The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878.

ILLUSTRATIONS
HERE AND THERE IN OLD BRISTOL. 9
AN ATELIER DES DAMES. 21
"AUF DEM HEIMWEG." 29
THROUGH WINDING WAYS.
		CHAPTER I. 30
		CHAPTER II. 36
		CHAPTER III. 39
THE WASHER AT THE WELL: A BRETON LEGEND. 44
THE REAL PRISONER OF CHILLON: A GENTLEMAN GROSSLY MISREPRESENTED. 46
"FOR PERCIVAL."
		CHAPTER XXXI. 57
		CHAPTER XXXII. 62
		CHAPTER XXXIII. 67
		CHAPTER XXXIV. 70
A LEVANTINE PICNIC. 73
A BIRD STORY. 82
THE MOCKING-BIRD. 88
POPULAR MARRIAGE CUSTOMS OF SICILY. 89
AUNT EDITH'S FOREIGN LOVER. 96
THE CENSUS OF 1880. 108
CHANG-HOW AND ANARKY. 114
THE IDYL OF THE VAUCLUSE. 118
A "TARTAR FIGHT" AT KAZAN, AND HOW IT WAS STOPPED. 123
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
		THE COLORED CREOLES OF BALTIMORE. 125
		GLIMPSES OF BRUSSELS. 127
		AN OFF YEAR. 130
		CONJUGAL DISCORDS. 132
		A RUSSIAN GENERAL IN CENTRAL ASIA. 133
LITERATURE OF THE DAY. 134
		Books received 136
		New Music Received 136
FOOTNOTES

ILLUSTRATIONS

HERE AND THERE IN OLD BRISTOL.

The streets of Bristol are, in a modern point of view, narrow and uninviting, yet if the visitor have a liking for the picturesque he will find much to interest him. There are plenty of streets crammed with old-time houses, thrusting out their upper stories beyond the lower, and [Pg 10]with their many-gabled roofs seeming to heave and rock against the sky. If they lack anything in interest, it is that no local Scott has arisen to throw over them a glamour of romance which might make more tolerable the odors wherein they vie with the Canongate of sweet memory.

Nor is the throng which fills the Bristol streets wholly prosaic in its aspect, for the quaint garb of ancient charities holds its own against the modern tailor. Such troops of charity-children taking their solemn walks! Such long lines of boys in corduroy, such streams of girls in pug bonnets, stuff gowns and white aprons, as pour forth from the schools and almshouses to be found in every quarter of the city! The Colston boys are less frequently seen, because the school has been removed to one of the suburbs, yet now and then one of their odd figures meets the eye. They wear a muffin cap of blue cloth with a yellow band around it and a yellow ball on its apex; a blue cloth coat with a long plaited skirt; a leathern belt, corduroy knee-breeches and yellow worsted stockings. Just such, in outside garb, was Chatterton a century ago, and thus he is represented on his monument near Redcliff church.

You are perhaps gazing skyward at some lordly campanile when a sudden rush of feet and hum of voices comes around the corner, and the dark street is all aglow. These are the Red Maids, who walk the earth in scarlet gowns, set off by white aprons: they owe the bright hues of their existence to Alderman Whitson, who died in 1628, leaving funds to the mayor, burgesses and commonalty of the city of Bristol, "to the use and intent that they should therewith provide a fit and convenient dwelling-house for the abode of one grave, painful and modest woman of good life and conversation, and for forty poor women-children (whose parents, being freemen and burgesses of the said city, should be deceased or decayed); that they should therein admit the said woman and forty poor women-children, and cause them to be there kept and maintained, and also taught to read English and to sew and do some other laudable work toward their maintenance; ... and should cause every one of the said children to go and be apparelled in red cloth, and to give their attendance on the said woman,[Pg 11] to attend and wait before the mayor and aldermen, their wives and others their associates, to hear sermons on the Sabbath and festival days, and other solemn meetings of the said mayor and aldermen and their wives," etc. etc. These maids are admitted between the ages of eight and ten, and at eighteen are placed at service.

Other aspects of Bristol are brought out in Pope's description of it in a letter to Mrs. Martha Blount.[1] After describing his drive from Bath and his crossing the bridge into Bristol, he continues: "From thence you come to a key along the old wall, with houses on both sides, and in the middle of the street, as far as you can see, hundreds of ships, their masts as thick as they can stand by one another, which is the oddest and most surprising sight imaginable. This street is fuller of them than the Thames from London Bridge to Deptford, and at certain times only the water rises to carry them out; so that at other times a long street full of ships in the middle and houses on both sides looks like a dream." ... "The city of Bristol is very unpleasant, and no civilized company in it; only, the collector of the customs would have brought me acquainted with merchants of whom I hear no great character. The streets are as crowded as London, but the best image I can give you of it is, 'tis as if Wapping and Southwark were ten times as big, or all their people ran into London. Nothing is fine in it but the square, which is larger than Grosvenor Square, and well builded, with a very fine brass statue in the middle of King William on horseback; and the key, which is full of ships, and goes round half the square. The College Green is pretty and (like the square) set with trees. There is a cathedral, very neat, and nineteen parish churches."

It is quite as curious to note what Pope omits as what he mentions. He is much taken with a commonplace square, and with the mingling of ships and houses (which is truly effective), but the modern traveller would find the chief beauty of the city in its Gothic architecture, to which Pope gives one line—"a cathedral, very neat, and nineteen parish churches." Let the visitor ascend any one of the hills which overhang Bristol, and a beautiful scene at once bursts upon his view: this is due to the pre-eminent beauty of the church-towers, the great stone lilies of the fifteenth century soaring above the dingy town; each,

and a hard struggle they have to hold their own against the menacing chimney-stacks of manufacturing England. All the poetry and aspiration of the past seems contending, shoulder to shoulder, in thick air with the material interests of the present.

Strolling about through the grimy streets, one's eye is caught by the sign[Pg 12] "Quakers' Friars," and following up the narrow court to seek the meaning of this odd combination of opposing ideas, one comes to the Friends' school, occupying the remnant of a former priory of Black Friars. It is a spot intimately associated with recollections of the early Friends. In 1690 the father of Judge Logan of Pennsylvania was master of this school. Adjoining the school is the Friends' meeting-house, built in 1669 on what was then an open space near the priory, where George Fox often preached; and within the walls of the meeting-house this Quaker father took upon himself the state of matrimony. A local bard is inspired to sing:

The streets near by, called Callowhill, Philadelphia and Penn streets, recall the residence here of William Penn in 1697, after his marriage with Hannah, daughter of Thomas Callowhill and granddaughter of Dennis Hollister, prominent merchants of Bristol. These streets are believed to have been laid out and named by Penn on land belonging to Hollister. Another Friend was Richard Champion, the inventor of Bristol china and the friend of Burke. Champion's manufactory was not commercially a success, but his ware is now highly prized, and some few remaining pieces of a tea-service, presented by Mr. and Mrs. Champion to Mrs. Burke at the time the latter's husband was returned member for Bristol, have brought thrice their weight in gold.

In Castle street, not far from Quakers' Friars, stands a profusely ornamented mansion, now St. Peter's Hospital. The eastern portion is of considerable antiquity: the western was rebuilt in 1608. In the fifteenth century the older portion was the residence of Thomas Norton, a famous alchemist, who, according to Fuller, "undid himself and all his friends who trusted him with money, living and dying very poor about the year 1477."[2] Norton's ill-success was, however, in his own belief, the success of others. He declared that a merchant's wife of Bristol had stolen from him the elixir of life. "Some suspect her" (says Fuller) "to have been the wife of William Cannings, contemporary with Norton, who started up to so great and sudden wealth—the clearest evidence of their conjecture." The person here intended is no other than the great Bristol merchant William Canynge the younger, who was five times mayor and one of the rebuilders of Redcliff church. His ships, which crowded the quays of Bristol, were a more evident source of wealth than any cunningly [Pg 13]devised elixir except in the eyes of a disappointed dreamer. The reflection that in this quaint old house was enacted a history like to that of Balthazar Claes lends to it a strange fascination.

The church of St. Mary Redcliff is, as ever, intimately associated with the name and genius of Chatterton: no saint in the calendar could have shed over it such an interest; and beautiful as it is, "the pride of Bristowe and the Westerne Land," how many visit it for its beauty alone? This is rather hard for the clericals: they are unwilling to forget that Chatterton was an impostor and a suicide; and to have their church surrounded by a halo from such a source! bah! They have done what they could by removing his monument from consecrated ground and depriving it of its inscription.

In an old chest left to moulder in a room over the north porch of this church Chatterton professed to find the Rowley manuscripts. In this room, "here, in the full but fragile enjoyment of his brief and illusory existence, he stored the treasure-house of his memory with the thoughts that, teeming over his pages, have enrolled his name among the great in the land of poetry and song. Happy here, ere his first joyous aspirations were repressed—ere the warm and genial emotions of his heart were checked—before time had dissipated his idle dreams, and neglect, contempt and distress had fastened on his mind, and hurried him onward to his untoward destiny."[3]

This church is one of the finest examples of the Perpendicular Gothic: it has been carefully restored, the work extending over thirty years. The most interesting monuments are those of William Canynge the younger, the great Bristol merchant, who lies buried here with his wife, his almoner, his brewer, his cook and other servants—a goodly family party: the cook is indicated by a knife and skimmer rudely cut upon a flat stone. There are two effigies of Canynge—one in his robes as mayor, the other in priest's robes; for in his latter years, after the death of his wife, he took orders, and died in 1474 dean of Westbury.

The memorial of Admiral Sir William Penn, father of the founder of Pennsylvania, is a conspicuous object in the nave—a mural tablet decorated with his helmet, cuirass, gauntlets, sword, and tattered banners taken from the Dutch. Near it—a singular object in a church—is the rib of a whale which is believed to date from the year 1497, there being an entry in the town records of that year: "Pd. for settynge upp ye bone of ye bigge fyshe," etc.;[4] and as Sebastian Cabot had then just discovered Newfoundland, it may have been one of the trophies of his voyage. But it long had a very different history: its origin being forgotten, there grew up a legend that it was the rib of a dun cow of gigantic build who gave milk to the whole parish of Redcliff, and whose slaughter, by Guy, earl of Warwick, threw all the milkmaids out of employment. It was in Redcliff church that both Southey and Coleridge were married.

The cathedral, "very neat," as Pope expresses it, would be a great treasure in New York, but in England, where Gothic structures so abound, it is far surpassed by several in its vicinity. It has suffered much from iconoclasts, both those who destroy and those who restore. The completion of the nave is now being rapidly pushed forward, and will be followed by that of the towers—good evidence that the Gothic revival in England has not yet spent its force. In its present condition the general effect of the building is disappointing, although there are many admirable details. The chapter-house and the archway below the church are fine relics of its Norman period. In the choir is the tomb of Bishop Butler, author of the Analogy, for twelve years bishop of this diocese. There is also a tablet to his memory, erected in 1834, with an inscription by Southey. Among the monuments one finds two names which shine, it may be said, by reflected light—that of Mrs. Draper, Sterne's "Eliza," and Lady Hesketh, Cowper's devoted friend and cousin. A bust of Southey finds a place here as a tribute of respect in his native town; and the name of Sydney Smith comes to mind, who was a prebendary of this cathedral.

The city of Bristol, although essentially a manufacturing and commercial centre, is not deficient in names which have enjoyed a widespread literary reputation. All through the first half of the present century Bristol was associated with the colossal fame of Hannah More, but the idol is long since forgotten, and now, a little more than forty years after her death, many might ask, Who was Hannah More? She was the daughter of the schoolmaster at Stapleton, near Bristol, and was born on the 2d of February, 1745. She was one of five daughters, who by the education received from their father were enabled to set up in Bristol a boarding-school for young ladies which had the luck to become fashionable. Hannah's literary reputation began at the age of seventeen with a pastoral drama, the Search after Happiness, written for, and performed by, the young ladies of the boarding-school. On this slender basis she visited London, was so fortunate as to attract the attention of Garrick, and was by him introduced into his brilliant circle. She must have been at that time both witty and pretty, for Mrs. Montagu and the Reynoldses were delighted with her, Dr. Johnson gave her pet names, and Horace Walpole called her Saint Hannah. Her next great success was her tragedy of Percy, in which Garrick sustained the principal character, and in which Mrs. Siddons afterward appeared. Later on, Mrs. More published some Sacred Dramas, but after the death of Garrick she abandoned dramatic writing, her views leading her to take up what was called, in her day, "strict behavior," of which she now became the apostle. On her literary profits she retired to Cowslip Green, near Bristol, and later on to Barley Wood, where she was joined by her sisters, who were enabled to retire on the handsome profits of their school. But neither "strict behavior" nor anything else could weaken [Pg 15]Hannah's hold on her day and generation: her Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World went off like hot cakes, and her Thoughts on the Manners of the Great were scrambled for by both great and small—seven large editions in a few months, the second in a week, the third in four hours! How many people now-a-days have read Cœlebs, of which twelve editions were printed in the first year, and in all thirty thousand copies of disposed of in America alone? Corinne appeared when Lucilla, the heroine of Cœlebs, was at the height of her popularity, and much animated comparison was instituted between Corinne and the rival she has long survived.

The first opposition which Hannah More encountered arose from her efforts to improve the condition of the poor in her neighborhood by education and the formation of benefit societies. The impulse to this movement came from Mr. Wilberforce, who, being on a visit at Barley Wood, was taken on an excursion to Cheddar Cliffs, then, as now, one of the "sights" of the vicinity. Mr. Wilberforce, while admiring the scenery, chanced to fall into conversation with[Pg 16] one of the inhabitants, and learned, to his dismay, that the whole beautiful region was sunk in ignorance and vice. This discovery was discussed in full conclave on their return to Barley Wood, and Mrs. More undertook to have a school opened in Cheddar. The school proved a success, and by the aid of the subscriptions which her name brought from far and near she eventually extended the system over nine of the neighboring parishes, sunk in the barbarism of English village-life of that day, of which Cowper's village of Olney was an example. But this work did not go on as smoothly as the sale of Cœlebs: it at once aroused opposition from the large class who do not like to see old ruts abandoned, and was branded as Methodism—an epithet that was then freely used as an extinguisher for anything novel, and was a "bugaboo" of whose terrors we can have in this day little conception. Hannah was accused of endeavoring to spread toleration, and a favorite charge against her was that she had partaken of "bread and wine in a meeting-house." In vain her sister Martha explained that she sinned in good company, for many "High-Church people did the same, and one gentleman and lady with ten thousand pounds a year, who have always the Church prayers performed morning and evening in their family." Although the bishop excused her, it was determined that Hannah was to be crushed by a review; but all was of no more avail than in the case of Miss Martineau, which has been recently recalled by her autobiography. Hannah survived it all, and stuck through thick and thin to her triumphant schools and her "strict behavior." A less harmful shaft was hurled by a Bristol wit on an occasion when her clothes took fire and she was saved by the stout quality of her gown:

A curious incident in Hannah More's life was her encounter with Ann Yearsley, the Bristol Milkwoman, of whom some account is given in Southey's Essay upon the Uneducated Poets. A gossiping writer briefly states the case as follows: "This poor woman, as is well known, sold milk, and, from going to water it each morning at the Pierian font, caught at length the poetic fervor. Mrs. Hannah More, whom she served[Pg 17] with cream, was struck by the superior merit of her verses, and became her patroness. Mrs. More's name was enough to sell worse poetry, or even worse milk, than Ann Yearsley's. Milton had no such friend, and could not get twenty pounds for Paradise; but Ann Yearsley's book brought her some three hundred guineas. Hannah More, as she was the artificer, wanted also to become the manager, of the milkwoman's little fortune; but the milkwoman thought she was competent to take care of it herself, and wanted to bind her boys out to trades. The lady-patroness was offended at the independence of the protégée, who had been taken from under the milk-pails; Ann Yearsley dared to differ from her benefactor, and was denounced as an ungrateful woman; all Mrs. More's idolaters declared against her, and the whole religious world opened on her in full cry."[5] Lactilla (for so the Mores and Montagus called her) loudly remonstrated: she accused Hannah of being envious of her talents, and announced a new edition of her poems freed from Mrs. More's corruptions. She carried her point, but, deprived of Mrs. More's favor, she quickly sank back into misfortune and obscurity.

The parents of Lord Macaulay were intimate friends of Mrs. More, and in her later years Hannah watched with tender interest the brilliant promise of that extraordinary youth. Young Macaulay was a not infrequent visitor at Barley Wood, and Mrs. More at one time devised her library to him, but afterward withdrew the bequest, owing to her doubts of the "strictness" of Macaulay's views. Poor Macaulay! He failed to win the esteem of two great female writers: the one feared he had no "religion;" the other declared he had no "heart."

As the Misses More began to get on in the seventies, one after the other died, and Barley Wood (or Mauritania, as wags called it) grew desolate. Then occurred the last great event of Hannah's life—her flight from Barley Wood. It suddenly transpired that for three years her eight servants had been in full enjoyment of high life below stairs[Pg 18] It was discovered that they had given large orders to tradesmen in her name; they had intercepted sums of money intended for charity, and when the whole household was supposed to be at rest they were supping on presents of game sent to Mrs. More; they had secretly harbored in the house one of their relatives who had lost her place for disreputable conduct: in short, Mrs. Jellaby's household would have been a paradise in comparison with this one. What did Hannah do? She left for ever the home of her life: she ran away! A house was secretly taken at Clifton, and after she had fled the servants received a quarter's wages in advance with immediate dismissal. It must be said for Mrs. More that during her sisters' lifetime she had had nothing to do with the housekeeping; further, she was in very ill health, and had not been down stairs for seven years; but, with all the palliations that may be offered, is it not startling to find that this woman's influence had pervaded the civilized world with the exception of that little corner of it which was to be found under her own roof? This incident, together with the quarrel with Lactilla, suggests that Mrs. More did not exert personally a very strong influence. In regard to her servants she relied upon the deathbed harangue with which Mrs. Martha had consigned her to their care, and her confidence was kept up by the texts of Scripture which they each night carefully repeated to her before retiring to eat her game.

