The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, No. 33,
November 1877, by Various

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Title: Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, No. 33, November 1877

Author: Various

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    See Transcriber's Notes at end of Text.
    Table of Contents and List of Illustrations added by Transcriber.




LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._

NOVEMBER, 1877
Vol XX--No. 33

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877,
by J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the
Librarian of Congress, at Washington.




CONTENTS


    CHESTER AND THE DEE. by LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.
    CONCLUDING PAPER.

    BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN. by T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

    SONG. by OSCAR LAIGHTON.

    "FOR PERCIVAL."
         CHAPTER IV.
              WISHING WELL AND ILL.
         CHAPTER V.
              WHY NOT LOTTIE?
         CHAPTER VI.
              HER NAME.
         CHAPTER VII.
              JAEL, OR JUDITH, OR CHARLOTTE CORDAY.
         CHAPTER VIII.
              "PERHAPS I'M LETTING SECRETS OUT."
              [TO BE CONTINUED.]

    THE DREAM OF ST. THERESA. poem by EPES SARGENT.

    THE FLIGHT OF A PRINCESS. by W.A. BAILLIE-GROHMAN.

    A KENTUCKY DUEL. by WILL WALLACE HARNEY.
    TWO PARTS.--I.
        CHAPTER I.
        CHAPTER II.
        CHAPTER III.

    THE DOINGS AND GOINGS-ON OF HIRED GIRLS. by MARY DEAN.

    THE CHEF'S BEEFSTEAK by VIRGINIA W. JOHNSON.

    LONDON AT MIDSUMMER. by H. JAMES, JR.

    SVEN DUVA.
    FROM THE SWEDISH OF JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG. by C. ROSELL.

    A LAW UNTO HERSELF. by REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
        CHAPTER XIV.
        CHAPTER XVI.
        CHAPTER XVII.
        CHAPTER XVIII.
    [TO BE CONTINUED.]

    THE CHURCH OF ST. SOPHIA. by HUGH CRAIG.

    OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

        RUSSIAN AND TURKISH MUSIC.
        an article by A. de Lasalle.

       "LES NAUFRAGÉS DE CALAIS." by E.W.L.

        REALISTIC ART. by E.B.
            ARTISTIC JENKINSISM.

    LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

     Count Frontenac and New France under
     Louis XIV. By Francis Parkman. Boston:
     Little, Brown & Co.

    Nimport. (Wayside Series.) Boston: Lockwood,
    Brooks & Co.

    Briefe aus Philadelphia (1876) an eine Freundin
    (Letters from Philadelphia to a Friend).
    Von Catherine Migerka. Wien.

    Jack. From the French of Alphonse Daudet,
    author of "Sidonie," "Robert Helmont,"
    etc., by Mary Neal Sherwood,
    translator of "Sidonie." Boston: Estes
    & Lauriat.

    X. Doudan, Mélanges et Lettres. Avec une
    introduction par M. le comte d'Haussonville,
    et des notices par MM. de Sacy et
    Cuvillier-Fleury. Tome III. Paris: Calmann
    Lévy.

    _Books Received._

    _New Music._




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


    REMAINS OF ROMAN WALL, CHESTER.

    WATER TOWER, WITH ROMAN HYPOCAUST, CHESTER.

    KING CHARLES'S TOWER, CHESTER.

    RUINS OF ST. JOHN'S, CHESTER.

    CATHEDRAL TOWER, FROM ST. JOHN'S STREET, CHESTER.

    BOSS IN LADY CHAPEL, CHESTER.

    OLD EPISCOPAL PALACE, CHESTER.

    BRIDGE STREET ROW, CHESTER.

    ANCIENT HALF-TIMBERED HOUSES, FOREGATE STREET, CHESTER.

    VIEW OF CHESTER, FROM THE COP.

    MOSTYN HALL.

    IN FRONT OF THE KURSAAL AT BADEN

    RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF ALLERHEILIGEN.

   "FOR THE SPACE OF A LIGHTNING FLASH THEIR EYES MET."--551.




CHESTER AND THE DEE.

CONCLUDING PAPER.


[Illustration: REMAINS OF ROMAN WALL, CHESTER.]

The "city of the legions" still bears traces of the Roman dominion, more
proud of them than were the spirited Britons in the days when these
walls and other Roman buildings meant subjection to a foreign power.
The walls, which are nearly perfect, now provide a pleasant walk for the
citizens, a surface five or six feet broad, with a coped parapet or iron
railing on either side, and trees almost as old as the walls
overshadowing some parts of them. The old gates have been destroyed or
removed, and three modern archways now pierce the walls; but the memory
of the ancient city defences lingers in the names of some of the
principal streets--Northgate, Foregate, Bridgegate, Watergate streets,
etc. The Dee was approached by two of these gates, one of which opened
at the lower end of Bridge street on the old bridge, which still
remains, while Watergate street was similarly connected with the river.
Here stands the same old tower--Water Tower--which in mediæval times
served to defend the gate. A Roman column and base, like that discovered
in Bridge street, stand near it among the formal evergreens, and a
strange low building, seemingly entire, which distinguishes this
opening, is called by antiquaries a hypocaust or Roman warming
apparatus. The walls of the tower still exhibit iron staples, showing
that ships were anciently moored at this place, but the river has
considerably receded since these were used, for even during the civil
wars there was a wide space between the tower and the shore. Another of
the old towers, the Phœnix, now called King Charles's Tower, is
memorable as the spot whence Charles I. watched the defeat of his troops
by Cromwell on Rowton Heath or Moor. It is approached by a small stone
staircase with a wooden railing, and is only large enough to hold a
dozen men. The ruins of St. John's, the old Norman cathedral--the church
to which King Edgar, before it had become a bishop's seat, rowed up the
river with six Welsh kings as his oarsmen, himself steering the
barque--are very imposing, although here and there improvements of
questionable taste have been added. The new park laid out around them
sets them off to great advantage, and though the date of the
architecture of Harold's Chapel disproves the legend attached to it, one
is none the less glad to be reminded of the obstinate love and loyalty
of Englishmen to the unsuccessful hero of the battle of Hastings. He was
said to have fled to Chester, and lived as a hermit in a chapel near
this cathedral: as to his widow, her stay in Chester after her husband's
defeat and death is an historical fact. Harold shared the same poetical
fate as Arthur, Charlemagne and Barbarossa, and for over a century he
was believed by the people to be alive and plotting. Higden, the
chronicler of St. Werburgh's Abbey (the church which since Henry VIII.
has been the cathedral, and itself stood on the site of an older church
dedicated in Roman and British times to Saints Peter and Paul),
naturally adopted the legend and versified it. In Saxon times, though
the city was included in a large diocese, St. Chad, which ruled all the
kingdom of Mercia, it was practically independent, and in the possession
of various monastic houses. Of these, the greatest was the abbey of St.
Werburgh. Its shrine was the goal of pilgrimages, and is said to have
been endowed by the daughter of King Alfred. The present building dates
from the days of William Rufus, when Hugh d'Avranches--or Lupus, as he
was surnamed--earl of Chester, and one of the Conqueror's old
companions, became a monk in his newly-endowed abbey, which he peopled
with Benedictine monks from Bec in Normandy. Thus, sturdy British
Chester is connected ecclesiastically with the first two and perhaps
greatest archbishops of Canterbury, Lanfranc and Anselm, both of whom
were successively abbots of Bec, and the latter of whom spent some time
with Lupus in Chester. In the north transept and along the north wall of
the nave are remains of masonry said to belong to that precise period.
The restoration, both of the exterior, whose warm red coloring
(sandstone of the neighborhood) is not one of its least attractions, and
of the interior, has been thorough and careful: all old things, such as
a quaint boss in the Lady Chapel representing the murder of Saint
Thomas à Becket, have been carefully handled, and new things, when
introduced, are strictly in keeping with the old.

[Illustration: WATER TOWER, WITH ROMAN HYPOCAUST, CHESTER.]

[Illustration: KING CHARLES'S TOWER, CHESTER.]

The old episcopal palace, enlarged from the abbot's house after the
Reformation and the raising of the abbey into a cathedral church, still
presents some of the oldest Norman remains: it is now being altered to
suit the needs of the cathedral school, a foundation of Henry VIII. for
twenty-four boys, from whom were to be chosen the cathedral choristers.
This, like all other old foundations of the kind, has grown and become
enriched. Anthony Trollope's _Warden_ gives a good picture of the abuses
and anomalies resulting from the unforeseen increase of the funds of
such institutions. One of the chief benefits still retained by Chester
cathedral school is a yearly exhibition to either university. The old
city schools of English boroughs, as well as the almshouses and
hospitals dating from mediæval times, are among the most interesting and
characteristic English foundations, and the old guilds or trade
companies, with their property, privileges and insignia, no less so. In
Chester there are still nominally twenty-four of the latter, though
scarcely any have any property or importance except that of the
goldsmiths, who have an assay-master and office, and claim the
examination of all plate manufactured and for sale in Chester, Cheshire,
Lancashire and North Wales. They also have, or had, the old historic
mace of the city corporation, which was first displayed in 1508 at the
laying of the foundation-stone of the unfinished south-western tower of
the cathedral, was taken with the sword by the Parliamentarians during
their occupation of the staunch royalist city, and afterward restored at
the end of the war. The sword dates from Richard II.'s reign, when he
gave it to the city just before his disgrace at Flint Castle, a little
lower down the Dee. In 1506, Henry VII. expressly ordained that the
mayor of Chester and his successors "shall have this sword carried
before them with the point upward in the presence of all the nobles and
lords of the realm of England." It seems incredible that such a relic as
the mace should have been made over to a goldsmith in exchange for "new
plate," but such was the fact, and the present one dates only from 1668,
and was a gift from Charles, earl of Derby, "lord of Man and the Isles,"
who was mayor of Chester for that year.

The greatest peculiarity of Chester--greater even than its Roman
walls--lies in its sunken streets and the famous "Rows." These are
unique in England, and indeed in Europe. Likenesses to them are seen in
Berne, Utrecht and Thun, but nothing just the same, nothing so evidently
systematic and prearranged, is to be found anywhere. The principal
streets, especially the four great Roman ones that quartered the camp,
are sunk and cut into the rock, while the Rows are on the natural level
of the ground. The reason for this has been a standing problem to
antiquaries. Some have supposed that the excavation of the streets dates
from Roman times, and was only due to the necessity of making work for
the soldiers during long periods of inaction. The effect is most
singular. Hardly any description brings it satisfactorily before the eye
of one who has not seen it. The best which I have met with, and a much
better one than I should be able to give from my own experience, is that
of a German traveller, J.G. Kohl: "Let the reader imagine the front
wall of the first floor of each house to have been taken away, leaving
that part of the house completely open toward the street, the upper part
being supported by pillars or beams. Let him then imagine the side walls
also to have been pierced through, to allow a continuous passage along
the first floors of all the houses.... It must not be imagined that
these Rows form a very regular or uniform gallery. On the contrary, it
varies according to the size or circumstances of each house through
which it passes. Sometimes, when passing through a small house, the
ceiling is so low that one finds it necessary to doff the hat, while in
others one passes through a space as lofty as a saloon. In one house the
Row lies lower than in the preceding, and one has in consequence to go
down a step or two; and perhaps a house or two farther one or two steps
have to be mounted again. In one house a handsome, new-fashioned iron
railing fronts the street; in another, only a mean wooden paling. In
some stately houses the supporting columns are strong, and adorned with
handsome antique ornaments; in others, the wooden piles appear
time-worn, and one hurries past them, apprehensive that the whole
concern must topple down before long. The ground floors over which the
Rows pass are inhabited by a humble class of tradesmen, but it is at the
back of the Rows themselves that the principal shops are to be found....
The Rows are in reality on a level with the surface of the ground, and
the carriages rolling along below are passing through a kind of
artificial ravine. The back wall of the ground floor is everywhere
formed by the solid rock, and the courtyards of the houses, their
kitchens and back buildings, lie generally ten or twelve feet higher
than the street."

[Illustration: RUINS OF ST. JOHN'S, CHESTER.]

The Rows are connected with the streets by staircases, and sometimes,
when a lane breaks through the gallery entirely, there are two flights
of stairs for the wayfarer to pass over. Many of the houses have
latticed windows and strongly clasped doors, such as are seldom seen
elsewhere in England except in old churches and towers. The gable ends
of most houses facing the lanes are turned outward, and ornamented with
strong woodwork curiously painted. The colors are quite traceable yet in
many houses. There are also texts of Scripture and good common-sense
mottoes carved or painted over some of the doors, especially of shops
and inns. The lanes are very intricate and irregular: one of them, St.
Werburgh's street, gives a glimpse of the cathedral, to which it leads.
The Rows have served for trade, for shelter and for defence: they were
considered a point of vantage during the siege, and were also useful as
gathering-places for serious consultation. In those days, however,
little shops along the outer edges of the footways themselves were more
numerous than they are now, and the shops within the shelter of the Rows
were not glazed, but closed at night with shutters, which in the day
were fastened with hooks above the heads of the people. The siege tried
the city sorely, and the streets were disputed foot by foot, yet the old
half-timbered houses in the Foregate street date farther back than the
time when Sir William Brereton, the Parliamentarian general, was
quartered there and received messages of defiance from the mayor, to
whom he had sent proposals of surrender and compromise. The city did not
surrender until the king himself, despairing of his cause, sent the
corporation word to make terms unless relieved within ten days.

We have already alluded to the Cop, or high bank, on the right side of
the Dee, with the distant view of the Welsh mountains. The nearer view
over the city and the river is picturesque also, though less wild, but
there is more suggested than the present by the sight of Flint Castle,
where the estuary begins, Mostyn, where it ends, Basingwerk Abbey ruins,
and Holywell, the famous shrine of St. Winefred. At Flint, Froissart
places an incident which shows the sagacity, if not the personal
fidelity, of a dog. A greyhound (notoriously the least affectionate of
all dog-kind) belonging to Richard II., and who was known never to
notice any one but his master, suddenly began to fawn upon Bolingbroke
and make "to hym the same frendly countinaunce and chere as he was wonte
to do to the kynge. The duke, who knew not the grayhounde, demanded of
the kynge what the grayhounde wolde do. 'Cosyn,' quod the kynge, 'it is
a greit good token to you and an evyll sygne to me.' 'Sir, howe knowe
you that?' quod the duke. 'I knowe it well,' quod the kynge. 'The
grayhounde maketh you chere this daye as kynge of Englande, as ye
shalbe, and I shalbe deposed. The grayhounde hath this knowledge
naturallye: therefore take hym to you: he will folowe you and forsake
me.'"

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL TOWER, FROM ST. JOHN'S STREET, CHESTER.]

Castle Dinas Bran, above Llangollen, and Flint are the only two genuine
ruined castles on the Dee. About halfway between Flint and Mostyn, and
nearly side by side, opposite Neston in Cheshire, stand Basingwerk and
Holywell. Though the smelting-works and vitriol-manufactories at
Bagillt, a little above the Sands of Dee, disfigure the landscape, the
mention of metals carries us back over a long stretch of history. The
Romans worked this district of lead-mines pretty thoroughly, and the
lead-trade in Elizabeth's reign was flourishing and far-reaching. "One
of the local peculiarities of the case, which seems to be unique," says
Dean Howson, "is the mode in which the lead-market is conducted at
Holywell. Notices of the quantity and quality of the metal on sale are
forwarded to managers of lead-works; samples are sent and tested; the
purchasers meet at Holywell on a fixed Thursday in every month; the
samples are ticketed; the prices are written on pieces of paper which
are placed in a glass; the highest bidders are of course successful, and
the ceremony ends with a friendly lunch." These gatherings have been
called from time immemorial the "Holywell ticketings," but the crowds
they drew were once as nothing compared with the concourse of pilgrims
to St. Winefred's wonder-working well. The legend of her death and
resurrection is one of the most marvellous in the annals of Saxon
saints; but, unlike the patroness of Chester, St. Werburgh, the
authentic character of whose life is supported by hosts of reliable
chroniclers, historical proof is much lacking in this case. Yet the
faith in her legend defied proof and even scepticism, and the outward
signs of the popular belief in the healing virtues of her well, the
waters of which were believed to have sprung miraculously from the spot
where she was brought to life again and her head reunited to her body,
with only a pink-tinged ring round her throat showing the place of
severance, were multiplied century after century. Wales had many other
holy wells of great repute, but this was always foremost. I believe that
besides the natural purity of the water and the mediæval (and especially
Celtic) tendency to belief in marvels, some national associations were
connected with this spot, and that the Welsh prided themselves on the
possession of a well so famous that Saxons from all parts of England,
poor and rich alike, came humbly or sent alms lavishly for the privilege
of partaking of its healing waters. Its fame continued long after the
Reformation, when James II. visited it as a pilgrim. Pope Martin V. had
two centuries before granted indulgences to its frequenters. Even at the
present day local faith in its powers remains undisturbed, though the
legend has faded from men's minds, and neither prayers nor alms are
resorted to; but, as I have heard from one who visited it in company
with Montalembert and the late Lord Dunraven (a very good antiquary),
some small superstitious practices, chiefly the offering of a pin, are
substituted. The chapel above the well, which is enclosed by massive
arches, is quite a large building, and there is a churchyard around it.
The chancel windows, though fine as a whole, are very Late Gothic, or
rather Perpendicular.

[Illustration: BOSS IN LADY CHAPEL, CHESTER.]

The ruins of Basingwerk show a purer and simpler architecture. Dark old
elms and sycamores fill up the gaps in the masonry, and through the
lancet windows and pointed arches one catches glimpses of the sands
illustrated by Canon Kingsley's ballad, "The Sands of Dee." On the
opposite shore, at English West Kirby, the rule of this once mighty
Welsh abbey was humbly and gratefully acknowledged, though the monks of
Lupus's abbey of St. Werburgh once disputed the patronage of the parish
church there, and on this occasion won their cause. Hilbree Island, and
its smaller copy with its Eye-Mark and Beach-Mark, are plainly seen a
few miles farther out; also the bank of the "Constable's Sands," which
tradition connects with the miracle of the rescue of Lupus's son from
the advancing tide through the intercession of St. Werburgh. A stone
cross from the cell of the Hilbree anchorite is kept in a Liverpool
museum. This cell, on a bare patch of sheep-pasture, rocky, surrounded
by sands and rank reedy grass, is still part of St. Oswald's parish in
Chester, and the two houses on the island contain the quota of
parishioners. At present the island is used as a school and dépôt of
buoys for the perpetual marking out of the very intricate navigable
channels at the mouth of the Dee, and also as a lifeboat station, though
the boat's crew lives on the mainland at Hoylake. Between West Kirby and
Shotwick, on the Cheshire bank of the Dee, stretches a long plateau
studded with country-houses, some belonging to old county families, but
more to rich merchants and bankers.

Older memories cling to the Welsh side of the river, and of these there
are not a few gathered round Mostyn Hall, the first country-house on the
right-hand side of the river, sailing up from the sea. Though in
describing such places one is obliged to repeat one's self, there is in
reality a good deal that is individual and characteristic in each house,
especially in those that keep the traces of their antiquity visibly upon
them. The kernel of Mostyn dates from 1420, but without losing its old
look the house has been added to and altered to suit the needs and
tastes of its successive owners. The deer-park is large, and as well
stocked as it is beautifully wooded, and the entrance, called Porth
Mawr, leading into a fine avenue that ends at the hall-door, is
suggestive, like many another of the kind, of the care taken of timber
in England. There is no reckless and irregular cutting down of young
wood unfit for anything but fuel: brushwood is cleared away
systematically at certain intervals of from three to seven years, and
various portions of the woods are cleared successively, instead of being
all bared at once. Then, too, tracts are carefully planted with forest
trees at proper distances, and these future groves fenced in, while in
formerly neglected plantations the useless timber is thinned out and
room given the older trees to grow and spread. The planting of lawns and
pleasure-grounds with foreign specimen trees is one of the greatest
delights of an English country gentleman, and the acres of young
_wellingtonias, diodaras, araucarias_ (or monkey-puzzlers--so named from
their spiky leaves, that defy a monkey's climbing powers), various
American pines and oaks, catalpas, tulip trees, etc., etc., are as much
his pride as a flower-garden or a poultry-yard is the favorite hobby of
his wife. Mostyn, however, well surrounded by trees, could afford to
dispense with that attraction, considering its family museum and its
valuable library of old British history and poetry. The Welsh
manuscripts are a treasure in themselves, and a silver harp which has
been in the family for more than three centuries is shown with as much
pride as the pedigree, which occupies nearly fifty feet of parchment.
The old family armor is also interesting. Among purely historical relics
is a golden _torque_, or neck-band, worn by the princes of Wales in
ancient times. Some of the royal jewelry of the Irish kings in the
museum at Dublin, and one or two specimens I have seen at a private
collector's near London, have much the same shape and general
appearance, and the plaid-brooches now in common use in Scotland are not
unlike the old pins for fastening cloaks of which these museums, public
and private, are full.

[Illustration: OLD EPISCOPAL PALACE, CHESTER.]

The road from Mostyn onward passes through Northup, whose high
church-tower, encircled with strongly-defined bands of cusped work, is a
very prominent object in one of the loveliest landscapes of the Dee. In
some parts of the road oaks meet overhead for long distances, and
between the trunks the views of the undulating cultivated fields,
studded with broad tall trees, are continually changing. At high water
there is a kind of likeness here to the scenery of the English lakes,
though the mountains there are nearer and better defined; but at low
water the Dutch likeness breaks out again, and the low-lying fields of
wheat and hay melt away in the distance into vast flat sandbanks. Near
Northup are Halkin Castle, a house of the duke of Westminster, formal
and black, but with fine grounds and park, and Upper Soughton Hall,
belonging to Mr. Howard--a low, irregular, gabled building in the style
of Mostyn, gray and timeworn, and very attractive. Nearing Hawarden,
the road passes by (but does not lead to) the ruins of Ewloc Castle, a
place whose history is very slightly known, but whose walls, eight feet
thick, and curious staircase, approached by a small gateway and enclosed
in the wall, lead to more speculation than other and better-known
places. Its odd situation in a deep, gloomy dell, suggestive, as Dean
Howson says, of a Canadian forest-glen, is another attraction. Most
ruins, castles especially, are conspicuous objects on hilltops or open
plains. Ewloc is like some of the natural beauties of the Lake country,
for a sight of which you have to climb steep slippery paths or go down
rocky declines with fern on their glistening edges, lean over frail
parapets, and cross bridges almost as swinging in their miniature
proportions as the famous rope-bridges of Peru. The tall elms and beech
trees that shroud Heron Bridge, belonging to Mr. Charles Potts, mark one
of the most delightful of the Dee scenes. The house, a very unpretending
one, is a statelier counterpart of Erbistock, with its double terraces,
broken by flights of steps leading down to the water's edge. Netherlegh,
once the home of an old extinct Chester family, the Cotgreaves, almost
leans on one of the lodges of Eaton Hall, opposite which, but nearly two
miles from the river, is Saighton Tower, formerly a country-house of the
abbots of St. Werburgh, and already in earlier times held by the secular
canons of that church, to whom the Domesday survey secured it for
another half century. Of course it is a good deal altered now. By Bangor
we pass a group of old historic houses, each still in the hands of the
family that built or inherited it centuries ago--among others, Acton
Hall, the birthplace of Judge Jeffreys; then some newer houses, one of
which, a large one in the Italian style, belongs to Mr. Edmund Peel, one
of the greatest land-owners of the neighborhood. Knolton Hall, near
Erbistock, is one of the most beautiful of country-houses, yet not one
that has a history as such. It shows what taste can do. Its front is
black and white, the timber showing outside, as in many of the southern
Cheshire and Shropshire houses, and its low, broad-capped tower, its
dozen or so of gables, its stacks of twisted and carved chimneys, give
it a very English and home look. How much of the old original farmhouse
remains one can hardly tell. Mr. Cotton, brother of Lord Combermere, the
Peninsular hero, bought the estate when the place was in a half-ruined
condition, but saw that the house had great capabilities. I have known
such a restoration, on a smaller scale, to be as successful, when the
large kitchen was turned into a drawing-room, ingeniously pieced on to a
new and large alcove opening by a glass door on to the flower-garden,
and communicating by a tower staircase with the chapel beside it and the
"boudoir" up stairs; which room had a mullioned oriel window over the
glass door. A library, study and second drawing-room were made out of
the existing rooms down stairs, while the oldest part of the house, an
ivied square tower with an orthodox ghost-story, was turned into
schoolroom and nursery; and on a lower level (a feature which made the
hall quite different from any I ever saw in a large or a small house)
were built out a covered stone porch, a dining-room with mullioned
bay-window and a stone mantelpiece receding to the ceiling, and guarded
by two carved lions bearing shields, and a line of servants' offices
enclosing a courtyard and a spring of famous water.

[Illustration: BRIDGE STREET ROW, CHESTER.]

Eaton Hall, the coldly magnificent pile of which we spoke before, has
its rival in Wynnestay, the house of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, the
largest landowner in Wales. No doubt the old house, burnt down in 1858,
was less grand, but the loss of its collections of heirlooms, all things
of historical and national interest to a Welshman, was a worse one than
that of the building itself. Pennant, in his _Tour in Wales_ nearly a
century ago, describes it with the same comments on domestic
arrangements as many of our architects now start on as guiding
principles: "The most ancient part is a gateway of wood and plaister,
dated 1616. On a tower within the court is this excellent distich,
allusive to the name of the house, Wynne stay, or 'Rest satisfied with
the good things Providence has so liberally showered on you:'

    Cui domus est victusque decens, cui patria dulcis,
    Sunt satis hæc vitæ, cætera cura labor.

The new part, built by the first Sir Watkin, is of itself a good house,
yet was only a portion of a more extensive design. It is finished in
that substantial yet neat manner becoming the seat of an honest English
country gentleman, adapted to the reception of his worthy neighbors, who
may experience his hospitality without dread of spoiling his frippery
ornaments, becoming only the assembly-rooms of a town-house or the villa
of a great city." The present house is splendid and enormous, severer in
style than Eaton, but as wilderness-like in its magnificence. The trees
in the park, which is enclosed by an eight-mile wall, are very old and
grand, especially the Ruabon avenue, a mile in length, leading from the
gates of the old church, where are the family monuments. Wynnestay
formerly belonged to the founder of Valle Crucis Abbey, Madoc ap Gryfydd
Maeler, and came to the Wynns by the inter-marriage of one of the Gwedyr
family of that name with the heiress of Eyton Evans. This creation of
almost princely lines by the union of so much land and influence in one
family is characteristic of the Middle Ages in English history, and has
its faint shadow even in these days, when you invariably find in each
family its self-installed herald, sometimes an old maid, often an old
bachelor or widower, given to poring over pictures and pedigrees, and
dreamily recounting to mischievously attentive cousins the glories of
such an alliance, the importance of a fifty-sixth "quartering," or the
story of such and such an old love-affair that spoilt (or otherwise) the
negotiation for another thousand acres of land. The Welsh are even more
given to family pride than the English, but everywhere you find the old
sentiment lingering in some remote corner of the family, sometimes
cropping out in a beautiful illuminated volume, for which the head of
the family generally has to pay, or oftener making the life-study and
delight of some innocent, kind-hearted old bookworm. Luckily, we are
spared the heraldic lawsuits of old times, such as were sustained by the
Grosvenors and the Scropes in the reign of Richard II. respecting the
arms they each claimed to bear, and during which the names of two famous
men, Chaucer and John of Gaunt, were affixed as witnesses to the
manuscript account of it, still preserved in the library at Eaton Hall.
Owen Glendower and Hotspur were also called as witnesses at various
times on this 'three years' trial.

[Illustration: ANCIENT HALF-TIMBERED HOUSES, FOREGATE STREET, CHESTER.]

The view of the Dee from the southern point of Wynnestay Park is
perhaps, as a whole, the most remarkable on the river. It is very
perfect, and combines the unchangeable with the progressive, showing as
it does the swelling hills on both sides of the water, fishermen with
coracles on their backs, autumn tints on the clustering trees, and the
regular arches of the great railway viaduct. When the train is absent
these look not unlike those arches on the Campagna near Rome of which
every artist has a sketch and every traveller a recollection. Opposite
Wynnestay--which is in Denbighshire--is a detached bit of Flintshire
hemmed in between Cheshire and Shropshire, in which is Bettisfield, a
house of Lord Hanmer. Owen Glendower's wife was a Hanmer, and tradition
says she was married in Hanmer church. The present owner evidently
prefers his native river to the greater but not more historic ones of
the Continent, and has recorded his preference in some lines, of which
the following form the opening:

    By the Elbe and through the Rheinland I've wandered far and wide,
        And by the Save with silver tones, proud Danube's queenly bride;
    By Arno's banks and Tiber's shore; but never did I see
        A river I could match with thine, old Druid-haunted Dee.

[Illustration: VIEW OF CHESTER, FROM THE COP.]œ

Other houses on or near the river are Chirk Castle, dating just nine
hundred years back, the family-place of the Myddletons (now Biddulphs),
where among the old portraits is an authentic one of Oliver Cromwell;
Brynkinalt, where much of the youth of Wellington was spent with his
relation, Lord Arthur Hill Trevor, the owner; Plas Madoc, belonging to
the famous member of Parliament for Peterborough, whose rise in the
House is always heralded by a well-bred titter; and near Llangollen--for
this enumeration carries us up the stream again--Plas Newydd, the house
of the "Ladies of Llangollen." Farther up is Rhaggatt, the seat of a
very old Welsh family, the Lloyds, and opposite it was the old hall of
Owen Glendower, of which a Welsh bard says that it had "nine halls with
large wardrobes" (probably the retainers' rooms), and near this "a
wooden house supported on posts, with eight apartments for guests." Of
the park, warren, pigeon-house, mill, orchard, vineyard and fishpond,
"every convenience for good living and every support to hospitality," of
which Pennant speaks, there is hardly a trace now, though the moat is a
self-evident relic. Rug (pronounced Reeg) came from the Vaughans to the
Wynns by many stages of attainder, marriage and sale, and is famous as
the place where King Gryffydd ap Cynan was betrayed into the power of
Lupus, earl of Chester, who kept him a prisoner for twelve years in the
city castle; and near Bala Lake is Palé Hall, a new house representing a
very old one; Rhiwlas (pronounced Rovlas), whose owners, the Prices,
suffered in the Stuart cause, a member of the Long Parliament, one of
their family, being expelled on account of his loyalty to the king; and
Glann-y-llyn, a comfortable shooting-box of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. Of
course there are numberless other houses, the mere list of which one
could not get through without the help of a county history and a court
guide for each of the shires through which the Dee passes. Every library
stored in these old houses or carefully brought there from still older
ones forms an inexhaustible subject of interest, not only to the owners
(who are often the least benefited by it), but to inquiring minds of
various races and conditions. Even a lad let loose from college, his
mind full of athletics and Alpine Club aspirations, can find something
to admire in the relics or representations of ancient national games,
while the scholar discovers details full of interest in looking over the
books, manuscripts and curiosities. The size of the country-houses and
the extent of their gardens and parks seem perhaps disproportionate
compared with the confined space of the country itself: indeed, it is as
much their frequency in the landscape as the general cultivation of the
whole that has made England celebrated for its garden-like look; but the
historic associations of these small rivers and small territories are on
an equally large scale. Thousands of unnamed brooks on this side of the
ocean run through forests or farms as large as an English or Welsh
county, without rousing any save imaginary associations in the mind of
the traveller or the angler: they are as large as, and more varied in
scenery than, our "wizard stream;" but the old recollections, the
castles, the ruins, the modernized homes, the national relics, the
inherited traits of likeness between past and present, are wanting. In
Wales it is easy to leap back a few hundred years. The costume of the
market-women at the seacoast town of Aberystwith--not a sluggish place,
by any means--is almost literally like the old one in pictures of
"Mother Hubbard." I have seen young and pretty women wear it. The
neatly-roofed hay and straw stacks, so different from the ungainly
heaps so called in England, are thatched in the same way for which the
Welsh farmers were famous two hundred years ago, while many of the
poorer dwellings, especially in the slate districts, look just as they
may have done to Owen Glendower himself. The character of the people,
like that of the grave Highlanders, is stern and enduring, though their
temper is fierce and hot: it is easy to understand how passionately
certain forms of Methodism appealed to such temperaments, and developed
among them an enthusiasm easy to stir up into a likeness of that of the
old Cameronians.

[Illustration: MOSTYN HALL.]

LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.




BADEN AND ALLERHEILIGEN.


Before the change which has recently befallen the chief German
watering-places, Baden--or, as it was more commonly called,
Baden-Baden--was the most frequented, the most brilliant and the most
profitable "hell" in Europe. Its baths and medicinal waters were a mere
excuse for the coming thither of a small number of the vast concourse
which annually filled its hotels. In any case, they sank into
comparatively utter insignificance. It was not for water--at least not
for the waters of any other stream than that of Pactolus--that the world
came to Baden. Of course, the sums realized by the keepers of the hell
were enormous; and they found it to be their interest to do all that
contributed to make the place attractive on a liberal scale. Gardens,
parks, miles of woodland walks admirably kept, excellent music in great
abundance, vast salons for dancing, for concerts, for reading-rooms, for
billiard-rooms, etc.--all as magnificent as carving and gilding and
velvet and satin could make them--were provided gratuitously, not for
those only who played at the tables, but for all those who would put
themselves within reach of the temptation to do so. And this liberal
policy was found to answer abundantly. Very many of the water-cure
places in the smaller states of Germany had their hells also, and did as
Baden did, on a more modest scale. Then came the German unification and
the great uprising of a German national consciousness. And German
national feeling said that this scandal should no longer exist. A
certain delay was rendered necessary by the contracts which were running
between the different small governments and the keepers of the
gambling-tables. But it was decreed that when the two or three years
which were required for these to run out should be at an end, they
should not be renewed. It was a serious resolution to take, for some
half dozen or so of these little pleasure-towns believed, not without
good reason, that the measure would be at once fatal to their prosperity
and well-nigh to their existence. And of course there were not wanting
large numbers of people who argued that the step was a quixotic one, as
needless and fallacious in a moral point of view as fatal on the side
of economic considerations. Could it be maintained that the governments
in question had any moral duty in the matter save as regarded the lives
and habits of their own people? And these were not imperilled by the
existence of the gambling-tables. For it was notorious that each of
these ducal and grand-ducal patrons of the blind goddess strictly
forbade their own subjects to enter the door of the play-saloons. And as
to those who resorted to them, and supplied the abundant flow of gold
that enriched the whole of each little state, could it be supposed that
any one of these gamblers would be reformed or saved from the
consequences of his vice by the shutting up of these tables? It was
difficult to answer this question in the affirmative. No liquor law ever
prevented men from getting drunk, nor could it be hoped that any closing
of this, that or the other hell could save gamblers from the indulgence
of their darling passion. Nevertheless, it can hardly be seriously
denied that the measure was the healthy outcome of a genuinely healthy
and highly laudable spirit. "Ruin yourself, if you will, but you shall
not come here for the purpose, and, above all, we will not touch the
profit to be made out of your vice." This was the feeling of the German
government, and, considering the amount of self-denial involved in the
act, Germany deserves no small degree of honor and praise for having
accomplished it.

And now it is time to ask, Has Baden--for we will confine our attention
to this ci-devant queen of hells--has Baden suffered that ruin which it
was so confidently predicted would overtake her? _Baden Revisited_, by
one who knew her well in the old days of her wickedness and wealth,
supplies the means for replying to the question. Unquestionably, in the
mere matter of the influx of gold the town has suffered very severely.
How were some four-and-twenty large hotels, besides a host of smaller
ones, which often barely sufficed to hold the crowds attracted by the
gambling-tables, to exist when this attraction ceased? It might have
been expected that a large number of these would at once have been shut
up. But such has not been the case. I believe that not one has been
closed. Nevertheless, a visitor's first stroll through the town, and
especially in the alleys and gardens around the celebrated
"Conversations-Haus," as it hypocritically called itself, is quite
sufficient to show how great is the difference between Baden as it was
and Baden as it is--between Baden the wealthy, gaudy, gay, privileged
home of vice, and Baden moralized and turned from the error of its ways.
And it cannot be denied that, speaking merely of the impression made
upon the eye, the difference is all in favor of vice. "As ugly as sin"
is a common phrase. But, unfortunately, the truth is that sin sometimes
looks extremely pretty, especially when well dressed and of an evening
by gaslight. And it did, it must be owned, look extremely pretty at
Baden. The French especially came there in those days in great numbers,
and they brought their Parisian toilettes with them. And somehow or
other, let the fact be explained as it may--and, though perhaps easily
explicable enough, I do not feel called upon to enter on the explanation
here--one used in those wicked old days to see a great number of very
pretty women at Baden, which can hardly be said to be the case at Baden
moralized. The whole social atmosphere of the place was wholly and
unmistakably different, and in outward appearance wicked Baden beat
moral Baden hollow. It would not do in the old time to examine the gay
scene which fluttered and glittered before the eyes much below the
absolute exterior surface. The little town in those old days, as
regarded a large proportion of the crowd which made it look so gay,
was--not to put too fine a point upon it--a sink of more unmitigated
blackguardism than could easily be found concentrated within so small a
compass on any other spot of the earth. A large number of the persons
who now congregate in this beautiful valley look, to tell the truth,
somewhat vulgar. Vulgar? As if the flaunting crowds which seemed to
insult the magnificent forests, the crystal streams and the smiling
lawns with their finery were not saturated with a vulgarity of the
most quintessential intensity! Yes, but that only showed itself to the
moral sense of those who could look a little below the surface, whereas
the vulgarity that may be noted sunning itself in the trim gardens and
sprawling on the satin sofas which are the legacy of the departed
wickedness is of the sort that shows itself upon the surface. In a word,
moral Baden looks a little _dowdy_, and _that_ wicked Baden never
looked.

[Illustration: IN FRONT OF THE KURSAAL AT BADEN.]

The general determination at Baden when the terrible decree which put an
end to its career of wealth and wickedness came upon it like a
thunder-bolt was of the kind expressed by the more forcible than elegant
phrase, "Never say die!" The little town was determined to have a
struggle for its existence. It still had its mineral waters, so highly
valued by the Romans. The Romans, it may be remarked _en passant_, seem
to have discovered and profited by every mineral spring in Europe.
Hardly one of the more important springs can be named which cannot be
shown, either by direct historic testimony or by the still existing
remains of baths and the like, to have been known to the universal
conquerors. Well, Baden still had its waters, good for all the ills to
which flesh is heir--_capiti fluit utilis, utilis alveo_. It still had
its magnificent forests--pine and oak and beech in most lovely
juxtaposition and contrast. It had the interesting and charmingly
picturesque ruins of its ancient castle on the forest-covered hill above
the town, perched on one mighty mass of porphyry, and surrounded by
other ranges of the same rock, thrown into such fantastic forms that
they seem to assume the appearance of rival castellated ruins built on
Nature's own colossal plan, and such a world of strange forms of turrets
and spires and isolated towers and huge donjons that the Devil has
"pulpits" and "bridges" and "chambers" there, as is well known to all
tourists to be his wont in similar places. It had its other mediæval
baronial residences situated in the depths of the forest at pleasant
distances for either driving or walking. It had its delicious parks and
gardens, beginning from the very door of the "Conversations-Haus," with
brilliantly-lighted avenues, gay with shops and gas-lamps, and gradually
wandering away into umbrageous solitudes and hillside paths lit by the
moon alone--so gradually that she who had accepted an arm for a stroll
amid the crowd in the bright foreground of the scene found herself
enjoying solitude _à deux_ before she had time to become alarmed or
think what mamma would say. Then it had still the gorgeous halls, the
ball-rooms, the concert-rooms, the promenading-rooms, with their gilding
and velvet and satin furniture, which had been created by a wave of the
wand of the great enchanter who presided at the green table. Why should
not all these good things be turned to the service of virtue instead of
vice? Why should not respectability and morality inherit the legacy of
departed wickedness? Why should not good and virtuous German Fraüleins,
with their pale blue eyes and pale blond hair, do their innocent
flirting amid the bowers where the Parisian demi-monde had outraged the
chaste wood-nymphs by its uncongenial presence? The loathsome patchouli
savor of the denizens of the Boulevard would hardly resist the purifying
breezes of one Black Forest winter. The notice to quit served on Mammon
would be equally efficacious as regarded the whole of his crew. The
whole valley would be swept clean of them, and sweetened and restored to
the lovers of Nature in her most delicious aspect. Baden, emerging
from the cold plunge-bath of its first dismay, determined that
it should be so. The hotel-keepers, the lodging-house-keepers, the
livery-stable-keepers, the purveyors of all kinds, screwed their courage
to the sticking-place and determined to go in for virtue, early hours
and moderate prices. Well, yes! moderate prices! This was the severest
cut of all. But there was no help for it. Virtue does prefer moderate
prices. There could be no more of that reckless scattering of gold, no
more of that sublime indifference to the figure at the foot of the bill,
which characterized their former customers. What mattered a napoleon or
so more or less in their daily expense to him or her whose every
evening around the green table left them some thousands of francs richer
or poorer than the morning had found them? There can be no doubt, I
fear, that Baden would have much preferred a continuance in its old
ways. But the choice was not permitted to it. It is therefore making a
virtue of necessity, and striving to live under the new régime as best
it may. And I am disposed to think that better days may yet be in store
for it. At present, the preponderating majority of the visitors are
Germans. There are naturally no French, who heretofore formed the
majority of the summer population. There are hardly any Americans, and
very few English. Those of the class which used to find Baden delightful
find it, or conceive that they would find it, so no more. And English
and Americans of a different sort seem to have hardly yet become aware
that they would find there a very different state of things from that
which they have been accustomed to associate in idea with the name of
the place. It must be supposed, however, that they will shortly do so.
The natural advantages and beauties of the place are so great, the
accommodation is so good, and even in some respects the inheritance of
the good things the gamblers have left behind them so valuable, that it
is hardly likely that the place will remain neglected. Where else are
such public rooms and gardens to be found? The charge made at present
for the enjoyment of all this is about six or eight cents a day. Such a
payment could never have originally provided all that is placed at the
disposal of the visitor. He used in the old times to enjoy it all
absolutely gratuitously, unless he paid for it by his losses at the
tables. Play provided it all. But it is to be feared that the very
modest payment named above will be found insufficient even to keep up
the establishment which Mammon has bequeathed to Virtue. The ormolu and
the carved cornices, and the fresco-painted walls and the embroidered
satin couches and divans, and the miles upon miles of garden-walks, have
not indeed disappeared, as, according to all the orthodox legends, such
Devil's gifts should do, but they will wear out; and I do not think that
any eight cents a day will suffice to renew them. But in the mean time
you may avail yourself of them. You may lounge on the brocade-covered
divans which used to be but couches of thorns to so many of their
occupants, undisturbed by any more palpitating excitement than that
produced by the perusal of the daily paper. The lofty ceilings echo no
more the hateful warning croak of the croupier, "Faites votre jeu,
messieurs. Le jeu est fait!" which used to be ceaseless in them from
midday till midnight. There are no more studies to be made on the men
and women around you of all the expressions which eager avarice,
torturing suspense and leaden despair can impart to the human
countenance. The utmost you can hope to read on one of those placidly
stolid German burgher faces is the outward and visible sign of the
inward oppression caused by too copious a repast at the one-o'clock
_table d'hôte_. It is the less disagreeable and less unhealthy subject
of contemplation of the two. But the truth remains that virtuous Baden
does look somewhat dowdy.

       *       *       *       *       *

Just seventy-three years ago a change as great as that which has
transformed Baden happened to an establishment which represented the
old-world social system of Europe as completely and strikingly as Baden
the "watering-place"--that is the modern phrase--did the Europe of the
latter half of the nineteenth century. In another green valley of this
region, as beautiful as, or even more beautiful than, that of Baden,
there existed a gathering-place of the sort produced by the exigencies
of a different stage of social progress--the convent of Allerheiligen,
or, as we should say, All Saints or Allhallows. It is within the limits
of an easy day's excursion from Baden, and no visitor who loves "the
merry green wood" should omit to give a day to Allerheiligen, for he
will scarcely find in his wanderings, let them be as extensive as they
may, a more perfect specimen of the loveliest forest scenery. It is an
old remark, that the ancient ecclesiastics who selected the sites of
the monastic establishments that were multiplied so excessively in every
country in Europe showed very excellent judgment and much practical
skill in the choice of them. And almost every visit made to the spot
where one of these cloister homes existed confirms the truth of the
observation, more especially as regards the communities belonging to the
great Benedictine family. The often-quoted line about seeking "to merit
heaven by making earth a hell," however well it may be applied to the
practices of some of the more ascetic orders, especially the mendicants,
cannot with any reason be considered applicable to the disciples of St.
Benedict. In point of fact, at the time when the great and wealthy
convents of this order were founded it was rather outside the
convent-wall that men were making the world a hell upon earth. And for
those who could school themselves to consider celibacy no unendurable
evil it would be difficult to imagine a more favorable contrast than
that offered by "the world" in the Middle Ages and the retreat of the
cloister. A site well selected with reference to all the requirements of
climate, wood and water, and with an appreciative eye to the beauties of
Nature, in some sequestered but favored spot as much shut in from war
and its troubles as mountains, streams and forests could shut it in; a
building often palatial in magnificence, always comfortable, with all
the best appliances for study which the age could afford; with beautiful
churches for the practice of a faith entirely and joyfully believed in;
with noble halls for temperate but not ascetic meals, connected by
stairs by no means unused with excellent and extensive cellars; with
lovely cloisters for meditative pacing, and well-trimmed gardens for
pleasant occupation and delight,--what can be imagined more calculated
to ensure all the happiness which this earth was in those days capable
of affording?

Such a retreat was the convent of Allerheiligen. It was founded for
Premonstratensian monks at the close of the twelfth century by Uta,
duchess of Schawenburg, who concludes the deed of foundation, which
still exists, with these words: "And if anybody shall do anything in any
respect contrary to these statutes, he will for ever be subject to the
vengeance of God and of all saints." Poor Duchess Uta! Could her spirit
walk in this valley, as lovely now as when she gave it to her monks, and
look upon the ruins of the pile she raised, she would think that the
vengeance of God and all saints had been incurred to a considerable
extent by somebody. The waterfalls--seven of them in succession--made by
the little stream that waters the valley immediately after it has passed
through the isolated bit of flat meadow-land on which the convent was
built, continue to sing their unceasing song as melodiously as when the
duchess Uta visited the spot and marked it out for the "Gottes Haus" she
was minded to plant there. Her husband, the duke Welf, who had married
her when she was a well-dowered widow, had been a very bad husband,
which naturally tended to lead his neglected lady wife's mind in the
direction of founding religious houses. He was duke of Altorf and
Spoleto, the one possession lying on the shores of the Lake of Lucerne,
and the other among the ilex-woods that overlook the valley of the
Tiber--a strange conjunction of titles, which is in itself illustrative
of the shape European history took in that day, and of the
preponderating part which Germany played in Italy and among the rulers
of its soil. Being thus duke of Spoleto, Welf resided much in Italy, but
does not seem to have found it necessary to take his German wife with
him to those milder skies and easier social moralities. Uta stayed at
home amid the dark-green valleys of her native Black Forest, and planned
cloister-building. Before the chart, however, which was to give birth to
Allerheiligen was signed, Duke Welf came home, and having had, it would
seem, his fling to a very considerable extent, had reached by a natural
process that time of life and that frame of mind which inclined him to
join in his long-neglected wife's pietistic schemes. So they planned and
drew up the statutes together, and the convent was founded and built,
a son of Uta by her first husband being, as is recorded, the first
prior.

[Illustration: RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF ALLERHEILIGEN.]

It was not long before the young community became rich. Such was the
ordinary, the almost invariable, course of matters. Property was held on
very unstable conditions even by the great and powerful. The most secure
of all tenures was that by which the Church held what was once her own.
And in a state of things when men were persuaded both that it was very
doubtful whether they would be able to keep possession of their
property, especially whether they would be able to secure such
possessions to those who were to come after them, and that the surest
way to escape that retribution in the next world which they fully
believed to have been incurred by their deeds in this world was to give
what they possessed to some monastic institution, it is not difficult to
understand how and why monasteries grew rich. And it is equally
intelligible that the result should have followed which did, as we know,
follow almost invariably. As the monasteries became rich the monks
became corrupt--first comfortable, then luxurious, then licentious. The
Benedictines escaped this doom more frequently than the other orders.
Even after their great convents had become wealthy and powerful
landlords they were often very good landlords, and the condition of
their lands and of their tenants and vassals contrasted favorably with
that of the lands and dependants of their lay neighbors. The superiority
of the Benedictines in this respect was doubtless due to their studious
and literary habits and proclivities. It is constantly urged that the
cause of learning and of literature owes a great debt of gratitude to
the monks, but it should be said that this debt is due almost
exclusively to the sons of St. Benedict.

But something more than this may be said for the community founded by
Duchess Uta, the beautiful ruins of whose dwelling now complete the
picturesque charm of this most exquisite valley. By a rare exception
history has in truth nothing to say against them. Their record is quite
clear. All remaining testimony declares that from their first
establishment to the day of their dissolution the Allerheiligen monks
lived studious and blameless lives. Possibly, the profound seclusion of
their valley, literally shut in from the outer world by vast masses of
thick roadless forests, may have contributed to this result, though
similar circumstances do not in all cases seem to have ensured a similar
consequence. Good fortune probably did much in the matter. A happy
succession of three or four good and able abbots would give the place a
good name and beget a good tradition in the community; and this in such
cases is half the battle. "Such and such goings-on may do elsewhere, but
they won't suit Allerheiligen"--such a sentiment, once made common,
would do much for the continuance of a good and healthy tradition.

