses of dark hair; there the short upper lip, the finely-carved mouth, the beautifully-rounded chin and throat; and there the frank, clear, proud eyes, with their long lashes and highly-curved eyebrows. Sometimes, too, a touch of color added warmth to the complexion, put a glimmer of the blue sea beneath the long black eyelashes, and drew a thread of scarlet round the white neck. But was this Sheila? Could he take this sheet of paper to his friends in London and say, Here is the magical princess whom I hope to bring to you from the North, with all the glamour of the sea around her? He felt instinctively that there would be an awkward pause. The people would praise the handsome, frank, courageous head, and look upon the bit of red ribbon round the neck as an effective artistic touch. They would hand him back the paper with a compliment, and he would find himself in an agony of unrest because they had misunderstood the portrait, and seen nothing of the wonder that encompassed this Highland girl as if with a garment of mystery and dreams.

So he tore up portrait after portrait—more than one of which would have startled Ingram by its truth—and then, to prove to himself that he was not growing mad, he resolved to try a portrait of some other person. He drew a head of old Mackenzie in chalk, and was amazed at the rapidity and facility with which he executed the task. Then there could be no doubt as to the success of the likeness nor as to the effect of the picture. The King of Borva, with his heavy eyebrows, his aquiline nose, his keen gray eyes and flowing beard, offered a fine subject; and there was something really royal and massive and noble in the head that Lavender, well satisfied with his work, took down stairs one evening. Sheila was alone in the drawing-room, turning over some music.

Sheila turned round, and the sudden light of pleasure that leapt to her face was all the praise and all the assurance he wanted. But he had more than that. The girl was grateful to him beyond all the words she could utter; and when he asked her if she would accept the picture, she thanked him by taking his hand for a moment, and then she left the room to call in Ingram and her father. All the evening there was a singular look of happiness on her face. When she met Lavender's eyes with hers there was a frank and friendly look of gratitude ready to reward him. When had he earned so much before by a simple sketch? Many and many a portrait, carefully executed and elaborately framed, had he presented to his lady friends in London, to receive from them a pretty note and a few words of thanks when next he called. Here with a rough chalk sketch he had awakened an amount of gratitude that almost surprised him in the most beautiful and tender soul in the world; and had not this princess among women taken his hand for a moment as a childlike way of expressing her thanks, while her eyes spoke more than her lips? And the more he looked at those eyes, the more he grew to despair of ever being able to put down the magic of them in lines and colors.

At length Duncan got the boat into the small creek at Callernish, and the party got out on the shore. As they were going up the steep path leading to the plain above a young girl met them, who looked at them in rather a strange way. She had a fair, pretty, wondering face, with singularly high eyebrows and clear, light-blue eyes.

But Sheila, on making the same inquiry, shook hands with the girl, who smiled in a confidential way, and, coming quite close, nodded and pointed down to the water's edge.[Pg 554]

"Have you seen them to-day, Eily?" said Sheila, still holding the girl by the hands, and looking at the fair, pretty, strange face.

"It wass sa day before yesterday," she answered in a whisper, while a pleased smile appeared on her face, "and sey will be here sa night."

"Good-bye, Eily: take care you don't stay out at night and catch cold, you know," said Sheila; and then, with another little nod and a smile, the young girl went down the path.

"It is Eily-of-the-Ghosts, as they call her," said Sheila to Lavender as they went on: "the poor thing fancies she sees little people about the rocks, and watches for them. But she is very good and quiet, and she is not afraid of them, and she does no harm to any one. She does not belong to the Lewis—I think she is from Islay—but she sometimes comes to pay us a visit at Borva, and my papa is very kind to her."

"Mr. Ingram does not appear to know her: I thought he was acquainted with every one in the island," said Lavender.

"She was not here when he has been in the Lewis before," said Sheila; "but Eily does not like to speak to strangers, and I do not think you could get her to speak to you if you tried."

Lavender had paid but little attention to the "false men" of Callernish when first he saw them, but now he approached the long lines of big stones up on this lonely plateau with a new interest; for Sheila had talked to him about them many a time in Borva, and had asked his opinion about their origin and their age. Was the central circle of stones an altar, with the other series marking the approaches to it? Or was it the grave of some great chieftain, with the remaining stones indicating the graves of his relations and friends? Or was it the commemoration of some battle in olden times, or the record of astronomical or geometrical discoveries, or a temple once devoted to serpent-worship, or what? Lavender, who knew absolutely nothing at all about the matter, was probably as well qualified as anybody else to answer these questions, but he forbore. The interest, however, that Sheila showed in such things he very rapidly acquired. When he came to see the rows of stones a second time he was much impressed by their position on this bit of hill overlooking the sea. He sat down on his camp-stool with the determination that, although he could not satisfy Sheila's wistful questions, he would present her with some little sketch of these monuments and their surroundings which might catch up something of the mysterious loneliness of the scene.

He would not, of course, have the picture as it then presented itself. The sun was glowing on the grass around him, and lighting up the tall gray pillars of stone with a cheerful radiance. Over there the waters of Loch Roag were bright and blue, and beyond the lake the undulations of moorland were green and beautiful, and the mountains in the south grown pale as silver in the heat. Here was a pretty young lady, in a rough blue traveling-dress and a hat and feather, who was engaged in picking up wild-flowers from the warm heath. There was a gentleman from the office of the Board of Trade, who was sitting on the grass, nursing his knees and whistling. From time to time the chief figure in the foreground was an elderly gentleman, who evidently expected that he was going to be put into the picture, and who was occasionally dropping a cautious hint that he did not always wear this rough-and-ready sailor's costume. Mackenzie was also most anxious to point out to the artist the names of the hills and districts lying to the south of Loch Roag, apparently with the hope that the sketch would have a certain topographical interest for future visitors.

No: Lavender was content at that moment to take down the outlines of the great stones and the configuration of lake and hill beyond, but by and by he would give another sort of atmosphere to this wild scene. He would have rain and darkness spread over the island, with the low hills in the south grown desolate and remote, and the waters of the sea covered with gloom. No human figure should be visible on this remote[Pg 555] plain, where these strange memorials had stood for centuries, exposed to western gales and the stillness of the winter nights and the awful silence of the stars. Would not Sheila, at least, understand the bleakness and desolation of the picture? Of course her father would like to have everything blue and green. He seemed a little disappointed when it was clear that no distant glimpse of Borva could be introduced into the sketch. But Sheila's imagination would be captured by this sombre picture, and perhaps by and by in some other land, amid fairer scenes and in a more generous climate, she might be less inclined to hunger for the dark and melancholy North when she looked on this record of its gloom and its sadness.

"Iss he going to put any people in the pictures?" said Mackenzie in a confidential whisper to Ingram.

Ingram got up from the grass, and said with a yawn, "I don't know. If he does, it will be afterward. Suppose we go along to the wagonette and see if Duncan has brought everything up from the boat?"

The old man seemed rather unwilling to be cut out of this particular sketch, but he went nevertheless; and Sheila, seeing the young man left alone, and thinking that not quite fair, went over to him and asked if she might be permitted to see as much as he had done.

"No," he said with a laugh, "you shall see it to-night. I have sufficient memoranda to work something out of by and by. Shall we have another look at the circle up there?"

He folded up and shouldered his camp-stool, and they walked up to the point at which the lines of the "mourners" converged. Perhaps he was moved by a great antiquarian curiosity: at all events, he showed a singular interest in the monuments, and talked to his companion about all the possible theories connected with such stones in a fashion that charmed her greatly. She was easily persuaded that the Callernish "Fir-Bhreige" were the most interesting relics in the world. He had seen Stonehenge, but Stonehenge was too scattered to be impressive. There was more mystery about the means by which the inhabitants of a small island could have hewn and carved and erected these blocks: there was, moreover, the mystery about the vanished population itself. Yes, he had been to Carnac also. He had driven down from Auray in a rumbling old trap, his coachman being unable to talk French. He had seen the half-cultivated plain on which there were rows and rows of small stones, scarcely to be distinguished from the stone walls of the adjoining farms. What was there impressive about such a sight when you went into a house and paid a franc to be shown the gold ornaments picked up about the place? Here, however, was a perfect series of those strange memorials, with the long lanes leading up to a circle, and the tallest of all the stones placed on the western side of the circle, perhaps as the headstone of the buried chief. Look at the position, too—the silent hill, the waters of the sea-loch around it, and beyond that the desolation of miles of untenanted moorland. Sheila looked pleased that her companion, after coming so far, should have found something worth looking at in the Lewis.

"Does it not seem strange," he said suddenly, "to think of young folks of the present day picking up wild-flowers from among these old stones?" He was looking at a tiny bouquet which she had gathered.

"Will you take them?" she said, quite simply and naturally offering him the flowers. "They may remind you some time of Callernish."

He took the flowers, and regarded them for a moment in silence, and then he said gently, "I do not think I shall want these to remind me of Callernish. I shall never forget our being here."

At this moment, perhaps fortunately, Duncan appeared, and came along toward the young people with a basket in his hand.

"It wass Mr. Mackenzie will ask if ye will tek a glass o' whisky, sir, and a bit o' bread and cheese. And he wass sayin' there wass no hurry at all, and he[Pg 556] will wait for you for two hours or half an hour whatever."

"All right, Duncan: go back and tell him I have finished, and we shall be there directly. No, thank you, don't take out the whisky—unless, Miss Mackenzie," added the young man with a smile, "Duncan can persuade you."

Duncan looked with amazement at the man who dared to joke about Miss Sheila taking whisky, and without waiting for any further commands indignantly shut the lid of the basket and walked off.

"I wonder, Miss Mackenzie," said Lavender as they went along the path and down the hill—"I wonder what you would say if I happened to call you Sheila by mistake?"

"I should be glad if you did that. Every one calls me Sheila," said the girl quietly enough.

"No: why should I be vexed?" she answered; and she happened to look up, and he saw what a clear light of sincerity there was shining in her eyes.

"But—but—" he said, with a timidity and embarrassment of which she showed no trace whatever—"but people might think it strange, you know; and yet I should greatly like to call you Sheila; only, not before other people perhaps."

"But why not?" she said with her eyebrows just raised a little. "Why should you wish to call me Sheila at one time and not at the other? It is no difference whatever, and every one calls me Sheila."

Lavender was a little disappointed. He had hoped, when she consented in so friendly a manner to his calling her by any name he chose, that he could have established this little arrangement, which would have had about it something of the nature of a personal confidence. Sheila would evidently have none of that. Was it that she was really so simple and frank in her ways that she did not understand why there should be such a difference, and what it might imply, or was she well aware of everything he had been wishing, and able to assume this air of simplicity and ignorance with a perfect grace? Ingram, he reflected, would have said at once that to suspect Sheila of such duplicity was to insult her; but then Ingram was perhaps himself a trifle too easily imposed on, and he had notions about women, despite all his philosophical reading and such like, that a little more mingling in society might have caused him to alter. Frank Lavender confessed to himself that Sheila was either a miracle of ingenuousness or a thorough mistress of the art of assuming it. On the one hand, he considered it almost impossible for a woman to be so disingenuous; on the other hand, how could this girl have taught herself, in the solitude of a savage island, a species of histrionicism which women in London circles strove for years to acquire, and rarely acquired in any perfection? At all events, he said to himself, while he reserved his opinion on this point, he was not going to call Sheila Sheila before folks who would know what that meant. Mr. Mackenzie was evidently a most irascible old gentleman. Goodness only knew what sort of law prevailed in these wild parts; and to be seized at midnight by a couple of brawny fishermen, to be carried down to a projecting ledge of rock—! Had not Ingram already hinted that Mackenzie would straightway throw into Loch Roag the man who should offer to carry away Sheila from him?

But how could these doubts of Sheila's sincerity last? He sat opposite her in the wagonette, and the perfect truth of her face, of her frank eyes and of her ready smile met him at every moment, whether he talked to her or to Ingram, or listened to old Mackenzie, who turned from time to time from the driving of the horses to inform the stranger of what he saw around him. It was the most brilliant of mornings. The sun burned on the white road, on the green moorland, on the gray-lichened rocks with their crimson patches of heather. As they drove by the curious convolutions of this rugged coast, the sea that lay[Pg 557] beyond these recurring bays and points was of a windy green, with here and there a streak of white, and the fresh breeze blowing across to them tempered the fierce heat of the sun. How cool, too, were those little fresh-water lakes they passed, the clear blue and white of them stirred into wavelets that moved the reeds and left air-bubbles about the half-submerged stones! Were not those wild-geese over there, flapping in the water with their huge wings and taking no notice of the passing strangers? Lavender had never seen this lonely coast in times of gloom, with those little lakes become sombre pools, and the outline of the rocks beyond lost in the driving mist of the sea and the rain. It was altogether a bright and beautiful world he had got into, and there was in it but one woman, beautiful beyond his dreams. To doubt her was to doubt all women. When he looked at her he forgot the caution and distrust and sardonic self-complacency his southern training had given him. He believed, and the world seemed to be filled with a new light.

"That is Loch-na-Muirne," Mackenzie was saying, "and it iss the Loch of the Mill; and over there that is Loch-a-Bhaile, and that iss the Loch of the Town; but where iss the loch and the town now? It wass many hundreds of years before there will be numbers of people in this place; and you will come to Dun Charlobhaidh, which is a great castle, by and by. And what wass it will drive away the people, and leave the land to the moss, but that there wass no one to look after them? 'When the natives will leave Islay, farewell to the peace of Scotland.' That iss a good proverb. And if they have no one to mind them, they will go away altogether. And there is no people more obedient than the people of the Highlands—not anywhere; for you know that we say, 'Is it the truth, as if you were speaking before kings?' And now there is the castle, and there wass many people living here when they could build that."

It was, in truth, one of those circular forts the date of which has given rise to endless conjecture and discussion. Perched up on a hill, it overlooked a number of deep and narrow valleys that ran landward, while the other side of the hill sloped down to the sea-shore. It was a striking object, this tumbling mass of dark stones standing high over the green hollows and over the light plain of the sea. Was there not here material for another sketch for Sheila? While Lavender had gone away over the heights and hollows to choose his point of view a rough and ready luncheon had been spread out in the wagonette, and when he returned, perspiring and considerably blown, he found old Mackenzie measuring out equal portions of peat-water and whisky, Duncan flicking the enormous "clegs" from off the horses' necks, Ingram trying to persuade Sheila to have some sherry out of a flask he carried, and everybody in very good spirits over such an exciting event as a roadside luncheon on a summer forenoon.

The King of Borva had by this time become excellent friends with the young stranger who had ventured into his dominions. When the old gentleman had sufficiently impressed on everybody that he had observed all necessary precaution in studying the character and inquiring into the antecedents of Lavender, he could not help confessing to a sense of lightness and vivacity that the young man seemed to bring with him and shed around him. Nor was this matter of the sketches the only thing that had particularly recommended Lavender to the old man. Mackenzie had a most distinct dislike to Gaelic songs. He could not bear the monotonous melancholy of them. When Sheila, sitting by herself, would sing these strange old ballads of an evening, he would suddenly enter the room, probably find her eyes filled with tears, and then he would in his inmost heart devote the whole of Gaelic minstrelsy and all its authors to the infernal gods. Why should people be for ever saddening themselves with the stories of other folks' misfortunes? It was bad enough for those poor people, but they had borne their sorrows and died, and[Pg 558] were at peace. Surely it was better that we should have songs about ourselves—drinking or fighting, if you like—to keep up the spirits, to lighten the serious cares of life, and drown for a while the responsibility of looking after a whole population of poor, half-ignorant, unphilosophical creatures.

"Look, now," he would say, speaking of his own tongue, "look at this teffle of a language! It has no present tense to its verbs: the people they are always looking forward to a melancholy future or looking back to a melancholy past. In the name of Kott, hef we not got ourselves to live? This day we live in is better than any day that wass before or iss to come, bekass it is here and we are alive. And I will hef no more of these songs about crying, and crying, and crying!"

Now Sheila and Lavender, in their mutual musical confidences, had at an early period discovered that each of them knew something of the older English duets, and forthwith they tried a few of them, to Mackenzie's extreme delight. Here, at last, was a sort of music he could understand—none of your moanings of widows and cries of luckless girls to the sea, but good common-sense songs, in which the lads kissed the lasses with a will, and had a good drink afterward, and a dance on the green on their homeward way. There was fun in those happy Mayfields, and good health and briskness in the ale-house choruses, and throughout them all a prevailing cheerfulness and contentment with the conditions of life certain to recommend itself to the contemplative mind. Mackenzie never tired of hearing those simple ditties. He grew confidential with the young man, and told him that those fine, common-sense songs recalled pleasant scenes to him. He himself knew something of English village life. When he had been up to see the Great Exhibition he had gone to visit a friend living in Brighton, and he had surveyed the country with an observant eye. He had remarked several village-greens, with the May-poles standing here and there in front of the cottages, emblazoned with beautiful banners. He had, it is true, fancied that the May-pole should be in the centre of the green; but the manner in which the waves of population swept here and there, swallowing up open spaces and so forth, would account to a philosophical person for the fact that the May-poles were now close to the village-shops.

"Drink to me only with thine eyes," hummed the King of Borva to himself as he sent the two little horses along the coast-road on this warm summer day. He had heard the song for the first time on the previous evening. He had no voice to speak of; he had missed the air, and these were all the words he remembered; but it was a notable compliment all the same to the young man who had brought these pleasant tunes to the island. And so they drove on through the keen salt air, with the sea shining beside them and the sky shining over them; and in the afternoon they arrived at the small, remote and solitary inn of Barvas, placed near the confluence of several rivers that flow through Loch Barvas (or Barabhas) to the sea. Here they proposed to stop the night, so that Lavender, when his room had been assigned to him, begged to be left alone for an hour or two, that he might throw a little color into his sketch of Callernish. What was there to see at Barvas? Why, nothing but the channels of the brown streams, some pasture-land and a few huts, then the unfrequented lake, and beyond that some ridges of white sand standing over the shingly beach of the sea. He would join them at dinner. Mackenzie protested in a mild way: he really wanted to see how the island was to be illustrated by the stranger. There was a greater protest, mingled with compassion and regret, in Sheila's eyes; but the young man was firm. So they let him have his way, and gave him full possession of the common sitting-room, while they set off to visit the school and the Free-Church manse and what not in the neighborhood.

Mackenzie had ordered dinner at eight, to show that he was familiar with the ways of civilized life; and when they[Pg 559] returned at that hour Lavender had two sketches finished.

"Yes, they are very good," said Ingram, who was seldom enthusiastic about his friend's work.

But old Mackenzie was so vastly pleased with the picture, which represented his native place in the brightest of sunshine and colors, that he forgot to assume a critical air. He said nothing against the rainy and desolate version of the scene that had been given to Sheila: it was good enough to please the child. But here was something brilliant, effective, cheerful; and he alarmed Lavender not a little by proposing to get one of the natives to carry this treasure, then and there, back to Borvabost. Both sketches were ultimately returned to his book, and then Sheila helped him to remove his artistic apparatus from the table on which their plain and homely meal was to be placed. As she was about to follow her father and Ingram, who had left the room, she paused for a moment and said to Lavender, with a look of frank gratitude in her eyes, "It is very good of you to have pleased my papa so much. I know when he is pleased, though he does not speak of it; and it is not often he will be so much pleased."

"And you, Sheila?" said the young man, unconscious of the familiarity he was using, and only remembering that she had scarcely thanked him for the other sketch.

"Well, there is nothing that will please me so much as to see him pleased," she said with a smile.

He was about to open the door for her, but he kept his hand on the handle, and said, earnestly enough, "But that is such a small matter—an hour's work. If you only knew how gladly I would live all my life here if only I could do you some greater service—"

She looked a little surprised, and then for one brief second reflected. English was not wholly familiar to her: perhaps she had failed to catch what he really meant. But at all events she said gravely and simply, "You would soon tire of living here: it is not always a holiday." And then, without lifting her eyes to his face, she turned to the door, and he opened it for her and she was gone.

It was about ten o'clock when they went outside for their evening stroll, and all the world had grown enchanted since they had seen it in the colors of the sunset. There was no night, but a strange clearness over the sky and the earth, and down in the south the moon was rising over the Barvas hills. In the dark green meadows the cattle were still grazing. Voices of children could be heard in the far distance, with the rumble of a cart coming through the silence, and the murmur of the streams flowing down to the loch. The loch itself lay like a line of dusky yellow in a darkened hollow near the sea, having caught on its surface the pale glow of the northern heavens, where the sun had gone down hours before. The air was warm and yet fresh with the odors of the Atlantic, and there was a scent of Dutch clover coming across from the sandy pastures nearer the coast. The huts of the small hamlet could but faintly be made out beyond the dark and low-lying pastures, but a long, pale line of blue smoke lay in the motionless air, and the voices of the children told of open doors. Night after night this same picture, with slight variations of position, had been placed before the stranger who had come to view these solitudes, and night after night it seemed to him to grow more beautiful. He could put down on paper the outlines of an every-day landscape, and give them a dash of brilliant color to look well on a wall; but how to carry away, except in the memory, any impression of the strange lambent darkness, the tender hues, the loneliness and the pathos of those northern twilights?