In the heyday of Hannah More's popularity there were living in Bristol or its vicinity three young men who were to bring in the new literary epoch by which Hannah has been forgotten—Coleridge, Southey and Wordsworth. Both Southey and Coleridge were introduced to Mrs. More by Cottle. Southey was invited to pass a day at Cowslip Green: he pleased equally all five of the sisters, and Hannah pronounced him "one of the most elegant and intellectual young men they had seen." In 1814, Cottle conferred a like favor on Coleridge: they went down to Barley Wood, where for the space of two hours Coleridge delighted the five-leaved clover with his brilliant talk, but, unluckily, a titled visitor coming in, the poor philosopher was left to finish his soliloquy alone.

Southey was born in Bristol, at No. 9 Wine street, now the sign of the Golden Key. His father, a draper, carried on his business under the sign of a hare: although all his life a shopkeeper, he had been brought up in the country, and was passionately fond of country sports. He related of his first experience of city life in London that, happening to look out at the shop-door just as a porter was passing with a hare in his hands, it brought the country so vividly before him that he burst into tears, and the impression was so lasting that years after, when opening a shop in Bristol, he took the hare for a sign, having it painted on a pane in the window on each side of the door and printed on the shop-bills. Of Robert Southey's recollections of Bristol there is his own very charming account in the first volume of his Life by his son.

We return to Pope's letter to Mrs. Martha Blount for his description of Clifton: "Passing still along by the river, you come to a rocky way on one side, overlooking green hills on the other: on that rocky way rise several white houses, and over them red rocks; and as you go farther more rocks above rocks, mixed with green bushes, and of different colored stone. This, at a mile's end, terminates in the house of the Hot Well, whereabouts lie several pretty lodging-houses, open to the river with walks of trees. When you have seen the hills seem to shut upon you and to stop any farther way, you go into the house, and looking out at the back door, a vast rock of an hundred feet high, of red, white, green, blue and yellowish marbles, all blotched and variegated, strikes you quite in the face; and, turning on the left, there opens the river at a vast depth below, winding in and out, and accompanied on both sides with a continued range of rocks up to the clouds, of an hundred colors, one behind another, and so to the end of the prospect, quite to the sea. But the sea nor the Severn you do not see: the rocks and river fill the eye, and[Pg 19] terminate the view much like the broken scenes behind one another in a play-house.

"Upon the top of those high rocks by the Hot Well, which I have described to you, there runs on one side a large down of fine turf for about three miles. It looks too frightful to approach the brink and look down upon the river; but in many parts of this down the valleys descend gently, and you see all along the windings of the stream and the opening of the rocks, which turns close in upon you from space to space for several miles in toward the sea. There is first, near Bristol, a little village upon this down called Clifton, where are very pretty lodging-houses, overlooking all the woody hills, and steep cliffs and very green valleys within half a mile of the Wells, where in the summer it must be delicious walking and riding, for the plain extends, one way, many miles: particularly, there is a tower that stands close at the edge of the highest rock, and sees the stream turn quite round it; and all the banks, one way, are wooded in a gentle slope for near a mile high, quite green; the other bank all inaccessible rock, of an hundred colors and odd shapes, some hundred feet perpendicular."

The reputation of the Hot Well, whose waters Pope was sent to drink, has utterly collapsed. The Hot Well house was long ago removed to admit a widening of the river, and the well itself is now inaccessible. There is no spa, once of great reputation, that has sunk into such complete oblivion as the Clifton Hot Well: this may be due, in part, to the exaggerated estimate that was formed of the virtue of the water, and to the[Pg 20] blamable practice which prevailed of sending patients here at their last gasp as a forlorn hope. Of too many it might be said as in these lines from the epitaph on his wife by the poet Mason in Bristol cathedral:

The little village of Clifton has now become a handsome suburb, where reside the wealthy successors of the merchant-venturers of Bristol. It is continuous with Bristol, and where the one begins or the other ends is not evident except to the parish authorities. The downs are what they were in Pope's time, with the exception of what is now their most striking feature—the suspension bridge across the chasm. As early as 1753, Mr. Vick, an alderman of Bristol, bequeathed one thousand pounds, to be kept at interest until they should reach ten thousand, when the amount was to be expended upon a stone bridge across the Avon. Nearly eighty years after, in 1830, the fund had reached eight thousand pounds, and it was determined to form a company to push forward the project: a plan for a suspension bridge by Mr. Brunel was accepted at an estimated cost of fifty-seven thousand pounds, and subscriptions were vigorously solicited. On the 27th of August, 1836, the foundation-stone was laid in the presence of the members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, then holding its sixth annual meeting in Bristol. The work went on slowly for seven years, at the end of which it was abandoned for want of funds, forty-five thousand pounds having been expended, including the legacy of eight thousand. For nearly twenty years the towers and abutments stood, unsightly objects in a lovely scene, until in 1860 the Hungerford suspension bridge in London was taken down, and it was found that its chains might be made use of to carry out the uncompleted plan at Clifton. A new company was formed with a capital of thirty-five thousand pounds, in ten-pound shares, and at length, in December, 1864, the bridge was thrown open to the public. Its span is seven hundred and two feet; height from low water, two hundred and eighty-seven feet. An inscription on one of the piers thus epitomizes its story: "Suspensa vix via fit."

There are many reflections which may be called up by a glance over the brink of the chasm at Clifton. Down this muddy ditch dropped the little Matthew, with the Cabots in command, bound for the discovery of America; borne on the surface of this liquid mud, the Great Western (built at Bristol) found its way to the sea and demonstrated the practicability of steam traffic with America; and if you ask why Bristol now has so little share in that traffic, although reasons as plenty as blackberries will be showered upon you, perhaps you will find as convincing a reason as any in the sight of this narrow and tortuous channel. Now, at last, docks are being built at the mouth of the Avon, and one adapted to the largest vessels was opened on the 24th of February, 1877. The prospects of present success cannot be brilliant in the prevalent depression of the Atlantic trade, yet, to have heard the wild talk in February, one would have thought that the dock had only to open its mouth (or gate) to have the great plums of trade at once fall into it. The company is too wise to expect to catch birds simply by hanging out a cage: every one waits to see what bait they will offer. It is claimed that the passage from New York to Avonmouth may be made in a day less than to the Mersey, and mails and passengers forwarded thence to London in three hours. May we soon have the pleasure of welcoming American friends on Avonmouth Dock!

After years of patient endeavor, of hope deferred and heart oftentimes made sick, Paletta found herself at last in Paris. Behind her were years of anxious calculations and shabby economies, a chequered pathway of brilliant ambitions and sombre discouragements. Before her was another vista of several years of art-study in the great capital—a vista arched, she could not but know, by as heavy clouds as had ever darkened her path. Yet she felt, even although she could not see its end, that the forward vista climbed ever upward toward glorious heights, upon which the storms of despair never beat, and where she could more nearly touch upon the divine ideals that ever elude the grasp of even the loftiest of earth's climbers.

And thus she was content. Paletta was yet a little young, it must be said, yet in that blessed youthfulness when the loins are girded with the strength that reduces mountains to molehills and forces the Apollyon of dismay to flee from out every dark valley.

Behold Paletta—twenty-three years of age, with a winy color upon her lips, the faintest perceptible shadow of fading upon the roses of her cheeks, a little anxious wrinkle between her earnest gray eyes, a slight nasal twang in her New England voice, and a fresh flounce upon her old black alpaca dress—the first morning of her experience in an atelier des dames in Paris! She had come down the hill from her dark little room on Montmartre, fancying that the gray December day was crystalline, that the dingy Rue Germain Pillon—with its dirty gamins of both sexes in cropped hair and blouses or white caps and black gowns, its frowsy women slouching in doorways, its succession of odorous cuisines bourgeoises, vile-smelling lavoirs, cheap fruit-shops and plebeian crémeries, its slimy cobblestones, its gutters running not with laughing waters, and sending up scents[Pg 22] not of spicy isles ensphered by sun-illumined seas—was a rainbow arch over which she passed with airy tread toward the Krug studio. For had she not at last finished for ever the detestable photograph-coloring which had been a daily crucifixion of all her artistic feelings for years? Had she not at last reached the Enchanted Land for which she had labored and pined for half her life? Had she not clothes enough to last her with patient mendings and persistent remakings for two years? Had she not a thousand dollars at the Crédit Lyonnais? And did not that stately entrance before her lead into a spacious courtyard, and that courtyard open upon the famous Atelier des Dames, where, at the feet of celebrated masters of form and color, she was to learn some of the mysteries of the art to which she had vowed her life?

Within the court, before the handsome building whose story after story of immense north windows showed it to be a collection of artists' studios, she found an interesting tableau vivant. A group of chattering models came laughing across the sunny court. In one corner loomed a huge square object surmounted by the conical crown of a Tyrolean hat. Nothing else was visible except a pair of gaitered feet mixed among the legs of a sketching-easel, making the whole seem some queer phenomenal creature which science had not yet classified or named. Before this phenomenon stood—or rather fidgeted—a beautiful Arabian horse with flashing eyes, and limbs clean cut as if by Doric chisel in marble of Pentelicus. This superb animal was held by two grooms, one at his head, the other holding first one foot, then another, as the order to pose the unwilling model fractionally in the attitude of a prancing, curveting Bucephalus came from the square, five-legged, unnamed creature in the corner.

"Ah!" thought Paletta as she followed her shadow over the sunny pavement, "the famous animal-painter Jacques is behind that great square canvas, I know, for I saw him there yesterday painting a struggling sheep."

The large room was closely packed with easels—so closely, indeed, that an inadvertent motion of hand or foot often sent a wave of excitement through the whole atelier. Heads of every color, from youthful flaxen to venerable gray, were bent over their labors. Hecubas and Helens worked side by side; maulsticks everywhere gave the scene the appearance of a winter-denuded thicket; plaster hands, feet and torsos hung upon the walls; bull-headed Nero swelled upon a shelf beside the mutilated Venus which is a revelation of the glory that merely human beauty can attain [Pg 23]without a gleam borrowed from the divine; fat Vitellius seemed to snore open-eyed beside lean and wakeful Julius Cæsar; a mask of Medusa leaned lovingly upon the shoulder of Dante; Apollo Belvedere smiled upon an écorché—in atelier parlance "skun man;" finished and unfinished studies of heads, bodies and detached sections of bodies hung from nails in every possible and impossible place. Upon a slightly elevated platform sat the model in his usual street-costume, with oily hair, parted in the middle, falling in long waves upon his shoulders. A spiky circle rested upon his brow, and upon his face was such a stupendous yet futile effort after an expression of divine sweetness and resignation as caused maulsticks to separate themselves every now and then from the denuded thicket and to wabble vaguely about his mouth or play wildly in his hair, accompanied by the commands, "Posez la bouche!" "Posez les yeux!" or, in good American accents, accompanied with a sniff of wrath, "Call him a good Christ? Umph! He'd pose better as a first-class Cheshire cat."

"Do you understand English, monsieur?" demanded Miss New Haven suspiciously, remembering the freedom with which the personal merits and defects of the French and Italian models were usually discussed in their presence in the Anglo-Saxon tongue.

"Oui, mademoiselle. I have made the Jesuses, the St. Johns and the Judases for the great English artists teel I have ennuied myself énormement."

"Because ze artists Anglaise are ze masters vairy difficile, not comme les artists Français. Zey demand zat ze model pose during two hours sans repose, and zey nevvair give of to drink to ze model."

"Did you return to Paris when you ennuied yourself so énormement?" asked a yellow-haired English girl who had painted countless vaporous and ravishing Eurydices and filmy Echoes from broad-waisted, pug-nosed Cockney models, and who always declared that she[Pg 24] would recognize a "professional" even among the shining hosts of heaven.

"Comme ça;" and the Italian made sundry rotary motions of the arm, as if grinding an invisible hand-organ.

"Did you earn more money with the music or as model?" asked Mademoiselle Émilie, the girl-artist from Madrid, with black hair dyed golden, who always swore by Murillo's Virgins, and who did her work dreamily, as if the motions of her hands were timed to the languorous rhythm of some far-off, daintily-touched guitar beneath vine-wreathed balcony and starlit sky.

"In Londres I gained more money as musician. In Angleterre zere is not mooch love of ze Christ, ze St. John and ze Judas. It is not a Catholic country, comme la France, and ze Anglaises aime bettaire ze gods of ze old Greek hommes. In la France zey aime ze true religion, and I gain mooch money, and am in ze Salon many times evairy year, because I am ze best Christ in Paris."

A wail swept up from French, American, English, Swedish, Spanish, Norwegian, Russian and West Indian bosoms.

"We'll embrace the religion and the gods of the old Greek hommes then, or throw ourselves into the profoundest gulfs of infidelity, while we remain in Paris," ejaculated Bostonia in a vigorous stage-aside.

"Oui, madame. Ma femme is Lucreza, whom you know. She has made the nymphs and goddesses for a thousand pictures, but now she is so much fat that the messieurs will have her only for the head, although she still poses for the ensemble in the ateliers des dames."

Here the best Christ in Paris grinned satanically as a polyglot howl went up from among the students.

"That's his tit for the tat of the 'Cheshire cat,'" laughed Madame Lafarge, a French-American Corinne with an all-French moustache.

"We won't have Lucreza again if she is too fat to pose for the nude except in a ladies' studio," snapped the elder Swede.

"Oh, I have forgotten to say zat she[Pg 25] has upset ze pail since eight days," chuckled the man.

"Giggle! giggle! giggle!" came sputteringly from behind Concordia's easel as she gasped, "Don't you understand? He has improved his English among the Americans in Gérôme's studio, and he means she kicked the bucket eight days ago."

"Quelle langue! quelle langue est la langue Américaine!" sniffed the elder Swede, wiping off a brushful of "turps" in her back hair.

Paletta twisted her head so as to peer through the forest of easels at the last speaker.

"What daubs she must make!" she thought, gazing at spectacled green eyes and hay-colored hair à la Chinoise with her fixed idea that "an artistic nature always wrought a semblance of its own beauty upon its outward form."

Paletta twisted her neck again. "What lovely ideals must blossom upon her canvases!" she thought as she saw a fair vision of rose-tints, creamy texture and sculptured lines ensphered in a halo of golden hair.

"Who is that poor woman who has so mistaken her vocation?" she asked with compassionate gesture toward the coiffure à la Chinoise.

"That? Oh, that's the celebrated Swedish artist, Miss Thingumbobbia, of whom you have heard, of course. She returns to Stockholm next week to paint the king's portrait. Mon Dieu! but I would give all my hair for the genius of her little finger!" answered pretty Mademoiselle Hubert, scraping her palette viciously, as if it were responsible for her artistic inferiority to the gifted Thingumbobbia.

"O-o-o-h!" gasped Paletta. "But who is the sweet creature with golden hair, who looks infused with fair ideals to her very finger-tips?"

"She? Oh, she's Miss Araminta Shoddy from Michigan Avenue, Chicago, who is finishing her education in Paris. She comes here twice a week for drawing-lessons from the antique, and also in pursuit of general information, I should think, judging from her questions. Only yesterday she said, 'Ladies, who can tell me the costume of the Venus de Melos? I have an idea that it would be stunning for my next fancy-dress ball!'"

"Ladies," cried Miss San Francisco, invisible among the easels, "has Professor Manley given out the subject of our composition for next week?"

"Oh, Miss Shoddy, Miss Shoddy, will[Pg 26] you pose for my Virgin Mother?" cried another dozen.

"Oh, Mees Shoddy, if you will pose for my Madonna I will pose for yours," echoed the Raphaelesque Thingumbobbia.

Just before noon the forest of easels swayed slightly beneath a breeze of excitement. A masculine step was heard at the door. The model's expression became if not divine, at least superhuman. The ladies ceased their chatter, and plied their brushes and crayons with increased diligence. The morning professor entered, and passed from easel to easel, commending this, criticising that, rebuking[Pg 27] something else, making a few touches of the brush upon several canvases, crossing others with a network of charcoal-lines to prove inaccuracy of drawing, distributed très biens and pas mals judiciously, and then with a pleasant "Bon jour, mesdames," passed away, leaving behind him about an equal measure of delight and dismay.

"I hope his bed-clothes will always come up at the foot!" growled Austina, whose canvas looked like a map of a humming-bird's flight done in charcoal.

"Let's all subscribe and buy The Angel a bouquet for Christmas," gushed enthusiastically the British blonde Godsalina, upon whom one of the pas mals had fallen, and who had the true faith of her nation in the efficacy of "tips" for sovereign or beggar.

Then the model stretched his legs, returned to his normal and carnal expression of countenance, and disappeared to return no more till the morrow, leaving the platform vacant awaiting the nude female model who was engaged for the afternoon. The atelier was abandoned to Sophie, the femme de ménage, who stirred the fires, gathered stray brushes from the floor, changed the background drapery for the afternoon model, rearranged the easels into afternoon position, and brought out glasses and plates for the ladies, who lunched in the anteroom. And then a looker-on in a [Pg 28]Parisian atelier des dames would readily have understood the words, "He's gone, girls!" even were that looker-on deafer than the deafest old woman who ever mistook a thunder-clap for one of her lord's champion snores. In the anteroom conversation ran during lunch in various channels. Some of the ladies discussed the ever-absorbing topic of the price of living, and boasted of marvellous exploits in the way of economy. Other and fewer students, to whom money was as the dust upon the bust of Pallas over the studio-door, talked of the last "first representations" at the Français, of Croisette's rapidly amplifying figure, of Sarah Bernhardt's unnecessary immodesty in dressing Racine's Andromaque, of the Grant reception at Healy's, of Lefevre's slipperiness of texture, of the lack of the true sentiment of piety in Bouguereau's religious pictures, of the harum-scarum amusements among the Americans at Bonnât's atelier, and the latest gossip of the private studios.