Accordingly, it was long before the sentence of dissolution went forth
against the monastery of Allerheiligen--that sentence which was to
produce a change in the place and all around it as momentous as that
other sentence which some seventy years later went forth against
Baden-Baden. It was not till 1802 that the monastery of Allerheiligen
was dissolved; and its extinction was due then not to any reason or
pretext drawn from the conduct of the inmates, but to the religious
dissensions and political quarrels of princes and governments. But the
doom was all the more irrevocably certain. In all the countries in which
monasteries have been abolished and Church property confiscated tales
eagerly spread, and by no means wholly disbelieved even by the spoilers
themselves, are current of the "judgments" and retribution which have
sooner or later fallen on those who have been enriched by the
secularization of Church property or who have taken part in the acts by
which the Church has been dispossessed. But rarely has what the world
now calls "chance" brought about what the Church would call so
startlingly striking a manifestation of the wrath of Heaven against the
despoilers of "God's house." St. Norbert was the original founder of the
Premonstratensian rule. And it was precisely on St. Norbert's Day next
after the dissolution of the monastery of Allerheiligen that a
tremendous and--the local chroniclers say--unprecedented storm of
thunder, lightning and hail broke over the woodland valley and the
devoted fabric in such sort that the lightning, more than once striking
the buildings, set them on fire and reduced the vast pile to the few
picturesque ruins which now delight the tourist and the landscape
painter. Could the purpose and intent of the supernal Powers have been
more strongly emphasized or more clearly marked? Truly, the scattered
monks may have been excused for recalling with awe, not unmingled with a
sense of triumph, the prophetic denunciation of their foundress Uta,
which has been cited above, against whoso should undo the pious deed she
was doing. For more than six hundred years her work had prospered and
her will had been respected, and now after all those centuries the
warning curse was still potent. Neither thunder nor lightning, nor the
anger of St. Norbert, however, availed to rebuild the monastery or
recall the monks. Their kingdom and the glory thereof has passed to
another, even to Herr Mittenmeyer, _Wirth und Gastgeber_, who has built
a commodious hostelry close by the ruins, which are mainly those of the
church, and on the site of the monastic buildings, and who distributes a
hospitality as universal, if not quite so disinterested, as that
practised by his cowled predecessors. There, for the sum of six
marks--about a dollar and a half--per diem you may find a well-furnished
cell and a fairly well-supplied refectory, and may amuse yourself with
pacing in the walks where St. Norbert's monks paced, looking on the
scenes of beauty on which they gazed, and casting your mind for the
nonce into the mould of the minds of those who so looked and mused. You
may do so, indeed, thanks to Herr Mittenmeyer, with greater comfort,
materially speaking, than the old inmates of the valley could have done.
For the most charming and delicious walks have been made through the
woods on either side of the narrow valley, and skilfully planned so as
to show you all the very remarkable beauties of it. These, in truth, are
of no ordinary kind. The hillsides which enclose the valley are
exceedingly steep, almost precipitous indeed in some places, though not
sufficiently so to prevent them from being clothed with magnificent
forests. Down this narrow valley a little stream runs, and about a
quarter of a mile from the spot on which the convent stood, and the
ruins stand, makes a series of cascades of every variety of form and
position that can be conceived. All these falls, together with the
crystalline pools in huge caldrons worn by the waters out of the rocks
at their feet, were no doubt well known to the vassal fishermen who
brought their tribute of trout to the convent larder. But the majority
of the holy men themselves, I fancy, lived and died without seeing some
of the falls, for they would be by no means easily accessible without
the assistance of the paths which by dint of long flights of steps,
constructed of stones evidently brought from the ruins of the abbey,
carry the visitor to every spot of vantage-ground most favorable for
commanding a view of them. If, however, you have the advantage over the
monks in this respect, your retreat will be less adapted to the purposes
of retirement in another point of view. Ten or a dozen carriages a day
filled with German tourists, all in high spirits and all very thirsty
("Thanks be!" says Herr Mittenmeyer), are not appropriate aids to the
indulgence of contemplation. Scott advised his readers if they "would
view fair Melrose aright, to visit it by the pale moonlight." And to
those who would view Allerheiligen aright I would add the recommendation
that the moon should be an October moon. The usual holiday-making months
in Germany are by that time over. The professors have gone back to their
chairs in the different universities; the _privat-docents_ have reopened
their courses; the substantial burghers have returned to their shops;
and the _raths_ of all sorts and degrees have ensconced themselves once
more behind their official desks, and have ceased to "babble of green
fields" any more till this time twelvemonth. The tourists will have
gone, and the autumnal colors will have come into the woods. There is
much beech mixed with the pine in these forests, and the beech in
October is as gorgeous a master of color as Rubens or Veronese. Herr
Mittenmeyer's mind, too, will have entered into a more placid and
even-tempered phase. A stout, thickset man is Herr Mittenmeyer, with
broad, rubicund face and short bull neck, of the type that suggests the
possibility of an analogous shortness of temper under the pressure of
being called in six different directions at once. Altogether, it is
better in October. The song of the waterfall will not then be the only
one making the woods melodious. There will be a fitful soughing of the
wind in the forest. There will be a carpeting of dry, pale-brown
oak-leaves on all the paths which "will make your steps vocal." Again
and again, when slowly and musingly climbing the steep homeward path up
the valley in the dark hour, when the sun has set and before the moon
has yet risen, you will fancy that you hear the tread among the leaves
of a sandalled foot behind you. But it is well that the path leads you,
for there is no more any vesper-bell flinging its sweet and welcome
notes far and wide over hill and vale to guide the returning wanderer
through the forest.

Then the whole of this Black Forest region is full of legends and
traditional stories, which live longer and are more easily preserved
among a people where the sons and the daughters live and marry and die
for the most part under the shadow of the same trees and the same thatch
beneath which their fathers and mothers did the same. Of course, the
Black Huntsman is as well known as of yore, though perhaps somewhat more
rarely seen. But his habits and specialties have become too well known
to all readers of folk-lore to need any further notice. Less widely
known histories, each the traditional subject of inglenook talk in its
own valley, may be found at every step. There is a rather remarkable
grotto or cavern in the hill above Allerheiligen, the main ridge which
divides that valley from Achern and the Rhine. It is, you are told, the
Edelfrauengrab (the "Noble Lady's Grave"). And you will be further
informed, if you inquire aright, how that unhallowed spot came to be a
noble lady's grave, and something more than a grave. 'Twas at the time
of the Crusades--those mischief-making Crusades, which, among all the
other evil which they produced, would have absolutely overwhelmed the
divorce courts of those days with press of business if there had then
been any divorce courts. This noble lady's lord went to the Crusades.
How could a gallant knight and good Christian do aught else? Of course
he went to the Crusades! And of course his noble lady felt extremely
dull and disconsolate during his absence. What was she to do? There was
no circulating library; and even if there had been, she would not have
been able to avail herself of its resources, for, though tradition says
nothing upon the subject, it may be very safely assumed that she could
not read. And needlework in the company of her maids must have become
terribly wearisome after a time. She could go to mass, and to vespers
also. Probably she did so at the new church of the recently-established
community nestling in so charming a spot of the lovely valley beneath
her. Let us hope that it was not there that she fell in with one whom in
an hour of weakness she permitted to console her too tenderly for the
absence of her crusading lord. Had she waited with patience but only
nine months longer for his return, all would have been well. For he did
return as nearly as possible about that time; and, arriving at his own
castle-door, met one whom he at once recognized as his wife's
confidential maid coming out of the house and carrying a large basket.
The natural inquiry whither she was going, and what she had in her
basket, was answered by the statement--uttered with that ingenuous
fluency and masterly readiness for which ladies' maids have in all
countries, and doubtless in all ages, been celebrated--that the basket
contained a litter of puppies which she was taking to the river to
drown. Alas! the girl had adhered but too nearly to the truth. There
_were_ seven living and breathing creatures in the basket, and the
confidential maid had been sent on the very confidential errand of
drowning them. Woe worth the day! They were seven little unchristened
Christians, doomed to die one death as they had been born at one
birth--the result of that erring noble lady's fault. The methods of
injured husbands were wont to be characterized by much simplicity and
directness of purpose in those days. The noble crusader invoked the aid
of no court, either spiritual or lay. He happened to remember the
existence of a certain dismal cavern in the sandstone rock not far from
his dwelling. The entrance to it was very easily walled up. That cavern
became the noble lady's prison and deathbed, as well as her grave! And a
valuable possession has that lady's death and grave become to the
descendants of her lord's vassals, for many a gulden is earned by
guiding the curious to see the spot and by retailing the tragic
history.

Well! and of the two changes, the two abolitions, which have been here
recorded, which was the most needed, which the most salutary, which the
least mingled in its results with elements of evil? Poor Baden piteously
complains that it does not take half the money in the course of the year
that it used to receive as surely as "the season" came round in the old
times. And the poor, wholly unconverted by maxims of political economy,
declare that there have been no good times in the land since the
destruction of the monasteries. After all, Abbot Fischer (that was the
name of the last of the long line) and his monks were less objectionable
than M. Benazet and his croupiers. Could we perhaps keep the scales even
and make things pleasant all round by re-establishing both the abolished
institutions--restoring the croupiers and "makers of the game" to their
green table, and requiring them out of their enormous gains to re-endow
the convent? "C'est une idée, comme une autre!" as a Frenchman says.

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.




SONG.


    Sweet wind that blows o'er sunny isles
      The softness of the sea!
    Blow thou across these moving miles
      News of my love to me.

    Ripples her hair like waves that sweep
      About this pleasant shore:
    Her eyes are bluer than the deep
      Round rocky Appledore.

    Her sweet breast shames the scattered spray,
      Soft kissed by early light:
    I dream she is the dawn of day,
      That lifts me out of night.

OSCAR LAIGHTON.




"FOR PERCIVAL."

CHAPTER IV.

WISHING WELL AND ILL.


[Illustration]

Lottie's birthday had dawned, the fresh morning hours had slipped away,
the sun had declined from his midday splendor into golden afternoon, and
yet to Lottie herself the day seemed scarcely yet begun. Its crowning
delight was to be a dance given in her honor, and she awaited that dance
with feverish anxiety.

It was nearly three o'clock when the dog-cart from Brackenhill came
swiftly along the dusty road. It was nearing its destination: already
there were distant glimpses of Fordborough with its white suburban
villas. Percival Thorne thoroughly enjoyed the bright June weather, the
cloudless blue, the clear singing of the birds, the whisper of the
leaves, the universal sweetness from far-off fields and blossoms near at
hand. He gazed at the landscape with eyes that seemed to be looking at
something far away, and yet they were observant enough to note a figure
crossing a neighboring field. It was but a momentary vision, and the
expression of his face did not vary in the slightest degree, but he
turned to the man at his side and spoke in his leisurely fashion: "I'll
get down here and walk the rest of the way. You may take my things to
Mr. Hardwicke's."

The man took the reins, but he looked round in some wonder, as if
seeking the cause of the order. His curiosity was unsatisfied. The slim
girlish figure had vanished behind a clump of trees, and nothing was
visible that could in any way account for so sudden a change of purpose.
Glancing back as he drove off, he saw only Mr. Percival Thorne, darkly
conspicuous on the glaring road, standing where he had alighted, and
apparently lost in thought. The roan horse turned a corner, the sound of
wheels died away in the distance, and Percival walked a few steps in the
direction of Brackenhill, reached a stile, leaned against it and waited.

"Many happy returns of the day to you!" he said as the girl whom he had
seen came along the field-path.

Light leafy shadows wavered on her as she walked, and, all unconscious
of his presence, she was softly whistling an old tune.

The color rushed to her face, and she stopped short. "Percival! You
here?" she said.

"Yes: did I startle you? I was driving into the town, and saw you in the
distance. I could not do less--could I?--than stop then and there to pay
my respects to the queen of the day. And what a glorious day it is!"

Lottie sprang over the stile, and looked up and down the road. "Oh, you
are going to walk?" she said.

"I'm going to walk--yes. But what brings you here wandering about the
fields to-day?"

She had recovered her composure, and looked up at him with laughing
eyes: "It is wretched indoors. They are so busy fussing over things for
to-night, you know."

"Exactly what I thought you would be doing too."

"I? Oh, mamma said I wasn't a bit of use, and Addie said that I was more
than enough to drive Job out of his mind. The fact was, I upset one of
her flower-vases. And afterward--well, afterward I broke a big china
bowl."

"I begin to understand," said Percival thoughtfully, "that they might
feel able to get on without your help."

"Yes, perhaps they might. But they needn't have made such a noise about
the thing, as if nobody could enjoy the dance to-night because a china
bowl was smashed! Such rubbish! What could it matter?"

"Was it something unique?"

"Oh, it was worse than that," she answered frankly: "it was one of a
set. But I don't see why one can't be just as happy without a complete
set of everything."

"There I agree with you," he replied. "I certainly can't say that my
happiness is bound up with crockery of any kind. And, do you know,
Lottie, I'm rather glad it was one of a set. Otherwise, your mother
might have known that there was something magical about it, but one of a
set is prosaic--isn't it? Suppose it had been a case of--

                  If this glass doth fall,
    Farewell then, O Luck of Edenhall!"

"Well, the luck would have been in uncommonly little bits," she replied.
"I smashed it on a stone step, and they were so cross that I was
crosser, so I said I would come out for a walk."

"And do you feel any better?" he asked in an anxious voice.

"Yes, thank you. Being in the open air has done me good."

"Then may I go with you? Or will nothing short of solitude effect a
complete cure?"

"You may come," she said gravely. "That is, if you are not afraid of the
remains of my ill-temper."

"No, I'm not afraid. I don't make light of your anger, but I believe I'm
naturally very brave. Where are we going?"

She hesitated a moment, then looked up at him: "Percival, isn't this the
way to the wishing-well? Ever since we came to Fordborough, three months
ago, I've wanted to go there. Do you know where it is?"

"Oh yes, I know it. It is about a mile from here, or perhaps a little
more. That won't be too far for you, will it?"

"Too far!" She laughed outright. "Why, I could walk ten times as far,
and dance all night afterward."

"Then we'll go," said Percival. And, crossing the road, they passed into
the fields on the opposite side. A pathway, too narrow for two to walk
abreast, led them through a wide sea of corn, where the flying breezes
were betrayed by delicate tremulous waves. Lottie led the way, putting
out her hand from time to time as she went, and brushing the bloom from
the softly-swaying wheat. She was silent. Fate had befriended her
strangely in this walk. The loneliness of the sunlit fields was far
better for her purpose than the crowd and laughter of the evening, but
her heart almost failed her, and with childish superstition she resolved
that she would not speak the words which trembled on her lips until she
and Percival should have drunk together of the wishing-well. He followed
her, silent too. He was well satisfied to be with his beautiful
school-girl friend, free to speak or hold his peace as he chose. Freedom
was the great charm of his friendship with Lottie--freedom from
restraint and responsibility. For if Percival was serenely happy and
assured on any single point, he was so with regard to his perfect
comprehension of the Blakes in general, and Lottie in particular. He had
some idea of giving his cousin Horace a word of warning on the subject
of Mrs. Blake's designs. He quite understood that good lady's feelings
concerning himself. "I'm nobody," he thought. "I'm not to be thrown
over, because I introduced Horace to them; besides, I'm an additional
link between Fordborough and Brackenhill, and Mrs. Blake would give her
ears to know Aunt Middleton. And I am no trouble so long as I am
satisfied to amuse myself with Lottie. In fact, I am rather useful. I
keep the child out of mischief, and I don't give her black eyes, as that
Wingfield boy did." And from this point Percival would glide into vague
speculation as to Lottie's future. He was inclined to think that the
girl would do something and be something when she grew up. She was
vehement, resolute, ambitious. He wondered idly, and a little
sentimentally, whether hereafter, when their paths had diverged for
ever, she would look back kindly to these tranquil days and to her old
friend Percival. He rather thought not. She would have enough to occupy
her without that.

It was true, after a fashion, that Lottie was ambitious in her dreams of
love. Her lover must be heroic, handsome, a gentleman by birth, with
something of romance about his story. A noble poverty might be more
fascinating than wealth. There was but one thing absolutely needful: he
must not be commonplace. It was the towering yet unsubstantial ambition
of her age, a vision of impossible splendor and happiness. Most girls
have such dreams: most women find at six or seven and twenty that their
enchanted castles in the air have shrunk to brick-and-mortar houses.
Tastes change, and they might even be somewhat embarrassed were they
called on to play their parts in the passionate love-poems which they
dreamed at seventeen. But the world was just opening before Lottie's
eyes, and she was ready to be a heroine of romance.

"This way," said Percival; and they turned into a narrow lane, deep and
cool, with green banks overgrown with ferns, and arching boughs above.
As they strolled along he gathered pale honeysuckle blossoms from the
hedge, and gave them to Lottie.

"How pretty it is!" said the girl, looking round.

"Wait till you see the well," he replied. "We shall be there directly:
it is prettier there."

"But this is pretty too: why should I wait?" said Lottie.

"You are right. I don't know why you should. Admire both: you are wiser
than I, Lottie."

As he spoke, the lane widened into a grassy glade, and Lottie quickened
her steps, uttering a cry of pleasure. Percival followed her with a
smile on his lips. "Here is your wishing-well," he said. "Do you like
it, now that you have found it out?"

She might well have been satisfied, even if she had been harder to
please. It was a spring of the fairest water, bubbling into a tiny
hollow. The little pool was like a brimming cup, with colored pebbles
and dancing sand at the bottom, and delicate leaf-sprays clustered
lightly round its rim. And this gem of sparkling water was set in a
space of mossy sward, with trees which leant and whispered overhead,
their quivering canopy pierced here and there by golden shafts of
sunlight and glimpses of far-off blue.

"It is like fairy-land," said Lottie.

"Or like something in Keats's poems," Percival suggested.

"I never read a line of them, so I can't say," she answered with defiant
candor, while she inwardly resolved to get the book.

He smiled: "You don't read much poetry yet, do you? Ah, well, you have
time enough. How about wishing, now we are here?" he went on, stooping
to look into the well. "Your wishes ought to have a double virtue on
your birthday."

"I only hope they may."

"What! have you decided on something very important? Seventeen to-day!
Lottie, don't wish to be eighteen: that will come much too soon without
wishing."

"I don't want to be eighteen. I think seventeen is old enough," she
answered dreamily.

"So do I." He was thinking, as he spoke, what a charming childish age it
was, and how, before he knew Lottie, he had fancied from books that
girls were grown up at seventeen.

"Now I am going to wish," she said seriously, "and you must wish after
me." Bending over the pool, she looked earnestly into it, took water in
the hollow of her hand and drank. Then, standing back, she made a sign
to her companion.

He stepped forward, and saying, with a bright glance, "My wishes must be
for you to-day, Queen Lottie," he followed her example. But when he
looked up, shaking the cold drops from his hand, he was struck by the
intense expression on her downward-bent face. "What has the child been
wishing?" he wondered; and an idea flashed suddenly into his mind which
almost made him smile. "By Jove!" he said to himself, "there will be a
fiery passion one of these fine days, when Lottie falls in love." But
even as he thought this the look which had startled him was gone.

"We needn't go back directly, need we?" she said. "Let us rest a little
while."

"By all means," Percival replied, "I'm quite ready to rest as long as
you like: I consider resting my strong point. What do you say to this
bank? Or there is a fallen tree just across there?"

"No. Percival, listen! There are some horrid people coming: let us go on
a little farther, out of their way."

He listened: "Yes, there are some people coming. Very likely they are
horrid, though we have no fact to go upon except their desire to find
the wishing-well: at any rate, we don't want them. Lottie, you are
right: let us fly."

They escaped from the glade at the farther end, passed through a gate
into a field, and found themselves once more in the broad sunlight. They
paused for a moment, dazzled and uncertain which way to go. "_Why_ did
those people come and turn us out?" said Thorne regretfully. A shrill
scream of laughter rang through the shade which they had just left.
"What shall we do now?"

"I don't mind: I like this sunshine," said Lottie. "Percival, don't you
think there would be a view up there?"

"Up there" was a grassy little eminence which rose rather abruptly in
the midst of the neighboring fields. It was parted from the place where
they stood by a couple of meadows.

"I should think there might be."

"Then let us go there. When I see a hill I always feel as if I must get
to the top of it."

"I've no objection to that feeling in the present case, as the hill
happens to be a very little one," Percival replied. "And the shepherds
and shepherdesses in our Arcadia are unpleasantly noisy. But I don't see
any gate into the next field."

"Who wants a gate? There's a gap by that old stump."

"And you don't mind this ditch? It isn't very wide," he said as he
stood on the bank.

"No, I don't mind it."

He held out his hand: she laid hers on it and sprang lightly across,
with a word of thanks. A few months earlier she would have scorned Cock
Robin's assistance had the ditch been twice as wide, as that day she
would have scorned any assistance but Percival's. It was well that she
did not need help, for his outstretched hand, firm as it was, gave her
little. It rather sent a tremulous thrill through her as she touched it
that was more likely to make her falter than succeed. She was not vexed
that he relapsed into silence as they went on their way. In her eyes his
aspect was darkly thoughtful and heroic. As she walked by his side the
low grass-fields became enchanted meads and the poor little flowers
bloomed like poets' asphodel. A lark sang overhead as never bird sang
before, and the breeze was sweet with memories of blossom. When they
stood on the summit of the little hill the view was fair as Paradise. A
big gray stone lay among the tufts of bracken, as if a giant hand had
tossed it there in sport. Lottie sat down, leaning against it, and
Percival threw himself on the grass at her feet.

She was nerving herself to overcome an unwonted feeling of timidity. She
had dreamed of this birthday with childish eagerness. Her fancy had made
it the portal of a world of unknown delights. She grew sick with fear,
lest through her weakness or any mischance the golden hours should glide
by, and no golden joy be secured before the night came on. Golden hours?
Were they not rather golden moments on the hillside with Percival? He
loved her--she was sure of that--but he was poor, and would never speak.
What could she say to him? She bent forward a little that she might see
him better as he lay stretched on the warm turf unconscious of her eyes.
Through his half-closed lids he watched the little gray-blue butterflies
which flickered round him in the sunny air, emerging from or melting
into the eternal vault of blue.

"Percival!"

She had spoken, and ended the long silence. She almost fancied that her
voice shook and sounded strange, but he did not seem to notice it.

"Yes?" he said, and turned his face to her--the face that was the whole
world to Lottie.

"Percival, is it true that your father was the eldest son, and that you
ought to be the heir?"

He opened his eyes a little at the breathless question. Then he laughed:
"I might have known that you could not live three months in Fordborough
without hearing something of that."

"It is true, then? Mayn't I know?"

"Certainly." He raised himself on his elbow. "But there is no injustice
in the matter, Lottie. The eldest son died, and my father was the
second. He wanted to have his own way, as we most of us do, and he gave
up his expectations and had it. He did it with his eyes open, and it was
a fair bargain."

"He sold his birthright, like Esau? Well, that might be quite right for
him, but isn't it rather hard on you?"

"Not at all," he answered promptly. "I never counted on it, and
therefore I am not disappointed. Why should I complain of not having
what I did not expect to have? Shall I feel very hardly used when the
archbishopric of Canterbury falls vacant and they pass me over?"

"But your father shouldn't have given up your rights," the girl
persisted.

"Why, Lottie," he said with a smile, "it was before I was born! And I'm
not so sure about my rights. I don't know that I have any particular
rights or wrongs." There was a pause, and then he looked up. "Suppose
the birthright had been Jacob's, and he had thrown it away for Rachel's
sake: would you have blamed him?"

"No," said Lottie, with kindling eyes.

"Then Jacob and Rachel's son is not hardly used, and has no cause to
complain of his lot," Percival concluded, sinking back lazily.

Lottie was silent for a moment. Then she apparently changed the
subject: "Do you remember that day Mrs. Pickering called and talked
about William?"

"Oh yes, I remember. I scandalized the old lady, didn't I? Lottie, I'm
half afraid I scandalized your mother into the bargain."

"I've been thinking about what you said," Lottie went on very
seriously--"about being idle all your life."

"Ah!" said Percival, drawing a long breath. "_You_ are going to lecture
me? Well, I don't know why I should be surprised. Every one lectures me:
they don't like it, but feel it to be their duty. I dare say Addie will
begin this evening." He was amused at the idea of a reproof from Lottie,
and settled his smooth cheek comfortably on his sleeve that he might
listen at his ease. "Go on," he said: "it's very kind of you, and I'm
quite ready."

"Suppose I'm not going to lecture you," said Lottie.

"Why, that's still kinder. What then?"

"Suppose I think you are right."

"Do you?"

"Yes," she answered simply. "William Pickering may spend his life
scraping pounds and pence together. Men who can't do anything else may
as well do that, for it _is_ nice to be rich. But if you have enough,
why should you spend your time over it--the best years of your life
which will never come back?"

"Never!" said Percival. "You are right."

There was a long pause. Lottie pulled a bit of fern, and looked at him
again. There was a line between his dark brows, as if he were pursuing
some thought which her words had suggested, but he held his head down
and was silent. She threw the fern away and pressed her hands together:
"But, Percival, you do care for money, after all. You set it above
everything else, as they all do, only in a different way. You are right
in what you say, but they are more honest, for they say and do alike."

"Do I care for money? Lottie, it's the first time I have ever been
charged with that."

"Because you talk as if you didn't. But you do. Why did you say you
would never marry an heiress? The color went right up to the roots of
your hair when they talked about it, and you said it would be
contemptible: that was the word--contemptible. Then I suppose if you
cared for her, and she loved you with all her heart and soul, you would
go away and leave her to hate the world and herself and you, just
because she happened to have a little money. And you say you don't care
about it!"

"Lottie, you don't know what you are talking about." His eyes were fixed
on the turf. She had called up a vision in which she had no part. "You
don't understand," he began.

"It is you who don't understand," she answered desperately. "You men
judge girls--I don't know how you judge them--not by themselves: by
their worldly-wise mammas, perhaps. Do you fancy we are always counting
what money men have or what we have? It's you who think so much about
it. Oh, Percival!" the strong voice softened to sudden tenderness, "do
you think I care a straw about what I shall have one day?"

"Good God!" Percival looked up, and for the space of a lightning flash
their eyes met. In hers he read enough to show him how blind he had
been. In his she read astonishment, horror, repulsion.

Repulsion she read it, but it was not there. To her dying day Lottie
will believe that she saw it in his eyes. Did she not feel an icy stab
of pain when she recognized it? Never was she more sure of her own
existence than she was sure of this. And yet it was not there. She had
suddenly roused him from a dream, and he was bewildered, shocked--sorry
for his girl-friend, and bitterly remorseful for himself.

Lottie knew that she had made a terrible mistake, and that Percival did
not love her. There was a rushing as of water in her ears, a black mist
swaying before her eyes. But in a moment all that was over, and she
could look round again. The sunlit world glared horribly, as if it
understood and pressed round her with a million eyes to mock her burning
shame.

"No, I never thought you cared for money," said Percival, trying to seem
unconscious of that lightning glance with all its revelations. He had
not the restless fingers so many men have, and could sit contentedly
without moving a muscle. But now he was plucking nervously at the turf
as he spoke.

"What does it matter?" said Lottie. "I shall come to care for it one of
these days, I dare say."

He did not answer. What could he say? He was cursing his blind folly.
Poor child! Why, she _was_ only a child, after all--a beautiful,
headstrong, wilful child, and it was not a year since he met her in the
woods with torn frock and tangled hair, her long hands bleeding from
bramble-scratches and her lips stained with autumn berries. How fiercely
and shyly she looked at him with her shining eyes! He remembered how she
stopped abruptly in her talk and answered him in monosyllables, and how,
when he left the trio, the clear, boyish voice broke instantly into a
flood of happy speech. As he lay there now, staring at the turf, he
could see his red-capped vision of Liberty as plainly as if he stood on
the woodland walk again with the September leaves above him. He felt a
rush of tender, brotherly pity for the poor mistaken child--"brotherly"
in default of a better word. Probably a brother would have been more
keenly alive to the forward folly of Lottie's conduct. Percival would
have liked to hold out his hand to the girl, to close it round hers in a
tight grasp of fellowship and sympathy, and convey to her, in some
better way than the clumsy utterance of words, that he asked her pardon
for the wrong he had unconsciously done her, and besought her to be his
friend and comrade for ever. But he could not do anything of the kind:
he dared not even look up, lest a glance should scorch her as she
quivered in her humiliation. He ended as he began, by cursing the serene
certainty that all was so harmless and so perfectly understood, which
had blinded his eyes and brought him to this.

And Lottie? She hardly knew what she thought. A wild dream of a desert
island in tropic seas, with palms towering in the hot air and snow-white
surf dashing on the coral shore, and herself and Cock Robin parted from
all the world by endless leagues of ocean, flitted before her eyes. But
that was impossible, absurd.

[Illustration: "FOR THE SPACE OF A LIGHTNING FLASH THEIR EYES
MET."--Page 551.]

_He_ was laughing at her, no doubt--scorning her in his heart. Oh, why
had she been so mad? Suppose a thunder-bolt were to fall from the blue
sky and crush him into eternal silence as he lay at her feet pulling his
little blades of grass? No! Lottie did not wish that: the thought was
hideous. Yet had not such a wish had a momentary life as she stared at
the hot blue sky? Was it written there, or wandering in the air, or
uttered in the busy humming of the flies, so that as she gazed and
listened she became conscious of its purport? Surely she never wished
it. Why could not the gray rock against which she leaned totter and fall
and bury her for ever, hiding her body from sight while her spirit fled
from Percival? Yet even that was not enough: they might meet in some
hereafter. Lottie longed for annihilation in that moment of despair.

This could not last. It passed, as the first faintness had done, and
with an aching sense of shame and soreness (almost worse to bear because
there was no exaltation in it) she came back to every-day life. She
pushed her hair from her forehead and got up. "I suppose you are not
going to stay here all day?" she said.

Percival stretched himself with an air of indolent carelessness: "No, I
suppose not. Do you think duty calls us to go back at once?"

"It is getting late," was her curt reply; and he rose without another
word.

She was grave and quiet: if anything, she was more self-possessed than
he was, only she never looked at him. Perhaps if he could have made her
understand what was in his heart when first he realized the meaning of
her hasty words, she might have grasped the friendly hand he longed to
hold out to her. But not now. Her face had hardened strangely, as if it
were cut in stone. They went down the hill in silence, Percival
appearing greatly interested in the landscape. As they crossed the level
meadows Lottie looked round with a queer fancy that she might meet the
other Lottie there, the girl who had crossed them an hour before. At the
ditch Thorne held out his hand again. She half turned, looked straight
into his eyes with a passionate glance of hatred, and sprang across,
leaving him to follow.

He rejoined her as she reached the glade. While they had been on the
hill the sun had sunk below the arching boughs, and half the beauty of
the scene was gone. The noisy picnic party had unpacked their hampers,
the turf was littered with paper and straw, and a driver stood in a
central position, with his head thrown back, drinking beer from a
bottle. Lottie went straight to the well and took another draught.

"Two wishes in one day?" said Percival.

"Second thoughts are best," she answered, turning coldly away. "Is there
no other way home? I hate walking the same way twice."

"There is the road: I'm afraid it may be hot, but it would be a change."

"I should prefer the road," she said.

That walk seemed interminable to Percival Thorne. He was ready to
believe that the road lengthened itself, in sheer spite, to leagues of
arid dust, and that every familiar landmark fled before him. At last,
however, they approached a point where two ways diverged--the one
leading straight into the old town, while the other, wide and trimly
kept, passed between many bright new villas and gardens. At that corner
they might part. But before they reached it a slim, gray-clad figure
appeared from the suburban road and strolled leisurely toward them.
Percival looked, looked again, shaded his eyes and looked. "Why, it's
Horace!" he exclaimed.

Lottie made no reply, but she awoke from her sullen musing, a light
flashed into her eyes, and she quickened her pace toward the man who
should deliver her from her _tête-à-tête_ with Percival.




CHAPTER V.

WHY NOT LOTTIE?


Percival advanced to meet his cousin. "You here, Horace?" he said.

"So it seems," the other replied, in a voice which sounded exactly as if
Percival had answered his own question.

The two young men were wonderfully alike, though hardly one person in a
hundred could see it. They were exactly the same height, their features
were similar, they walked across the room in precisely the same way, and
unconsciously reproduced each other's tricks of manner with singular
fidelity. Yet any remark on this resemblance would almost certainly
encounter a wondering stare, and "Oh, do you think so? Well, I must
confess I can't see much likeness myself;" the fact being that the
similarity was in form and gait, while both color and expression
differed greatly. Horace's hair had the same strong waves as Percival's,
but it was chestnut-brown, his eyes were a clear light gray, his
complexion showed a fatal delicacy of white and red. His expression was
more varying, his smile was readier and his glance more restless.

He had once taken a college friend, whose hobby was photography, to
Brackenhill. Young Felton arrived with all his apparatus, and
photographed the whole household with such inordinate demands on their
time, and such atrocious results, that every one fled from him in
horror. Horace was the most patient of his victims, and Felton declared
that he _would_ have a good one of Thorne. But even Horace was tired out
at last, and said very mildly that he didn't particularly care for the
smell of the stuff, and he was afraid his portraits wouldn't help him to
a situation if ever he wanted one--apply, stating terms and enclosing
carte; that he thought it uncommonly kind of Felton to take so much
trouble, but if ever he let him try again, he'd be--Sissy was there, and
the sentence, which had been said over his shoulder as he leaned out of
the window, ended in a puff of smoke up into the blue. Felton begged for
one more, and persuaded Sissy to be his advocate. "I've an idea that
something will come of it," said the hapless photographer. Horace
yielded at last, and sat down, grimly resolute that he would yield no
more. Something _did_ come of it. Felton got it very much too dark, and
the result was a tolerable photograph and a startling likeness of
Percival.

The incident caused some little amusement at Brackenhill, and visitors
were duly puzzled with the portrait. But it was not long remembered,
and people dropped into their former habit of thinking that there was
but a slight resemblance between the cousins. Only, Percival carried off
the photograph, and was interested for a week or two in questions of
doubtful identity, looking up a few old cases of mysterious claimants,
and speculating as to the value of the testimony for and against them.

Horace shook hands with Lottie, and uttered his neatly-worded birthday
wishes. Her answer was indistinctly murmured, but she looked up at him,
and he paused, struck as by something novel and splendid, when he
encountered the dark fire of her eyes. "I left them wondering what had
become of you," he said. "They thought you were wandering about alone
somewhere, and had lost yourself."

"Instead of which we met on the road, didn't we?" said Percival.

"Yes," she answered indifferently.--"And you came to look for me?"

"Of course. I was on my way to hunt up the town-crier and to make our
loss known to the police. In half an hour's time we should have been
dragging all the ponds."

"I think I'd better go and set mamma's anxious mind at rest," said
Lottie with a short laugh. "Good-bye for the present." She was gone in a
moment, leaving the young men standing in the middle of the road. Horace
made a movement as if to follow her, then checked himself and looked at
his cousin.

Percival made haste to speak: "So you have come down for the
birthday-party, too? Where are you staying?"

"Oh, the Blakes find me a bed. I'm off again to-morrow morning."

"You are now at Scarborough with my aunt? I have it on Sissy's
authority."

"There's no occasion to disturb that faith," said Horace lightly. "Are
you going into the town? I'll walk a little way with you."

"You are not going to see them at Brackenhill before you leave?"

Horace shook his head: "Say nothing about me. Did you tell them where
you were going?"

"No. I don't suppose they know of the Blakes' existence."

"So much the better. _I'm_ not going to enlighten them."

They strolled on side by side, and for a minute neither spoke. Horace
was chafing because it had occurred to him that afternoon that Mrs.
Blake seemed rather to take his devotion to Addie for granted. His path
was made too smooth and obvious, and it was evident that the prize might
be had for the asking. Consequently, Master Horace, who was not at all
sure that he wanted it, was irritable and inclined to swerve aside.

"Are not you playing a dangerous game?" said Percival. "Sooner or later
some one will mention the fact of these visits to the squire, and
there'll be a row."

"Well, then, there _must_ be a row. It's uncommonly hard if I'm never to
speak to any one without going to Brackenhill first to ask leave," said
Horace discontentedly. "How should you like it yourself?"

"Not at all."

"No more do I. I'm tired of being in leading-strings, and the long and
short of it is that I mean to have my own way in this, at any rate."

"In _this_? Is this a matter of great importance, then? Horace, mind
what you are after with the Blakes."

"You're a nice consistent sort of fellow," said Horace.

"Oh, you may call me what you like," Percival replied.

"Who introduced me to these people before they came to Fordborough? Who
comes down to Brackenhill--the dullest hole, now there's no
shooting--because it's Lottie Blake's birthday? Whose name is a sort of
household word here--Percival this and Percival that? Percival without
any Thorne to it, mind."

"I plead guilty. What then?"

"What then? Why, I wish you to remark that _this_ is your example, while
your precept is--"

"Take care what you are about with the Blakes. Yes, old fellow, you'd
better leave my example alone, and stick to the precept. My wisdom
takes that form, I admit." He spoke with more meaning than Horace
perceived.

"Well, thanks for your advice," said the young man with a laugh. "Though
I can't see any particular harm in my coming down to-day."

"No harm. Only remember that there is such a place as Brackenhill."

"The governor oughtn't to find fault with me, since you're in the same
boat. He never thinks you can do wrong."

"Never."

"You're a lucky fellow to have only yourself to please."

"Very lucky," said Percival dryly. "Will you change places with me?"

"Change places? What do you mean?"

The other looked fixedly at him, and said in a pointed manner, "I fancy
it might easily be managed--with Addie Blake's help."

The suggestion was unpleasant. Horace winced, and vented his displeasure
in a random attack: "And why Addie, I should like to know? How can you
tell it is Addie at all?"

"Who, then?"

"Why not Lottie?" The words were uttered without a moment's thought, and
might have been forgotten as soon as said. But Percival was taken by
surprise, and a look of utter incredulity flashed across his face.
Horace caught it and was piqued. "Unless you understand her so well that
you are sure that no one else has a chance. Of course, if that is the
case--"

"Not at all," Percival exclaimed. "It's not for me to pretend to
understand Lottie: I'm not such a fool as that."

"All the same," Horace said to himself, "you think you understand her
better than I do, and you don't believe I should have a chance if I
tried to cut you out. Well, Mr. Percy, you may be right, but, on the
other hand, you _may_ be mistaken." And, as he walked back to the
Blakes, Horace hurriedly resolved to teach his cousin that he was not to
consider Lottie his exclusive property. He knew the folly of such a
proceeding, but who was ever hindered from obeying the dictates of
wounded vanity by the certainty that he had much better not?

Percival sincerely wished the evening over. He dared not stay away, lest
his absence should provoke comment, but he feared some childish outbreak
of petulance on Lottie's part. When he saw her he was startled by her
beauty. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were full of brilliant
meaning. She cast a defiant glance at him as she went by. She was
burning with shame, and maddened by the cruel injustice of her fate. A
white light seemed to have poured in upon her, and she found it
incredible that she could ever have felt or acted as she had felt and
acted that afternoon. She said to herself that she might as well have
been punished for her conduct in a dream.

Percival plucked up courage enough to go and ask her to dance. He was
distressed and pitiful, and longing to make amends, and stood before her
like the humblest of suitors. She assented coolly enough. No one saw
that there was anything amiss, though he was quick to remark that she
gave him only square dances. No more waltzes with Lottie for him. But
Horace had one, and when it was over he leaned almost exhausted against
the wall, while Lottie stood by his side and fanned herself. The fan
seemed to throb in unison with her strong pulses, quickened by the dance
and slackening as she rested.

"That was splendid," said Horace with breathless brevity. "Best waltz I
ever had."

"Ah!" said Lottie, turning toward him. "Suppose Addie heard that, Mr.
Thorne?"

They looked straight into each other's eyes, and Horace felt a strange
thrill run through him. He evaded her question with a laugh. "Why do you
call me Mr. Thorne?" he asked. "If you call that fellow by his Christian
name, why not me? Mine isn't such a mouthful as Percival: try it."

"We knew him first, you see," Lottie replied with much innocence.

"As if that had anything to do with it! If you had known my grandfather
first, I suppose you would have called him Godfrey?"

"Perhaps he wouldn't have asked me," said Lottie.

Horace smiled: "Well, perhaps he wouldn't. He isn't much given to making
such requests, certainly. But I do ask you. Look!" he exclaimed, with
sudden animation, "there's Mrs. Blake taking that dried-up little
woman--what is her name?--to the piano. I may have the next dance, I
hope."

"How many more things are you going to ask for all at once?" The bright
fan kept up its regular come and go, and Lottie's eyes were very arch
above it. "I'm sure you don't take after your grandfather."

"Believe me," said Horace, "you would be awfully bored if I did. But you
haven't given me an answer. This dance?"

"I've promised it to Mr. Hardwicke. Adieu, _Horace_!" And before he
could utter a syllable she was across the room, standing by the little
spinster who was going to play, and helping her to undo a clashing
bracelet of malachite and silver which hung on her bony wrist.

Horace, gazing after her, felt a hand on his shoulder and looked round.

"I'm off when this dance is over," said Percival, who seemed weary and
depressed. "You still wish me not to say that I have seen you?"

Horace nodded: "I shall be at Scarborough again to-morrow night. There's
no occasion to say anything."

"All right. You know best."

"Who can tell what may happen?" said Horace. "Why should one be in a
hurry to do anything unpleasant? Put it off, and you may escape it
altogether. For instance, the governor may change all at once, as people
do in tracts and Christmas books. I don't say it's likely, but I feel
that I ought to give him the chance."

"Very good," said Percival; and he strolled away. Horace noted his
preoccupied look with a half smile, but after a moment his thoughts and
eyes went back to Lottie Blake, and he forgot all about his cousin and
Brackenhill.




CHAPTER VI.

HER NAME.


Most country towns have some great event which marks the year, or some
peculiarity which distinguishes them from their neighbors. This one has
its annual ball, that its races, another its volunteer reviews. One
seems to relish no amusement which has not a semi-religious flavor, and
excels in school-feasts, choir-festivals, and bazaars. Some places only
wake up on the fifth of November, and some are devoted to amateur
theatricals. Fordborough had its agricultural show.

Crowds flocked to it, not because they cared for fat cattle, steam
ploughs and big vegetables, but because everybody was to be seen there.
You stared at the prize pig side by side with the head of one of the
great county families, who had a faint idea that he had been introduced
to you somewhere (was it at the last election?), and politely entered
into conversation with you on the chance. You might perhaps suspect that
his remembrance of you was not very clear, when you reflected afterward
that he

    Asked after my wife, who is dead,
    And my children, who never were born;

but at any rate he meant to be civil, and people who saw you talking
together would not know what he said. Or you might find the old friend
you had not seen for years, gold eye-glass in hand, peering at a plate
of potatoes. Or you were young, and there was a girl--no, _the_ girl,
the one girl in all the world--bewitchingly dressed, a miracle of
beauty, looking at Jones's patent root-pulper. You lived for months on
the remembrance of the words you exchanged by a friendly though rather
deafening threshing-machine when her mamma (who never liked you) marched
serenely on, unconscious that Edith was lingering behind. Then there was
the flower-show, where a band from the nearest garrison town played the
last new waltzes, and people walked about and looked at everything
except the flowers. Fordborough was decked with flags and garlands, and
appropriate sentiments on the subject of agriculture, in evergreen
letters stitched on calico, were lavishly displayed. Every one who
possessed anything beyond a wheelbarrow got into it and drove about, the
bells clashed wildly in the steeple, and everything was exceedingly
merry--if it didn't rain.

People in that part of the world always filled their houses with guests
when the time for the show came round. Even at Brackenhill, though the
squire said he was too old for visitors, he made a point of inviting
Godfrey Hammond, while Mrs. Middleton, as soon as the day was fixed,
sent off a little note to Horace. It was taken for granted that Horace
would come. Aunt Harriet considered his invariable presence with them on
that occasion as a public acknowledgment of his position at Brackenhill.
But the day was gone by when Mr. Thorne delighted to parade his grandson
round the field, showing off the slim handsome lad, and proving to the
county that with his heir by his side he could defy the son who had
defied him. Matters were changed since then. The county had, as it were,
accepted Horace. The quarrel was five-and-twenty years old, and had lost
its savor. It was tacitly assumed that Alfred had in some undefined way
behaved very badly, that he had been very properly put on one side, and
that in the natural course of things Horace would succeed his
grandfather, and was a nice, gentlemanly young fellow. Mr. Thorne had
only to stick to what he had done to ensure the approval of society.

But people did not want, and did not understand, the foreign-looking
young man with the olive complexion and sombre eyes who had begun of
late years to come and go about Brackenhill, and who was said to be able
to turn old Thorne round his finger. This was not mere rumor. The
squire's own sister complained of his infatuation. It is true that she
also declared that she believed the newcomer to be a very good young
fellow, but the complaint was accepted and the addition smiled away. "It
is easy to see what her good young man wants there," said her friends;
and there was a general impression that it was a shame. Opinions
concerning the probable result varied, and people offered airily to bet
on Horace or Percival as their calculations inclined them. The majority
thought that old Thorne could never have the face to veer round again;
but there was the possibility on Percival's side that his grandfather
might die intestate, and with so capricious and unaccountable a man it
did not seem altogether improbable. "Then," as people sagely remarked,
"this fellow would inherit--that is, if Alfred's marriage was all
right." No one had any fault, except of a negative kind, to find with
Percival, yet the majority of Mr. Thorne's old friends were inclined to
dislike him. He did not hunt or go to races: he cared little for horses
and dogs. No one understood him. He was indolent and sweet-tempered, and
he was supposed to be satirical and scheming. What could his grandfather
see in him to prefer him to Horace? Percival would have answered with a
smile, "I am not his heir."

Mr. Thorne was happy this July, his boy having come to Brackenhill for a
few days which would include the show.

It was the evening before, and they were all assembled. Horace,
coffee-cup in hand, leant in his favorite attitude against the
chimney-piece. He was troubled and depressed, repulsed Mrs. Middleton's
smiling attempts to draw him out, and added very little to the general
conversation. "Sulky" was Mr. Thorne's verdict.

Percival was copying music for Sissy. She stood near him, bending
forward to catch the full light of the lamp to aid her in picking up a
dropped stitch in her aunt's knitting. Close by them sat Godfrey Hammond
in an easy-chair.

He was a man of three or four and forty, by no means handsome, but very
well satisfied with his good figure and his keen, refined features. He
wanted color, his closely-cut hair was sandy, his eyes were of the
palest gray, and his eyebrows faintly marked. He was slightly underhung,
and did not attempt to hide the fact, wearing neither beard nor
moustache. His face habitually wore a questioning expression.

Godfrey Hammond never lamented his want of good looks, but he bitterly
regretted the youth which he had lost. His regret seemed somewhat
premature. His fair complexion showed little trace of age, he had never
known what illness was, and men ten or fifteen years younger might have
envied him his slight active figure. But in truth the youth which he
regretted was a dream. It was that legendary Golden Age which crowns the
whole world with far-off flowers and fills hearts with longings for its
phantom loveliness. The present seemed to Hammond hopeless, commonplace
and cold, a dull procession of days tending downward to the grave. He
was thus far justified in his regrets, that if his youth were as full of
beauty and enthusiasm as he imagined it, he was very old indeed.

"What band are they going to have to-morrow, Percival?" asked Sissy.

"I did hear, but I forget. Stay, they gave me a programme when I was at
the bookseller's this afternoon." He thrust his hand into his pocket and
pulled out a handful of papers and letters. "It was a pink thing--I
thought you would like it: what has become of it, I wonder?"

As he turned the papers over a photograph slipped out of its envelope.
Sissy saw it: "Percival, is that some one's carte? May I look?"

"What!" said Godfrey Hammond, sticking a glass in his eye and peering
short-sightedly, "Percy taking to carrying photographs about with him!
Wonders will never cease! What fair lady may it be?--Come, man, let us
have a look at her."

Percival colored very slightly, and then, as it were, contradicted his
blush by tossing the envelope and its contents across to Godfrey: "No
fair lady. Ask Sissy what she thinks of him."

"Why, it's young Lisle!" said Hammond. Mr. Thorne looked up with sudden
interest.

Percival reclaimed the photograph: "Here, Sissy, what do you say? Should
you like him for your album?"

"For my album? A man I never saw! Who is he?" Miss Langton inquired.
"Oh, he's very handsome, though, isn't he?"

Percival saw his grandfather was looking. "It's Mr. Lisle's son," he
said.

"And very handsome? Doesn't take after his father."

(Mr. Lisle had been Percival's guardian for the few months between his
father's death and his majority. It had been a great grief to Mr.
Thorne. Something which he said to his grandson when he first came to
Brackenhill had been met by the rejoinder, very cool though perfectly
respectful in tone, "But, sir, if Mr. Lisle does not disapprove--" The
power-loving old man could not pardon Mr. Lisle for having an authority
over Percival which should have belonged to him.)

He put on his spectacles to look at the photograph which Sissy brought.
It was impossible to deny the beauty of the face, though the style was
rather effeminate: the features were almost faultless.

"Is it like him?" said Sissy, looking up at young Thorne.

"Very like," he replied: "it doesn't flatter him at all, if that is what
you mean: does it, Hammond?"

"Not at all."

"He used to sing in the choir of their church," Percival went on. "They
photographed him once in his surplice--a sort of ideal chorister. All
the old ladies went into raptures, and said he looked like an angel."

"And the young ladies?" said Mrs. Middleton.

"Showed that they thought it."

"H'm!" said Mr. Thorne. "And where may this paragon be?"

"At Oxford."

"Going into the Church?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. Not that I ever heard: I don't fancy his tastes
lie that way. He is very musical: probably that was why he joined the
choir."

"I should say Lisle had money enough," said Godfrey Hammond: "he lives
in very good style--if anything, a little too showy perhaps. He won't
want a profession. Most likely he will spend his life in thinking that
one of these days he will do something wonderful and convulse the
musical world. Happy fellow!"