They walked down by the side of one of the streams toward the sea. But Sheila was not his companion on this occasion. Her father had laid hold of him, and was expounding to him the rights of capitalists and various other matters. But by and by Lavender drew his companion on to talk of Sheila's mother; and here, at least, Mackenzie[Pg 560] was neither tedious nor ridiculous nor unnecessarily garrulous. It was with a strange interest the young man heard the elderly man talk of his courtship, his marriage, the character of his wife, and her goodness and beauty. Was it not like looking at a former Sheila? and would not this Sheila now walking before him go through the same tender experiences, and be admired and loved and petted by everybody as this other girl had been, who brought with her the charm of winning ways and a gentle nature into these rude wilds? It was the first time he had heard Mackenzie speak of his wife, and it turned out to be the last; but from that moment the older man had something of dignity in the eyes of this younger man, who had merely judged of him by his little foibles and eccentricities, and would have been ready to dismiss him contemptuously as a buffoon. There was something, then, behind that powerful face, with its deep-cut lines, its heavy eyebrows and piercing and sometimes sad eyes, besides a mere liking for tricks of childish diplomacy. Lavender began to have some respect for Sheila's father, and made a resolution to guard against the impertinence of humoring him too ostentatiously.

Was it not hard, though, that Ingram, who was so cold and unimpressionable, who smiled at the notion of marrying, and who was probably enjoying his pipe quite as much as Sheila's familiar talk, should have the girl all to himself on this witching night? They reached the shores of the Atlantic. There was not a breath of wind coming in from the sea, but the air seemed even sweeter and cooler as they sat down on the great bank of shingle. Here and there birds were calling, and Sheila could distinguish each one of them. As the moon rose a faint golden light began to tremble here and there on the waves, as if some subterranean caverns were lit up and sending to the surface faint and fitful rays of their splendor. Farther along the coast the tall banks of white sand grew white in the twilight, and the outlines of the dark pasture-land behind grew more distinct.

But when they rose to go back to Barvas the moonlight had grown full and clear, and the long and narrow loch had a pathway of gold across, stretching from the reeds and sedges of the one side to the reeds and sedges of the other. And now Ingram had gone on to join Mackenzie, and Sheila walked behind with Lavender, and her face was pale and beautiful in the moonlight.

"I shall be very sorry when I have to leave Lewis," he said as they walked along the path leading through the sand and the clover; and there could be no doubt that he felt the regret expressed in the words.

"But it is no use to speak of leaving us yet," said Sheila cheerfully: "it is a long time before you will go away from the Lewis."

"And I fancy I shall always think of the island just as it is now—with the moonlight over there, and a loch near, and you walking through the stillness. We have had so many evening walks like this."

"You will make us very vain of our island," said the girl with a smile, "if you will speak like that always to us. Is there no moonlight in England? I have pictures of English scenery that will be far more beautiful than any we have here; and if there is the moon here, it will be there too. Think of the pictures of the river Thames that my papa showed you last night—"

"Oh, but there is nothing like this in the South," said the young man impetuously. "I do not believe there is in the world anything so beautiful as this. Sheila, what would you say if I resolved to come and live here always?"

"I should like that very much—more than you would like it, perhaps," she said with a bright laugh.

"That would please you better than for you to go always and live in England, would it not?"

"But that is impossible," she said. "My papa would never think of living in England."

For some time after he was silent. The two figures in front of them walked steadily on, an occasional roar of laughter[Pg 561] from the deep chest of Mackenzie startling the night air, and telling of Ingram's being in a communicative mood. At last Lavender said, "It seems to me so great a pity that you should live in this remote place, and have so little amusement, and see so few people of tastes and education like your own. Your papa is so much occupied—he is so much older than you, too—that you must be left to yourself so much; whereas if you had a companion of your own age, who could have the right to talk frankly to you, and go about with you, and take care of you—"

By this time they had reached the little wooden bridge crossing the stream, and Mackenzie and Ingram had got to the inn, where they stood in front of the door in the moonlight. Before ascending the steps of the bridge, Lavender, without pausing in his speech, took Sheila's hand and said suddenly, "Now don't let me alarm you, Sheila, but suppose at some distant day—as far away as you please—I came and asked you to let me be your companion then and always, wouldn't you try?"

She looked up with a startled glance of fear in her eyes, and withdrew her hand from him.

"No, don't be frightened," he said quite gently. "I don't ask you for any promise. Sheila, you must know I love you—you must have seen it. Will you not let me come to you at some future time—a long way off—that you may tell me then? Won't you try to do that?"

There was more in the tone of his voice than in his words. The girl stood irresolute for a second or two, regarding him with a strange, wistful, earnest look; and then a great gentleness came into her eyes, and she put out her hand to him and said in a low voice, "Perhaps."

But there was something so grave and simple about her manner at this moment that he dared not somehow receive it as a lover receives the first admission of love from the lips of a maiden. There had been something of a strange inquiry in her face as she regarded him for a second or two; and now that her eyes were bent on the ground it seemed to him that she was trying to realize the full effect of the concession she had made. He would not let her think. He took her hand and raised it respectfully to his lips, and then he led her forward to the bridge. Not a word was spoken between them while they crossed the shining space of moonlight to the shadow of the house; and as they went indoors he caught but one glimpse of her eyes, and they were friendly and kind toward him, but evidently troubled. He saw her no more that night.

So he had asked Sheila to be his wife, and she had given him some timid encouragement as to the future. Many a time within these last few days had he sketched out an imaginative picture of the scene. He was familiar with the passionate rapture of lovers on the stage, in books and in pictures; and he had described himself (to himself) as intoxicated with joy, anxious to let the whole world know of his good fortune, and above all to confide the tidings of his happiness to his constant friend and companion. But now, as he sat in one corner of the room, he almost feared to be spoken to by the two men who sat at the table with steaming glasses before them. He dared not tell Ingram: he had no wish to tell him, even if he had got him alone. And as he sat there and recalled the incident that had just occurred by the side of the little bridge, he could not wholly understand its meaning. There had been none of the eagerness, the coyness, the tumult of joy he had expected: all he could remember clearly was the long look that the large, earnest, troubled eyes had fixed upon him, while the girl's face, grown pale in the moonlight, seemed somehow ghost-like and strange.

CHAPTER VII.

AN INTERMEDDLER.

But in the morning all these idle fancies fled with the life and color and freshness of a new day. Loch Barvas was ruffled into a dark blue by the westerly wind, and doubtless the sea out there[Pg 562] was rushing in, green and cold, to the shore. The sunlight was warm about the house. The trout were leaping in the shallow brown streams, and here and there a white butterfly fluttered across the damp meadows. Was not that Duncan down by the river, accompanied by Ingram? There was a glimmer of a rod in the sunshine: the two poachers were after trout for Sheila's breakfast.

Lavender dressed, went outside and looked about for the nearest way down to the stream. He wished to have a chance of saying a word to his friend before Sheila or her father should appear. And at last he thought he could do no better than go across to the bridge, and so make his way down the banks of the river.

What a fresh morning it was, with all sorts of sweet scents in the air! And here, sure enough, was a pretty picture in the early light—a young girl coming over the bridge carrying a load of green grass on her back. What would she say if he asked her to stop for a moment that he might sketch her pretty costume? Her head-dress was a scarlet handkerchief, tied behind: she wore a tight-fitting bodice of cream-white flannel and petticoats of gray flannel, while she had a waistbelt and pouch of brilliant blue. Did she know of these harmonies of color or of the picturesqueness of her appearance as she came across the bridge in the sunlight? As she drew near she stared at the stranger with the big, dumb eyes of a wild animal. There was no fear, only a sort of surprised observation in them. And as she passed she uttered, without a smile, some brief and laconic salutation in Gaelic, which of course the young man could not understand. He raised his cap, however, and said "Good-morning!" and went on, with a fixed resolve to learn all the Gaelic that Duncan could teach him.

Surely the tall keeper was in excellent spirits this morning. Long before he drew near, Lavender could hear, in the stillness of the morning, that he was telling stories about John the Piper, and of his adventures in such distant parts as Portree and Oban, and even in Glasgow.

"And it wass Allan M'Gillivray of Styornoway," Duncan was saying as he industriously whipped the shallow runs of the stream, "will go to Glasgow with John; and they went through ta Crinan Canal. Wass you through ta Crinan Canal, sir?"

"Ay, jist that. And I hef been told it iss like a river with ta sides o' a house to it; and what would Allan care for a thing like that, when he hass been to America more than twice or four times? And it wass when he fell into the canal, he was ferry nearly trooned for all that; and when they pulled him to ta shore he wass a ferry angry man. And this iss what John says that Allan will say when he wass on the side of the canal: 'Kott,' says he, 'if I wass trooned here, I would show my face in Styornoway no more!' But perhaps it iss not true, for he will tell many lies, does John the Piper, to hef a laugh at a man."

"The Crinan Canal is not to be despised, Duncan," said Ingram, who was sitting on the red sand of the bank, "when you are in it."

"And do you know what John says that Allan will say to him the first time they went ashore at Glasgow?"

"It wass many years ago, before that Allan will be going many times to America, and he will neffer hef seen such fine shops and ta big houses and hundreds and hundreds of people, every one with shoes on their feet. And he will say to John, 'John, ef I had known in time I should hef been born here.' But no one will believe it iss true, he is such a teffle of a liar, that John; and he will hef some stories about Mr. Mackenzie himself, as I hef been told, that he will tell when he goes to Styornoway. But John is a ferry cunning fellow, and will not tell any such stories in Borva."

"Oh, there iss more than one," said Duncan with a grim twinkle in his eye—"there iss more than one that would hef a joke with him if he was to tell stories about Mr. Mackenzie."[Pg 563]

Lavender had been standing listening, unknown to both. He now went forward and bade them good-morning, and then, having had a look at the trout that Duncan had caught, pulled Ingram up from the bank, put his arm in his and walked away with him.

"Ingram," he said suddenly, with a laugh and a shrug, "you know I always come to you when I'm in a fix."

"I suppose you do," said the other, "and you are always welcome to whatever help I can give you. But sometimes it seems to me you rush into fixes, with the sort of notion that I am responsible for getting you out."

"I can assure you nothing of the kind is the case. I could not be so ungrateful. However, in the mean time—that is—the fact is, I asked Sheila last night if she would marry me."

"Well, I knew you would be angry," said the younger man in a tone of apology. "And I know I have been too precipitate, but I thought of the short time we should be remaining here, and of the difficulty of getting an explanation made at another time; and it was really only to give her a hint as to my own feelings that I spoke. I could not bear to wait any longer."

"Never mind about yourself," said Ingram somewhat curtly: "what did Sheila say?"

"Well, nothing definite. What could you expect a girl to say after so short an acquaintance? But this I can tell you, that the proposal is not altogether distasteful to her, and that I have her permission to speak of it at some future time, when we have known each other longer."

"There is no mistake about her silence, for example, that might have led you into misinterpreting her wishes altogether?"

"Nothing of the kind is possible. Of course I could not ask the girl for any promise, or anything of that sort. All I asked was, whether she would allow me at some future time to ask her more definitely; and I am so well satisfied with the reply that I am convinced I shall marry her."

"And is this the fix you wish me to help you out of?" said Ingram rather coldly.

"Now, Ingram," said the younger man in penitential tones, "don't cut up rough about it. You know what I mean. Perhaps I have been hasty and inconsiderate about it; but of one thing you may be sure, that Sheila will never have to complain of me if she marries me. You say I don't know her yet, but there will be plenty of time before we are married. I don't propose to carry her off to-morrow morning. Now, Ingram, you know what I mean about helping me in the fix—helping me with her father, you know, and with herself, for the matter of that. You can do anything with her, she has such a belief in you. You should hear how she talks of you—you never heard anything like it."

It was an innocent bit of flattery, and Ingram smiled good-naturedly at the boy's ingenuousness. After all, was he not more lovable and more sincere in this little bit of simple craft, used in the piteousness of his appeal, then when he was giving himself the airs of a man-about-town, and talking of women in a fashion which, to do him justice, expressed nothing of his real sentiments?

Ingram walked on, and said in his slow and deliberate way, "You know I opposed this project of yours from the first. I don't think you have acted fairly by Sheila or her father, or myself who brought you here. But if Sheila has been drawn into it, why, then, the whole affair is altered, and we've got to make the best of a bad business."

"I was sure you would say that," exclaimed the younger man with a brighter light appearing on his face. "You may call me all the hard names you like: I deserve them all, and more. But then, as you say, since Sheila is in it, you'll do your best, won't you?"

Frank Lavender could not make out[Pg 564] why the taciturn and sallow-faced man walking beside him seemed to be greatly amused by this speech, but he was in no humor to take offence. He knew that once Ingram had promised him his help he would not lack all the advocacy, the advice, and even the money—should that become necessary—that a warm-hearted and disinterested friend could offer. Many and many a time Ingram had helped him, and now he was to come to his assistance in the most serious crisis of his life. Ingram would remove Sheila's doubts. Ingram would persuade old Mackenzie that girls had to get married some time or other, and that Sheila ought to live in London. Ingram would be commissioned to break the news to Mrs. Lavender—But here, when the young man thought of the interview with his aunt which he would have to encounter, a cold shiver passed through his frame. He would not think of it. He would enjoy the present hour. Difficulties only grew the bigger the more they were looked at: when they were left to themselves they frequently disappeared. It was another proof of Ingram's kindliness that he had not even mentioned the old lady down in Kensington who was likely to have something to say about this marriage.

"Yes," said Lavender with much eagerness, "but then, look! You may be sure that if we get over these, Sheila will know well who managed it, and she will not be ungrateful to you, I think. If we ever should be married, I am certain she will always look on you as her greatest friend."

"It is a big bribe," said the elder man, perhaps a trifle sadly; and Lavender looked at him with some vague return of a suspicion that some time or other Ingram must himself have been in love with Sheila.

They returned to the inn, where they found Mackenzie busy with a heap of letters and newspapers that had been sent across to him from Stornoway. The whole of the breakfast-table was littered with wrappers and big blue envelopes: where was Sheila, who usually waited on her father at such times to keep his affairs in order?

Sheila was outside, and Lavender saw her through the open window. Was she not waiting for him, that she should pace up and down by herself, with her face turned away from the house? He immediately went out and went over to her, and she turned to him as he approached. He fancied she looked a trifle pale, and far less bright and joyous than the ordinary Sheila.

"Mr. Lavender," she said, walking away from the house, "I wish very much to speak to you for a moment. Last night it was all a misfortune that I did not understand; and I wish you to forget that a word was ever spoken about that."

Her head was bent down, and her speech was low and broken: what she failed to explain in words her manner explained for her. But her companion said to her, with alarm and surprise in his tone, "Why, Sheila! You cannot be so cruel! Surely you need not fear any embarrassment through so slight a promise. It pledges you to nothing—it leaves you quite free; and some day, if I come and ask you then a question I have not asked you yet, that will be time enough to give me an answer."

"Oh no, no!" said the girl, obviously in great distress, "I cannot do that. It is unjust to you to let you think of it and hope about it. It was last night everything was strange to me—I did not understand then—but I have thought about it all the night through, and now I know."

"But you do not ask that, do you?" he said. "You are only frightened a little bit just now, but that will go away. There is nothing to be frightened about. You have been thinking over it, and imagining impossible things: you have been thinking of leaving Borva altogether—"

"But why think of such a thing?" he said. "You need not look at all the possible troubles of life when you take such[Pg 565] a simple step as this. Sheila, don't be hasty in any such resolve: you may be sure all the gloomy things you have been thinking of will disappear when we get close to them. And this is such a simple thing. I don't ask you to say you will be my wife—I have no right to ask you yet—but I have only asked permission of you to let me think of it; and even Mr. Ingram sees no great harm in that."

"Yes," said Lavender, wishing he had bitten his tongue in two before he had uttered the word. "You know we have no secrets from each other; and to whom could I go for advice but to your oldest friend?"

"Well, he sees a great many difficulties, but he thinks they will easily be got over."

"Then," she said, with her eyes again cast down and a certain sadness in her tone, "I must explain to him too, and tell him I had no understanding of what I said last night."

"Sheila, you won't do that!" urged the young man. "It means nothing—it pledges you to nothing."

"Sheila! Sheila!" cried her father cheerily from the window, "come in and let us hef our breakfast."

"Yes, papa," said the girl, and she went into the house, followed by her companion.

But how could she find an opportunity of making this explanation? Shortly after breakfast the wagonette was at the door of the little Barvas inn, and Sheila came out of the house and took her place in it with an unusual quietness of manner and hopelessness of look. Ingram, sitting opposite to her, and knowing nothing of what had taken place, fancied that this was but an expression of girlish timidity, and that it was his business to interest her and amuse her until she should forget the strangeness and newness of her position. Nay, as he had resolved to make the best of matters as they stood, and as he believed that Sheila had half confessed to a special liking for his friend from the South, what more fitting thing could he do than endeavor to place Lavender in the most favorable light in her eyes? He began to talk of all the brilliant and successful things the young man had done as fully as he could before himself. He contrived to introduce pretty anecdotes of Lavender's generosity; and there were plenty of these, for the young fellow had never a thought of consequences if he was touched by a tale of distress, and if he could help the sufferer either with his own or any one else's money. Ingram talked of all their excursions together, in Devonshire, in Brittany and elsewhere, to impress on Sheila how well he knew his friend and how long their intimacy had lasted. At first the girl was singularly reserved and silent, but somehow, as pleasant recollections were multiplied, and as Lavender seemed to have been always the associate and companion of this old friend of hers, some brighter expression came into her face and she grew more interested. Lavender, not knowing whether or not to take her decision of that morning as final, and not wholly perceiving the aim of this kindly chat on the part of his friend, began to see at least that Sheila was pleased to hear the two men help out each other's stories about their pedestrian excursions, and that she at last grew bold enough to look up and meet his eyes in a timid fashion when she asked him a question.

So they drove along by the side of the sea, the level and well-made road leading them through miles and miles of rough moorland, with here and there a few huts or a sheepfold to break the monotony of the undulating sky-line. Here and there, too, there were great cuttings of the peat-moss, with a thin line of water in the foot of the deep black trenches. Sometimes, again, they would escape altogether from any traces of human habitation, and Duncan would grow excited in pointing out to Miss Sheila the young grouse that had run off the road into the heather, where they stood and eyed the passing carriage with anything but a frightened air. And while Mackenzie hummed something resembling,[Pg 566] but very vaguely resembling, "Love in thine eyes sits beaming," and while Ingram, in his quiet, desultory, and often sardonic fashion, amused the young girl with stories of her lover's bravery and kindness and dare-devil escapades, the merry trot of the horses beat time to the bells on their necks, the fresh west wind blew a cloud of white dust away over the moorland behind them, there was a blue sky shining all around them, and the blue Atlantic basking in the light.

They stopped for a few minutes at both the hamlets of Suainabost and Tabost to allow Sheila to pay a hurried visit to one or two of the huts, while Mackenzie, laying hold of some of the fishermen he knew, got them to show Lavender the curing-houses, in which the young gentleman professed himself profoundly interested. They also visited the school-house, and Lavender found himself beginning to look upon a two-storied building with windows as something imposing and a decided triumph of human skill and enterprise. But what was the school-house of Tabost to the grand building at the Butt? They had driven away from the high-road by a path leading through long and sweet-smelling pastures of Dutch clover; they had got up from these sandy swathes to a table-land of rock; and here and there they caught glimpses of fearful precipices leading sheer down to the boiling and dashing sea. The curious contortions of the rocks, the sharp needles of them springing in isolated pillars from out of the water, the roar of the eddying currents that swept through the chasms and dashed against the iron-bound shore, the wild sea-birds that flew about and screamed over the rushing waves and the surge, naturally enough drew the attention of the strangers altogether away from the land; and it was with a start of surprise they found themselves before an immense mass of yellow stone-work—walls, house and tower—that shone in the sunlight. And here were the light-house-keeper and his wife, delighted to see strange faces and most hospitably inclined; insomuch that Lavender, who cared little for luncheon at any time, was constrained to take as much bread and cheese and butter and whisky as would have made a ploughman's dinner. It was a strange sort of meal this, away out at the end of the world, as it were. The snug little room might have been in the Marylebone road: there were photographs about, a gay label on the whisky-bottle, and other signs of an advanced civilization; but outside nothing but the wild precipices of the coast, a surging sea that seemed almost to surround the place, the wild screaming of the sea-birds, and a single ship appearing like a mere speck on the northern horizon.