"Want to know where you can buy just h-e-a-venly cheese for a franc a pound?" mumbles young Madame New Jersey with her mouth full of Gruyère.

"Over in the Latin Quarter, close by the Rue Jacob Brasserie, where so many American students hold daily symposia."

"I'll go and buy a quarter of a pound this very evening," said Miss Providence energetically.

"I too! I too! et moi aussi!" cried others of the many who lived à la Bohémienne in lofty mansards of maisons meublées, dining at cheap restaurants, breakfasting by aid of spirit-lamps from corners of dressing-tables and lunching on charcuterie in the anteroom of the Krug studio, searching high and low for "cheapness" as for a pearl of great price.

"And pay twelve sous for your omnibus fare!" cried the practical little Illinois maiden, Dixonia.

"And I am desolé, mesdames, that you have not want of me;" and the graceful Alphonse melted away like a snow-wreath in a south wind.

At one o'clock came the sallow Frenchwoman, with the face of a Gorgon and the figure of a Juno, who posed for the ensemble. She stood against the dark crimson background, outlined pure and white like a marvel of Phidian sculpture upon which the Spirit of Life had slightly breathed. So still, so white, so coldly, purely statuesque she seemed, that one sometimes entirely forgot that she was else than the fair statue born from the block of marble at the command of a divine genius, till the chiselled arms were seen to quiver and the sculptured knees to almost bend. Then a reproachful cry ran through the atelier: "Shame! shame! We have forgotten that she was a woman[Pg 29] and not a statue, and have kept her posing two hours without a repose."

"How much do you earn by this wearisome business?" asked Paletta pityingly as the tired model, wrapped in a threadbare waterproof, cowered over the stove during "the repose."

"If I pose for a half day of each week like this in an atelier des dames, I earn twenty-five francs a week, but what I earn by posing for artists in private studios depends much upon chance. Sometimes I am needed only for a leg or arm or bust, or even hand: then I earn less of course, for it makes broken hours. I would demand much more from the ateliers des dames had I a handsome face, but always my ensemble is painted with the head of a prettier model where there is any purpose of using me in a picture."

"Often more so. I have posed for nearly an hour upon one foot with extended arms in a dance of bacchantes, till I have fainted. Oftentimes I am kept in a running position upon one foot, with the other far behind me, in Atalanta's race; sometimes suspended by cords from the ceiling, with arms and legs in horribly uncomfortable positions, till everything seems to spin before me."

"Dislike? Why should I with so fine a figure as this?" answered the woman, throwing off her cloak to resume her pose. "I'd like it better if I had a handsome face, but I'd like it much worse if I had flabby flesh or buniony feet."

Paletta saw that no question of modesty entered the model's mind, and she went back to her easel to paint the rounded limbs and marble huelessness of fair Dian, chastest of all Olympia's deities, wondering if, after all, what is called modesty does not come as much of habit as of nature—if the veiled face of the Oriental is not as immodest as the unclothedness of the artist's model.

CHAPTER I.

"I can't reach it," declared Georgy. "You boys are all growing so tall that a girl has to mount on stilts in order to go about with you."

"Come!" struck in Jack Holt, laughing, "make a footstool of me, Georgy;" and without another word he flung himself flat on his face. She was never loath to put her foot upon any of our necks, figuratively speaking, and now, with a burst of laughter, she took Jack at his word, and planting herself on his shoulders peered down through the coils of Virginia creeper into the cunningly devised bird's nest in the hollow of an oak tree. There were five delicately tinted eggs, and she tried in vain to squeeze her slim hand through the aperture and possess herself of them.

"No," he answered, his face still kissing the moss: "I don't tire so easily in your service, Georgy."

I felt rather bitter against them both. I would have died to serve this girl, I told myself, yet such an opportunity left me dull and cold. I was always dreaming of doughty deeds to please her, yet if she dropped her handkerchief I could hardly stoop to pick it up.

"Oh, get up, Jack!" cried Harry Dart, whose lip had been curling in angry scorn as he watched the performance: "you are by far too good to be trodden under foot by any girl, let alone Georgy Lenox."

Georgy tripped down from her temporary throne and made Harry a little courtesy. "Do you mean to say that you would not be glad to be trodden under foot by Georgy Lenox?" she asked, laughing and tossing her curls.

He gave a contemptuous shrug: "Wait until I give you an opportunity. Floyd and I don't make fools of ourselves for any girls."

"Come, come, Harry!" said Jack, who had risen from the ground and was now wiping off the earth-stains from his clothes, "don't spoil our day by being disagreeable.—Shall we go on, Georgy?" He gave her a peculiar glance in which there was less of humility than gentle command, and she sprang after him and put her hand within his arm. He did not serve her for rewards as yet, and was used to as many blows as smiles, and this was a rare condescension on her part.

Georgy was fifteen—of the same age as Harry, but considerably younger than Jack, who was two years older than his cousin, while I was the youngest of the three. We had been playmates all our lives, and had each of us found in Georgy Lenox the only girl-friend of our boyhood. She had been a beauty from her infancy, and her wiles had grown with her growth and strengthened with her strength; and now her myriad tricks of mischief, caprice and cruelty were too closely identified with what was most bewitching in her not to have become additional charms for us. In those days, while we were still hobbledehoys, she pleased us the more that she had, with the precocity of her sex, quite outstripped us where all subtle social forces are concerned. Although she could be a hoyden still, it was quite as easy for her to assume the part of an elegant young lady, equipped for society with charming manners, a fastidious taste and indifferent ease. We occasionally laughed at her airs, but inwardly admired her superb assumptions of careless superiority: had she become timid, docile, admiring toward us, I dare say her reign would not have lasted the day out.

Harry flung his arm about me, and we followed Jack and Georgy deeper and deeper into the wood. It was the last Saturday in May, and the fairest day of the year. The thickets were full of [Pg 31]mysterious sounds, and one could almost feel the beating of the delicate pulses of the springing, expanding life about us. I knew all the secrets of this forest, and loved no place half so well in Belfield outside of my own home. Nature, too, seemed tenderer of it than of other wildnesses, and had set the seal of her choice upon it with every gift of fern and vine and moss and lichen. No axe had invaded these solitudes for years except to prune away a too riotous undergrowth along the cart-path: the trees grew in grand natural aisles, and to look through the noble colonnade into mysterious vistas of copsewood gloom and stillness was for me to thrill with that blissful agony of youthful emotion which is our first premonition of the unreachable secret that underlies the universe.

"Did you ever think," said Harry to me earnestly, "that you would like to leave the world behind you for ever and live altogether in the woods, with only the trees and birds for company?"

But, dearly although I loved the woods, I could not answer him that I should be willing to resign my home, my mother, my friends and social joys for the life of a hermit.

"I'm not sure of that," Harry rejoined with sudden misanthropy. "See what a hard world it is! I feel to-day like Achilles in his tent."

"But I don't like Achilles: he was only sullen because he had lost Briseis. Surely, Harry, you don't mind it that Georgy has gone on with Jack?"

Harry laughed loud and long: "That would be a good joke! As if I cared for Georgy Lenox! But it does make me angry to see Jack so taken up with her. Did you see her new shoes?"

"Jack bought them for her," said Harry with angry emphasis. "He spends all his money on her, and I think it is a shame. She told him at first she could not come to-day, because she had nothing to wear on her feet except thin slippers. What does Jack do but post off to John Edwards and buy her a pair of boots at once!" He paused a moment, then burst out: "Just look at them!"

Georgy had flung her flowers at Jack, and having jumped across the little brook which meandered through the wood, now nodded at him defiantly, tossing her long curls, while her eyes sparkled and her color rose. He too sprang over the stream, with pretended anger, and she gave a little shriek and flew down the path, with him in pursuit. Jack was clumsy and not built for speed, while Georgy had the spring of a fawn; but I suspect she was willing to be caught, for when we next gained a glimpse of them she was sitting on a stump fanning herself with her broad-brimmed hat, which had fallen off, while he was leaning against a tree looking at her.

"He has kissed her—I know he has," Harry whispered to me with a bitter look. "I would die before I would kiss her when she behaved like that!"

I was in a sort of tremor. I was too young to be in love in the ordinary sense of the phrase, but I was aghast at the thought of the bloom of her cheeks and lips being plucked like roses in a hedgerow. She was precious to my imagination, yet, for all her every-day reality, scarcely nearer to my aspirations than Lady Edith Plantagenet or Ellen, Lady of the Lake.

"I don't care," muttered Harry doggedly—"I don't care. I dare say he means to marry her when he grows up, but I don't care."

Now I knew at least a hundred birds' nests in these woods. All Wednesday afternoon I had nestled here in the thickets and watched the little builders hopping from moss to bough and twig, and had learned all their secrets. I knew that by the great rock just behind where she was sitting was a ledge with shelving sides overhung with moss, and that there, so cunningly wrought and hidden that none but a trained eye could ever have discovered it, was an exquisite nest formed of lichens. Half ashamed of disclosing such a sacred confidence, I led Georgy up to it. Last Wednesday it was barely[Pg 32] finished: now there were three eggs in it. It was a wood-pewee's nest, and while I let her peep the mother-bird flew toward us with a shrill pathetic cry.

"Hush, you horrid thing!" cried Georgy to the alarmed bird, that circled about us with cries growing every moment more piercing.—"Is not that perfectly sweet? I never saw anything prettier."

I had only consented that she should give one glance, and I now tried to coax her away; but nothing would content her but to hold two of the eggs in her hand, and while she held them her foot slipped and they fell to the ground, and she trod upon them.

"Oh, Georgy!" I cried angrily, "that is too horribly careless of you: I cannot forgive you."

"The idea!" she returned, laughing. "Do look at him, boys!—as white as a ghost just because I broke those wretched eggs! Look at that furious little bird! I declare it is ready to peck my eyes out! There, madam! now you may go to work and lay some more eggs;" and she took the sole remaining egg from the nest and flung it with wanton cruelty into the thicket.

I was cut to the heart. Both Jack and Harry came up to me, but I shook them off and sat down upon a fallen trunk, and would not say a word in answer to their inquiries or consolations. Presently they wandered down the woods together, and left me there alone. The owners of the despoiled nest kept up a loud, emphatic chirping for a time, which drew all the other birds to discover its cause. I felt as if they looked at me with wonder and resentment in their innocent eyes. But after a time the tumult of sorrow passed and the usual forest sounds returned: the whir of partridge-wings smote the air, and I heard the tender coo of the mother-hen; then the wind rose and blew through the tree-tops, and the blossoming boughs moved restlessly, no longer filtering green sunshine through their transparent leaves, but disclosing a gathering storm in the glimpses I gained of the sky above. I knew a short cut through the wood which led to the hill at the back of my mother's house, and when I heard Harry's voice calling me I sprang like a deer into the covert, and before the rain came had reached home.

Georgy's wanton cruelty had wounded me deeply, but my allegiance to our girl-queen was not easily thrown off; and seizing an umbrella I flew back to the woods to offer it to Georgy, who received it kindly, glad of shelter from the sudden shower. I was as proud of her smile and good-natured thanks as a dog is proud of his master's scant caress after a sound beating.

The fair May day ended in rain, and, as usual on Saturdays, my three mates finished the afternoon with me. Jack took his books and went sturdily at his Greek; Harry drew pictures by the dozen; Georgy was reading Queechy, nestled in my mother's chair by the bay-window; and I was deep in one of the Waverley novels. Banners streamed, bugles blew, spears gleamed, knights jostled in my world. Oh for a wet afternoon again like that twenty-five years ago, with the monotonous patter of rain in my ears, to go back to Cœur de Lion and Edith and Saladin! And not alone the time and the books, and the old high heart with the old longings and resolves, and the old fearless eyes to look out upon the world, but the old companions as well, with their glorious boy-faces, untouched then by any imprint of the base emotions and aims sure almost, a little later, to enter in and defile! The rain pattered ceaselessly; the heavy scent of the lilacs came in through the open windows; the martins screamed about their boxes under the eaves of the stable, and I could hear the twitter of innumerable birds; but with the consciousness of all this I had no thought except of my rapture for Kenneth when the dog sprang at the throat of Conrad.

"Floyd," said Georgy, putting her hand on my arm, "don't you hear the door-bell? Ann went out an hour ago."

Our service was not numerous, and if Ann had gone out, as was her wont when she found a moment's leisure, there was no one to answer the bell but myself. I rose heavily and unwillingly, and [Pg 33]walked along the little hall, my eyes still glued upon the page, hardly raising them when I opened, the door until I saw, instead of some indifferent neighbor, a tall gentleman, quite strange to Belfield, who was shutting his dripping umbrella. He was very tall, stately, broad-shouldered, with an impassive but handsome face, and a glance at once quiet and commanding. He regarded me with an amused smile, as if he knew me very well, and something about him gradually renewed a sort of recollection in me.

I led the way silently back to the dull, chilly sitting-room, where Jack and Harry still sat at the table, while Georgy was peeping out to catch a glimpse of the new arrival. Mr. Floyd, having put his umbrella in the rack and taken off his hat and overcoat, followed me, casting a look about the room as he entered, as if he missed somebody he expected to see.

"My mother is not at home, sir," I observed, sitting down stiffly on the edge of a chair: "she has gone to spend the afternoon with a sick lady."

"Oh, she will certainly be at home to tea, sir," I answered; and then, remarking that he gave a shrug as he glanced at the wide-open casements, I closed both windows, went to the closet, brought wood and kindlings and built a fire on the hearth.

"You are a boy of much nice discrimination," remarked Mr. Floyd. "Now that you have a temperature not altogether conducive to lumbago, I will venture to sit down. Do you know who I am?"

"And who are these young people?" he inquired, apparently noticing the group by the table for the first time.

I introduced them, and Mr. Floyd shook hands with Jack, put his hand under Harry's chin and looked keenly into his chiselled, beautiful face; then gave another glance at Georgy, to whom he had first bowed.

"Oh yes, sir: I am his daughter," cried Georgy, blushing and dimpling. "I am third cousin to your little girl: Mr. Raymond at The Headlands is my great-uncle."

"He was first cousin of my wife," said Mr. Floyd, "and I have met him, I believe."

"That is Antonio Thorpe," observed Mr. Floyd—"a young friend of mine for whom I want to get board and lodging in Belfield. Can any of you recommend a place? He is a lad of eighteen or nineteen, and will probably study under your own masters."

"Mamma would be very glad to have a boarder," struck in Georgy earnestly. "There is a nice large room for him."

I ushered in the new-comer, a slim fellow of my own height, but looking immeasurably older, with a delicate black moustache and a coat which fitted in a way to shame anything in Belfield.

"Well, well, Tony!" said Mr. Floyd: "you followed quickly upon my footsteps; but all the better, perhaps, as I have already heard of a suitable place for you to settle. This young lady, Miss Lenox, thinks her mother may be able to accommodate you: perhaps she will be good enough to take you home now and introduce you, referring her family to me."

Thorpe bowed with a very finished air, and presently was walking off in the rain with Georgy, holding his umbrella over her in a manner truly Grandisonian. Harry and Jack also went away, and I[Pg 34] was left alone with my guardian; for, although I had never seen him since my father's funeral eight years before, my guardian I knew him to be. He called me up to him, flung his arm over my shoulder and looked into my eyes. "My dear boy!" said he in a kind voice, and kissed me on the forehead. "You remember me a little, don't you?" he asked.

"No wonder. I have been in Europe eight years. My little girl is ten years old, and had never seen me since she was the merest baby. She was afraid of me at first."

But not for long, I was sure of that: nobody, man, woman or child, could look into his face and not love and trust him.

"I want to see your mother," he exclaimed with a sudden flash of expression over his tranquil face. "Your mother is all that is left to me of my youth: I have come back an old man."

I laughed at this, and then we fell to talking of our life in Belfield. I was not a loquacious fellow, but something about Mr. Floyd unloosed my tongue, and after describing our quiet household ways I spoke freely of the Lenoxes and of Jack and Harry. The two boys were cousins, and Harry, having neither father nor mother, lived with the Holts, who were the rich people of our village. My two friends loved me dearly, but still they were more to each other than I could be to either, for they shared the same room, ate at the same table, and had grown into an intimacy wonderful and rare even among brothers. They were Damon and Pythias, Orestes and Pylades; but indeed I doubted if anything in poetry, history or tradition had ever equalled this beautiful and complete friendship. I could not be jealous of it, because each gave me all I needed; and even if, at times, I felt the pang of being a little outside their world, my isolation was made sacred to me by the recollection of the brother I had lost, in whom some time, somewhere, I should regain everything.

Mr. Floyd had a way of listening which made me yearn to tell him every insignificant detail of my life. I knew that he was a man of national reputation, but I hardly cared for that, since he was the pleasantest companion I had ever met. I found myself gossiping to him about our village worthies, making him laugh heartily at their sayings passed into tradition and fable among us boys; for our one-eyed shoemaker and our corpulent grocer, like many other country wits to fortune and to fame unknown, surpassed either Douglas Jerrold or Sydney Smith in quip and drollery. And I did not omit George Lenox, for all Belfield except his wife was in the secret of his affairs, and they were our crowning joke, in which poor George himself joined merrily, although the story was so against himself.