"But suppose he doesn't do it?" said Sissy.

"Happier fellow still! He will never have a doubt, and never know what
failure is."

"Perhaps," she said, looking at the bright beautiful face, "it would be
better if Mr. Lisle were poor."

"I doubt if he would appreciate the kindness which doomed him to
poverty," smiled Hammond.

"But perhaps he would not only dream then of something great: he might
do it," said Sissy. "That is, do you think he could really do anything
great?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. Talent looks very big in a small room."

"Is he the only one?" Mrs. Middleton inquired of Percival.

"The only son: there is a daughter."

"A daughter! Is she as wonderful as her brother?" Sissy exclaimed. "Have
you got her photograph? What is she like?"

"I will tell you," said Godfrey Hammond, speaking very deliberately in
his high-pitched voice. "Miss Lisle is a very charming young lady. She
is like her brother, but she is not so good-looking, and she is
decidedly more masculine."

"Oh!" in a disdainful tone. Then, turning swiftly round: "But what do
you say, Percival?"

He answered her, but he looked at Godfrey: "Hardly a fair
description--not so much a portrait as a caricature. Miss Lisle's
features are not so perfect as her brother's: she would not attract the
universal admiration which he does. But I think there could be no
question that hers is the nobler face."

"She is fortunate in her champion," said Hammond. "It's all right, no
doubt, and the fault is mine. I may not have so keen an eye for latent
nobility."

"Stick to her brother, then, and let Miss Lisle alone;" and Percival
stooped over his copying again. Sissy came back to the table, but as she
passed the lonely figure by the chimney-piece she spoke: "You are very
silent, to-night, Horace."

"I don't seem to have much to say for myself, do I?"

She took up her knitting, and after a moment he came and stood by her.
The light fell on his face. "And you don't look well," she said.

"There's not much amiss with me."

"I shall betray you," said Percival as he ruled a line. "He coughed in
the hall, Sissy: I heard him, three times."

"Oh, my dear boy, you should take more care," exclaimed Aunt Middleton:
"I know you have been dreadfully ill."

"I was blissfully unconscious of it, then," said Horace. "It was
nothing, and I'm all right, thank you.--You are very busy, Sissy: what
are you worrying about down there?" He laid his hand caressingly on her
shoulder. Percival and she acted brother and sister sometimes, but with
Horace, whose pet and playfellow she had been as a little child, it was
much more like reality.

"Only a stitch gone."

"Well, let it go: you have lots without it."

"You silly boy! it isn't that. Don't you know it would run farther and
farther, and ruin the whole work if it were not picked up at once?"

"You may not be aware of it," said Hammond, "but that sounds remarkably
like a tract."

"Then I hope you'll all profit by it.--Horace, do you hear? If ever you
drop a stitch, be warned." She looked up as she said it, and something
in his face made her fancy that he _had_ dropped a stitch of some kind.

When she was saying good-night to Percival, Sissy asked abruptly, in a
low voice, "What is Miss Lisle's name?"

He answered, "Judith."




CHAPTER VII.

JAEL, OR JUDITH, OR CHARLOTTE CORDAY.


Sissy, when she reached her room that night, drew up the blind and stood
looking out at the park, which was flooded with moonlight. "It ought to
be Percival's," she thought. "I should like Horace to have plenty of
money, but the old house ought to be Percival's. He is so good: he
screens Horace instead of thinking of himself. I do believe Horace is in
some scrape now. And Aunt Middleton is always thinking about him, too:
she won't let Uncle Thorne be just to Percival. Oh, it is a shame!--If
he had Brackenhill perhaps he would marry Miss Lisle. I wonder if he is
in love with her? He spoke so coolly, not as if he were the least bit
angry, when Godfrey Hammond laughed at her. But he said she had a noble
face.--What did it remind me of when he said 'Judith'?" Sissy was
perplexed for a few moments, and then their talk on the terrace a month
before flashed into her mind--"Jael, or Judith, or Charlotte Corday,"
and she remembered the very intonation with which Percival had repeated
"Judith." "Ah!" said the girl half aloud, with a sudden intuition, "he
was thinking of her when he talked of heroic women!--Why wasn't I born
noble and heroic as well as others? Is it my fault if I can't _bear_
people to be angry with me--if I always stop and think and hesitate, and
then the moment is gone? I couldn't have driven the nail in, like Jael,
for fear there should be just time for him to look up at me. I should
have thrown the hammer down and died, I think. I wonder what made her
able to do it--how she struck, and how she felt when the nail went
crashing in? I wonder whether I _could_ have done it if Sisera had hated
Percival--if I knew he meant to kill him--if it had been Percival's life
or his?"

Sissy proceeded to ponder the biblical narrative (with this slight
variation), but she came to no satisfactory decision. She inclined to
the opinion that Sisera would have woke up, somehow. She could not
imagine what she could possibly feel like when the deed was done, except
that she was certain she should be afraid ever to be alone with herself
again for one moment as long as she lived.

So she went back to the original question: "I dare say Miss Lisle is
brave and calm, and horribly strong-minded: why wasn't I born the same
as she was? Perhaps Percival would have cared for me then. He _did_ say
even I might find something I could die for: he didn't think I was quite
a coward. Ah! if I could only show him I wasn't!"

She stood for a moment looking out: "He may marry Miss Lisle if he
likes, and--and I hope they'll be very happy indeed. But if ever I get a
chance I'll do something--for Percival."

With which magnanimous determination Sissy went to bed; and if she did
not have a nightmare tumult of Jael and Judith, nails and hammers, and
murdered men about her pillow as she slept, I can but think her
fortunate. But her last thought was a happy one: "Perhaps he doesn't
care about her, after all!"




CHAPTER VIII.

"PERHAPS I'M LETTING SECRETS OUT."


Fordborough had a glorious day for the agricultural show. Not a cloud
dimmed the brightness of the sky: a breath of warm wind stirred the
flags from time to time, and all was going as merrily as possible. The
dogs were all barking in their special division, the poultry were all
cackling in theirs. People had looked at the animals, as in duty bound,
and were now putting their catalogues in their pockets and crowding into
the flower-show.

The Brackenhill party were there. Mr. Thorne, his sister, Godfrey
Hammond and Miss Langton had come over in state behind the sleek
chestnut horses, and the young men had arranged to follow in the
dog-cart. At present the two divisions had not met--nay, showed no
symptom of uniting, but rather of breaking up into three or four. Mrs.
Middleton and Sissy had been walking about, encountering a bewildering
number of acquaintances, and earnestly endeavoring to disseminate a
knowledge of the fact that they considered it a beautiful day. Godfrey
Hammond, their squire for some time, after arranging when he would meet
them by the tent where the potatoes were, had taken himself off to look
up some of the country gentlemen whom he met year after year when he
came down to Brackenhill. There happened to be several squires of the
old sort in the neighborhood, and with these Godfrey Hammond enjoyed a
friendship based on mutual contempt. He laughed at them, and they knew
it; they laughed at him, and he knew it; and each being convinced that
his cause for scorn was the one well founded, they all got on
delightfully together. Mr. Thorne, meanwhile, was strolling round the
field, halting to talk from time to time, but fettered by no
companionship.

He was presently pounced on by Mrs. Rawlinson, a fair, flushed beauty of
two-and-forty with a daughter of fifteen. People with a turn for
compliment always supposed that this daughter was Mrs. Rawlinson's
sister, and when that assumption was negatived there had once been a
prompt reply, "Oh, your _step_-daughter you mean!" (The man who invented
that last refinement of politeness was welcome to dine at the
Rawlinsons' whenever he liked, and, the dinners being good, he was to be
met there about twice a week.)

She came down upon Mr. Thorne like a bright blue avalanche. "Ah!" she
said, having shaken hands with him, "_I_ saw what you were doing. Now,
do you agree with Mr. Horace Thorne in his taste? Oh, it's no use
denying it: I saw you were looking at the beautiful Miss Blake."

"It is very possible," Mr. Thorne replied, "only I didn't know of her
existence."

"Oh, how severe you are! I suppose you mean you don't admire that style?
Well, now you mention it, perhaps--"

"I simply mean what I say. I was not aware that there was a Miss Blake
on the ground to-day."

"Well, I _am_ surprised! You _are_ in the dark! Do you see those tall
girls in black and white, close by their mother, that fine woman in
green?"

"Perfectly. And which is the beautiful Miss Blake?"

"Oh!" with a little giggle. "Fancy! _Which_ is the beautiful Miss Blake?
Why, the elder one, of course: there! she is just looking round."

Mr. Thorne put up his eye-glass. "Indeed!" he said; "and who may Miss
Blake be?"

"They have come to that pretty white house where old Miss Hayward
lived. Mr. Blake was a relation of hers, and she left it to him. He has
some sort of business in London--very rich, they say, and all the young
men are after the daughters."

"Probably the daughters haven't the same opinion of the young men of the
present day that I have," said Mr. Thorne; "so I needn't pity them."

"Fancy your not knowing anything about them! I _am_ surprised!" Mrs.
Rawlinson repeated. "Such friends of Mr. Horace Thorne's, too! Ah, by
the way, you must mind what you say about the young men who are after
them. He's quite a favorite there, I'm told."

"Perhaps Horace told you," the old gentleman suggested with a quiet
smile: "the news sounds as if it might come from that authority."

"Oh, no: I think not. Any one in Fordborough could tell you all about
it. I suppose this summer--But, dear me! here am I rattling on: perhaps
I am letting secrets out."

"Not much of a secret if it is Fordborough talk," said Mr. Thorne
blandly. But something in the expression of his eyes made Mrs. Rawlinson
feel that she was on dangerous ground, and at any rate she had said
enough. She hurried off to greet a friend she saw in the distance.

Mr. Thorne was speedily joined by a neighboring landowner. "I didn't
know I should see you here to-day," he said to the newcomer. "I heard
you were laid up."

Mr. Garnett cursed his gout, but declared himself better.

"Look here," said Thorne, laying his hand on the other's sleeve, "you
know every one. Who and what are these Blakes?"

"Bless me! you don't mean you don't know? Why, the name's up in
every railway-station in the United Kingdom. 'Patent British
Corn-Flour'--that's the man. 'Delicious Pudding in Five Minutes'--you
know the sort of thing. I don't know that he does much in it now: I
suppose he has a share. Very rich, they say."

Mr. Thorne had withdrawn his hand, and was listening with the utmost
composure. "Ah!" he said, "very rich? And so all these good Fordborough
people are paying court to him?"

"No," Garnett grinned, "they don't get the chance: don't see much of
him. No loss. They pay court to the daughters: it does just as well, and
it's a great deal pleasanter. Dear! dear! what a money-loving age it is!
Nothing but trade, trade, trade! We shall see a duke behind the counter
before long if we go on at this rate. Gentlemen used to be more
particular in our young days--eh, Thorne?" Having said this, he
remembered that Thorne's son married the candlemaker's daughter. For a
moment he was confounded, and then had to repress an inclination to
laugh.

"Ah, it was a different world altogether," said Thorne, gliding
dexterously away from the corn-flour and candles too. "There was a young
fellow staying with us a little while ago who was wild about
photography. If he didn't get just the right focus, the thing came out
all wrong: he always made a mess of his groups. The focus was right for
us in our young days, eh? Now we have to stand on one side and come out
all awry. No fault in the sun, you know."

"I don't care much about photographs," said Garnett. "All very well for
the young folks, I dare say, but _I_ sha'n't make a pretty picture on
this side of doomsday!" And indeed it did not seem likely that he would.
So he departed, grinning, to say to the next man he met, "What do you
think I've been doing? Laughing about Blake's patent corn-flour to old
Thorne: forgot the composite candles--did, upon my word! Said 'Gentlemen
used to be more particular in _our_ young days,' and the minute it was
out of my mouth I remembered Jim and the candles. Fine girl she was,
certainly. Poor old Thorne! he was terribly cut up at the time. It was
grand to see the two old fellows meet--as good as a play. Thorne held
out just the tips of his fingers: I believe he thought if he shook hands
with old Benham he should smell of tallow for ever. Ever see Benham's
monument? They ordered it down from town--man knew nothing of course:
how should he? So he went and put some angels weeping, and an inverted
torch, just like a bundle of candles. Fact, by Jove! I went to have a
look at it myself one day. Some of the Benhams were very sore about it.
Dear! dear! I shouldn't think the old fellow could ever have a quiet
night there with that over him. Only, as he was covered up snugly first,
perhaps he doesn't know;" and Garnett, chuckling to himself at the idea,
marched off to have a look at the prize pig.

Meanwhile, the young Thornes had arrived, and came strolling around the
field--a noticeable pair enough, tall, handsome and well dressed,
walking side by side in all faith and friendliness, as they were not
often to walk again. When people talked of them afterward a good many
remembered how they looked on that day. Apparently, Horace had resolved
to throw off his trouble of the night before, and had succeeded. There
was something almost defiant in the very brightness of his aspect, and
the heat had flushed him a little, so that no one would have echoed
Sissy's exclamation of "You don't look well." On the contrary, he was
congratulated on his looks by many of his old friends, and seemed full
of life and energy.

Turning the corner of one of the tents, the two came suddenly on the
Blakes. There was not one of the four who was utterly unconcerned at
that meeting, though the interests and motives which produced the little
thrill of excitement were curiously mingled and opposed. Two pairs of
eyes flashed bright signals of mutual understanding: the others made no
sign of what might be hidden in their depths. Delicately-gloved hands
were held out, Mrs. Blake came forward fluent and friendly, and the two
groups melted into one.

Horace and Addie led the way round the tent. Percival followed with
Lottie and her mother, feeling that he had never rightly appreciated the
latter's conversational powers before. When they emerged into the
sunlight again, they encountered Mrs. Pickering and her girls, and in
the talk that ensued our hero found himself standing by Addie.

"Percival," she said in a low, quick tone, "don't be surprised. I want
to say a word to you. Look as if it were nothing."

Though he was startled, he contrived not to betray it. After the first
moment there is small danger of failing to appear indifferent--very
great danger of seeming preternaturally indifferent. Percival had tact
enough to avoid this. He listened, and replied with the polite
attention, which was natural to him, but his manner was tinged--any
words I can find seem too coarse to describe it--with just the faintest
shade of languor, just the slightest possible show of scorn and
weariness of the great agricultural show itself. It was not enough to
attract notice: it was quite enough to preclude any idea of excited
interest.

"I am in a little difficulty," said Addie. "You could help me if you
would."

"You may command me."

"You will not mind a little trouble? And you would keep my secret? I
have no right to ask, but there is no one--I think you are my friend."

"Suppose me a brother for this occasion, Addie. Waste no more time in
apologies."

"A brother! Be it so. Then, my brother, I have to go through Langley
Wood to-morrow evening, and I am afraid to go alone."

"I will gladly be your escort. Where shall I meet you?"

"There is a milestone about a quarter of a mile on the road to our
house, after you have passed the gate into the wood. Don't come any
farther. Somewhere between the gate and that."

"I know it. At what time?"

"Half-past eight, or a few minutes earlier. Will that suit you?"

"Perfectly. I will be there."

"If you don't see me before nine don't wait for me. I shall have failed
somehow."

"I understand," said Percival.

"I will explain to-morrow. You must trust me till then."

"You shall do as you please. I don't ask for any explanations, remember.
Have you been having much croquet lately?"

"Oh, much as usual. Lottie has been beating me, also as usual. We have
joined the Fordborough Croquet Club."

"Then I suspect the former members feel small."

"One or two of the best players feel ill-tempered, I think, unless they
make-believe very much. Lottie means to win the ivory mallet, she says;
and I think she will. Mrs. Rawlinson's sister always considered herself
the champion, and I am sure Lottie," etc., etc.

In short, by the time it occurred to anybody that Percival and Addie
were talking together, their conversation, carried smoothly on, was
precisely what anybody might hear.

The Pickerings went off in one direction, the Blakes in another, and the
young men resumed their walk.

"That's over, and the governor not by," said Horace.

"Don't be too secure," was Percival's reply. "Everybody talks about
everybody else at Fordborough."

"Well," said Horace, who apparently would not be discouraged, "it's
something not to have been standing between the old gentleman and Aunt
Middleton, and then to have seen Mrs. Blake sailing straight at one, her
face illuminated with a smile visible to the naked eye a quarter of a
mile off--eh, Percy?"

"You are a lucky fellow, no doubt," said Percival.

"And, after all, it is quite possible--"

"That you may be a very lucky fellow indeed? Yes, it is quite possible.
But I don't quite see what you are after, Horace."

("Nor I," thought Horace to himself, "and that's the charm of it,
somehow.")

"Surely it isn't worth while getting into trouble with my grandfather
for a mere flirtation."

"If you always stop to think whether a thing is worth while or not,
Percy, I wouldn't be you for all the money that ever was coined."

"And if it is more," said the other, not heeding the remark--"I like
fair play, but if it is more--"

"What then?" For Percival hesitated.

"We'll talk of that another time," said the latter. "Not now. Only don't
be rash. Look! there's Sissy."

"How pretty she is!" thought Percival, as they went toward her. "What
can Horace see in Addie Blake, that he should prefer her? She is a fine
girl, handsome--magnificent, if you like--but Sissy is like a beautiful
old picture, sweet and delicate and innocent. I can't fancy her with
secrets like Addie with this Langley Wood mystery of hers. If it had not
been for that ideal of mine--"

They had reached the two ladies.

Meanwhile, Mr. Thorne had listened to more odds and ends of gossip, and
had gone on his way, warily searching among the shifting, many-colored
groups. He was curious, and in due time his curiosity was gratified. The
Blake girls passed him so closely that he could have touched them. They
knew perfectly well who he was, and Lottie looked at him, but Addie
passed on in her queenly fashion, with her head high, apparently not
aware of his existence.

"So," said the old gentleman to himself, "that is Horace's taste? Well,
she is very superb and disdainful, and I should think Patent Corn-Flour
paid pretty well. She might have bestowed a glance on me, as I suppose
she destines me the honor of being her grandpapa-in-law, but no doubt
she knows what she is about, and it may be wiser to seem utterly
unconscious, as Horace has not introduced us yet. Perhaps he will defer
that ceremony a little while longer still. As for the other, she looked
me straight in the face, as if she didn't care a rap for any man living.
I shouldn't think that girl was afraid of anything on earth--or under it
or above it, for that matter. A temper of her own, plainly enough. The
beautiful Miss Blake is Horace's taste, of course (I could have sworn to
that without a word from him), and ninety-nine out of a hundred would
agree with him. But if I were five-and-twenty, and had to choose between
them, I'd take that fierce-eyed girl and tame her!"

Of which process it may fairly be conjectured that it would have ended
in total defeat for Mr. Thorne, or in mutual and inextinguishable
hatred, or, it might be--for he was hard as well as capricious--in a
Lottie like a broken bow. In neither case a very desirable result.

Godfrey Hammond, looking at his watch, and going in the direction of the
tent where the potatoes were, perceived Mrs. Rawlinson, and endeavored
to elude her. He loathed the woman, as he candidly owned to himself,
because he had once nearly approached the other extreme. It was a
horrible thought. What had come over him and her? Either she was
strangely and hideously transformed--and how could he tell that as
fearful a change might not have come to him?--or else his youth was a
time of illusion and bad taste. That perfect time, that golden dawn of
manhood, when the world lay before him steeped in rosy light, when every
pleasure had its bloom upon it, and every day was crowned with joy--Good
Heavens! was it _then_ that he cared to dance the polka in Fordborough
drawing-rooms with Mrs. Rawlinson--Lydia Lloyd as she was of old? Little
did that fascinating lady think what disgust at the remembrance of his
incredible folly was in his soul as he met her.

For she caught him and shook hands with him, and would not let him go
till she had reminded him of old times as if they might have been
yesterday and might be again to-morrow. He smiled, and blandly made
answer as if they two were a pair of antediluvian polka-dancers left in
a waltzing age to see another generation spinning gayly round. (He could
dance quite as well as Horace when he chose.)

Mrs. Rawlinson did not like his style of conversation, and said
abruptly, "I had a talk with Mr. Thorne about half an hour ago. I _was_
surprised! Mr. Horace Thorne seems to keep the old man quite in the
dark."

"Mr. Horace Thorne is a clever fellow, then," said Hammond dryly.

"Oh, you know all about it, I dare say. But really, I _did_ think it was
too bad. He didn't seem ever to have heard Miss Blake's name. He
certainly didn't know her when he saw her."

"Unfortunate man! For Miss Blake so decidedly eclipses the Fordborough
young ladies that such ignorance is deplorable. No doubt you did what
you could to remove it?"

"Well"--Mrs. Rawlinson tossed her blue bonnet--"I really thought I ought
to give him a hint: it seemed to me that it was quite a charity."

"A charity--ah yes, of course. Charity never faileth, does it?" And
Hammond raised his hat and bowed himself off.


[TO BE CONTINUED.]




THE DREAM OF ST. THERESA.


    Have you heard of the dream that she had--
      Theresa the saintly?
    Come, listen, ye good and ye bad!
      And heed it not faintly.

    A weird, awful woman she saw,
      And wondered what brought her:
    In one hand she bore flaming straw,
      In the other hand water.

    "Where bound?" asked Theresa. "Oh tell!"
       This answer was given:
    "Theresa, I go to quench hell,
       And then to burn heaven."

    "But why," asked the saint, "do you make
       So wild an endeavor?"
    "So that men, for His own holy sake,
       May love God for ever."

EPES SARGENT.




THE FLIGHT OF A PRINCESS.


A voluminous parcel of letters and official documents quite recently
brought to light in one of the continental court archives[1] invalidates
in many material points the short notices which historians have given us
of the captivity and flight from Innsbruck of Princess Clementina
Sobiesky, the elder Pretender's wife, and supplies us with an ample and
interesting account of this episode in the lives of the two most
persecuted men of the day, the Pretender and his father-in-law, Prince
James Sobiesky of Poland.

[Footnote 1: They were discovered by Dr. D. Schönherr, the keeper of the
imperial archives at Innsbruck, to whom the writer is indebted for
drawing his attention to this interesting discovery. The private
imperial archives at Vienna, examined by the writer, yielded also
interesting documents.]

It will be remembered that after the failure of his Scotch expedition of
1715 the Pretender--or, as he was then commonly styled, the Chevalier de
St. George--was obliged to quit France and Germany and retire to Italy,
where the misfortunes of his family, proceeding in part from its
devotion to the Roman Catholic Church, gave him the best right to expect
a hospitable reception. Here he opened a negotiation with Prince James
Sobiesky which had for its object his marriage with Princess Clementina,
Sobiesky's daughter. Sobiesky was the son of John, king of Poland, the
heroic deliverer of Vienna and Christendom from the Turks. This
unfortunate prince, having signally failed in his repeated attempts to
instal himself upon the Polish throne, vacated by his father's death,
had retired to Ohlau, a large estate near Breslau in Silesia belonging
to the emperor Charles VI., and with which the latter had invested him.

The negotiations carried on between the two parties ended in the formal
betrothal of the Princess Clementina to James III., king of Great
Britain and Ireland, as the Pretender styled himself.

Meanwhile, the English government had exhibited great solicitude to
frustrate the Pretender's intention of strengthening his cause by
contracting a marriage likely to yield an heir to his pretensions to the
crown of Great Britain. The Pretender and Sobiesky were both perfectly
well aware of this, and hence Sobiesky's anxiety that the union should
be completed as soon as possible. Through the vacillating character of
the bridegroom valuable time was lost at the last moment, and before the
project could be carried out the petty court at Ohlau was surrounded by
English spies. We know that in August, 1718, the English government was
acquainted with the whole plot, and was using to the utmost the
influence which its friendly relationship with the emperor of Germany
gave it. A prohibition was obtained from him forbidding all further
intercourse between the Pretender and Sobiesky, whose wife, it should be
mentioned, was the emperor's aunt.

Sobiesky vainly expostulated with his imperial kinsman. He reminded him
that although he was then residing within the frontiers of the empire,
he was nevertheless an independent prince; and he begged him to consider
that his conduct was unworthy of their close relationship and
incompatible with every feeling of gratitude toward the memory of his
father, the brave deliverer of Vienna and of Christendom. Charles, who
had at this time very good reasons for wishing to keep on a good footing
with England, not only turned a deaf ear to the expostulations of Prince
Sobiesky, but actually threatened him with his highest displeasure if he
did not sever his connection with that "worthless vagabond princeling."
Sobiesky, convinced that nothing was to be gained by delay, and quite
prepared to sacrifice the favor of his mighty kinsman for the sake of
compassing his object, determined to send his daughter to Italy to join
her betrothed, with a view to the consummation of the marriage.

In the latter half of September, 1718, Princess Clementina and her
mother, accompanied by a suite consisting of a lady-in-waiting, a
confidential maid, Monsieur Châteaudoux, a gentleman of the household,
with his servant, and Monsieur la Haye,[2] gentleman-in-waiting of the
Pretender, left Ohlau for Innsbruck _en route_ for Italy. Secret as the
preparations for the journey had been kept, they had not escaped the
notice of the English agent at Breslau; and a few hours after the
departure of the princess and her party an English and a German courier
left that town--the one for London, the other for Warsaw. In a
remarkably short time the former had accomplished his journey, and was
back again in Vienna, the bearer of an autograph letter from the king,
George I., to the emperor Charles. The immediate upshot was a despatch
sent off in hot haste to the provincial government of Tyrol, ordering
that body to stop the princely party wherever they could lay hands on
them, "be it in Innsbruck or any other part of our empire."

[Footnote 2: A member, no doubt, of the noble Scotch family of Hay, so
famous for its devotion to the Jacobite cause.]

The twelve privy councillors who constituted the government of Tyrol
were "sorely perplexed and harassed by this order;" for it appears that
so little time had been lost by the courier on his way to and from
London that the order actually reached Innsbruck two days before the
arrival of the party, who, as we must presume, accomplished their
journey from Breslau to Augsburg, and from thence to Innsbruck, by very
easy stages. The first despatch from the emperor was short, and was
couched in somewhat mysterious terms, so that the bewildered privy
councillors, exaggerating the importance of their commission, caused the
most portentous precautions to be taken. Bodies of armed men were
despatched in all directions to watch the different mountain-passes and
high-roads leading into the country from the North. To the astonishment
of the zealous statesmen, the princely party arrived two days later
(October 3d), "quietly and properly mannered." They took rooms at the
principal hostelry, swinging the signboard of the Golden Rose.[3]

[Footnote 3: This inn, under the same name, is thriving to this day.]

When their arrival became known, a privy council was immediately
convoked, and the councillors, who had received that morning minute
instructions from the emperor, sent to their noble visitors a deputation
consisting of two of their number, Count Lodron and Count Sonnenburg.
Their request for an interview was at first refused, on the plea that
the illustrious travellers were at the time engaged in their devotions
and very much fatigued by their journey. The lady-in-waiting, who in the
absence of a chamberlain acted as spokesman, was then informed by the
two counts that they came by the express order of His Majesty "to convey
a certain message to the princess and her daughter."[4] Thereupon they
were allowed to enter and present themselves to the princess-mother.
"After humbly offering their congratulations on their safe arrival,"
the two councillors acquainted the princess-mother with the desire of
the emperor that she and her daughter should take up their residence at
Innsbruck. On receiving this startling news, "the princess seemed a bit
frightened, and stood silent for a little time." Presently she replied
that she was quite willing to comply with His Majesty's order, strange
as it seemed to her, "for," said she, "our journey had for its sole
object a visit to the holy shrine at Loretto, there to perform our
prayers." Bowing humbly, the deputation assured her of their ignorance
of the whole matter, whereupon the princess dismissed them. They had
hardly reached the council-hall, where their ten comrades were awaiting
them, as we may presume, full of eagerness and curious to hear how they
had fared, when the gentleman-in-waiting of the princess overtook them
and acquainted them with her wish to be allowed to inspect the imperial
cabinet order. The councillors, "though in our character," said they to
the emperor, "as representatives of your most exalted person, we were
surely not obliged to produce our credentials," forthwith returned and
complied with the princess's request. The minute résumé sent by them to
the emperor, and from which we make these verbatim extracts, then says:
"The inspection of the document seemed to satisfy the princess,
especially when Your Majesty's humble servants pointed out to her the
autograph signature of Your exalted Majesty."

[Footnote 4: We must mention that from this point in the story we make
use of the copious material contained in the bundle of official
documents recently discovered.]

Upon a hint of the princess the two councillors placed at her service
the court courier; and we hear that this personage left for Vienna that
same night as the bearer of two letters from the princess--one to her
sister, mother of Charles VI., the other to the emperor himself--as well
as of a minute protocol in which the privy councillors detailed the
occurrences of this eventful day.

The Pretender, it seems, must have awaited the party from Ohlau near the
Austrian-Italian frontier, for on the 9th of October, six days after
their arrival at Innsbruck, a Scotch nobleman appears on the scene.
According to the declaration of the postmaster-general of Tyrol, Count
Taxis, this gentleman had travelled with the greatest despatch the night
through from Trent to Innsbruck. At Innsbruck he seems suddenly to have
lost the desire to continue his journey, for after stopping two days in
the town, during which time he was seen conversing with a person in the
suite of Princess Sobiesky, he was about to start for Italy, whence he
had come, when the privy councillors, whose suspicion had been aroused
by his strange conduct, had him arrested and brought before them. On
being asked for his passport, he maintained that he had none, and
declared himself "to be a Scotch nobleman, his name Robert Seiberg
[_sic_], thirty-six years of age, and travelling for his amusement."
When pressed to give further information, he told them that he had been
on the Continent for the last two years, that he had been travelling in
France and Italy, and that he was on his way to Vienna when he
accidentally met a friend and countryman of his named La Haye, who was
travelling in the suite of Princess Sobiesky. More pressure being
brought to bear upon him, he produced a passport which he said he had
received from the Irish Capuchin monks at Prague, and which bore the
name of Count John Wirmann. He was then asked if he possessed any
letters or documents bearing upon the Pretender or the Sobiesky family.
He declined to answer this question; and when force was threatened he
requested a private interview with the president of the council. To him
he ultimately acknowledged that "he was a servant of King James of
England." He was then asked to produce the letters and documents in his
possession. Amongst them was found a letter in English, but without
address, heading or signature. It was a communication from the Princess
Clementina to her affianced, and in it she informed him of the
misfortune that had befallen them, and warned him not to entrust any
letters to couriers or messengers. She told him that her mother had
written to her sister and to the emperor, but that she feared their
efforts would be in vain. The closing sentence of the letter is: "We
receive much honor and politeness. Adieu."

This letter, with the rest of the papers found upon Fremont,[5] was sent
to the emperor, and the bearer himself was taken to a second-class
hostelry. Here he was closely watched, and although he had given his
word of honor not to escape, he was not allowed even to go out alone.

[Footnote 5: We learn from a letter from that nobleman to a friend in
Paris, which is amongst the papers in the imperial archives at Vienna,
that this was his real name.]

To the mortification of the privy council, the emperor discountenanced
their rigorous proceeding, for the next courier from Vienna brought an
imperial order commanding them to set the "Stuart messenger" at liberty,
and forthwith to provide suitable lodgings in a private house, as
befitted their rank, for the two illustrious ladies and their suite. The
emperor had at first intended to place the imperial palace at their
disposal, but he subsequently ordered "that a more respectable private
house in or out of the town" should be prepared for the ladies, adding
"that he did not wish the noble ladies to know that this was done by his
order, but rather that it should seem an act of politeness on the part
of the privy council."

Baron Greiffen, a member of that body, seems to have been the only one
that took the hint to heart; for we find that the two princesses and
their suite removed their domicil to the "palatial building"--in reality
a quiet and by no means very magnificent house--of which the above-named
nobleman was owner. The princely party entered upon their new residence,
which was situated in the new town just outside the town-walls, on the
23d and 24th of October. Trained servants were now added to the princely
household by the cautious privy councillors. Amongst these, however, as
we see by the minutes sent to the emperor, were a couple of "trusty
personages"--in other words, court spies. A handsome offering of choice
game, fish and wine, the usual form of paying homage to distinguished
guests, was presented to the princesses.

While the princesses are installing themselves in their new prison, we
will turn for a moment to the Pretender, who had arrived on the 8th of
October at Bologna, where he was to await the coming of the princess and
her daughter. For seven days he remained without news, a prey to
anxiety. On the 15th of October he received the first intimation of the
fate that had befallen his bride, and the very next day he despatched
two letters to the mother and daughter at Innsbruck.[6] From the answer
to these missives we learn that the princesses had by no means given up
the project of effecting their flight to Italy. The long, dreary winter
evenings and the absence of all society in dull Innsbruck left them full
time and opportunity to plan the best means of escape; and though they
were surrounded by watchful spies and guarded by a morbidly cautious
government, they yet found ways and means to communicate two or three
times with their friends in the North and the South. Strange to say, the
councillors themselves afforded them on one occasion the means of
intercourse with the Pretender. Under the pretence that bills of
exchange were awaiting her at Venice, Princess Sobiesky obtained
permission to send her gentleman-in-waiting, La Haye, to the latter town
to arrange "these necessary money-matters."

[Footnote 6: These letters must have fallen into the hands of the
councillors, for we find that exact copies of them, together with a copy
of Princess Clementina's answer, were sent to the emperor, and are still
preserved in the private imperial court archives at Vienna.]

After the departure of the princess from Ohlau the English government
concentrated its attention upon the unfortunate father of the bride, for
it was obvious that as long as the head of the family continued to
advocate the marriage, all efforts to dissolve the betrothal would prove
abortive. He was therefore made the object of countless intrigues on the
part of England's staunch ally the emperor. A special commissioner,
Count Praschma, then governor of Silesia, was sent by the imperial court
to Ohlau. On the 14th of October he met Prince Sobiesky, but, though the
interview lasted from three o'clock in the afternoon till a late hour
of the night, the count did not succeed in bringing Sobiesky to more
reasonable views. Sobiesky refused to give him then and there a definite
answer, and begged him to come again the next day. "The matter," he
said, "was of too vital importance for him to give a decisive answer
that day." The result of the next day's interview was that Count
Praschma set down in writing, at the prince's dictation, two separate
minutes--the one addressed to the emperor personally, the other also
nominally addressed to him, but specially prepared for the scrutiny of
the English ambassador at Vienna. Did we not know that the courier who
left for Vienna the same evening with these two documents was also the
bearer of a third, a private letter from Praschma to the emperor, we
should naturally wonder at the count's willingness to comply with this
whim of Sobiesky--a proceeding which would have been fraught with some
danger for the imperial commissioner. These documents are not without
interest, for they give us a picture of the political intrigues forming
such unstable links between the courts of St. James and Vienna. The
limited space of this paper, however, compels us to confine ourselves to
a brief résumé of their contents. In the first, addressed to the emperor
personally, Prince Sobiesky lays great stress upon "the certainty that
the marriage with the Pretender would prove to be a source of great
political advantage to Austria"--an argument which, we must confess, was
well adapted to find favor in the eyes of Charles VI., the last male
descendant of a house in the history of which marriage had played such a
momentous rôle. He pointed out to the emperor that "His British Majesty"
would find in the annulment of the betrothal no help in suppressing
rebellion in his kingdom; and, moreover, that it would be quite
impossible for the king by any means to prevent the Pretender's
marrying. "It is well known," he goes on to say, "that the
English"--meaning the rebels--"wait only for the marriage of the
Pretender, and not for an alliance with a foreign power." He begs his
imperial kinsman not to shut his eyes to the obvious precariousness of
King George's tenure of the throne, nor to the well-known fact that dire
necessity alone had impelled the king to come to his aid by sending the
English fleet to Naples. The emperor is warned that the king of England
would assuredly break off his alliance with him the moment he had no
longer cause to dread the Pretender; and he is reminded that while the
former was at best a cold and crafty ally, he would find the prince a
staunch and powerful confederate. "It is therefore," he continues, "for
Your Majesty's interest to bring about a marriage, and not to allow the
royal house of Stuart to become extinct. And even, taking the worst for
granted, if the Pretender did not succeed in realizing his pretensions
to the British throne, it would be only fair on the part of Your Majesty
to remind King George that the marriage would detract nothing from, and
have no influence whatever upon, the alliance between him and Your
Majesty." Sobiesky closes his letter by assuring the emperor how deeply
he regretted his displeasure, and by declaring that he had acted in good
faith to the emperor; "for," said he, "I would never have advocated this
match without the consent of Your Majesty had I not received the written
assurance of Her Majesty the empress Eleonora (the emperor's mother)
that she had spoken to Your Majesty on this matter. To me this was
sufficient; for, considering the course of European politics, I dared
not hope to receive open signs of Your Majesty's approbation."

Count Praschma remarks, in his private report to the emperor, that he
believes "Prince Sobiesky places great reliance on the assistance
proffered by the Roman Curia, on the good-will displayed by the regent
of France, no less than on the guarantee ensured to him by Sweden and
Prussia, and on the concurrence of Russia."

In the second document Prince Sobiesky displays far more energy and
spirit in resisting the overbearing demands of King George, whom he
persistently styles throughout the whole of this second paper "elector
of Hanover." He not only condemns the king's intrigues as perfidious,
but also asserts with much emphasis that the marriage between his
daughter and the Pretender had been consummated and stood irrevocable.
He trusts that His Majesty will decline to uphold any further these
grossly unjust concessions which the elector and his government had
dared to exact of a monarch who was famed for his justice and benignity.
He humbly reminds the emperor, his exalted kinsman, that the great
services which his (Sobiesky's) father had rendered to Christendom
deserved worthier recognition than the open persecution to which he and
his family were then subjected. He declares with some asperity that the
elector of Hanover has no right whatever over his person, and that he,
an independent prince, reserves to himself the power to dispose of his
own flesh and blood. The threats of England would never frighten him
into submission, especially as he is sure of the aid of several
potentates--a circumstance which ensures to him the safety of his
estates in Poland and France. "The marriage," says he, "is not opposed
to the interest of Your Majesty in respect to your alliance with the
elector, for the union does not enrich the Pretender either in money or
in land. And were it possible that the marriage could be still
prevented, the Pretender would assuredly turn to some more powerful
court, able to supply him not only with a wife, but also with ample
funds and troops." Sobiesky closed his missive with the request to His
Majesty to take back the investiture of Ohlau, "a place which had become
unbearable to him through the ignominious treatment to which he was
constantly exposed, no less than by the endless trouble and pecuniary
losses which the management of that imperial estate entailed upon him."
He was desirous of removing to some distant and secluded spot, far away
from Poland, where he could end his days in peace.

These two important missives were followed a few days later (17th and
19th of October) by two more letters from the prince to Chancellor
Count Zinzendorf at Vienna. Of their contents--which are generally a
repetition of the arguments contained in the first two--we need not
speak, except in reference to one point, which was evidently the result
of an after-thought that had rushed through the bewildered prince's
head. The reader will have observed that Sobiesky, while using the name
of almost every potentate of Europe to strengthen his arguments, omits
to mention the Pope, the staunchest and most powerful partisan he had.
This omission he seeks to repair in his letters to Zinzendorf, in which
he endeavors to persuade the emperor that the marriage ceremony had
really been performed, though only by proxy, and that hence it was a
_matrimonium ratum_, which, according to the canon law, could not be
dissolved without drawing upon the parties concerned in the act the just
wrath of the pontiff and of every good Catholic.

These four letters, but chiefly the first two, had evidently some effect
in making the emperor waver. This appears from one of the most striking
sentences in a letter from the imperial court to Monsieur de
Peutenrieder, imperial ambassador at the court of St. James, which runs
as follows: "In the mean while I beg you to remember that we are very
desirous of extricating ourselves from this dilemma _honesto et licito
modo_. We were, and are still, quite willing and prepared to do
everything in this delicate affair according to the wishes of the king,
to convince him of our love and friendship.... The emperor wishes you to
convince the king, as politely and delicately as possible, that we fear
our measures in this marriage affair will prove abortive."

Politicians in England, less scrupulous than their confrères on the
Continent, persisted in their demand that no concessions should be made
to Prince Sobiesky until the betrothal, the work of Alberoni and the
Roman Curia, was formally dissolved. In a formal protest which the
English ambassador at the imperial court handed in (9th of December)
stress is laid upon the fact that Prince Sobiesky was not an
independent prince, but rather a subject of the emperor, and that hence
his conduct, culpable in the extreme, deserved to be visited by the
emperor with severity. It was alleged to be ridiculous that he held out
against the express wish of the allies, well knowing how easy it would
be for the king of England to ruin him entirely. Even Venice, whither it
was said Prince Sobiesky wished to retire, would not receive him for
fear of annoying England. The duke of Modena, prompted by sincere
consideration for England, had broken off his engagement with the eldest
daughter of Prince Sobiesky, and it was very probable that the duke of
Guastalla would follow this example.

We should tire the reader were we to repeat all the arguments employed
by statesmen in defence of the English policy. Untenable as most of them
were, they sufficed to dispel such slight qualms of conscience as had
arisen in Charles's mind. England's powerful fleet and beef-fed troops
were then far more important to Charles than the empty thanks of a
thriftless princeling.

While the father was thus being made the centre of political intrigues,
the lives of his wife and daughter, on whose account the courts of
Europe had been thrown into a state of commotion, flowed on in the same
dull routine which had marked them from the very beginning. Four long
months were thus spent, and the rigorous winter of Tyrol was at its
height, when the guardians of the princesses, the worthy privy
councillors, were suddenly startled from their lethargic repose by the
news that the friends of their noble prisoners in the North and the
South were on the move. On the 11th of February, 1719, it became known
in Vienna that Prince Sobiesky had mysteriously left Ohlau, and that it
was supposed he had repaired to Augsburg. Ten days later the governor of
Mantua (then part of the empire) reported that the Pretender had turned
his back on Rome on the 8th of February, and had posted to Florence.
These two highly suspicious movements convinced the emperor that the
Sobiesky party was bent upon rescuing Princess Clementina. Strict
injunctions were therefore despatched to Innsbruck, enforcing redoubled
precautions against a surprise, while the governors of Mantua and Trent
were at the same time commanded to keep a watchful eye on all travellers
that passed through those towns, and were supplied with minute
instructions for their conduct should the Pretender visit either of
them. Force was not to be used in ejecting the person of the Pretender,
but he was to be told quite politely "that the emperor had given strict
orders not to allow him to proceed on his journey toward Innsbruck, and
that hence his further stay in the town was useless."

Politely as this imperial decree was framed, the Pretender did not give
the authorities occasion to make use of it, for his journey had Spain,
and not Innsbruck, for its goal. Ignorant of this circumstance,
government continued to maintain its cautious attitude. A staff officer
and a body of men were under a plausible pretext quartered in the house
adjoining the Sobiesky palace, and the two spies in the retinue of the
Princess Clementina were ordered "to make it a point to catch sight of
her at least once in every twenty-four hours." The privy councillors,
indeed, deemed all these precautions superfluous, for they placed full
reliance on the barrier, seemingly insurmountable by a delicate young
woman, with which Nature had surrounded the prisoner in the shape of a
severe winter blocking up all the Alpine passes leading to the South;
and they now reported to the emperor that they had done everything in
their power to make escape or rescue impossible.

Nothing of importance occurred for the next two months, save that the
princess-mother wrote to the emperor, and informed the Innsbruck
government that she desired to return to Ohlau--a request which the
emperor immediately granted, little thinking it to be a mere ruse on the
part of the ladies to lull their watchful guardians.

The night of the 27th of April was at last to witness the triumph of the
artful prisoners over their vigilant jailers.

In the afternoon of that day Princess Clementina drove, as usual, to the
church of the Franciscans (well known to all tourists for its celebrated
monument to Maximilian I.), there to perform her devotions. From thence
she drove home. It was the last time the sedate burghers of Innsbruck
set eyes upon her. Mother and daughter passed the evening in the usual
manner, as the spies witnessed with their own eyes. At eleven o'clock
the servants retired, and none of them had observed, as they deposed
upon their oath, anything in the least suspicious, save that Monsieur de
Châteaudoux was seen under the gate by the scullery-maid half an hour
later.

On the following morning the servants were told that Princess Clementina
was ill, and that they must keep as quiet as possible in order that her
fitful slumbers might not be disturbed. No suspicion was aroused by this
incident for two whole days. The escape had taken place on Thursday
night, and not till late in the evening of Saturday did the head-steward
of the Sobiesky household, one of the court spies, think proper to
inform one of the privy councillors of the fact that the young princess
had remained invisible, shut up in her room, since Friday morning. The
suspicions of the privy councillor were aroused, and notwithstanding the
late hour a council was immediately convoked to deliberate on the best
means of convincing themselves by actual inspection of the presence of
their prisoner. It was decided that the doctor who had been in the habit
of attending the Sobiesky family should be sent early the next morning
to see her in person. The physician, on presenting himself to the
lady-in-waiting, was politely informed that "he was only to come when
called." Not a little startled, for hitherto he had had free access to
the princess's room, he forthwith informed the privy councillors, who
were spending their Sunday forenoon in debate, of the result of his
visit. Upon hearing the physician's tale, they despatched Baron
Greiffen, the owner of the house in which the Sobiesky family lived, to
insist upon an interview with Princess Clementina, and thus pacify
their minds. The lady-in-waiting vainly endeavored to rid herself of the
inopportune visitor by pleading for her sick mistress; and when,
finally, Baron Greiffen assumed a sterner tone, she pertly asked him,
"And what if the princess has really given you the slip?" These words
amounted, of course, to an open confession of the deplorable fact. No
doubt they grated very harshly on the ears of the hapless councillors,
whose commission now obliged the baron to break the news of the
prisoner's escape to his confrères, who were anxiously awaiting his
return in the Diet Hall.

We will not pry into the feelings of utter consternation and abject
bewilderment which took possession of that solemn-faced company when
they heard that their charge had so ignominiously duped them. These
feelings are dimly reflected in the pile of long-winded minutes which
followed each other in quick succession, and in which the councillors
vainly endeavored to appease the wrath of their monarch.

Charles, on hearing of Princess Clementina's escape, is said to have
burst out in a fit of laughter, which, however, soon gave way to a storm
of rage. On this occasion, it is likewise reported, he made the only pun
that ever passed his lips.

But to return to the twelve hapless councillors, whom we left staring
blankly at each other in the Innsbruck Diet Hall. Two of their
number--the very same who had had the honor of receiving the princess on
her arrival in the town--were sent off to seek an interview with her
mother. "They found her," as they state in one of the minutes, "bathed
in tears, but quite willing and prepared to give them all the
information she could respecting the mysterious and most deplorable
flight of her daughter, of which, so she assured us, she had known
absolutely nothing." Her words, confirmed by her tears, at first found
ready credence with her gullible visitors. Later on they asked
themselves, "If she really did not know anything of the flight, why did
she not inform us at once?" and some revulsion in their feelings
accordingly took place.

The princess-mother then handed to the deputies a letter which "she had
found on her daughter's dressing-table on the morning of her flight." In
this letter, the original of which is before us, Princess Clementina
informs her mother, whom she addresses as "Your Royal Highness," that
the day before she had received two letters--one from her father, and
the other from her husband the king, in which they both begged her to
entrust herself to the care of certain persons who would be sent to take
her away as speedily as possible. High-flown passages, breathing the
deepest regret for the step she is about to take without her mother's
knowledge and consent, intermingled with quite unnatural expressions of
humiliation before the august personage of "Madame, my dear mother, Your
Royal Highness," make up the rest of this capital sham.

From the depositions of the various witnesses examined by the
councillors it is easy to fit together the details of this remarkable
escape--details which, as we have hinted in the beginning of this paper,
differ on important points from the scanty notices on the subject which
French and English historians have given us.

Sir Walter Scott, in his _Tales of a Grandfather_, gives us correctly
the names at least of the persons who were immediately concerned in the
abduction. Prominent among these persons was Charles Wogan, one of the
prisoners of Preston, and one of the most devoted partisans of the
Stuarts. It was he who devised the plan, and to whom the princess had
been instructed by her father, in a letter which lies before us, to
entrust herself. Major Misset, his wife, and Captain Toole, with two
attendants, and finally the maid-servant of Mrs. Misset, who was to take
the place of Princess Clementina, made up the rest of the company. These
persons were divided into two distinct parties--the first consisting of
three gentlemen, Wogan, Misset and Toole, and "two ladies," Mrs.
Misset's maid being ranked with her mistress; and the second of Captain
Toole's two attendants. It is unnecessary to speak of these again, for,
as far as we can see, their aid was not called into requisition.
Wogan's party travelled from Augsburg _viâ_ Füssen and Reusse to
Innsbruck, at that time the usual route to Italy from South Germany. To
enable them to make frequent stoppages without arousing suspicion, "one
of the ladies" (Mrs. Misset's maid) was reported to be enceinte. They
stopped twenty-four hours at Nassereit, a post-station near the Bavarian
frontier and a few hours' journey from Innsbruck, assigning as the
reason for this strange proceeding the "precarious condition of the
lady," who, as the postboy declared, was beautifully dressed and wore a
red cloak, but kept her features hidden under a thick veil. In reality,
they awaited at Nassereit the final orders of Châteaudoux. These were
brought by his servant the morning after their arrival. The party set
out in the afternoon, and after short stoppages at the intermediate
post-stations arrived at Innsbruck at half-past 9 P.M. (27th of April).
They drove to a second-class hostelry outside the town, whither one of
the gentlemen (in all probability Captain Toole) had preceded them,
ordering a comfortable room to be immediately heated. The Kellnerin
(barmaid)--there were no waiters--seems to have had eyes for the
gentlemen only, for while she deposed that the latter were "young,
handsome and very well dressed," she could give very little information
as to the appearance of the two ladies. In fact, all she remembered was
that the smaller one had a black veil. Wogan, the smallest and stoutest
of the three gentlemen, wore a handsome white coat, and nether garments
to match, while his head was adorned with an aristocratic perruque.
Captain Toole was, according to her account, a tall and very handsome
man, clothed in light garments. On being shown into the apartment, the
lady with the black veil threw herself upon the bed, while the other sat
down near the table with the gentlemen. Supper was ordered and brought
up. The so-called _Herrenmahl_ or "gentlemen's meal," consisted of
barley soup, roast meat, veal ragoût and salad, washed down by two
_mass_ or four bottles of wine. On the police-sheet, which was
presented to them before they retired, they inscribed themselves as
"Monsieur de Cernes, avec son épouse et famille, de Flandre, en voyage
pour Loretto."