They had not noticed the wind much as they drove along; but now, when they went out on to the high table-land of rock, it seemed to be blowing half a gale across the sea. The sunlight sparkled on the glass of the lighthouse, and the great yellow shaft of stone stretched away upward into a perfect blue. As clear a blue lay far beneath them when the sea came rushing in among the lofty crags and sharp pinnacles of rock, bursting into foam at their feet, and sending long jets of white spray up into the air. In front of the great wall of rock the sea-birds wheeled and screamed, and on the points of some of the islands stood several scarts, motionless figures of jet black on the soft brown and green of the rock. And what was this island they looked down upon from over one of the bays? Surely a mighty reproduction by Nature herself of the Sphynx of the Egyptian plains. Could anything have been more striking and unexpected and impressive than the sudden discovery of this great mass of rock resting in the wild sea, its hooded head turned away toward the north and hidden from the spectator on land, its gigantic bulk surrounded by a foam of breakers? Lavender, with his teeth set hard against the wind, must needs take down the outlines of this strange scene upon paper, while Sheila crouched at her father's side for shelter, and Ingram was chiefly engaged in holding on to his cap.[Pg 567]

"It blows here a bit," said Lavender amid the roar of the waves. "I suppose in the winter-time the sea will sometimes break across this place?"

"Ay, and over the top of the lighthouse too," said Mackenzie with a laugh, as though he was rather proud of the way his native seas behaved.

"It is because we will be standing still," said the girl with a smile which was scarcely visible, because she had half hidden her face in her father's great gray beard. "But when Mr. Lavender is finished we will go down to the great hole in the rocks that you will have seen before, and perhaps he will make a picture of that too."

"You don't mean to say you would go down there, Sheila?" said Ingram, "and in this wind?"

"Indeed, you will do nothing of the kind, Sheila," said her father: "you will go back to the lighthouse if you like—yes, you may do that—and I will go down the rocks with Mr. Lavender; but it iss not for a young lady to go about among the rocks, like a fisherman's lad that wants the birds' eggs, or such nonsense."

It was quite evident that Mackenzie had very little fear of his daughter not being able to accomplish the descent of the rocks safely enough: it was a matter of dignity. And so Sheila was at length persuaded to go across the plain to a sheltered place, to wait there until the others should clamber down to the great and naturally-formed tunnel through the rocks that the artist was to sketch.

Lavender was ill at ease. He followed his guide mechanically as they made their way, in zigzag fashion, down the precipitous slopes and over slippery plateaus; and when at last he came in sight of the mighty arch, the long cavern, and the glimmer of sea and shore that could be seen through it, he began to put down the outlines of the picture as rapidly as possible, but with little interest in the matter. Ingram was sitting on the bare rocks beside him, Mackenzie was some distance off: should he tell his friend of what Sheila had said in the morning? Strict honesty, perhaps, demanded as much, but the temptation to say nothing was great. For it was evident that Ingram was now well inclined to the project, and would do his best to help it on; whereas, if once he knew that Sheila had resolved against it, he too might take some sudden step—such as insisting on their immediate return to the mainland—which would settle the matter for ever. Sheila had said she would herself make the necessary explanation to Ingram, but she had not done so: perhaps she might lack the courage or an opportunity to do so, and in the mean time was not the interval altogether favorable to his chances? Doubtless she was a little frightened at first. She would soon get less timid, and would relent and revoke her decision of the morning. He would not, at present at any rate, say anything to Ingram.

But when they had got up again to the summit of the rocks, an incident occurred that considerably startled him out of these vague and anxious speculations. He walked straight over to the sheltered spot in which Sheila was waiting. The rushing of the wind doubtless drowned the sound of his footsteps, so that he came on her unawares; and on seeing him she rose suddenly from the rock on which she had been sitting, with some effort to hide her face away from him. But he had caught a glimpse of something in her eyes that filled him with remorse.

"Sheila," he said, going forward to her, "what is the matter? What are you unhappy about?"

She could not answer; she held her face turned from him and cast down; and then, seeing her father and Ingram in the distance, she set out to follow them to the lighthouse, Lavender walking by her side, and wondering how he could deal with the distress that was only too clearly written on her face.

"I know it is I who have grieved you,"[Pg 568] he said in a low voice, "and I am very sorry. But if you will tell me what I can do to remove this unhappiness, I will do it now. Shall I consider our talking together of last night as if it had not taken place at all?"

"Yes," she said in as low a voice, but clear and sad and determined in its tone.

"And I shall speak no more to you about this affair until I go away altogether?"

"And then," he said, "you will soon forget all about it; for of course I shall never come back to Lewis again."

The word had escaped her unwillingly, and it was accompanied by a quick upturning of the face and a frightened look in the beautiful eyes.

"I should not wish you to go away from the Lewis through any fault of mine, and say that we should never see you again," said the girl in measured tones, as if she were nerving herself to make the admission, and yet fearful of saying too much.

By this time Mackenzie and Ingram had gone round the big wall of the lighthouse: there were no human beings on this lonely bit of heath but themselves. Lavender stopped her and took her hand, and said, "Don't you see, Sheila, how I must never come back to Lewis if all this is to be forgotten? And all I want you to say is, that I may come some day to see if you can make up your mind to be my wife. I don't ask that yet: it is out of the question, seeing how short a time you have known anything about me, and I cannot wish you to trust me as I can trust you. It is a very little thing I ask—only to give me a chance at some future time, and then, if you don't care for me sufficiently to marry me, or if anything stands in the way, all you need do is to send me a single word, and that will suffice. This is no terrible thing that I beg from you, Sheila. You needn't be afraid of it."

But she was afraid: there was nothing but fear and doubt and grief in her eyes as she gazed into the unknown world laid open before her.

"Can't you ask some one to tell you that it is nothing dreadful—Mr. Ingram, for example?"

"Your papa, then," he said, driven to this desperate resource by his anxiety to save her from pain.

"Not yet—not just yet," she said almost wildly, "for how could I explain to him? He would ask me what my wishes were: what could I say? I do not know. I cannot tell myself; and—and—I have no mother to ask." And here all the strain of self-control gave way, and the girl burst into tears.

"Sheila, dear Sheila," he said, "why won't you trust your own heart, and let that be your guide? Won't you say this one word Yes, and tell me that I am to come back to Lewis some day, and ask to see you, and get a message from one look of your eyes? Sheila, may not I come back?"

If there was a reply it was so low that he scarcely heard it; but somehow—whether from the small hand that lay in his, or from the eyes that sent one brief message of trust and hope through their tears—his question was answered; and from that moment he felt no more misgivings, but let his love for Sheila spread out and blossom in whatever light of fancy and imagination he could bring to bear on it, careless of any future.

How the young fellow laughed and joked as the party drove away again from the Butt, down the long coast-road to Barvas! He was tenderly respectful and a little moderate in tone when he addressed Sheila, but with the others he gave way to a wild exuberance of spirits that delighted Mackenzie beyond measure. He told stories of the odd old gentlemen of his club, of their opinions, their ways, their dress. He sang the song of the Arethusa, and the wilds of Lewis echoed with a chorus which was not just as harmonious as it might have been. He sang the "Jug of Punch," and Mackenzie said that was a teffle of a good song.[Pg 569] He gave imitations of some of Ingram's companions at the Board of Trade, and showed Sheila what the inside of a government office was like. He paid Mackenzie the compliment of asking him for a drop of something out of his flask, and in return he insisted on the King smoking a cigar which, in point of age and sweetness and fragrance, was really the sort of cigar you would naturally give to the man whose only daughter you wanted to marry.

Ingram understood all this, and, was pleased to see the happy look that Sheila wore. He talked to her with even a greater assumption than usual of fatherly fondness; and if she was a little shy, was it not because she was conscious of so great a secret? He was even unusually complaisant to Lavender, and lost no opportunity of paying him indirect compliments that Sheila could overhear.

"You poor young things!" he seemed to be saying to himself, "you've got all your troubles before you; but in the mean time you may make yourselves as happy as you can."

Was the weather at last about to break? As the afternoon wore on the heavens became overcast, for the wind had gone back from the course of the sun, and had brought up great masses of cloud from the rainy south-west.

"Are we going to have a storm?" said Lavender, looking along the southern sky, where the Barvas hills were momentarily growing blacker under the gathering darkness overhead.

"A storm?" said Mackenzie, whose notions on what constituted a storm were probably different from those of his guest. "No, there will be no storm. But it is no bad thing if we get back to Barvas very soon."

Duncan sent the horses on, and Ingram looked out Sheila's waterproof and the rugs. The southern sky certainly looked ominous. There was a strange intensity of color in the dark landscape, from the deep purple of the Barvas hills, coming forward to the deep green of the pasture-land around them, and the rich reds and browns of the heath and the peat-cuttings. At one point of the clouded and hurrying sky, however, there was a soft and vaporous line of yellow in the gray; and under that, miles away in the west, a great dash of silver light struck upon the sea, and glowed there so that the eye could scarcely bear it. Was it the damp that brought the perfumes of the moorland so distinctly toward them—the bog-myrtle, the water-mint and wild thyme? There were no birds to be heard. The crimson masses of heather on the gray rocks seemed to have grown richer and deeper in color, and the Barvas hills had become large and weird in the gloom.

"No," said the girl, looking frankly toward him with her glad eyes, as though he had pleased her by asking that not very striking question. And then she looked round at the sea and the sky in the south, and said quietly, "But there will be no thunder: it is too much wind."

Ingram, with a smile which he could scarcely conceal, hereupon remarked, "You're sorry, Lavender, I know. Wouldn't you like to shelter somebody in danger or attempt a rescue, or do something heroic?"

"And Mr. Lavender would do that if there was any need," said the girl bravely, "and then it would be nothing to laugh at."

"Sheila, you bad girl! how dare you talk like that to me?" said Ingram; and he put his arm within hers and said he would tell her a story.

But this race to escape the storm was needless, for they were just getting within sight of Barvas when a surprising change came over the dark and thunderous afternoon. The hurrying masses of cloud in the west parted for a little space, and there was a sudden and fitful glimmer of a stormy blue sky. Then a strange soft yellow and vaporous light shot across to the Barvas hills, and touched up palely the great slopes, rendering them distant, ethereal and cloud-like. Then a shaft or two of wild light flashed down upon the landscape beside them. The cattle shone red in[Pg 570] the brilliant green pastures. The gray rocks glowed in their setting of moss. The stream going by Barvas Inn was a streak of gold in its sandy bed. And then the sky above them broke into great billows of cloud—tempestuous and rounded masses of golden vapor that burned with the wild glare of the sunset. The clear spaces in the sky widened, and from time to time the wind sent ragged bits of yellow cloud across the shining blue. All the world seemed to be on fire, and the very smoke of it, the majestic masses of vapor that rolled by overhead, burned with a bewildering glare. Then, as the wind still blew hard, and kept veering round again to the north-west, the fiercely-lit clouds were driven over one by one, leaving a pale and serene sky to look down on the sinking sun and the sea. The Atlantic caught the yellow glow on its tumbling waves, and a deeper color stole across the slopes and peaks of the Barvas hills. Whither had gone the storm? There were still some banks of clouds away up in the north-east, and in the clear green of the evening sky they had their distant grays and purples faintly tinged with rose.

"And so you are anxious and frightened, and a little pleased?" said Ingram to Sheila that evening, after he had frankly told her what he knew, and invited her further confidence. "That is all I can gather from you, but it is enough. Now you can leave the rest to me."

"Yes. I like new experiences. I am going to become an intermeddler now. I am going to arrange this affair, and become the negotiator between all the parties; and then, when I have secured the happiness of the whole of you, you will all set upon me and beat me with sticks, and thrust me out of your houses."

"I do not think," said Sheila, looking down, "that you have much fear of that, Mr. Ingram."

"I would rather not have you try to do anything that is likely to get you into unhappiness," she said.

"Oh, but that is absurd. You timid young folks can't act for yourselves. You want agents and instruments that have got hardened by use. Fancy the condition of our ancestors, you know, before they had the sense to invent steel claws to tear their food in pieces—what could they do with their fingers? I am going to be your knife and fork, Sheila, and you'll see what I shall carve out for you. All you've got to do is to keep your spirits up, and believe that nothing dreadful is going to take place merely because some day you will be asked to marry. You let things take their ordinary course. Keep your spirits up—don't neglect your music or your dinner or your poor people down in Borvabost—and you'll see it will all come right enough. In a year or two, or less than that, you will marry contentedly and happily, and your papa will drink a good glass of whisky at the wedding and make jokes about it, and everything will be as right as the mail. That's my advice: see you attend to it."

"But if you begin to cry, Sheila, then I throw up my duties. Do you hear? Now look: there goes Mr. Lavender down to the boat with a bundle of rugs, and I suppose you mean me to imperil my precious life by sailing about these rocky channels in the moonlight? Come along down to the shore; and mind you please your papa by singing 'Love in thine eyes' with Mr. Lavender. And if you would add to that 'The Minute Gun at Sea,' why, you know, I may as well have my little rewards for intermeddling now, as I shall have to suffer afterward."

"Not through me," said Sheila in rather an uncertain voice; and then they went down to the Maighdean-mhara.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

AT ODDS.

The snow had lain upon the ground
From gray November into March,
And lingering April hardly saw
The tardy tassels of the larch,
When sudden, like sweet eyes apart,
Looked down the soft skies of the spring,
And, guided by alluring signs,
Came late birds on impatient wing.

And when I found a shy white flower—
The first love of the amorous sun,
That from the cold clasp of the earth
The passion of his looks had won—
I said unto my brooding heart,
Which I had humored in its way,
"Give sorrow to the winds that blow:
Let's out and have a holiday!"

My heart made answer unto me:
"Where are the faint white chestnut-blooms?
Where are the thickets of wild rose—
Dim paths that lead to odorous glooms?"
"They are not yet. But listen, Heart!
I hear a red-breast robin call:
I see a golden glint of light
Where lately-loosened waters fall."

I waited long, but no reply
Came from my strangely silent heart:
I left the open, sunlit mead,
And walked a little way apart,
Where gloomy pines their shadows cast,
And brown pine-needles made below
A sober covering for the place,
Where scarce another thing could grow.

And then I said unto my heart,
"Now, we are in the dark, I pray
What is it I must do for thee
That thou mayst make a holiday?
Was ever fresher blue above?
Was ever blither calm around?
The purple promise of the spring
Is writ in violets on the ground.

"Comes, blown across my face, the breath
Of apple-blossoms far away:
Hast thou no memories, my heart,
As sweet and beautiful as they?"
[Pg 572] And while I spoke I stood beside
A low mound fashioned like a grave,
And covered thick with last year's leaves,
Set in the forest's spacious nave.

And there I heard a little sound,
The flutter of a feeble wing,
And saw upon the grave-like mound
A bird that never more would sing.
I took it up, and first I laid
The quivering plumage to my cheek,
Then tenderly upon my breast,
And sorrowed, seeing it so weak.

Up spoke my sore reproachful heart:
"And now how happens it, I pray,
Thou dost not press the wounded bird
To sing and make a holiday?"
I made no answer then, but went
Into the dark wood's darkest deep,
And on my breast the bird lay dead,
And all around was still as sleep.

"There be that walk among the graves,"
At length, "repining heart," I said—
"Who carry slain loves in their breasts,
Yet smile like angels o'er their dead.
And thou! Why wilt thou shame me thus,
Saying, for ever, Nay and Nay?"
Then said my heart, "To conquer pain
Is not to make a holiday.

"And they who walk upon the heights,
Not hurtled by the passing storm,
Have carried long in lower lands
The grievous burdens that deform
The small of faith, the weak of heart,
The narrow-minded and untrue,
Who doubt if any heaven is left
When clouds are blown across its blue.

"And they are not of those who seek
To put unsolvèd things away,
Too early saying to their hearts,
'Come out, for it is holiday!'
And often 'tis the shallowest soul
That makes unseemly laughter ring,
That dares not bide amid its ghosts,
And, lest it weep, must try to sing.

"Wait till the tooth of pain is dulled;
Wait till the wound is overgrown:
Not in a day the moss hath made
So fair this once unsightly stone."
[Pg 573] Then was I silent, but less wroth,
Content my heart should have its way.
Believing that in God's fit time
We yet should keep our holiday.

PHILADELPHIA ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.

Zoological gardens for Philadelphia have been a dream for many years, and spasmodic efforts have been made from time to time to produce the reality, but as yet nothing tangible has resulted. The idea has been too inchoate to develop much enthusiasm, and year after year our citizens have returned from enjoying the delights of foreign gardens, and mildly wondered, in the true Philadelphia style, why we should not have them. Nor is this marvelous when we consider the present condition of the proposed Centennial Exhibition, which, it is mortifying to confess, languishes for want of proper support. It cannot be denied that in this undertaking an opportunity is presented that would be eagerly seized, with all its attendant labor and expense, by any one of the States, and that it was with great difficulty, and only because of the self-evident incongruity of holding it elsewhere, that we were permitted by the national authorities to celebrate the anniversary in Philadelphia. It is in connection with this, and as a part thereof, that the Zoological Gardens deserve immediate attention, as an additional, and next to the grand exhibition itself the principal, attraction to the hundreds of thousands who will visit the City of Brotherly Love on the Fourth of July, 1876. The plan on the next page shows the ground which has been granted by the Commissioners of the Fairmount Park to the Philadelphia Zoological Society. The gentlemen who have taken the matter in hand are well known for their energy and breadth of view, and if sustained in their endeavors will carry out the scheme in a manner worthy of this great and growing city.

In undertaking this work the managers have the advantage of the experience and counsel of similar societies in the Old World, and particularly of the magnificent London Zoological Gardens, the officers of which are extremely interested in the success of the enterprise here, and are prepared to aid, by advice and contributions, the Philadelphia Garden. A description of the English society may be useful in forming an opinion of the feasibility and advantages of the proposed scheme. The London Zoological Society was organized in 1826, under the auspices of Sir Humphry Davy, Sir Stamford Raffles and other eminent men, for the advancement of zoology and animal physiology, and for the introduction and acclimatization of subjects of the animal kingdom. By the charter, granted March 27, 1829, Henry, marquis of Lansdowne, George, Lord Auckland, Charles Baring Wall, Joseph Sabine and Nicholas Aylward Vigors, Esqs., were created the first fellows. These gentlemen were empowered to admit such other persons to be fellows, honorary members, foreign members and corresponding members as they might think fit, and to appoint twenty-one of the fellows to be the council, which should manage the entire affairs of the society and elect members thereof until the 29th of May following; at which time and annually thereafter the society should hold a meeting, and by ballot remove five of this council, and elect five others in their place, being fellows of the society, who, with those remaining, should constitute the council for the ensuing year. It will thus be seen that every year five of the council are voted out, and five others elected in their stead, thus retaining a large proportion of managers acquainted with the workings of the organization.[Pg 574]

By the by-laws fellows are required to pay twenty-five dollars initiation fee and fifteen dollars per annum, or one hundred and fifty dollars at once in lieu of such dues. Annual subscribers pay the same amount yearly, but no initiation fee, and they are not permitted to vote at elections. Ladies are admitted as fellows upon the same terms and with the same privileges; with the addition, however, that they are allowed to vote by proxy.

Fellows have personal admission to the Gardens, with two companions, daily, and receive orders, to be signed by them, admitting two persons on each Saturday and Sunday in the year. They are also entitled to twenty free tickets of admission. Sundays are set apart specially for fellows and their friends, the general public not being admitted.

The society has business and scientific meetings—the latter monthly—and these are very largely attended and of the most interesting character. New and remarkable subjects of zoology are exhibited, papers and communications on animal physiology and zoology are read, and animated discussions carried on. An abstract of the proceedings is regularly forwarded to the scientific journals and newspapers. The society also publishes a large variety of zoological matter, which is furnished to fellows at one-fourth less than the price to strangers. Every addition to the collection of the society has its picture taken upon its entrance, and very handsome colored plates of those which are rare or curious are inserted in these publications. The sales from this source realized last year over thirty-seven hundred dollars.

In 1871 the income of the society was $123,101, of which $69,000 were from admissions to the Gardens, $9507 from Garden sales and rent of refreshment-rooms, $3750 from the society's publications, and $39,415 from dues of fellows and annual subscribers. The expenses for the same year were $106,840, the principal items being—salaries, wages and pensions, $21,790; cost and carriage of animals, $10,560; provisions, $20,430; menagerie expenses, $10,480; Garden expenses, $3465. The annual income has so much exceeded the expenses during the last ten years that the society has been able to devote over two hundred and thirty thousand dollars of such surplus to the permanent embellishment of its Gardens, and still retain some fifty thousand dollars as a reserve fund.

In the collection of the society are 590 quadrupeds, 1227 birds and 255 reptiles—altogether 2072. The quantity and various kinds of food—the knowledge of the tastes and necessities of the animals—the temperature, ventilation, habitations and so on of such a large assortment of different species—necessitate the employment of trained and skillful servants and scientific officers. It has been seen that the provisions and menagerie expenses alone exceed $30,000, and it must be remembered that the most difficult part, the brain-work, the knowledge—without which the whole would be a failure—is furnished the society by its council entirely free.