"That girl of his is remarkably pretty," said Mr. Floyd. "Is he, then, so poor? He was well born, liberally educated, and married in a family of high pretensions."

There could be no doubt but what George Lenox had begun better than other men, with enough to live on comfortably in city or country, provided he did not think too much of the necessity for showing his wife that she had not lessened her consequence in marrying him. Nobody could accuse poor Mr. Lenox now-a-days of ambition, or blame him if, in those early days as now, that terrible woman had frankly regarded him as an utter nonentity save in his association with her own destiny. She was a handsome woman, with aquiline nose, a thin, firmly-set mouth, piercing eyes and a magnificent carriage. She was no longer young when she had accepted Mr. Lenox, and by what means she had encompassed his subjugation we were never told: he always shook his head when he alluded to his courtship. "A fellow is wax in a woman's hands," he had sometimes remarked darkly. But after his marriage he had seemed to acquiesce in his wife's belief in her high individual value to the world in general and himself in particular, and had given her the best of everything. Mrs. Lenox knew how to spend money,[Pg 35] she had a house in New York and a villa in Belfield; she had running accounts with tradesmen; and not only gave dinner-parties, balls and receptions, but out-dressed her circle with a sort of gorgeous superfluity which made her intimates experience the ignominy of their inferiority. Mr. Lenox resigned himself to the irresistible current of his wife's will, and if he felt inward doubts silenced them as suggestions of morbid distrust in the discretion of a woman whom he knew to be virtuous, and whose price was so much above rubies that sordid calculations ought not to be mentioned in the same breath with her. After a time, however, not even his high faith in the necessity of agreeable issues where she was concerned could blind him to the fact that he had many debts and but a few thousand dollars. He at once invested these thousands in an enterprise which was shortly to make all those interested in it millionaires. But if any one made money out of it, it was not George Lenox, who suddenly found himself reduced to be a pensioner upon his wife, who had twelve thousand dollars invested in railway stock. They removed to their little Gothic cottage in Belfield, and Mrs. Lenox lost what remained of her beauty, her spirits, her temper, but never her ineradicable pride. Within a year her husband had taken her railway stock, sold it and invested it in some speculation which failed ignominiously, as any schemes of his were sure to do. Nothing attracted him which was regulated by average laws of supply answering a demand: all his undertakings required a miracle, an upheaval of popular ideas, to ensure success. He never told his wife of this embezzlement of his: when he lost her property he meditated suicide, and merely staved off the evil day by pretending to pay her dividends regularly; and for this he twice a year implored the assistance of his uncle, Mr. Raymond. The railroad in which Mrs. Lenox had invested was a prosperous one, and occasionally declared an additional stock dividend: it was on these occasions that the reduced lady lost in a degree her usual air of picturesque gloom—that she roused herself to talk about her family and the glories of her youth, the éclat and brilliance of her position, which she had never lost until after marrying her unfortunate husband; and at such times she even regained her courage and made a round of visits, dropping glazed and ancient cards, and retaining in her feebleness all the traditions of her majesty. But this epoch of her revived grandeur was set in painful contrast to poor Lenox's misery. He was commissioned to sell the scrip, which, for him, had no existence, and thus raise money to deck the family in transient brightness. I fancy that at such times, without any waste of rhetoric or balancing of expediencies, he was more in love with suicide than Hamlet or Cato, and that if it had not been for the sympathy and aid of a golden-haired little girl he would have swallowed his death-potion quietly. Georgy was his firm ally against her mother, and helped him shrewdly in many a close pinch; and his rich uncle, Mr. Raymond (Mr. Floyd's father-in-law), rarely refused him provisional aid upon his application, although he was wise enough to decline helping him in any of his fantastic kite speculations.

"And what sort of a girl is this Miss Georgy?" inquired Mr. Floyd. "Has she been injured at all by the somewhat exceptional circumstances of her family?"

I assented eagerly to this observation, and he laughed: "There is no doubt in your mind upon that point. If she were in all respects a suitable companion for Helen, I would request that she should be invited to The Headlands. But Tony will find out what she is made of. He will be a new friend for you."

And he told me about this Antonio Thorpe, who had been under his guardianship for six years. He was the son of an Englishman who had married a Spanish girl in the West Indies: the lad was but twelve years old when he was thrown upon the world without parents[Pg 36] or near relatives or suitable provision for his maintenance. The elder Thorpe had been a careless, good-natured person, without any distrust of his fellows, and not knowing what to do with his son had thrust him upon Mr. Floyd, who had at some trouble and expense looked after his education. He had entered college the year before, but his conduct had been a little unsatisfactory to the authorities, and his guardian had withdrawn him, and now, in some doubt as to the best course to pursue in regard to his future, wished him to study for a few months quietly at Belfield.

"Your mother will let him visit here, I trust," he went on. "I think he is half a good fellow, and we must forgive the other half, because his mother was the proudest, vainest, silliest little Castilian that ever lived. Tony has got a good deal to contend against."

But the drawbacks to Thorpe's advancement were not so patent to my mind on first acquaintance as his advantages. He had a slight, graceful figure, a little under height, but carried himself with the dignity of a grandee; his eyes were large, dark and languishing; his complexion was a pale olive; while his moustache, black and exquisitely pencilled, was a sign of itself of towering superiority above the rest of us callow youths. That alone would have filled me with envy.

CHAPTER II.

I had become too much absorbed in our talk to hear the click of the gate, but now I sprang up and rushed to the door, and, seeing my mother quietly walking up the path, I ran out bareheaded into the rain.

It seemed to me all at once that some thought of him must have been in her mind, for her color came and went. "I hope it is Cousin James," she replied calmly.

As I took her umbrella from her hand I could see that she was trembling and her lips quivering. I unclasped her cloak and untied her bonnet, and took them from her: she ungloved her hands hastily and smoothed her hair as she went along the hall. Mr. Floyd stood facing her as she entered the sitting-room. "Dear Mary!" said he, and took her in his arms and kissed her.

I felt as if I had been struck a heavy blow. I knew that he had been not only my father's first cousin, but his nearest and dearest friend as well; but, for all that, it was not easy for me to see my mother surrendering herself to that caress. But presently, when I saw that she was crying, I knew that she was thinking only of my father and her long agony of loneliness, and I forgave them both. When she regained her calmness she called me to her with a timid smile and a faint blush.

"This is my boy, James," she said, looking up at Mr. Floyd smiling, but with the tears still on her cheeks. "He is your godson, you remember, and namesake."

"My godson, my namesake, my ward, and my dear friend besides," replied Mr. Floyd, throwing his arm heavily over my shoulder. "I know him already very well, and I like him more than I can tell you."

That same old thrill of feeling goes over me now like a wave as I write. As I stood looking up at him I seemed to grow rich, as if I had suddenly come into my kingdom. I continued to stand leaning against him as he sat down close beside my mother and talked intimately and freely with her. I may have felt a little alien and apart at first, for the days they talked of were the days of long ago, before I could remember. Mr. Floyd's private personal history had been but one short chapter in his long, full and busy life. He was well past thirty before he had married Alice Raymond, the only child of a wealthy merchant: she was but seventeen when he first saw her and fell in love with her. Few [Pg 37]people knew whether the twelve short months of his married life were but as a dream to him now, eleven years later, or whether his scant allusions to that time came from a shy tenderness for a memory which was his dearest and most sacred possession. Alice Raymond was but little past eighteen when she died, and even the child she left behind her had never really belonged to Mr. Floyd, but had grown up at her grandfather's at The Headlands while her father had assumed the duties of a mission abroad. Life had denied him little of what men seek as objects in a brilliant and exciting career; but in listening to him now I felt a certainty that he had been a lonely man, and, if not an unhappy one, that his mind was tinged at least with a certain melancholy which lay at the root of all his impulses.

My mother seemed to have grown younger in meeting him. She was always the most beautiful of women to me, with her large, serious brown eyes, her wavy brown hair, her complexion pure and delicate as a young girl's; and indeed she was but twenty years older than myself, thus at this date only thirty-four. But while she talked to Mr. Floyd I observed a change in her: her eyes had lost their pensiveness and calm, and fell before his shyly: the flushes came and went on her cheeks. He told her again and again that in meeting her he found the first realization that he had come back to his home: old Mr. Raymond had seemed to be afraid of him, and little Helen had cried with terror when he first clasped her in his arms and kissed her with unguarded fondness.

"But that was not strange," observed my mother. "Intimate affection is, after all, a habit. Now that you have a chance of having your little girl always with you, she will very soon grow fond of you."

"Oh, but I have no claim to her. She must stay with Mr. Raymond as long as he lives, I suppose. He loved Alice, but he worships Helen. I robbed him of his child once almost against his will, and now that he is so old a man I could not have the heart to do it again."

"But I made my mistake ten years ago. Just then I only cared for what lay beneath a fresh grave at The Headlands: there seemed to be no to-morrow for me—no time when I should get used to such sorrow and find comfort in any one or anything that took Alice's place. I gave up Helen then with absolute indifference: now such coldness seems enigmatical to me."

"It could not be. I asked her this morning if she would come with me: she burst into a passion of weeping, and declared she could not leave her grandfather—that he would die without her; and I verily believe that he would. Well! well! I have got along for ten years without happiness. I have a career, while Mr. Raymond, millionaire though he is, has nothing but Helen. If only my health does not altogether fail!"

"The doctors tell me that I have three incurable diseases," returned Mr. Floyd, laughing. "Then I took cold the moment I landed in this horrible climate. I perfectly realize the truth of the Psalmist, who declares that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Physicians dote upon me: I am an admirable field of research. Some people have the ill taste to die without any preliminaries, but I shall not give occasion for any painful surprise. Still, I only tell you this that you may make the most of me. Let me hear about yourself, Mary. If you only knew how often I have thought of you shut away here from the world in this wretched country place, nothing near you not utterly foreign to your tastes and your circles of thought!"

My mother's hand stole into mine, and she met my jealous glance and smiled into my face. "Cousin James does not know what good times we have, does he, Floyd?" said she.

"I forgot for one moment your consolations," said Mr. Floyd. "I saw your boy's mates when I came in: one of them has a powerful face: he looks like a youthful Cato."[Pg 38]

"That is Jack Holt," I cried. "He is like Cato: he is strong, severe, just. Whatever he says ought to be done we know must be done, even if the heavens fall."

"And the handsome fellow, who is he? Harry Dart? He looks equal to the heroism of all Plutarch's heroes: he has a beautiful, consecrated face. I hope he will live up to what it tells us now."

Glad and proud although I was to see Mr. Floyd, his coming disturbed me a little. Hitherto I had accepted my life unquestioningly. We had been poor ever since my father's death, and my mother's life had become circumscribed and narrowed down to Belfield. It had seemed to me that no other people in the world were just so happy as my mother and myself. What need had we of a larger house, when the one stately mansion that I was familiar with appeared to me a desert, even with all its fairy-land splendors? Jack Holt's father was too rich a man not to allow his wife all the good things which she coveted, and her parlors, halls and bedrooms were irrefragable proof of the enormities which may be committed with an utter want of taste and tens of thousands of dollars. Both Harry and Jack hated the house, and spent every available moment out of school in our comfortable, well-worn nooks inside and out of doors. My mother used to play to us at twilight, and sing sweet ballads which gave us a state of mind full of the blessed misery which youth loves. Then what gay little waltzes used to rattle off from my mother's fingers! She taught us all to dance, and in the winter dusk we would waltz in turn with Georgy Lenox, the two of us who could not have her as a partner circling with our arms about each other's less slender waists. Then the feasts my mother used to cook for us with her own clever hands have made the greatest banquets seem poor since: she had the gift of performing every feminine task better than any other woman in the world. In short, I had lived the life which undoubtedly comes to many a lad who has no father: my mother appeared to have no thought but of me and my happiness, and not one of my dreams of far-reaching happiness but included her. I realized enough of the exquisite worth of her devotion to me never to cross her wishes: an invisible yet insurmountable barrier separated me from any of the grosser faults of boyhood, for she never let me go from her without her kiss, the clasp of her hand, and her saying, "You will be a good boy, Floyd?"

Yes, I had been perfectly happy; and, as I say, it disturbed me to have a doubt suggested that this full, complete existence of mine had not filled my mother's heart as well. Belfield—merely writing the word "Belfield" has a breezy influence over my mind still. Wherever a man has spent his boyhood there linger associations of the cool wind of the hill-top, the sound of the sea audible yet invisible, the hush before a storm, the tumbling of the ice in the river in the spring freshets, the berries that grew on the edge of the wood, the ecstatic thrill of physical strength and delight on the playground where he ran "drinking in the wind of his own speed." But youth is the season not alone of action, but of reverie. Most of our original thinking is done before we are sixteen: after that we acquire so much of other men's experience that our thoughts wear the current stamp. We come into our rich inheritance of the world's accumulated knowledge, and evolve from it the answers to the necessities of our own individual development. As boys we were not cribbed by any exact logic and hard common sense, which must stretch us a little later on a Procrustean bed, and we were free to grow as we would and to stand on the highest level of noble thought and heroic deed. The writers whom we read with avidity were those who ennobled us: in those days youth was the era of a high romanticism, and our authors did not enter the actual world which lay about us, giving us pictures of real life, and with devilish ingenuity teaching us to regard men's actions from the reverse side, and thus detect ignoble traits as the mainspring of human achievement.

More than forty of us went to school[Pg 39] together in the stiff white academy which stood on the hill surrounded by a quadrangle of straight poplars. We learned many things there—some from the grim old preceptor, some outside the walls. I had a volume of Plutarch, from which I used to read stories to the boys as we lay on the grassy slopes in the shade, and I often felt a tremor in my voice as I read. It seems to me sometimes that the youth of this day lose some of the grandeur which made our ideals. Our sons read "Oliver Optic" and the magazines, while we used to thrill over the grand words of the men who have ruled the world. Then my mother's teaching was simple, direct and wise, and had become incorporated in every action of my will and impulse of my heart. I was to love and obey my God, never to tell a lie, never to do a mean action, never to be disloyal to a friend nor unfair to a foe. Still, if Harry and I were tolerably good, one of the reasons which acted most powerfully to restrain us from committing faults was our wish to stand well with Jack: he never scolded, never gave advice, but if he were displeased with our conduct we could not eat or sleep. Once Harry committed a trifling error—to call it a wickedness seems a grotesque exaggeration now—and Jack did not like it.

"Of course, Harry," he said coldly, "you can do as you please, but I am disappointed in you."

Harry rushed out of doors, and could not be found all night: he slept on the turf beneath his cousin's window, and the rain drenched him and he took a violent cold.

"I forgive nothing: a bad action is a bad action. But I could not sleep when I did not know where you were: I got up and studied, for I was so tormented."

But Jack was so equable, so gentle! There was never a trace of harshness in his treatment of us. Indeed, it was only in his unfailing rectitude that he surpassed us, for, our senior although he was, he could barely keep up in our classes. Harry was the quickest of the three, but with a mortal hatred of hard study: he had an easy capacity for mastering knowledge without tedious assiduity; and, as he was resolved to be a painter, he held all mental acquirements as subsidiary to his master-passion for gaining dexterity and skill with his pencil. He could have done anything at his books had he expended any high endeavor, but he always let his chances slip by him, and allowed me to carry off the prizes which he might far more easily have won. I was by nature and habit rigidly conscientious, and discontented with myself unless I did my best. I hated cheap successes, and I was shy of praise, as my performances always fell short of my ideals. Mine was no studious disposition, and I had plenty of physical inclination to shirk lessons and lie beneath the forest boughs watching the birds all day; but there were detached lines that I used to repeat to myself aloud over and over again in lonely places, caring far less for their meaning than for the immeasurable music of the words.

CHAPTER III.

I could write many chapters about our life at Belfield, and perhaps of all I have to tell nothing would be so well worth telling. Belfield is a quiet place on the shore of Long Island Sound, placidly sleeping through the summers and autumns beneath the shadows of its immemorial trees. We went to school on the hill: below us was our ancient church built in far-off colonial times, and connected with many a story of Revolutionary times, to which we used to listen greedily: George Lenox had one of which we never tired.

"My grandfather," said he, "went to church the Sunday after the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, and when the clergyman read the prayers for the royal family he stood up in his pew and cried out that no such prayers must be read in Belfield—that George III.'s name was no longer the name of our friend, but of our worst enemy. The[Pg 40] minister rose and shut up his prayer-book forthwith, raised his hand and pronounced the benediction, and the church was closed until the end of the war. We were good Federalists, we were," continued Mr. Lenox, "but we had one staunch Tory and Churchman in our family. After the church was closed my grandfather's family used to attend Presbyterian meeting on the hill, close by where your schoolhouse now stands; but their old dog, Duke, would never go past the church when he followed his master out on Sunday mornings: he would not go to Presbyterian meeting—not he: he stretched himself on the great millstone before the closed church-door."

When Jack, Harry and I sat together on the high "back seat" at school we had a good view down the hill at the weather-stained old church, with its imperishable gilt vane on top of the tall spire. Often enough our vagrant eyes wandered that way, but not that we cared for green slopes or colonial church or venerable weathercock. The truth of the matter was, that we oftentimes saw Georgy Lenox walking along the quiet street under the elms. To tell of our early life in Belfield, and say nothing of the influence which was already moulding the lives of at least two of us, would be to give an incomplete and partial picture. I was an imaginative boy, and Jack was the reverse, yet we were both desperately in love with the same girl. As for Harry, nobody ever decided what he felt toward her. They continually quarrelled when they were together, and Harry sometimes took pains to abuse her in her absence: he never read of an unworthy trait in a woman but he at once pointed its meaning at her. He called us "spoons," etc. for caring about her, yet, all the same, she must have been invested with an endless store of associations in his mind, for his portfolio was full of sketches of her; which seemed to furnish his ideals of feminine beauty. She was not only Rowena, but Rebecca as well (with only a change of complexion), Helen of Troy and Joan of Arc, Cleopatra and the Madonna, Marie Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor. Still, Jack and I each felt that he was not one with us in his devotion to her, and we made no confidences to him respecting her. For Jack and I talked about her incessantly when we were together: when we saw her in the street below us we nudged each other, and together felt the thrill, the inextinguishable rapture, of beholding the sunny gleam of her golden hair and her quick, graceful gait.