We have selected these few extracts from the enormous mass of evidence
collected by the distracted councillors in order to give the reader some
little idea of the consternation excited by this daring and well-planned
escapade.

When the party had finished their repast the second lady joined her
companion on the bed, while the "two" gentlemen--the third being
evidently on the watch--left the room to take a stroll under the arched
gateway of the house. Here the postilion, on coming to receive his
orders, met them. He was told by the smaller of the two (that is, Wogan)
that they would leave punctually at two o'clock that same night. This
was, properly speaking, against the town laws, but the postilion, who
had been told that they would proceed on their journey that night, had
provided for the emergency by seeking the necessary permission from the
postmaster-general, Count Taxis. This he had received in the shape of a
message brought down by the lady's maid of the countess, "that he might
drive on whenever he liked."

The most important part of the whole undertaking yet remained to be
performed. This was the abduction of Princess Clementina from her house,
situated in quite another part of the town, and conducting her through
the streets to the hostelry. We have seen that on the night in question
the servants of the Sobiesky household had retired at eleven o'clock,
and that Monsieur Châteaudoux was seen loitering about the gate half an
hour later, evidently for the purpose of choosing a propitious moment to
let the princess out of the house. By one o'clock the princess was
already in the hostelry. She had donned the same attire as the three
gentlemen who accompanied her wore--viz., a long white cloak and a broad
hat. The distance between the two houses was considerable; and, what was
worse, the party had to pass the only bridge that led across the Inn,
the hostelry being situated on the other side of the river. While they
were groping their way through the crazy lanes and winding streets of
the town an incident occurred which came near exemplifying the old adage
about the cup and the lip. The party were placed for a quarter of an
hour or thereabouts in the most imminent risk of detection. The minutes
which proved such pleasant reading for the emperor contain such ample
information, paraded in the most pompous style, of this most ludicrous
adventure, that we do not hesitate to give the reader a short extract.
We must premise that the night was extremely dark, and a violent storm
of sleet and snow was raging at the time. This, however, did not prevent
the Rumormeister--or, as we might translate the word, the "riotmaster,"
whose duties were those of a police sergeant and night watchman--from
being out on patrol, accompanied by several trusty men, on the lookout,
not for robbers and thieves, but for students. It seems that the
frequenters of the Innsbruck University gave great and constant trouble
to this most important of town functionaries. By all that we hear of
their mad excesses and their riotous conduct, we can conclude that "Gown
_versus_ Town" was a constant war-cry in those dark days of Innsbruck.
The "riotmaster"--evidently a most conscientious personage, judging from
his conduct on that auspicious night--was of course constantly the
object of the students' spite and revenge. To quote the words of this
much-exposed individual, we find "that he completed his first round that
night by ten o'clock. He had met some students, but they did not
commence any riot or fight. At twelve o'clock, while on his second
round, he was approaching the meat-booths"--a row of stalls of which
some time previously the students had made a clean sweep--"when by the
light of his lantern he and his men perceived some persons standing
about. As the thought struck him that these might be students, he firmly
advanced with the intention of catching the evil-doers and giving them
a sound thrashing." On getting quite close to the booths he and his men
heard a "subtile woman's voice." At this moment three figures issued
from the gloom, while a fourth followed them at a little distance, and
passing by him they turned the corner of the street leading to the Inn
bridge. Our confidence in the courage of the riotmaster is rudely shaken
by his next remark: "I called out Good-night! but they did not answer
me; and after vainly searching behind the booths for the female whose
voice we had heard, but whom we did not perceive among the four persons
that left, we proceeded with due caution to follow these suspicious
personages." When they reached the bridge, the butcher's man, leading
three oxen and carrying a lantern, met them, and him the riotmaster
asked if he had not seen four students on the bridge. Upon receiving a
negative reply, the whole matter seemed more suspicious than ever, and
he was just ordering his men to search below the bridge, where the
students might have secreted themselves, when the butcher himself came
up and told him he had met four persons on the other side of the bridge.
"Thereupon," says the report, "we returned to our quarters, confident
that they were only French people"--meaning outlandish or foreign folk.

But to return from this ludicrous interlude, the details of which the
privy councillors narrate with the most self-assured satisfaction as
evidence of the active zeal of their town functionary. The party on
reaching the inn divided itself, the three gentlemen ascending the
stairs, while the Princess Clementina hid herself in the carriage. Our
friend the Kellnerin was still up, and met the gentlemen on the landing,
"whereupon they seemed annoyed, and told me I might go to bed, for they
did not require me any more." The girl once away in her bedroom, it was
easy enough to bring the princess up stairs unobserved. Although we can
without difficulty follow the whole undertaking from step to step, there
is one point which the documents before us fail to clear up--when and
where Mrs. Misset's maid took the place of the princess, and what
became of her afterward.

It seems to us that Wogan exaggerated the difficulties of the scheme, or
at least omitted to take into account the astounding stupidity of the
Kellnerin, and in fact of everybody with whom the party came in contact.
For all that the Kellnerin observed, they might have dispensed with the
"sick lady" altogether, and yet have driven away from the house with two
princesses instead of one. Of such an extraordinarily unsophisticated
nature was this simple handmaiden that, when helping the sick lady down
stairs to the carriage, she noticed that the skirt of her dress was wet,
and that the dress itself was of brown taffeta, similar to the one the
princess generally wore (proving thereby that she had frequently seen
the princess). Nevertheless, no suspicion crossed her mind, though she
knew that the party had arrived in a closed carriage, and that the
ladies had not gone out.

Punctually at two o'clock the party drove off, the two ladies and two of
the gentlemen inside, the third on horseback acting as outrider. At the
very first station after Innsbruck, Schönberg on the Brenner road, some
delay occurred, for the great depth of snow obliged them to add two more
horses to the four they already had, and the whole house had to be
roused. Nothing of importance seems to have occurred in crossing the
high Brenner Pass, although the huge masses of snow on the slopes of the
mountains threatened every minute to bury the travellers. At Trent they
received the second check, which, from the results that seemed at first
inevitable, was far more serious than that at Schönberg. That very
morning the margravine of Baden had passed through Trent, and her
numerous carriages had required every one of the post-horses stabled in
the town. The postmaster, Count Wolkenstein, the very man whom the privy
councillors had warned some months previously to keep a sharp lookout on
all travellers, helped them out of the scrape by providing private
horses--a matter of some difficulty.

On Saturday night (29th of April) at ten o'clock, Princess Clementina
had reached Venetian territory at Peri, and was saved. This was half an
hour before the privy councillors at Innsbruck had received the first
intimation of her absence. The grand reward of liberty, we presume,
fully compensated the youthful princess for the fatigues and absorbing
excitement of the preceding eight and forty hours. Little as we may
sympathize with the cause for which this brave little party were
fighting, we cannot deny them the praise that in the face of the
difficulties which stood in their way, much as they may have been
lightened by the inordinate slowness of mind in general at Innsbruck,
the undertaking was a decidedly plucky one and deserved the successful
issue it had.

Princess Clementina's gentleman-in-waiting, the oft-mentioned
Châteaudoux, fared less happily in his attempt to follow his mistress.
The day after the princess's flight from Innsbruck, and before the
slightest suspicion had been aroused in the minds of the privy
councillors, Châteaudoux, having in due form received permission to
undertake a journey to Italy on business matters, as on a former
occasion, left Innsbruck. He had delayed his departure too long,
however, for though he had a clear start of nearly twenty-four hours,
the lieutenant who commanded the pursuit of the princess overtook him
close to the frontier and led him back to Roveredo, where he remained
eighty-five days in confinement. The important papers and his mistress's
jewels were taken from him and sent to Innsbruck, whence the papers
wandered by the usual route to the emperor: the jewels, however, were
handed to the princess-mother.

From Peri the fugitives hastened to Bologna, where, as we know, the
marriage ceremony was solemnized by proxy,[7] Lord Dunbar being the
Pretender's representative. From Bologna the princess proceeded to Rome,
where a royal reception was given her at the hands of the highest
dignitaries of Church and State. A medal well known to numismatists
commemorates the incident of the flight. On the obverse we see Princess
Clementina's bust and the inscription "Clementina, Queen of Great
Britain, France, Scotland and Ireland:" the reverse represents her
riding in a car drawn by a spirited team and guided by Amor, the god of
love, as coachman. The words, "I follow fortune and the good cause," and
below, "To Deluded Guardians, 1719," surround this novel design, which
reminds us somewhat of the incidents peculiar to a Gretna-Green runaway
match.

[Footnote 7: The marriage was consummated on the 1st of September at
Monte Fiascone.]

At Rome, where the Pretender and his wife took up their permanent
residence, and where they were treated as became their rank of titular
king and queen of England, that gifted but foolish adventurer, Baron
Pöllnitz, frequently met them. The description which he gives in his
_Mémoires_ of Princess Clementina's person and appearance is worth
quoting. "The queen," so he styles her, "is a princess who really
deserves to be a queen. Without being a beauty of the first rank, she
combines in her person resistless charms. She has a sterling character,
and never did one find greater humility and tender-heartedness. She is
obliging, compassionate and charitable: her piety is sincere, and her
life is that of a saint.... Did she possess a kingdom, she would
assuredly make it her first aim to discharge conscientiously her queenly
duties. Nature has bestowed upon her those gifts that would ensure her
success. She has remarkable powers of comprehension and a truly
wonderful memory. She speaks the Polish, German, French, Italian and
English tongues so perfectly as to leave it an open question which of
these is her mother-language. Of all royal personages with whom I have
had the honor of coming into contact, she is the most worthy of general
veneration, and I would wish to see her happy."

Unfortunately, Fate bereft this unhappy princess of the chance of
proving the truth of the old adage about fools speaking the truth.[8]

W.A. BAILLIE-GROHMAN.

[Footnote 8: Pöllnitz was at one time court-jester to Frederick II. of
Prussia.]




A KENTUCKY DUEL.


TWO PARTS.--I.




CHAPTER I.


It was Aunt Fanny Brown who caused the duel between Captain Mason and
Bob Nettles. Aunt Fanny was a high-nosed, aristocratic dowager, of a
pretty taste in old china, who put her wig in curl papers and came down
to breakfast in the roseate bloom of sixty summers, as if defying
perfidy to call it paint. A Washington, New Orleans and Louisville
belle, she had received from her husband five hundred acres of
blue-grass land and the finest racing stables in that part of the State.
To the surprise of all but the knowing, she conducted the business with
admirable skill. Many a jockey has walked out of the pink boudoir before
a crack race so completely dazed and pumped he did not dare to chaff
even a stable-boy. The newsboy's stamp, the dissipated buck's allowance
and the leakage of the shop-till all found a way to irrigate Aunt
Fanny's fat blue-grass pastures and to keep glossy her satin-coated
stock. Not that she soiled her aristocratic hands with such canaille,
but she domineered the whole race of Brown, from Vandyke Brown the
artist, who painted her stud, to little Yelloe Ochre and Burnett Umber
of the stable-yard, poor but proud in the aristocracy of horse.

Aunt Fanny proposed to marry her nephew, Lind Mason--or Lindley Brown
Mason, for the remotest relation took a color from the parent stock--to
little Sue Brown, daughter of her nephew, Walter Brown, Esq., pork
merchant. That was her object in the intriguing that led to the duel.
Captain Mason was a man-about-town, with no wish to marry any one in
particular, but anxious to raise the wind, to clear off his play debts
and attend the match race between Kentucky and Asteroid, then much
talked of in racing circles. His object, to use his own picturesque
language, was "to put the saddle on the right horse."

Bob Nettles, the other party to the duel, was a sort of general clerk or
factotum to Walter Brown. He was _épris_ of little Sudie Brown, his
employer's daughter, one of those merry little romps no one thinks of as
a grown woman until she surprises society by marrying. Bob was a shy,
modest little fellow, with scrubby poll, pug nose, stubby palms, like
leather, from base ball, and with a habit of laughing in the nose,
called sniggering. He had merry gray eyes and hair of a pure tow color,
which I take to be the true plebeian tint, without a sanguine shade in
it--just the last man you would think of as engaging in a duel. To tell
how these various shades were woven into the carmine flower is the
purpose of this sketch.

Bob would probably never have looked so high but for the bookkeeper at
Brown, Ochre & Co.'s pork-house, Major Johnstone--nicknamed Toady
Johnstone, because he could not help reflecting the air, tone, gestures
and opinions of those he conversed with. But the major was of tried
courage, and had a pistol wound from a duel in the thigh; and no one
ever heard an ungentlemanly word from his lips. He had a store of
singularly inept recollections in respect to such marriages, which had
generally, turned out badly; but that was nothing. The major, like a
novelist, believed he had done his whole duty in marrying a couple, and
the deuce might take them after that.

Sue had not, at this time, shown any marked preference, though she liked
Bob as a playmate, and had a sort of awe of her cousin Lind and his
marvellous stories of adventures in the Lost Cause. It was her mother,
who by no means approved of a match with the little plebeian, that first
gave her daughter a hint of such pretensions.

It was the morning Sudie proposed that garden-party, and at Mrs.
Brown's country-house. The view overlooked a jumble of village roofs
very confusing to any conception of regular thoroughfares, and faced the
meeting-house, in much disrepair, because the Masons and Methodists had
agreed to put up a lodge and a church together, and had not yet put up
something else necessary to such enterprise. The house had just been
cleaned: fresh streaks of moisture dried off the porch and mixed with
the fragrance of verbenas and the cool pungency of soot from the
freshly-cleaned chimneys. The bees droned under the pear trees; the
redbirds sang in the cedars; even the black cook, scouring her tins in
the kitchen, caught the infection and shouted jubilant doxologies at the
top of her voice. Sudie swung in a hammock on the porch. Mrs. Brown read
the _Woman in White_, and held a feather-duster over the colored girl
red-painting the pavements, as if it were a wand. Then Sue proposed that
garden-party that made all the mischief.

"But the house just cleaned, and all the carpets to take up!" murmured
Mrs. Brown, pursuing the indomitable Miss Holcombe across the page like
a flea.

"Oh no, mamma: we'll dance out here," said Sue. "This house was just
built for fun. It's so"--pouncing on the expressive word--"jolly!"

"Well, you must see your aunt," said Mrs. Brown, who dreaded the
dowager.

"Why?" asked the little rebel. "She'll just say, 'There, child, don't
trouble me with details;' and if I put in a lump of sugar or spike of
cloves without telling her, she'll snub me before papa for extravagance.
Besides, she'll say Bobby Nettles isn't aristocratic; and we can't have
a garden-party without Bob."

"I don't understand the fuss you girls make over that little fellow,"
said Mrs. Brown. "Why, he is not as tall as you!"

"Yes he is, mamma," answered Sue, laughing at the recollection. "We
measured, and Mr. Warrener bumped our heads and drove a hairpin clear
into my wits. Bob hasn't any, but he's so accommodating."

"Your aunt won't like it," said Mrs. Brown with a peculiar stress on
the pronoun.

Sue blushed to the roots of her hair and looked a little startled: "La,
mamma! I didn't mean that: I don't think of him that way. Little Bob
Nettles! Why, mamma!" For all that, little Sue kept laughing to herself
and blushing, as if there was something not altogether unpleasant in the
thought.

Mr. Brown pooh-poohed the necessity of consulting his aunt about his
home hospitalities, but thought it only courtesy to inform her of what
was contemplated. This he undertook to do, and failed. It was the first
offence.

His factotum, Bob, was to have the conduct of the preliminaries, for
those were idle days at the pork-house. The great vats were dry, the
pens vacant, Parker's patent fingers for lifting swine reached out
beggarly hands for alms. At any hour of the forenoon you could see
the rows of porkmen sitting on chairs atilt on the flags. Take a
retail grocer, water him well, he buds into a forwarding and
commission merchant, flowers a transportation agent, and matures a
great pork merchant. Why? I don't know. No more do I know why a
livery-stable-keeper always develops into a candidate for sheriff. It is
a mystery, a branch of the great Darwinian theory. At eleven o'clock
they stop talking steamboat, the chairs come down with a crack, and the
stately figures--all Kentucky pork-dealers are large, fine-looking
men--troop into the beer-saloon to drink lager and eat pretzels. Bob
does not go--he knows Mr. Brown does not want a beer-drinker to overlook
his transactions in pork--nor does the major, who objects to beer as
slops, and says it is hard on the coats of the stomach. The major has a
theory on the coats of the stomach he has never been able to propound,
from his agreeable facility in coinciding with any one who questions it.
They remain outside to inhale the fragrance of oak shavings in the
cooper-shop opposite, and to watch Beargrass glass itself under the old
stone bridge like a great green eye and lid.

As Walter Brown, Esq., passes out he stops by Bob's chair: "Here,
Nettles, I have to meet the Board of Trade at twelve. Would you see to
these commissions for Puss?" Would he? Bob enters the street-car with
the others. Mr. Brown adds: "Oh, I promised Sue to let her aunt Fanny
know. Would you mind--?"

"Hm-m!" hesitates Bob. "Old lady's rather uppish--got the scrinctum
scranctums 'bout me, somehow: my nose is too short. Beg pardon, but she
don't like me."

"Confounded old jockey!" ejaculates the irreverent Brown at the
inconvenience; and Redmond Ochre, Esq., thinks such language in a
prospective legatee should be reported; and it is, and Aunt Fanny rages.

These offences, however, were mere preliminaries to that which the
unlucky Nettles was destined to give, and which was the true origin of
that duel and its results.

He arrived at Mrs. Brown's in the afternoon in a grocer's van.

"La! if it isn't Bob!" screamed Sudie, rushing out, very fresh and
rumpled.--"Why, what have you got there?"

"Goodies," said Bob, "and things marked 'L'eau'--'riginal packages. Shut
your eyes and open your mouth when the vane o' the church is blowing
south. Ain't it hunkidory?"

"My precious papa!" screamed Sudie. "Come right in here.--Mamma, here's
Mr. Nettles," offering him like a saucer of cream.--"Just wait till I
get my bonnet--where is my bonnet?--and we'll run right down to Mrs.
Dinwiddie's and get Vixie and Cordie to help."

The two went giggling and romping down the lawn, more like two hoydens
than boy and girl, and pretty soon returned with two others. It would be
hard to tell what help Sue wanted, unless it was to laugh, though she
did that very well, for Bob did the entertaining. They played "Old
Maid," and they put the odd queen on Bob with as frank cheating as if
they were the three knaves in the pack. Then they blacked Bob's comical
face with soot, and in this costume he mimicked everybody, even the
great dragon, Aunt Fanny, being put up to it by her nephew; whereat
Mrs. Brown looked grave, while Mr. Brown roared like a great bull
alligator.

How did Bob Nettles entertain that family? He was not witty; he could
not tell a story without missing the point; he was a poor buffoon; he
did not know a pun from a problem; and his voice in singing was hee-haw
and screech. Yet he did entertain them better than noted humorists would
have done. O thou immaculate and pure spirit of Fun! fathered in no
classic fable, brought to sweetness by no toil of thought, thou art
indeed the lowliest and sweetest of thy kind. Growing like the wild
fruits and berries that the humblest may partake of thy bounty and be
filled, thy nutriment is in a quick and cheerful spirit, and thy
abundance in the broadest sympathies of our common nature.

But this childish mummery did the mischief, carried as it was by the
common vehicle of scandal in the South.

Dame Brown had two maids--Ma'amselle Hortense, who enamelled that fine
old face and retired to her crucifix and French novels; and Memmie, the
mulatto, elderly, with a complexion like a soiled and creased
straw-colored kid glove, light-blue eyes, and a prim, affected laugh
like the crackle of letter paper.

The morning after Bob's mimicry the latter went about muttering, as her
kind do, to attract attention.

"What is it, Memmie?" asked the dowager, carelessly closing and relaxing
her upper lip before a hand-mirror to adjust her false teeth. "Have you
and Hortense quarrelled again?"

"Te-hee," crackled the negress. "Missis sich sweet dispisition me 'n'
Miss Ho'tense 'bleege to be frien's. If ma'amselle hain't got the true
spirit of the Methodies, hallelujah! amen! She ain't none o' them
Nettleses pesterin' roun', a-blackin' of his face fo' tu 'ten' like of
it's a-missus's beyoucheeful enamuel; and Mistah Waltah a-laughin' of
hoss-laughs, a-sayin' it's the very spit o' ole Miss Fanny.--Whar ye
been wid dat choc'lit all dis time missis a-waitin'?" breaking out on
the under-servant with the breakfast tray. "Some'hin' hap'n top o' yo'
head, gal: yo' mammy'll have to git ye peg t' hang yo' hat on. Yo's
wuss'n Nettles, niggah as ye is."

Dame Brown's first thought was of a _lettre de cachet_: she would have
chopped off Bob's head without the slightest compunction. Her next was
to reduce the rebellious province of Walter Brown and occupy its fairest
possession, Sudie, much given to upset the tea-caddy upon occasion.

The General Gage she proposed for this expedition was her nephew.
Captain Mason was one of those elegant do-nothings whom statisticians
grub out and sentimentalists wail over, as if I were to shed a few
ink-drops because the morning-glory at my porch will not make an edible
potato of its root, like its first cousin the yam in the near field. He
was portly, rosy in the jowls, with fat blue eyes of a tendency to get
bloodshot in the corners, and curly brown hair. He wore sumptuous
waistcoats, lawn fronts, much irrigation of vest-chain and jewels, like
her of Banbury Cross; after which it is superfluous to add skill in
billiards and games of chance. He affected a pompous sort of military
horse-talk, as if the steed in the book of Job neighed through his
conversation. Sudie Brown thought him just awful, and was quite sure he
had chopped off heads with that ostentatious sabre he kept on view. But
waggish Confederates had a way of playing on the captain's foible by
such remarks as "I say, Lind, how about the four Dutchmen you scalped at
Perryville?" and there would be good entertainment for an hour, or
indeed as long as one chose to listen. If it was absurd to think of that
merry little prig Nettles in such a business, Captain Mason's old
companions-in-arms at the mere suggestion of his being brought to face a
loaded pistol burst into great guffaws of laughter. For all that, it got
to look very ugly, and one silly, loving little heart suffered
unspeakable agonies of apprehension before it was over.

Captain Mason had stepped into Rufer's gorgeous saloon as if to collect
his rents, and came out wiping his moustache as if he had eaten them,
when he was hailed by Aunt Fanny's African page, and ushered into the
presence in time to witness a spectacle of materialization that would
astound Spiritualists.

Mason, in a puffy sort of way, stood greatly in awe of his aunt--who, in
addition to all a man knows, knew all a woman knows--and would have
liked to impress her. He began: "Ah, how dee do, aunt? Just been looking
at Woodlawn. Company's rather gravelled, eh? Thought to give 'em a lift
and take the race-course myself."

"You take Woodlawn!" cried the dowager, absolutely startled out of her
discernment by the notion of getting the once-famous racing-park in the
family. Then, recognizing the tremendous bounce, she said sharply,
"Pshaw! Do you know a young fellow named Nettles?"

"Nettles? Net-tles?" repeated Mason, hesitating, in doubt if it was a
proper acquaintance to acknowledge just then. "Well, yes--a clerk or
duffer of some sort at Uncle Brown's pork-house. Oh yes, I know the
cad--by sight."

"I did not ask if you knew him by scent," said the dowager, who took no
pains to conceal her contempt for her nephew. "He is making up to little
Sue Brown. Susannah is too silly to see it, and Walter Brown is an
obstinate fool. Low people are always trying to make good connections.
You can cut him out if you like."

There was a little chuckle of delight under Mason's watch-pocket, as if
that dry timepiece laughed like a dice-box at the thought of the little
round-eyed girl who had listened to his vaporing with no mere hypocrisy
of belief; but he said, "Marry for money! eh, aunty? Not that she isn't
a clean little filly, built up from the ground, neat pastern, good
shoulders; but marry for money! eh, aunty?"

It was the purest of cant. He knew, his aunt knew, he would as soon
think of eating his knife and fork as marrying a piece of furniture that
did not feed him.

"Bah! ostrich with your head in the sand!" said his aunt. "You have
played Ancient Pistol all your life. I show you where it will win. Will
you play?"

Lind looked over his hand: he remembered that he had made Bob fag on the
playground, and as he thought of little Sue he believed it feasible; but
he saw more tricks in his hand than that one. "Well," said he
affectedly, "if it is to keep out an interloper I don't mind; but you
said pistols? A man that has seen Perryville, Stone River, Vicksburg,
Gettysburg"--Lind got his battles mixed sometimes in the haste of
composition--"don't mind saying he has seen enough of bloodshed."

"Pah!" said the dowager in the tone of Hamlet putting down Yorick's
skull. "You amuse me to disgust. I'll mop up all the blood spilt with a
cambric handkerchief. Will you do it?"

"Didn't I say so?" answered Mason, chafing under her open contempt. "But
war cannot be carried on without funds, and Asteroid let into me
heavily." He was playing for the odd trick now.

"I expected that," said the dowager contemptuously. "How much?"

"Well, say two hundred," hesitated Lind, for he expected a
controversy--"for first impressions."

She only took out her portemonnaie and said, "See that you earn it."

"You bet! I mean, Thank ye, aunt," muttering as he left the room,
"Confounded old cow with the crumpled horn! but who thought she would
milk so easy?"

Elated with having "made a raise," he went strutting and breathing down
the avenue, clanking his chains and thinking of his little cousin as
already won.

But that was the way of the dowager, this Queen Catharine of the Browns.
If she heard of derelictions from loyalty, she did not stop to mediate
and discuss, but, like a vigorous ruler, took prompt means to put them
down. We shall see how she succeeded, and what befel her chief marshal
in this campaign.




CHAPTER II.


The dowager's chiding laugh, low and musical, at that festive gathering
of little Sue's, was at once rebuke and pardon for the past. It
inspired the music: the deft fiddler touched the speaking strings with
firmer bow, and the clashing violins, tinkling triangle and the shrill
bubbling of the quill pipe rolled mellowing through the halls and under
arches of cedar and rosebush where lovers strolled among the shrubbery.
The dowager sat gossiping in the broad hall. Such talk, too! with a
flavor of old bellehood in it, when Mr. Clay's graceful form visited the
saloons and Prentice and Wallace were young and dashing poets of
society. She quoted with quaint accentuation mellow old-fashioned verses
inscribed to her at those old merry meetings, and Time rolled up his
curtain to feelings and fashions of thought like the faint musk of old
pressed rose-leaves. Ah me! I wrote some verses myself t'other
day--little verses indeed, and for a very little girl. But I think when
the brain that thought and the heart that felt so are long dust, some
old, old grandam shall take them from her reticule and say to
great-grandchildren, "He wrote them for me when I was but a little
girl," and across the ashes of three quarters of a century the dead lips
shall speak again to hearts as kind and tender. The seed sowed in thorny
labor may be choked up, and, barren of tears, the dry rocks of time
wither the sweet old fancies I have written, but this little seed by the
wayside shall lift its tiny sheaf, and I too shall have my small harvest
of immortality.

I think of it as I picture the dowager to myself, so fearfully and
wonderfully made, and I confess to a chaste admiration for those old
belles of society and their nepenthe of cosmetics, bringing down to us a
sort of Hallow-e'en summer dressed in the quaint phraseology of an elder
period. I do protest against those jejune satirists who hold them up to
ridicule, forsooth! because unique and like themselves, and true,
because always like themselves, to the latest lapse of affectation. Let
us be sure, however quaintly the lacquer be laid on, there is real
porcelain below in these reserves of old china, which we affectedly call
sham only because it differs in texture and ornament from the delft
cast in a common mould.

The dowager was all vivacity, looking lightly on those limber heels age
is so wont to decry, but alert, sensitively conscious of that pedestal
of affected juvenescence, and bold with that old pioneer blood of hers
that needs but a scratch to show the cruel, revengeful Indian fighter
below.

Silly Bob Nettles was romping by with Sudie--promenade all, around the
porches, through the hall, and back to their places. The dowager had but
time to intimate, "The young gentleman with Sue--Mr. Nettles, is
it?--isn't he rather free?" and Mr. Brown to feel it rather, when they
came by. Sue's hair was down, her eyes bright, cheeks flushed, her lips
bubbling with laughter; and that unlucky Bob was singing,

    "When we are young we are careless and happy,
    But when we get old we are hairless and cappy."

One flash of those awful eyes told him the dowager had made an
application of his silly and thoughtless words. Relieved from his
partner, he stole off to the dressing-room to think.

He found Warrener and Wylde Payne there, and presently he began to tell
"what a confounded mess he had made of it down stairs."

Mason had been charged by the angry woman with the disagreeable duty of
ordering Bob Nettles to leave the house. Selfish, but good-natured,
Mason by no means liked the task, and on a favorable opportunity would
have softened it probably into a warning. But the temptation to vapor a
little when he found his rival down was too much for him. "I call it
confounded shabby," said he--"a lady of Aunt Fanny's age and character!"

"You are a relation," said Bob anxiously and not at all offended. "I
wish you'd just say to Mrs. Brown I meant nothing. It was just chaff and
nonsense, and I never meant anything."

"Chaff, indeed!" said Mason, egged on by Payne's and Warrener's open
grins. "I think it confounded blackguardly, and you ought to be kicked
out," ruffling like a cock-turkey with trailed wings.

"Go for him, Lind!" laughed Payne, "but remember the four Dutchmen and
be merciful."

Thus adjured, Mason made a gesture with his open palm. Bob let out two
little fists, hard as bats, one of which caught Mason in the eye, the
other on the nose, and then went whirling among the tipping chairs and
tables, rolling his fists over each other, as if grinding up for another
blow, as he cried, "Come on, ye dog-goned gas-bag! I'll knock the socks
off'n ye."

Wrath carried little Bob back to the playground. It was superbly
ridiculous, but Aunt Fanny's champion was clearly discomfited; his fine
lawn front was dabbled with blood, and a discoloration promised a
southerly wind and a cloudy eye by morning. He withdrew, followed by
Payne, who snuffed frolic mischief in the wind.

"This is not the last of it," said Mason, as he went out, in a
threatening tone.

"Of course not," said Payne. "A blow has passed. But you have a soft
thing of it: I don't think the other cocktail will fight. But didn't he
hit out, though?" and he burst into shouts of laughter at the late
scene.

Mason could not join in it very heartily: his comb was cut terribly. He
had got on amazingly as Hector with the nodding plume to his little
cousin that evening; but Hector with his eye blacked and his nose
bloodied! He heard Bob crow, as he would have crowed had the victory
been his, and he felt there must be something done.

Bob would have withdrawn too, but Warrener said, "No: you said all that
was sufficient. Don't let that old griffin think you have been hectored
off the place."

So Bob stayed, distrait, uneasy. Presently, little Sue, who had heard
nothing, came to him, looking very pretty in her fluttering ribbons and
flower-trimmed skirts. "I am going into town to-morrow--shopping," she
said slyly.

"Yes," said Bob, distrait, uncomfortable, for he saw Patsey Warrener
whispering to the dowager and looking at him.

"Shopping," repeated Sue, "all day, but--"

Bob was not even looking at her: he was looking at the two women.

"Is it your set next?" asked the little girl, filling up.

"Yes, I believe so," said Bob, trying to get back.

"No it ain't: I won't! I won't! There! I'm going to dance with Cousin
Lind. I ain't going to dance with you no more--never! There!" And she
whirled off, pettish, provoked, leaving the poor little fellow in his
nervous state, lost in a sort of half-conscious misery. He had not the
courage to seek her out and try to appease her: he took his hat and left
without a word.

But little Sue was to pay dearly for her innocent little burst of
temper. Two gentlemen behind her were commenting on our friend Major
Johnstone: "What makes the major wabble so? I saw him dancing a while
ago as light as the pen-feathers of a gander."

"Don't you know?" asked the other. "There was a row in the dressing-room
between Short-stop Nettles and Bully Mason; and it always makes old
Johnstone limp on that wounded leg to scent a duel."

They laughed and passed on, but poor little Sue, bred in the theory of
the right of personal redress, felt her heart stop. That was what had
made her lover so absent! What would she give to recall her words and
manner--the last words she might ever have to say to him? But it was too
late: he was gone.

After the party she said to the dowager, "Aunty, will there be any more
trouble between Cousin Lind and Mr. Nettles?"

"There must not be," said the dowager: "I shall send for your cousin in
the morning."

"In the morning?" hesitated little Sue.

"What has made you so wise?" asked the dame, seizing her niece with
those bold questioning eyes. "You have never kissed a brother, put a
rose in his buttonhole, and had him brought back to you stark and cold,
with the rosebud unwithered. But you are right. I shall send for him at
once."

Though Sue believed, yet all that night the strange fancy possessed her
of seeing her playmate lover laid out in the room below, with the
withering immortelles faintly scenting the awful dusk about his still
cold face.

Bob Nettles's reception of the challenge by the hand of Wylde Payne was
rather informal. He was just roused in the attic over the
counting-house, and said after reading, "I can't promise not to visit in
my employer's house if he asks me, but I'm mighty sorry."

"I'm afraid that will not do," said Payne coldly, "but you might give up
your situation."

"Me give up my place?" said Bob, touched on the business edge. "If
that's your biz, you'd better trot."

"Your friend will find me there," said Payne coldly, laying down his
card and going.

But when Bob sought a second, all his business intimates refused, like
Joe Skinner, mud clerk--_i. e._ receiving clerk--at the wharf: "I don't
mind knocking a man over with a dray-pin in the way of business," said
he, "but this ain't in my line. If anybody wants anything out o' Joe
Skinner, he gets it then and there. If he wants more, the shop ain't
shut: he can get it served hot at all hours. But this cold-luncheon
style o' fightin' ain't in my line."

Bob succeeded in finding a second, however, with pluck enough to meet
the whole Brown clan. Below is the correspondence:


MASON'S NOTE.

     SIR: You will sign the enclosed apology, and pledge yourself not to
     visit in the family whose hospitality you have abused, or give me
     the usual satisfaction.

L.B. MASON.

     To R. NETTLES, ESQ., _Main Street._

REPLY OF NETTLES.

     SIR: My relations with Mr. Brown's family have nothing to do with
     this difference, nor will I have them drawn into it. For yourself,
     I am sorry a necessary defence of my person resulted so seriously
     to you, but I have no apologies to make for injuries you brought
     upon yourself.

     This will be conveyed to you by Captain Deane Lee, who is
     authorized to act in the premises.

R. NETTLES.

     To CAPTAIN L.B. MASON, _Galt House._


EXCHANGED CARDS OF THE SECONDS.

WYLDE PAYNE, ESQ.,
_Galt House._

DEANE LEE,
_Conductor Street Railroad._




CHAPTER III.


I have often wondered at the freshness, loquacity and altogether unreal
tone of the duellists' rooms pending an encounter; and I can only liken
it to the mind of an assiduous chess-player, which still even in dreams
is tilting with ivory knights and banning with puppet bishops. Such
fancies are accepted among duelling men as the real sentiments that move
and govern society. To Lind Mason, who was naturally made of paste-board
and stuffed with bran, they were the breath in his nostrils. He vapored
of the family as if, instead of plain Brown, it had been born in the
purple. Payne on his return had said, "The funk wanted to apologize,"
and that "Lind had a soft thing of it," chaffing his principal not a
little over the prospects of his aunt's generosity.

"Ye-as," said Lind, negligently drawing the long silky moustache and
beard through the hollow of his hand and letting the points drop.
"Woodlawn. We talked it over. 'Marry, my boy,' said the old girl, 'and
settle.' 'All right!' said I, 'aunty: _I'll_ marry, and _you_ settle.'
Payne and I made out a liberal schedule of my liabilities for her lawyer
last night. My motto is, be off at the tap if you can, or a wink before
it, and come down the quarter under the whip. I consider my autograph on
Aunt Fanny good for a thousand any day. T'other day I said to Payne I
wanted the stick and two hoops ($100), and Aunt Fanny just said, 'Double
it, and arrange with your cousin Sue.' Soon as this baggytell is over
little Sue Brown jines the Masons.--Here's to her, gentlemen! and no
heeltaps. No need to say fellows of this party are welcome to our
table;" and he delicately tipped off the wine, saying "he had drunk
better."

"Payne says the fellow will apologize," said one. "What will you do?"

"Well," drawled Mason, dipping a cracker in the fragrant sherry and
munching, "a fellow that saw it all from Mill Springs to Appomattox
doesn't care for these little things. If it was the first time, or even
the second or third, I wouldn't stand it. But after that the thing loses
its gloss and gets to be a confounded bore. You see it's getting up so
early; and there's your man squatting on the grass like a hurt
wild-duck, and all the fellows scared and ugly, and poking at you as if
it was your fault. And the confounded police, and the bother of keeping
out of the way, and maybe lose the spring meeting. It gets to be deuced
low, fellows. No: if the little man will own up and quit annoying
somebody--" with a lazy wink. "I drink to Sue Mason, _née_ Brown,
gentlemen. I don't care: he may get off whole. Of course a written
apology."

"Apology," said Major Johnstone, whose impressible nature went with the
extremists. "My God, sir! is a venerable lady of wealth and fashion--of
the American peerage, by George, sir! American peerage--to be insulted
in an assembly of her nearest relatives, and the base scullion to escape
with a bare 'Sorry for it'? A pocket full of apologies and a back full
of bruises, as Tom Marshall said, by George! Look at Rule 10, Tipperary
Code," slapping Barrington's _Sketches_ emphatically. "No, sir! Such an
example would corrupt American youth."

"Bosh!" said another, who sat on the side of the bed and rocked his legs
alternately as if for a wager. "That rot is past salting down. A lady's
name involved! Our chivalrous principal is right. Honorably adjusted,
satisfactory, etc., is the end of it."

"But a blow?" said the major, like a weathercock in contradictory flaws,
and running over the leaves. "Here is Rule 5--"

"That's Payne," said one, interrupting the major unceremoniously at a
step outside.

"Payne never walked that fast in his life," was the reply. "Payne was
born tired. There's somebody with him."

The door opened, and Deane Lee in gray tweed, from foot to forage-cap
the dashing soldier, saluted. "Honor to report from Captain Nettles," he
said, touching his cap. Military titles prevail on such occasions.

"Will you join us?" said Payne, motioning to the refreshments, as Mason
read the note.

"Don't care if I do. Plain: no cooked drinks for me," said the envoy
briefly.

This struck the major as having a judicial bearing upon the coats of the
stomach. He cocked his chin and began unconsciously to imitate the
dashing stranger.

"An unfortunate affair," said Payne. He had thought it amusing, absurd,
but something in this young fellow impressed him also, and he said it,
and meant it.

"D---- unlucky!" said the other, in much the same tone as if he had said
"lucky." "But my man is all right. He had to hunt me up, or I'd been in
your lines before now." He took the ice from the tumbler, dashed off the
moisture, and ate it like a salamander.

The major was possessed. He whispered behind his hand to his neighbors,
"Never saw but one like him."

"Who?" asked several, for the easy, cool assurance of Bob Nettles's
second affected them all.

The major shook his head and sighed grievously.

"Was he killed?" asked one eagerly.

"Kill him!" said the major in hollow emphasis of scorn: "no, sir."

"Died, then?" suggested another.

"No, sir," said the major: "his worst enemy could not say that of him.
No, he didn't die."

"Drowned?" put in a third, venturing at the major's conundrum.

"No, sir," said the major gutturally. "Water couldn't drown him. It is
not wet enough. Lost."

"Lost!" marvelled his auditors at this sphinx. "How?"

"Married," said the major in basso-profundo, husky with emotion.

Such an ornament lost to the chivalry of duelling accentuated their
admiration of his after-type in Bob's second.

"When I last saw him," continued the major, in the tone of Griffith
describing the last hours of Wolsey--

"Well?" ejaculated all in one voice.

"He was buying seed-corn."

Degradation could no lower go, and in the pause they could hear the blue
fly buzz in the window-pane.

Mason had beckoned Payne aside. The two found that reply a hard nut to
crack. Payne had regarded the duel as a huge hoax, and counted on easily
bluffing the burgher's second. But bluffing those steely nerves yonder,
that stood at ease with a suggestion of military accoutrements, was not
to be thought of. Nor could his principal go out, under the pretext of
controlling the associations of Walter Brown's family, without Walter
Brown's approval.

"For proper reasons, no doubt," said Payne courteously, "your principal
ignores what is, with us, the gravamen of his offence--his behavior in
the house of Mr. Mason's relations."

Pretty well covered for Mr. Payne, but it would not do.

"Don't want to ignore anything," said Deane Lee. "Just don't want
petticoats mixed up in it. My man does not pledge worth a--pyrotechnic."
He had got it in at last, and with a step--a peremptory refusal to
submit to dictation of any kind.

Payne felt outmanœuvred and crowded. He saw Bob Nettles was not to be
bullied out of little Sue, and they must give up that point. "My
principal is disposed to waive that part," said Payne haughtily, "rather
than involve others."

"All right!" said Deane carelessly. "It's not in the regulations--but
come to taps. We want this thing over before reveille. I've got an
infernal mule-team to yank up and down these streets after that."

It was done with the easiest nonchalance, yet Wilde Payne felt he was
bitted and spurred, and the butt of this ridiculous duel might prove to
be the man who had brought it about.

"I don't know where he picked up Deane Lee," said he after his rival
left; "but Deane will fight his man. It isn't going to be such a soft
thing, after all."

"He is only a street-car conductor," said a callow Brown, who looked on,
and thought all this very heroic and fine.

"I don't care," said the major, rising on his crutch, "but if that man
drives a mule, it is a credit, sir--to the mule; and, gentlemen, I wish
you well out of it--I do, by George!" and he stumped off and out of the
room. The major's departure was as significant as the sinking of the
mercury in the sealed tube: it indicated a stormy atmosphere outside,
setting in favor of the other side.

But an incident just then, seeming to confirm some of Mason's vaporing,
created a profound sensation, and so complicated and embarrassed the
duel for that gentleman as to tax all his ingenuity and address to come
out of it with anything like credit. It adds a lustre to his boast that
he was "betting on a certainty" and "intended to put the saddle on the
right horse." A servant presented a card on a tray, with "Lady in
ladies' parlor C wishes to see Captain Mason."

Mason took it up, looked flushed, flattered, more pompous than ever.
"Here, Payne," said he; and the two whispered.

"You'd better not," said Payne critically: "it will compromise you."

"But she knows I am here--meddlesome servant, etc." In fact, Mason was
too flattered by the visit to deny the lady or himself.

"Poor girl!" was whispered about--"desperately attached."--"She needn't
be uneasy: it's the other fellow ought to be looked after."

To explain who this mysterious visitor was we must go back a little.

Sudie arose the morning after her garden-party flushed and feverish,
with a strange consciousness of being unlike herself. She drifted from
room to room; peeped into the parlor, with its fading garlands, in a
little superstitious awe of her last night's vision, and then took to
standing at the gate or looking from the west windows toward the city,
as if she expected some one. But she did not: it was only that all her
anxiety lay there. At 10 A.M. she took the pony carriage to town and
hurried to Aunt Fanny, only to learn that the etiquette of the code had
excluded the dowager's messenger, and that Her Majesty was so incensed
thereat as to resolve to let matters take their course. This by no means
satisfied Sudie. She thought it horrible, wicked. She would see
papa--she had all a child's confidence in papa--and he could stop it.
Passing the hotel, an impulse seized her to appeal to her cousin; for he
was her cousin, Sudie repeated to herself to justify her resolution; and
so, without any formed plan of appeal, she sent up her card. She was
enough confused and embarrassed at her cousin's entrance to have
deceived a wiser man than Lind Mason; but, luckily, he was better at
reading the backs of his cards than a woman's face, and, to his credit,
felt supremely silly.

"Cousin Lind," said the little girl, speaking the first thought in her
mind, "I was going to see papa, and--" and she broke down.

"Hem! Mr. Brown is in the city, ha? Of course," blundered Mason, shy as
an awkward girl to her first lover, and obstinately turning that eye
away from her on which Bob Nettles had left his mark.

"And--and--" hesitated Sudie, with a little shuddering, nervous laugh,
like a smothered cry, "have you and Mr. Nettles met this morning?"

To do Mason justice, he was too artificial and shallow to retain any
resentments. He was only confused at his novel position, and before he
could muster a reply Sudie went on: "Because I want you and him to be
friends," with that tremulous laugh again; "and I should be so mad
if--if he was to--to hurt you."

"By Joe!" thought Lind, "what am I to do if she proposes outright?" He
was terribly scared: no one is so timid as one of these fast, horsey
men in the presence of an innocent, pure-minded girl. The situation was
trying: he thought it was his cue to put his arm about her and say
something; but when he saw how she sat back in the chair, and had tested
his own nerves, he felt he could not do it. Little Sue, therefore, had
it all to herself, recovering courage by her own freedom, without any
conception of what was troubling the thoughts of the great, handsome,
awkward booby before her. "Aunt Fanny wants you to be friends," she
continued, "and so do I."

Mason began to pluck up a little at this. The association of Aunt
Fanny's name suggested that she had talked the matter over with her
niece, as she had with him, and broken the ice for him. He looked over
his shoulder to see if the parlor was clear. She was leaning forward
now, holding out two plump little hands, like a child going to beg, and
with a sly, roguish look too. He thought he could do it now: he would
drop gracefully on one knee and--

And Sudie went on: "Somebody else will be mad too, you don't know." A
half whisper from the roguish pucker of those dimpling lips: "Ma'amselle
Hortense."

The blood rushed to that ensanguined face till it looked like a great
romanete apple: "Hortense?"

"Yes," with a half-dozen mischievous, confidential little nods. "There!
Now you go right straight and see Mr. Nettles, and tell him _I_ sent
you; and if he doesn't behave himself to you, just let _me_ know." And,
nodding intelligence, little Sue rose with a rustle and flutter of
puffs and bows, in childish confidence of having done her whole duty and
stopped that wicked, wicked business.

That skilful card-player Mason was as completely stumped as if some one
had raked down the stakes on a pair of deuces against his exhibit of the
four aces. Nothing but the most gracious condescension and chaste
humility of salutation had passed between him and his aunt's French
maid; yet shrewd little Sudie, with her intuitive woman's instinct, had
shot her arrow in the dark and cloven the wand.

She went out in the innocent simplicity of her childlike faith, and it
was hours before she came to realize how utterly she had failed in
stopping the execution of that deadly purpose.

How often is it the case with her sex that, having no other coin than
the affections, so dear to themselves, they over-value them for others,
and only know from finding them soiled and trampled in the mud how
little they are estimated in the hard and selfish dealings of man with
man! But the little girl went off, happy in her delusion. God bless the
rest of heart from apprehension that it gave her!

But Mason had to slip aside into the hotel bar and drink a mighty jorum
of brandy before he could rejoin his friends. As he thought of all the
confounded annoyances and embarrassments growing out of the little
girl's discovery, including the loss of her hand and fortune, the terse
and pithy brevity of his summing-up of the situation was an epitome of
Spartan eloquence. It was, "D---- it!"

WILL WALLACE HARNEY.




THE DOINGS AND GOINGS-ON OF HIRED GIRLS.


Leave the town and the highway, journey onward deep among the hills, and
in their farthest nooks and crannies you will come to places where the
hired girls are living happily. You will come to places where the hired
girls do not long to be old nor long to be dead--spots where there are
no vulgar, insulting rich, untrained to the management of servants and
ignorant of the routine of good housework--neighborhoods where the maxim
of the ancient noblesse of France, that only the low-born are hard with
their hirelings, still prevails. In Mid New York, for instance, are
regions sweet as Thessaly, hilly, shaggy with woods, and peopled by
descendants of the Puritans bearing old Shakespearian names--Ford, Page,
Peck and Scroop--a yeomanry on whom the rich soil of their present seats
has had a powerful effect: they enjoy their hills in health and mellow
content, and their servants live at ease with them.

The New York farmer of Puritan descent is a patriot. He can never enough
gloat over the number of Britishers his ancestors killed at the battle
of Lexington. He loves politics. He is great at voting. He stands up for
his candidate almost to the fighting-point. Squires Catesby and Plunket
did have a little fight at the Forge Hollow election; not actually
coming to blows--that would be too absurd for men of their figure and
property--but hunching and shouldering each other around the tavern
bar-room until they hunched the stove over and the chairs and tables
upside down. A farmer of their type has a mind busied in operating,
American fashion, on every conceivable topic--you will see such a one in
town, broad-shouldered as an Egyptian statue, matching silk for his wife
after selling a herd of cattle--and this kind of man is not the one to
be "snooping round the house" worrying his servants. His wife is like
himself, a comfortable person to serve. It would be hard to find a more
luxurious woman, one fonder of taking naps and of driving about the
country paying visits--our opulent New York farmer has not the least
suspicion that his wife can walk anywhere--and partly because of a
paucity of fashionable calls and milliners' windows, partly because the
country doctor is such a good one to make her think she needs medicine,
she cultivates a gentle hypochondria, spins talk spider-like from her
own frame, thinks she lives in a sort of human oven where she is in
constant peril of being overdone, and so is tender of her domestics,
lest they be overdone. The rich farmer's wife does not wash trencher nor
scrape dish; she boils not, neither does she skin apple or potato; she
occupies herself with fancy-work that would make Solomon in all his
glory stare. You ought to see her best bedroom: it is a bower of
bonbonnerie of her own make. Its treatment, as an architect would say,
is in the Decorated pocketed style--pockets on the wall for papers;
pockets for rags and scraps; a double pocket for slippers; one for your
watch, one for your comb, one for lamplighters, one for burnt matches;
ever so many others for what you can't guess; and all beaded, bugled,
tasselled and embroidered to form a perfect zodiac of splendors.