The collection of living animals is the finest in existence, and is daily increasing. Scattered everywhere are its corresponding members, keeping it advised of every opportunity to augment its stores: its agents have penetrated and are still exploring the desert and the jungle, braving the heats of the equator, and the terrible winters of the ice-bound regions of the globe, to furnish every possible link in the grand procession of organized life.

A large proportion of the most wonderful and valuable part of the collection has been presented by crowned heads and governors of different countries, British consuls, other zoological societies, British naval and military officers stationed in foreign ports and posts, Englishmen of wealth and travelers. The donations to the society for the year 1871 would alone be sufficient to establish a Garden at Fairmount Park which would be the finest in America. They amounted to over five hundred in number,[Pg 576] and include almost every description of animal, from a tiger to a monkey, and from an imperial eagle to a humming-bird. With our present connection by rail and steamer with the East and West Indies, and other distant regions, let it only be generally known that such a Garden as is now proposed exists in Philadelphia, and it will receive contributions from all parts of the world. The Philadelphia society has already had numerous offers of animals, birds and reptiles, and the promise of any number for the mere cost of transportation. The officers of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington have expressed their willingness and desire to hand over to any proper association the many curious animals constantly offered it. The societies of Europe, many of whose managers have been in communication with the one started here, are extremely anxious that a collection of American animals, birds, reptiles and fishes shall be made. It will be wholly unique, and will attract zoologists from every part of the world, permitting them, for the first time, to study the habits of many new species. This continent has a wealth of subjects of the animal kingdom as yet almost unexplored. The birds are absolutely innumerable, and the immense rivers produce fishes of the most marvelous character and but little known. In the Berlin Garden, rapidly becoming a rival to the one in London, one of the greatest attractions, if not the chief, is the American beaver: an assemblage of a number of these on the banks of the Schuylkill, giving an opportunity of witnessing their astonishing sagacity, would of itself be an attractive exhibition.

The Zoological Society of Philadelphia was incorporated by act of the Legislature of Pennsylvania, approved March 21, 1859. The site selected at that time, and approved by City Councils, was five acres of the extreme south-eastern corner of the then Park, consisting of Sedgeley and Lemon Hill, and containing about two hundred acres. A meeting of certain prominent and influential citizens interested in the subject was held, and the matter carefully discussed. At subsequent meetings a constitution and by-laws were adopted, officers elected and plans proposed for raising the necessary funds. The officers of the society at that time were as follows: President, Dr. William Camac; Vice-Presidents, William R. Lejée and James C. Hand; Recording Secretary, Fairman Rogers; Corresponding Secretary, Dr. John L. LeConte; Treasurer, P. Pemberton Morris; Managers, Frederick Graeff, Thomas Dunlap, Charles E. Smith, John Cassin, William S. Vaux, J. Dickinson Sergeant, Dr. Wilson C. Swann, W. Parke Foulke, Francis R. Cope and Samuel Powel; Trustees of the Permanent Fund, Evans Rogers, Charles Macalester and James Dundas.[A]

Soon after this the rebellion broke out, and in the clash of arms, the terrible anxieties of the times, and the fevered pursuit of wealth that followed the inflation of the currency, the subject of zoological gardens entirely disappeared. Many of those whose names appear as officially connected with the association, and whose purses and influence would now be warmly exerted in its favor, have passed away, to the irreparable loss of the society. Those who remain have revived the project with sanguine hopes of its accomplishment. The increased wealth since the inception of the idea in 1859, the enlarged size of the Park, the growth of the city and the prospect of the Centennial, have widened the views of the society, and it is confidently anticipated that a Garden will be established, with a collection and all the necessary appurtenances, that will equal in a few years the superb one of London. The strangers that will flock here in 1876 will one and all visit the Zoological Gardens if in any sort of condition for display at that time. In 1851, the year of the great Exhibition of London, the number of visitors to the Zoological Gardens increased from 360,402 in the year before to 667,243;[Pg 577] and in 1862, the time of the second and International Exhibition, it leaped from 381,337 in 1861 to 682,205. The number of visitors to the London Garden has been steadily on the increase since its foundation. In 1863 the largest number up to that time, except the Exhibition years, was 468,700, and by regular progression annually it reached in 1871 the large amount of 595,917 persons.

The situation of our proposed Gardens is most admirable in every way. Stretching along the west bank of the Schuylkill for nearly a third of a mile; opposite the principal entrance to the Park on one side, and the West Philadelphia approach by Thirty-fifth street on the other; directly on the route to the Centennial Exhibition; contiguous to the great railroad artery of the United States, the Pennsylvania Central, a sideling from which will enter the receiving-house of the society (marked D on the plan), and thus enable animals and curiosities from all parts of the United States to be carried without change of cars directly to the Gardens, or from the East Indies, China, Japan, South America and the Pacific islands with but one trans-shipment, while the canal alongside enables freights of all kinds and from any part of the world to be deposited at the very entrance-gates; the ground rolling and fertile, rising in the centre, and sufficiently elevated to be away from the floods of the river; larger by some acres than the Zoological Garden of London; interspersed with handsome trees, many of them of noble size, planted by John Penn, whose family mansion, "Solitude," still stands (35) within the proposed enclosure, and with slight alterations will make a handsome museum for the society; the old West Philadelphia Waterworks (20) only needing an engine to force the water into the lake, around which will be the abodes of the aquatic animals, and from whence the natural slope of the land will permit the irrigation of the whole tract; the great sewer for the use of the western portion of the city, now in process of construction, passing through the southern end of the Garden, and running along the bank of the river to empty below the dam; convenient to all parts of the city by means of the city railways and the Reading Railroad;—these and many other advantages, which an examination of the illustration of the grounds will naturally suggest, produce a combination unsurpassed and unsurpassable anywhere. Is it exaggeration to say that the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens, once properly established, would not only be regarded with pride and affection by the citizens, but very materially benefit the whole city? Imagine the grounds handsomely laid out in walks and drives, bordered with grass and flowers, terraced from the river; tables and chairs scattered about on the green sward under the trees; a band of music; the cool breezes from the Schuylkill; opposite, the beautiful Lemon Hill Park, with its broad drive alongside the bank: could anything be more attractive and wholesome to the hundreds of thousands who through the hot months of this uncommonly hot city are obliged to remain within its limits?

Assuming, then, the advantages of a Zoological Garden in Philadelphia, what is necessary for success and what business inducements (to consider it in that light) can the society hold out to obtain sufficient money to procure its collection of living animals, and provide for their suitable accommodation and increase? The number of members is now two hundred, who pay five dollars initiation and the same amount annually, which gives them continual admission to the proposed Garden. Fifty dollars secures a life-membership free from any further subscription. The sum now in the treasury is two thousand dollars, and although at the last meeting twenty-one new names were proposed, and many more persons have announced their intention of joining, it is apparent that by this means the society will never accomplish its object. Begging subscriptions, without offering a pecuniary return therefor, is repugnant to the officers, and the following plan has been adopted for procuring the necessary funds. Certificates of stock are to be issued of not less than fifty dollars[Pg 578] each. All receipts derived from the Gardens and collections of the society are to be applied annually—first, to the maintenance of the establishment; second, to the payment of six per cent. on the stock; and third, any balance remaining to go to the gradual extension of the collections of the society and the improvement of its grounds.

It will be observed that stockholders can never receive a larger dividend than six per cent. per annum, and this only in case the receipts exceed the expenditures. There are therefore two points to be considered by those willing to invest—first, the character of the managers, and second, the prospect of the pecuniary success of the enterprise. The first is a matter of acquaintance and reputation: the second can be demonstrated in favor of the society, if honestly and efficiently managed, with almost mathematical accuracy.

The main entrance to our Gardens will be directly opposite the Lansdowne drive, at the west end of Girard Avenue Bridge. The Park Commissioners' Report for 1872 gives the recorded number of pleasure carriages and sleighs entering the Park at this point and at the Green street gate, during the year, as 363,138, of equestrians 26,255, and of pedestrians 385,832. These, in the words of the report (p. 60), "allowing three persons for each vehicle, will make a total of one million five hundred and one thousand four hundred and ten visitors passing these two entrances; and supposing the number of persons coming by the other ten entrances to be not more than those recorded at these two, we shall have three millions as the approximate number of visitors."

It will hardly be asserted that there is any prospect of this number diminishing, nor will it be denied that it is most probable it will steadily increase, and during the year of the Centennial be more than quadrupled. It is reasonable to believe that few would resist the pleasure of driving, riding or walking through the Zoological Gardens, so invitingly at hand. Saturdays should be cheap days, say at half price, and the money that would be received at the admission-gates upon that one day alone would dissolve any fears of their six per cent, in the minds of stockholders.

Relieved of the expense of securing the ground, a sum of three or four hundred thousand dollars would enable the society to secure a solid basis, and to open the Gardens upon a scale that would make them the great feature of Philadelphia. In a very few years it could buy up all its certificates of stock and own its collections free. The handsome surplus, before alluded to, accruing annually to the London society shows that this is not chimerical. The city railways are interested in this movement, and should subscribe liberally. It is proposed in the Legislature to charter a railroad running north and south in West Philadelphia, and if this be done it will render the Garden still more accessible.

The Commissioners of the Park warmly advocate its establishment, and do not hesitate to say it will be a most magnificent addition and the most entertaining resort at Fairmount. City Councils have already endorsed it, and devoted space for its location. There remains nothing but the assistance of the moneyed and public-spirited men of Philadelphia to accomplish the undertaking. The stock books of the society are now open for subscriptions, and to prevent the loss of another year ground must be broken in the coming spring. It is most desirable that upon June 1st the society may be in a condition to throw open to the public the nucleus of a collection. Once actually begun, public interest will be aroused, and, the people convinced that there is a prospect of success, it will not be permitted to fail. Certain it is that too much time has already been wasted in such a needed improvement, and that the Zoological Gardens of Philadelphia will be permanently established now or never.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Since this article was written the vacancies in the board of managers have been filled by the election of Messrs. George W. Childs, Anthony J. Drexel, Henry C. Gibson, J. Vaughan Merrick, Clarence H. Clark and Theodore L. Harrison.

BERRYTOWN.

CHAPTER VI.

Mrs. Guinness up stairs in her closet gave thanks every day to Heaven for the blessed result: down stairs she nagged and scolded Kitty from morning until night. Peter supposed it was in order to maintain her authority, but it appeared there were other reasons.

"The girl disappoints me, now that one looks at her as a woman," she said to her husband at breakfast one day, while Kitty sat opposite placidly eating a liberal supply of steak and cakes. She looked up inquiringly. "Yes," vehemently, "at your age I could not have eaten a meal a week after I was engaged. Whenever I heard your father's step I was in a tremor from head to toe. You receive Mr. Muller as though you had been married for years. Not a blush! As cool as any woman of the world!"

Kitty blushed now, but whether from anger or shame no one could tell; for she remained silent. She laid down her knife and fork the next moment, however, and rose.

"What I fear is this," said her mother, raising her voice—"Mr. Muller's disappointment. He looks for a womanly, loving wife—"

"And I'm not one?" Poor Kitty stood in the doorway swinging her sun-bonnet. She was just then certainly not a morbid, despairing woman, who had made a terrible mistake: nothing but a scared child whom anybody would have hurried to comfort and humor. "I want to do what's right, I'm sure;" and her red under lip began to tremble and the water to gather in her eyes. She sat down to hear the rest of the lecture, but her mother stopped short. Presently, when the chickens came clucking, she went to mix their meal as usual, very pale and dolorous.

In an hour she put her head in at the shop-window, her eyes sparkling: "There's two new chicks in the corn-bin nest, and they're full-blooded bantams, I'm sure, father."

"She's not fit to be married!" cried Mrs. Guinness excitedly. "She is both silly and unfeeling. God only knows how I came to be the mother of such a child! The great work before her she cares nothing about; and as for Mr. Muller, she doesn't value him as much as a bantam hen. It's her narrow intellect. Her brain is small, as Bluhm said."

It was his wife's conscience twitting her, Peter knew. "I would not be uneasy," he said with a cynical smile. "You can't bring love out of her by that sort of friction." But he was himself uneasy. If Catharine had been gloomy, or even thoughtful, at the prospect of her marriage, he would have cared less. But she came in that very day in glee at the sour, critical looks with which some envious young women of the church had followed her; and when her mother called her up stairs to look at a trunkful of embroidered under-clothing which she had kept for this crisis, he could hear Kitty's delighted chatter and giggle for an hour. Evidently her cup of pleasure was full for that day. Was his little girl vulgar, feeble in both heart and mind, as her mother said?

Kitty was on trial that day. Miss Muller called and swept her off to the Water-cure in the afternoon. She meant to interest her in the Reformatory school for William's sake. She began by explaining the books, and the system of keeping them. "It is my brother's wish you should keep the accounts," she said.

The tone was too emphatic. Miss Muller looked up from the long lines of figures and found Kitty holding her eyes open by force. Evidently she had just had a comfortable nap.

Whereupon Maria began to patiently[Pg 580] dilate on the individual cases of the boys to be reformed; and terrible instances they were of guilt and misery.

"She whimpered a little," she said afterward to her brother. "I'll do her justice: she did, a little. But they ought to have brought tears from a log; and the next minute, seeing those wonderful eyes of hers fixed on me with a peculiar thoughtfulness, I asked her what was she thinking of, and found she was studying 'how I did that lovely French twist in my back hair.' No. There's nothing in her—nothing. Not an idea; but that I did not expect. But not even a feeling or principle to take hold of. Take my word, William. You are going to marry fine eyes and pink cheeks. Nothing more."

Mr. Muller cared for nothing more. If there had been an answering hint of fire in eyes or cheeks to the rush of emotion he felt at the sight of them, he would have been content. But Catharine's face was very like a doll's just now—the eyes as bright and unmeaning, the pink as unchanging. In vain he brought her flowers; in vain, grown wiser by love, led her out in the moonlight to walk, or, flushed and quaking himself, read in a shrill, uncertain voice absurd fond little sonnets he had composed to her. Kitty was always attentive, polite and indifferent. She never went to her old seat during the whole summer, never opened one of the old books over which she and Peter used to pore. He showed her a new edition of the Pilgrim's Progress one day, with illustrations: "See what Bell and Daldy have done for our old friend, Catharine."

"This allegory all seems much ado about nothing," she said presently, filliping over the leaves. "Really, I can't see that there is any wilderness in the world, or devils to fight in or out of pits. At least for me."

Speculations on life from Kitty! A month ago she would have gone no farther than the pictures. "There's nothing worse for me than nice dresses and a wedding, and three hundred children to bring up for the Lord, with a smell of beef-and-cabbage over it all. Good gracious! Don't you know I'm joking, father?" seeing his face. She laughed and hugged him, and hugged him again. "As for the children, I love them of course, poor little wretches!"

Peter scowled over her back as she hung on him. Was it sheer silliness? Or had certain doors in her nature never been opened, even enough for her to know all that lay behind them? He pushed her off, holding her by both wrists: "Are you quite willing to marry Mr. Muller? Do you love him? Think what it is to marry without love. For God's sake tell me, Catharine!"

"Yes, I love him. Certainly. Why," kindling into animation, "I've worn his ring for a month. Haven't you seen it?" turning her hand about and looking at the blue turquoise against the white dimples with a delighted chuckle.

There was a storm that evening: the thunder was deafening; the rain dashed heavily against the little square windows of the Book-house. Catharine was alone. As soon as she made sure of that, Peter having gone to the city and her mother to a meeting, she put on her waterproof cloak and overshoes, and sallied out. Not by any means as heroines do who rush out into the tempest to assuage fiercer storms of rage or despair within. But there was something at this time in Kitty's blood which, though it would not warm her cheeks at Mr. Muller's approach, was on fire for adventure. To go out alone in the rain was to the chicken-hearted little simpleton what a whaling-voyage would be to a runaway boy. She came in after an hour drenched to the skin, went up stairs to change her clothes, and ran down presently to cuddle before the fire. Now was the time to think rationally, she thought, her elbow on a chair, her chin pillowed in her soft palm. Here was her marriage just at hand. She had looked forward to marriage all her life. Five minutes she gave to the long-vexed question of whether her wedding-veil should cover her face or not, "It would shade my nose, and in frosty weather my nose always will be red." What queer little hooked noses the Mullers all had! and[Pg 581] that reflection swung her mind round to her lover and his love-making, where it rested, until suddenly the fire grew a hazy red blotch and her head began to bob.

"I did not use to be so thick-headed," rousing herself, and staring sleepily at the rain-washed window and the crackling fire. She sang a little hymn to herself, that simplest of all old ditties:

I think, when I hear that sweet story of old.

It made her tender and tearful, and brought her feet close to her Saviour, as those other children upon whose head He laid his hands. "I ought to be thankful that I have work for Him," she thought. "How I envied Mary McKean when she sailed to India as a missionary! And here are the heathen ready-made for me," proceeding very earnestly to think over the state of the wretched three hundred. But her head began to nod again, and the fire was suddenly dashed out in blackness. She started up yawning. It was all so dreary! Life—Then and there our wholesome Kitty would have made her first step toward becoming the yearning, misplaced Woman of the Time, but for a knock which came at the door.

There had been an occasional roll of thunder, and the rain beat steadily upon the roof. The first knock failed to rouse her. At the second a man burst in, and stopped as suddenly in the dark end of the shop, shading his eyes from the glare: then he came tiptoeing forward. Even in this abrupt breaking in out of the storm there was something apologetic and deprecating about the man. As he came up, still sheltering his eyes, as though from the surprise of Kitty's loveliness, and not the fire, he had the bearing of a modest actor called before the curtain for bouquets.

Now Kitty's pink ears, as we know, were always pricked for a compliment, and her politeness was apt to carry her over the verge of lying; but she was hardly civil now: she drew coldly back, wishing with all her heart that her lover, fat, simple, pure-minded little Muller, were here to protect her. Yet Mrs. Guinness, no doubt, would have said this man was made of finer clay than the clergyman. Both figure and face were small and delicate: his dress was finical and dainty, from the fur-topped overshoes to the antique seal and the trimming of his gray moustache. He drew off his gloves, holding a white, wrinkled hand to the fire, but Catharine felt the colorless eyes passing over her again and again.

"Your father is Peter Guinness? No. My business hardly deserves the name, in fact," leisurely stopping to smooth and fold the yellow gloves between his palms, in order to prolong his sentences. "It was merely to leave a message for his son, for Hugh Guinness."

"Dead!" For an instant the patting of the gloves ceased, and he looked at her steadily; then, with a nod of comprehension, he went on: "Oh, it is not convenient for Hugh to be alive just now? We are old comrades, you see: I know his ways. I know he was in Delaware a year ago. But I have no time now to go to Delaware. The message will no doubt reach him if left with you." He had made the gloves into a square package by this time, and, flattening it with a neat pat or two, put it in his pocket, turning to her with a significant smile.

"Hugh Guinness is dead," said Catharine. "He died in Nicaragua five years ago. Your business with him ended then."

"And yet—" coming a step nearer, "yet if Guinness were in his grave now, I fancy he would think my business of more importance to him than life itself would be." He was talking against time, she saw—talking while he inspected her to see whether she were willfully lying or believed what she said. He was a man who by rule believed the worst: the disagreeable, incredulous smile came back. "These are the days when ghosts walk, as you know." After[Pg 582] a moment's pause: "And Hugh may come to rap and write with the rest. So, even admitting that he is dead, it would be safer for you to receive the message. It matters much to him."

"What is it?" she said curiously. "There is no use in wasting so many words about the matter."

"Tell him—" lowering his voice. "No," with a sudden suspicious glance at her. "No need of wasting words, true enough. Give him this. There's an address inside. Tell him the person who sent it waits for him there." He took out of his pocket a small morocco case, apparently containing a photograph, and laid it down on the table.

"Take it back. Hugh Guinness has been dead for years. I will not take charge of it."

"No, he's not dead," coolly buttoning his coat again. "I suppose you believe what you say. But he was in Delaware, I tell you, last October. If he asks about me, tell him I only acted as a messenger in the matter. I've no objection to doing him that good turn."

He nodded familiarly, put on his hat, and went out as suddenly as he had come. When he was gone she heard the rain drenching the walnuts outside, dripping, dripping; the thunder rolled down the valley; the fire crackled and flashed. There, on the table, in the dirty morocco case, lay a Mystery, a tremendous Life-secret, no doubt, of which she, Kitty, held the clue. It was like Pepita when she found the little gold key that unlocked the enchanted rooms. Hugh Guinness living? To be restored to his father? She was in a fever of delight and excitement. When she opened the case she found a beautiful woman's face—a blonde who seemed sixteen to Kitty, but who might be sixty. The Mystery enlarged: it quite filled Kitty's horizon. When she put the case in her pocket, and sat down, with red cheeks and bright eyes, on the rug again, I am sure she did not remember there was a Reform school or a Muller in the world.