We were not rivals. I do not know how the thought of her came to Jack in those early days, but he had a habit of decision, and I dare say had made up his mind that she was to be his wife. He had plenty of pocket-money, and could buy her trinkets, ribbons and gloves: I had no money, and my tribute to her was of flowers and fruits. It was natural to both of us to offer her all we could; and it was equally natural to her to receive our largesse with a smile and laughing thanks if it pleased her, and a cool, indifferent shrug of contempt if it failed to suit her.

I carried the thought of her into all my occupations. Were I planting my mother's flower-beds, were I writing my composition, it was all the same: the question was, "Will it please Georgy?" Not that it mattered; and I well knew that I was a fool for it all, for she was steadily indifferent to any matters in which she had no personal concern, and despised my pains with scant ceremony. I too held in contempt my small efforts to please her, and fell a-dreaming of the wonderful things I was sure to do some time. Not that she was slow in telling us what she wanted, and her demands upon us were not of the sort that appertain to heroic achievements; yet I felt, all the same, that let me once be a hero I must win her approbation. I can remember her sitting in our garden at home under the laburnums, with the greenery making a background for her fresh girl-face. From her babyhood her beauty had been remarked, and at ten years old she was as used to compliments as an old woman of the world. Mrs. Lenox had long since resigned expectation for herself, but she was not yet too hopeless to indulge in passionate [Pg 41]belief of a brilliant future for her daughter; and when I used to listen to the gorgeous day-dreams of the two, I felt dejectedly that my own most radiant visions were by comparison the offspring of a lifeless and gloomy fancy. There was nothing problematical or idealistic in their ideas of a happy destiny. What they wanted was, in the first place, money; in the second place, money; thirdly and finally, money. I doubt whether Mrs. Lenox ever resigned herself to the sway of fiction or poetry, but I am sure that had she studied Shakespeare she would have thought Iago's advice to Roderigo shrewdly comprised the worth of all aspiration. She and Georgy longed for dress, jewels and laces; great houses panelled with mirrors and carpeted with velvet; magnificence and pomp and circumstance about their every-day life; horses, carriages, invitations, theatres, operas,—all the pleasures which throng toward people with lined pockets and idle lives. Their wants were innumerable, their taste and fancy a harp of a thousand strings upon which caprice and vanity could play an endless variety of tunes. Mrs. Lenox had once enjoyed the luxuries she still coveted so ardently, yet Georgy, who had never known wealth, or even the easy-assured comforts of life, had instinctively the keener perception of the two for the worth of costly surroundings and possessions. No princess who had breathed perfumes all her life, trod on velvet and been served on gold and silver, could have felt a more vital necessity for luxury than Georgy, who had always lived among shabby things and known few but shabby people. She was born with the looks, manners and tastes of what we call an aristocrat, and her mother worshipped these traits in her. When one day she flung away her dinner because it was not to her liking, and went out of doors and pulled the peaches ripening against the wall, and ate them instead, Mrs. Lenox felt that such fastidiousness foreshadowed a destiny more than common. For her to tear her hats to pieces and cut her dress or apron in shreds because they did not suit her was a frequent caprice, and one we had all laughed at again and again—except Jack, who was thrifty by nature and respected the worth of things like a sensible economist. It was generally he, however, who replaced the ruined garments, and by the time he was sixteen he had attained quite a nice taste in millinery from his frequent purchases for Georgy. Mrs. Lenox always had a fit of weeping when such presents came and were displayed by Georgy as trophies, for she was still too proud not to be cut deeply by every fresh humiliation; but her belief in her daughter's future carried her through the present, and she pacified her scruples in regard to her course with Jack or anybody else who made outlay for her daughter by remembering that all such services would be balanced by and by when the natural order of things had been restored.

All in Belfield knew both Mrs. Lenox and Georgy so well—their history, the miserable shortcomings of their home, the girl's scanty education both of intellect and morals—that we could but attribute their faults to sheer worldliness combined with the evils of their bitter poverty. Jack and myself, at least, with the most meagre excuse readily forgave Georgy everything. She was so beautiful, so radiant in all the phases of her dingy life, so good-natured even in her contempt of our stupidity and dulness, so eager to find enjoyment in everything, that we were willing to accept all her faults with her charms, to love her idolatrously, and blame ourselves for harshness if we were momentarily angry with the lovely creature.

We had all, even Georgy, been reasonably happy in Belfield until Mr. Floyd and Antonio Thorpe came. My guardian's influence I will speak of later, for it touched only myself perhaps; but Tony's was felt more or less by us all. He widened our horizons at once, and, as usual, enlarged our imaginations at the expense of our belief in ourselves. We were not used exactly to be complimented on our ignorance of the world, but in Belfield habits of thought tended toward a pleasant conviction of the uselessness of all[Pg 42] knowledge and experience that our best inhabitants did not happen to possess. Until Tony came we were in the habit of deploring the fate of people who were not born and brought up in Belfield. Almost the entire population were descendants of the original proprietors of the soil, and we had our own ideas about our first families. Thorpe's views, however, were not flattering: he was, in fact, one of those elegant young men whose innermost souls are penetrated with convictions of the inadequacy of intellects in general to appreciate theirs in particular.

Both Jack and I passed sleepless nights at first, wretched at the thought of his sleeping beneath the same roof with Georgy Lenox—of his enjoying that mystical, beautiful experience of coming down every morning to find her at table with her hair freshly curled, to enjoy the felicity of passing her eggs and toast, to carve a slice for her from the joint which the welcome addition of the young man's payment for board allowed Mrs. Lenox to provide for her dinner. Then, too, we felt with a pang that he would receive with his unequalled grace all sorts of little services from the daughter of the house: she would pour his tea for him, counting the lumps of sugar and dropping cream upon them in the distracting way we knew; she would amuse him with her sweet-voiced chatter. He was so old, so handsome with his velvety eyes and his moustache, she might even fall in love with him. However, Georgy was not given to sentiment, and Tony, for his part, was utterly indifferent to her: indeed, the most exclusive circles in Belfield opened to him at once, for a young man with a moustache was a rara avis there, the masculine element in the village falling short of social requirements, as its representatives were generally either in their first or second childhood. But the only intimacy he cultivated was with me and my mother: he criticised everybody else, and it was evident that he considered nothing in Belfield quite good enough for him.

"What a great man my master is!" says the French valet: "nothing suits him." And it must be confessed that the valet's state of mind concerning his master much resembled ours regarding Thorpe. At every woman in the place except my mother he levelled trenchant sarcasms: the men, he declared, possessed every trait which could shock or weary a man of the world, and not only displeased his eyes, but were so foreign to his spheres of thought that he was obliged to ignore them. At the habits and customs of everybody alike he shrugged his shoulders, and we used to wonder to each other why so great a man stayed in Belfield at all. But he did us no harm, and it is not impossible that he did us good. He laughed freely at our provincialisms, accustomed us to take raillery good-naturedly, disillusionized us in many ways, and showed us always a pattern of polished and careful demeanor.

He used to entertain us frequently—if I may use the word "entertain" to describe his indifferent toleration of us and his acceptance of such listeners in default of better—by a description of Mr. Raymond's place, "The Headlands," as it was usually called. He had been in the habit of spending a few days of his vacations there for years, and was in a position to enlighten Georgy about her distant cousin and mine, Helen Floyd, Mr. Raymond's probable heiress. Perhaps he liked to tease Georgy, yet it is possible that the little daughter of Mr. Floyd, growing up in the quiet, stately place, really possessed something already to arouse Tony's admiration for a child ten years old; but he would dwell upon her beauty, her brilliant prospects in the future and the grandeur of her present possessions, until Georgy was enraged with him. The train was perhaps already laid in the mind of the young girl which led up to a magazine of hatred and anger against more successful mortals, and needed but a chance spark to light it. She made a rival of little Helen Floyd at once, and every action of her life became infused with ambitious desires to surpass her in some way. She besieged me with questions concerning my guardian, his ideas, views, tastes and habits, and beset me feverishly to use[Pg 43] my influence to get her invited to The Headlands.

Mr. Floyd's visits became more and more frequent as the summer advanced, and I began with some jealousy to notice a growing change in my mother. In former times she had shown an exquisite poise of strength and peace in every phase of her life, but of late she seemed possessed with a sort of girlish fluttering and disquiet: her eyes were dreamy and her voice softer and less decided in its inflexions, and her manner to me, instead of continuing its old noble habits of command, became timid and caressing, as if she were anxious to propitiate me. In the evenings, instead of sitting among us boys on the piazza, she would leave us and walk by herself under the laburnums in the garden; and if I followed her and put my arm about her, I found, with vague pain and rebellion at my heart, that although she amply responded to my tenderness, she had sweet and sacred thoughts that she was smiling over all by herself. It had been her wont to busy herself with housekeeping cares from morning until night: our income was small, and she was very busy, for she gave thought to everything and decided wisely upon the smallest matter. In these duties she had found pleasant occupation apparently: she had shown no fatigue, had marred nothing by impatience or over-haste—had judiciously studied how to manage every detail of our lives. Now all at once there seemed a little lassitude upon her: she left all questions concerning the housekeeping for her domestic, Ann, to decide; she would drop her sewing in her lap and fall into reverie, her cheeks crimsoning, her eyes growing dark and misty, and emerge into reality presently with a beautiful trembling smile on her lips. I grudged her those reveries and those smiles: I quaked at the thought that her heart was turning toward Mr. Floyd, much as I loved and venerated him. I knew that she had worshipped my father, and I wanted her to carry that one feeling supreme to the end of her days. Cet âge est sans pitié. I realized nothing of the preciousness of those impulses which were quickening her again into happy youth: I realized nothing of her having been lonely—nothing of the pain and passion of longing which must have tried her through these eight years of widowhood, without any companionship save mine, with such cruel silence when she had been used to every tenderness, to constant loving flatteries, to gentlest ministrations—or I hope I should not so bitterly have resented this new hope of hers which made her almost afraid to look me in the face.

When Mr. Floyd did not come he wrote frequently to my mother. I used to bring his letters to her with a swelling heart and bitter tears in my eyes; but she knew nothing of those tears, for she never looked up, nor when she took the letters did she read them before me. He wrote frequently to me as well as to her, but while her envelopes covered numerous well-filled pages, his notes to me were adorned with just one degree more ample verbiage than we use in a telegram.

But nothing was said between us until one night early in September. It was a rainy evening, but so warm that both doors and windows stood wide open, and we heard the faint pattering music of the swift succeeding showers mingled with the monotonous chant of the katydids. My mother sat at the table with a pretence of work in her hands, but I saw that she trembled so much that she could not draw the thread. I had brought her in a letter at seven o'clock directed in Mr. Floyd's fine cramped handwriting, and I too had a note from him. My mother had taken hers from me with a devouring blush, and as if to hide it had thrust it beneath a pile of cambric ruffles on the table.

Her look and manner had made me turn almost sick with pain, for it seemed to me she no longer loved or trusted me. I had lost everything, I told myself with profound dreariness. I laid my own letter from Mr. Floyd open in her lap without a word. It ran thus:

"My Dear Boy: I have had a trying week: Helen has been at the point of death, and that she is now convalescent[Pg 44] fills me with gratitude to God too great for words. I think she would have died if I had not been here. As soon as she is well I want you to spend a few weeks at The Headlands: you need the change, and my little girl needs a friend. Love to your dear mother and for yourself.

But although my mother took up the letter, something seemed to blind her: she could not read it, and put it by and resumed her work. We spent an hour in complete silence.

"We are very dull," she said at last, looking over at me with a little trembling smile. "Have you nothing to tell me, Floyd?"

"Oh, Floyd!" she cried, "it seems to me you are a little hard and cruel to me of late."

"Read your letter, mother, and mine too. If it is impossible for you to open a letter from Cousin James before me, I will leave the room."

She obeyed me, calmly taking her missive out from its hiding-place, opening it and reading it through: then she handed it to me with her old habit of command: "I wish you to read it, my boy."

I did so: it was just as I had thought. Mr. Floyd loved her: he had spoken of his feelings many times, and was waiting for her answer.

"Poor little Helen!" said my mother tenderly. "I am so thankful she is better! You will like to go to The Headlands, Floyd? 'Tis a beautiful place: your father and I attended Cousin James's wedding there. I remember still how superb and stately the place was."

She gave me a piteous glance, and her hands locked and unlocked as they lay together in her lap.

In another moment she had me in her arms. There was no more doubt between us: she had given him up, and our old sweet, strong comradeship returned.

Nigh a league to the castle still:
Twelve! booms the bell from the old clock-tower.
Now, brave mare, for the stretch up the hill,
Then just a gallop of half an hour.

Half an hour, and home and rest!
Is she watching for him on the oriel stair,
Or cradling the babe on her silken breast
In the hush of the drowsy chamber there?

Holà! steady, good Bonnibelle!
Scared at the wind, or the owlet's flight?
Ha! what stirs by the Washing Well?
Who goes there at the dead of night?

Over the stream below the slope,
Where the women wash their webs at noon,
A form like a shadow seems to grope,
Doubtful under the doubtful moon.
[Pg 45]

Good mother, your task is late and lone.
All goes well at the castle? say!—
Not a word speaks the withered crone,
Gray as a ghost in the moonlight gray.

Stone-still over the running stream,
Steadily, swiftly, round and round,
Plying her web through gloom and gleam,
Out and in, with never a sound—

Never a sound save the blasted oak
That shakes in the wind, and the bubbling well:
This is no face of the peasant-folk!—
With the sign of the cross he bars the spell.

Slowly, slowly she turns about:
Oh the creeping horror that chokes his breath
As slowly she draws the linen out,
And fashions its folds in guise of death—

Long and loose like a winding-sheet!
So sharp he pulls at the bridle-rein
The mare stands straight on her trembling feet
Before she cowers to the ground again.

Now he knows, with a shudder of dread,
The Ghost of the Well he has looked upon
Washing the shroud for some one dead—
Some one dear to him, dead and gone!

Well and washer and funeral-pall
Swim under his sight in pale eclipse.
The good God send that the shroud be small!—
He bites the words in his bloodless lips.

Over the lonely moor alone,
Praying a prayer for the dearest life,
Stifling a cry for the dead unknown,
Child or wife: is it child or wife?

Over the threshold and up the stair,
And into the hush of the deathly room,
To a motionless form in the midnight there
Under the tapers' glimmering gloom;

And the babe on her bosom—child and wife!
Child and wife! and his journey done.
Hark! overhead, with a sullen strife,
The bell in the old clock-tower booms—One!

"A character more celebrated than known" is Francis Bonivard, prior of St. Victor and Prisoner of Chillon. It is not by any intentional imposture on his part that he goes stalking through modern literature disguised in the character of hero, saint and martyr, and shouting in a hoarse chest-voice his "appeal from tyranny to God." In fact, if he could be permitted to revisit his cherished little shelf of books about which has grown the ample library of the University of Geneva, and view the various delineations of himself by artist, poet, and even serious historian, it would be delightful to witness his comical astonishment. Perhaps it is not to be laid to the fault of Lord Byron, who after visiting the old castle and its dungeon beguiled the hours of a rainy day at the inn at Ouchy with writing a poem concerning which he frankly confesses that he had not the slightest knowledge of its hero. Hobhouse, his companion, ought to have been better informed, but was not. If anybody is to blame, it is the recent writers, who do know the facts, but are unwilling to hurt so fine an heroic figure or to dethrone "one of the demigods of the liberal mythology." Enough to say that the Muse of History has been guilty of one of those practical jokes to which she is too much addicted, in dressing with tragic buskins and muffling in the cloak of a hero of melodrama, and so palming off for earnest on two generations of mankind, the drollest wag of the sixteenth century.

A wild young fellow like Bonivard, with a lively appreciation of the ridiculous, could not fail to see the comic aspect of the fate which invested him[Pg 47] with the spiritual and temporal authority and emoluments of the priory of St. Victor. This was a rich little Benedictine monastery just outside the eastern gate of Geneva, on the little knoll now crowned by the observatory, surrounded with walls and moat of its own, independent of the bishop of Geneva in spiritual matters, and in temporal affairs equally independent of the city: in fact, it was a petty sovereignty by itself, and its dozen of hearty, well-provided monks, though nominally under the rule of Cluny, were a law to themselves, and not a very rigid one either. The office of prior, by virtue of a little arrangement at Rome, descended to Bonivard from his uncle, immediately upon whose demise the young potentate of twenty-one took upon him the state and functions of his office in a way to show the monks of St. Victor that they had no King Log to deal with. The document is still extant, in the Latin of the period, in which Prior Bonivard ordains that every new brother at his initiation shall not only stand treat all round, but shall, at his own cost and charges, furnish every one of his brethren with a new cap. Another document of equal gravity makes new ordinances concerning the convent-kitchen, which seems to have been one of the good prior's most religious cares.[6] Not only his own subjects, but those of other jurisdictions, were made to feel the majesty of his sovereign authority. He would let them know that he had "just as much jurisdiction at St. Victor as the duke of Savoy had at Chambéry." He heard causes, sentenced to prison, even received ambassadors from his brother the duke, but not without looking sharply at their credentials. If these were wanting, the unfortunate wretches were threatened with the gallows as spies, and when they had been thoroughly frightened the monarch would indulge himself in the exercise of the sweetest prerogative of royalty, the pardoning power, and, when it was considered that the majesty of the state had been sufficiently asserted, would wind up with asking the whole company to dinner.