Though the country wife is kind to her domestics, she has a knack of
getting the best out of them. The girl who scorches things and boils tea
as if some incantation of double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and
teapot bubble, had got into her head--the girl who stands like a
Stoughton bottle and bawls "Ma'am!" whenever she is spoken to--the slow
girl who can't tell time, forgets to put on the teakettle, and never
gets beyond "one I, one--two I, two," on the kitchen clock--the small
servant with the bad cold who _will_ sit by the parlor fire coughing,
snuffing and breathing hard--the girl like an overgrown man who slobbers
dish-water on the floor and steps in it--the Deutsche girl who spoils
the parlor clock turning it upside down to dust it thoroughly,--these
and worse become reliable people under the sway of the old-fashioned
country housewife. The Deutsche girl becomes a paragon in the farmhouse,
quickly falling into Yankee ways and picking up Yankee kitchen phrases,
and turning them with a bold originality. "Them clothes is bone dry,"
says the Deutsche girl. "Oh land! yes: they got a bone drying to-day. I
gave them clothes a bone rubbing and a bone boiling, and to-morrow
they'll get a bone ironing, you bet," says she. Next to her rank the
Dane and the Swede. The Irish girl is never a congenial inmate of the
farmhouse. The Irish girl is too noisy and too much given to lying. The
last might be endured--the farmer's wife would rather hear an Irish girl
tell forty lies than sing one song--but the noise she makes talking to
the butcher's boy, the peddler, the essence-man and the ash-gatherer is
insufferable; and when the Irish rag-merchant bursts open the kitchen
door roaring, "God bless you! you're a real lady; got any rags? don't
sell to them theivin' Jews, they're villains; sold your rags to a man
that pays more than me? divil a man in the county pays more than me,"
why, the farmhouse quiet is torn to ribbons. And then the Irish girl is
cross to visitors, who form the solace and charm of country life. "I
wants no lady-visitors around me; they makes too much bodderin' wid
towels and wather; they're always a-washin' of theirselves. They wants a
clean towel to every one of their tin fingers: they're afraid us gurrels
sha'n't earn our wages. Give me men for my money: they ain't always
a-cleanin' of theirselves," growls the Irish girl.

No girl of any species can compare with an oldish American hired girl.
Give Sar' Ann her due. She works at a spanking pace; she is "poison
clean;" she can do up a shirt fit for a funeral, and she is a dabster at
cooking. In butchering or in haying and harvesting she will pitch in and
work without a murmur until she is pale and damp with weariness, and at
such times will let her hair go until her head looks like Encke's comet,
one halo of frowse, with a frowsy knob in its periphery. Still, she will
put up with no asperity from her mistress: "the foodle ages" are done
with, look you! as to Sar' Ann. Let her mistress once reprimand her, she
turns the tables on that lady slap, dab. "It's a poor story," ejaculates
Sar' Ann, "for you to talk so, Mis' Fife. I've dug and delved for you
six year, and run my daylights out of me, and I won't do it no longer.
It's jaw, jaw, jaw with you till I'm worn to a shadder. I've spunked up
now, Mis' Fife, and I'll light out. I never crep' nor crawled to nobody,
and I won't begin now. I'll throw my dishcloth right smack up the
chimbly, and I'll clear." If you have a servant who understands her
rights and business better than you do yours, where are you? "Why, there
you are," as the man in the play says.

In the farmhouse kitchen you sometimes find a girl rare, now-a-days,
outside of old portraits, and one seen only in spots as sequestered as
the haunts of the deer and wild-duck. She has hair of a burnished copper
color, eyes so fair they reflect crystal sparkles of light from their
lashes, a pure skin, round cheeks, a delicate cocked-up nose, a chin all
weakness and a look of wistful propitiation. Another girl peculiar to
country kitchens, not so rare, but delicious, is a fresh, dark nymph of
a temperament both gay and imperturbable. This one has almost perfect
beauty--black hair that should be crowned with water-cresses, black eyes
with a thrilling glance, and a sudden, frank, enchanting smile. Perhaps
you will say her nose and lips are a line too heavy: there is no
skimping in her outlines. The country-people never find out that she is
handsome. "Adeline would be quite handsome if she was not so dark," say
they.

A well-to-do farmhouse, where the work is "done up" early, is a pleasant
place to work in. Adeline has an hour of liberty every day in which she
may stand in the door "dressed up," looking out over the meadows, or run
to The Corners to "borry a teaspoonful of soda," or look over a
newspaper. If Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoigne Cecil, marquis of Salisbury
(what a sound that has!), were the farmer's guest, Adeline would
condescend to talk to him during this hour when she is waiting for
tea-time. "I guess you feel pretty lonesome over here," she would say;
and when he replied that he felt "like a crumb of bread at the bottom of
a trowsers pocket," as he probably would, she would try to amuse him
with innocent rustic familiarity. It never occurs to her that she is not
as good as "them kings" or anybody else, she has such an idea of her own
smartness and respectability. At five o'clock she sits down to tea with
her mistress. The men-folks take supper after milking is done, the
farmer supping with his men that he may talk over the harvest. When
there is company the hired people have all the good things
going--jelly-cake sixteen streaks deep, floating islands, preserves,
tarts, pound-sweet apples boiled in sweet cider, boiled tongue,
inconceivable pickles, cabbage salad--everything. After a company supper
the hired man is just able to crawl out and perch himself on the
dooryard fence, where he sits blown up as by hydraulic pressure until
bedtime brings him the deep satisfaction of a hired man's sleep.

A circumstance that makes farmhouse servitude agreeable is, that the
hired girl's friends are welcome there. Her mother comes often to see
her. This interesting old woman has a face dried down as if to last for
ages, strong gray hair and a smile that drives back a score of wrinkles
in her cheeks, being "tough as a biled owl." She wears a black bombazine
dress, and under it a heavy quilted petticoat, in which she invariably
sleeps, goodness gracious only knows why. She comes in with the remark,
"Sorry to hender;" she calls flowers "blummies," houses, "housen,"
bouquets, "beaupots;" terminates her assertions with "'sfurzino" ("as
far as I know"), and talks with a muffled yang-yang, as if she had an
invisible tumor at the end of her nose. Her observations would remind
you of something in Browning's _Aristophanes' Apology_--

    You too, my Chrusomelolthian-Phaps
    Girl-goldling-beetle-beauty,

for example. Her conversation has the effect of hasheesh for lengthening
the apparent duration of time: the Happy Thought man would call it dry
as an extinct volcano; it drives everybody to the wall; is a perfect
battering-ram for that--all talk and no wool, you know. She is
perpetually finding mares' nests and getting news by the "grapevine
telegraph," and she is always looking for signs in the air, in the
embers, in candle-snuff, in empty teacups, as if mysterious laws like
Kepler's threaded the universe and she knew the clue to them. If the cat
turns her tail to the fire, the hired girl's mother thinks something
will happen. She has a great deal of trouble. "Trouble sticks to me,"
says she. She keeps turkeys which are creatures that assert their
American origin by running away to the woods and going wild at every
opportunity, and a respectable old lady in cap and spectacles cannot
chase wild turkeys through the woods; besides, they insist on roosting
in her neighbors' cherry trees, a proceeding sure to kill the trees. And
she keeps a cow with a genius for opening gates. Her cow has a habit of
standing meditatively before a garden gate swinging her tail, but
suddenly, after looking cautiously round, she will hook one horn into
the gate by a quick twirl of her head, and by giving it a series of
searching shakes will unfasten the latch, after which she will shoulder
herself into the garden and take off its cream in great content. These
facts are calculated to inflict a wound on neighborly peace not so deep
as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but all the king's horses and
all the king's men could not make it whole again. The hired girl's
mother keeps hens too, and being a lone woman lets them run round the
house for company. In winter you will be surprised to see a hen's face
looking from her parlor window with an air of being at home.

The hired girl's sister and sister's husband also come frequently to see
her, riding in an old wagon drawn by a large, gray, famished horse that
devours the farmer's oats by the bushel. The sister's husband is a
carpenter by trade. He usually has a large boil or carbuncle on his arm
that gives him leisure, and he sits by the kitchen fire with his chair
tilted back, rubbing a grease spot on the wall from his bushy black hair
and getting redder and redder in the face, talking about his boil until
his head looks like a lampwick that has burned too long and needs
snuffing. They stay until the sisters begin to quarrel. "Your coffee is
dish-water and your gravy paste," sneers the hired girl's sister before
she goes, alluding to the fact that thin coffee and fried pork gravy, in
which are lumps that break on the tongue and fill the mouth with dry
flour, are the vulnerable points of the farmhouse breakfast.

When there is a young girl in the kitchen, she is on good terms with the
jingle-legged boys of the farm. She is interested in their pets,
especially in that funny one of the bear tribe that has the head of a
fox with shaggy whiskers round his sharp visage, and that sits on his
hind legs and holds his food in his hands and looks around him when he
eats, and that makes friends so insinuatingly with the puppies, kittens
and ducks until he finds a chance to devour them--the raccoon. Of
evenings, when the barefoot boys sit on the kitchen lounge tired with
their long day's work, yet scuffling and knocking their elbows and knees
together, she keeps up an incessant tittering with them. And in the
beginning of the season, when they clear out the leavings of last year's
pease, beans and seed-corn from the garret, she has a good time with the
boys a-dodging the wasps that fly through the garret singing their bass
buzz and carrying blobs of mud like boxing-gloves on their feet, and
taking such irregular zig-zags their course cannot be foreseen. She
wastes her time then watching quivering fights between spiders and
unfortunate wasps that have become entangled in cobwebs among the
rafters. "She has found a te-he's nest with a lot of ha-ha's eggs in
it," says the farmer's wife, listening at the foot of the garret-stairs.
"That girl is not worth her keep." The girl has another gala-day with
the boys if the bees swarm in May: that brings a mild jollity to the
house, because

    A swarm of bees in May
    Is worth a load of hay;
                 In June
    Is worth a silver spoon;
                 In July
    It ain't worth a fly.

She thinks it is fun to see the bees make a rush at the hired man
blundering about in the way, and when he throws his hat at them,
thinking to fool them, and sets to whipping his own ears, and the wise
creatures settle in his hair, and the boys madly whisk hay in the air
for his salvation, she "laughs like ten christenings."

Much farmhouse work has a trace of pleasure. Such is going a-greening in
mornings of the still season before grasshoppers chirp or moths flutter
or bats whir or dewdrops patter--mornings when people look up and repeat
the distich,

    Mackerel sky! mackerel sky!
    It won't be long wet, and it won't be long dry.

While the girl gathers skokeweed, milkweed, dock and dandelion from the
fields, deerweed from the corners of the fence that runs around the
woods, cowslip from the fragrant swamp, and adder's tongue and
crinkle-root from the black forest earth, to make a dish loved by women
and hated by men, she sees the airy attacks of crows upon a hawk, and
his escape from them by sailing up, up, in circles delightful to
contemplate for their height and immensity to altitudes his enemies
cannot attain. At times she is near enough to a hawk to catch one glance
from his bright, observant, defiant eye--a different glance from that of
the caged bird. At times she finds an owl dreaming on the edge of a
wood, and gazes long into its strange, deep, contemplative, satisfying
eyes, and recollects the boys say an owl knows whether a hunter's gun is
loaded or not. She sees the crows make an attack on the owl too, rushing
upon it with a wild "ha! ha!" of multitudinous laughter and clattering
of wings that are met with still indifference, for the owl knows that
not one dares venture within reach of its iron claw and bending beak.
And, ah, too rarely, she beholds an eagle on the dry branch of a tall
pine. He, like the owl, encounters with nonchalance the insolent hate
of the crows, who caw, flap their wings about his head and perch around
him in myriads. When he rises, as he waves his broad and long wings in
the leisurely movements that plunge him so swiftly through the blazing
sky, the eagle will grasp a crow in his talons and drop it dead on the
plain, where the girl picks it up, a mass of crushed feathers.

To go blackberrying is a fête. It falls on a day when the morning
meadows, veiled in cobwebs strung with drops of dew, assert that though

    The wind may alter twenty ways,
      A tempest cannot blow.
    It may blow north, it still is warm;
      Or south, it still is clear;
    Or east, it smells like a clover-farm;
      Or west, no thunder fear.

They go in straw hats and sun-bonnets, with tinkling milkpails and
buckets in their wagon, and driving the sleek bay brood mare as
carefully as if she were crammed with nitro-glycerine and would blow up
at a touch. They travel merrily along a road that is nothing but "the
bare possibility of going somewhere;" they pass through a pair of bars;
they follow a lonely farm-track; they stop in a stump-lot, where they
leave the mare in a doze, and, crossing the light baked earth of the
clearing still covered with puff-balls and the dry stalks and kexes of
forest plants, they dive into the berry-patch, a steep gulf of briers
terraced by former berry-seekers. As they pick their way downward in the
hot sunshine, the pealing sound of waters comes up to meet them through
dense woods beneath their feet, for a broad, dark, perfumed stream,
margined with pebbles and yeasty and barmy with foam, rushes through the
bottom of the ravine. Refreshing is its odor when the berry-pickers
reach it: they quaff its moist breath as one would drink some
melanagogue, some old medicine able to cure sorrow or fear. The sight of
its heavy verdure and of its gurges heaped high with froth lifts them
like immortal thoughts. Half an hour of skipping stones on the water, a
lunch on a rock, a drive homeward with their wagonload of fruit, and the
day's work is done.

There is a ball in summer for the hired girl's delectation. You should
stand in the village street and look up at the lighted tavern ball-room,
and listen to the thundering floor. You would see the heads of the
village tailor, harness-maker and photographer bobbing up and down; the
hired man's head, with its heavy forelock whipping his forehead; the
white brow and swarthy cheeks of the farm-boy leaping above the rest;
and the hired girl's rosy face shaken up with scores of other young
girls' faces, wagging, whirling, swaying, in delirious arcs and
parabolas, and all wearing a perturbed and anxious expression, as if
they were hard put to it to keep track of the fiddler's "Swing pardners
once and a half; all sashay; allemand left," and so on. The hired girl
dances "every heat," and at half-past three rides home through a
landscape like a line from Milton, giving a vast idea of night and
darkness and the stillness brooding over a woody, pastoral country. As
she lifts the kitchen latch she sees a line of citron-green light behind
the eastern hills, and

    The curled moon
    Is like a little feather
    Fluttering far down the gulf.

Later comes the hired man on foot, having run the risk of being "chawed
up" by farmhouse dogs for a mile and a half. The two seek their beds
through Saharas of darkness in woodhouse, kitchen, back entry and back
stairs, and at five are both up milking and milk-skimming.

Going to funerals is a heart's delight for the hired girl. She relishes
the ride in fine weather, the good funeral sermon, the sight of other
people's best clothes and furniture, the touch of tragedy we all like in
life, the cheerful reaction after the solemnity, and the staving good
supper she cooks when they come home.

"Bill, go up to Ford Hill and find out about that funeral," is her
entreaty on the eve of the event.

Bill has been raking with the horse-rake, or, worse, mowing pease all
day. Whatever you have to do in this world, if you have ever mowed
pease, that you will acknowledge to be the hardest work you have ever
done. Bill is tired. There is a hole in the toe of his boot into which a
stiff pea-straw has thrust itself once in five minutes all day--a
circumstance exhausting to the nervous system of a hired man. And he had
the heifer to hunt before milking. The old cows wait at the bars to come
up, but the heifer stays a mile away at the top of the pasture. Bill can
see her every night lying with her ears pricked up against the sky, and
never stirring until she feels a pebble against her forehead. Then she
gallops homeward as if remembering that Bill's motto is a kick in time
saves nine. However, Bill likes to accommodate. "I'm off like a
pot-leg," says he.

"What time is it to be?" asks the hired girl when he returns.

"I forgot to ask," he replies.

"Who's a-going to preach?"

"Nobody said," is the answer.

"Is it at the house or church?"

"I didn't think to find out," returns he.

"Well, you _are_ a nimshi!" declares she.

"Go yourself next time," rejoins he.

"I wish I had your wooden head for a chopping-bowl," says she.

"Gaul darn it! you're never suited," says he.

"Needn't get your Dutch up: we're going together. You may depend on
takin' on us to that funeral: him and her is going," says she.

"Walking is too good for you, by thunder!" says he.

"It's a sin to be as mad as hops at nothing," says she.

"I'm as much of a angel as you be: put a pair of wings on you, you'd be
a hen turkey," says he.

"I ain't a goose: I've got a head on me, Bill Blowers."

"So has a pin."

"If I'm a pin, you let me be: children and fools shouldn't play with
edge tools. I'm a pin that'll go to that funeral, then. It'll be a good
funeral--singing and everything right up to the handle."

"Plague take it! I knowed how it would be when I started on the arrant,"
he grumbles.

"You're blue as a whetstone now, but a couple of fritters big as
rhinoceroses on your plate to-morrow night will set you up again, I
guess," she says.

The hired man has a monstrous inaptitude for doing an errand. The time
he spends going to the Green to get the horses shod is enormous. He can
be depended on for nothing but to come home across lots when the
dinner-horn blows.

Said the farmer to his hired man, "Go to the Holler and bring the square
immediately."--"That saws my legs off," he added soon after, seeing
"Square" Catesby pounding along the road toward the farm with a face of
great importance and concern, the hired man in full swing behind,
evidently bringing him.

Melvine, a fat, lazy farmer--so fat he had lost his voice, probably
inside of him somewhere--while dozing away a winter afternoon yawned to
such an immoderate degree that he dislocated his jaw. The hired man was
despatched to the village for a doctor, and in the course of revolving
ages returned, without the doctor. "Where is the doctor?" cried the
folks. "He wasn't to hum," replied the hired man.--"Misery to tell!
Didn't you bring one? Go back and get one," shouted they. The hired man
mogged off, hitched up again, and after an interminable period, during
which Melvine cast figurative ashes on his bald head (if they had been
actual wood-ashes and "lively" he could not have suffered worse), did
bring a doctor. The doctor gave Melvine's jaw a tap: it flew into place.
Here pause: trouble no kind heart with the hired man's fate when Melvine
regained the use of his jaw.

The hired girl's autumn and winter beam with long evenings of leisure,
when neighbors drop in for talk, games and stories go round, and
spitzenbergs and gillyflowers, nutcakes, cider, and butternuts that make
cider taste wonderfully delicious, are enjoyed. In farm-houses among the
hills games are played that were known to the hearths of the Angles.
"Saddleback" is one. The farmer takes a brand from the fire, saying,

    "Robin's alive--as live as a bee:
    If he dies in my hand, you may saddleback me;"

and gives it to his next neighbor, who repeats the verse and hands the
brand to his neighbor; and thus it goes round the circle. He in whose
hand the brand goes out ('tis the hired man, of course, who never can
scramble through his verse half fast enough) must be blind-folded and
guess what objects are held before him, all he guesses wrong to be
placed on his back at the end of his guessing. Then he lies face down on
the floor, while kitchen tables and chairs, skillets, pokers, tongs,
frying-pans, the bread-board, the rolling-pin, the egg-beater, all are
piled on his back; after which he rises slowly and overturns the things
with a house-quaking crash which is rather interesting to hear and see.
Antique stories that were never written, or, if at all, were written in
dead languages that tell no tales at the present time, fill the lapse of
the winter evening until it is time honest folks were in bed and thieves
a-jogging. Listen to this: it has the flavor of a sip of mulse from a
yew-tree keg. It was told among the Druids, maybe, long ago in gray-lit
ages a thousand years before the mediæval darkness, when King Cymbeline
was building his city of Warwick, and his fair daughter Imogen was
having adventures in a cavern. Call it _How Cunning paid better than
Industry_.

Richard was a hard-working, saving farmer: his brother Ned was a lazy
lout. Ned's cow died, and he hung the cowskin up in the barn to dry, too
lazy to carry it to market. After the cowskin was dried up, Ned started
for town to sell it. On the way, feeling lazy, he wrapped himself in his
cowskin and went to sleep in a barn's hay-mow. Night came, and some
robbers with a lantern entered the barn to count their gold. Ned with a
groan rolled himself down from the mow, horns, hoofs and tail, and the
robbers fled in terror, leaving their money behind. "Where did you get
your gold?" asked Richard, seeing his brother's treasure.--"I sold my
cowskin for a penny a hair," answered Ned. Then Richard killed his cows,
dried their skins and took them to market. Enraged at not selling them,
he fell upon his brother, tied him in a bag and took him to the river to
drown him. Before throwing him in he thought he would give Ned a good
licking; so he went to the woods to get some withes. While he was gone a
man with a flock of sheep came by, who, seeing Ned struggling in the bag
on the river-bank, asked, "What are you doing in the bag?"--"Going to
heaven," replied Ned.--"How is that?" questioned the man.--"You get in
here and you will see," said Ned. The man untied the bag, and took Ned's
place therein. Ned tied him up, and drove the sheep off to market. When
Richard returned from the woods he gave the shepherd in the bag a
basting, threw him into the river, and after the last bubble had risen
to the surface went home, where he found Ned counting a pile of gold.
"Whence that treasure?" asked Richard.--"The bubbles you saw when you
drowned me turned into sheep, and I took them to town and sold them,"
quoth Ned.

As a rule, the hired girl and the hired man are not good friends: he
derides her, and she scorns him. "I do expise that Bill Blowers: he
don't know beans when the bag's untied. He's as bashful as nothing,"
says she. She likes the farm-hand by the day: she often visits his
cotland on the edge of a woods. He really is a man to respect, knows a
reason for the crooks in the mully scythe and in the light cradle's
snath, and can tell the time of day by holding his hoe-handle straight
in the sunshine and looking at its shadow on the ground. The hired girl
particularly hates the Scotch hired man, a fellow with a face like a
wig-block, white hair and eyebrows, and a working-suit made apparently
of old snuff-rags and flatiron-holders. He keeps his eye on the
blue-ringed cider pitcher of winter evenings, and, to the huge disgust
of his comrades, drinks up the vial of cider vinegar placed in the pail
with the boiled potatoes and sweet, buttery pork which form their lunch
when they go to the forest chopping. Ralph Waldo Emerson says that an
awkward man is graceful when he is asleep or at work or agreeably
amused. It is perfectly evident that Emerson has never seen the Scotch
hired man. When _he_ is asleep his knurly limbs are twisted to an
indescribable pitch, his right elbow under his head, his left in the
small of his back; when at work he humps himself out of all proportion;
and when agreeably amused he canters about as does a new-born calf with
its legs thrust out at different angles.

The hired girl does fall in love with the English hired man on occasion.
"Stay me with flagons and comfort me with apples, for I am sick of
love!" cries the farmer's wife then. 'Tis a fine thing for the hired
man. He escapes the miseries human beings have to endure going
courting--the "slicking up," the hair-oiling, the blacking of wrinkly,
turn-up-toed fine boots, the wearing of a fine shirt that must have been
made to fit a pelican, it is so bulgy-bosomed, and the awful and
stiffening sensations a man feels when he goes into a stark neat parlor
to see a girl. He does his courting with rolled-up sleeves and the dust
of the bean-thrashing in his hair. The English hired man is a prize for
the girl. When first he comes to America he wears coarse linen, heavy
shoes, corduroys and a pair of broad, inelastic, red and white
suspenders, capable of sustaining several tons, that he bought in
Liverpool before sailing. He eats a leg of mutton and potatoes to match
at a sitting; he slips the half of a custard pie on to his plate, and
takes down a whole "boiled Indian" like smoke if it stands at his hand.
He ignores salt-spoons, sugar-spoons and butter-knives, and, if the
truth must be told, cleans his knife in his mouth. (The man whom
Professor Proctor, the astronomer, saw at Des Moines putting his knife
down his throat and sticking it into the butter, and wrote home to the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ about, was an English hired man on his travels.)
Nevertheless, living among decent people corrects these blemishes in the
Englishman, and his merits soon shine undimmed. He has a hale
countenance; he has length of limb, breadth of grasp, glorious
plenitudes of health, English self-conceit, the taste for toil and
distaste for pleasure; and he has a talent for economizing. He carries
his money around until it is worked into a hard ball in his pocket-book,
so that when he wants to lend some he has to peel it off. Vast are the
revenues of parsimony. "Sense and economy must rule in a world that is
made of sense and economy." The English hired man is the first of
adventurers. His wages are waiting for him; his farm is prepared; bees,
beeves, orchards and fields of wheat are his for the taking. The hired
girl marries him, and her career ends in a blaze of happiness and
prosperity.

MARY DEAN.




THE CHEF'S BEEFSTEAK


On the morning of the twenty-fifth of February, Mr. Nibby glanced out of
the window and unhesitatingly pronounced himself the most miserable man
in Mentone. There is a certain savage joy in such a conviction of
supreme wretchedness, and Mr. Nibby, while he called himself the most
miserable of men, experienced a feeling of satisfaction and was
conscious of a pre-eminence among his fellow-creatures. At the same
moment Fräulein Rottenhöfer looked forth from the window above, her
blond hair dishevelled, her eyes red with weeping, and wrung her hands
with a gesture of passionate despair. "Oh, why was I ever born?" she
sighed.

To a casual and philosophical observer the disquiet of these two people
might have seemed sufficiently perplexing, unless he had remembered that
our world lies within ourselves, and not in external circumstance. They
happened to gaze from their respective windows at the same time, with
this abstracted aspect, unaware of their mutual propinquity and
unacquainted with each other's history: the two stories of the hotel
might well have represented separate worlds. Fräulein Rottenhöfer had
travelled from Bonn to Mentone in the train of that distinguished
invalid the Baroness von Merk: Mr. Nibby was a forlorn waif from the New
World. He wore at this hour an Oriental dressing-gown of gorgeous hues,
but he had laid aside his cigar unsmoked, and his face was sallow with
illness as he presented it to the sun's pitiless inspection.

The beauty of the scene on which Fräulein Rottenhöfer looked with that
hand-wringing of desperation, and Mr. Nibby below stairs, in the
gorgeous dressing-gown, surveyed so dolefully, is unsurpassed on that
coast of enchantment, the Riviera--realm of pure skies, purple mountains
capped by glittering snow-peaks, the smoky gray of olive-orchards, and
gleaming sea acquiring the splendor of melting jewels in the glow of
fiery sunsets. The Hôtel des Jasmins was a small establishment of
exquisite elegance and the highest reputation: its fame for select
privacy, an irreproachable cuisine and lovely surroundings may be said
to have gone forth to all lands. The _chef_ was known to be an artist
for whose valuable services the proprietors of other mansions had basely
plotted and conspired, as the Hôtel des Jasmins was kept by a woman;
but, fortunately, their evil endeavors had been thus far frustrated by
the devotion of the great man to madame's interests. Countless nobles
had appended their names to the glorious record of the office register:
Belgian counts, French marquises and German princes had all been
sheltered beneath this roof and reflected lustre on the name of the
hotel. The suite of rooms through which plain, republican Mr. Nibby now
prowled like an unhappy ghost had once been tenanted by an English lord,
who had been kind enough to depart this life in the state bed.

"What shall I try next?" quoth Mr. Nibby gloomily, thrusting his hands
deep into the pockets of the dressing-gown. Then he opened the sash and
leaned one elbow on the window-ledge.

The whole garden sparkled with the morning freshness. Marble steps led
down to the green sward; the balustrade was draped in a luxuriant mantle
of heliotrope that loaded the air with the fragrance of clustering
blossoms; the beds of roses and geranium swept like a wave of color in
the direction of those nooks of shrubbery where the fervent heat of
noonday was tempered by a canopy of delicate foliage. Mr. Nibby's eye
roved languidly over the fountain with its column of silvery spray and
gushing spouts formed by the gaping mouths of grotesque heads. Mr. Nibby
detested that fountain: its babbling music kept him awake at night.
Beyond the garden was a margin of rustling palms and a glimpse of blue
Mediterranean sea. If any aspect of Nature could lure forth a man into
the balmy beauty of a perfect day, it must be such a vision of
loveliness as this one--the garden blooming with a Southern warmth of
color and richness of perfume, that margin of palms affording views of
the sea--a crystal shield--and on the other side a reach of orange
plantation, the boughs powdered with snowy blossoms.

The weak human clay asserted itself instead, and Mr. Nibby merely
groaned. He had passed a sleepless night; he was wretchedly ill; and, so
far from improving his health by journeying in Europe, as he had hoped
to do, he now looked back regretfully to the days when he suffered from
mild dyspepsia in his native land. Constant nausea had afflicted the
unfortunate gentleman since he came to the Mediterranean shore and took
up his residence at the charming Hôtel des Jasmins, where madame made
out the most extortionate bills, although he subsisted on the sparsest
diet.

"I might be poisoned," soliloquized Mr. Nibby with another groan.

Then his idle glance fell on two persons with a suddenly awakened
interest. The chef appeared for a moment at an opening in the
shrubbery, and then was to be discerned strolling down a sequestered
path in the direction of a kitchen-garden, where he finally paused and
became absorbed in the contemplation of various hot-beds. The mighty
artist possessed the beauty so largely bestowed by capricious Nature on
his class in France and Italy. His bearing was dignified, his features
perfect, his form as finely proportioned as that of the classical
athlete; a silky black moustache drooped to his firm chin; his eye was
large, tranquil and lustrous, reflecting all things and revealing
nothing. He wore his linen cap and apron with grace, and his feet were
encased in slippers of green carpet.

"He must be the head-cook of whom madame is so proud," murmured Mr.
Nibby. "I have half a mind to call him and inquire of him if he could
make me some honest gruel of Indian meal, well salted."

The second person was no other than Fräulein Rottenhöfer, her blond hair
smoothed and her outward aspect composed.

"Why, that is the very girl I helped on the Cologne boat!" exclaimed Mr.
Nibby with reviving animation as he put on his eye-glass.

What a light figure had the Fräulein in a blue muslin gown, with a black
velvet ribbon about her throat! How pretty the sunshine rendered those
fair tresses, piled high over a cushion on the top of her head, which
left the low, broad forehead and round face fully revealed! She walked
rapidly toward the hot-beds, where the chef lingered with a sprig of
parsley in his hand. That celebrated artist, although absorbed in a
professional reverie over certain herbs, became aware of the approach of
maidenly charms and doffed his cap.

The Fräulein disliked excessively the task assigned her. She was a
gentlewoman by birth, shy, sensitive and proud, now dependent for bread
on the whims of that wicked old woman, the baroness. The latter had said
on this particular morning, as she sat up in bed to sip her chocolate,
looking like a witch, "Fräulein Rottenhöfer, you will have the kindness
to present my compliments to the chef of this hotel, and tell him I
approve of his hare ragoût. He may serve it more frequently for my
déjeuner."

The Fräulein had flushed uneasily, and murmured, "Perhaps Fritz or
Margret could do it better."

Whereupon the baroness, who seemed to exist solely for the pleasure of
tormenting those dependent on her caprices, had rolled one black eye at
the young girl and rejoined, "You will do it personally, and to-day,
understand. Tut! doubtless you often gossip with the chef."

The Fräulein winced and compressed her lips. She, a born gentlewoman
reduced to distressing poverty, was accused of gossiping with the hotel
chef, like any other servant! However, she had watched her opportunity,
dreading exceedingly to seek the kitchens, and Fate had sent him out to
the hot-beds in order to be waylaid. She made her little speech
concerning the ragoût, and the chef laid his hand on his heart,
declaring that the lady baroness was too kind in praising his poor
efforts. Then, as the Fräulein was about to turn away, a softer
expression beamed from his fine, dark eyes, the tones of his voice
acquired the caressing intonation of Southern races, and this knight of
the copper stew-pan desired to know if mademoiselle herself had a
penchant for any particular dish. She was young, pretty and amiable,
ready to smile if the baroness would only permit, as she did now while
assuring the chef that _all_ his efforts pleased her. She tripped back
to the hotel, having accomplished the mission, and met full shock the
spectacled glance of Mr. Nibby as he stood in the window, eye-glass on
nose and Oriental dressing-gown glowing like the plumage of a tropical
bird. The Fräulein blushed, hesitated, walked on a pace, and paused,
evidently recognizing him.

"I hope you are better to-day," she said in careful English, then
vanished quickly through the door.

Mr. Nibby was profoundly interested. He forgot how he felt for ten
minutes at least. This was the very girl he had assisted on the Cologne
boat in the autumn. The service rendered was a trifling one: her pocket
had been picked coming on board the steamer; she was alone and
frightened; evidently the official was sceptical as to her story, when
Mr. Nibby stepped in opportunely, paid for another ticket and took the
young girl under his own protection to the extent of frowning upon the
advances of certain other tourists of a pronounced type. She had
explained with simplicity and dignity of manner that she was journeying
to Bonn for the purpose of applying to a great lady for the position of
companion, and had only just quitted the school where she was educated.
Then she had gone ashore at Bonn with shyly-expressed thanks, and Mr.
Nibby, good Samaritan by the way, had been swept on by the Rhine to
distant Mayence. Here she was again, at Mentone, tripping through that
tropical garden with its palms, oranges, and mantling heliotrope, with
the sunshine playing over her blond hair and fair face, the blue muslin
robe a bright and charming element of color.

The garçon appeared with Mr. Nibby's déjeuner as he turned away from the
window.

"Salad? No, I detest the sight and smell of oil," said Mr. Nibby
pettishly in response to an inquiry: then he added, in gloomy soliloquy,
"I wish there was not such an article as a beefsteak in the world."

The garçon stared at Mr. Nibby sympathetically. He was a chuckle-headed
youth in a black coat with tails that threatened to sweep the ground,
and a white cravat of stiffest quality and enormous dimensions. It might
have wrung the chef's heart to have beheld Mr. Nibby turn over his
dainty beefsteak with a fork and sniff at it disdainfully, but he was
fortunately spared that spectacle. Mr. Nibby, in his truly alarming
state of health, was restricted by his physician to the simplest diet:
thus the chef's beefsteak had become the bane of his existence. He was
like the needy adventurer who subsisted on pigeons for a month to win a
wager, or the prisoner who starved on chocolate. He lost no time in
making inquiries about the Fräulein Rottenhöfer, and the sympathetic
garçon, although still a fledgling in years and with a down on his upper
lip like that on a gosling's back, immediately saw his way clearly to
fresh perquisites of office. If Mr. Nibby, occupant of the best suite of
rooms in the hotel, was interested in a lady, any stray news concerning
her fetched by himself would naturally result in francs. There was an
abundance to impart at the outset. Mr. Nibby, kind of heart, left the
detested beefsteak to grow cold while he listened, although that
sacrifice was not a great one.

The Baroness von Merk was very old and paralytic, and possessed a
fearful temper. The sympathetic garçon drew the cork of a wine-bottle,
and opined that she was mad. She had been a celebrated court beauty in
one of the German principalities, perhaps married with the left hand by
the duke, and still retained fantastic caprices as the dregs in her
spent cup of pleasure. Her own relatives had been driven away by her
evil and malicious tongue. Her servants lived in purgatory, but then
they received good wages, the garçon affirmed solemnly as he removed the
cover of a potato-dish. What would monsieur think of her slapping the
Fräulein with a fan for not reading distinctly or for not retrimming a
lace mantle to please such a whimsical mistress? Old Margret, the
lady's-maid, was kept awake night after night to watch beside the
baroness's couch when she was nervous and feared the ghosts of her own
past. Fritz was the gray-haired person in livery, who had served too
long to permit his own digestion to be disturbed.

"The women cry, but I do not. I have lived with her forty years," Fritz
observed in those kitchen regions where the faults of the great are
freely criticised, with a gesture toward his cheeks, in texture like
parchment.

When Mr. Nibby heard this sad tale of petty tyranny his sympathies were
moved. He had bought a fresh ticket on the Cologne boat which consigned
the Fräulein to the tender mercies of the baroness. He began to
experience a degree of personal responsibility in the whole matter. How
could he help the girl out of her painful position now?

"Dear me!" ejaculated Mr. Nibby, pushing aside the untasted beefsteak,
and the garçon subsequently devoured it by stealth, seated on the back
stairs with a tray balanced precariously on his knees.

Our invalid continued to say "Dear me!" during his afternoon drive, and
on returning to the hotel either the lack of that matutinal beefsteak or
interest in the Fräulein Rottenhöfer induced him to announce that he
would dine at the _table d'hôte_. What need to add that the sympathetic
garçon placed him beside the Fräulein, who appeared slightly startled at
first, and then pleased? When the companion had begged to be spared the
ordeal of eating alone at the table d'hôte, the baroness had insisted on
compliance: her _dame de compagnie_ always dined at the table d'hôte.
Good often results from evil in this world.

Mr. Nibby enjoyed the meal amazingly. The _salle-à-manger_ was decked
with flowers, the table linen was snowy white, the plate glittered, and
there was as a central ornament a mediæval castle of spun sugar perched
on almond rocks, which must have cost the chef much time to design. It
was the fête of madame's patron saint, and the church-bells which had
resounded in the town since dawn meant also a dinner of unusual elegance
at the Hôtel des Jasmins, concluded by champagne of inferior quality,
but freely dispensed to all. The saint had brought her very good luck,
madame piously observed. Thus the meal was a sort of feast to Mr. Nibby
and the Fräulein. Both remembered the Cologne boat, and she required no
other incentive than gratitude to prompt inquiry as to her benefactor's
health. There are more unfavorable places for growth of mutual
confidence than a table d'hôte. Amidst a hum of voices and clatter of
dishes, with many lights twinkling before his dazzled eyes, Mr. Nibby
became aware that the Fräulein had an aunt living in America, whom she
desired to visit, although her ideas of distance were of the vaguest.
Poor Fräulein! belonging to that vast army of educated women teeming in
every land and needing to coin money out of their accomplishments, she
must wait on the whimsical old baroness a while longer before making a
journey to distant America.

In turn, she learned that Mr. Nibby had long promised himself the
recreation of foreign travel, and had now escaped from active
business-life for the realization. Alas! his health had improved in
England only to suffer severely on the Continent, especially in the
Hôtel des Jasmins.

"Perhaps the climate is too warm for you," she said, looking at him with
mild blue eyes.

Thus the banquet concluded. Mr. Nibby was quite animated in manner,
while the Fräulein was all the prettier for the additional color in her
cheeks induced by a little excitement. The sympathetic garçon with the
long coat-tails grinned at a sideboard where he was clashing about
knives and forks. Mr. Nibby retired, carrying away the image of his fair
neighbor for evening reverie over his cigar, and that night he slept so
soundly, without recurrence of his afflicting nausea, that he was
disposed to make of madame's saint's day one of most favorable augury
for himself.

The Fräulein went up stairs, and read aloud to the baroness. Her
thoughts strayed to the good-looking gentleman with a gray moustache,
friendly smile and well-kept, white hands who had been so kind to her.
At ten o'clock she received an unexpected gift. Lo! on the fête-day the
chef had compounded for her a second edifice in the shape of a nougat
house stocked with bonbons. She blushed, then laughed like a child.

       *       *       *       *       *

A month later, the Fräulein again sat reading to the baroness, her
thoughts astray and her tone of voice so monotonous that it acted
soporifically on her listener. The baroness nodded in her arm-chair,
with her pet poodle on her knee. The coquettish cap on her head was
grotesquely crumpled, and her false front pushed awry, while the sneer
on her pinched features only deepened their habitual expression of
ill-nature in repose. The fat poodle blinked and the Fräulein yawned. In
the large, gloomy house at Bonn was a florid portrait of the shrivelled
old creature before her, there represented in slim youth, in blue
velvet, with state jewels clasped about her throat. Outside, the garden
still glowed with vivid patches of flowers, but the sky was dull and the
piercing mistral swept clouds of dust over the boundary-wall
occasionally. Again did the chef stroll down that remote path in the
shrubbery, where the boundary of his dominions seemed marked by the
forcing-beds of the kitchen-garden.

The Fräulein's eyes sparkled with a sudden determination. She closed her
book softly and glanced apprehensively at the slumbering baroness. The
poodle winked one eye at her, as if perfectly comprehending the
situation, and laid its nose on two little folded paws. Then she slipped
noiselessly out of the room, ran down stairs, and met Mr. Nibby in the
hall. He looked very ill, and shook his head in response to her inquiry
concerning his health. Mr. Nibby's health could scarcely be worse, and
yet he lingered at the Hôtel des Jasmins, where he constantly met
Fräulein Rottenhöfer. Sympathy is the first requisite of the human
heart. Such sympathy as the young German lady had unexpectedly required
of the American tourist on the Cologne boat she was striving to return
in another fashion.

"I have a thought," she exclaimed with unusual animation of manner as
she now encountered the invalid. "Will you be so kind to come in ze
pavilion while I talk with ze chef?"

Mr. Nibby, rather puzzled, slid into the pavilion, and the Fräulein
paused in the path beyond to accost her unconscious victim. Through the
mantling vines Mr. Nibby could witness the smiles this really ingenuous
young creature was prepared to lavish on the susceptible chef because
already aware of her power. The Fräulein's tongue ran nimbly enough in
French. It was now the turn of beefsteak to be praised. Did the baroness
like his beefsteak then? the chef inquired, hand on heart, large eyes
darting admiring glances, and yet with a wholly inscrutable smile. The
Fräulein colored slightly: her gaze sought the ground. Unquestionably,
the baroness approved. The dish was always most skilfully cooked, the
gravy exquisitely flavored, and the meat fibre possessed the tenderness
of game, the Fräulein said. The chef, always with a sprig of parsley
twirling between his fingers to assist conversation, confessed modestly
that there was skill in his treatment of the prosaic beefsteak.

Mr. Nibby listened, fascinated, and with a dawning suspicion in his
mind. What was the Fräulein striving to accomplish? Actually, this
daughter of Eve was begging to be instructed in the preparation of the
culinary triumph. Perhaps she had never received before such a tribute
to her charms as when the chef, rolling his fine eyes languishingly,
confessed himself to be wax in her hands, and ready to yield up one of
the secrets of his profession without the bribe of gold. The steak need
not be the best quality of beef: even a tough and inferior portion would
serve. The chef approached nearer his questioner while vouchsafing this
explanation, and lowered his voice mysteriously. The Fräulein winced,
but stood her ground. Ah, that was much to know, she assented with a
bright smile, if one should be required to cook for an invalid. The chef
nodded sagely. The steak must be laid in oil for twelve hours, which
made it deliciously tender, then removed, dried slightly, and broiled.
He never cooked with oil for foreigners, he added with scarcely veiled
contempt of tone.

Mr. Nibby groaned in the summer-house. What! the chef's beefsteak was
prepared in oil, and he had been born with such an antipathy to the
luxury that it made him uncomfortable to sit at table opposite a castor!
Could his daily illness be attributed to the simple diet selected in
the belief that a beefsteak was the most harmless food for a dyspeptic?

The Fräulein returned to him radiant with success. "I have thought it
must be what you eat," she exclaimed.

"How clever women are!" said Mr. Nibby fervently. "You always jump at
conclusions, and now I am placed under an everlasting obligation."

"Then I am glad," she answered simply.

Mr. Nibby took her hand and kissed it. "Would you like to visit your
aunt in America?" he inquired tenderly.

The mistral blew and the sky was gray. Up in her salon the baroness had
awakened, and the poodle on her knee not only winked one eye, but cocked
an ear apprehensively.

"Continue the reading: I am not asleep," croaked the old lady.

No response. Then the baroness opened her eyes wide, and they flashed
ominously. Never had Fräulein Rottenhöfer dared to quit her seat before.
The crash of an overturned chair succeeded the peal of a bell pulled by
a tremulous hand, and then there was a stifled scream.

When the Fräulein came up stairs later in guilty haste, she paused to
fasten an exquisite rose, gift of Mr. Nibby, in her dress, and the
flower rivalled only the fine color of her own cheeks.

The baroness lay on the floor, stiff and rigid, with old Margret
wringing her hands helplessly, and old Fritz looking on with solemnity.
For the first time on record these two faithful retainers dared to
express a candid opinion in her presence. "It's another stroke," said
Fritz. "See to what a pass you have brought yourself by temper,
mistress!"

"You could not walk alone," moaned Margret.

The baroness, dumb as if her features were frozen in a mask, lay in
impotent and awful silence, staring back at them.

That night Mr. Nibby formed two resolutions: one was to ask the Fräulein
Rottenhöfer to marry him, and the other never to eat another of the
chef's beefsteaks.

In the garden of the Hôtel des Jasmins the flowers still bloom, the
palms rustle and the orange trees change their snowy blossoms to balls
of gold. Madame has occasion to be dissatisfied with her celebrated
artist of the kitchen. He seasons his sauces savagely with excess of
fiery condiments; there is no nice discrimination exercised in his
vols-au-vent; the treatment of his entrées is commonplace, not to say
coarse; he has been known to burn the soup hopelessly. He no longer
seeks the garden in a leisure hour of the morning, but may be seen in
the twilight standing with his back to the wall, smoking a cheap cigar
and staring moodily at the windows once occupied by the pretty Fräulein.
He sighs profoundly.

The Baroness von Merk has been carried back to her home on the Rhine by
the faithful Fritz, a helpless burden, to be disposed of according to
the judgment of others. What the air-castles of the chef might have
been, built out of such rainbows as the Fräulein's smiles and praises,
must ever remain buried in his own bosom. Ladies have been known to
condescend to those of low estate before, especially when such personal
beauty as his own manly perfections were in the balance. Did the chef
dream of a rival Hôtel des Jasmins, with the Fräulein as attractive
landlady, while he managed the whole establishment?

Alas, poor chef! left to sigh in the shadowy garden, while a most
blooming bride crosses the Atlantic with fortunate bridegroom Mr. Nibby,
miraculously restored in health and spirits. The first-cabin passengers
are puzzled at table by the archness with which Mrs. Nibby proffers
beefsteak to her husband, and his shudder of aversion as he rejects the
dish.

If it is true that one man's meat is another man's poison, may not
unconscious Mr. Nibby be deemed quits with the disconsolate chef in
bearing away Fräulein Rottenhöfer as his wife?

VIRGINIA W. JOHNSON.




LONDON AT MIDSUMMER.


I believe it is supposed to require a good deal of courage to confess
that one has spent the month of August in London; and I will therefore,
taking the bull by the horns, plead guilty at the very outset to this
dishonorable weakness. I might attempt some ingenious extenuation of it.
I might say that my remaining in town had been the most unexpected
necessity or the merest inadvertence; I might pretend I liked it--that I
had done it, in fact, for the love of the thing; I might claim that you
don't really know the charms of London until on one of the dog-days you
have imprinted your boot-sole in the slumbering dust of Belgravia, or,
gazing along the empty vista of the Drive in Hyde Park, have beheld, for
almost the first time in England, a landscape without figures. But
little would remain of these specious apologies save the naked fact that
I had distinctly failed to retire from the metropolis--either on the
first of August with the ladies and children, or on the thirteenth with
the members of Parliament, or on the fifteenth when the grouse-shooting
began. (I am not sure that I have got my dates right to a day, but these
were about the proper opportunities.) I have, in fact, survived the
departure of everything genteel, and the four millions of persons who
remained behind with me have been witnesses of my shame.

I cannot pretend, on the other hand, that, having remained in town, I
have found it a very odious or painful experience. Being a stranger, I
have not felt it necessary to incarcerate myself during the day and
steal abroad only under cover of the darkness--a line of conduct imposed
by public opinion, if I am to trust the social criticism of the weekly
papers (which I am far from doing), upon the native residents who allow
themselves to be overtaken by the unfashionable season. I have indeed
always had a theory that few things could be more pleasant than during
the hot weather to have a great city, and a large house within it, quite
to one's self. If it were necessary, I could point with some exultation
to the fact that I have never come so near as on the present occasion to
an opportunity of testing my theory; and I must add that I have now
tested it under circumstances which have deprived the experiment of half
of its value.

To make it perfect, the summer should be very hot and the house in which
you live very cool. You should keep it cool by keeping it dark--just
dark enough not to prevent you from reading a charming old book as you
lie on the sofa in one of the lighter rooms. Your costume as you lie on
the sofa and wander about from chamber to chamber should be of the most
imponderable; in fact, you should have on almost no clothes at all. To
increase the comfort of your undressedness you must have no
fellow-inmates but the servants, who remain below stairs and adapt
themselves to the temperature as best they can. They are free, of
course, to sit in the cellar. And then you must have several other
resources--resources which, if you are an American, you may be pardoned
for believing to be most easily secured in the case of your trying your
experiment in your native land. The carpets must all have been taken up
and the floors covered with straw matting in pale, tender colors. There
must be an everlasting gush of the coldest water into a bath big enough
for you, if the fancy takes you, to drown yourself in. You must have
plenty of peaches and pears, of grapes and melons. You must commit
unseen excesses in the consumption of ice-cream. You must sit in the
evening on a balcony and, looking up and down the empty street, see here
and there in other balconies the gleam of a white robe in the darkness.