At last Peter was heard in the porch, stamping and shaking: "Oh, I'm dry as a toast, Jane, what with the oil-skin and leggings. Yes, take them. Miss Vogdes wants tea in the shop, eh? All right! Why child," turning up her face, "your cheeks burn like a coal. Mr. Muller been here?"

"Oh dear, no!" pushing him into a chair. "Is there nothing to think of but Mullers and marrying?"

She poured out the tea, made room for the plates of cold chicken and toast among the books, and turned the supper into a picnic, as she had done hundreds of times, gossiping steadily all the while. But Mr. Guinness saw that there was something coming.

When the tea was gone she sat down on the wooden bench beside him, leaning forward on his knee: "Father, you promised once to show me before I went away all that you had belonging to—your other child."

Guinness did not speak at once, but sat smoking his cigar. It went out in his mouth. He made a motion to rise once or twice, and sat down again. "To-night, Kitty?"

He got up at last slowly, going to a drawer in the oak cases which she had never seen opened. Unlocking it, he took out one or two Latin school-books, a broken fishing-rod, a gun and an old cap, and placed them before her. It was a hard task she had set him, she saw. He lifted the cap and pointed to a long red hair which had caught in the button, but did not touch it: "Do you see that? That is Hugh's. I found it there long after he was gone. It had caught there some day when the boy jerked the cap off. He was a careless dog! Always jerking and tearing!"

Catharine was silent until he began putting the things back in the drawer: "Father, there's no chance, is there? You could not be mistaken in that report from Nicaragua? You never thought it possible that your son might yet be alive?"

"Hugh's dead—dead," quietly. But his fingers lingered over the book and gun, as though he had been smoothing the grave-clothes about his boy.[Pg 583]

He turned on her: "Why do you talk to me of Hugh, Catharine? I can tell you nothing of him. He's dead: isn't that enough? Christian folks would say he was a man for whom his friends ought to think death a safe ending. They have told me so more than once. But he was not altogether bad, to my mind." He bent over the drawer now. Kitty saw that he took hold of the red hair, and drew it slowly through his fingers: his face had grown in these few minutes aged and haggard.

"'Behold, how he loved him!'" she thought. He had been the old man's only son. Other men could make mourning for their dead children, talk of them all their lives; but she knew her mother would not allow Peter to even utter his boy's name.

"I'm sure," she said vehemently from where she stood by the fire, "he was not a bad man. I remember Hugh very well, and I remember nothing that was not lovable and good about him;" the truth of which was that she had a vague recollection of a freckle-faced boy, who had tormented her and her kittens day and night, and who had suddenly disappeared out of her life. But she meant to comfort her father, and she did it.

"You've a good, warm heart, Kitty. I did not know that anybody but me remembered the lad."

She snuggled down on the floor beside him, drawing his hand over her hair. Usually there is great comfort in the very touch of a woman like Kitty. But Peter's hand rested passively on her head: her cooing and patting could not touch his trouble to-day.

"Your mother will need you, my dear," he said at last, as soon as that lady's soft steady step was heard in the hall. Kitty understood and left him alone.

"Mother," she said, coming into the chamber where Mrs. Guinness, her pink cheeks pinker from the rain, lay back in her easy-chair, her slippered feet on the fender—"mother, there is a question I wish to ask you."

Mrs. Guinness sat erect and looked at her in absolute silence. Astonishment and anger Kitty had expected from her at her mention of the name, but there was a certain terror in her face which was unaccountable.

"What do you know of Hugh Guinness? I never wished that his name should cross your lips, Catharine."

"I know very little. But I have a reason for wishing to know when and how he died. It is for father's sake," she added, startled at the increasing agitation which her mother could not conceal.

Still, Mrs. Guinness did not reply. She was not a superstitious woman: she felt no remorse about her treatment of her stepson. There had been evil tongues, even in the church, to lay his ruined life at her door, and to say that bigotry and sternness had driven him to debauchery and a drunkard's death. She knew she had done her duty: she liked best to think of herself as a mother in Israel. Yet there had always been a dull, mysterious terror which linked Hugh Guinness and Catharine together. It was there he would revenge himself. Some day he would put out his dead hand from the grave to work the child's destruction. She had reasoned and laughed at her own folly in the matter for years. But the belief was there. Now it was taking shape.

She would meet it face to face. She stood up as though she had been going to throttle some visible foe for ever: "I shall tell you the truth, Catharine. Your father has never known it. He believes his son died in Nicaragua fighting for a cause which he thought good. I let him believe it. There was some comfort in that."

"No." She rearranged the vases on the mantel-shelf, turned over the illuminated texts hanging on the wall, until she came to the one for the day. She was trying to convince herself that Hugh Guinness mattered nothing to her.

"What can that matter to you?" sharply. "But I will tell you where and how. Two winters ago a poor, bloated, penniless wretch took up his lodging in a cheap hotel in New York. He left it only to visit the gambling-houses near. An old friend of mine recognized Hugh, and warned me of his whereabouts. I went up to the city at once, but when I reached it he had disappeared. He had lost his last penny at dice."

"God forbid! No," correcting herself. "A week later the body of a suicide was recovered off Coney Island and placed in the Morgue. It was horribly mutilated. But I knew Hugh Guinness. I think I see him yet, lying on that marble slab and his eyes staring up at me. It was no doing of mine that he lay there."

"No, mother, I am sure that it was not," gently. "If your conscience reproaches you, I wish he were here that you could try and bring him into the right path at last."

"My conscience does not trouble me. As for Hugh—Heaven forbid that I should judge any man!—but if ever there was a son of wrath predestined to perdition, it was he. I always felt his day of grace must have passed while he was still a child."

Kitty had no answer to this. She went off to bed speedily, and to sleep. An hour or two later her mother crept softly to her bedside and stood looking at her. The woman had been crying.

"Lord, not on her, not on her!" she cried silently. "Let not my sin be laid up against her!" But her grief was short-lived. Hugh was dead. As for his harming Kitty, that was all folly. Meanwhile, Mr. Muller and the wedding-clothes were facts. She stooped over Kitty and kissed her—turned down the sheet to look at her soft blue-veined shoulder and moist white foot. Such a little while since she was a baby asleep in this very bed! Some of the baby lines were in her face still. It was hard to believe that now she was a woman—to be in a few days a wife.

As for Kitty, she had gone to bed not at all convinced that Hugh Guinness was dead. It was a more absorbing Mystery, that was all. But it did not keep her awake. She did not spin any romantic fancies about him or his dark history. If he were alive, he was very likely as disagreeable and freckle-faced a man as he had been a boy. But the secret was her own—a discovery; a very different affair from this marriage, which had been made and fitted on her by outsiders.

CHAPTER VII.

"Gone! You don't mean that your mother and Mr. Guinness have gone to leave you for a month!" Mr. Muller was quite vehement with annoyance and surprise.

"At least a month," said Catharine calmly. "Mrs. Guinness always goes with my father on his summer journey for books, and this year she has—well, things to buy for me."

It was the wedding-dress she meant, he knew. He leaned eagerly in at the window, where he stood hoping for a blush. But none came. "Purl two and knit one," said Kitty to her crochet.

"I certainly do not consider it safe or proper for you to be left alone," he blustered mildly after a while.

"There is Jane," glancing back at the black figure waddling from the kitchen to the pump.

"You are very kind! It is so pleasant to be cared for!" with a little gush of politeness and enthusiasm. "But dear Maria finds the house damp. I will not be selfish. You must allow me to be alone."

He looked at her furtively. Was there, after all, an obstinate, unbendable back-bone under the soft feathers of this his nestling dove? He was discomfited at every turn this evening. He had hoped that Kitty would notice that his[Pg 585] little imperial had been retrimmed; and he had bought a set of sleeve-buttons, antique coins, at a ruinous price, in hopes they would please her. She looked at neither the one nor the other. Yet she had a keen eye for dress—too keen an eye indeed. Only last night she had spent an hour anxiously cutting old Peter's hair and beard, and Mr. Muller could not but remember that he was a handsome young fellow, and do what she would with Peter, he was old and beaked like a parrot. "Besides, he is only her stepfather," he reasoned, "and I am to be her husband: she loves me."

Did she love him? The question always brought a pain under his plump chest and neat waistcoat which he could not explain; he thrust it hastily away. But he loitered about the room, thinking how sweet it would be if this childish creature would praise or find fault with buttons or whiskers in her childish way. Kitty, however, crocheted on calmly, and saw neither. The sun was near its setting. The clover-fields stretched out dry and brown in its warm light, to where the melancholy shadows gathered about the wooded creeks.

Mr. Muller looked wistfully out of the window, and then at her. "Suppose you come and walk with me?" he said presently.

Kitty glanced out, and settled herself more comfortably in her rocking-chair. "It is very pleasant here," smiling.

He thought he would go home: in fact, he did not know what else to do. The room was very quiet, they were quite alone. The evening light fell on Catharine; her hands had fallen on her lap; she was thinking so intently of her Mystery that she had forgotten he was there. How white her bent neck was, with the rings of brown hair lying on it! There was a deeper pink than usual on her face, too, as though her thoughts were pleasant. He came closer, bent over her chair, touched her hair with one chubby finger, and started back red and breathless.

"I have never bidden you good-bye except by shaking hands. Could I kiss you? I have thought about that every day since you promised to marry me."

The pleasant rose-tinge was gone now: even the soft lips, which were dangerously close, were colorless: "You can kiss me if you want to. I suppose it's right."

The little man drew back gravely. "Never mind; it's no matter. I had made up my mind never to ask for it until you seemed to be able to give me real wifely love."

She started up. "I can do no more than I have done," vehemently. "And I'm tired of hearing of myself as a wife. I'd as soon consider myself as a grandmother."

Mr. Muller waited a moment, too shocked and indignant to speak: then he took up his hat and went to the door. "Good-night, my child," he said kindly, "To-morrow you will be your better self."

Kitty knew nothing of better selves: she only felt keenly that two months ago such rudeness would have been impossible to her. Why was she growing vulgar and weak?

The air stirred the leaves of the old Walnuts outside: the black-coated, dapper figure had not yet passed from under them. He was so gentle and pious and good! Should she run after him? She dropped instead into her chair and cried comfortably till a noise in the shop stopped her, and looking through the dusky books she saw a man waiting. She got up and went in hastily, looking keenly at his face to find how long he had been there, and how much he had seen. It wore, however, an inscrutable gravity.

Most of Peter's old customers sold to themselves during his absence, but this[Pg 586] was a stranger. He stood looking curiously at the heaped books and the worn sheepskin-covered chair, until she was close to him: then he looked curiously at her.

"I have had some correspondence with Mr. Guinness about a copy of Quadd's Scientific Catalogues."

"Mr. Guinness is not at home, but he left the book," said Kitty, alertly climbing the steps. Bringing the book, she recognized him as Doctor McCall, who had once before been at the shop when her father was gone. He was a young man, largely built, with a frank, attentive face, red hair and beard, and cordial voice. It was Kitty's nature to meet anybody halfway who carried summer weather about him. "My father hoped you would not come for the book until his return," she said civilly. "Your letters made him wish to see you. You were familiar, he told me, with some old pamphlets of which few customers know anything."

"Probably. I could not come at any other time," curtly, engrossed in turning over the pages of his book. Presently he said, "I will look over the stock if you will allow me. But I need not detain you," glancing at her work in the inner room. Kitty felt herself politely dismissed. Nor, although Doctor McCall stayed for half an hour examining Peter's favorite volumes as he sat on his high office-stool and leaned on his desk, did he once turn his eyes on the dimpling face making a picturesque vignette in the frame of the open window. When he had finished he came to the door. "I will call for the books I have chosen in an hour;" and then bowed distantly and was gone.

He had scarcely closed the gate when the back door creaked, and Miss Muller came in smiling, magnetic from head to foot, as her disciples in Berrytown were used to allege.

"And what is our little dove afraid of in her nest?" pinching Kitty's cheek as though she had been a dove very lately fledged indeed. She had always in fact the feeling when with Kitty that through her she suffered to live and patted on the back the whole ignoble, effete race of domestic women. Catharine caught sight of her satchel, which portended a visit of several days.

Miss Muller saw through her stratagem and laughed: "Now, that is just the kind of finesse in which such women delight!" she thought good-humoredly, going into the shop to lay off her hat and cape. The next moment she returned. Her face was bloodless. The muscles of the chin twitched.

"Who has been here?" she cried, sitting down and rubbing her hands violently on her wrists. "Oh, Catharine, who has been here?"

Now Kitty, a hearty eater with a slow brain, and nerves laid quite out of reach under the thick healthy flesh, knew nothing of the hysterical clairvoyant moods and trances familiar to so many lean, bilious American women. She ran for camphor, carbonate of soda and arnica, bathed Miss Muller's head, bent over her, fussing, terrified, anxious.

"Is it a pain? Is it in your stomach? Did you eat anything that disagreed with you?" she cried.

"Eat! I believe in my soul you think of nothing but eating!" trying resolutely to still the trembling of her limbs and chattering of her teeth. "I was only conscious of a presence when I entered that room. Some one who long ago passed out of my life, stood by me again." The tears ran weakly over her white cheeks.

"Somebody in the shop!" Kitty went to it on tiptoe, quaking at the thought of burglars. "There's nobody in the shop. Not even the cat," turning back reassured. "How did you feel the Presence, Maria? See it, or hear it, or smell it?"

"There are other senses than those, you know," pacing slowly up and down the room with the action of the leading lady in a melodrama; but her pain or vision, whatever it was, had been real enough. The cold drops stood on her forehead, her lips quivered, the brown eyes turned from side to side asking for[Pg 587] help. "When he is near shall I not know it?" she said with dry lips.

Kitty stole up to her and touched her hand. "I'm so glad if you are in love!" she whispered. "I thought you would think it foolish to care for love or—or babies. I used to care for them both a great deal."

"Pshaw! Now listen to me, child," her step growing steadier. "Oh dear! Haven't you any belladonna? Or coffea? That would set me right at once. As for a husband and children, they are obstructions to a woman—nothing more. If my head was clear I could make you understand. I am a free soul. I have my work to do. Marriage is an accident: so is child-bearing. In nine cases out of ten they hinder a woman's work. But when I meet a kindred soul, higher, purer than mine, I give allegiance to it. My feeling becomes a part of my actual life; it is a spiritual action: it hears and sees by spiritual senses. And then—Ah, there is something terrible in being alone—alone! She called this out loudly, wringing her hands. Kitty gave a queer smile. It was incredible to her that a woman could thus dissect herself for the benefit of another.

"But she's talking for her own benefit," watching her shrewdly. "If there's any acting about it, she's playing Ophelia and Hamlet and the audience all at once.—Was it Doctor McCall you fancied was in the shop?" she asked quietly.

Miss Muller turned, a natural blush dyeing her face and neck: "He has been here then?—Oh, there! there he is!" as the young man came in at the gate. She passed her hands over her front hair nervously, shook down her lace sleeves and went out to meet him. Kitty saw his start of surprise. He stooped, for she was a little woman, and held out both his hands.

"Are you really so glad to see me again, Maria?" She caught his arm for her sole answer, and walked on, nestling close to his side.

"It may be spiritual affinity, but it looks very like love," thought Kitty. It was a different love from any she had known. They turned and walked through the gate down into the shadow of the wooded creeks, the broad strong figure leaning over the weaker one. Kitty fancied the passion in his eyes, the words he would speak. She thought how she had noticed at first sight that there was unusual strength and tenderness in the man's face.

"There will be no talk there of new dresses or reformatory schools, I'm sure of that," she said, preparing to go to bed. She felt somehow wronged and slighted to-night, and wished for old Peter's knee to rest on. She had no friend like old Peter, and never would have.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

OVERDUE.

The beads from the wine have all vanished,
Which bubbled in brightness so late;
The lights from the windows are banished,
Close shut is the gate
Which yesterday swung wide in joyance,
And beckoned to fate.
[Pg 588]

The goblet stands idle, untasted,
Or, tasted, is tasteless to-night;
The breath of the roses is wasted;
In sackcloth bedight,
The soul, in the dusk of her palace,
Sits waiting the light.

Ah! why do the ships waft no token
Of grace to this sorrowful realm?
Must suns shine in vain, while their broken
Rays clouds overwhelm?
Tender Breeze, if some sail bear a message,
Rule thou at the helm!

But if haply the ruler be coming,
Drug the sea-sirens each with a kiss:
Stroke the waves into calmest of humming
Over ocean's abyss:
Speed him soft from the shore of the stranger
To the haven of this.

And the soul-bells in joyous revival
Shall peal all the carols of spring;
The roses and ruby wine rival
Each other to bring,
In the crimson and fragrance of welcome,
Delight to the king.

QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MILLIONAIRE.

Queen Victoria either is or ought to be a very wealthy woman. Her income was at the beginning of her reign fixed at £385,000 a year. This sum, it was understood, would, with the exception of £96,000 a year, be divided between the lord steward, the lord chamberlain and the master of the horse, the three great functionaries of the royal household. Of the residue £60,000 were to be paid over to the queen for her personal expenses, and the remaining £36,000 were for "contingencies." It is probable, however, that the above arrangements have been much modified, as time has worked changes.

The prince-consort had an allowance of £30,000 a year. The queen originally wished him to have £100,000, and Lord Melbourne, then prime minister, who had immense influence over her, had much difficulty in persuading her that this sum was out of the question, and gaining her consent to the government's proposing £50,000 a year to the House of Commons, which, to Her Majesty's infinite chagrin, cut the sum down nearly one-half.

During the happy days of her married life the expenditure of the court was very much greater than it has been since the prince's death. Emperors and kings were entertained with utmost splendor at Windsor. During the emperor of[Pg 589] Russia's visit, for instance, and that of Louis Philippe, one or two hundred extra mouths were in one way or another fed at Her Majesty's expense. The stables, too, were formerly filled with horses—and very fine ones they were—whereas now the number is greatly reduced, and many of those in the royal mews are "jobbed"—i.e. hired by the week or month, as occasion requires, from livery stables. This poverty of the master of the horse's department excited much angry comment on the occasion of the princess Alexandra's state entry into London.

But besides the previously-mentioned £60,000 a year, and what residue may be unspent from the rest of the "civil list," as the £385,000 is called, Queen Victoria has two other sources of considerable income. She is in her own right duchess of Lancaster. The property which goes with the duchy of Lancaster belonged originally to Saxon noblemen who rose against the Norman Conqueror. Their estates were confiscated, and in 1265 were in the possession of Robert Ferrers, earl of Derby. This nobleman took part with Simon de Montfort in his rebellion, and was deprived of all his estates in 1265 by Henry III., who bestowed them on his youngest son, Edmund, commonly called Edmund Crouchback, whom he created earl of Lancaster. From him dates the immediate connection between royalty and the duchy. In 1310, Thomas, second earl of Lancaster, son of Edmund Crouchback, married a great heiress, the only child of De Lacy, earl of Lincoln. By this alliance he became the wealthiest and most powerful subject of the Crown, possessing in right of himself and his wife six earldoms, with all the jurisdiction which under feudal tenure was annexed to such honors. In 1311 he became involved in the combination formed by several nobles to induce the king to part with Piers de Gaveston. The result of this conspiracy was that the unhappy favorite was lynched in Warwick Castle. The king, Edward II., was at first highly incensed, but ultimately pardoned the conspirators, including the earl of Lancaster; but that very imprudent personage, subsequently taking up arms against his sovereign, was beheaded.

In 1326 an act was passed for reversing the attainder of Earl Thomas in favor of his brother Henry, earl of Lancaster. Earl Henry left a son and six daughters. The son was surnamed "Grismond," from the place of his birth. He greatly distinguished himself in the French wars under Edward III., and was the second knight companion of the Order of the Garter, Edward "the Black Prince" being the first. Ultimately, to reward his many services, Edward III. created him, about 1348, duke of Lancaster, and the county of Lancaster was formed into a palatinate or principality. This great and good nobleman who seems to have been the soul of munificence and piety, died in 1361, leaving two daughters to inherit his vast possessions, but on the death of the elder without issue the whole devolved on the second, Blanche, who married John of Gaunt (so called because born at Ghent in Flanders, in March, 1340), son of Edward III. He was created duke of Lancaster, played a prominent part in history, and died in 1399, leaving a son by Blanche—Henry Plantagenet, surnamed Bolingbroke, from Bullingbrook Castle in Lincolnshire, the scene of his birth. He became King Henry IV., and thus the duchy merged in the Crown, and is enjoyed to-day by Queen Victoria as duchess of Lancaster.