It had been considered a clever stroke of policy, at a time when the dukes of Savoy and the bishops of Geneva, who agreed in nothing else, were plotting, together or separately, to capture and extinguish the immemorial liberties of the brave little free city, to get this fortified outpost before its very gate officered by a brilliant and daring young Savoyard gentleman, who would be bound to the duke by his nativity and to the Church by his office, and to both by his interests. To the dismay of bishop and duke, it appeared that the young prior, who had led a gay life of it at the University of Turin, had nevertheless read his classics to some purpose, and had come back with his head full of Plato and Plutarch and Livy and of theories of republican liberty. So that by putting him into St. Victor they had turned that little stronghold from an outpost of attack upon Geneva liberties into the favorite resort and rendezvous of all the young liberal leaders of that gay but gallant little republic, who found themselves irresistibly drawn to young Bonivard, partly as a republican and still more as a jolly good fellow.[Pg 48]

The first manifestation of his sympathies in that direction occurred soon after his installation as prior. His uncle on his deathbed had confessed to young Francis the burden on his conscience in that he had taken Church money and applied it to the making of a battery of culverins wherewith to levy war against one of his neighbors in the country; and bequeathed to his nephew the convent and the culverins, with the charge to melt down the latter into a chime of church-bells which should atone for his evil deeds. Not long after, Bonivard was telling the story to his friend Berthelier, the daring and heroic leader of the "Sons of Geneva" in their perilous struggle against tyranny, when the latter exclaimed, "What! spoil good cannon to make bells? Never! Give us the guns, and you shall have old metal to make bells enough to split your ears. But let guns be guns. So the Church will be doubly served. There will be chimes at St. Victor and guns in Geneva, which is a Church city." The bargain was struck, as a vote in the records of the city council shows to this day. But it was the beginning of a quarrel with the duke of Savoy which was to cost Bonivard more than he had counted on. There was reckless deviltry enough among all these young liberals, but some of them—not Bonivard—were capable of seriously counting the cost of their game. On one occasion—it was at the christening of Berthelier's child, and Bonivard was godfather—Berthelier took his friend aside from the guests and said, "It is time we had done with dancing and junketing and organized for the defence of liberty."—"All right!" said the prior. "Come on, and may the Lord prosper our crazy schemes!" Berthelier took his hand, and with a serious look that sobered the rattle-headed ecclesiastic for a moment, replied, "But let me warn you that this is going to cost you your living and me my head."—"I have heard him say this a hundred times," says Bonivard in his Chronicles. The dungeon at Chillon and the mural tablet in the Tour de l'Isle at Geneva tell how truly the prophecy was fulfilled.

There was so little of the strut of the stage-hero about Bonivard that he could not be comfortable in doing a chivalrous thing without a joke to take off the gloss of it. Before the ducal party had quite given up hopes of him there was a serious affair on their hands—the need of putting out of the way by such means, treacherous and atrocious, as the Savoyards of that day loved to use, one of the noblest of the Geneva magistrates, Aimé Lévrier. An emissary of the duke, of high rank, kinsman to Bonivard, came to St. Victor and offered the prior magnificent inducements to aid in the plot. With a gravity that must have convulsed the spectators if there had been any, Bonivard pointed to his monastic gown, his prayer-book and his crucifix, and pleaded his deep sense of the sacredness of his office as a reason for having nothing to do with the affair. "Then," says his kinsman, rising in wrath, "I will do the business myself. I'll have Lévrier out of his bed and over in Savoy this very night."—"Do you really mean it, uncle? Give me your hand!"—"Then you consent, after all, to help me in the matter?"—"Oh no, uncle: that isn't it. But I know these Genevese are a hasty sort of folk, and I am just going to raise thirty florins to be spent in saying masses to-morrow for the repose of your soul." Before the evening was over, Bonivard found an opportunity of slipping in disguise over to the house of Lévrier and giving a hint of what was intended: the notes of preparation for resistance that Berthelier and his friends began at once to make wrought upon the excited nerves of the ambassador and his armed retinue to such a point that they were fain to escape from the town by a secret gate before daylight.

The affair of his rescue of Pecolat is another illustration of his character and of the strange, turbulent age in which he lived; and it went far to embitter the hatred of the duke and the bishop against him. This poor fellow was the jester, song-singer and epigrammatist of the madcap patriots who were associated under the title of "Sons of Geneva." Under a trumped-up charge of plotting[Pg 49] the death of the bishop he was kidnapped and carried away to one of the castles in the neighborhood, and there tortured until a false confession was wrung from him implicating Berthelier and others. To secure his condemnation to death he was brought back into the city and presented before the court; but the sight of the poor cripple, racked and bruised with recent tortures, and his steadfastness in recanting his late confession, wrought more with the judges than the fear of the duke, and he was acquitted. But the feeble and ferocious bishop, moved partly by malignity and partly, no doubt, by sincere and cowardly terror, was resolved to kill him; and by some fiction declaring him to have been in the minor orders, he clapped him into the bishop's prison, claiming to try him by ecclesiastical law. The story of renewed tortures inflicted on their helpless comrade, and their knowledge of the certain death that awaited him, stirred the blood of the patriots of Geneva. It was just the moment for the prior of St. Victor to show that the studies at Freiburg and Turin that had made him doctor utriusque juris had not been in vain. He would fight the bishop with his own weapon of Church law. He despatched Pecolat's own brother with letters to the archbishop of Vienne, metropolitan to the bishop of Geneva, and, using his family influence, which was not small, he secured a summons to the bishop and chapter of Geneva to appear before the archiepiscopal court and give account of the affair, and meanwhile to cease all proceedings against the prisoner.

It was comparatively easy to procure the summons. The difficulty was to find some one competent to the functions of episcopal usher and bold enough to serve it. Bonivard bethought him of a "caitiff wretch"—an obscure priest—to whom he handed the document with two round dollars lying on it, and bade him hand the paper to the bishop at mass the next day in the cathedral. The starving clergyman hesitated long between his fears and his necessities, but finally promised to do the work on condition that the prior should stand by him in person and see him through. The hour approached, and the commissioner's courage was oozing rapidly away. His knees knocked together, and he slipped back in the crowd, hoping to escape. The vigilant prior darted after him, seized him, and laying his hand on the dagger that he wore under his robe whispered in his ear, "Do it or I'll stab you!" He adds, in his Chronicles, "I should have been as good as my word: I do not say it by way of boasting. I know I was acting like a fool, but I was quite beside myself with anxiety for my friend." Happily, there[Pg 50] was no need of extreme measures. He gripped his terrified victim by the thumb, and as the procession moved toward the church-door he thrust the paper into his hand, saying, "Now's the time! You've got to do it." And all the time he held him fast by the thumb. The bishop came near, and Bonivard let go the wretch's thumb and pushed him to the front, pointing to the prelate and saying, "Do your work!" The bishop turned pale with terror of assassination as he heard the words. But the trembling clerk, not less terrified than the bishop, dropped on his knees and presented the archiepiscopal mandate, gasping out, "My lord, inhibitur vobis, prout in copia." Bonivard retreated into his inviolable sanctuary of St. Victor. "I was young enough and crazy enough," he says, "to fear neither bishop nor duke." He had saved poor Pecolat's life, although the work was not finished until the publication of an interdict from the metropolitan silencing every church-bell and extinguishing every altar-candle in the city had brought the bishop to terms.[7]

It is a hardship to the writer to be compelled to retrench the story of the early deeds for liberty of Bonivard and his boon companions. There is a rollicking swagger about them all, which by and by begins to be sobered when it is seen that on the side of the oppressor there is power. By violence, by fraudulent promises, by foul treachery on the part of cowardly citizens, the duke of Savoy gains admittance with his army within the walls of Geneva, and begins his delicious and bloody revenge for the indignities that have been put upon his pretensions and usurpations. Berthelier, a very copy from the antique—a hero that might have stepped forth into the sixteenth century from the page of Plutarch [8]—remained in the town serenely to await the death which he foreknew. On the day of the duke's entrance Bonivard, who had no such relish for martyrdom for its own sake, put himself between two of his most trusted friends, the lord of Voruz and the abbot of Montheron of the Pays de Vaud, and galloped away disguised as a monk. "Come first to my convent," said the abbot, "and thence we will take you to a place of safety." The convent was reached, and in the morning Bonivard was greeted by his comrade Voruz, who came into his room, and, laying paper and pen before him, required him to write a renunciation of his priory in favor of the abbot of Montheron. Resistance was vain. He was a prisoner in the hands of traitors. The alternative being "Your priory or your life!" he frankly owns that he required no time at all to make up his choice. Voruz took the precious document, with the signature still wet, and went out, double locking the door behind him. His two friends turned him over to the custody of the duke, who locked him up for two years at Grolée, one of his castles down the Rhone, and put the honest abbot of Montheron in possession of the rich living of St. Victor.

But Bonivard in his prison was less to be pitied than the citizens of Geneva who remained in their subjugated city. The two despots, the bishop and the duke, who had seized the unhappy town, combined to crush the gay and insubordinate spirit out of it. All this time, says Bonivard, "they imprisoned, they scourged, they tortured, they beheaded, they hung, so as it is pitiful to tell."

Meanwhile, the influential family friends of Bonivard, some of them high in court favor, discovering that he was yet alive and in prison, bestirred themselves to procure his liberation; and not in vain, for the possession that had made him dangerous, the priory of St. Victor, having been wrested from him, there was little harm that he could do. His immediate successor in the priory, good Abbot de Montheron, had not [Pg 51]indeed long enjoyed the benefice. He had gone on business to Rome, where certain Churchmen who admired his new benefice invited him (so Bonivard tells the story) to a banquet more Romano, and gave him a dose of the "cardinal powder," which operated so powerfully that it purged the soul right out of the body. He left a paper behind him in which, as a sign of remorse for his crime, he resigned all his rights in the priory back to Bonivard.[9] But the pope, whose natural affection toward his cousins and nephews overflowed freely in the form of gifts of what did not belong to him, bestowed the living on a cousin, who commuted it for an annual revenue of six hundred and forty gold crowns—a splendid revenue for those days—and poor Bonivard, whose sole avocation was that of gentleman, found it difficult to carry on that line of business with neither capital nor income. He came back, some five years later, into possession of the priory. They were five years of exciting changes, of fierce terrorism and oppression at Geneva, followed by a respite, a rallying of the spirit of the people, an actual recovery of some of the old rights of the city, and, presently, by the beginning of some signs of religious light coming from the direction of Germany. And the way in which Bonivard at last got reinstalled into his convent is curiously illustrative of the strange condition of society in those times. One May morning in 1527 the little town was all agog with strange news from Rome. The Eternal City had been taken by storm, sacked, pillaged, burned! The Roman bishop was prisoner to the Roman emperor, if indeed he was alive at all. In fact, there was a rumor—dreadful, no doubt, but attended by vast consolations—that the whole court of Rome had perished. Immediately there was a rush to the bishop's palace, and a scramble for the vacant livings in the diocese that had been held by absentees at Rome. The bishop, delighted at such a windfall of patronage, dispensed his favors right and left, not forgetting, says Bonivard, to reserve something comfortable for himself in the shape of a fat convent that had been held by a cardinal. This was Bonivard's opportunity, and, times and the bishop having changed, he got back once more into his cherished quarters as prior of St. Victor. The convent was there, and the friars, but the estates that had been wont to keep them all right royally were mostly in the hands of the duke and his minions. It is in the effort to recover these that Bonivard shines out in his most magnificent character, that of military hero. The campaign of Cartigny includes the most memorable of his feats of arms.

Cartigny was an estate about six miles down the left bank of the Rhone from Geneva, appertaining to St. Victor. "It was a chastel of pleasaunce, not a forteresse," says our hero, who is the Homer of his own brave deeds. But the duke kept a garrison there, and to every demand the prior made for his place he replied that he did not dare give it up for fear of being excommunicated by the pope. Rent-time came, and the Savoyard government enjoined the tenants not to pay to the prior. Whereupon that potentate declared that, being refused civil justice, he "fell back on the law of nations."

The military resources of his realm were limited. He counted ten able-bodied subjects, but they were monks and not liable to service. The culverins of his uncle were gone, but he had six muskets—a loan from the city—and there were four pounds of powder in the magazine. But this was not of itself sufficient for a war against the duke of Savoy. He must subsidize mercenaries.

About this time there chanced to be at Geneva a swashbuckler from Berne, Bischelbach by name, by trade a butcher, who had found the new régime of the Reformers at that city too strait-laced for his tastes and habits, and had come to Geneva, with some vagabonds at his heels, in search of adventures and a livelihood. Him did the prior of St. Victor, greatly impressed with his own accounts of his powers, commission as generalissimo of the forces. Second in command he set a priest, likewise just[Pg 52] thrown out of business by the Reformation in the North; and in a council of war the plan of campaign was determined. But before the actual clash of arms began the solemn preliminaries usual between hostile powers must be scrupulously fulfilled. A herald was commissioned to make proclamation in the name of the lord of St. Victor, through all the lands of Cartigny, that no man should venture to execute there any orders, whether of pope or duke, under penalty of being hung. This energetic procedure struck due terror, for when Bonivard's captain with several soldiers appeared before the castle it capitulated without a blow.

It was a brief though splendid victory. The very first raid in which the "Knights of the Spoon"—an association of neighboring country gentlemen—harried that region they found that the captain and entire garrison of the castle had gone to market (not without imputations of treason), leaving the post in charge of one woman, who promptly surrendered.

The sovereign of St. Victor's blood was up. He resolved to draw, if need were, on the entire resources of his realm. The army was promptly reinforced to twenty men, and Bonivard took the field in person at the head of his forces. On what wise this array debouched in two corps d'armée one Sunday morning from two of the gates of Geneva; how the junction of the forces was effected; the military history of the march; how they appeared, at last, before the castle of Cartigny,—are these not written by the pen of the hero himself in his Chronicles of Geneva? But Bonivard, though brave, was merciful. Willing to spare the effusion of blood, he sent the general-in-chief, Bischelbach, with his servant, Diebolt, as an interpreter, to summon the castle. The answer was a shot that knocked poor Diebolt over with a mortal wound; whereupon the attacking army fell back in a masterly manner into the woods and made good their way into Geneva, bringing one prisoner, whom they had caught unarmed near the castle, and leaving Diebolt to die at a roadside inn.

We may not further narrate the deeds of Bonivard as a martial hero, though they are neither few nor uninteresting.[10] But he is equally worthy of himself as a religious reformer. It was about this time that the stirrings of religious reformation at Berne and elsewhere began to be heard at Geneva, and the thought began to be seriously entertained by some of the patriotic "Sons of Geneva" that perhaps that liberty for which they had dared and suffered so much in vain might best come with that gospel which had wrought such wonders in other communities. There was one man who could advise them what to do; and they went together over to the convent and sought audience and ghostly counsel of the prior. "We are going to have done with all popish ceremonies," said they, "and drive out the whole rabble-rout of papistry, monks, priests and all: then we mean to send for gospel ministers to introduce the true Christian Reformation." It is pleasant to imagine the expression of Bonivard's countenance as he replied to his ardent friends: "It is a very praiseworthy idea. There is no doubt that all these ecclesiastics sadly need reformation. I am one of them myself. But who is to do the reforming? Whoever it is, they had better begin operations on themselves. If you are so fond of the gospel, why don't you practise it? It looks as if you did not so much love the gospel as you hate us. And what do you hate us for? It is not because we are so different from you, but because we are so like. You say we are a licentious lot; well, so are you. We drink hard; so do you. We gamble and we swear; but what do you do, I should like to know? Why should you be so hard on us? We[Pg 53] don't interfere with your little enjoyments: for pity's sake, don't meddle with ours. You talk about driving us out and sending for the Lutheran ministers. Gentlemen, think twice before you do it. They will not have been here two years before you will wish they were gone. If you dislike us because we are too much like you, you will detest them because they are so different from you. My friends, do one thing or the other. Either let us alone, or, if you must do some reforming, try it on yourselves."

Thus did this excellent pastor, in the spirit of the gospel injunction to count the cost, give spiritual counsel to those who sought reformation of the Church. "I warrant you," he wrote concerning them, "they went off with their tails between their legs. I am as fond of reformation as anybody, but I am a little scrupulous as to who shall take it in hand."[11]

Bonivard's harum-scarum raids into the duke of Savoy's dominions after rents or reprisals at last became so embarrassing to his Geneva friends that, much as they enjoyed the fun of them, it became necessary to say to the good monk that this sort of thing really must stop; and feeling the force of his argument, that he must have something to live on, the city council allowed its neighboring potentate a subvention of four crowns and a half monthly to enable him to keep up a state worthy of the dignity of a sovereign. He grumbled at the amount, but took it; and thereafter the peace of Europe was less disturbed on his part.

But bad news came to the gay prior in his impoverished monastery. His mother was ill at his old home at Seyssel in Savoy, and he must see her before she died. It was venturing into the tiger's den, as all his friends told him, and as he did not need to be told. But he thought he would adventure it if he could get a safe-conduct from the tiger. The matter was arranged: the duke sent Bonivard his passport, limited to a single month; and the prior arrived at Seyssel, and nearly frightened the poor old lady out of her last breath with her sense of the peril to which he had exposed himself.