These harmless conditions have not been combined in my own metropolitan
sojourn, and I have received an impression that in London it would be
rather difficult for a person not having the command of a good deal of
powerful machinery to find them united. English summer weather is rarely
hot enough to make it necessary to darken one's house and disrobe. The
present year has indeed in this respect been "exceptional," as any year
is, for that matter, that one spends anywhere. But the manners of the
people are, to American eyes, a sufficient indication that at the best
(or the worst) the highest flights of the thermometer in the British
Islands are not particularly startling. People live with closed windows
in August, very much as they do in January, and there is to the eye no
appreciable difference in the character of their apparel. A "bath" in
England, for the most part all the year round, means a little portable
tin tub and a sponge. Peaches and pears, grapes and melons, are not a
more obvious ornament of the market at mid-summer than at Christmas.
This matter of peaches and melons, by the way, offers one of the best
examples of that fact to which a foreign commentator on English manners
finds himself constantly recurring, and to which he grows at last almost
ashamed of alluding--the fact that the beauty and luxury of the
country--that elaborate system known and revered all over the world as
"English comfort"--is a distinctly limited and restricted, an
essentially private, affair. I am not one of those irreverent strangers
who talk of English "fruit" as a rather audacious _plaisanterie_, though
I could see very well what was meant a short time since by an anecdote
related to me in a tone of contemptuous generalization by a couple of my
fellow-countrywomen. They had arrived in London in the dog-days, and,
lunching at their hotel, had asked to be served with some fruit. The
hotel was of the stateliest pattern, and they were waited upon by a
functionary whose grandeur was proportionate. This gentleman bowed and
retired, and after a long delay, reappearing, placed before them, with
an inimitable gesture, a dish of gooseberries and currants. It appeared
upon investigation that these acrid vegetables were the only "fruit"
that the establishment could undertake to supply; and it seemed to
increase the irony of the situation that the establishment was as near
as possible to Buckingham Palace. I say that the heroines of my anecdote
seemed disposed to generalize: this was sufficiently the case, I mean,
to give me a pretext for assuring them that in Devonshire, in
Warwickshire, in Norfolk, in Dorset and in twenty other English counties
whose names they had certainly heard, the most beautiful peaches and
melons might be seen growing in considerable numbers in the most
admirably organized hot-houses in the depths of the most extensive and
picturesque properties. My auditors tossed their heads, of course, at
the counties, the peaches and melons, the admirable hot-houses and the
extensive properties; and indeed at their ascetic hostelry close to
Buckingham Palace these reflections were but scantily consoling. But
these are the things they have had in mind, the reasonable English
people whom in other countries I have heard upholding the superiority of
English fruit. I have heard them argue the case most resolutely against
Frenchmen and Americans, but, in reality, the contending parties were
talking about two very different things. One side was talking about
fruit as a luxury, and the other about fruit as a necessity. The
Englishman was thinking of the soft-colored, smooth-skinned peaches that
he had been invited down into Dorsetshire to eat at eight o'clock in the
evening at a brilliantly-lighted table: the American and the Frenchman
were thinking of these articles as they importuned you from heaped-up
fruit stalls in your daily walk. The difference brings me back to what I
referred to as the "private" character of this particular branch of
English comfort. A stranger may spend a summer in London and never be
reminded of the existence of pears and grapes. Those establishments
known in America as fruit-stalls are conspicuous by their absence, and
their office is in no appreciable degree supplied by the inns, the
restaurants or the clubs. I believe there are peaches of great rotundity
to be obtained at Covent Garden market at half a crown apiece, but
Covent Garden is hardly on the line of one's daily strolls. The
irritated stranger, therefore, sitting down to gooseberries at a
"palace" hotel, may be pardoned for unflattering generalizations. He
gradually learns, if he remains in England, that the relation of hotels
and restaurants to the life of the country is here essentially different
from what it is elsewhere. It may be said, generally, that such places,
at their best, represent the maximum comfort of the community. The
traveller in England must teach himself that they represent the minimum,
and he must learn the further lesson that "English comfort"--the comfort
which, as I said just now, is known and venerated all over the
world--means, strictly, the maximum comfort, the privilege, of a small
minority, of the opulent and luxurious class. To make good inns and good
restaurants there must be a comfortable _bourgeoisie_, for people of
great fortune are able to do things in a way that makes them independent
of a public fund of entertainment.

It is to this public fund of entertainment that the desultory stranger
in any country chiefly appeals, especially in summer weather; and as I
have implied that there is little encouragement in England to such an
appeal, it may appear remarkable that I should not have found London, at
this season, at least as uncongenial as orthodoxy pronounces it. But
one's liking for London--a stranger's liking at least--is at the best an
anomalous and illogical sentiment, of which he may feel it hardly more
difficult to give a categorical account at one time than at another. I
am far from meaning by this that there are not in this mighty metropolis
a thousand sources of interest, entertainment and delight: what I mean
is, that for one reason and another, with all its social resources, the
place lies heavy on the foreign consciousness. It seems grim and dusty,
fierce and unbeautiful. And yet the foreign consciousness accepts it at
least with a kind of grudging satisfaction, and finds something warm and
comfortable, something that if removed would be greatly missed, in its
heavy pressure. It must be admitted, however, that, granting that every
one is out of town, your choice of pastimes is not embarrassing. If it
has been your fortune to spend a certain amount of time in foreign
cities, London will seem to you but slenderly provided with innocent
diversions. This, indeed, brings us back simply to that question of the
absence of a "public fund" of amusement to which reference was just now
made. You must give up the idea of going to sit somewhere in the open
air, to eat an ice and listen to a band of music. You will find neither
the seat, the ice nor the band; but, on the other hand, faithful to your
profession of observant foreigner, you may supply the place of these
delights by a little private meditation upon the deep-lying causes of
the English indifference to them. In such reflections nothing is
idle--every grain of testimony counts; and one need therefore not be
accused of jumping too suddenly from small things to great if one traces
a connection between the absence of ices and music and the aristocratic
constitution of English society. This aristocratic constitution of
English society is the great and ever-present fact to the mind of a
stranger: there is hardly a detail of English life that does not appear
in some degree to point to it. It is really only in a country in which a
good deal of democratic feeling prevails that people of "refinement," as
we say in America, will be willing to sit at little round tables, on a
pavement or a gravel-walk, at the door of a café. The upper classes are
too genteel, and the lower classes are too miserable. One must hasten to
add too, in justice, that the upper classes are, as a general thing,
quite too well furnished with entertainments of their own: they have
those special resources which I mentioned a while since. They are always
rich, and are naturally independent of communistic pleasures. If you can
sit on a terrace in a high-walled garden and have your _café noir_
handed to you in Pompadour cups by servants in powder and plush, you
have hardly a decent pretext for going to a public-house. In France and
Italy, in Germany and Spain, the count and countess will sally forth and
encamp for the evening under a row of colored lamps upon the
paving-stones, but it is ten to one that the count and countess live on
a single floor up several pairs of stairs. They are, however, I think,
not appreciably affected by considerations which operate potently in
England. An Englishman who should propose to sit down at a café-door
would find himself remembering that he is exposing himself to the danger
of meeting his social inferiors. The danger is great, because his social
inferiors are so numerous; and I suspect that if we could look straight
into the English consciousness we should be interested to find how
serious a danger it appears. It is not of the fear of contact with the
great herd of one's unknown fellow-citizens that I speak: it is of the
possibility of meeting individuals with whom in the business of life one
has had some sort of formal relations--one's grocer, one's bootmaker,
one's apothecary, even one's solicitor. To an American, a Frenchman, an
Italian, there is of necessity nothing alarming in such an incident:
there is at the worst a way of taking it easily. But as it looms up
before an Englishman it has the power of making him extremely
uncomfortable; and, combined with a corresponding anxiety on the part of
the inferior himself, this prospective discomfort operates as a
chronically deterrent force. These, however, are mysteries which I
should not have allowed myself to deal with so parenthetically. I have
ventured to do so because there is a very familiar illustration of the
phenomenon I speak of. It may be found in the usual demeanor of English
servants. If you "meet" an English servant--that is, if you encounter
him at a moment when he is not literally executing an order for you--if
you are left in a room with him, if you pass him in the hall, if you are
confronted with him in the portico, you perceive that his effort is
immediately to spare you a possibly offensive realization of his
presence. He has been taught that at such times he is uncomfortable to
you--that you don't, mentally as it were, know what to do with him. His
place in the universe is to answer your bell, and from your point of
view he should only exist by intermission. He has been trained to adapt
himself to this point of view, and he does so with remarkable success.
He not only rigidly abstains from bidding you good-morning, but he
abstains equally from responding to the good-morning which in a moment
of culpable inconsistency you may have offered him. A couple of months
since, paying a visit to a friend in the country, I drove to the door
with a gentleman whom I had met at the station, and who was engaged in
the same pleasant errand as myself. The butler who admitted us stood
motionless and inarticulate as we crossed the threshold, with his eyes,
in the manner of butlers, fixed upon our boots. He was a very admirable
servant, and having, in the course of twenty-four hours, taken the
measure of this fact, I on the following day called my companion's
attention to it. My companion was an Englishman, but he was young and
perhaps foolishly sentimental. "Oh yes, he's an excellent servant," he
said, "but he might give one a faint sign of recognition when one
arrives."--"You had seen him, then," I asked, "before?"--"I have stayed
in the house half a dozen times, and half a dozen times on departing I
have given him the sidelong tip; yet whenever I arrive he gives me a
stony stare, as if I were a perfect stranger." But the stony stare, for
butlers, is not simply the English custom: I think it may be said that
it is the English ideal.

I have wandered very far from the potential little tables for ices
in--where shall I say?--in Oxford street; but, after all, there is no
reason why our imagination should hover about them. I am afraid they
would not be very pleasant. In such matters everything hangs together,
and I am afraid that the customs of the Boulevard des Italiens and the
Piazza Colonna would not harmonize with the scenery of the great London
thoroughfare. A gin-palace right and left and a detachment of the London
rabble in an admiring semicircle,--these, I confess, strike me as some
of the more obvious features of the affair. At this time, however, one's
social studies must, at the least, be studies of low life, for wherever
you may go for a stroll or to spend your summer afternoon the
unfashionable side of things is uppermost. There is no one in the parks
save the rough characters who are lying on their faces in the
sheep-polluted grass. These people are always tolerably numerous in the
Green Park, through which I frequently pass, and I never fail to drop a
wondering glance upon them. But your wonder will go far if it begins to
bestir itself on behalf of weary British tramps. You see among them some
magnificent specimens of weariness. Their velveteen legs and their
colossal high-lows, their purple necks and car-tips, their knotted
sticks and little greasy hats, make them look like stage villains in a
realistic melodrama. I may do them great injustice, but I always assume
that they have had a taste of penal servitude--that they have paid the
penalty of stamping on some one with those huge square heels that are
turned up to the summer sky. But, actually, they are innocent enough,
for they are sleeping as peacefully as the most accomplished
philanthropist, and it is their look of having walked over half England,
and of being confoundedly hungry and thirsty, that constitutes their
romantic attractiveness. These six feet of brown grass are their present
sufficiency, but how long will they sleep, whither will they go next,
and whence did they come last? You permit yourself to wish that they
might sleep for ever and go nowhere else at all.

The month of August is so unfashionable in London that going a few days
since to Greenwich, that famous resort, I found it possible to get but
half a dinner. The hotel (where you are supposed to be able to obtain
one of the best dinners in England) had put out its stoves and locked up
its pantry. But for this discovery I should have mentioned the little
expedition to Greenwich as a charming relief to the monotony of a London
August. Greenwich and Richmond are, classically, the two suburban
dining-places. I don't know how it may be at this time with Richmond,
but the Greenwich incident brings me back (I hope not once too often) to
the element of what has lately been called "particularism" in English
pleasures. It was in obedience to a perfectly logical argument that the
Greenwich hotel had, as I say, locked up its pantry. All genteel people
leave London after the first week in August, _ergo_ those who remain
behind are not genteel, and cannot therefore rise to the conception of a
"fish dinner." Why, then, should we have anything ready? I had other
impressions, fortunately, of this interesting suburb, and I hasten to
declare that during the genteel period the dinner at Greenwich is the
best of all dinners. It begins with fish and it continues with fish:
what it ends with--except songs and speeches and affectionate
partings--I hesitate to affirm. It is a kind of mermaid reversed; for I
do know, in a vague way, that the tail of the creature is elaborately
and interminably fleshy. If it were not grossly indiscreet I should risk
an allusion to the particular banquet which was the occasion of my
becoming acquainted with the Greenwich _cuisine_. I should say that it
is very pleasant to sit in a company of clever and distinguished men
before the large windows that look out upon the broad brown Thames. The
ships swim by as if they were part of the entertainment and put down in
the bill: the afternoon light fades ever so slowly. We eat all the fish
of the sea, and wash them down with liquids that bear no resemblance to
salt water. We partake of any number of those sauces with which,
according to the French adage, one could dine upon one's grandmother. To
speak of the particular merits of my companions would indeed be
indiscreet, but there is nothing indelicate in expressing a high
appreciation of the manly frankness and robustness of English
conviviality. The stranger--the American at least--who finds himself in
the company of a number of Englishmen assembled for a convivial purpose
becomes conscious of a certain indefinable and delectable something
which, for want of a better name, he will call their superior richness
of temperament. He takes note of the liberal share of the individual in
the magnificent temperament of the race. This seems to him one of the
finest things in the world, and his satisfaction will take a keener edge
from such an incident as the single one I may permit myself to mention.
It was one of those little incidents which can occur only in an old
society--a society in which every one that a newcomer meets strikes him
as having in some degree or other a sort of historic identity, being
connected with some one or something that he has heard of. If they are
not the rose, they have lived more or less near it. There is an old
English song-writer whom we all know and admire--whose songs are sung
wherever the language is spoken. Of course, according to the law I just
hinted at, one of the gentlemen sitting opposite must be his
great-grandson. After dinner there are songs, and the gentleman trolls
out one of his ancestral ditties with the most charming voice and the
most finished art.

I have still other memories of Greenwich, where there is a charming old
park, on a summit of one of whose grassy undulations the famous
observatory is perched. To do the thing completely, you must take
passage upon one of the little grimy sixpenny steamers that ply upon the
Thames, perform the journey by water, and then, disembarking, take a
stroll in the park to get up an appetite for dinner. I find an
irresistible charm in any sort of river-navigation, but I am rather at a
loss as to how to speak of the little voyage from Westminster Bridge to
Greenwich. It is in truth the most prosaic possible form of being
afloat, and to be recommended rather to the inquiring than to the
fastidious mind. It initiates you into the duskiness, the blackness, the
crowdedness, the intensely commercial character of London. Few European
cities have a finer river than the Thames, but none certainly has
expended more ingenuity in producing an ugly river-front. For miles and
miles you see nothing but the sooty backs of warehouses, or perhaps they
are the sooty fronts: in these rigidly-unfeatured edifices it is
impossible to distinguish. They stand massed together on the banks of
the wide, turbid stream, which is fortunately of too opaque a quality to
reflect their hideousness. A damp-looking, dirty blackness is the
universal tone. The river is almost black, and is covered with black
barges: above the black housetops, from among the far-stretching docks
and basins, rises a dusky wilderness of masts. The little puffing
steamer is dingy and begrimed: it belches a sable cloud that keeps you
company as you go. In this carboniferous shower your companions, who
belong chiefly, indeed, to the less brilliant classes, assume an
harmonious dinginess; and the whole picture, glazed over with the
glutinous London mist, becomes a masterpiece of bituminous-looking
color. But it is very impressive in spite of its want of lightness and
brightness, and in its own sombre fashion it is extremely picturesque.
Like so many of the aspects of English civilization that are untouched
by elegance or grace, it has the merit of being serious. Viewed in this
intellectual light, the polluted river, the sprawling barges, the
dead-faced warehouses, the dreary people, the atmospheric impurities,
become richly suggestive. It sounds rather absurd to say so, but all
this sordid detail reminds me of nothing less than the wealth and power
of the British empire at large; so that a kind of metaphysical
picturesqueness hovers over the scene, and supplies what may be
literally wanting. I don't exactly understand the association, but I
know that when I look off to the left at the East India Docks, or pass
under the dark, hugely-piled bridges, where the railway trains and the
human processions are for ever moving, I feel a kind of imaginative
thrill. The tremendous piers of the bridges, in especial, seem the very
pillars of the British empire.

It is doubtless owing to this habit of obtrusive reverie that the
sentimental tourist thinks it very fine to see the Greenwich Observatory
lifting its two modest little brick towers. The sight of this useful
edifice gave me an amount of pleasure which may at first seem
unreasonable. The reason was, simply, that I used to see it as a child
in woodcuts in school geographies, and in the corners of large maps
which had a glazed, sallow surface, and which were suspended in
unexpected places, in dark halls and behind doors. The maps were hung so
high that my eyes could reach only to the lower corners, and these
corners usually contained a print of a strange-looking house standing
among trees upon a grassy bank that swept down before it with the most
engaging steepness. I used always to think that it must be an ineffable
joy to run straight down that bank. Close at hand was usually something
printed about something being at such and such a number of degrees "east
of Greenwich." Why east of Greenwich? The vague wonder that the childish
mind felt on this point gave the place a mysterious importance, and
seemed to put it into relation with the difficult and fascinating parts
of geography--the countries of fantastic outline and the lonely-looking
pages of the atlas. Yet there it stood the other day, the spot from
which longitude is calculated; there was the plain little façade with
the old-fashioned cupolas; there was the bank on which it would be so
delightful not to be able to stop running. It made me feel terribly old
to find that I did not forthwith proceed to taste of this delight. There
are indeed a great many steep banks in Greenwich Park, which tumbles up
and down in the most picturesque fashion. It is a charming place, rather
shabby and footworn, as befits a strictly popular resort, but with a
character all its own. It is filled with magnificent dwarfish chestnut
trees, planted in long, convergent avenues, with trunks of extraordinary
girth and limbs that fling a dusky shadow far over the grass; there are
plenty of benches, and there are deer as tame as sleepy children; and
from the tops of the bosky hillocks there are views of the widening
Thames, and the moving ships, and the two classic inns by the waterside,
and the great pompous buildings of the old hospital, which have been
despoiled of their ancient pensioners and converted into a kind of naval
academy.

Taking note of all this, I arrived at a far-away angle in the wall of
the park, where a little postern door stood ajar. I pushed the door
open, and found myself, by a picturesque transition, upon Blackheath
Common. One had often heard of Blackheath: well, here it was--a great
green, breezy place, where various lads in corduroys were playing
cricket. I always like an English common: it may be curtailed and
cockneyfied, as this one was--which had lamp-posts stuck about on its
turf and a fresh-painted banister all around--but it is sure to be one
of the places that remind you vividly that you are in England. Even if
the turf is too much trodden, there is, to foreign eyes, an English
greenness about it, and there is something peculiarly insular in the way
the high-piled, weather-bearing clouds hang over it and drizzle down
their gray light. Still further to identify this spot, here was the
British soldier emerging from two or three of the roads, with his cap
upon his ear, his white gloves in one hand and his foppish little cane
in the other. He wore the uniform of the artillery, and I asked him
where he had come from. I learned that he had walked over from Woolwich,
and that this feat might be accomplished in half an hour. Inspired again
by vague associations, I proceeded to accomplish its equivalent. I bent
my steps to Woolwich, a place which I knew, in a general way, to be a
nursery of British valor. At the end of my half hour I emerged upon
another common, where local color was still more intense. The scene was
very entertaining. The open grassy expanse was immense, and the evening
being beautiful it was dotted with strolling soldiers and townsfolk.
There were half a dozen cricket-matches: the soldiers were playing
against the lads in corduroys. At one end of this peaceful _campus
martius_, which stretches over a hilltop, rises an interminable
façade--one of the fronts of the artillery barracks. It has a very
honorable air, and more windows and doors, I imagine, than any building
in Britain. There is a great clean parade before it, and there are many
sentinels pacing in front of neatly-kept places of ingress to officers'
quarters. Everything that looks out upon it is military--the
distinguished college (where the French prince imperial lately studied
the art of war) on one side; a sort of model camp--a collection of the
tidiest plank huts--on the other; a hospital, on a well-ventilated site,
at the remoter end. And then in the town below there are a great many
more military matters--barracks on an immense scale; a dock-yard that
presents an interminable dead wall to the street; an arsenal which the
gatekeeper (who refused to admit me) declared to be "five miles" in
circumference; and, lastly, grogshops enough to inflame the most craven
spirit. These latter institutions I glanced at on my way to the
railway-station at the bottom of the hill; but before departing I had
spent half an hour in strolling about the common in vague consciousness
of certain emotions that are called into play (I speak but for myself)
by almost any glimpse of the imperial machinery of this great country.
The glimpse may be of the slightest: it stirs a peculiar sentiment. I
know not what to call this sentiment unless it be simply an admiration
for the greatness of England. The greatness of England: that is a very
pregnant phrase, but I am not using it analytically. I use it only as it
sounds in the imagination of any American who really enjoys the
enjoyable parts of this head-spring of his patriotism. I mean the great
part that England has played in history, the great space she has
occupied, her tremendous might, her far-stretching sway. That these
clumsily-general ideas should be suggested by the sight of some
infinitesimal fraction of the English administrative system may seem to
indicate a too hysterical cast of fancy; but if so, I must plead guilty
to the weakness. Why should a sentry-box more or less set one thinking
of the glory of this little island, which has manufactured the means of
so vast a dominion? This is more than I can say; and all I shall attempt
to say is, that in the difficult days that are now elapsing a
sympathetic stranger finds his meditations singularly quickened. It is
the picturesque element in English history that he has chiefly cared
for, and he finds himself wondering whether the picturesque epoch is
completely closed. It is a moment when all the nations of Europe seem to
be doing something, and he waits to see what England, who has done so
much, will do. He has been meeting of late a good many of his
country-people--Americans who live on the Continent and pretend to speak
with assurance of continental ways of feeling. These people have been
passing through London, and many of them are in that irritated condition
of mind which appears to be the portion of the American sojourner in the
British metropolis when he is not given up to the delights of the
historic sentiment. They have affirmed with emphasis that the
continental nations have ceased to care a straw for what England thinks;
that her traditional prestige is completely extinct; that General
Ignatieff twisted Lord Salisbury round his finger; and that the affairs
of Europe will be settled quite independently of the power whose capital
is on the Thames. England will do nothing, will risk nothing: there is
no cause bad enough for her not to find a selfish interest in it--there
is no cause good enough for her to fight about it. Poor old England is
exploded: it is about time she should haul in her nets. To all this the
sympathetic stranger replies that, in the first place, he does not
believe a word of it; and, in the second place, he does not care a fig
for it--care, that is, what the continental nations think. If the
greatness of England were really waning, it would be to him as a
personal grief; and as he strolls about the breezy common at Woolwich,
with all those mementoes of British dominion around him, he is quite too
softly exhilarated to admit discomposure.

He wishes, nevertheless, as I said before, that England would do
something--something striking and powerful and picturesque. He asks
himself what she can do, and he remembers that that greatness of England
which he so much admires was formerly much exemplified in her "taking"
something. Can't she "take" something now? There is the _Spectator_, who
wants her to occupy Egypt: can't she occupy Egypt? The _Spectator_
considers this her moral duty--inquires even whether she has a right
_not_ to bestow the blessings of her beneficent rule upon the
down-trodden Fellaheen. I found myself in company with a very
intelligent young Frenchman a day or two after this eloquent plea for a
partial annexation of the Nile had appeared in the most ingenious of
journals. Some allusion was made to it, and my companion proceeded to
pronounce it a masterpiece of British hypocrisy. I don't know how
powerful a defence I made of it, but while I read it I certainly had
been carried away by it. I recalled it while I pursued my
contemplations, but I recalled at the same time that sadly prosaic
speech of Mr. Gladstone's to which it had been a reply. Mr. Gladstone
had said that England had much more urgent duties than the occupation of
Egypt: she had to attend to the great questions of--What were the great
questions? Those of local taxation and the liquor-laws. Local taxation
and the liquor-laws! The phrase, to my ears, just then made a painful
discord. These were not the things I had been thinking of: it was not as
she should bend anxiously over these doubtless interesting subjects that
the sympathetic stranger would seem to see England in his favorite
posture--that, as Macaulay says, of hurling defiance at her foes. Of
course, Mr. Gladstone was probably right, but Mr. Gladstone was not a
sympathetic stranger.

H. JAMES, JR.




SVEN DUVA.

FROM THE SWEDISH OF JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG.


    Sven Duva's sire a sergeant was, with many winters white:
    In Eighty-eight, though past his prime, he went into the fight,
    And after living on his land he reared him fruit and corn,
    While children nine around him grew, and Sven was youngest born.

    None knows if Duva's father was with sense enough endowed
    To still keep some part for himself, and share with such a crowd;
    But it must be unto the eight far more than right did fall,
    For scarcely to the latest born fell any share at all.

    Yet, none the less, young Sven grew up broad-shouldered, strong of limb:
    He hewed the tree and ploughed the glebe, for toil was play to him.
    More mild than many a wiser man, more prompt he hied along,
    And turned his hand to anything, but everything turned wrong.

    "In God's name, witless son of mine, what shall become of thee?"
    So oft the white-haired sergeant cried in his perplexity,
    That 'neath the burden of the tune Sven's patience fell to earth,
    And weighed he, far as in him lay, his own degree of worth.

    So, when upon a certain day the sergeant raised again
    The burden of the tiresome tune, "What wilt thou be, O Sven?"
    The old man scarce believed his ears when, all unwontedly,
    Sven's massive jaws wide opened with, "A soldier I will be!"

    Then loud the sergeant laughed in scorn, and answered mockingly,
    "What! thou wouldst bear a rifle?--thou, a booby! Shame on thee!"
    "Why," said the boy, "here 'neath my hands unhandy works each thing:
    Less handiness may serve to die for country and for king."

    Old Duva stood a while amazed, then went in grieving mood,
    And pack on back Sven forth did fare to where the barracks stood.
    His stature fine, his sturdy height, all lesser needs o'erweighed,
    And one in Dunker's company young Sven was quickly made.

    But when was need that he should learn the drill and carriage meet,
    God wot it was a sight to see how chance did guide his feet:
    The corporal laughed aloud and cried, and cried and laughed again,
    But still unchanged did his recruit in frown and fun remain.

    Yet tireless was he, certainly, if ever mortal yet:
    He marched and stamped that earth did shake, and laid the dust with sweat;
    But at the word to change or move he missed the meaning quite:
    When "Left face!" called the corporal, Sven's face looked toward the right.

    Now he was taught to order arms, and arms to shoulder too,
    To fix his bayonet, and present; and all, it seemed, he knew,
    But at the "Order" usually he fixed his bayonet,
    And at "Present" as gracefully his gun his shoulder met.

    And so it came Sven Duva's drill was far and wide renowned:
    'Midst all--commander, captains, men--the good jest passed around;
    But Sven still kept his quiet way--was patient as before,
    And always hoped for better times. And so broke out the war.

    Now 'midst his comrades question rose, since they their land must shield,
    If Sven were sane enough to go with them unto the field.
    He let them talk, stood calmly by, and said in coolest tone,
    "If with the ranks I cannot go, why I can go alone."

    They let him keep his soldier arms, nor put his hands away,
    For he was servant in the halt and soldier in the fray;
    But board or sword, 'twas one with him: his cool way still he had,
    And none might call him coward, though betimes they called him mad.

    Once Sandels was in full retreat, pushed back by Russian ranks,
    And yielding step by step along a river's reedy banks:
    Ahead, a foot-bridge crossed the stream upon the army's way,
    Where--scarcely twenty men they were--a little outpost lay.

    Sent but to mend the broken road, when all the toil was o'er
    At rest they lay at distance far from noises of the war:
    A grange near hand they made their camp, nor fared they on its least,
    And Sven--for he was of the band--did serve them at the feast.

    But soon a change came on them there, for down a slope hard by
    Spurred Sandels' aide fast hurrying, and rose his sudden cry:
    "To arms! to arms! for God's good sake! and be the bridge your care,
    For word is brought a hostile force will cross the river there.

    "And, sir," said he to him who led the guard, "if yet you can,
    Tear quickly down the bridge, or fight till falls the latest man.

    'Tis ruin if the Russian can assail us in the rear;
    And fear ye not, for help is by: the general hurries here."

    So sped he back, but to the bridge scarce reached the little band
    When high a Russian platoon rose upon the shore beyond.
    It wider grows, it thicker grows; a volley blazes wide;
    Beneath the blast nigh half the band are dying or have died.

    A fear runs through the little band; a longer stay is vain;
    Again a thundering volley roars, and only five remain.
    Then all obeyed the swift command to shoulder arms, retreat:
    Sven Duva only missed the word, and fixed his bayonet.

    Still more his turning to retreat th' old look of bungling wore,
    For, far from going with the rest, upon the bridge he bore;
    And there he stood, broad-shouldered, stiff, with his old coolness still,
    Prepared to teach to whomsoe'er the best points of his drill.

    Nor long he waited ere was need he should his tactics show,
    For in a moment all the bridge was freighted with the foe:
    Fast on they pressed, man after man, but each who came was met
    And tumbled bleeding to the earth by Sven's good bayonet.

    To push this giant down was more than single arm could do,
    And still his nearest foe a shield from shots of others grew:
    The quicker pressed the pushing foe, the more his hope was foiled,
    'Till Sandels with his host appeared, and saw how Duva toiled.

    "Well done!" the chieftain cried, "well done! my bravest soldier thou!
    Let not a devil pass the bridge: hold out a moment now.
    Yon brave man be a soldier called, and so a Finn should fight.
    Come, help him well, for well we owe our safety to his might."

    The foe soon found th' attack was foiled, and without long delay
    The Russian forces wheeled around and slowly moved away.
    The chief, dismounting, sought the stream when all the din was o'er,
    And asked for him who held the bridge and stayed the Russian war.

    They pointed to Sven Duva then: his war was overfought;
    Yea, manlike he had warred, and now the battle-hour was not.
    It seemed that he had lain to rest what time the sport was done--
    Well, scarce more quiet than of old, but much more pale and wan.

    Above the fallen Sandels bent, the features well to trace--
    No stranger features to the chief: it was a well-known face.
    Beneath Sven's heart where he was laid the green grass gleamed with red:
    A ball had pierced the willing heart, and he was of the dead.

    "That bullet knew to take effect, we must confess who see,"
    So simply spoke the general. "It knew much more than we:
    It let alone his forehead, for it was his weakest part:
    It entered at a nobler spot--into a faithful heart."

    Those words were bruited far and wide throughout the general host,
    And unto each one everywhere the general's words seemed just;
    "For surely unto Duva brains were scant in measure doled,
    But, though his head was rather bad, his heart was good as gold."

C. ROSELL.




A LAW UNTO HERSELF.




CHAPTER XIV.


The Hemlock Farm was awake to its farthest worm-eaten old fence. Never
since its trees grew or its grass was green had such a breath and stir
of delight swept through them. The low October sun reddened the
stubble-field and thrust lances of light through the darkening boles; a
string band, hidden somewhere, as evening fell sent long wafts of music
through meadow and woods; everywhere was the sound of children's
voices--in the trees, in the hay-mow, down in the old-fashioned
rose-garden, up in the dusty garrets. Boys and girls of every shape and
size, from pale, gray-eyed midges to big, beefy hobbledehoys, beset the
captain at every turn. With his one arm and his uniform, and his gusty
delight in themselves, and the background of this marvellous old farm
and nut trees, he was a hero belonging to the family of Signor Blitz or
Kriss-Kringle. In fact, this feast of feasts given by Miss Swendon yet
lingers in the memory of its guests alongside of the enchanted garden of
figs.

The feast had grown out of a word. Miss Swendon had talked of the nuts
going to waste, and Mrs. Wilde of the hundreds of children she knew "who
fancied nuts grew on a fruit-stand." Jane's face began to kindle. "Let
us all go nutting with them," she said.

So it easily came to pass--with tremendous exertions, however, on the
part of Judge Rhodes and the captain, whose ideas, vague and vast, of
the necessary amount of cake and ice-cream doubled with each day.

"Our fear in Virginia always used to be that we should not have enough,"
said the judge in solemn consultation.

"When I was a boy I never did have enough," rejoined the captain.

The Twiss and Nichols children were put into their Sunday finery and
turned out, their jealous mothers watching how the city children treated
them, Betty's face red with delight as she announced to Jane that they
were "paler and more delicate than any of 'em, and much better-looking."
Buff and his father grumbled loudly how they "weren't goin' to let one
of dem young debbils inter de stable;" but before the day was over even
gray old Dave was at the top of every nut tree, shouting louder than any
boy of ten. As for Jane, she was everywhere: she climbed trees and
filled all the pockets, told no end of stories, laughed at the least
jokes, and wiped away a hundred sobbing miseries.

"I did not know you were excitable," said Mrs. Wilde, meeting her
suddenly with pink cheeks and shining eyes on her way to her father.

"I don't know. I never played with young people before. Did you ever
know such a happy day?"

Mr. Van Ness came out in the afternoon, and stood in odd corners beaming
down on the little folk. But she passed him without seeing him, as she
might the bronze Buddha shining in the hall.

"Do you really think the children are having a good time, father?"
hanging on his arm. "Have you been happy all day? Every minute?"

As the twilight deepened the moon came out yellow and round; a few
Chinese lanterns were hung in the mossy crannies and projections of the
old house; the carriages began to drive away with the happy children,
who all came to say good-bye and cling about her with that wild fervor
which children give to a new friend. Jane might be cold and slow with
grown people, but she hugged these little folks as if she were mother to
all of them, and ran to hug them again more closely, and could not keep
the joyous tears down in her eyes as their soft kisses rained on her.
Some of their mothers and friends had come to thank the beautiful young
heiress for giving their children such a happy day, and they stayed,
wandering about the queer old house and the illuminated grounds: they
were the very people whose formal calls Jane had forgotten to return.
But she did not think of that: she only saw that they were quiet,
friendly folk, and that her father's face was glowing with hospitality
and content. The band struck up a waltz, and some of the pretty girls
began to dance on the grass. Jane stood apart watching them
thoughtfully: her hands were folded together. This couple who floated
past her now--surely they were lovers. What a magnificent young fellow
he was! She caught the meaning of his eyes bent on the sweet fair face.
She knew that little girl would be the best wife for him in the world.
She was certain that she loved him dearly.

The yellow October twilight lingered warmly; even the cold moon glowed
in the colored haze; the darkening woods, the shadowy house on the hill,
the laughing dancers, the broad river at the foot of the slope, were
softened into the mellow atmosphere of a dream. The music was faint, a
single fine harmony often repeated.

The grave girl with the arched white throat who stood attentive and
silent under a tree, a wolf-hound beside her, her gown of some soft
creamy hue belted about her waist and falling in heavy silken folds, was
to the visitors the most noticeable point in the picture. Mr. Van Ness,
a few yards away, waited, hoping she would come to him. But Jane saw
only the sky and the running water and the lovers who passed her by.
"There are persons," said Mr. Van Ness suavely to the judge, "who are
like children or animals. No intellectual poise. Good weather or a
little amusement throws them completely off their balance."

The dog, which Jane held by the collar, began to pull and bark joyfully.
There was a tall dark figure coming toward the group near her father.
Jane trembled more than the dog.

"No, you must not bring him to us, Bruno: he doesn't wish to come."

He did not come. She could hear a word now and then. Everybody was
hurrying to greet him. How had he been able to leave his post? Would
this new platform save the country? And what would the Syndicate do in
view of this last complication? She knew he was the leader of the
Syndicate. Great leaders and the Syndicate and the country,--all these
things were in company.

She crept back out of sight in the bushes. Bruno broke loose and ran
toward him. She went down to the river.

In a moment Bruno came dashing back, crunching through the bushes. There
was a steady step on the grass.

"Are you here, Miss Swendon?"

"Yes."

Any of the finical little ladies yonder, had they been in her place,
would have met this lover who gave no sign of love with all the
self-respect and dignity of womanhood. Not unwooed would they be won,
yet every resentful word or tear that drove him back would have been
alluring and maddening. Honest Jane went straight to him and gave him
her hand. She could not keep the hot color from her face or the water
from her eyes. She had told him once that she loved him. With her, done
was done. Death itself, coming between, would not give her love back
again.

Mr. Neckart took the frank hand and let it fall. "I came to you for this
one evening," he said, "before--before I go. One evening surely can
import nothing. It can make no difference to you."

Mr. Neckart was a fluent speaker in public: he had been used to talk to
Jane by the hour with the lazy freedom of thinking aloud. Now, arguing
perhaps against himself, he was awkward and stammered. He did not know
what she answered, or if she answered at all.

They both fell into silence. For months Neckart had looked forward to
this supreme moment of parting. He must see her once more. But she
should not have a glimpse of his starved soul. He would act with perfect
honorable propriety. A few friendly words, one look to carry with him
until death,--that was all. He did not remember now that it was a
supreme moment: it was only a deliciously happy one. What rare fine
shades of meaning came out on her face each minute! The absurd
downright sincerity of the girl too! Surely all these men must be mad
with love of her! Where had she discovered that wonder of a dress? Did
other women ever wear such garments? his eyes following the soft slopes.

As for the young woman in the creamy robe, she was filled with a great
content. She did not once think of the actual insanity which had its
hold upon him. She did not think of her dying father, or of Jane
Swendon's crime, or of Jane Swendon at all. All her real life had
dropped out of her memory. There was left the warm air and the happy day
and the music, and this one living being beside her. His hand rested on
the bough of an apple tree: she could see on his palm a peculiar red
mark, a birth-mark, which she had often watched darken or fade. She
never thought of Neckart without remembering it. But why she should
settle into a great content at the sight of this mark, which was in no
wise a beautiful or desirable thing, is not for us to say. It is certain
that as soon as she saw it her hold on life became quite secure, and the
world righted itself instantly.

The music deepened, it filled the night; warm air stirred all the trees;
a robin chirped in its nest overhead. The lovers whom Jane had watched
waltzed past them. Neckart and Jane looked after them. Then they turned
to each other. After all, they were young: life that night throbbed high
as it had never done before.

"Come with me," he said, and put his arm about her waist.

He had danced when he was a boy, and had since seen a thousand women
waltz: it was to him nothing but music and a pleasant motion. But no boy
or man had ever danced with Jane before or touched her. It was to her
her wedding-day.

It lasted but for a moment. The music stopped and left them standing
under the pines, the spicy smell strong in the air. When Neckart removed
his hand he saw how bloodless and grave her face was.

"I ought not to have asked you to dance, Jane. But it will be something
for me to remember as long as I live. And men are selfish."

"You do not mean to leave me--now?"

"My God! I don't know!"

In the shadow of the pines he could see the white face upturned to his.
He took it between his hands. Why should he not take her to his breast
and dare his fate? Nothing came between them but that shadow of honor.

He would obey it.

She would forget him: women were shallower than men. They always forgot.
But for him there was only intolerable solitude to the end. He would
meet it, although he had come back weakly to the forbidden fruit. He
gloried in the consciousness that he was a most heroic martyr as he
stooped and kissed her mouth again and again.

"Neckart!" called the captain.--"Somebody find Bruce. He has not a
minute to spare."

Neckart released her. "I must make this train," he said. "I must go back
to the office. You know that I go on the steamer that sails to-morrow."

Trains? Steamers? With these kisses on his lips?

"What line do you cross in, Bruce?" The captain had hurried down with
the other men. "Where do you go first?" as they walked to the house.

"To France, and then to the East," buttoning his coat nervously, without
a glance toward the stunned girl beside him.

"Be back in the spring, Mr. Neckart?" said a lisping young lady.

"Not for years. At least, that is my present intention."

The warmth, the happy day, music, love that had filled all earth and
heaven but now, were gone. In their place the gaslight, trains,
conventional talk of duty!

"Neckart"--she heard a whisper behind her--"goes to Russia and Turkey on
secret business for the government."

The kindly old judge, seeing Jane's face, quietly gave her a chair and
sheltered her from notice. If Neckart had waited on this girl, he was an
infernal scoundrel, no matter what his political rank. He knew she was
as good as betrothed to Van Ness.

Jane watched all these brilliant women flutter around Neckart, giving
him messages to their friends abroad. His cloak was thrown loosely back
from his broad shoulders: he bent to listen to them. She knew nothing of
this world of theirs. She was like a poor limp rag of humanity, blown
aside into a corner. She had her fantastic passion: all the world
besides was orderly, moved in the grooves of common sense and duty.

Mr. Neckart looked at his watch: "I must really go now." He shook hands
with Mrs. Wilde, giving a swift glance to the corner where Jane sat.
Waring and his attendant young ladies closed in on him with more last
words and purling laughter. He made his way through them.

"Good-bye! good-bye!" cried the captain, wringing his hand. "God bless
you, Bruce! What is it? Jane? Oh, I'll make your adieux to her. You'll
miss your train."

But he had reached her at last, and took her hand in his, all the world
looking on: "Good-bye, Miss Swendon."

She could not say a word. They all followed him out, one pretty little
girl taking off her slipper to throw after him. But Jane sat alone in
the deserted room, looking at the door through which the heavy cloaked
figure had disappeared.




CHAPTER XV.


Jane was roused by a wild shriek from without. She thought at first it
was an animal in an agony of pain or rage. The wind had closed the door,
and she could not open it. She went round by a passage to reach the
lawn. While she had been in the hall a scene fit for a melodrama was in
progress without. The tiny black Russian landaulet with three ponies
abreast which Madame Trebizoff usually drove stood a few paces back near
the woods. In the centre of the open space, in the full light both of
the moon and the lights from the house, stood the princess, black lace
draping her tragically, rubies flaming in her jetty hair, and a
blood-red poppy in her breast. She was turning from one group of men to
another like a hunted animal: her voice, once let loose from the thin
smooth level on which she held it, squeaked and chattered, and then fell
into doglike growls and sobs. Mrs. Wilde stood between her and a burly
man in gray.

"I assure you, sir, that there is no Madame Varens here. This is an
English lady and my guest. _My_ guest! You know who I am--Mrs. John
Schuyler Wilde."

"Very sorry, Mrs. Wilde, to annoy you, or these ladies," turning to the
group of frightened girls to whom the princess had flown for succor. She
looked back from their midst like a furious crow from out of a covey of
white doves. "I won't swear that her name's Varens. She's down in the
description also as Mrs. Swift and Aurelia Lamb. Regular
confidence-woman, madam. I didn't want to follow her in here. Nobody
respects ladies as are ladies more than I do. Now, ma'am," turning to
Charlotte, "you'd better come quietly. It's nothing serious. A few
hundreds. Small operation for _you_. Not worth disturbing people of this
class," nodding back over his right ear as he caught her by the arm.

"Class! What do you mean? This is _my_ class!" shaking him back as if he
had been a snake and tapping her breast as she lifted herself to her
tiptoes. "_My_ class! Do you hear? I am the Princess Trebizoff. I have
witnesses.--Mr. Van Ness! Mr. Van Ness is here to speak for me."

"Pliny Van Ness?" said the awed detective. "If _he_ vouches for you,
ma'am--"

Mr. Van Ness, who had watched the arrest with much placidity, was
suddenly left by the withdrawal of the crowd standing alone facing the
detective and his prisoner. He stroked his blond beard and looked down
at her with thoughtful compassion.

"Mr. Van Ness," she said shrilly, advancing a step, "I am in danger of a
jail. Certify for me that I am--your friend, the woman whom I represent
myself to be."

"Of course any friend of yours, Mr. Van Ness--I may be mistaken,"
interjected the officer.

"I am very sorry, officer," said the reformer, his mellow tones full of
pain. "But this lady--"

"Do you refuse?" she shrieked. Then springing up to him and thrusting
her face in his, she whispered, "For Ted's sake! I am your child's
mother! If he should find me in jail!"

"I was about to say, officer," calmly pursued Mr. Van Ness, "that this
lady is unknown to me except as a casual acquaintance. She may be a
princess. She may be a thief. That is for you to settle. As for me--"
And waving his white hands and shrugging his broad shoulders, he turned
away.

The princess looked after him steadily a moment, then she turned to the
men: "Are you going to see me hauled away to prison without a word? I am
a woman! An Englishwoman! This is American justice!" She lifted herself
again into her favorite attitude of malediction, shaking her fingers
against the air as if scattering curses.

"Good gracious!" cried Mr. Waring. "Why! why! Surely I have seen that
done before!--I say, judge! Don't you remember? The medium Combe? The
spirit--"

"Come!" said the officer gruffly. "We've had enough of this. Your
friends disown you, ma'am. I'll trouble you to step down to the hack--"

It was then that the poor princess gave the despairing shriek which Jane
had heard. Eluding the officer's clutch, she darted across the open
space and faced them, while she plunged her hand into her pocket and
drew out a vial full of a dark liquid. There was a cry of horror as she
put it to her lips, drained it and sank to the ground.

"Good God! she has taken poison!" cried the captain.

There were immediate shouts for a doctor, and frantic rushes out and
back again on the part of Buff and Dave and the young men, who wanted to
scatter the news, but were afraid something would happen while they were
gone. Mrs. Wilde came up to her. "She really is an impostor, then?"
holding out her trembling arms to take her.

"Oh, the worst kind! Dead-beat, confidence--as much lower as you can go.
Don't touch her, ma'am. You'd better take them young ladies away too.
This isn't the sort of thing for them to see."

"Certainly not," running off like a scared hen-partridge.--"Come, girls,
I will take you home at once. This is a phase of life not fit for you to
look into."

But she could not drive them farther than the porch, where they huddled,
pale, all talking at once, looking back and declaring it was as exciting
as any tragedy, and was the poor creature dead? and oh, to think they
had all called on her!

By this time Jane was on her knees and had the princess in her arms.
"Poor thing! poor thing!" she said. Her own heart was so bruised and
sore that she might have sobbed over this other woman if she had had
nothing else to do for her.

"Lay her down, miss, if you please. A doctor's been sent for. She's in
the hands of medicine and the law."

"Father, where is your patent stomach-pump?"

"The very thing, Jane!" dashing into the house.

"May the Lord have mercy on her soul!" said Waring.

"Mr. Waring, are you there? Help me to carry her. Into my room."

"Somewhere else! Not there!" exclaimed the judge.

"These proceedings are very irregular!" blustered the officer.
"Accordin' to New York law, the body shouldn't be touched until the
coroner arrives."

"But is she dead?" interposed Mr. Van Ness, bringing the little
procession to a full halt. "_Is_ she dead? That is the question.--Allow
me. Lay her on this settee: one moment, Miss Swendon," prying one eyelid
open and bending his ear to her heart with an air of judicial decision.

"Life," said the detective ponderously, "appears to have become
extinct."

Jane pushed back the hair from the lean face. "Perhaps," she said, "she
has a child," and then stooped and kissed her on the mouth.

Van Ness, at the word, paused and looked for a moment sharply from one
woman to the other. Then with a sad smile he lifted the hand which
clenched the vial tightly. It required a wrench to remove it. He
uncorked it and put it to his tongue.

"Prussic acid!" said the detective. "Strong odor of peach-blossoms."

"Give me space one moment," said Van Ness excitedly. "There is a chance
of saving her!--Stand back, Miss Swendon."

The officer and Jane drew back hastily. He stooped and whispered
vehemently into the ear of the dead woman. She opened her eyes,
sparkling and full of malice, stared at him doubtfully, then nodded. The
captain, a physician and a dozen other aids arrived at the moment.

"You are too late," said Van Ness calmly, meeting them. "Madame
Trebizoff had only swooned. She is willing to go with the officer.--Will
you take my arm, Miss Swendon? You are faint, I am sure. As for the
poison," lowering his voice as he bent toward her, "it was only
sweetened water. The princess has taken it before."




CHAPTER XVI.


The steamer began to cut at last through the short curled waves, a bit
of spray blown up on Neckart's mouth was salt, and, looking back, the
great congregation of ships in the offing had dwindled to a few black
spears of masts.

It was done, then! He had left all behind and cut loose, finally and for
ever. He was glad that there was not a familiar face in the ship's
company. The other passengers, looking critically at the well-known
politician as he paced up and down, rated him as a keen, vigorous man in
the maturity of power, wholly engrossed in affairs. He did not once
think of the affairs of his own or any other country: he knew now but
one fact--that the time was at hand when he must meet the fate to which
he had looked forward so long, and that the sea must be between himself
and Jane before that day came. But he was not likely to give any hint by
appearance or words that this matter troubled him. There was a young
mother with her first baby near him. God only knows what thoughts of
Jane were in his mind as he looked at her. But he stopped to talk with
her husband, who spoke to him about a shoal of porpoises; and afterward,
when the captain inquired if health or pleasure took him from home,
stated carelessly that it was a cerebral affection, and discussed the
efficacy of some recommended bromide.

There was a lady sitting alone on the deck, a dark-green cloth dress
belted neatly about a jimp figure, and cut short enough to show
tight-laced boots: a close fur cap tied over her ears--an ugly little
woman, but all alive and ready for action.

Something familiar in her carriage drew Neckart's eye to her a second
time. She nodded and smiled: "You have quite forgotten me?"

"Miss Fleming! It is so many years since I saw you! Or ought I to say
Miss Fleming?" looking about for her companion.

She laughed: "I am quite alone. On the ship, and everywhere else, for
that matter. They are all gone, Mr. Neckart." She stopped abruptly and
turned her head away. Cornelia never could speak of her mother without
choking.

"I did not know," said Bruce gently. "It is long since I was at the
homestead."

"Yes, there's nobody but me," she said presently with a nervous laugh.
"I manage to support myself by art. It's poor support, and poorer art.
But I have scraped together enough money to take me to Rome to make it
better. With shawl-straps and a satchel American women can go anywhere,
you know."

"You do not look like one of the modern Unas," glancing down. There was,
on the contrary, a singular degree of femininity in this woman: he
remembered now how it used to impress him as a boy. In the crowds that
had filled his later years Cornelia's face had faded completely out of
his mind. It began to come up now out of his boyhood, not unpleasantly,
but rather with much of the glamour of those early days clinging to it.
Yet he was annoyed that any old remembrance was to be kept awake during
the voyage. He had meant to make it a lapse of absolute forgetfulness,
and after that--what? "A season of dreadful looking-for of judgment," he
found himself repeating as he talked civilly to Cornelia about the color
of the water. He rose at last, being under such a nervous strain that he
could not keep still.

"I shall go and beg the captain to give me a seat next yours at table,"
he said smiling. "I must take an oversight of you."

"Pray do not," she said anxiously, laying her hand on his sleeve. "I
will not be a charge on anybody. Why, I am as independent as any--female
doctor! Just let me come and go without notice, and if ever you feel
like talking to me, don't think of me as a young lady, but only as
somebody whom you used to know when you were a boy."