Her revenue from this source has been steadily increasing. Thus in 1865 it was £26,000; in 1867, £29,000; in 1869, £31,000; in 1872 £40,000. The largest of these figures does not probably represent a fifth of the receipts of John of Gaunt, but the duchy of Lancaster, like that of Cornwall, suffered far a long time from the fraud and rapacity of those who were supposed to be its custodians. Managed as it now is, it will probably have doubled its present revenue before the close of the century.[B]

The other source is still more strictly personal income. On the 30th of August, 1852, there died a gentleman, aged seventy-two, of the name of John Camden Neild. He was son of a Mr. James Neild, who acquired a large fortune as a gold- and silversmith. Mr. James Neild was born at Sir Henry Holland's birthplace, Knutsford, a market-town in Cheshire, in 1744. He came to London, when a boy, in 1760, the first year of George III.'s reign, and was placed with one of the king's jewelers, Mr. Hemming. Gradually working his way up, he started on his own account in St. James's street, a very fashionable thoroughfare, and made a large fortune. In 1792 he retired. He appears to have been a man of rare benevolence and some literary ability. He devoted himself to remedying the condition of prisons, more especially those in which persons were confined for debt: indeed, his efforts in this direction would seem to have rivaled those of Howard, for in the course of forty years Mr. Neild visited most of the prisons in Great Britain, and was for many years treasurer, as well as one of the founders, of the society for the relief of persons imprisoned for small debts. He described his prison experiences in a series of papers in the Gentleman's Magazine, which were subsequently republished, and highly praised by the Edinburgh Review. Mr. Neild had three children, but only one, John Camden Neild, survived him. This gentleman succeeded to his father's very large property in 1814.

Mr. James Neild had acquired considerable landed estate, and was sheriff of Buckinghamshire in 1804. His son received every advantage in the way of education, graduated M.A. at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was subsequently called to the bar. He proved, however, the very reverse of his benevolent father. He was a miser born, and hid all his talents in a napkin, making no use of his wealth beyond allowing it to accumulate. From the date of the death of his father, who left him £250,000, besides real estate, he had spent but a small portion of his income, and allowed himself scarcely the necessaries of life. He usually dressed in a blue coat with metal buttons. This he did not allow to be brushed, inasmuch as that process would have worn the nap. He was never known to wear an overcoat. He gladly accepted invitations from his tenantry, and would remain on long visits, because he thus saved board. There is a story of how a benevolent gentleman once proffered assistance, through a chemist in the Strand, in whose shop he saw what he supposed to be a broken-down old gentleman, and received for reply, "God bless your soul, sir! that's Mr. Coutts the banker, who could buy up you and me fifty times over." So with Mr. Neild: his appearance often made him an object of charity and commiseration, nor would it appear that he was at all averse to being so regarded. Just before railway traveling began he had been on a visit to some of his estates, and was returning to London. The coach having stopped to allow of the passengers getting refreshment, all entered the hotel except old Neild. Observing the absence of the pinched, poverty-stricken-looking old gentleman, some good-natured passenger sent him out a bumper of brandy and water, which the old niggard eagerly accepted.

A few days before his death he told[Pg 591] one of his executors that he had made a most singular will, but that he had a right to do what he liked with his own. When the document was opened it was found that, with the exception of a few small legacies, he had left all "to Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, begging Her Majesty's most gracious acceptance of the same, for her sole use and benefit, and that of her heirs." Probably vanity dictated this bequest. To a poor old housekeeper, who had served him twenty-six years, he left nothing; to each of his executors, £100. But the queen made a handsome provision for the former, and presented £1000 to each of the latter; and she further raised a memorial to the miser's memory.

The property bequeathed to her amounted to upward of £500,000; so that, supposing Her Majesty to have spent every penny of her public and duchy of Lancaster incomes, and to have only laid by this legacy and the interest on it, she would from this source alone now be worth at least £1,000,000. Be this as it may, even that portion of the public which survives her will probably never know the amount of her wealth, for the wills of kings and queens are not proved; so that there will be no enlightenment on this head in the pages of the Illustrated London News.

Both Osborne House in the Isle of Wight, and Balmoral, were bought prior to Mr. Neild's bequest. These palaces are the personal property of Her Majesty, and very valuable: probably the two may, with their contents, be valued at £500,000 at the lowest. The building and repairs at these palaces are paid for by the queen herself, but those of all the palaces of the Crown are at the expense of the country, and about a million has been expended on Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle during the present reign.

The claims made on the queen for charity are exceedingly numerous. They are all most carefully examined by the keeper of her privy purse, and help is invariably extended to proper objects. But whilst duly recognizing such calls upon her, the queen has never been regarded as open-handed. Her munificence, for example, has not been on the scale of that of the late queen Adelaide, the widow of William IV. It is to be remembered that her father suffered all his life from straitened circumstances, and indeed it was by means of money supplied by friends that the duchess of Kent was enabled to reach England and give birth to its future sovereign on British soil. Although the duke died when his daughter was too young to have heard from him of these pecuniary troubles, she was no doubt cautioned by her mother to avoid all chance of incurring them; and a circumstance in itself likely to impress their inconvenience on her memory was that one of the first acts of her reign was to pay off, principal and interest, the whole of her father's remaining liabilities.

A good deal of sympathy is felt in England for the prince of Wales in reference to his money-matters. His mother's withdrawal from representative functions throws perforce a great deal of extra expense upon him, which he is very ill able to bear. He is expected to subscribe liberally to every conceivable charity, to bestow splendid presents (here his mother has always been wanting), and in every way to vie with, if not surpass, the nobility; and all this with £110,000 a year, whilst the dukes of Devonshire, Cleveland, Buccleuch, Lords Westminster, Bute, Lonsdale and a hundred more noblemen and gentlemen, have fortunes double or treble, no lords and grooms in waiting to pay, and can subscribe or decline to subscribe to the Distressed Muffin-makers' and Cab-men's Widows' Associations, according to their pleasure, without a murmur on the part of the public.

About five years ago the press generally took this view of the subject, and a rumor ran that the government fully intended to ask for an addition to the prince's income; but nothing was done. We have reason to believe that the hesitation of the government arose from the well-grounded apprehension that it would bring on an inquiry as to the queen's income and what became of it. Opinion[Pg 592] ran high among both Whigs and Tories that if Her Majesty did not please to expend in representative pomp the revenues granted to her for that specific purpose, she should appropriate a handsome sum annually to her son. It may be urged, "Perhaps she does so," and in reply it can only be said that in such case the secret is singularly well kept, and that those whose position should enable them to give a pretty shrewd guess at the state of the case persist in averring the contrary. However, it will no doubt be all the better for the royal family in the end. The queen is a sagacious woman. She no doubt fully recognizes the fact that the British public will each year become more and more impatient of being required to vote away handsome annuities for a succession of princelings, whilst at the same time it may look with toleration, if not affection, upon a number of gentlemen and ladies who ask for nothing more than the cheap privilege of writing "Royal Highness" before their names. If, then, Queen Victoria be by her retirement and frugality accumulating a fortune which will make the royal family almost independent of a parliamentary grant in excess of the income which the Crown revenues represent, she is no doubt acting with that deep good sense and prudence which are a part of her character. And here we may just explain that the Crown revenues are derived from the property which has always been the appanage of the English sovereign from the Norman Conquest. For a long time past the custom has been to give this up to the country, with the understanding that it cannot be alienated, and to accept, in lieu thereof, a parliamentary grant of income. This Crown property is of immense value. It includes a large strip of the best part of London. All the clubs in Pall Mall, for instance, the Carlton, United Service, Travelers', Reform; Marlborough House, The Guards Club, Stafford House, Carlton House Terrace, Carlton Gardens—which pay the highest rents in London—stand on Crown land; as do Montague House, the duke of Buccleuch's, Dover House, etc. But this property suffers very much from the fact of its being inalienable. It can only be leased. The whole of the New Forest is Crown land, and it is estimated that if sold it would fetch millions, whereas it is now nearly valueless. If the royal family could use their Crown lands, just as those noblemen who have received grants from sovereigns use theirs, it would be the wealthiest in England, and would have no need to come to Parliament for funds.

Half of the people who howl about the expense of royalty know nothing about these Crown lands, which really belong to royalty at least as much as the property of those holding estates originally granted by kings belongs to such proprietors, and if exception were taken to such tenures scarcely any title in England would be safe.

Taking her, then, for all in all, Queen Victoria is not only the best, but probably the cheapest, sovereign England ever had; and her people, although inclined, as is their wont, to grumble that she doesn't spend a little more money, feel that she has so few faults that they can well afford to overlook this. Deeply loved by them, she is yet more respected.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] How the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall have grown under the admirable management instituted by the late prince-consort, who discovered that peculation and negligence were combining to dissipate his eldest son's splendid heritage, the following will show. In 1824 the gross revenue had fallen to £22,000: in 1872 it was nearly £70,000! Loud were the howls of the peculators against "that beastly German" when His Royal Highness took it in hand. But "he knew he was right," and had his reward. When the prince of Wales came of age, instead of having from £13,000 to £14,000, net, a year from his duchy, as the last prince of Wales had, there was a revenue of £50,000 a year clear, and cash enough to buy Sandringham. The income is now increasing at the rate of about £3000 a year, on the average. By net revenue is meant the clear sum which goes into the prince's pocket. Of course his father's prudence and energy saved the country a large sum, which it would otherwise have been compelled to vote for maintaining the prince's establishment.

George IV. had on his marriage, when prince of Wales, £125,000 a year, besides his duchy revenues, £28,000 for jewelry and plate, and £26,000 for furnishing Carlton House. The present prince of Wales has nothing from the country but £40,000 a year, and his wife has £10,000 a year. No application has ever been made for money to pay his debts or to assist him in any way.

CRICKET IN AMERICA

Cricket is the "national game" of England, where the sport has a venerable antiquity. Occasional references to the game are found in old books, which would place its origin some centuries back. The most ancient mention of the game is found in the Constitution Book of Guildford, by which it appears that in some legal proceedings in 1598 a witness, then aged fifty-nine, gave evidence that "when he was a scholar in the free schoole at Guldeford he and several of his fellowes did runne and plaie there at crickett and other plaies." The author of Echoes from Old Cricket Fields cites the biography of Bishop Ken to show that he played cricket at Winchester College in 1650, one of his scores, cut on the chapel-cloister wall, being still extant; and the same writer reproduces as a frontispiece to his "opusculum" an old engraving bearing date 1743, in which the wicket appears as a skeleton hurdle about two feet wide by one foot high, while the bat is the Saxon crec or crooked stick, with which the game was originally played, and from which the name cricket was doubtless derived.

In England the game is universally played: all classes take equal interest in it, and it is a curious fact that on the cricket-ground the lord and the laborer meet on equal terms, the zest of the game outweighing the prejudice of caste. The government encourages it as a physical discipline for the troops, and provides all barracks with cricket-grounds. Every regiment has its club, and, what is odd, the navy furnishes many crack players. It is the favorite par excellence at all schools, colleges and universities; every county, every town and every village has its local club; while the I Zingari and its host of rivals serve to focus the ubiquitous talent of All England. The public enjoy it, merely as spectators, to such a degree that a grand match-day at Lord's is only second in point of enthusiasm to the Derby Day. Special trains carry thousands, and the field presents a gay picture framed in a quadrangle of equipages. It is sometimes difficult, even by charging large admission-fees, to keep the number of spectators within convenient limits. Notwithstanding the motley assemblage which a match always attracts, so unobjectionable are the associations of the cricket-field that clergymen do not feel it unbecoming to participate in the diversion, either as players, umpires or spectators.

In this country, while cricket is known in a few localities, it has never been generally adopted. In New York a few English residents have for years formed the nucleus of a somewhat numerous fraternity, and the announcement that an American Cricketer's Manual will be published in that city during the present season indicates that home interest in the sport is on the increase. But the chief thriving-place of native American cricket is conceded to be Philadelphia, and it will be interesting, perhaps, to take a retrospect of the progress of the game in this city.

Tradition carries us back as far as the year 1831 or 1832, when cricket was first played on the ground of George Ticknor, Esq., west of the old bridge below Fairmount, by a few Englishmen, who shortly afterward organized themselves under the name of the Union Club. Some of our older native cricketers remember taking their first lessons from the three brothers, George, Prior and John Ticknor, who, with Joseph Nicholls, William Richardson, John M. Fisher, John Herrod, George Parker, Samuel Dingworth, Jonathan Ainsworth, John Kenworthy and George Daffin, met on Saturday afternoons and holidays. In subsequent years a few enthusiastic spirits practiced with home-made bats on the Camden common, and thence we trace the feeble but growing interest in the game, until in 1854 the Philadelphia Cricket Club was organized, with J.[Pg 594] Dickinson Sergeant (who still fills the office) as president, William Rotch Wister as secretary, and Hartman Kuhn (third), James B. England, Morton P. Henry, Thomas Hall, Thomas Facon, Dr. Samuel Lewis, William M. Bradshaw, Henry M. Barlow, R. Darrell Stewart, S. Weir Mitchell and (last, but not least) Tom Senior among its founders. Then came the Germantown Club, of native American boys, organized in 1855, whose highest ambition, for many years, was to play the Philadelphia Club, "barring Tom Senior," then the only fast round-arm bowler in the country. Next came the Olympian, the Delphian, the Keystone Cricket Clubs, and a host of lesser lights, whose head-quarters were at West Philadelphia; and soon after the now famous Young America Cricket Club was formed by the lamented Walter S. Newhall, partly as a training-club for the Germantown. Well did it fulfill its purpose until the breaking out of the war, when the members of the Germantown Club changed the bat for the sabre almost in a body, and the club went out of existence.

With calmer times the old love of cricket came back, and through the energy of Mr. Charles E. Cadwalader the Germantown Club was reorganized, and the esprit de corps was such that before the club had taken the field the roll showed more than twice its former numbers. Through the spirit of its patrons, and especially by the kindness of H. Pratt McKean, Esq. (part of whose country-seat was tendered for a cricket-ground), the new life of the Germantown Cricket Club was successfully inaugurated on the 17th of October, 1866, by a victory in its opening match with the St. George Club of New York. That was a red-letter day, when Major-General Meade, on behalf of the ladies of Germantown, and amid the huzzas of thousands of its friends, presented to the club a handsome set of colors, and, hoisting them to the breeze, alluded in his own graceful style to the memories of the past, and the achievements which he predicted the future would witness on this magnificent cricket-field.

But what is cricket? Descriptions of lively things are apt to be dull, and it is indeed no easy task to render a detailed description of cricket intelligible, much less entertaining, to the uninitiated. The veriest enthusiast never thought the forty-seven "laws of cricket" light reading, and, resembling as they do certain other statutes whose only apparent design is to perplex the inquiring layman, they would, if cited here, be "caviare to the general."

But come with us, in imagination, on a bright May-day to a great match—say on the Germantown cricket-ground. You will find a glorious stretch of velvet turf, seven acres of living carpet, level and green as a huge billard-table, skirted on the one hand by a rolling landscape, and hedged on the other by a row of primeval oaks. Flags flaunt from the flag-staffs, and the play-ground is guarded by guidons. The pavilion is appropriated to the players, and perchance the band: the grand stand is already filling with spectators. Old men and children, young men and maidens, are there—the latter "fair to see," and each predicting victory for her favorite club. For it must be known that on the Germantown ground party spirit always runs high among the belles, many of whom are good theoretical cricketers, and a few of whom always come prepared with blanks on which to keep the neatest of private scores. During the delay which seems inseparable from the commencement of a cricket-match some of the players, ready costumed in cricket apparel, "take care," if they do not "beware," of the aforesaid maidens; others, impatient for the call of "time," like jockeys cantering before the race, disport themselves over the field, practicing bowling, batting, and, in ball-players' parlance, "catching flies." The whole picture is one of beauty and animation, and that spirit must indeed be dull which does not yield to the exhilarating influences of such a scene.

Cricket is usually played by eleven players on each side, the tactics of each party being directed by a captain. Two umpires are appointed, whose decrees,[Pg 595] if sometimes inscrutable, are always irreversible, and whose first duty it is to "pitch the wickets." Having selected the ground, they proceed to measure accurately a distance of twenty-two yards, and to erect a wicket at either extremity. Each "wicket" consists of three wooden "stumps," twenty-eight inches long, sharpened at the bottom, whereby they may be stuck perpendicularly in the ground, and grooved at the top, in order to receive two short sticks or "bails," which rest lightly across their tops. When pitched, the wickets face each other, and each presents a parallelogram twenty-seven inches high by eight inches broad, erect and firm-looking, while in fact the lightest touch of the ball or any other object would knock off the bails and reduce it to its elements. Each of these wickets is to be the locus in quo not only of a party rivalry, but also of an exciting individual contest between the bowler and the batsman, the former attacking the fortress with scientific pertinacity, and the "life" of the latter depending on its successful defence. The "popping-crease" and the "bowling-crease" having been white-washed on the turf—the one marking the batsman's safety-ground, and the other the bowler's limits—all is now ready for play. The captains toss a copper for choice of innings, and the winner may elect to send his men to the bat. He selects two representatives of his side, who, having accoutred themselves with hand-protecting gloves and with leg-guards, take position, bat in hand, in front of each wicket. All the eleven players on the out side are now marshaled by their captain in their proper positions as fielders, one being deputed to open the bowling. For a few moments the new match ball—than which, in a cricketer's estimation,

A carbuncle entire, as big as thou art,
Were not a richer jewel—

is passed round among the fielders, just to get their hands in; which ball, we may mention, is nine inches in circumference, weighs five and a half ounces, is in color not unlike a carbuncle, and nearly as hard. The umpires take their respective position, and at the word "Play!" the whole party, like a pack of pointers, strike attitudes of attention, more or less graceful, and the game begins.

The bowler, stepping briskly up to his crease, delivers the ball, and, whether it be a "fast round-arm" or a "slow under-hand," his endeavor is so to bowl it that the ball shall elude the batsman's defence and strike the wicket. The batsman endeavors, first and foremost, to protect his wicket, and, secondly, if possible, to hit the ball away, so that he may make a run or runs. This is accomplished when he and his partner at the other wicket succeed in changing places before the ball is returned to the wicket by the fielders.

The several ways in which a batsman may be put out are these: 1. "Bowled out," if the bowler succeeds in bowling a ball which evades the batsman's defence and strikes the wicket. 2. "Hit wicket," if the batsman, in playing at the ball, hits his wicket accidentally with his bat or person. 3. "Stumped out," if the batsman, in playing at a ball, steps out of his ground, but misses the ball, which is caught by the wicket-keeper, who with it puts down the wicket before the batsman returns his bat or his body within the popping-crease. 4. "Caught out," if any fielder catches the ball direct from the striker's bat or hand before it touches the ground. 5. "Run out," if the batsman, in attempting to make a run, fails to reach his safety-ground before the wicket to which he is running is put down with the ball. 6. "Leg before wicket," if the batsman stops with his leg or other part of his body a bowled ball, whose course in the opinion of the umpire was in a line with the wickets, and which if not so stopped would have taken the wicket.

At every ball bowled, therefore, the batsman must guard against all these dangers: he must, without leaving his ground, and avoiding "leg before wicket," play the ball so that it will not strike the wicket and cannot be caught. Having hit it away, he can make a run or runs only if he and his partner can reach[Pg 596] their opposite wickets before the ball is returned by the fielders and a wicket put down. All the fielders are in active league against the batsman, whose single-handed resistance will be of little avail unless he exceeds mere defence and adds his quota of runs to the score of his side. To excel in this requires, in addition to a scientific knowledge of the game, cool presence of mind, a quick eye, a supple wrist, a strong arm, a swift foot and a healthy pair of lungs. Thus the nobler attributes of the man, mental and physical, are brought into play. As the Master in Tom Brown's School-days remarks: "The discipline and reliance on one another which cricket teaches are so valuable it ought to be an unselfish game. It merges the individual in the eleven: he does not play that he may win, but that his side may."

Four balls, sometimes six, are said to constitute an "over," and at the completion of each over the bowler is relieved by an alternate, who bowls from the opposite wicket, the fielders meantime crossing over or changing places, so as to preserve their relative positions toward the active batsman for the time being. Any over during which no runs are earned from the bat is said to be a "maiden" over, and is scored to the credit of the bowler as an evidence of good bowling. In addition to the runs earned on hits there are certain "extras," which, though scored as runs in favor of the in side, are not strictly runs, but are imposed rather as penalties for bad play by the outs than as the result of good play by the ins. Thus, should the bowler bowl a ball which, in the opinion of the umpire, is outside the batsman's reach, it is called a "wide," and counts one (without running) to the batsman's side; should the bowler in delivering a ball step beyond the bowling-crease, or if he jerks it or throws it, it is a "no ball," and counts one (without running) to the batsman's side; but if the batsman hits a no ball he cannot be put out otherwise than by being "run out." If he makes one or more runs on such a hit, the no ball is condoned, and the runs so made are credited as hits to him and his side. The umpire must take especial care to call "no ball" instantly upon delivery—"wide ball" as soon as it shall have passed the batsman, and not, as a confused umpire once called, "No ball—wide—out." Again, should a ball which the batsman has not touched pass the fielders behind the wicket, the batsmen may make a run or runs, which count to their side as "byes:" should the ball, however, missing his bat, glance from the batsman's leg or other part of his body, and then pass the fielders, the batsmen may make a run or runs, which count to their side as "leg-byes."