Our hero's incomparable genius for getting himself into difficulties never shone more brightly than at this hour. While here in the country of his mortal enemy, on the last days of his expiring safe-conduct, he got news of accusations gravely sustained at Geneva that he had gone over into Savoy to treat with the enemy. He did not dare to stay: he did not dare to go back. If he could get his safe-conduct extended for one month, to the end of May, he would try to make his way through the Pays de Vaud (then belonging to Savoy) to Fribourg in the Swiss Confederation. The extension was granted, and with many assurances of good-will from friends of the duke he pushed on. It was a fine May morning, the 26th, that he was on his last day's journey to Lausanne, and passing through a pine wood. Suddenly men sprang from ambush upon Bonivard, who grasped his sword and spurred, calling to his guide, "Put spurs!" But instead of so doing the guide turned and whipped out his knife and cut Bonivard's sword-belt; "Whereupon these worthy gentlemen," says Bonivard's Chronicle, "jumped on me and took me prisoner in the name of my lord duke." Safe-conducts were in vain. A bagful of ropes was produced, and he was carried on a mule, bound hand and foot, in secrecy, to the duke's castle of Chillon, the captain of which was one of the ambuscading party. For six years he was hidden from the world, and at first men knew not whether he was alive or dead. But his sufferings at the hand of the common foe put to shame the suspicions that had been engendered at Geneva, and it is recorded, to the honor of the Genevese, that during all that period, whenever negotiations were opened between them and the duke of Savoy, the liberation of Bonivard was always insisted on as one of the conditions.

The story of the imprisonment is soon told; for, strangely enough, this most garrulously egotistical of writers never alludes to it but twice, and then briefly.[Pg 54] The first two years he was kept in the upper chambers of the castle and treated kindly, but at the end of this time the castle received a visit from the duke, and from that time forth the Prisoner of Chillon was remanded to the awful and sombre crypt. A single sentence in his handwriting is all that he tells us of this period, of which he might have told so much, and in this he shows a disposition to look at the affair rather in its humorous than in its Byronesque aspect. For his one recorded reminiscence of his four years of dungeon-life is, that "he had such abundant leisure for promenading that he wore in the rock pavement a little path as neatly as if it had been done with a stone-hammer."[12]

One March morning in 1536 the Prisoner of Chillon heard through the windows of his dungeon the sound of a cannonade by land and lake. It was the army of Berne, which was finishing its victorious campaign through the Pays de Vaud by the siege of the duke's last remaining stronghold, the castle of Chillon. They were joyfully aided by a flotilla fitted out by Geneva, which had never forgotten its old friend. That night the dungeon-door was burst open, and Bonivard and three fellow-prisoners were carried off in triumph to Geneva.

Not Rip Van Winkle when he awoke from his long slumber in the Catskills, not the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus when they came back from their sepulchre and found their city Christian, had a better right to be surprised than the prior of St. Victor when he got back to Geneva. Duke and bishop and all their functionaries were expelled; priests and preaching-friars were gone; the mass was abolished; in the cathedral of St. Peter's and all the lesser churches, which had been cleared of their images, there were singing of psalms and preaching of fiery sermons by Reformers from France; and the streets through which he had sometimes had to move by stealth were filled with joyous crowds to hail him as a martyr. St. Victor was no more. If he went to look for his old home, he found a heap of rubbish, for all the suburbs of the city that might give shelter to an enemy had been torn down by the unsparing patriots of Geneva, and the trees had been felled. The joyous city had ceased, and Bonivard's prophecy to his roystering companions was not long in being fulfilled for himself as well as for them: they soon found Calvin's little finger to be heavier than the bishop's loins.

And yet the heroic little town showed a noble gratitude toward the old friend of its liberties. The house which he chose out of all the city was given him for his own and furnished at the public expense. A pension of two hundred crowns a year in gold was settled on him, and he was made a senator of the republic. To all which was added a condition that he should lead a respectable life—a proviso which is practically explained in the very next appearance of his name in the records on account of a misdemeanor for which his accomplice was ordered to quit the town within three days.

The more generous was the town the more exacting became the Martyr. He could not get over his free-and-easy way of living in the gay old days when the tithes of his benefice yielded him nigh a thousand yellow crowns a year. He could not see why he was not entitled to have his rents back again; and after a vain effort on the part of the council to make him see it, he went off to Berne, where he had been admitted a citizen, to ask it to interfere for him, sending back an impudent letter renouncing his Geneva citizenship, on the ground that in his reduced circumstances he could not afford to be a citizen in two places at once. For a while the patient city lost its patience with its unruly beneficiary, but the genuine grateful and kindly feeling that every one felt for the poor fellow, and the general admiration for his [Pg 55]learning and wit, conspired with his growing embarrassments to bring about a settlement of the affair on the basis of a reduced pension with a round lump sum to pay his debts.

They sent for him two or three years later to come to Geneva as historiographer, and he came, bringing with him a wife from Berne, who died soon after his arrival. For a man of his years, he had a remarkable alacrity at getting married, and his second venture was an unlucky one. For from the wedding-day onward, when he was not before the council with some quarrel or some affair of debt he was apt to come before it to get them to compel his wife to live with him, or, failing that, to get her money to live on himself. What time could be saved from these wranglings, which lasted almost till the poor woman's death, was devoted ardently to his literary work. The history grew apace, and other books besides. In the seditions of the Libertine party against the austerities of the new régime the old man took the side of law and order and good morals (in his book on L'ancienne et nouvelle Police de Genève) with an ardor that was the more surprising as one remembered his antecedents. In the midst of his toils he found time to get married to a third wife and to go to law with his neighbors. He is continually coming to the council, sometimes for a little loan to help him with his lawsuits, sometimes for relief in his embarrassments. It is touching to see how tender they are toward the poor foolish old man. They make him little grants from time to time, always looking to it that their money shall be applied to the object designated, and not "on his fantasies." They take up one of his notes for him, looking to see that it has not been tampered with, because "he is easily circumvented and not adroit in his business." He complains of the heat during an illness one summer, and the seigneurie give him the White Chamber in the town-hall, and when winter comes on, and he is old and infirm, they assign him the lodging lately occupied by Mathurin Cordier (famous schoolmaster Corderius, whose Dialogues were the first book in Latin of our grandfathers), because it contained a stove—a rare luxury. He thanks them for their kindness as his fathers, and makes them heirs of his library and manuscripts.

There was another and more solemn assemblage, his relations with which were less tender. This was the consistory of the Church, which found it less easy to allow for the old man's infirmities. His first appearance before this body was under accusation of playing at dice with Clement Marot, another famous character and the sweet singer of the French Reformation. He comes next time of his own accord, asking the venerable brethren to interfere because his second wife ran away from him on their wedding-day, she defending herself on the ground of a bad cold. His domestic troubles bring him thither so often as to put the clergy out of patience. He is called up for beating his wife, but shows that the discipline was needed, and she is admonished to be more obedient in future. Later on he is questioned why he does not come to church. He can't walk, is the answer. But he is told that if he can get himself carried to the hôtel de ville to see the new carvings, he could get carried to church. And why does he neglect the communion? Answer: He has been debarred from it. "Then present your request to be restored." So the poor old gentleman presents himself six weeks later, asking to be readmitted to the Church; which is granted, but with the remark, entered on the record, that he "does not show much contrition in coming with a bunch of flowers over his ear—a thing very unbecoming in a man of his years."

The dreadful consistory had a principal concern in the affair that darkened the declining days of Bonivard with the shadow of a tragedy. An escaped nun had found refuge in his lodgings after his third wife's death; and after some love-making—on which side was disputed—there was a promise of marriage given by him, which, however, he was in no hurry to fulfil. The consistory deemed it best to interfere, in the interests of propriety, and insist on the marriage; and[Pg 56] the decrepit old invalid in vain pleaded his age and bodily infirmities. So he was married in spite of himself to his nun, and showed his disposition to make the best of it by making her a wedding-present of his new Latin treatise, just finished, on The Origin of Evil, and receiving in tender return a Greek copy of the Philippics of Demosthenes. Three years later the wretched woman was accused of adultery, and being put to the torture confessed her crime and was drowned in a sack, while her paramour was beheaded. Bonivard, being questioned, declared his belief of her innocence, and that her worst faults were that she wanted to make him too pious, and tormented him to begin preaching, and sometimes beat him when he had a few friends in to drink.[13]

For five years after this catastrophe the old man lingered, tended by hirelings, but watched with filial gratitude by the little state whose liberties he had helped to save, and whose heroic history he had recorded. He had at least the comfort of having finished that great work; and when he brought the manuscript of it to the council, they referred it to a committee with Master Calvin at the head; who reported that it was written in a rude and familiar style, quite beneath the dignity of history, and that for this and other reasons it had better not be printed. The precious manuscript was laid on the shelf until in the lapse of years it was found that the very reasons why those solemn critics rejected it were the things that gave it supreme value to a later age. It has been the pride of Geneva scholars to print in elegant archaic style every page written by the Prisoner of Chillon in prose or verse, on history, polity, philology and theology.

Somewhere about September, 1570, Francis Bonivard died, aged seventy-seven, lonely and childless, leaving the city his heir. The cherished collection of books that was the comfort of his harassed life has grown into the library of a university, and the little walled town for whose ancient liberties he ventured such perils and suffered such imprisonment is, and for the three hundred years since has been, one of the chief radiant centres of light and liberty for all the world. Leonard Woolsey Bacon.

Note.—Like every subject relating to the history of Geneva, the life of Bonivard has been thoroughly studied by local antiquarians and historians. The most important work on the subject is that of Dr. Chaponnière, before cited: this is reprinted (but without the documents attached) as a preface to the new edition of the Chronicles. M. Edmond Chevrier, in a slight pamphlet (Macon, 1868), gives a critical account both of the man and of his writings. Besides these may be named Vulliemin: Chillon, Étude historique, Lausanne, 1851; J. Gaberel: Le Château de Chillon et Bonivard, Geneva. Marc Monnier, Genève et ses Poëtes (Geneva, 1847), gives an excellent criticism on Bonivard as author. For original materials consult (besides the work of Chaponnière) Galiffe: Matériaux pour l'Histoire de Genève, and Cramer: Notes extraites des Registres du Consistoire, a rare book in lithography (Geneva, 1853). A weak little article in the Catholic World for September, 1876, bravely attacks Bonivard as "one of the Protestant models of virtue," and triumphantly proves him to have been far from perfect. The charge, however, that he was "a traitor to his ecclesiastical character," and "quitted his convent and broke his vows," is founded on a blunder. Bonivard never took monastic vows or holy orders, but held his living in commendam, as a lay-man. The main resource, however, for Bonivard's life up to his liberation from Chillon is in his own works, especially the Chronicles (Geneva, edition Fick, 1867).

CHAPTER XXXI.

WHY NOT LOTTIE?

It was all over. The neighborhood had paid due honor to Godfrey Thorne. Old Garnett, who was kept at home by his gout, had written a letter of condolence to Mrs. Middleton, and expressed his deep regret at his enforced absence. She was pleased with the letter. She did not care for Dick Garnett, but he had known her brother all his life. She would not have been so pleased, perhaps, had she seen old Dick grinning and showing his fierce old teeth as he wrote it: "Ought to have been there—believe I was his best man fifty years ago. But half a century takes the shine out of most things—and people too." He shrugged his shoulders, eyed the last sentence he had written, and perceiving a little space at the end of a line, put in an adjective to make it rather warmer. "Won't show," he said to himself—"looks very natural. Lord! what a farce it all is! Fifty years ago there was Thorne, like a fool, worshipping the very ground Fanny Harvey trod on, and a few years later he wasn't particularly sorry to put her safe underneath it. Wonderful coal-scuttle of a bonnet she wore that wedding-day, to be sure! And I was best man!" Dick chuckled at the thought. "I shouldn't look much like best man now. Ah, well! I mayn't be best, but I'm a better man than old Godfrey to-day, anyhow." (And so, no doubt, for this world's affairs, Richard Garnett was, on the principle that "a living dog is better than a dead lion.") "And the candlemaker's daughter begins her reign, for that poor lad will never marry. Upon my word, I believe I'm a better man than Master Horace now. And I'm not likely to play the fool with physic-bottles, either: I know a little better than that." No, Aunt Harriet would not have liked Garnett's train of thought as he folded and addressed the letter which pleased her. And yet the old fellow meant the best he could.

And now it was all over, and Brackenhill would know Godfrey Thorne no more. But for that one day he was still all-powerful, for they had met to hear his will read.

Horace sat by the table with an angry line between his brows, and balanced a paper-knife on his finger. He tried to appear composed, but a shiver of impatience ran through him more than once, and the color came and went on his cheek. His mother was by his side, controlling her face to a rigidly funereal expression. But the effort was evident.

Godfrey Hammond said to himself, "Those two expect the worst. And if the worst comes, if Percival is mistaken and Horace is cut off with just a pittance, we shall see what Hunting Harry's temper really is. We may have an unpleasant quarter of an hour, but it will give us a vivid idea of the end of the millennium, I fancy."

Percival was rather in the background. Sitting on one chair, he laid his folded arms on the back of another and rested his chin on his wrists. In this attitude he gazed at Hardwicke with the utter calm of an Assyrian statue. He felt his pulses throbbing, and it seemed to him as if his anxiety must betray itself. But[Pg 58] it did not. If you have a little self-restraint and presence of mind you can affect to have much. Percival had that little.

Just before Hardwicke began to read Mrs. James leant toward her son and whispered with an air of mystery. He answered with a short and sullen nod.

Hardwicke read clearly but monotonously. The will was dated four days after Alfred Thorne's death—not only before Percival came to Brackenhill, but before any overtures had been made to him. Mrs. Middleton came first with a legacy of ten thousand pounds and a few things which the dead man knew she prized—their mother's portrait and one or two memorials of himself. Sissy had five thousand pounds and a small portion of the family jewels, which were very splendid. His godson, Godfrey Hammond, had three pictures and a ring, all of considerable value, and two or three other things, which, though of less importance, had been looked upon as heirlooms by successive generations of Thornes. Hammond perfectly understood the wilful pride and remorseful pangs with which that bequest was made.

Then came small legacies to old friends. Duncan the butler and one or two of the elder servants had annuities, and the others were not forgotten. Two local charitable institutions had a hundred pounds each. By this time Horace was white to his very lips and drawing his breath painfully. Percival preserved an appearance of calm, but he could feel his strong, irregular heart-throbs as he leant against the chair.

The lawyer went on to read the words which gave Brackenhill to Horace for his life. If he died and left no son to inherit the estate, it was to go to Percival Thorne. But unless Horace died first, and died childless, Percival would not take sixpence under his grandfather's will.

It was a heavy blow, and his lips and hands tightened a little as he met it. He had known that the great prize was for his cousin, but he had fancied that there might be some trifling legacy for him. He would have been more thankful than words could say for half the annuity which was left to the butler. The remembrance of that paper which but for him would have been all powerful rose vividly before his eyes. Did he repent now that he was certain of the greatness of the sacrifice? Again from the bottom of his heart he answered, No. But even while Hardwicke read the words which doomed him to beggary it almost seemed to young Thorne as if the wrinkled waxen face and shrunken figure must suddenly become visible in the background to protest—as if a dead hand must be laid on that lying will which was itself more dead than the newly-buried corpse. Even in that bitter moment Percival was sorry for the poor old squire.

Hardwicke finished, and thought it all very well. He did not pity the young fellow opposite him who had listened so intently and now was looking thoughtfully into space. The lawyer summed up Percival's position in his own mind thus:

He had an income of his own, amount unknown, but as during Alfred Thorne's life it had sufficed for both, it must be more than enough to support the son.

He was engaged to Sissy Langton. Her father had left her at least eight hundred pounds a year, besides which there were all the accumulations of a long minority and this legacy. Mr. Hardwicke thought that the united incomes would be more than fifteen hundred pounds a year.

There were expectations too. Mrs. Middleton was rich, and though some of her property would revert to her husband's family, Hardwicke knew that she had saved a considerable sum. He had no doubt that those savings and her brother's ten thousand pounds would go to Sissy, and consequently to Percival.

And lastly he looked at the new owner of Brackenhill. No, Mr. Hardwicke did not pity Mr. Percival Thorne.

All these thoughts had flashed through his mind as he folded the paper and laid it down. Mrs. Middleton broke the silence. "But Percival—" she exclaimed[Pg 59] in utter bewilderment: "I don't understand. What does Percival have?"

"Nothing," said the young man quickly, lifting his head and facing her with a brave smile.

"That will was made before ever I came here. It doesn't mean any unkindness to me, for he didn't know me."

"But did he never make another?—Horace!—Oh, Mr. Hardwicke, you know Godfrey never meant this! That was what his letter was about, then?"

"Perhaps Mr. Percival Thorne would like to dispute the will." It was evident that Mrs. James perfectly comprehended the position. Aunt Harriet looked helplessly at her boy, unable to understand his silence.

Horace, though unconscious of the glance, rose suddenly to his feet. "I want to understand," he began in a high thin voice—an unnatural voice—which all at once grew hoarse.

"Yes—what?" said Hardwicke, looking up at the young man, who rested both his quivering hands on the table to support himself. All eyes were turned to the one erect figure.

"Undoubtedly," Hardwicke replied, wondering whether Horace was unusually slow of comprehension.

"Nothing can alter it?" said Horace. "I may do what I please in everything? I want to be sure."

"You can't sell it, if you mean that," said the lawyer. "Didn't you understand? You have only—"

"I know—I know that." The interruption was hasty, as if the speaker would not be reminded of an unpleasant truth.

Hardwicke's eyes rested on the two hands which were pressed on the table. They were painfully weak and white. "You are master here," he said gently. "Certainly. Your grandfather has made no conditions whatever. Brackenhill is yours for your life."

Horace looked fixedly at him, and half opened his lips as if to speak, but no sound came. It was so evident that he had something to say that the others waited in strained anxiety, and no one spoke except Mrs. James. She laid her fingers on his and said, "Now—why not now?"