Neckart bowed and smiled. There was something very cordial and sweet in
the little speech. Was it genuine nature that dictated it or only fine
tact? In any case, he was glad to be relieved of the duty of paying
_petits soins_ to any woman. Of course he would not neglect the poor
creature, who appeared to be very lonely, and, in spite of her grotesque
little swagger, as ill able to stand alone as any woman he had ever
seen. He glanced at the homely attractive face looking far out to sea
when he turned in his walk. The second time he caught her looking at him
with a sadness and hunger in her eyes that drove the blood to his heart
like a blow. What was that which had happened between them when they
were both children? A love-affair? Absurd! It was impossible that any
sane woman could remember such folly. With every drop of blood tingling
hot within him he turned down the deck and buried himself in the crowd
in the cabin. Why had she never married? But what did that matter to
him? He did not come near her at the table, nor join her during the
rest of the day. But why had she never married? Could it have been the
thought of him which had kept her aloof and solitary all her life?

Miss Fleming was one of the last to forsake the deck that night. She was
a good sailor, and not likely to lose any time by sickness. "I can't
afford to lose any time," she said to herself, her lips making a thin
seam across her face, as she sat hour after hour waiting for him to
return. "What I do must be done now or never." She had taken every penny
she had in the world to pay for this fortnight in the ship with him.

"I shall succeed," rising, her thin cheeks pale, but her eyes like coals
of fire. As she went through the cabin she scowled at the pretty young
girls, who, like the birds in the fable, had a thousand lures of
innocence and beauty and plumage. She was Reynard with his one
trick--friendship and whatever she hid behind it. "But I never failed
yet," she said as she shut herself into the darkness of her state-room.




CHAPTER XVII.


The captain reported himself "under the weather" the day after the
nutting frolic. His guests had all gone excepting Van Ness, who remained
in New York, appearing at the farm every afternoon with a fresh invoice
of diffusive sweetness and light. In a week the captain gave up his
daily visit to the club, and one morning Jane found him in the
work-room, busy again among the dusty models, with a gray pinched line
about his jaws. She ran to put on her apron, and worked with him,
jesting and laughing, but as soon as she could escape sent Dave to the
doctor. The old gentleman came, chatted a while, and soon followed Jane
out to the hall.

"Florida to-morrow? Southern California? No, not now. Let him have home
comforts and good nursing this winter. Anything he wants to eat. Humor
him as much as you choose."

Jane stood holding by the back of a chair: "You do not mean that there
is danger?"

"I see no change in the symptoms," cautiously. "We'll try the new
prescription a few days, and we shall see--we shall see."

Jane went back to her father and the models, and talked calmly of screws
and pistons. If she could only take the shaking old gray head to her
breast and cry her heart out! If she could lie down in the grave with
him! They had been such friends all her life! He was the only friend she
ever had. She got up and ran out of doors once or twice: her breath was
leaving her: his face, with the strange change in it, drove her away.
Outside, the ducks were wabbling in and out of the pond, the sun was
shining, the chrysanthemums and crimson prince's feather were all in
flower. Dave was currying a horse in the stable-yard and whistling a
dancing tune. What a foolish fright she had been in! Everything in the
world was going just as usual. When she went back, too, the captain was
pulling out his patent scissors from a drawer, laughing, his face
flushed. He never looked better in his life.

She never left him after that. She had a couch made for herself at his
door, that she might hear the moment that he stirred in the night. She
could see no change in him from day to day, but she watched everybody
keenly who came near him, trying to read their opinion of him in their
faces. She fancied there was a difference in the manner of even Dave and
Buff to him--a forced jocularity, a peculiar tenderness of voice. Bruno,
she observed, had deserted her altogether and kept close to his master.

It was at this time that Mr. Van Ness began to monopolize the house: the
very air of it grew bland and decorous. He came early, and stayed until
night. The captain treated him with reverential deference: Jane fell
into the same habit. She was weak and suasible as a reed just now. She
had lost all root and marrow out of her life. Every day her father
dilated on Mr. Van Ness's virtues. She could not deny one of them. They
began to fence her in as with smooth polished walls, with no breath
inside. Bruno, alone inexorable, never allowed him to pass without a
snap and growl, although he had yielded enough to the pressure of public
opinion not to fly at his throat.

"Mr. Van Ness, my dear," said the captain one day, "has been good enough
to look into the affairs of the farm. He says the income from it should
be trebled. Ask his advice, Jane. Especially as to turnips. We failed
there. What intellectual scope that man has! It grasps a vast theory one
moment and the minutest detail the next."

"Yes, father." It mattered little to Jane who meddled with the farm now.

"Mr. Van Ness"--the next day--"was glancing over your book-shelves this
morning, Jane. A course of reading such as he would dictate would be of
immeasurable benefit to you."

"I know it," humbly. "I am shamefully ignorant."

"Why not put yourself wholly into his care, Jenny?" taking her hand
tenderly. "He is one of the best of men."

"I believe he is," candidly.

At this moment the reformer came in sight on the lawn without, the full
sunshine falling on him. They both looked at him.

"His intellect is of a high calibre, Jenny: he saw into that idea of
mine for the gauge to-day in an instant."

Jane nodded dully.

"And as for looks--have you any fault to find with him, Jane?"

"No, none."

"Then, in God's name, why--" He checked himself. "Mr. Van Ness asked me
to speak with you this afternoon. It's a very solemn matter, Jenny. It's
for life. You know what I wish. Don't shove off your life's happiness
for a prejudice of no more weight than so much fog. I think I'll lie
down and sleep a while. Think the matter over. There he is outside. He
wishes to talk to you of it now."

Jane lingered, tucked the cover over his feet again and again. She could
not go out and talk to this man in cold blood of marriage. When she told
him that it could not be, that she could not love him, what reason could
she give? She had no reason. There was none. This husband waiting out
on the gravel-path, and smiling in on her, was in every way admirable
and lovable. But Bruno and old Dave were better comrades for her--nearer
kinsfolk.

The captain opened his eyes drowsily: "You are going to read? That's
right, Jenny."

She brought the book gladly, and Mr. Van Ness moved disappointed away.
There were certain chapters in St. John which the old man himself had
taught Jane. Her mother had little to do with the Bible, which she
declared was full of Presbyterian bigotry, but the captain, who was at
bottom a devout soul, had anxiously tried to give the child as soon as
she could speak what he supposed to be the milk of the Word. Every day
now she would hear him muttering to himself these passages from the
Sermon on the Mount or in John's Gospel, and he would presently call on
her to repeat them, explaining them to her as though she were still a
child.

"We got away from the Master as we grew older, Jenny: that was the
mistake," he said now, stroking her hair as she kneeled by the bed. "I
ought to have kept you close by Him. But you see the patents and the
other worries--It's all been so hurried--I've hardly begun fairly. But
we'll try and do what's right now. There's plenty of time before us."

"Oh, father!" She buried her head on his breast.

"If I've done wrong to any man, I'd like to have his forgiveness and to
make restitution. Restitution"--the captain said, talking into the vague
space which widened slowly about him every day. Jane, holding his
shaking old hand, groped, as every other human soul in pain does, to
find this Master.

She had but little faith then: like all other feelings, it would
probably come slowly into her slow nature and abide there. But could He
come close as her father said? She was so utterly alone! She would be
glad to make restitution, though the money had been her own, if that
would please Him. But restitution to whom?

"Go now: I want to sleep. Mr. Van Ness is waiting." She moved to the
door: "Jenny, you'll say what is right to him. I trust you."

Mr. Van Ness did wait at the door of the conservatory. His white hand
was held out, as if to lead her into perfume and light. Was it this
which He would order her to do? Was it? The very touch of his hand
seemed to her an indecency.

"Miss Swendon--" Van Ness began abruptly, in so rough and candid a tone
that Jane looked at him startled and respectful--"you are prejudiced
against me. I see that my manner impresses you as artificial. It is so,
and I know it. I wish to account to you for that before I open my
business to you." He passed his soft fingers slightly down the fold of
his shirt, opened his thick red lips once or twice and shut them again,
his eyes fixed on her own, probing, gauging her. "I must give you the
keynote to my whole life," he resumed. "You were born among people of
culture and gentle habits. I was a foundling, the child of vice, reared
in it, fed by it, until I was old enough to stand by myself. Then I
swore by God's help to leave it behind me for ever. I have struggled on
this far. It has been hard work. That is all," with a long breath. "You
know what I am now. I wanted you to know precisely what I have been."

It was unwomanly not to make a friendly sign to the man who had thus
frankly humiliated himself before her. Jane forced herself to speak:

"You are very sincere--more sincere than is necessary. But I respect you
for it."

"You can understand now why my manners and voice bear the evident marks
of training. They both have an artificial twang which has prejudiced you
against me. Am I right?"

"Possibly you are right," said downright Jane. "If it was only the
manner and voice, I have been unjust to you."

He waved his hand with humble deprecation, and sighed audibly. Jane
moved restlessly. No exhibition of character could be more noble or
genuine: nothing could be more winning than the handsome blond head
between her and the shelves of flowers. This senseless antipathy which
she felt to both was that of an animal. She was ashamed of it, and stood
smiling, her head bent with clumsy politeness, and the same look in her
eyes which Bruno gave him.

"You will understand now, too," he continued gently, "why my interest in
vicious and hungry children is so deep. I have been one of them. It is
little for me to have given my life to help them."

"It must be a comfort to give your life to any certain work," cried Jane
hotly. "It's very hard to reach middle age, as I have done, and find
one's self fit for nothing! Nothing whatever!"

Mr. Van Ness did not at once reply. He scanned her curiously, as he
might a tool about whose temper he was not certain, but which it was
necessary for him to use.

"Your father has told you my reason for wishing to speak to you to-day?"
he said abruptly.

Jane's head and very throat were scarlet: "Yes. But we will not talk at
all of that matter, Mr. Van Ness," stammering with haste. "It is
impossible, unnatural. You are more experienced than I: you must see
that it is impossible more clearly than I do."

"In hoping," he resumed, after calmly dropping his light eyelashes while
she spoke, politely attentive, "in anxiously striving, I may say, to
gain you as my wife, I did not intend to give up the cause of the orphan
and the fatherless."

"Oh you ought not to give it up! It would be really criminal! After you
have gone so far! And I should be no help to you at all," she added
breathlessly.

"But," with his light confusing gaze full on her, "you know, to speak
plain English, that your father on his deathbed desires that you shall
marry me?"

The blood came and rushed back from Jane's face, leaving it colorless.

"Why will you not grant this last wish?"

Why? There was no reason why she should not. She was dear to nobody
else in the world than this old man--she was of use to nobody else. To
nobody. She looked for some time directly into the shallow eyes facing
her with aggressive complaisance. "I cannot do it," she said at last.
She seemed to have grown stolid from head to foot.

"Why? What is this bar between us?" coming a step closer.

"How can I tell?" with a nervous shudder. "If I lived with you as your
wife for years, you would be none the less a stranger to me."

"Miss Swendon," suddenly, and with the indulgent smile which he would
have given to a child, "I will not accept such an answer. Take time.
Consider the matter calmly. You speak rashly now. You have not a single
reason to give for your decision."

"No," said Jane quietly. "But I shall not alter it."

"This woman," thought Van Ness, "is _all_ mule." But he went on blandly:
"In any other case the fact that you were possessed of large means and
that I am almost penniless would have deterred me from approaching you
in this way--"

"The money counts for nothing with me," quickly.

"I know that. I know that if you were my wife your generous nature would
rejoice in giving it to me in furtherance of my great work. In fact--"
He stopped, measured her again with the same hesitating inspection, and
then, while Jane listened intently, proceeded: "To be quite candid, Miss
Swendon, but for a sudden and most unexpected change in Mr. Laidley's
disposition on the last day of his life, my Home for Friendless Children
would have been made a certainty without your aid."

"What do you mean?"

"The will," deliberately, "which he made but a week before his death
left his whole property intact to me as trustee for this charity. You
know that he changed his mind and destroyed this will apparently in the
very act of dying, and gave it to you. I am rejoiced that he did so: be
assured of that. But if it should come back, after all, to the Home, and
you with it as a helper, there would be a fine poetic justice in that,
I think," with a pleased gurgle in his throat.

Mr. Van Ness had always regarded Jane as a young, insignificant-looking
girl. But now, for some strange reason, she impressed him as a
middle-aged, powerful woman.

"So you were the heir?"

"Yes. Or the Home, to be exact--the Home."

Jane raised her arms and clasped her hands over her head. She said at
last: "The money is mine. It was mine when William Laidley gave it to
you. I will keep it as long as my father lives. As soon as he is dead I
shall give it to you. I shall be glad to give it up--glad." Her arms
fell to her side: a great relief came slowly into her face.

At last the burden was to fall off. The way before her was simple and
clear.

Mr. Van Ness laughed with keen amusement, but checked himself with an
apologetic cough: "Forgive me, but really, Miss Swendon, you are so
incredibly innocent! A mere baby in your knowledge of the world or
ordinary customs. It would be impossible for you to make such a
transfer. You could not give the estate, and I could not take it, unless
upon one condition."

"What is that?"

"That you give it as my wife."

"There is no other way," he resumed after a pause, finding that she made
no reply. "Of course," with a bitter laugh, "I do not expect your zeal
in behalf of the friendless children to tempt you to so repugnant a step
as marriage with me. But that is the only way in which this property
could be restored to them."

Still she was silent. A pot with a half-dead geranium was near her: she
began to break off the yellow leaves and lay them in a neat little heap
one by one. Did Van Ness suspect the truth? He stood erect, regarding
her from calm heights of virtue. Presently he continued: "The property,
as you say, is legally your own. The tenor of the will makes it so. But
when I think of the starved bodies and souls of these poor children, and
remember how little you value your great wealth, I feel that surely God
meant it for them. It was some strange mistake that took it from them."

Jane did not meet his eye. She pushed open the little door, and went out
hurriedly into the fresh air. Van Ness followed her. It is not probable
that he had guessed her secret, but he certainly knew that for some
reason this fact of the lost will had given him an inflexible hold upon
the jaded, fluttering woman. He meant to press it with peremptory force.

The wind without was blowing keen and cold. Jane rallied in it. She
turned to Van Ness with something of her ordinary courage. She was
absolutely certain of her own honesty, and she hoped that God believed
in it. What did it matter if by the laws of men and society she was a
thief? It was some time before she caught the meaning of Van Ness's
words. He was urging his cause with a surfeit of honeyed and long-conned
phrases. He remembered as he talked how many women would receive any
hint of courtship from him with delight, and the consciousness gave him
a factitious dignity. He walked beside her down the path. Bruno, who
leaped the barnyard fence to join her, marched on the other side, fixing
a red suspicious eye on him.

"I have not made love to you as a younger man would do. I never have
told you how different from every woman you are in my eyes. How
attractive--how fair--" His eyes rested on hers for a full silent
moment. She turned away with a shiver. "I never have told you how dear
you are to me. But you must have seen it."

"No, I did not see it," said Jane bluntly. "But what has my beauty to do
with the matter? Or your love? They do not alter you or me."

Even Van Ness was stunned by this calm delivery of fact. He recovered
himself presently, and with a smile of hurt feeling gently replied,
"Your antipathies are strong, Miss Swendon. Most women would cover them
over courteously. But, do you know, I really like your honesty,"
pointing the tips of his fingers together mildly. "Yes, I do. Now I
shall not urge myself personally on your notice any more. I did not seek
an immediate marriage. I am willing that time should work for me.
Promise me this," halting and suddenly facing her; "look at me as the
representative of those poor friendless children whom I love so dearly,
and whose inheritance you now enjoy." (He saw and took note of the
sudden quailing of her whole bearing.) "You will give your wealth to
them some day."

"God knows I shall be glad to do that."

"And yourself to me."

"Never!" she said quietly. But she smiled politely in his face. All the
currents of her future life were ebbing from this half hour of time, and
she knew it; yet that little taunt at her discourtesy had galled her
sorely. Since she was a child she had felt herself and her rugged talk
big and boorish and coarse-grained beside the polished complaisance of
smaller women. When Van Ness, therefore, took her hand now, and, after
kissing the thin fingers with his slow sultry glance, drew them within
his arm and held them there close, she did not resist, and walked
patiently beside him down the path. Van Ness's hand, as we have said,
was unpleasantly cold and clammy.

Jane remembered a story in her primer of the little princess, who,
having told a lie, was given over thereafter to the ownership of a frog.
It sat on her plate, on her lap, on her bed, on her mouth as she tried
to pray. It never left her. It was her master and owner.




CHAPTER XVIII.


As they turned into another path, Jane saw the boy Phil running toward
the stables, and Betty came toward her, walking calmly, but twisting her
sleeve into a rag with nervous fingers.

"My father!" cried Jane.

"Yes. He's awake, and he don't seem quite so peart as he was this
morning. But it's nothing: don't you be scared, miss. I took the liberty
of sending Phil for the doctor," panting after her as she ran.

Van Ness quickened his pace and followed.

The captain was in his arm-chair, wrapped in his flowered dressing-gown.
Buff and Dave were busy over him, their black lips turning blue with
fright.

"No, I'll not go to bed!" he cried testily. "What good will blankets and
feathers be to me? It's death, you blockhead! But don't tell her--don't
tell Miss Jane."

"Hyah she is, sah."

"Keep her out!--Oh, Jenny! Go, finish your walk. I--I'm very well, and
I'd rather be alone a while. Dave will stay with me," looking helplessly
up into her white face. Then he broke down and fumbled for her hand:
"Oh, I'm going--I'm going, Jenny."

"No, no, father, you shall not go. It's just a passing pain. Swallow
this," holding the gray head close to her breast. Her hand shook so that
she could not put the spoon to his lips.

"I wish you would go away, child. It will worry you so. I never meant
you to be with me when It came."

She could not answer. She laid him down, drenched his hands with
camphor, seeing how blue and sunken they were. "His feet are like ice,
Betty," she cried. "What shall I do? what shall I do?"

"I've got mustard draughts here, ma'am. Try and get him to take these
drops."

"Yes, yes. Don't go out of the room, dear Betty! Don't leave him." She
caught hold of this savior who was wise in mustard draughts and tonics.
Why had she never learned such things in all her long, useless life? She
would not look beyond the blue marks on his hands and the cold of his
feet. She and Betty could fight them until the doctor came--just as the
wrecked man sees only the floating logs and the raft, and will not look
below at the unfathomable black sea waiting for him.

"'Pears to me, Miss Jane," said Dave presently in a pitying whisper, "as
dat ar camphire on'y vexes him. His bref is mos' gone."

"Whah de debbil am dat doctor?" muttered Buff, going to the door, with a
thrill of terror at his oath. For in the last moment the approach of an
awful Power was felt in the commonplace little room. Yet the afternoon
sunshine shone as before in the open door, the green curtains waved to
and fro, a chicken came pecking up on to the wooden steps. The captain's
feeble glance wandered to it.

"The gate of the poultry-yard is broken, Dave.--Remind me to-morrow,
Jane--my new lock."

"De Lohd sabe us! Can't you take his mind off his patents, Miss Jane,
an' Death jes' at hand?"

"I told Phil to bring the minister with the doctor," whispered Betty.
She took the useless mustard away from the poor old feet and covered
them reverently. They would never feel any touch again. Then she and
Dave drew away from him, and stood back from the chair, leaving him
alone with his child.

Jane knelt, holding him by the hand, looking into the dimming eyes.
"Father!" she said. "You must not go. You shall not leave me! Father!"

The old man's soul, as always irresolute, halted at the call, going out
to its long journey: "I will not leave you until I have taken care of
you, Jenny," trying to smile at her.

"And how are you, my dear sir?" said a mellow voice behind her. "Feeling
better, are we now--eh?"

"Van Ness? Yes." The captain's voice gathered a little of its old
authority, and he struggled to rise. "Is it all settled? Have you
promised to marry him, Jenny?"

"She will! she will!" replied Van Ness hastily. "It will be arranged as
you wish, my dear sir."

"I must be sure of it," uneasily, with the restlessness of coming death
and the old desire to control. "I cannot go until I see you his wife,
Jane."

Jane held his hand immovable. She did not stir nor show any feeling more
than the wooden plank on which she kneeled.

There was a slight stir at the door. Doctor Knox came in with Mr.
Lampret, the meek little Methodist minister from the village. The doctor
went up to the captain, who waved him impatiently aside.

"Too late, doctor. Your occupation's gone. I have a matter to arrange,
and--only a few minutes."

Jane raised her head, looking dully at the physician.

He shook his head. "There is no chance," he said. As he drew back he
watched the girl, rather than the dying man. He was used to seeing women
suffer, but he felt an unwonted pity for this friendless Jane.

The captain beckoned feebly to Mr. Lampret: "I'm glad to see you
here.--Now--Van Ness--now. I can give her to you. I can die in peace."

Van Ness's color changed, perhaps for the first time in his life. He
stood irresolute. He had not thought of immediate marriage with Jane. He
scanned in that instant the danger involved in it--the probability that
Charlotte would "make trouble"--the chance of buying her off. The actual
risk involved was great enough to make even his ruddy face ghastly.

But if he allowed this chance to escape he would never regain his hold
on her. Was this property twice to slip from his grasp? He took a step
closer to her, and laid his hand on her arm.

"Will you consent?" he said.

She let fall her father's hand and stood up. She and Van Ness were a
little apart from the others, so that his words were heard only by
herself. There was absolute silence in the room, except for the
breathing of the dying man.

Van Ness stooped closer to her: she could feel his warm clammy breath on
her cheek. "You are very dear to me." Seeing that she shuddered, he
changed his mode of attack to direct assault: "If you marry me you will
restore the property--restore, you understand?--to the children to whom
it belongs."

"Jenny," moaned her father, "are you ready? I cannot die in peace until
this is done."

The clergyman took pity on the girl: something in her set, deep-lined
face alarmed him: "Is there any reason why you do not wish to gratify
your father's last wish?"

She did not answer. There was no reason but her hopeless passion for
another man, whose wife she could never be. Yet it seemed to her that
God was bidding her to be true to that true love at whatever cost.

"I infer," said the little man, turning to Van Ness, "that the marriage
was arranged before, and is only hastened now by"--glancing at the
captain--"circumstances."

"Yes, yes! Precisely!" suavely. "You may trust me. You may have heard my
name before--Pliny Van Ness."

Mr. Lampret bowed deferentially: "The name is well known. Our church has
reason--grateful," he murmured.--"My dear Miss Swendon, this is a hard
trial--hard. A young girl would fain give herself away with joy and
rejoicing. But as your father will not depart in peace, I see no reason
why the ceremony should not immediately take place."

"Jane! Jane!" cried the captain shrilly, "why do you delay?"

There was no answer for a minute. Then there came into her face a sudden
resolve. She turned and held out her hand to Van Ness: "I will marry
you."

The words revived the captain. "Lift me up," he said to David--"Closer,
closer, Mr. Lampret! I can't hear very well." He listened eagerly until
the last words of the marriage service were said. Then his head sank on
his breast: "I'm always loth to interfere. But I am glad that is settled
properly."

Van Ness turned to kiss his wife, but, without seeing him apparently,
she went up to her father and put her lips to his. Van Ness followed
her, as if to assert his rightful place, and, standing on the other side
of the sofa, possessed himself of the captain's one hand, pressing it
gently.

"He is sinking very fast," he said. "Let him rest in my arms."

She shivered, and held him tighter to her breast. When she would have
stroked back the gray hair from his forehead, Van Ness's soft fingers
were there with hers, soothing them: "Compose yourself. Our dear father
will soon be gone."

"Jenny!"

"Yes, father."

"I'll hear you now--your chapter, you know. We ought to have read the
Bible more. We forgot the Lord, we were so busy. But--but--" He lifted
his hand, struggled to rise, his dim eyes lighting with sudden energy.
"Jenny! He doesn't forget me now!"

"No, father, no!"

There was a long silence. Dave sobbed aloud. Mr. Van Ness cleared his
throat composedly. "I will sing," he said. "A hymn would soothe his
passage, probably; or shall I pray?"

Jane leaned forward: "Go away!"

"How? Eh?" aghast, and not sure he had comprehended the vehement
whisper.

"Go. You shall not come between us in these last minutes. You have the
money now. Go away!"

Van Ness wheeled instantly. He was plentiful in expedients for so slight
an emergency as this. He beckoned the clergyman and doctor out of the
room, and shut the door.

"It would be better to leave them alone, gentlemen. The relation between
Captain Swendon and his--ah--Mrs. Van Ness--has always been singularly
close and intimate. The presence of so many strangers oppresses them
both."

"I readily understand that," rejoined Mr. Lampret eagerly, "as far as we
are concerned. But do you return, my dear sir. Surely _you_--"

But Van Ness waved his hand lightly: "No, no! I am comparatively a
stranger to the dear old man. In a few moments--when all is over--I
shall return to support and console _her_."

"Delicate feeling there! Remarkably fine feeling, sir!" said the
clergyman as he strolled with the doctor to his buggy, leaving Mr. Van
Ness to the sanctity of his grief. "Going now? I shall remain until all
is over. There appears to be a storm coming up," with a sad subjection
of tone.

The gathering clouds darkened the room where the captain lay dying: the
wind sobbed gustily through the open window. His feeble eyes were
steady as they never had been in life: he nodded from time to time as
Jane repeated the old verses which he had taught her when she was a
little child.

"'Come unto Me.' That's good! It's all good.--Some water, Dave. What are
you crying about, old fellow?--Yes, we'll read the Bible every day,
Jenny. We'll begin all fresh. We've plenty of time--plenty of time--"

Dave, holding the water to his lips, took it quickly away and fell upon
his knees.

"Oh, father! father!"

The darkness was heavy and the wind blew fiercely as this overgrown
boy's soul went out to love and dogmatize and make mistakes elsewhere.

They let Jane lie a while upon his breast: she was as cold and
motionless as the dead when they took her up.

"I'll go for her husband," said the sobbing old negro.

"No," said Betty shrewdly. "Let her alone a while. This is trouble
enough, God knows, poor child!"

When Jane's senses came to her, and she looked about her intelligently,
old Dave cried eagerly, "I'll fetch Mr. Van Ness: I'll fetch yoh
husband, Miss Jenny."

She stood up quickly: "No. Let me be alone with my father a little
while. Go out, please, and watch the door."

"Nobody shall come in," said Betty.

The room was nearly dark. She was alone with the dead for a long time.
She stooped at last and kissed passionately the poor hand and face which
had been close to her all her life.

"Good-bye!" she said. "Good-bye, father!"

       *       *       *       *       *

When Mr. Van Ness and the clergyman entered the room later, they found
Betty there, her lean visage half terrified and half defiant.

"Where is my wife?" said Van Ness with the sad authority becoming the
master of this house of mourning.

"She--she begs that she may not be disturbed until to-morrow," said
Betty with a scared look behind her. "She's ill. The fact is, she's
clean worn out with trouble."

"I can readily conceive that," said Mr. Lampret.

But Van Ness said nothing: he only glanced toward the still figure which
lay upon the sofa covered with a white sheet, and turned away with a
gloom and alarm on his benignant face quite new to it.

A couple of hours afterward, being alone, he met Betty coming out of
Jane's apartment, and stopped her sternly:

"Mrs. Nichols, I must see my wife. If she is ill, my place is beside
her."

For her answer Betty, with a gasp, threw open the door.

The room was vacant.

"Where is she?"

"As God sees me, I don't know. She bade me say this to you--That she had
paid you the debt, and had gone where you would never find her."

Van Ness's smooth countenance scarcely evinced surprise. He went into
the room and walked about it, and as he touched little articles of dress
and the toilette which she had left scattered here and there, which were
yet warm from her presence, the stout, bulky man could scarcely draw his
breath. He stopped in front of the white pillow with the impress of her
head on it, took up the velvet band which had fastened her hair, the
knot half untied. So nearly within his hold--to escape!

"What is the money to me?" he muttered. "It is Jane that I
want--_Jane_."

Betty was standing at the door when he went out. She cowered back when
she saw the sultry fire in his eyes.

"I don't know where she went. She only said as you would never find her,
sir."

"I will find her," said Van Ness quietly.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]




THE CHURCH OF ST. SOPHIA.


Few buildings have been the object of such passionate attachment as the
great church of Constantinople. To the Greeks of the Lower Empire, St.
Sophia was all that their temple was to the Jews--the centre of the
national life and the focus of the national religion. There a long train
of princes, proudly styling themselves emperors of the Romans, had been
consecrated and had worshipped--there a succession of patriarchs had
edified the Church, presided over great councils, and defied the rival
bishops of Old Rome. The glories of St. Sophia proclaimed that the city
of Constantine was not merely the capital of the East, but the one city
which had been born and educated in the bosom of the faith, and never
polluted by the worship of the older gods. To the modern Greek the
gilded Crescent that has supplanted the Cross on its aërial dome is at
once a sacrilege and a humiliation, a flashing symbol of political and
religious degradation, telling too plainly that the barbarian rules in
the palaces of the Cæsars, and that the faith once delivered by the
Saviour at Jerusalem has been driven from its noblest temple by the
Prophet of Arabia. Nor can the venerable edifice be without interest to
all of us when we remember how it is identified with the greatest
triumphs and the greatest reverses of Christianity, and with the two
great epochs of Christian history--the death of paganism and the birth
of free thought: its erection was a proof of the former, and its capture
led directly to the Renaissance.

The present church is the fourth which has stood on the same spot and
borne the same name. Constantine in A.D. 325--therefore long before his
baptism--dedicated the first to the Wisdom of God which was from the
beginning (Proverbs viii. 22)--that is, to the Logos, or Word of God.
Near it he founded another, dedicated to the Peace of God which passeth
all understanding. His son and successor, Constantius, as the former
seemed too small for his increasing city, rebuilt St. Sophia, and added
to it the latter, the church of St. Irene. This second St. Sophia
witnessed the strange pagan revival of Julian and the ascendency of
Arianism under Valens. From St. Sophia issued that crowd of satyr-like
monks and Jezebel-like women who attacked Gregory Nazianzen in his
missionary church Anastasia; and from its gate went forth into poverty
and exile Damophilus, the last of the Arian patriarchs, when Theodosius,
at the head of his armed soldiers, conducted the triumphant Gregory
through streets echoing with cries of rage, grief, astonishment and
despair, and in the church, filled with the imperial guards in all the
panoply of war, installed him with his own imperial hand on the throne
of the patriarchs. But the greatest name in the annals of the church of
Constantius is that of St. John Chrysostom. Here he denounced the vices
of the rich, the extravagance of female dress, the profuse honors paid
to the statue of Eudocia the empress; here, when the fallen minister
Eutropius had fled for refuge to the church and lay grovelling in
agonies of fear under the holy table, he uttered his great discourse on
the instability of human greatness and the forgiveness of injuries.[9]
Here, in allusion to the hostility of the empress, he cried, "Herodias
is again furious; Herodias again dances; she again demands the head of
John"--a sentence not to be forgotten by a woman and a queen. Her
revenge came soon. On Easter Eve, A.D. 404, St. Sophia was invaded by
the troops, the rite of baptism rudely interrupted, the Catholics driven
from the church to the baths, from the baths to the fields: amid the
tumult fire burst forth in the sanctuary, and the church perished in the
conflagration.

[Footnote 9: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! Where are now the
splendid surroundings of the consulship? Where are the gleaming torches,
the applause, the dances, the banquets, the crowded feasts? Where are
the acclamations of the circus, the adulation of the spectators?
Perished. A storm has stripped off the leaves and bared the tree, now
tottering from its root. Where are the feigned friends, the revellings
and drinkings, the swarm of parasites, the various artifices of the
cook, the slaves and ministers to the caprices of the powerful? They
were but night and a dream--the day has come and they have vanished;
they were spring flowers--the spring has ended and they are withered;
they were shadows, and they have passed away--a vapor that is
dissipated, a bubble that is burst, a spider's web that is torn. Who was
higher in place than this man? Who had ascended greater heights of
honor? Now he is more wretched than the prisoner, more pitiable than the
slave, more indigent than the beggar famishing. What need is there of
words when the man is here before us? See the pallor of death on his
cheeks, the chattering of his teeth, the trembling of his limbs--the
broken voice, the unsteady tongue, the form and figure befitting a stony
heart.

"Nor do I say these things as a reproach, but to soften your hearts--to
lead you to be content with his present punishment. Let the rich see
here the ruin of the mighty: let the poor thank his poverty, which has
been a safe asylum, a waveless harbor, a sure defence. To rich and poor,
to high and low, to bond and free, here is a lesson to benefit all. Have
not I softened your hearts and cast out your anger, extinguished your
inhumanity and led you to compassion? Your faces show it, and your
streaming tears. Let us pray to the God of mercy to soften the emperor's
heart. Thus shall God be favorable to us; thus shall our sins be wiped
out; thus shall we adorn the Church; thus to the farthest ends of the
world will be spread the fame of our humanity and forgiveness."]

The third church was built by Theodosius, A.D. 415, and witnessed a
strange occurrence when its throne was occupied by the well-known
Nestorius, whose name still gives an appellation to the widespread
Nestorian sect. Proclus, the bishop of Cyzicus, was preaching in St.
Sophia, and argued in his discourse for the ascription to the Blessed
Virgin of the title "mother of God;" but the patriarch rose from his
throne and denounced, in the presence of the astonished congregation,
the language of the preacher. This church, too, beheld the
excommunication of the Monophysite Acacius, when one of the Sleepless
Brotherhood, as the body of monks was called, pinned to his vestments,
as he was celebrating at the altar, the sentence of the Roman pontiff,
Felix II.

From Old Rome, New Rome adopted old vices--among others, the passion for
the entertainments of the circus and the factions to which they gave
rise. The two chief parties were the Blues and the Greens, and when
Justinian ascended the throne the Greens were partisans of heresy and
Anastasius--the Blues, of orthodoxy and Justinian. In January, A.D.
532, their rivalry came to a head, or rather the licentious oppressions
of the Blues drove the Greens to despair. The arrest of some ringleaders
of both parties led to a temporary union: a joint attack on the
prefect's palace resulted; the palace was burnt, the prisons thrown
open; the city was in the possession of the mob, who encountered with
all the fury of religious enthusiasm the wild barbarian soldiery. The
women threw from roofs and windows stones on the heads of the troops,
who in return darted firebrands against the houses. For five days the
tumult raged and the flames spread. The conflagration destroyed St.
Sophia, the baths of Zeuxippus, the Brazen Porch of the palace, St.
Sampson's Hospital with its inmates, and the porches which led to the
Forum. Justinian had lost his throne had not the empress Theodora
inspired him with courage. The sedition was at last suppressed, but not
before thirty thousand of the rioters, whose watchword had been Νίκα,
perished in the contest.

On the fortieth day after the fire the St. Sophia still standing was
begun. After prayer by the patriarch Eutychius the foundation-stone was
laid by Justinian on the twenty-third of February, A.D. 532. Large
purchases of adjacent lots were made for the purpose of enlarging the
site. The land on the right hand of the nave, as far as the pillar of
St. Basil, was bought from Charito--on the left, as far as the pillar of
St. Gregory, from Xenophon, a cobbler; that for the bema, from a eunuch
named Antiochus; for the vestry and treasure-house, from a lady named
Anna. The three last named did not want to sell. The emperor in person
had to wait on the lady, who, overcome by this mark of zeal or
condescension, fell at his feet and gave him the ground, stipulating
that she might be buried near it, and trusting that at the day of
judgment she might have a share in the merit of such a work. Antiochus
was more obdurate, but a cruel advantage was taken of his passion for
the sports of the circus. He was arrested on some pretext just before
the great games and thrown into prison. As the time of the festival
approached he gradually weakened, and when the day at length arrived he
surrendered at discretion. The circus was crowded, the emperor in his
seat, the races just beginning, but the sport was suspended till
Antiochus was brought from prison, and in sight of the eager spectators
conducted to the emperor's box to conclude the bargain. The poor cobbler
Xenophon was treated scurvily. He had a longing to play the great man
once in his life, and demanded as a condition of sale that the factions
of the circus should give him a royal salute. The condition was
literally fulfilled. Clad in white and scarlet, the cobbler was placed
in the centre of the arena and the salute given _behind his back_.

For the materials requisitions were made in all the provinces. The
governors of the _Themata_ of the East, the West, the North and the
South were ordered to send up to the capital pillars and marbles from
the ancient temples, baths and palaces. Eight columns of porphyry, which
Aurelian had transported from Baalbec to adorn the temple of the Sun
erected by him at Rome, were sent to Constantinople by Marcia, a noble
widow, whose dowry they had been; eight pillars of green marble were
supplied by the famous shrine of the Ephesian Diana, and the temples of
the Delian Apollo, of Cybele at Cyzicus and of Athene at Athens were
despoiled of their most valuable portions.

The work was pressed forward vigorously. The stones were paid for on
delivery; the workmen had extra pay twice a week; the emperor, staff in
hand, dressed in white linen robe with a white linen kerchief on his
head, daily visited and encouraged his workmen. The architects,
Anthemius of Tralles and Ignatius of Miletus, had under their orders,
according to the Greek stories, one hundred master architects, each
superintending one hundred men. The lime was tempered with barley-water,
and the foundations of the great central piers, fifty feet square and
twenty feet deep, were laid with concrete in which the same barley-water
and chopped willow-bark, poured in lukewarm, were chief ingredients. The
mosaics and marbles of the interior were laid in lime and oil. The
bricks for the cupola were made of Rhodian clay, under the direction of
Troilus the chamberlain, Theodore the patrician of Seleucia, and Basil
the quæstor, and were so light that twelve of them weighed only as much
as one ordinary brick. This last statement, however, of the Byzantine
writer is described by Salzenberg as a pure fiction. The building was
fireproof, no wood being used except in some of the doors.

While human skill and foresight and industry were thus engaged in their
sacred task, the heavenly host, according to the Greek traditions, did
not fail to inspire and protect the toilers. Three visions are narrated.
One day, when the laborers had retired, leaving their tools under the
care of a son of the architect Ignatius, there appeared before the lad,
at the right-hand side of the pier of the upper semi-dome as you ascend
to the dome, a figure like one of the eunuchs of the court, in white and
shining apparel, bidding him recall the workmen to the work of Heaven,
and, to give confidence that nothing would be lost during the absence of
the messenger, adding, "I swear by the Holy Wisdom I will not depart
before thou returnest." The sequel was unfortunate for the boy. By the
emperor's orders, all the officials of the court were brought for
identification before the stripling: he could recognize none as the one
who sent him. Of course, he must have had a vision; and to ensure the
perpetual presence and protection of the celestial visitor according to
his oath, the boy was sent for the rest of his life to the Cyclades.

Again, one Saturday, as the day was declining, the same figure appeared
to the emperor: "Why art thou disquieted for money? Send hither
to-morrow some of thy great men, and I will supply thy needs." On the
morrow came Strategius the treasurer, Basil the quæstor, Theodore the
prefect, and a train of fifty servants and twenty mules. The radiant
figure led them through the Golden Gate, and on and on till they stood
before an immense palace. They ascended its magnificent portico, and
followed their guide through long corridors till they reached a door
which he opened with a brazen key, and disclosed a chamber where the
floor was covered with gold coin. The mules were loaded with the
treasure, and the officers, returning, laid at Justinian's feet eight
thousand pounds weight of gold. Astonished at the tale told by the
officials, the emperor despatched a messenger to the spot described. No
palace there towered aloft: the spot was desolate and unbuilt on.

A third time the angel--in the imperial dress, with the purple
buskin--presented himself to the architect, and bade him change his plan
from a double to a triple apse τρίφωτον μύακα. He
remonstrated, when he next met the emperor, about his contradictory
directions, and was awestruck to hear that on the day when the vision
came to him in the building Justinian had not quitted his palace.

Thus under angelic guidance the work went on, and after five years,
eleven months and ten days of ceaseless toil the stately fane was
completed. Largesses of enormous amount were distributed: one thousand
oxen, as many sheep, as many swine, six hundred deer, ten thousand
fowls, thirty thousand measures of corn, were given to the poor. In long
procession, on Christmas Eve, A.D. 538, the emperor, accompanied by the
patriarch, came to the door of St. Sophia; thence, unaccompanied by
priest or courtier, as though making the final offering alone, he ran to
the foot of the ambo, and with hands outstretched in the attitude of
prayer exclaimed, "Glory to God, who hath deemed me worthy of such a
work! I have conquered thee, Solomon." Well might he so exclaim as he
gazed on the temple resplendent with gold and jewels and flashing
marbles and decked with the spoils of heathen shrines. There was the
white marble of Paros, the blue of Libya, the green of Croceæ, the
black-streaked Celtic marble, the rosy-veined Phrygian, the granite and
porphyry of Egypt; supporting the four smaller semi-domes were the eight
pillars from the temple of the Sun; on either side of the nave the eight
columns which had once adorned the temple of Diana of the Ephesians; the
seats of the priests and the throne of the patriarch were silver-gilt;
the dome of the ciborium over the holy table was of pure gold, bearing a
cross weighing seventy-five pounds and encrusted with precious stones.
The sacred vessels--the chalices, the flagons, the patens--were of the
same metal; the hangings of the altar were of cloth of gold embroidered
with gems; the candlesticks on the altar, the ambo, in the women's
gallery and elsewhere, six thousand in number, were all of gold, as were
the crosses on the bema, the covers of the holy books, the pillars of
the iconostasis screening off the bema. In the altar itself pious
ingenuity had surpassed itself. Into the fluid mass of liquid gold were
thrown pearls, rubies, crystals, topazes, sapphires, onyxes and
amethysts to enhance the costliness of the holiest of holies. The
expense was enormous--Byzantine writers say three hundred and twenty
thousand pounds weight of gold, or between sixty and seventy millions of
dollars.

In marked contrast to the pagan temples, where the resources of art were
lavished on the exterior, the outside of St. Sophia is remarkably plain
and unornamented. To some extent this is due to the removal of all the
statues by the Turks; but even when they were in their places it must
have been merely a huge rectangular mass. The length of the building is
two hundred and forty-one feet, the breadth two hundred and twenty-six
feet, the diameter of the dome one hundred feet, the height to the
centre of it one hundred and seventy-nine feet. East and west of the
great dome spring two large semi-domes, the eastern supported by three
smaller semi-domes, of which the centre one covers the bema; the western
by two smaller semi-domes. The effect of this arrangement is that the
spectator sees at once the lofty dome in the centre, whereas in modern
buildings of like design the full view of the dome is not obtained till
we are nearly under it. St. Sophia thus seems great at first sight--St.
Peter's only after reflection. Around the dome are twenty-four windows;
at the four angles are four colossal seraphim; in the centre the face of
Christ, the sovereign Judge, looked down in mosaic. The porch or narthex
is double, one hundred feet in depth. In the outer one stood the phiale,
with the inscription that reads the same backward and forward: ΝΙΨΟΝ
ΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΜΗ ΜΟΝΑΝ ΟΨΙΝ--"Wash thine iniquities, not the face
alone." Five marble portals, with bronze gates wrought in floriated
crosses, admit to the inner narthex, whence nine doors of bronze,
exquisite in workmanship, admit to the church. Over the centre doorway
is a group in mosaic, where Justinian is represented kneeling with a
nimbus round his head. Over this second narthex and the side aisles is
the _gynœconitis_ or women's gallery, adorned with sixty-seven
pillars, so that the whole number of columns in the church is the prime
number one hundred and seven. In the interior was the nave for the
laity, divided from the _soleas_, or the part for the clergy, by the
_ambo_, a stately and elaborate structure with a canopy of gold and a
cross of pure gold weighing one hundred pounds. The ambo was at once
pulpit and reading-desk. The soleas supplied accommodation for three
hundred and eighty-five ministers of various ranks, including sixty
priests, one hundred deacons and thirty deaconesses. On the left of the
soleas was the seat of the emperor--on the right, the throne of the
patriarch. From the soleas projected the apse of the _bema_, or
sanctuary, flanked by the _diaconicon_, or vestry, and the _prothesis_,
where the elements were prepared for the Eucharist. The bema was divided
from the soleas by the _iconostasis_, or screen, made of silver, and
exhibiting in oval medallions the _icons_ or pictures of Our Lord, His
Virgin Mother, the prophets and apostles. In the iconostasis were the
three holy doors--above the middle one a massive cross of gold. Behind
the holy table ran a semicircular row of seats for the officiating
clergy, the stalls of silver-gilt, the columns dividing them of gold. In
the chord of the bema stood the holy table with its _ciborium_ or canopy
of gold.

But in addition to the marble and alabaster which gleamed in various
hues from wall and pavement, St. Sophia was bright with mosaics. On the
great west arch was represented the Blessed Virgin and Sts. Peter and
Paul; on the sides still exist the figures of St. Anthemius, Basil,
Gregory, Dionysius the Areopagite, Nicholas of Myra, Gregory the
Armenian, and the prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, Jonah and Habakkuk. On the
eastern arch is again a representation of the Virgin Mother, of St. John
the Baptist and of John Palæologus, the last Christian restorer of the
church; on the arch of the bema, Our Lord, His Mother and the archangel
Michael.

On great festivals the emperor went to St. Sophia in state, in
embroidered robes, with purple buskins and close diadem. This diadem was
a high cap of cloth or silk covered with jewels, the crown formed of a
horizontal circle and two arches of gold, bearing at their intersection
a cross or globe. With him went the rest of the imperial family, the
cæsar or sebastocrator in open diadem and green buskins, the
panhypersebastos, the protosebastos and the despots. In attendance were
the great officers--the curapalata, or lord steward, with his silver
rod; the great logothete, or chancellor; the great domestic, who
commanded the infantry; the protostrator, who commanded the cavalry; the
stratopedarch, or quartermaster-general; the protospathaire of the
guards; the constable of the Franks; the æteriarch of the barbarians;
the acolyte of the English or Varangians. In the Byzantine
administration the great duke commanded the fleet, having under him the
great drangaire and the emir or admiral, an Arabic designation borrowed
from the Norman kings of Sicily. To this long array of officials and
courtiers must be added the patriarch and his clergy in the magnificent
vestments of the Greek Church, if we wish to form an idea of the
splendid ceremonial which gave to dome and arch a life and a
significance now lost in the simpler forms of Mohammedan worship.

Twenty years after Justinian in his pride had exclaimed, "Νενίκηκά
σε, Σαλομών," the great dome and the eastern semi-domes fell and
destroyed the holy table and the rich apparatus of the bema; but the
zeal and energy of Justinian did not experience any diminution. A nephew
and namesake of one of the original designers, Ignatius, was employed to
restore the work. He gave the dome its present form, making its height
twenty-five feet more than that of its predecessor, thus diminishing the
lateral thrust. The church remains substantially the same as thus
restored in A.D. 561, but needed and received in after years many
repairs. In A.D. 896 the tower at the west end was erected by the
emperor Michael, and in A.D. 987 a thorough renovation was carried out
by Basil the Bulgaricide. The conquest of the city by the Latins in A.D.
1204 led to the entire destruction of the rich interior arrangements,
and we read of the repairs effected by Andronicus in 1307 A.D., and,
the eastern semi-dome showing signs of giving way, by John Palæologus
IV. in 1345.

The Mohammedan conquest of course swept away the ornaments of the
interior--the ambo, the iconostasis and the holy table. The heads of the
crosses were chiselled off, so as to destroy the cruciform shape, and
the numerous groups and figures portrayed in mosaic were covered with
coats of whitewash. During the restoration of the church in the reign of
Abd-ul-Medjid these works of art were once more brought to light by
Fossati, and sketches of them made by this architect and by Herr
Salzenberg before they were again hidden from sight. The figures of the
four seraphim were never covered, and still look down upon the
desecrated temple: on the four piers hang huge shields bearing in Arabic
characters the names of Aboo-bekr, Omar, Osman and Ali, the four
companions of the Prophet, whom the orthodox Soonees reverence as the
true khalifs. The floor is covered with rich carpeting. As the
Mussulman at prayer turns to the Kebla at Mecca--that is, to the
south-east--and as the church was built nearly east and west, the
pulpit, the carpet, the long lines of worshippers are now arrayed
obliquely to the length of the building.

Although the building of Justinian has never had a patriarch like
Gregory or Chrysostom, it has been the scene of many important events.
At the altar of St. Sophia the emperor Heracleios was compelled by the
citizens to swear to remain in Constantinople when, terrified by the
attacks of the Alans in the North and the Persians in the East, he was
thinking of transferring the seat of the Roman empire to the city of
Carthage. In the ambo, Heracleonas, his younger son by the intriguing
Martina, was forced to exhibit the true heir to the throne, his nephew
Constans. "Christians, to St. Sophia!" was the order of Leontius, who
led the revolt against the cruel Justinian II., and "This is the day of
the Lord," the text of the sermon from the ambo to the insurgents. In
the same spot, after five years of cruel captivity, the five sons of
Constantine Copronymus took refuge. Nicephorus, the eldest, had been
deprived of sight: the others had their tongues cut out. The blind spoke
for the dumb: "Countrymen and Christians, behold the sons of your
emperor, if you can recognize our features! We throw ourselves on your
compassion." From A.D. 726 there reigned the iconoclastic emperors, who
banished all images from the churches, but the year A.D. 842 saw the
sacred icons again restored by Theodora. Her patronage raised to the
patriarchate Ignatius, a son of the emperor Michael Rhaagabe. He
excommunicated the cæsar Bardes for an incestuous marriage, and in
revenge the cæsar forcibly expelled him from his church, and then
endeavored to extort a confession of resignation by stripes and cruelty.
From the high character of Ignatius it was necessary that his successor
should be equal to him in reputation: the cæsar selected for the office
a man of great firmness, unblemished integrity and immense erudition,
the celebrated Photius, whose invaluable work, the _Myriobiblion_, is
still a treasure-house for the scholar. At the time of his election
Photius was a layman, combining the somewhat discordant titles of
proto-a-secretis, or chief-justice, and protospathaire, or captain of
the guards. The first day witnessed his transformation from a layman to
a monk; the second day he was made a reader; the third day, a subdeacon;
the fourth, a full deacon; the fifth, a priest, the sixth, Christmas
Day, A.D. 858, beheld him placed in the throne of Chrysostom. But this
new patriarch was not left undisturbed by the friends of Ignatius. They
appealed to the pope, Nicholas I., who excommunicated Photius, his
legates depositing on the altar of St. Sophia a solemn anathema
enumerating the seven heresies of the Greeks, and devoting teacher and
disciple to the eternal society of the devil and his angels. "From this
thunder-bolt may be dated the schism of the Eastern Church." Photius in
turn excommunicated and deposed Pope Nicholas. It is hard to say how
often Photius was banished and restored. He was banished by Basil the
Macedonian, and Ignatius restored. He was recalled after the death of
Ignatius, and presided in the general council of 869 A.D., and was
banished again by the emperor Leo.