The game thus proceeds until each batsman of the in side is in turn put out, except the eleventh or last, who, having no partner to assume the other wicket, "carries out his bat," and the innings for the side is closed. The other side now has its innings, and, mutatis mutandis, the game proceeds as before. Usually two innings on each side are played, unless one side makes more runs in one innings than the other makes in both, or unless it is agreed in advance to play a "one-innings match."

So much for the matter-of-fact details of the game of cricket. To enter into the more interesting but less tangible combination of science, chance and skill to which cricket owes not a little of its fascination, would extend this article far beyond its assigned limits. The science of "length-balls" and "twisting lobs," the skill in "forward play" or "back play," the chances of "shooters" and "bailers," are balanced in a happy proportion, and to a cricketer form a tempting theme. But we must content ourselves by referring those disposed to pursue the subject to such books as The Cricket Field, The Theory and Practice of Cricket, Felix on the Bat, Cricket Songs and Poems, and to other similar English publications on the game, which are so numerous that if collected they would make quite a cricket library.

Nor can we here refer to the incidental pleasures which a cricket-match affords independently of participation in the game itself. These are depicted, from a lady's point of view, by Miss Mitford in[Pg 597] Our Village; where a pretty bit of romance is interwoven with a description of a country cricket-match, the very recollection of which draws from the graceful authoress this admission: "Though tolerably eager and enthusiastic at all times, I never remember being in a more delicious state of excitation than on the occasion of that cricket-match. Who would think that a little bit of leather and two pieces of wood had such a delightful and delighting power?"

And this sentiment is echoed by scores of the fair spectators at our home matches. When, for example, during the last international match at Germantown, one of the English Gentlemen Eleven said to a lady, "We were told we should have a fine game at Philadelphia, but, really, I had no idea we should be honored by the presence of so many ladies," her reply expressed the sentiments of a numerous class: "Oh, I used to come to a match occasionally pour passer le temps. At first the cricket seemed to me more like a solemn ceremonial than real fun, but now that I understand the points I like the game for its own sake; and as for a match like this, I think it is perfectly lovely!" Another of the English Eleven—a handsome but modest youth—on being escorted to the grand stand and introduced to a party of ladies, became so abashed by unexpectedly finding himself in the midst of such a galaxy of beauties (and, as a matter of course, the conscious cynosure of all eyes) that, blushing to suffusion, and forgetting to lift his hat, he could only manage to stammer out, "Aw, aw—I beg pardon; but—aw—aw—I fancy there's another wicket down, and I must put on my guards, you know;" whereupon he beat a hasty retreat.[C]

A game which has for centuries in England afforded healthful recreation to all classes must needs possess some value beyond that of mere physical exercise. Not that we would undervalue the latter advantage. Improvement in health usually keeps pace with improvement in cricket. Mr. Grace, the "champion cricketer of the world," is hardly less a champion of muscular physique: he sought in vain for a companion to walk to town, late at night, from the country-seat of the late Mr. Joshua Francis Fisher, where the cricketers, after a long day's play, had been entertained at dinner—a distance of more than ten miles. We heartily concur in the favorite advice of a physician, renowned alike for his social wit and professional wisdom, who prescribed "a rush of blood to the boots" to all professional patients and head-workers—men who, happening to possess brains, are prone to forget that they have bodies. In no way can this inverse apoplexy be more healthfully or pleasantly induced than by a jolly game of cricket. That the sport is adapted to American tastes and needs we are convinced, and that it may find a habitat throughout the length and breadth of our land is an end toward which we launch this humble plea in its interest.

Now we hardly expect all the readers of Lippincott's Magazine forthwith to become cricketers, but we venture to suggest, by way of moral, that some of them may take a hint from Mr. Winkle, who, when asked by Mr. Wardle, "Are you a cricketer?" modestly replied, "No, I don't play, but I subscribe to the club here."

FOOTNOTES:

[C] The following extract from the diary of Mr. Fitzgerald, captain of the English Gentlemen Eleven of 1872, has been published in England, and will be read with interest:

"Sept 21, 1872. Philadelphia, seventh match. Lost the toss. Ground fair to the eye, and immense attendance. The bowling and fielding on both sides quite a treat to the spectators. Total for the English Twelve (first innings), 105. Not considered enough, but a good score against such bowling and fielding—quite first-class.

"Sept. 24. Second innings. With but 33 to get, the Twelve looked sure of victory, but a harder fight was never yet seen. Bowling and fielding splendid; excitement increasing. Fall of Hadow—ringing cheers. Advent of Appleby—fracture of Francis. Seven down for 29. Frantic state of Young America. The English captain still cheerful, but puffing rather quickly at his pipe. Six 'maidens' at each end. The spell broken by splendid hit of 'the tormentor.'

"This was the best and most closely-contested match of the campaign, and the scene presented at the finish would lose nothing in excitement and interest by comparison with 'Lord's' on a grand match-day."

A book of Transatlantic Cricket Notes has been announced in England as in preparation by Mr. Fitzgerald.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

IRISH AGENTS.

The Irish papers mentioned a few months ago the death of Mr. Stuart Trench, whose Realities of Irish Life excited so much attention three years ago. Mr. Trench was the most eminent of a class of men peculiar to Ireland, and growing out of the unfortunate condition of that country. He was an agent, which means overlooker and manager of the estates of absentee landlords.

In England, except on very extensive properties, landlords do not employ an agent of this sort, and even where they do his duties are of a very different character. There the landlords, being nearly always in the country, if not on their estates, look after their business themselves, and have merely an overlooker, who does not occupy the position of a gentleman, to superintend and report to them what may be needful, whilst the rents are collected by a solicitor. This is the case in Scotland also.

But in Ireland this would never do. Even where the landlord is resident he almost always has an agent, to save himself the great trouble which would otherwise be entailed on him, while to the non-resident an agent is imperatively necessary.

Most Irish property is still subdivided into very small farms, and this is in itself a source of constant trouble. The tenants get into arrear or become hopelessly insolvent: they very often refuse to quit their holdings nevertheless, and have to be coaxed, bought or turned out, as the case may be; which several processes have to be accomplished by the agent. Then he is compelled to see in many cases that they don't exhaust the land by a repetition of the same crops, and in fact to superintend, either by himself or his sub-agents, in a hundred ways which would never be necessary in England, where the farms are large and their holders of a different class.

He also represents the landlord socially, and is frequently the great man of the district, duly invested with magisterial and other county offices. The office of agent has therefore in Ireland had a high social standing, and agencies are eagerly sought by the younger sons of gentlemen, and even noblemen.

There are three or four estates whose agencies are regarded as special prizes, and of these Mr. Trench held one, the marquis of Lansdowne's. That nobleman—who is descended from the ancient Fitzmaurices, earls of Kerry, and the celebrated savant Mr. William Petty, who first surveyed Ireland, and took the opportunity of helping himself pretty freely to some very nice "tit-bits" as "refreshers" by the way—has a very extensive property in Queens county and the wild maritime county of Kerry, in which his ancestors were in bygone days a sort of kings.

Probably Lord Lansdowne's agency was worth to Mr. Trench quite $5000 a year, equal in Kerry, where living is still very cheap, to $15,000 in New York City; and he had two or three other agencies in addition.

On the smaller properties the agent is usually paid five per cent., on the large by fixed salary. The best agency of all is that of Lord Pembroke, who owns the most valuable portion of Dublin and a great deal of adjoining land.

When the duties and risks of an agent are considered, he can by no means be regarded as highly paid. Very many agents have lost their lives, and others are exposed to continual danger. They are sometimes harsh, tyrannical and overbearing, but far less so now, when railroad, press and telegraph let light in upon all parts of the country, than formerly, when they were left to themselves, and as long as the rents were duly paid no heed was taken of their operations.

To do an agent's work well great firmness and knowledge of the Irish character[Pg 599] is required, and in some districts in the West a knowledge of the Irish language is very desirable and absolutely requisite.

When an agency becomes vacant a proprietor receives innumerable applications for the vacant office, often from persons ludicrously ignorant of its duties. Thus, some time ago a seeker of such an office accompanied his application—he was a retired army officer—by a sketch of a sort of watch-tower whence he proposed to watch the tenantry, and fire upon them as occasion required! With few exceptions the agents on large estates are gentlemen bred to the business, whose fathers have been agents, and have thus early become initiated into the mysteries of the office.

Many Irish landlords are, and still more used to be, very much in the hands of their agents, of whom they have borrowed money, and further depend on for support in elections. Instances are by no means wanting of men now holding high rank as country gentlemen whose fathers and grandfathers grew rich out of estates confided to them to manage by negligent, reckless landlords, who gradually fell completely into the meshes of their managers.

RANDOM BIOGRAPHIES.

Julius Cæsar. An ancient Roman of celebrity. He advertised to the effect that he had rather be first at Rome than second in a small village. He was a man of great muscular strength. Upon one occasion he threw an entire army across the Rubicon. A general named Pompey met him in what was called the "tented field," but Pompey couldn't hold a Roman candle to Julius. We are assured upon the authority of Patrick Henry that "Cæsar had his Brutus." The unbiased reader of history, however, will conclude that, on the contrary, Brutus rather had Cæsar. This Brutus never struck me as an unpleasant man to meet, but he did Cæsar. After addressing a few oral remarks to Brutus in the Latin language, Cæsar expired. His subsequent career ceases to be interesting.

John Paul Jones. An American naval commander who sailed the seas during the Revolution, with indistinct notions about gold lace or what he should fly at the main. He was fond of fighting. He would frequently break off in the middle of a dinner to go on deck and whip a British frigate. Perhaps he didn't care much about his meals. If so, he must have been a good boarder.

Lucrezia Borgia. Daughter of old Mr. Borgia, a wealthy Italian gentleman. Lucrezia was one of the first ladies of her time. Beautiful beyond description, of brilliant and fascinating manners, she created an unmistakable sensation. It was a burning sensation. Society doted upon her. Afterward it anti-doted.

Benjamin Franklin. A philosopher and statesman. When a boy he associated himself with the development of the tallow-chandlery interest, and invented the Boston dip. He was lightning on some things, also a printer. He won distinction as the original Poor Richard, though he could not have been by any means so poor a Richard as McKean Buchanan used to be. Although born in Boston and living in Philadelphia, he yet managed to surmount both obstacles, and to achieve considerable note in his day. They show you the note in Independence Hall.

Mark Twain. A humorous writer of the nineteenth century. As yet, I have not had the honor of his acquaintance, but when I do meet him I shall say something jocose. I know I shall. I have it. My plan will be to inveigle him into going over a ferry to "see a man." As we pass up the slip on the other side, I shall draw out my flask, impromptu-like, with the invitation, "Mark, my dear fellow, won't you take something?" He will decline, of course, or else he isn't the humorist I take him for. I shall then consider it my duty to urge him. Fixing my eye steadily upon him, so he can understand that I am terribly in earnest, I shall proceed to apostrophize that genial victim as follows:

"Take, I give it willingly,
For invisibly to thee,
Spirits, Twain, have crossed with me."

Christopher Columbus. The man who discovered America two points off the port-bow. One day, in his garden, he observed an apple falling from its tree, whereupon a conviction flashed suddenly through his mind that the earth was round. By breaking the bottom of an egg and making it stand on end at the dinner-table, he demonstrated that he could sail due west and in course of time arrive at another hemisphere. He started a line of emigrant packets from Palos, Spain, and landed at Philadelphia, where he walked up Market street with a loaf of bread under each arm. The simple-hearted natives took him out to see their new Park. On his second voyage Columbus was barbarously murdered at the Sandwich Islands, or rather he would have been but for the intervention of Pocahontas, a lovely maiden romantically fond of distressed travelers. After this little incident he went West, where his intrepidity and masterly financial talent displayed itself in the success with which he acquired land and tobacco without paying for them. As the savages had no railroad of which they could make him president, they ostracized him—sent him to the island of St. Helena. But the spirit of discovery refused to be quenched, and the next year we find him landing at Plymouth Rock in a blinding snow-storm. It was here that he shot an apple from his son's head. To this universal genius are we indebted also for the exploration of the sources of the Nile, and for an unintelligible but correspondingly valuable scientific report of a visit to the valley of the Yellowstone. He took no side in our late unhappy war; but during the Revolution he penetrated with a handful of the garde mobile into the mountain-fastnesses of Minnesota, where he won that splendid series of victories which, beginning with Guilford Court-house, terminated in the glorious storming of Chapultepec. Ferdinand and Isabella rewarded him with chains. Genoa, his native city, gave him a statue, and Boston has named in his honor one of her proudest avenues. One day he rushed naked from the bath, exclaiming, "Eureka!" and the presumption is that he was right. He afterward explained himself by saying that he cared not who made the laws of a people, so long as he furnished their ballots. Columbus was cruelly put to death by order of Richard III. of England, and as he walked to the scaffold he exclaimed to the throng that stood around him, "The world moves." The drums struck up to drown his words. Smiling at this little by-play, he adjusted his crimson mantle about him and laid his head upon the block. He then drank off the cup of hemlock with philosophic composure. This great man's life (which, by the way, was not insured) teaches the beautiful moral lesson that an excess of virtue is apt to be followed by a redundancy of happiness, and that he who would secure the felicity of to-day must disdain alike the evanescent shadows of yesterday and the intangible adumbrations of the morrow.

THE CRIES OF THE MARCHANDS.

The other morning I was lying quietly in bed, waiting for the bonne to fetch my café noir, when a most extraordinary sound caught my ear. The cries of Paris marchands early in the morning are curious enough usually, but this one exceeded in quaintness all that I had heard since my arrival. Between the words "Chante, chante, Adrienne!" a horrible braying broke forth, resounding through our quiet faubourg in a manner which brought many a bonnet de nuit to the windows. I got up to see what was the matter.

By this time a crowd of gamins—the gamins are always up, no matter how early—had gathered in the middle of the street around the object of the disturbance. It was a marchand of vegetables in a greasy blouse, leading an ass. There was a huge pannier on the ass's back full of kitchen vegetables, which the marchand was crying and praising to our sleepy faubourg. With an economy worthy of Silhouette, the scamp had taught Adrienne—for that[Pg 601] was the beast's name—to bray every time he said "Pommes de terre, de terre—terre!" As often as he said this, or "Chante, Adrienne, chante!" Adrienne would switch her tail and chante lugubriously, setting the whole neighborhood in commotion. So adroitly had he trained the creature—with her thigh-bones sticking in peaks through her hide, and a visage of preternatural solemnity—that when her master but lifted his finger Adrienne would go through her part with admirable gravity, thus helping her lord to get his daily bread. I laughed till the bonne came with my coffee, and was glad to see the pannier gradually emptying as the grotesque procession defiled through our street, with a rear-guard of exhilarated urchins poking at poor meek Adrienne in a manner the most méchant. And so on they went till the peasant and his invaluable assistant were quite out of hearing.

There is no end to the originality of the Parisians. If you but go to a kiosque to get a Figaro, the white-capped marchande has something clever to say. The rain, the air, the clouds, the sun are full of esprit for her—are to her banques de France, upon which she has an unlimited credit—credit fonder, if you will, credit mobilier, or what not. The conducteur who stands behind his omnibus and obligingly helps you in, says Merci! with an accent so exquisite that it is like wit or poetry or music, utterly throwing you into despair after your months and months of travail and dozens and dozens of louis lavished on incompetent professors.

"Pronounce that for me, please," said I one day to a gentleman who had just spoken some word whose secret of pronunciation I had been trying to filch for weeks—some delicate little jewel of a word, faint as a perfume, expressive as only a tiny Parisian word can be—and he did so in the politest manner in the world, adding some little witticism which I do not recall. Whereupon I went home and instantly dismissed my "professor."

But to return to our theme, the cries of the marchands. It would take a pen like Balzac's, as curiously versatile, as observant, as full of individual ink, to catch all the shades of these odd utterances. You may recollect as you lay in your sweet English bed in London, just as the fog was lifting over the great city early in the morning, the distinct individuality of the voices which, although you did not see their owners, told each its story of sunrise thrift and industry as it cried to you the early peas or the wood or the melons of the season. You may remember, too, how perplexing, how fantastic, many of those cries were, making it impossible for you to understand what they meant, or why a wood-huckster, for example, should give vent to such lachrymose sentimentality in vending his fagots. But quite different is the Paris marchand. With a physiognomy of voice—if the expression be pardoned—quite as marked as the cockney's, what he says is yet perfectly clear, often shrewd, gay, cynical, sometimes even spiced with jocularity, as if it were pure fun to get a living, and the world were all a holiday.

Some years ago a marchand was in the habit of visiting our neighborhood whose specialty it was to vend baguettes, or small rods for beating carpets, tapestry and padded furniture. His cry was—"Voilà des baguettes! Battez vos meubles, battez vos tapis, battez vos femmes pour un sou!"

It is said that as this gay chiffonnier went one morning by the fish-markets uttering this jocose cry, a squad of those formidable poissardes, the fishwomen of Paris, got after him, and administered a sound thrashing with his own baguettes. Such is the vengeance of the French-woman!

But there is a curious pathos in many of these cries—queer searching tones which go to the heart and set one thinking; tones that come again in times of revolution, and gather into the terrible roar of the Commune. I sometimes wonder if they ever sell anything, those strange sad voices of the early morning struggling up from the street. They are the voices of Humanity on its mighty errand of bread and meat. Some dozen[Pg 602] or so traverse our quarter through the day—some of feeble old women, full of sharp complaint; some of strong, quick-stepping men; some of little children with faint modest voices, as if unused to the cruel work of getting a living. It is these poor people who walk from Montmartre to Passy in the morning, and in the evening fish for drowned dogs or pick up corks along the canal of the Porte St. Martin. For a dog it is said they get a franc or two, and corks go at a few sous a hundred.

Such is an inkling of the life-histories wafted through our summer windows by the voices of the street. Well, the sun is brilliant, the Champs are crowded with the world, the jewelers of the Palais Royal are driving a thriving trade, the great boulevards are margined by long lines of absinthe drinkers. Who cares? Only it is a little disagreeable in the early morning to have one's sleep broken by the pathos of life. Let us sleep well on our wine, and dine to-morrow at the Grand Hotel. We shall forget the misery of these patient voices which visit us with their prayer for subsistence every day.

THE ANGEL HUSSAR.

I think some of the best talks I have had in my life have been with chance companions on whom I have happened in the course of a roving life—sometimes in a restaurant, sometimes in the railroad-car or steamboat, and not unfrequently in the smoking-room of a hotel.

If you have ever been in Dublin, you know Dawson street, and in Dawson street the Hibernian Hotel. I am not prepared to endorse all the arrangements of that hostelry, nor indeed of any other in that part of the United Kingdom called Ireland: I have suffered too much in them. Still, I will say that the Hibernian is to be praised for a really comfortable and handsome smoking-room, containing easy-chairs deservedly so called, and a capital collection of standard novels. One raw evening in the spring of 1871 I sauntered in, and found some gentlemanlike-looking fellows there, who proved pleasant company, and presently a remarkably distingué-looking young man, with an unmistakably military cut, came in and sat down near me. We fell to talking. He was quartered at the Curragh, and was up in Dublin en route for the Newmarket spring meeting. He told me that he made some £700 a year by the turf. "I've a cousin, you see, who is a great sporting man, and thus I'm 'in with a stable,' and get put up to tips," he said. "But for this the turf would be a very poor thing to dabble in." And this led to a talk about officers' lives and their money-affairs. "Oh," he said, "you've no notion of the number who go to utter grief. Why now, I'll tell you what happened to me last season in London. I was asked to go down and dine with some fellows at Richmond; and being awfully late, I rushed out of the club and hailed the first hansom I could see with a likely horse in Pall Mall. I scarcely looked at the man, but said, 'Now I want to get down to the Star and Garter by eight: go a good pace and I'll pay you for it.' Well, he had a stunning good horse, and we rattled away at a fine rate; and when I got out I was putting the money into his hand, when he said, 'Don't you know me, B——?' I looked up in amazement, and in another moment recognized a man whom I had known in India as the greatest swell in the —— Hussars, the smartest cavalry corps in the service, and who, on account of his splendid face and figure, went by the sobriquet of 'the Angel Hussar.'

"Well, it gave me quite a shock. 'Good Heavens, H——!' I said, 'what in the world does this mean?' 'Mean, old fellow? It means that I'd not a farthing in the world, and didn't want to starve. It's all my own cursed folly. I've made my bed, and must lie on it.' I pressed a couple of sovereigns into his hand, and made him promise to call on me next day. He came and gave me the details of his descent, the old story of course—wine and its alliterative concomitant, conjoined with utter recklessness." "Well, and could you help him?" "I'm glad to say I could. I got him the[Pg 603] place of stud-groom to a nobleman in the south of Ireland: he's turned over a new leaf, is perfectly steady, and doing as well as possible."

NOTES.

There is an old story that Augustus, being once asked by a veteran soldier for his aid in a lawsuit, told the petitioner to go to a certain advocate. "Ah," replied the soldier, "it was not by proxy that I served you at Actium!" So struck, continues the tradition, was Augustus with this response, that he personally took charge of the soldier's cause, and gained it for him. Possibly it may be on the theory that his subjects "do not serve him by proxy" when he needs their services that the Austrian kaiser even to this day holds personal audiences with his people regarding their private desires or grievances. Evidently traditional, this custom is so singular as to merit a more general notice than it habitually receives: indeed, its existence might be doubted by the foreign reader, did not a Hungarian journal, Der Osten, furnish a detailed description of it. The only prerequisite to an audience would seem to be the lodging of the subject's name and rank with one of the emperor's secretaries, who thereupon appoints the day and hour for his appearance at the palace. If the emperor has been long absent from Vienna, his next audience-day is always a trying one, as the waiting-room is then crowded with hundreds of both sexes, and all ranks and ages. They are in ordinary dress, too, so that the imperial ante-chamber presents a motley and picturesque scene—the gold-broidered coat of the minister of state and the brilliant uniform of the army mingling with the citizen's plain frock, with the Tyrolean or Styrian hunter's jacket, with the bunda of the Hungarian, with the long, fur lined linen overcoat of the Polish peasant; while the rustling silks of the elegant city lady are side by side with the plain woolen skirt of the farmer's wife. Each of these in regular turn, as written on the list from which he calls them, a staff-officer ushers into the emperor's study. There the petitioner states his case. The emperor listens without interruption, then receives the written statements and documents, sometimes asks a question, but generally dismisses the visitor with a simple formula of assurance that a decision will be duly rendered. There is evidently much form in the matter, as if it were but the empty perpetuation of some ancient ceremony designed to show that the monarch is the father of all his people, and hence is personally interested in their individual troubles. But yet it appears that the emperor does listen to the harangues, for he is occasionally known to affix his initials to some documents; which act is always interpreted as a good sign, it being equivalent to a special recommendation to the secretaries, indicating that primâ facie the cause has seemed to the sovereign to be just. However, the precaution of a written statement is always taken, because it would be impossible for him to remember all the oral explanations. Only a few weeks after each of these audiences the suitors are individually notified of the result. The emperor's sense of etiquette does not allow him to give any sign of impatience during the interview, though some of the visitors are as long-winded and importunate as Mark Twain pretends to have been at one of President Grant's receptions. The emperor answers the German, Hungarian, Tzech, Croat or Italian each in the suitor's own tongue. It is quite possible that in the preliminary registry of the names and condition of suitors care is taken that the emperor shall not be subjected to too great annoyance from any abuse of this curious and interesting privilege.

Among the canonizations of the past few months a notable place must be assigned to that of the beatified Benoît Labre. That he was faithful in doctrine needs hardly be said, but it was his manner of life which procured him this posthumous honor, in order that those who read of his career may rank him among those saints who, as in Tickell's line, have both "taught and led the way to heaven," and may seek to imitate his[Pg 604] example. The decree of canonization, in reciting his characteristic virtues, says that though of very honorable birth, yet, scorning earthly things as dross, he clothed himself in rags, and ate and drank only what chanty gave him. His shelter was the Coliseum or the doorways or desert places of Rome. He washed not, neither did he yield to the effeminacy of the comb; his hair and nails grew to what length Nature wished: in short (for some of the additional details are better fancied than described), he so utterly neglected his person that he became an object of avoidance to many or all. But his neglected body was after death placed under a glass shrine in the church of the Madonna del Monti. The decree calls upon others to follow the example of the blessed Benoît, or at least as far as the measure of spiritual strength in each will allow; but we apprehend that many will modestly confess that the peculiar virtues of the saint are inimitable.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The pamphlet has changed since the days of Swift and Dr. Johnson, and the modern method, which seeks to influence opinion by means of a short, pointed story, is certainly a gain in persuasiveness and pictorial vigor. It is hard to say what the dean of Saint Patrick's would have thought of The Battle of Dorking, or Ginx's Baby, or Lord Bantam, or Little Hodge, by the author of the last two of these. The dean's ferocity of expression no modern writer can allow himself; and the engine of a tremendous intellect is by no means apparent, as it was in his work, behind the efforts of our modern pamphleteers. But the nerves of pity, when exquisitely touched, are as apt to influence action as the feelings of hate or scorn, and Swift's proposal, from the depths of his bleeding heart, to fat and eat the Irish children, was no more adapted to produce reformed legislation than is the picture in Little Hodge of the ten deserted children starving under the thatch, the eldest girl frozen and pallid, the father shot by a gamekeeper, after having failed to support his motherless brood. Swift would have put in some matchless touches, but the picture seems adapted to our day of average, mechanical commonplace. It has a nerve of tenderness in it which will work upon the gentler souls of our communities. The father of Little Hodge is represented as an honest field-laborer, working for Farmer Jolly at nine shillings a week. The birth of his manikin baby and the accompanying death of his wife increase his cares past bearing. He thereupon commits three crimes in succession: he applies to Jolly for an increase of pay, he joins the agrarian movement of a year ago, and he attempts to run away and find work elsewhere. He is inexorably, minutely and witheringly punished for these several acts, and at last gets his only chance of comfort in a violent death, leaving his poor problems unsolved and his children naked and starving. Such a picture, if drawn by a foreigner, would arouse English indignation from shore to shore; but it is home-drawn. The only foreign delineation is in the author's Jehoiachin Settle, a stage Yankee, whose avocation is planting English children in Canada after the manner of Miss Rye. Settle is a preposterous failure, but every other limb of the writer's argument is strong and operative.

The author of Miss Marjoribanks, who is said to keep writing first a good novel and then a poor novel in careful alternation, will leave her friends in some doubt as to which category she means her last story to be placed in, for it is impossible to call it poor, and[Pg 605] conscience-rending to call it good. It is long, and depicts many persons, of whom only one, Mr. Burton's cynical wife, is at all original. Mr. Burton aforesaid, a pompous business-man, places "at his gates," just outside his villa walls, the widow of a man whom he has used as a catspaw. The catspaw was a guileless artist, whom Burton has tempted to take a directorship in his bank when the latter was about to break, he himself retiring in time. The poor painter, in despair, jumps into the water, and his wife, who is proud and aristocratic, is condemned to be the pensioner and neighbor of a vulgar villain, every favor from whom is a conscious insult. Presently the tables are turned. Whether the asphyxiated artist really comes undrowned again, and returns rich from America, nothing could persuade us to tell, as we disapprove of the premature revelation of plots. But the tiresome Burton, at any rate, is bound to come to grief, and his headstrong young daughter to run off with his partner in atrocity, a man as old as her father, and his wife to adapt her cold philosophy to a tiny house in the best part of London. There is one scene, worth all the rest of the book, where this lady tries to bargain with her son, whom she is really fond of, for a manifestation of his love: she is about to yield to his opinion that she should give up her own private settlement to the creditors of her ruined husband, and then, just as she is consenting to this sacrifice, not disinterestedly but maternally, the boy blurts out his passion for a parvenu girl, the lost painter's daughter in fact—a rival whom he introduces to her in the moment of her supreme tenderness. She simply observes, "You have acted according to your nature, Ned—like the rest." If there were ten such chapters in the book as the one containing this scene, the novel would be something immortal, instead of what it is—railway reading of exceptional merit. It forms the first of a "Library of Choice Fiction" projected by Messrs. Scribner, Armstrong & Co., of which it forms a very encouraging standard of interest.

Memoirs of Madame Desbordes-Valmore. By Sainte-Beuve. With a Selection from her Poems. Translated by Harriet W. Preston. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Sainte-Beuve, with whom the art of female biography seems to have died, and who has given us so many softly touched and profoundly understood portraits, is here engaged with one of his own personal friends and contemporaries. This is no study of a heroine long dead, and draped in the obsolete and winning costume of the Empire or the Revolution, but of an anxious woman concerned with the hardship and grime of our own day, "amid the dust and defilement of the city, on the highway, always in quest of lodgings, climbing to the fifth story, wounded on every angle." Only sympathy and a poetic touchstone could bring out the essence and sweetness of a nature so unhappily disguised; but Sainte-Beuve, discarding with a single gesture her penitential mask and hood, finds Madame Desbordes-Valmore "polished, gracious, and even hospitable, investing everything with a certain attractive and artistic air, hiding her griefs under a natural grace, lighted even by gleams of merriment." The poor details of her life he contrives to lose under a purposed artlessness of narrative and a caressing superfluity of loyal eulogy. We learn, however, that Mademoiselle Desbordes was born at Douai in 1786, and died in Paris in 1859. Daughter of a heraldic painter, the necessities of her family obliged her to make a voyage, as a child, to Guadeloupe, in the hope of receiving aid from a rich relative, and a little later to go upon the stage. In the provinces, and occasionally at Paris, she played in the role of ingénue with an exquisite address, succeeding because such a part was really a natural expression of herself: she thus won the abiding friendship of the great Mars, who turned to the young comédienne a little-suspected and tender side of her own character. Mademoiselle Desbordes' artistic charm was infinite, and she controlled with innocent ease the fountain of tears, whitening the whole parterre with pocket-handkerchiefs when she appeared as the Eveline, Claudine and Eulalie of French sentimental drama. But she felt keenly the social ostracism which was still strong toward the stage of 1800, and bewailed in her poetry the "honors divine by night allowed, by day anathematized." In 1817 she married an actor, M. Valmore, who subsequently disappeared into obscure official life, accepting with joy a position as catalogue-maker in the National Library. Her relatives, and even her eldest daughter, received small government favors, while her own little pension,[Pg 606] when it came, was so distasteful that for a long time she could not bring herself to apply for the payments. She was a confirmed patriot, shrank from the favors of the throne, was ill for six weeks after Waterloo, and hailed with delight the revolution of '48, which for some time stopped her pension and impoverished her. After twenty years of the stage she retired into the greater privacy of literature, and published various collections of verse which struck a note of pure transparent sentiment rare in the epoch of Louis Philippe. She had, in an uncommon degree, the gift of intelligent admiration: her addresses to the great men of her time appear to be as far as possible from a spirit of calculation or self-interest, but they secured her an answering sympathy all the more valuable as it was never bargained for. Michelet said, "My heart is full of her;" Balzac wrote a drama at her solicitation; Lamartine, taking to himself a published compliment which she had intended for another, replied with twenty beautiful stanzas; Victor Hugo wrote to her, "You are poetry itself;" Mademoiselle Mars, when past the age of public favor, took from her the plain counsel to retire with kindness and actual thanks; Dumas wrote a preface for her; Madame Recamier obtained her pension; the brilliant Sophie Gay, now Madame Émile de Girardin, wrote of her poetry, "How could one depict better the luxury of grief?" M. Raspail, the austere republican, called her the tenth muse, the muse of virtue; and Sainte-Beuve himself, thinking less of her literary life than of her family life and manifold compassions, terms her the "Mater Dolorosa of poetry." His memoir, however, is valuable for its own grace as much as for the modest sweetness of its subject: without his friendly eloquence the name of Madame Desbordes-Valmore would not have got beyond a kind of personal circle of native admirers, nor the present translator have rendered for foreign ears the whispering story of her pure deeds and the plaintive numbers of her verse.

Memoir of a Brother. By Thomas Hughes, Author of "Tom Brown's School-days." London: Macmillan & Co.

Here is a book that was never meant to be dissected and analyzed by critics and reviewers. It is not hard to imagine the "discomfort and annoyance" which the writer has (he tells us) felt in consenting to give to the public a memoir compiled for a private family circle. Still, on the whole, it is altogether well, and there is good reason to call attention to it, for there is much benefit in the book for many readers. It is the loving record of a life that, from first to last, never challenged the world's attention—that was connected with no great movement or event, political, theological or social; but a life, all the same, that was lived with a truth, an earnestness and a straightness that won the affection and respect of all who came within its influence, and will, or we are much mistaken, glow warmly in the hearts and memories of just all whose eyes now light upon this story of it.

How many boys—ay, and grown men and women too—got up from Tom Brown's School-days consciously the better from the reading of it! But there was withal a vague feeling of incompleteness, an unsatisfied longing. The story left off too soon. One wanted to know more of Tom after his school-days. And then, it was, after all, a novel, a fiction. One would have liked to come across that Tom, and perhaps felt half afraid that he might not readily be found outside the cover of the volume. It is true that that longing to know something of the hero's after-life which is one accompaniment of the perusal of a thoroughly good work of fiction was, in the case of Tom Brown, partially gratified. Everybody had the chance of seeing Tom Brown at Oxford, and watching their old favorite's course through undergraduate days to that haven and final goal of fiction-writers, marriage. But there he is lost to view for good and all, and one is left to the amiable hypothesis that he lived happy all his days, without being either shown how he managed to do so, or taught how we might manage to do likewise.

Now this Memoir of a Brother may be said just to supply the want that we have here endeavored to indicate. It is the whole life—the child life, the school-boy life, the college life and the adult, responsible life in the world and as a family head—of a real flesh-and-blood, actualized Tom Brown; and it stands out depicted with an intense naturalness of coloring that charms one more than the laborious effects of imaginative biography.

George Hughes, the subject of the memoir[Pg 607] before us, was the eldest son of a Berkshire squire, and little more than a year older than his brother and biographer. Very pleasant is the glimpse of child life in an English county forty years ago that is given in the story of his first years. From the first he showed the calm fearlessness, the practicality and the helpfulness which seem to have been among his most prominent characteristics. These qualities, and with them a rigorous conscientiousness, a sensitive unselfishness, and—no trifling advantage in these or any other days—a splendid physique, he took with him, and preserved alike unaltered, through Rugby, Oxford and after years. Little wonder that the possessor of such gifts became a Sixth-form boy and football captain at his public school, and achieved boating and cricketing successes, an honorable degree, and the repute of being the most popular man of his day at the university. Most people who take an interest in boat-racing, and many who do not, have heard of that famous race upon the Thames at Henley, in which a crew of seven Oxford oarsmen snatched victory from a (not the) Cambridge "eight;" but not everybody knows—for the feat was done now thirty years ago, and names are lost while the memory of a fact survives—that George Hughes pulled the stroke-oar of that plucky seven-oared boat.

Oxford days over, and after a three-years' spell of private tutoring—a not uncommon temporary resort of English graduates while they are making up their minds as to what profession or business to take up for life—we find George Hughes settled in London, reading law in Doctors' Commons. By this time his biographer, who has been close by his side, and following his lead in work and play, through all the years of school and college life, is at work in London too, and the two brothers are again together under one roof. The similarity, one may almost say identicality, of the circumstances of their bringing up might, but that such things, luckily, don't always go by rule, have led one to expect to find in them, now full-grown and thoughtful men, something like a coincidence of sympathies and opinions. Nothing of the sort. George is by temperament and conviction a Tory of the kindly, old-fashioned school: his younger brother has become an advanced Liberal, an enthusiastic promoter of workingmen's associations, and a leading spirit among the so-called Christian Socialists. Needless to add that, though never for one moment sundered one from the other in heart or affection by differences of opinion, the two could not work together in this field. Downright, practical George has his objections, and states them. Listen: "'You don't want to divide other people's property?' 'No.' 'Then why call yourselves Socialists?' 'But we couldn't help ourselves: other people called us so first.' 'Yes, but you needn't have accepted the name. Why acknowledge that the cap fitted?' 'Well, it would have been cowardly to back out. We borrow the ideas of these Frenchmen, of association as opposed to competition, as the true law of industry and of organizing labor—of securing the laborer's position by organizing production and consumption—and it would be cowardly to shirk the name. It is only fools who know nothing about the matter, or people interested in the competitive system of trade, who believe or say that a desire to divide other people's property is of the essence of Socialism.' 'That may be very true, but nine-tenths of mankind, or, at any rate, of Englishmen, come under one or the other of these categories. If you are called Socialists, you will never persuade the British public that this is not your object. There was no need to take the name. You have weight enough to carry already, without putting that on your shoulders.... The long and short of it is, I hate upsetting things, which seems to be your main object. You say that you like to see people discontented with society as it is, and are ready to help to make them so, because it is full of injustice and abuses of all kinds, and will never be better till men are thoroughly discontented. I don't see these evils so strongly as you do, don't believe in heroic remedies, and would sooner see people contented, and making the best of society as they find it. In fact, I was bred and born a Tory, and I can't help it.'" However, our biographer tells us, "he (George) continued to pay his subscription, and to get his clothes at our tailors' association till it failed, which was more than some of our number did, for the cut was so bad as to put the sternest principles to a severe test. But I could see that this was done out of kindness to me, and not from sympathy with what we were doing."

After a few years of law-work in the ecclesiastical[Pg 608] courts, the call of a domestic duty took George Hughes—not, one may well imagine, without a severe struggle—from the active practice of his profession, and bade him be content thenceforward with home life. Idle or inactive of course a man of prime mental and bodily vigor could not be. The violoncello, farming, volunteering, magistrate's work, getting up laborers' reading-rooms and organizing Sunday evening classes for the big boys in his village, gave outlets enough for his superfluous energies. And meanwhile he was now become a pater-familias, and had boys of his own to send to Rugby, and to encourage and advise in their school-life by letters which—and it is paying them a high compliment to say so—are almost as good as those which his father had, thirty years before, addressed to him at the same place. It is impossible to overestimate the advantage to a school-boy of having a father who can appreciate and sympathize with boyish thoughts and aims, and knows how to use his natural mentorship wisely. We shall be much surprised if readers do not find the letters from George's father to him, and his to his own boys, among the most attractive parts of this book. Like most men who care heartily for anything, George Hughes always continued to feel a strong interest in public affairs, though circumstances had "counted him out of that crowd" who do the outside working of them. He had a considerable gift of rhyming, and that incident of the ex-prince imperial's "baptism of fire" with which the late Franco-Prussian war opened drew from him some vigorously indignant lines. Here are a few of them:

By! baby Bunting,
Daddy's gone a-hunting,
Bath of human blood to win,
To float his baby Bunting in,
By, baby Bunting,

What means this hunting?
Listen, baby Bunting—
Wounds—that you may sleep at ease,
Death—that you may reign in peace,
Sweet baby Bunting.

Yes, baby Bunting!
Jolly fun is hunting.
Jacques in front shall bleed and toil,
You in safety gorge the spoil,
Sweet baby Bunting.

Perpend, my small friend,
After all this hunting,
When the train at last moves on,
Daddy's gingerbread salon
May get a shunting.

It is not our place here to do more than record how that suddenly, in the early summer of last year, the true strong man was struck down by inflammation of the lungs and passed away. What the loss must be to all whom his influence touched the pages before us sufficiently attest. It is perhaps well, though, that no life can be faithfully lived in the world without leaving such sore legacies of loss behind it.

Books Received.

The Relation of the Government to the Telegraph; or, a Review of the Two Propositions now Pending before Congress for Changing the Telegraphic Service of the Country. By David A. Wells. With Appendices. New York.

The Country Physician. An Address upon the Life and Character of the late Dr. Frederick Dorsey. By John Thomson Mason. Second edition. Baltimore: William K. Boyle.

Addresses delivered on Laying the Cornerstone of an edifice for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, October 30, 1872. Philadelphia: Collins.

Mysteries of the Voice and Ear. By Prof. O. N. Rood, Columbia College, New York. With Illustrations. New Haven: C. C. Chatfield & Co.

The Poems of Henry Timrod. Edited, with a Sketch of the Poet's Life, by Paul H. Hayne. New York: E. J. Hale & Son.

Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches. By Justin McCarthy. New York: Sheldon & Co.

The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier. Household edition. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co.

The Earth a Great Magnet. By Alfred Marshal Mayer, Ph. D. New Haven: C. C. Chatfield & Co.

The Two Ysondes, and Other Verses. By Edward Ellis. London: Basil Montagu Pickering.

LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

MAY, 1873.

Contents

THE ROUMI IN KABYLIA.

THIRD PAPER.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

OUR HOME IN THE TYROL

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

WILMINGTON AND ITS INDUSTRIES.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

MARIE FAMETTE AND HER LOVERS.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

SALMON FISHING IN CANADA.

A PRINCESS OF THULE.

BY WILLIAM BLACK.

CHAPTER VI.

AT BARVAS BRIDGE.

CHAPTER VII.

AN INTERMEDDLER.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

AT ODDS.

PHILADELPHIA ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.

FOOTNOTES:

BERRYTOWN.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

OVERDUE.

QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MILLIONAIRE.

FOOTNOTES:

CRICKET IN AMERICA

FOOTNOTES:

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

IRISH AGENTS.

RANDOM BIOGRAPHIES.

THE CRIES OF THE MARCHANDS.

THE ANGEL HUSSAR.

NOTES.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Books Received.