The conquest by the combined forces of the Venetians and the French in
1204, A.D., was disastrous to St. Sophia. The veil of the sanctuary was
torn asunder for the sake of the golden fringe, the altar broken in
pieces, and the wrought silver and gold ornaments torn down. A
prostitute was placed on the throne of the patriarchs, and danced and
sang in derision of the hymns and processions of the Oriental rite. But
this wanton sacrilege and shameless indecency disgusted the Greeks less
than the celebration of the Eucharist according to the Latin rite with
unleavened bread. The Orthodox patriarch fled, a Venetian prelate was
installed on the vacant throne, but after a succession of six Latin
patriarchs no trace of the Latin conquest was left in the church except
the tomb, in the women's gallery,

    Of blind old Dandolo,
    The octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe;

and the feelings of the outraged Greeks found expression in the words of
the great duke: "I would rather see in St. Sophia the turban of Mohammed
than the tiara of pope or cardinal."

This hatred, deep and strong, of the Latins and the Latin rite
effectually marred all the attempts at reunion of the two churches
undertaken by John Palæologus in the hope of thus alluring to his aid
the arms of Western Christendom. When Metrophanes, who had assented to
the terms of union with Rome, was consecrated, the spacious church was
empty--even the cross-bearers had fled. A final trial to conciliate Rome
and the nations who acknowledged the pope as the Vicar of God was made
by the ill-fated Constantine. On December 12, A.D. 1452, the two
nations joined in communion in St. Sophia: Pope Nicholas and the
patriarch Gregory were solemnly commemorated; but the dress and language
of the Latin priest were objects of horror, and when he was seen to mix
water with the wine and take up the unleavened wafer, the worshippers of
either sex and every degree rushed forth from the lofty dome, dispersed
themselves in taverns, drank confusion to the slaves of the pope, and
emptied their glasses in honor of the Blessed Virgin. The polluted
church was deserted by clergy and people, and "a vast and gloomy silence
prevailed in that venerable dome which had so often smoked with a cloud
of incense, blazed with innumerable lights and resounded with the voice
of prayer and thanksgiving." But when Constantine had fallen, with the
courage of a Roman, at the gate of St. Romanus, St. Sophia was sought
again by the timid crowd. "In the space of an hour the sanctuary, the
choir, the nave, the upper and lower galleries, were filled with
multitudes of fathers and husbands, of women and children, of priests,
monks and nuns," expecting the descent of an angel whose celestial sword
was to exterminate the hosts of the Turks. But axes began to thunder at
the bolted doors; the priest fled from the altar with the consecrated
elements, and tradition added to his escape the miraculous feature that
the door through which he passed defied all efforts to open it. This
door, in the upper gallery, was opened during the repairs a few years
ago, and was found to lead to an old disused staircase choked up with
rubbish. Although there is pointed out on one of the pillars a red mark
said to have been made by the bloody hand of Mohammed as he stood on a
heap of slain, truth compels the historian to assert that the church was
not defiled with bloodshed: no resistance was made; the conquerors had
merely to select their captives. Through the struggling mass of fierce
captors and reluctant prisoners Mohammed forced his way to the bema,
laid his hand on the altar and exclaimed, "One only is God, One only;
and Mohammed is His prophet." The next Friday all the forms of Islam
were gone through--the muezzin proclaimed the hours of prayer from the
Venetian bell-tower; the imam preached; the sultan in person performed
the _namaz_ of prayer. From that hour the church which had seen the
Arian controversy, which had been the scene of disputes respecting the
twofold nature, the one person, the eternal generation of the Son, and
whose last days were engaged in denying the double procession of the
Holy Ghost, has been the temple of a faith that teaches that "God begets
not, nor is He begotten; and of His mercy there is no end."

HUGH CRAIG.




OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.


RUSSIAN AND TURKISH MUSIC.

In the obscure period preceding the origin of the great civilizer, Peter
I., the Muscovites knew scarcely more than one melody, to which
different words were adapted according to the circumstances. "It served
alike," says an old author, "the unhappy man for his lamentations; the
drunkard for his bacchanalian song; the laborer for his diversion when
overcome with weariness; the driver for encouragement to his horses; and
the young for regulating their steps in the dance." Among the
instruments that were used to accompany this universal melody we notice
the _goudok_, a species of violin having three strings, of which the
_chanterelle_ was played _pizzicata_, while a very short bow was drawn
over the other two strings. (These bass strings must have acted like a
double pedal accompaniment--_i.e._ two immovable notes, for the
performer had not, so far as we know, a third hand to vary the
intonation.) Then there was the _balalai-ka_, a kind of guitar with two
strings; the _doutka_ an exact copy of the double pipes of antiquity;
the _gousli_, or horizontal harp, approaching the zither or psalterion;
the _valinca_, which was a species of bagpipe, etc. All of this was very
primitive and a little savage. However, music was noticeably more
advanced in the southern province of Ukraine. "Many of the inhabitants
of this portion of the country went to Moscow or St. Petersburg, and
entered the service of the nobles in the capacity of musicians. They
had, and have still, very fine voices. They formed almost the entire
choir of the imperial chapel.... The Ukrainians all love music and the
dance, and seem to have no occupation more important than that of
amusing themselves. They excel particularly on the _bandora_, with which
they accompany their songs of a tender or lively character."

It was hardly until the time of Peter the Great--that is to say, in the
early part of the last century--that European music was introduced into
Russia. "The czar appointed a certain number of young men, who were
taught to play on trumpets, kettle-drums, hautboys and bassoons; and so
that the public might be in a state to judge of their progress, he
commanded that every day at noon they should perform, some of them in
the belfry of the Admiralty, the others in the belfry of the
fortress.... While he was at table _cornets à bouguin_ and _sackbuts_
(trombones) were played. The violins and bass-viols were reserved for
court balls." But it was not until the reign of the czarina Anne that a
troupe of Italian singers established themselves at St. Petersburg. The
first opera played by them in this capital was entitled _Abiazare_: the
score was by the Florentine maëstro Araya, chapel-master of the court.
It was to the empress Elizabeth, "_née avec une âme sensible_," that the
town of Moscow owed the building of its first theatre. The opera with
which it was inaugurated was _La Clemenza di Tito_, a poem of
Metastasio's, the music by Hasse, with a prologue of Araya's entitled
_La Russia afflitta e riconsolata_.

From this time on the musical part of Russia maintained uninterrupted
relations with Italy. Araya's successors were Galuppi, Iraetta, Sarti,
Cimarosa, Federico Ricci (author of _Crispino e la Comare_). We must add
to the list Boieldieu, who in the first part of this century occupied
the envied position of chapel-master to the czar.

And now let us pass over the Pruth. It would be difficult in an article
of a few lines to give an exact idea of the Turkish music, for in order
to do this it is necessary to treat the question from an acoustic point
of view.

In fact, the Oriental gamut differs from ours very essentially, as it
contains quarter tones. Our ears, educated to the semitone as minimum
interval, cannot seize any melodious meaning in the midst of these
heteroclite sounds. However, the Turkish music, well suited to the
dance, is not lacking in rhythm. The principal instruments used to mark
the time are the _daul_, or great drum; the _tomboleh_, or small drum;
the _kios_, a brass drum; the triangle, etc.... As for the other
instruments, they are--the _sinekeman_, a violin of large dimensions;
the _nei_, flute made of a reed; the _ghirif_, little flute; the
_kânon_, a psalterion with strings of catgut, which is particularly in
favor in the harems, etc.... In _Constantinople in 1828_ (by Farlane) we
read: "The music to which the dervishes perform their ambulatory
rotations is made up of tambourines, small drums and Turkish flutes....
The dervishes begin singing a soft and slow melody while turning around:
then the movement is gradually accelerated until it becomes a giddy
whirl, lasting twelve or fifteen minutes. After a brief pause a second
dance begins, then a third, more rapid and more savage, and the cries,
_Allah il Allah, la illa il Allah_, are given louder and sharper than
before." If our readers have any curiosity about this strange art, they
have but to open the score of _Oberon_: they will find there two
authentic Turkish airs, noted down almost textually by Weber--namely,
the march of the patrol which ends the first act, and the dizzy round
that makes the dénoûment of the piece, dragging the pasha and his suite
into a choreographic vortex with the force of a whirlwind.--_Condensed
from an article by A. de Lasalle_.


"LES NAUFRAGÉS DE CALAIS."

After the restoration of the monarchy in France on the 22d of July,
1815, a royal decree ordained the banishment of thirty-eight ex-members
of the Convention who had voted for the death of Louis XVI. These
unhappy regicides took refuge in the Low Countries, but the French
government demanded their expulsion, and King William of Holland was
reluctantly compelled to obey. Among these persons was Merlin of Douai,
who had been Minister of Justice in 1795. On being refused an asylum on
Dutch soil, he took passage on board the brig Alice for New York. She
was wrecked off Flushing before reaching the Channel. Her passengers
were saved, and relanded on the coast of Belgium. In this situation how
vividly must Merlin have recalled a parallel event in which he played
the part of an unjust and cruel judge, while his victims were two
hundred and fifty shipwrecked noblemen escaping from the government of
the Reign of Terror!

Minister Merlin, having been written to to know what disposition it
would be proper to make of the _naufragés de Calais_, as these
unfortunates are called in history (since the law dooming to death
emigrants who returned to France with arms in their hands did not seem
to apply to persons shipwrecked while escaping), he answered with fierce
brevity, "Wherever I find an enemy I kill him!" In spite of the Minister
of Justice, however, public opinion in Calais was on the side of
humanity. Delays were interposed, and one brave lawyer, Gorse by name,
ventured to address a letter of remonstrance to the minister, which cost
him his liberty, and would doubtless have brought him to the guillotine
but for the fall of Robespierre.

Among the naufragés de Calais (all noblemen) was the duke de
Choiseul-Saintville. He and his companions were transferred from jail to
jail during the reign of the Directory. Sometimes they were threatened
with courts-martial--sometimes they appeared to be forgotten. Several
times they were tried in civil courts, and every time they were
acquitted. But they were never set at liberty, and it is difficult to
imagine what might have been their fate had not Bonaparte suddenly
returned from Egypt. The news of his landing was hailed by all who were
suffering from the weak tyrannies and unjust indecisions of the
Directory. The naufragés especially saw in his sense of what was
generous and just a hope of deliverance.

That deliverance came even sooner than they expected, thanks to the
following letter, written by Stéphanie de Choiseul, a girl of fourteen,
to the First Consul:

"CITIZEN GENERAL, FIRST CONSUL:"

I hardly know how to address you, for I am writing without the knowledge
of anybody, and I do not even know if you will get my letter. But every
one is talking about you: every one is saying that you are so very
great--that you are setting so much that has been wrong to rights--that
you are doing things so very wonderful. When I hear this I feel
confident you will not despise my prayers and tears. If what I am doing
seems very extraordinary, pardon my boldness because I am so unhappy.

"You have no doubt heard of the naufragés de Calais, who have been tried
and acquitted several times. Several times they have been on the point
of being sent away from France and set at liberty, but each time the
prospect has only resulted in their being more harshly treated than
before. What crime have they committed? They were cast away on the
French coast against their will. They were not bearing arms against
their country. If you deign to read their defence you will be convinced
of the justice of their cause. Alas! Citizen First Consul, my father is
one of these unhappy persons. He is sick--he is dying in prison. In
spite of any prejudice you may feel against him, you would take pity on
him if you could know all he has suffered. He has been now nearly five
years in prison, sent from dungeon to dungeon, sometimes confined with
mad people, sometimes with criminals.

"After being eleven months imprisoned in the casemates of the citadel of
Lille, he has been sent in chains to Ham, and cannot understand why his
imprisonment has been made more strict than before. He is now alone, in
solitary confinement. I have been torn from him in prison, and now I
come imploring you upon my knees to let me go back to him, unless you
will grant his liberty to my prayers.

"Take me, citizen general, as a hostage for my father. I will promise he
shall submit to whatever conditions may be asked of him. If I may only
be imprisoned in his stead, I shall be happy. I will answer for him: you
may trust him wherever he may be permitted to live.

"Take pity on my grief: grant me this prayer. If you do, you will make
amends to me for many sorrows, for I have lost upon the scaffold my
nearest and dearest friends. I have no one left now but my father and
my little brother. Take pity upon him and me. We will bless you every
day if you do so. The endless gratitude of such poor children will
surely do you good, and help in some way to make your life more happy.
That gratitude will be always yours if you will save our father, who
will die if you do not succor us.

"You are so great you will not despise our prayer. Be our deliverer, and
be sure your name will never be uttered in our presence without being
blessed from the very depths of our souls."

"STÉPHANIE CHOISEUL.
HOURCOURT (Vosges), 4 Frimaire, an VIII."

Immediately after the First Consul had read this letter the naufragés
were set at liberty; that is, they were transported beyond the limits of
France. Two years later, however, they were permitted to return by the
act of general amnesty. Many, however, had already made their peace with
the new government. The duke de Choiseul was of that number.

Twenty years later, as we have already seen, Merlin, the savage Minister
of Justice who had refused pity to these unfortunate persons, was
himself, by a similar shipwreck under similar circumstances, delivered
over to the mercy of their friends. He had sententiously declared,
"Wherever I find an enemy I kill him!" King William of Holland silenced
one of his ministers who was urging him to take revenge on Merlin by
very different words: "A hurricane has thrown him back upon our coast:
shall I be more pitiless than winds and storms?"

Once again during the brief remainder of his days was Merlin to learn
the lesson "_noblesse oblige_" by experiencing a generosity he had never
shown. In 1820 his son, General Eugène Merlin, who had served with
distinction under the Empire, but had made his submission to the
government of the Restoration, was arrested on a charge of being
implicated in a military conspiracy. The matter came before the Court of
Peers. The duke de Choiseul, high in the favor of his king, sat as one
of the judges. He believed the young man innocent, and took his defence
upon himself, pleading his cause so warmly that General Eugène Merlin
was acquitted.

Stéphanie de Choiseul married when she grew up, and became duchesse de
Marmier.

E.W.L.


REALISTIC ART.

Seldom now-a-days does an "old master" appear in the catalogues of
art-sales or private galleries, the genuine article having grown too
scarce and the fictitious too abundant. What the buyer looks for is a
picture younger than himself, as full of the fashion of his own day as
his coat or his hat. The painter must have some celebrity, and that must
have at least six or eight years to grow in. Allowing for that necessary
age, the newer the artist the better his work. The period has every
confidence in itself, and does not care to look back for guidance and
instruction in the principles of beauty and taste.

Naturally, this state of things implies realism in the selection and
treatment of subjects. There is no time to idealize. The pencil must
seize what is at hand, and serve it up on the spot. Landscapes and
figures are flat copies of what the artist sees, and are labelled with
their true names. Lorettes, contadine and odalisques are presented to us
as such, and not as goddesses, heroines or saints. A ravine in Algeria,
Norway or the Rocky Mountains, a sugar-camp in Maine or a wreck at Long
Branch, are equally undisguised in their shape and title. The successors
of Wilson and Turner no longer compose or combine. They have stopped
clipping Nature into bits and sewing her together again like a patchwork
quilt. The scenes we meet with on the walls are real scenes, to a tree
or a ripple, and the title tells us so. Some liberties are taken with
the clouds, and an artificial drapery of light and shade is thrown over
the solid objects. Appropriate figures, too, are injected, by way of
making up some sort of story and showing that the place is inhabited.
But plain, faithful copying, as of an advanced drawing-school turned
out of doors, and not pretending to be anything else, is the rule.

Not yet is a representation of Ajax or Ariadne, a satyr or a nymph,
labelled "Portrait of a Gentleman" or "of a Lady," as the case may be.
That may come ere long, with the names, given and family, of the
individuals so honored. Till then we do without the Homeric characters
altogether, and get Smith and Jones, their spouses and progeny, in
dresses and situations they may be readily conceived as filling.

All this implies a reign of truth. Truth is a good thing, and nowhere a
better thing than in art. But literal truth is prosaic, and the
Gradgrind school of art has a tendency to lower us to the hardest kind
of facts. Stationary subjects are the choice of the copyist. Asses,
ponds, weeds, bottles, melons, young chickens (dead), oysters and
decayed trees commend themselves as capital sitters. It is disheartening
to the amateur to see his gallery gradually assuming the similitude of a
common or a junk-shop. However, an ultra-realistic style cannot prevail
long. Human nature cannot bear it, and will insist on springing from
earth into a purer, thinner and more impalpable air. A craving for the
imaginative will assert itself; and when it does so art will be all the
stronger for the discipline and study through which it is now passing.


ARTISTIC JENKINSISM.

Who was it that, his soul hot within him at the undue predominance of
the dead languages in the English university curriculum, declared that
the system of facts with which the British graduate of the present day
was the most familiar was the intrigues of the heathen gods?

We think of this Thersites sometimes when our eyes light, in big
double-sheeted daily or fashionable monthly, on a column or two, fresh
from over the water, of exhaustive minutiæ of the daily life, walk and
conversation of French artists, playwrights, actors and actresses.
Matter of this sort was not wont to be so absorbingly interesting to the
American reader. The time was not very long since when a very little of
it went a great way with him--when the domestic troubles of Madame de
Caux and the personal habits of M. Sardou would not have been considered
worth as many lines as they now get paragraphs. Even such assiduously
advertised affairs as the relations of De Musset and George Sand, and
Rachel's patronage of her pets among the gilded youth, created no
contemporary sensation comparable to that consequent upon their
resuscitation. And we were none the worse for missing such topics,
although they were rather less unworthy of study than the corresponding
gossip of to-day. Literature, the drama, music and pictorial art on the
Continent were certainly not at a lower standard fifteen or twenty years
ago than now. The inner halo around their leading lights was not less
attractive or less deserving of micrometric analysis. No first-class
name has been added to their number in either walk, nor are the
individual careers of the second-class characters who have succeeded
them at all more fruitful in salient traits for instruction or
entertainment.

It is a familiar theory that the creative age dies out as the critical
age gains strength--that when we grow nice, finical and blasé as to the
quality of our intellectual aliment, we prove thereby the enfeeblement
of our intellectual appetite and digestion. At present, the
circumstances point to our having gone a step farther still, and
attained the _hyper_critical stage. Our attention now has degenerated
into a study of the dishes wherein the aforesaid food is served--their
lustre, fabric, style and "crackle," a craze in flesh-and-blood
ceramics. We never get tired of holding them up to the light and
minutely mapping all their flaws and beauties, with each shade of color
and glaze, superficial and iridescent or struck through and solid.

There may be something in the fierce light that beats upon a literary or
artistic throne beneficial alike to subject and monarch. But here there
are too many thrones, and the light is too fierce. Let us have a
selection of potentates to be illuminated, and let us turn down the gas
a little.

E.B.


LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV. By Francis Parkman.
Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

In this volume Mr. Parkman has made a long step toward the culminating
point of his historical series, and in the preface he announces that,
passing over the intervening half century, he will make the fall of the
French dominion in Canada the subject of his next book. There will then
be more to relate of interest to readers in general than the events and
personages of the present work can afford: this, nevertheless, has a
peculiar value, as showing the opening of the rivalry between the French
and English colonies, and exposing the causes which from the beginning
rendered defeat inevitable for the former. These causes Mr. Parkman has
already stated in the _Old Régime in Canada_, though less clearly and
with an apparent tendency to consider that the result, after all, really
came from an incapacity of the "French Celt" for self-government. More
truly he now says that, had the Huguenots been allowed to settle in
Canada, its fate would probably have been different. They represented
that middle class to which was in great part due the success of the
English settlements; and, standing shoulder to shoulder, as was their
way, they would have formed a strong wall against encroachment and
invasion. But Louis XIV. wished to exercise a more immediate control
over his North American possessions than he might have found practicable
had the too independent Huguenots been permitted to swarm into the land.
Moreover, the colony, formed originally by the missionaries, retained
its religious character to the very end. In the government the priest
gradually gave way to the royal officer, though not without a contest:
the jarrings between temporal and spiritual authorities were frequent,
and not least so in Frontenac's time. He indeed lived in a constant
state of quarrel with the Jesuits, who were, nevertheless, his right
hand in external troubles. Canada was peopled by an "army of bigots," to
use Napoleon's expression; and the priests kept alive the spirit of
warlike piety which furthered so well the purposes of king and governor.

Cross in hand, they led their Indian converts to battle; nor do they
seem to have softened the asperities of Indian warfare, doubtless
looking on fire and steel as the best discipline for their heretical
foes. Children taken in war they were accustomed to keep and bring up as
Catholics; and this desire to save souls, which was communicated by the
fathers to the whole population, helps to explain why captives among the
Canadians, as among the Indians, so often forgot their homes and were
unwilling to return to them. Both French and savages received their
prisoners into their families, and treated them as they did those of
their own blood--the latter to make good their losses in war by the
adoption of new members into the tribe, the former as well from natural
kindliness as moved by eagerness for the spiritual welfare of the
benighted. The English, like the Plains Indians of the present day, had
no such motives; and those living in captivity among them, however
kindly treated, remained aliens, and seized gladly any opportunity of
regaining their freedom.

Mr. Parkman, while doing full justice to the ability, valor and
self-sacrifice of the priests, condemns of course their acceptance, and
even approval, of such barbarous customs as torture and the killing of
non-combatants; and this blame extends itself to the French generally,
with whose adoption of savage practices he compares the self-restraint
and mercifulness of the New Englanders, even when, as at the time of the
capture of Port Royal, exasperated by the recent massacre of their
countrymen. The causes of this difference of conduct are not far to
seek, though Mr. Parkman does not explain them, being perhaps inclined
to refer it to national character. The war-parties that left Quebec and
Montreal consisted of soldiers, trained to the manner of war which in
the first half of that century turned much of Germany into a desert, or
of Indians and trappers, red and white savages, who inflicted cruelty on
others with all the indifference which they displayed in bearing it. The
forces of New England, on the other hand, were composed of fishermen and
farmers, men with families and engaged in peaceful occupations, to which
war came as an unwelcome interruption. Murder had not been taught them
as a duty, but forbidden as a crime; and, more gentle by habit, it was
not to be expected but that they would display far more moderation in
bloodshedding.

The military character of Canada is strikingly shown by the moral
influence exercised over the people by the character of the governor. As
in an army the officers are known by the conduct of their troops, so his
vigor or inability gave tone to the whole colony. Under Frontenac all
was energy and confidence, while under the blustering La Barre and the
pious Denonville, who ruled between the count's two terms of office, the
_habitans_ shut themselves up in forts, leaving their fields to the
ravages of the Mohawks. At the age of seventy Frontenac returned to
uphold the failing colony, sent by the king as the only man capable of
performing the task. He was sagacious in council, prompt and tireless in
action, and, what was a chief recommendation to his post, he well
understood the character of the Indians, his dealings with whom were
marked by equal address and firmness. "In their eyes," says Mr. Parkman,
"Frontenac was by far the greatest of the 'Onontios' or governors of
Canada." Common sense and a knowledge of men probably enabled him to
make himself feared and esteemed even by the fierce, astute Iroquois,
quick at noting weaknesses, but recognizing a man when they saw him. The
count, on his side, was attracted by these foes, so difficult to fight,
whose shrewd diplomacy and unflinching courage he appreciated no less
than their childish simplicity; while their cruelties did not shock the
old campaigner against the Turks, who could be cruel enough himself on
an occasion where policy seemed to demand it, though he was wont to
display much courtesy and generosity toward his English prisoners, many
of whom he ransomed from the Indians. In fine, he deserves all the good
that Mr. Parkman has to say of him, if not entitled to the unlimited
laudations bestowed on him by Father Goyer. The discourse which this
priest--one of the Récollet order--held over the count's grave is, as
annotated by a hostile critic, a most amusing document, and gives a good
idea of Frontenac's real character. He left more friends than enemies
behind him, and the mourning of the whole colony for his loss may be set
against the bitterness with which his Jesuit adversaries pursued him
even after his death.


Nimport. (Wayside Series.) Boston: Lockwood, Brooks & Co.

_Nimport_ certainly deserves to be set high among the new American
novels that are appearing in such unaccustomed profusion. If, as it
would seem, it is a first venture of some unknown writer, it indicates
considerable promise, not perhaps of the highest talent, but of that
agreeable union of humor and intelligence of which the richest fruit is
to be seen in the stories of Mrs. Oliphant among contemporary authors.
The book has decided faults: it is too long; the different chapters are
incoherently put together; characters are lugged in and turned out again
without any reference to the needs of the plot; what is most interesting
is cut up by frequent interruptions; there are too many threads in the
story; and yet, in spite of these glaring faults, there is so much
cleverness of a certain sort in the parts that are good that the reader
is disposed to be very clement toward this well-meant though mistaken
profusion of material.

The story deals with the fortunes of a family who have been left almost
penniless at the death of their parents, and it is narrated by one of
their number, a somewhat wan and spectral figure, an artist, whose
adventures are thrust in amid the far more interesting letters of a
sister who recounts her experience as governess in a rich but underbred
family. Her pen is very sharp, and she puts down what she sees and hears
with a great deal of cleverness. Had the story consisted of her career
alone, it would have been much completer than the present motley record,
but some amusing episodes would have been sacrificed which the reader
could ill spare. The best of these is the account of Aunt Bangs, the
stately and unattractive relation who swoops down upon the fragment of
the family left at home, perching like a raven over their heads, and
bullying them to within an inch of their lives. Everything that is said
about her is full of unexaggerating humor. There is no grinning through
a horse-collar in these scenes, and no reckless abuse of old age, but
simply accurate drawing of a disagreeable character. This is certainly
much more the author's strong point than the delineation of high
tragedy. A murder is as much out of place in this simple narration as it
would be in a quiet, decent parlor. It is not thrilling: it is simply
out of taste, in the way of being unnatural and offensive, rather than a
legitimate conclusion to carefully-drawn horrors. The introduction does
not lead up to such black crime: the book is on surer ground in quiet
domestic incidents. Once for all, it may be said that Phil's death, the
part about Miss Quilty, and possibly even what is said about Dan, might
have been omitted to advantage. What would have been left has been only
injured by this extraneous matter; and the directness of the impression
the better parts would have made has been weakened by this distracting
complexity.

The good parts are really good: they lack the morbidness which
undermines so many otherwise clever stories of New England life. Too
frequently in these the element of passion is left out, and in its place
we have a good deal of more or less entertaining writing about
love-making, with the love left out. But in this book this mistake is
not made. The love-story is simple enough and obvious enough. It will
never make the book a formidable rival to _Jane Eyre_, but so far as it
goes it is true to every-day life. What is best in the book is the
intelligent observation to which it bears witness: its humor is kindly
and unaffected. The story is clumsy and ill-constructed, but it has
decided merit, and the faults are only such as could have been best
cured by the judicious application of a pair of scissors. Too often it
happens that the reader of novels feels that the author's only chance is
to be born again, but _Nimport_ inspires the hope that the writer will
try again.


Briefe aus Philadelphia (1876) an eine Freundin (Letters from
Philadelphia to a Friend). Von Catherine Migerka. Wien.

As long as a concern--or at least curiosity--to see ourselves as others
see us shall move American breasts, so long will such books as the above
have interest for us. In the present case it will depend entirely upon
the interest we take in what relates to ourselves, for a more vapid yet
didactic little volume--or rather pamphlet--than Frau Migerka's letters
we have never seen; which we say with a distinct recollection of various
books by our own country-folk upon foreign lands. The author is not
observant of characteristic details, nor has she the faculty of drawing
inferences or coming to general conclusions correctly from what she sees
and hears. She has collected some statistics, picked up some facts,
noted some prominent features of the national physiognomy, which she has
mixed and muddled with apostrophes to Nature, Liberty, the soul of man,
the German people, the American people, and poetical reflections a
little in the manner of Primula Veris, the literary lady in one of
Spielhagen's novels. It is unusual for German women to travel: many of
them in easy circumstances and a respectable position live and die
without going more than a few miles from home. From Dresden to Pilnitz,
from Berlin to Potsdam, from Vienna to Glocknitz, from Munich to the
Staremberg See, is by many of the inhabitants considered not an
excursion, but a journey. Frau Migerka is a Viennese, and appears to
have studied men and manners exclusively in her own country, as her
standards and comparisons are drawn thence alone. She came to this
country with her husband, who was one of the Austrian commissioners to
the International Exposition, and Philadelphia was the only American
city which she saw, except fleeting glimpses of New York, Boston and
Cleveland. She was exceedingly struck by New York Bay, and indeed the
scenery of the country wherever she went elicited real raptures,
although she invariably declines the attempt to describe it as beyond
her powers: the only natural beauties on which she expatiates are
sunrises, sunsets and moonlights. These not being phenomena peculiar to
our heavens, it is fair to suppose that she was unaccustomed to behold
them in so much beauty and splendor; but it does not seem to have
occurred to her that they were due to the extraordinary clearness and
brilliancy of our sky and atmosphere compared with those of most
European countries. New York itself disappointed her by looking "so new
and modern, with nothing to recall the past;" and she sadly contrasts
Broadway with the streets of Vienna, on which stand the haughty palaces
of the Schwarzenbergs, Lichtensteins and Esterhazys. One must be a
soulful German to come to a new country and lament over its cities for
not being old. Her remarks about Boston are calculated to irritate the
feelings of sister-cities without gratifying the Bostonians: she says
that the moral qualities of that community have obtained for it the
prominence and leadership in the politics and religion of the country
and an intellectual supremacy in public opinion, but that the city is
not handsome, and that the bad taste of the edifices, within and
without, is barbarous. Cleveland is the town which pleases her most, and
she ascribes its beauty and charm to German influence. With
Philadelphia she had some opportunity of making acquaintance, and her
impressions of us will be amusing to those who are not too thin-skinned.

Frau Migerka's first letter is devoted to the women of America, whom she
acknowledges to be pretty even beyond their reputation and her
expectation, wider awake and better educated than the men, and
beautifully dressed, although her sober taste is shocked by the display
of jewelry and trinkets in public conveyances and places of amusement.
She censures the rage for adornment of the women of the working-classes,
and the unfitness of a woman who is maid-of-all-work, whether in her own
house or that of an employer, appearing in the street arrayed with
pretensions to style and elegance which belong to people of very
different means and scale of living. Frau Migerka had heard of the
extravagance, love of luxury and idleness of our women in all classes,
but inclines to disbelieve the last charge, and to give them credit for
working much harder than they themselves admit. She suspects them of
being ashamed of household occupations, and shows us first the American
woman, who, after drudging the whole week, sallies forth on Sunday
peacockwise, "looking like a real lady" (as used to be said before
"ladies" took to advertising their desire for a cook's or chambermaid's
situation), and then the good German housewife, who, after "cooking and
cleaning all day long, stirring with spoons and clattering with plates,
patching the children's clothes and darning the goodman's hose, has no
ambition beyond relating her achievements to her next-door neighbors
over a friendly gossip-cup of coffee." It is a lifelike picture of the
two types: no right-minded person will deny the folly and vanity of the
American city woman, who does not lack mentors and censors in her own
country; but whether the German housewife, after her day of multifarious
scrubbing, scouring and sewing, might not find something better to talk
about in the evening, Frau Migerka could learn from some of our Yankee
farmers' wives. She considers American wives very inferior to German
ones; and there, again, she is right, as far as industry and
self-forgetfulness are concerned; but she also considers American
husbands as in a condition of subservience and degradation, of which
flagrant instances are their not daring to smoke in their wives' rooms,
and going to market carrying the basket. How wrong and inverted is such
a position! No, no: if there must be slaves, Nature has settled of which
sex they shall be by appointing that the weak shall serve the strong.
Therefore she accounts for the respect which the unworthy fair sex
receives in America, like several other things which she cannot
otherwise explain, as being a matter of tradition, the habit of a
reverence which our foremothers rightly received from men for whom they
had sacrificed everything but principle.

Frau Migerka betrays her curious lack of the inductive faculty by
accusing us of want of domestic taste and love of home, after remarking
on the inaptitude of our houses for social purposes: while delighted
with their cleanliness and convenience, she is struck by the absence of
suitable rooms for the assembling of guests, and the consequent
inconvenient crowd at an ordinary American party. Now, home-keeping is a
good fault, but a fault it is in the extent to which we carry it:
moreover, we and the English are the most domestic, the only truly
domestic, people, for we are the only civilized people who have houses
and homes of our own, and do not live in flats and apartments and go out
for our meals, repairing to beer-halls and tea-gardens in the evening.
Because Frau Migerka did not see the family circle, from the grandmother
down, abroad, knitting, chatting, drinking coffee and listening to music
with one ear--and a very cheerful sight it is--she inferred that there
is no family circle in this country, although, putting that and the snug
sitting-rooms, inconvenient for large companies, together, a sharper
woman would have come to an opposite conclusion. However, it is not for
their acumen that we quote any of her remarks, although, as has been
shown, they are sometimes sensible and just. There is much of both sense
and justice in her strictures on our mode of keeping Sunday--"the
compulsory Sabbath," as she terms it--which in her ignorance she
supposes to be a purely American custom. She is full of sympathy for the
breakers of the Sunday liquor-law, especially for the poor publicans.
But while speaking of the universal strict observance of the day, she
represents it as a sore tax and burden to a great number, who resent it
as an infringement of their personal liberty. She reconciles the
apparent contradiction in such a situation by referring to a vice which
gives her a ready key to many inconsistencies of our national character
and conduct--hypocrisy. One is forced to suppose that this seems a
natural explanation, since the hypocrite, whether an American type or
not, figures prominently in most pictures of German society drawn by
German hands.

Quakerism, our public-school system and our charities are the things
which please Frau Migerka best, and impress her most favorably among our
institutions. The skein of poetry which is so queerly entangled with the
homespun yarn of the German nature is drawn out by the Floral Mission,
the Children's Free Excursions and the Midnight Association: she
declares that American women are truly admirable in their beneficence,
and that the way in which the poor are cared for by private kindness and
liberality, independent of the state, is one of the brightest sides of
our social life. But does it come from a warmer benevolence, a deeper
sense of brotherhood, than in other nations? She thinks not. Besides the
great affluence of the country as a whole, there are three causes for
American charity--vanity and the emulation of rival sects, the feeling
of universal equality, which makes almsgiving in every form appear more
as a duty than a benefit, and the afore-mentioned tendency to hypocrisy.

Whatever Frau Migerka finds good in America which is not hypocrisy or a
relic of the past she ascribes to German influence. We are undoubtedly
indebted to Germans for many excellent and pleasant usages, as well as
for the rapid decay of that superstitious deference to women of which
she complains. Our increasing love of music she rightly claims is due to
her countrymen, but its primitive manifestations are all our own, and
her sufferings from them form one of the few lively passages in the
narrative. The piano in the steamboat saloon; the boarding-school
girl--"dear Carry, who has got on so splendidly with her music in such a
short time;" the Canadian rustic dandy, who only knows his notes; the
long-haired travelling virtuoso with his violin (in all probability her
own countryman, however); the head-waiter and his harp; the young bride
in her smart clothes, with her thin voice and endless ballads; the
exulting bridegroom, who accompanies her on a three-stopped tin
trumpet,--form a Bedlamite procession through which our sympathies
follow her; but in setting down this experience as _American_, although
it occurred on a voyage up the Saguenay, she overlooks the proud fact
that German influence must be spreading to Canada.

Frau Migerka's letters are not to be treated seriously, nor are they
merely to be made fun of. They would not deserve more than a paragraph's
notice but for their local interest, which will probably make them more
entertaining to Philadelphians than they could have been to the female
friend in Vienna. They are not written in an unfriendly spirit; yet
nothing the lady met with wins cordial, hearty sympathy or approbation,
her commendation of our charities being, as we have seen, qualified by
the motives for them which she supposes. The one thing in America which
she felt she should regret is Niagara, which is unlucky for her, as
there are few things for which she could not more easily find a
substitute. Of her reflections and aspirations--

            _Á la mode_ Germanorum,
    With her sentimentalibus lachrymæ roar 'em,
    And bathos and pathos delightful to see--

the following specimen will suffice: "Here flows the Wissahickon,
silent, dark and motionless, as if dreaming of a bygone world and unable
to awaken to the bustling present. Many an Indian maiden has beheld her
brown visage and sparkling eyes mirrored in its crystals. Yet let no one
trust the quiet of that river: a short space farther and the tranquil
stream becomes a rushing mountain-torrent, the friendly vale grows
wildly romantic, full of gloomy, mysterious beauty. How like is this
water to many a human soul, which lives as serene and shut within itself
as if it scarce knew what it is to feel, until passion sweeps over it
and the whole being is changed and uplifts its voice loud and
tumultuous!"


Jack. From the French of Alphonse Daudet, author of "Sidonie," "Robert
Helmont," etc., by Mary Neal Sherwood, translator of "Sidonie." Boston:
Estes & Lauriat.

Daudet's _Sidonie_ in its English form certainly received in this
country all the praise it deserved. It has now been followed by the same
author's _Jack_, which has the additional advantage of its predecessor's
success, and shares with it the benefit of careful translation. The
story is an exceedingly pathetic one: it describes the career of the son
of a frivolous woman, of not even doubtful reputation, from the time of
his entering school until his death. This mother is a silly creature
with an affectionate heart, who is really fond of her son and tries in
her feeble way to do all she can for him. Being rebuffed in her attempt
to place him in one school, she thrusts him into another, and leaves him
to be first petted and then bullied by a French translation of Squeers
and a crowd of his satellites. With one of the teachers, D'Argenton, the
mother falls wildly in love, and they are married. Jack runs away from
school to their home, and finds himself pursued by the malignity of his
step-father, who finally sends him off to work in a machine-shop. The
people he sees here are kind to him, but the work is much too hard for
his delicate health, and, to make matters worse, he is offered, and
accepts in his ignorance, a place as stoker in a large steamship. This
is almost his death, but he manages to escape penniless from the wreck
of the ship, and returns to Paris. He finds near by, in the suburb where
he had formerly lived, the old doctor who had been kind to him, and his
granddaughter, with whom he is soon in love. At this point it will be
well to stop abridging the story, so that the reader may find out for
himself the poor young fellow's subsequent misery. There are occasional
slight relapses into the happiness he has at rare intervals already
known in his life, and at the last he dies in the arms of the woman he
loves; but the general impression is that of great wretchedness.

There is this relief to the somewhat monotonous gloom--that Jack's
character is refined and strengthened by what he goes through; and there
is very touching pathos in his treatment of his mother at all times, and
especially when she puts an end to his hopes of saving enough money to
marry on by returning to live with him. Yet it is a question whether
there is not a wanton and wilful accumulation of wretchedness about the
poor fellow's head, which, of course, does its allotted work in
depressing the reader, and so makes the book effective, but also, it may
be felt, offensive as regards literary art. A cool inventory of Jack's
causes for happiness and sorrow might leave the reader undecided about
the nature of the book, and its mournfulness might be matched by that of
many another novel which is considered to be only allowably pathetic;
but this one is written with such virulence, so to speak, or at least
with such manifest design to accumulate miseries, that the reader's
soul revolts within him at being put on the rack in this violent way.
What makes it more noticeable is, that this is a French novel which is
thus marked by what are more distinctly the qualities of an English
novel. In French novels we expect to find a more temperate method of
writing and the absence of such heat as Daudet shows, which is of common
occurrence in those English novels where no pains are spared to show the
good man's virtues and the bad man's faults. Mr. Carker, in _Dombey and
Son_, may serve as an example of the way this is sometimes done. Daudet
is quite as energetic in pointing obvious morals. The way he impales
D'Argenton on the point of his pen and spares no pains in holding him up
to ridicule is an instance of this, while a much clearer one, and one
wholly unredeemed by such permissible satire as at times redeems the
portrait of D'Argenton, is the account of the school to which Jack is
sent. There is no air of reality in the account of the little king of
Dahomey who is Jack's sole friend in that wretched place. Then, too, the
poor silly mother can never appear but the author, besides making her
talk and act like the foolish creature she is, must be for ever
whispering in the reader's ear that she is a great fool and a frivolous
creature. This over-violent method defeats its own object, and surprises
and pains the reader instead of gratifying him. Nothing is taken for
granted; we are not left to perceive anything by our own unaided vision;
everything is made as plain for us as if it were written in words of one
syllable. But that way of writing palls at length, and calls forth a
feeling of disappointment with what is in some respects a very able
novel.


X. Doudan, Mélanges et Lettres. Avec une introduction par M. le comte
d'Haussonville, et des notices par MM. de Sacy et Cuvillier-Fleury. Tome
III. Paris: Calmann Lévy.

Only a year ago two volumes of M. Doudan's correspondence were given to
the public--they received notice in these pages,[10] it will be
remembered--with a conditional promise of more in case the first should
be duly appreciated. Fortunately, these letters were widely read and
heartily admired, so that now we have this third volume, with further
selections up to the year 1860, and the promise of the speedy
appearance of a fourth, to contain letters after that date and Doudan's
essay on the "Revolutions of Taste." There need be no fear in any one's
mind that all the best letters were taken for the first publication, and
that the editor has been obliged to swell the pages of this volume with
Doudan's hasty, uninteresting notes. Far from it: everything that Doudan
wrote had, as some one has well said, the flavor of perfection: he never
wrote letters as one writes prize essays, cramming into some of them all
his wit and wisdom, leaving his less fortunate correspondents to content
themselves with the meagre statement of facts. All the qualities that
were to be noticed in the volumes that first appeared are to be found
here; and they are qualities of the rarest sort. His method of
expressing himself is simply delightful, his French is most charming,
and his wit and humor must fascinate those who are capable of
appreciating anything outside of mathematical exactness of statement.
Critics have been by no means unanimous in his praise: some have
complained that he wrote his letters with the direct intention of
pleasing--not so much those to whom the letters were avowedly sent as
deceived posterity. The only reason for this ill-natured supposition
would seem to be that the letters were too good for private
correspondence; which is a strong argument in favor of reading them.
Others--and they are French critics--despise him because he was a friend
of the duc de Broglie, but in the course of time this will doubtless be
forgiven him. Some, too, object to his humor. M.G. Monod, for instance,
who is a very intelligent man, says in the _Academy_ that Doudan "makes
fun of everything, even when fun is quite out of place. Even in the most
tragic occurrences he finds occasion for wit." But, after all, it is a
way humorists have: the only remedy for such levity would seem to be
decapitation or solitary confinement in prison without pen, ink and
paper. Some are so captious that they say Doudan was too delicate and
refined a critic for the crude world he lived in. But what is the use of
a critic who praises what is worthless, and has no word of encouragement
for what is good and deserving of praise? The value of a man like Doudan
is that he rises above the common herd by the exactest discrimination:
he never follows the multitude in adoring false gods, but is true to his
own delicate taste. If common sense is the power of applying the
judgment to trifles as well as to important matters, good taste in
literature is the habit of applying the judgment to slight as well as to
serious questions. Doudan's taste is most refined; that is to say, he is
not influenced by general rumor, but he examines everything on its own
merits, overlooking nothing, and appreciating even slight matters
without placing them above things of real importance.

[Footnote 10: See number for October, 1876.]

Here is a bit of his criticism: "You were quite right to be irritated
with this _Fanny_. I had to see what success _Madame Bovary_ had with
all the clever people of society to believe in the success of _Fanny_.
His emphatic and declamatory style has helped the author in putting into
his book more shocking and absurd things than there were in the vile
anecdotes about Madame Bovary. If a young buffalo in the Pontine Marshes
were to write his memoirs, with a detailed account of his loves, his
jealousy, his excesses and his despair, he would doubtless give
expression to the same sentiment of moral good and evil among buffaloes,
but he would not exaggerate the fashion of description in such a
ridiculous way. The genuineness of his feelings would prevent his seeing
a number of things which do not concern his passions. He would not
describe, while sharpening his horns for the fight, the little
field-flowers, which he could not notice, nor the village curé's wig,
which does not concern him at all; but this small and numerous school of
self-styled realists has, in my opinion, so little keen feeling and true
passion that it is like the mathematician who wrote from his mother's
deathbed, 'I lost my mother this day at twenty-two and one-half minutes
after eight [mean time].' The passions are not so accurate, and do not
see so many things."

Here is an extract from a letter written in the perturbed days of 1848:
"In the country, whence I write, there is no news. The vervain, the
heliotropes, are in flower, as they are every year, and the squirrels
run up and down the trees without asking what is going on in Paris. Not
one has subscribed to the most insignificant newspaper. By the way, do
you suppose there are social disturbances among the beasts of the air,
or of the fields, or of the waters? That is not impossible, and I should
be very sorry if it were the case: it pleases my imagination more to
think that the squirrels are living to-day just as they lived in the
garden of Eden; but I have already told you that at a not very remote
period a race of rats, stronger than those who dwelt here, came by
chance on a merchant vessel from the East Indies, and drove out all the
former population of rats that had lived under our old kings. The
ancient race of rats is to be found only in isolated farms. We have no
longer the rats that gnawed the cloaks of the knights of the Middle
Ages. Ask some professor of the Jardin des Plantes what he thinks of it.

"When I say that everything is quiet here, I am wrong, for the men at
least were very uneasy regarding what might take place on the 14th of
July. It was whispered that there was confusion in the capital, and when
the diligence passed by a great many small land-owners were on their
doorsteps waiting for their newspaper, while their cows were feeding
quietly in the meadow, not suspecting that there was a Ledru-Rollin or a
Louis Blanc in the world who wanted to begin the world over again on a
better model. This eagerness to know what is going on in Paris is a
customary sign of disturbance. At present one is naturally anxious to
know whether the little field one has planted with handsome trees will
by to-morrow's sunrise belong to some obscure soldier of the obscure
Sobrier. Formerly they were the veterans of Sylla or of Cæsar, at least,
who took the house of Virgil, but now-a-days they are the veterans of
Sobrier who threaten the house of Victor Hugo. The times are
deteriorating in every direction."

Further extracts might be made in abundance to show the humor that
played over not the surface of things, but their inmost depths, and
threw such a clear light on all sorts of topics; but the reader would do
best to add this volume to the other two, and judge for himself how
great is the merit of these letters, how rare the intelligence they
show, how fine the appreciation of literature and of men which breathes
through them all. They are books for all time.


       *       *       *       *       *


_Books Received_.

The Wings of Courage: Stories for American Boys and Girls. From the
French, by Mary E. Field. With Illustrations. New York: G.P. Putnam's
Sons.

Lotus Land, and Other Poems. By G.S. Ladson. Cincinnati: Peter G.
Thomson.

The Young Magdalen, and Other Poems. By Francis S. Smith. With Portrait
of the Author. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Imaginary Conversations. By Walter Savage Landor. Fifth
Series--Miscellaneous Dialogues (concluded). Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Biology, with Preludes on Current Events. By Joseph Cook. (Boston Monday
Lectures.) Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

The Sanitary Condition of City and Country Dwelling-houses. By George E.
Waring, Jr. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

Meister Karl's Sketch-Book. By Charles G. Leland (Hans Breitmann).
Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Beautiful Snow, and Other Poems. By J.W. Watson. Illustrated.
Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Dick's Recitations and Readings. No. 5. Edited by William B. Dick. New
York: Dick & Fitzgerald.

Nicholas Minturn: A Study in a Story. By J.G. Holland. New York:
Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

Cooking Receipts from _Harper's Bazaar_. (Half-Hour Series.) New York:
Harper & Brothers.

Devil-Puzzlers, and Other Studies. By Frederick B. Perkins. New York:
G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The Outcast, and Other Poems. By J.W. Watson. Philadelphia: T.B.
Peterson & Brothers.

The Publishers' Trade-List Annual, 1877. New York: Office of Publishers'
Weekly.

Egypt as it Is. By J.C. McCoan. With Map. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

The New School-Ma'am; or, A Summer in North Sparta. Boston: Loring.

Hetty's Strange History. (No-Name Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers.

East Lynne. By Mrs. Henry Wood. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald.

Tangled: A Novel. By Rachel Carew. Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Co.

Selections from Epictetus. Boston: Roberts Brothers.


_New Music._

Sweet and Low: Cradle Song. Words by Tennyson; Music by Mrs. R.H.
Alexander. Philadelphia: W.H. Boner & Co.

Beneath the Stars: Serenade. Words and Music by Charles T. Dazey.
Louisville, Ky.: D.P. Faulds. "C" Co.: Ne Plus Ultra March. By Frank
Green. Philadelphia: W.H. Boner & Co.

Buttercup Polka. By Eastburn. Philadelphia: W.H. Boner & Co.


Transcriber's Notes:

    Table of Contents and List of Illustrations added by Transcriber.

    Page 538 "Why should not good and virtuous German Fraüleins" should
             be Fräuleins.

    Page 548 "she answered dreamily." Changed closing punctuation with
             period not comma as original text printed.

    Pages 580-581 end-of-page hyphenation "break-fast-tray" changed to
             breakfast tray.

    Page 601 "The Fräulien colored slightly" changed to Fräulein colored
             slightly. Fräulein misspelled.

    Page 633 "diadem, This" comma should be period, changed to period.

    Page 648 "Harper's Bazar" changed to Harper's Bazaar.





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