"Leave me to manage it," he answered, and drew his hand away, provoking a lofty "Oh, very well!" He walked hurriedly to the hearth-rug and stood in the master's place with an air of having taken possession. Hardwicke moved his chair a little, so as to look sideways at the new squire: Hammond put up his glass.

Mrs. James was like a living explanation of the text, "As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead." Though she was sulky and persistently silent, there was a lurking triumph in her eyes, and it was easy to see that she listened eagerly for the words which seemed to die on her son's lips. He glanced quickly round, stepped back, and rested his elbow on the chimney-piece so awkwardly that a small china cup fell and was shivered to atoms on the hearth.

"It's mine," said the young man with a nervous little laugh. "And—since Brackenhill is mine too—it is time that my wife should come home."

There was a startled movement and a sudden exclamation of surprise, though it would have been impossible to say who moved or spoke.

"No. I mean that I am married," Horace replied. "Oh, it's all right enough. I took care of that. You shall know all about it."

"But how? when? who is she?" Mrs. Middleton had her hand on his arm and was stammering in her eagerness. "Oh, my dear boy, why didn't we know?"

Horace looked at Percival, the only one who had been silent. "Why not Lottie?" he said, and the tone was full of meaning.

Percival stared at him for a moment, and then leapt to his feet. "It isn't true!" he exclaimed.

"You're very kind, but Lottie doesn't want your championship, thank you," said Horace with an angry sneer. "No doubt you find it very incredible that she should prefer mine."

"Oh, by all means, if it suits her," scoffed Percival, and sat down again, feeling stunned, robbed and duped.

Aunt Harriet, scared by the menacing clash of words, uttered a faint little cry.

"Percival! Horace!" said Godfrey Hammond, "you forget what day this is—you forget Mrs. Middleton. For God's sake don't quarrel before her!—Horace, is this really true? Is Lottie your wife?"

"Yes," said the young man, turning quickly toward him: there was a sudden light of tenderness in his glance—"since last November." He paused, and then added softly, "the third," as if the date were something sacred. "Hammond, you know her: you know how young she is—only eighteen this month. If you choose to blame any one, blame me. And I'm not ashamed of what I've done." He looked defiantly round. "I'm proud of having won her; and as to my having concealed it, I ask you, in common fairness, what else could I do? My grandfather used to be very good to me, but of late he was set against me." A quick glance at Percival, who smiled loftily. "Whatever I did was wrong. If I'd told him I was going to marry a princess, it wouldn't have satisfied him. Since this time last year I've hardly had a good word. I've been watched and lectured, and treated like an outsider here, in my own home. You know it's true, and you know to whom I owe it. I never expected to have my rights: I thought my grandfather would have no peace till I was driven out of Brackenhill. And even now I can't understand how it is that I am master here." Percival smiled again, to himself this time. "But Lottie was willing to share my poverty—God bless her!—and I won't let an hour go by without owning my wife. I should be ashamed of myself if I did."

Horace paused, not unconscious of the weakness of his position, yet more like the Horace of old days to look at—flushed, with a happy loyalty in his eyes and his proud head high in the air.

"No one will blame you for marrying the girl you loved," said Percival in his strong voice. "That is exactly what my father did. It is true that you manage matters in a different way, and naturally the result is different." He rose. "I prefer my father's way—result and all." And with a bow to the assembled company young Thorne walked out of the room.

Horace looked round to see how the attack was received—at Aunt Harriet, who was wiping away the quick coming tears; at Hardwicke, who was looking at the door through which Percival had vanished; at Hammond, who came forward a step or two. "I ordered a dog-cart to come over from Fordborough for me," he said. "If you will allow me I will ring and have it brought round."

"We shall just catch the four-o'clock train very comfortably if we go now," Godfrey replied. "Thorne will prefer going by that."

"I see: you take his part. Very well. I suppose sooner or later you must choose between us: as well now as later." Horace rang the bell.

"Horace," said Hammond, dropping his voice, yet speaking in the same tone of authority he had used once before that day, "for the first time in your life Mrs. Middleton is your guest. If you have a spark of right feeling—and you have more than that—you will not make her position here more painful than it must be. We will defer all discussion: there[Pg 61] must be a truce while she is here.—My dog-cart," he said over his shoulder to the servant. "It was to come from Fordborough. At once.—Keep out of the way ten minutes hence when your cousin goes," he added to Horace: "it will be best."

"I shall take Percival with me," said Hammond to Mrs. Middleton as he went by. "He wants to be off, I know, and I shall be of more use with him than here."

He found Percival crushing his things into his little portmanteau and in hot haste to get away from Brackenhill.

"I'm going by the four train," Hammond remarked, "and I've told them you'll drive with me."

"In one of his carriages?" said young Thorne, looking up with furious eyes. "No, thank you: I'll walk."

"If you jumped out of that window you wouldn't have to go down his staircase," said Hammond.

"I came here to ask you to drive with me in the dog-cart from the Crown. It's no use pulling a strap much past the tightest hole. Come, you are not going to quarrel with me?"

"I'm a fool," said Percival. "I shall feel it all in a minute or two, I suppose. Just now I only feel that everything belongs to the man who has duped me, and every breath I draw is choking me."

"I understand," returned Hammond. "Percival, Mrs. Middleton is coming: I hear her step. For her sake—to-day—Thorne, you will not break her heart?"

The old lady was knocking at the half-open door. "Come in," said Percival in a gentle voice. His portmanteau was strapped, and he rose as she entered. "Come to say good-bye to me, Aunt Harriet? I'm off, you see."

"Oh, Percival, I can't understand it!" she exclaimed. "Horace married—married! And you going away like this! It is like a dream."

"And one of those Miss Blakes! Oh dear! what would Godfrey have said? Oh, Percival, he never meant this!" She had her hand to her forehead as she spoke.

"But it isn't right. Oh, I don't know what to say or think, I am so bewildered. Perhaps Horace has hardly had time to think yet, has he?" she said faintly. "He will do something, I'm sure—"

"He mustn't—don't let him! I can hold my tongue if I'm let alone. But if he insults me—" said Percival. "Aunt Harriet, for God's sake, don't let him offer me money."

"Ah!" in an accent of pain. "But my money! Percival, do you want any? It's a good thing, as he said, that Mr. Lisle didn't fail before you came into yours, but if you want any—"

"But I don't," said Percival. "As you say, it's a good thing I have some of my own." He had his fingers in his waistcoat pocket, and was wondering which of the coins that he felt there would prove to be gold. It was an important question. "Don't vex yourself about me, Aunt Harriet. Kiss me and say good-bye: there isn't much time, is there? Tell Sissy—" he stopped abruptly.

"Tell her—I don't know. You'll let me hear how she is. You've been very good to me, Aunt Harriet. It's best as it is about Sissy, isn't it, seeing how things have turned out?"

He caught up his luggage and went quickly out, but only to turn and pause irresolutely in the doorway.

"I'll not say anything about Horace: we are best apart. But Lottie! I liked Lottie: we were very good friends when she was a school-girl. She is very young still. Perhaps she didn't understand. I ought to say this, because you never knew her, and I did."

And having said it, he went away with a light on his sombre face. Mrs. Middleton looked up at Hammond with streaming eyes and shook her head: "I shall never like that girl: I shall never have anything to do with her. Godfrey was right."[Pg 62]

"I'll look after him," said Hammond; and with a quick pressure of her hand he followed the young man down stairs.

As they drove away Percival sat erect and grave, with a face as darkly still as if it were moulded in bronze. He went away from the dear old house without one backward glance: Horace might be looking out. He never spoke, and when they reached the station he took his ticket and got into the carriage without the least reference to Hammond, who followed him quietly. There was no one else with them. The silence was unbroken till they drew near their journey's end, when Thorne took out his ticket and examined it curiously. "I wonder if I shall ever see another?" he said.

"You get an opportunity of studying character, no doubt. But I think this is better to-day," said Hammond.

Percival was silent for a moment. Then he spread all his money on his open hand and eyed it: "What do you think of that for a fortune, eh, Godfrey?"

Godfrey glanced at the little constellation of gold and silver coins. "Wants a little more spending," he said. "Two-pence halfpenny is the mystic sum which turns to millions. So Lisle has swindled you, has he? I thought as much."

Percival nodded: "Keep my secret. They sha'n't say that I lived on my grandfather first, and then on Aunt Harriet or Sissy. They may find it out later, and welcome if I have shown them that I can do without them all."

CHAPTER XXXII.

LOTTIE WINS.

Percival had not been wrong about Lottie: she had at any rate only partially understood what she was doing. The poor child had been bitterly humiliated by the discovery that he did not love her, and felt that she was disgraced for life by her ill-judged advance. The feeling was high-flown and exaggerated no doubt, but one hardly expects to find all the cool wisdom of Ecclesiastes in a brain of seventeen. Lottie, flying from Percival's scorn as she supposed, was ready for any desperate leap. What wonder that she took one into Horace's open arms! How could she find a better salve for wounded pride than by captivating the man who had passed her by as nothing but a child, and who had been, as she would have said, "much too great a swell to take any notice of her"? He had dangled in a half-hearted fashion after Addie, and had given himself airs. Wounded vanity had attracted him to Lottie, but, smitten by sudden passion, he wooed her hotly, with an eagerness which startled even himself. How could she be unconscious of the difference and of her triumph? Percival Thorne, who had slighted her, should see her reigning at Brackenhill!

Proud, pleased, grateful, excited, dizzy with success, Lottie was swept away by the torrent of mingled feelings. Her sorrow for her father's death was violent, but not lasting. She could not feel his loss for any length of time, she had always been so much more her mother's child. Even during her mourning there was something of romance in Horace's letters of comfort, for Horace, who had always been the laziest correspondent in the world, wrote ardent letters to Lottie, and used all the hackneyed yet ever fresh expedients for transmitting them which have been bequeathed to us by generations of bygone lovers. There were meetings too, more romantic still. No one is so sentimental as the man who is startled out of a languid scorn of sentiment. He does not know where to stop. Horace would have been capable of serenading Lottie if Mrs. Blake would only have slept on the other side of the house.

Addie was unconscious of the fiery romance which went on close at hand. She felt that the languid attentions which she had prized were fading away and would never ripen to anything more. Her sorrow for her father's death was deeper[Pg 63] than Lottie's, and while it was fresh she hardly thought of Horace Thorne's coldness, except as a part of the general dreariness of life, and did not attempt to seek out its cause. Even Mrs. Blake never for a moment expected the revelation which was made to her near the beginning of October.

It was Lottie who told her, coming to her one night with a white face of agony and resolution.

Horace was dangerously ill. He had been ill before, but this was something altogether different. The cold which led to such alarming results had been caught in one of his secret expeditions to see Lottie. She had been forced to keep him waiting, and a chilly September rain had drenched him to the skin. He had gone away in his wet clothes, had tried to pretend that there was nothing amiss with him, and had gone out the next day in order to be able to attribute his cold to a ride in the north-east wind. Since that time Lottie had had three letters—the first a gallant little attempt at gayety and hopefulness; the second, after a considerable interval, depressed and anxious. They had ordered him abroad. "I am sure they think badly of me," he wrote, "though I'll cheat the grave yet—if I can. But how am I to live through the winter in some horrible hole of a place without my darling? Suppose I get worse instead of better, and die out there, and never see you again—never once?" And so on for a page of forebodings. Lottie's fondness for him, fanned by pity and remorse—was it not for her that he had risked his life?—flamed up to passion. They say that a woman always puts the real meaning of her letter into the postscript. I don't know how that may be, but I do not think she would ever fail to give full weight to any postscript she might receive. Horace's postscript was, "After all, I've a great mind to stay in England and chance it."

Lottie was terrified. She replied, wildly entreating him to go, and vowing that they should meet again and not be parted. She did not yet know what she would do, but—Then followed a few notes of music roughly dashed in.

He was puzzled. He tried the notes furtively on the piano, but they told him nothing. That day, however, there came to his mother's house a girl with whom he had had one of his numerous flirtations in bygone days. He asked her to play to him, and then to sing, hanging over the piano meanwhile, and thrilling her with his apparent devotion and with the melancholy which reminded her of the fate which threatened him. When she had finished her song he said, "But you'll sing me one more, won't you? I sha'n't have the chance again, you know." He looked down as he spoke and struck the notes which haunted him. "Do you know what that is?" he asked. "It has been going in my head all day, and I can't put a name to it."

She tried it after him. "What is it?" she said: "I ought to remember," and paused, finger on lip. Horace's eager eyes flashed upon hers, when she suddenly exclaimed, "I know. It's one of Chappell's old songs;" and, dashing her hands victoriously upon the keys, she sang "Love will find out the way."

"Ah!" said Horace, and stood erect in a glow of passion and triumph. He remembered himself enough to ask again for one more song, but when, with a wistful tremor in her voice, she said, "This? you used to like this," he assented, without an idea what it was, and dropped into the nearest arm-chair to ponder Lottie's message. He was quite unconscious that the girl at his side was singing "O Fair Dove! O Fond Dove!" with an earnestness of meaning, a pathos and a power, which she never attained before or since. But he was sorry when she stopped, for he had to come out of a most wonderful castle in the air and say "Thank you." When she went away he looked vaguely at her and let her hand fall, as was only natural. How we listen for the postman when we are longing for a letter and sick with hope deferred! But who thinks of him when he has dropped it into the box and is going down the street? Horace felt almost sure as he said good-bye that Love had found out the way.

Mrs. Blake was utterly confounded when her younger daughter announced that she was engaged to Horace Thorne. "It was no good saying anything," said Lottie frankly, "for his old wretch of a grandfather wouldn't think we were good enough to marry into his family, and I dare say he would go and leave all his money to Percival if Horace thwarted him. So we thought we would wait. People can't live very much longer when they are seventy-seven, can they? At least they do sometimes, I know," Lottie added, pulling herself up. "You see them in the newspapers sometimes in their ninety-eighth or ninety-seventh year, I've noticed lately. But I'm sure it will be very wicked if he lives twenty years more. And now Horace is ill, and we can't wait. For he must not and shall not go away, and perhaps die, without me." And Lottie broke down and wept.

"But what do you want to do?" said Mrs. Blake. It was a shock to her, and she was sorry for Addie, but she could not repress a thrill of exultation at the thought that Horace Thorne, whom she had so coveted for a son-in-law, was caught. The state of his health was serious of course, but they must hope for the best, and the idea of an alliance with one of the leading county families dazzled her.

"We want to be married before he goes out, and nobody to know anything about it," said Lottie; "and then you must take me abroad this winter."

"Oh, very well," said Lottie, drying her tears. "Then I give you fair warning. I shall run away, and get to Horace somehow. I don't know whether we can get married abroad—"

"No, I suppose we couldn't. Well, then, it will be your doing, you know, if we are not. I shouldn't like to have such a thing on my conscience," said Lottie virtuously. "But perhaps you don't mind."

Mrs. Blake said that it was impossible that Lottie could be so lost to all sense of propriety, so wicked, so unwomanly—

The girl stood opposite, slim, white and resolute. Her slender hands hung loosely clasped before her and a fierce spark burned in her eyes.

"Oh yes," was the calm reply. "You might lock me up. Try it: I think I should get out. Make a fuss and ruin Horace and me. That you can do, but keep us apart you can't."

"You don't know, you can't know, what it is you talk of doing, or you couldn't stand there without blushing."

"Wicked? Perhaps. Yes, I think I am wicked. I'm a child, I know. Help me, mother, for I love him!"

The argument was prolonged, but the end could not be doubtful. Mrs. Blake could scold and bluster, but Lottie was determined. The mother was in bondage to Mrs. Grundy: the daughter played the trump card of her utter recklessness and won the game.

Having yielded, Mrs. Blake threw herself heart and soul into the scheme. She announced that painful recollections made Fordborough impossible as a place of residence, that Lottie was looking ill, and that they both required a thorough change. She dropped judiciously disagreeable remarks about her stepson till Addie was up in arms, and said that her mother and Lottie might go where they liked, but she should go to her aunt, Miss Blake, till Oliver, who was on his way, came home. Then Mrs. Blake shut up her house and went quietly off to Folkestone: Horace was to start from Dover in rather more than a fortnight's time.

After that the course was clear. Horace found out that he was worse, and must put off his departure for a week or ten days. Then, when the time originally fixed arrived, he said that he was better and would start at once. Naturally, Mrs. James was not ready, and[Pg 65] he discovered that the house was intolerable with her dressmakers and packing, that he must break the journey somewhere, and that he might as well wait for her at Dover. The morning after his arrival there he took the train to Folkestone, met Lottie and her mother, went straight to the church, and came back to Dover a lonely but triumphant bridegroom, while Mrs. Blake and Mrs.[Pg 66] Horace Thorne crossed at once to Boulogne.

It was necessary that Mrs. James should be enlightened, but Horace was not alarmed: he knew that she had no choice but to make common cause with him. Mrs. Blake, however, could hardly make up her mind what should be done about Addie. She more than suspected that the tidings would be a painful humiliation to her daughter. "We mustn't tell her," she said at last to Lottie. "She might be spiteful: it wouldn't be safe."

"It will be quite safe," said Lottie. "Because of what we used to say about Horace, you mean? But that is just what makes it safe. I know Addie: she won't let any one say that she betrayed me because she wanted Horace herself once. She said she didn't, but I think there was something in it; and if there was, she'd be torn in pieces sooner than let any one say so."

There was a curious straightforwardness about Lottie, even while she schemed and plotted. She calculated the effect of her sister's tenderness for Horace as frankly and openly as one might reckon on a tide or a train, and behaved as if the old saying, "All is fair in love and war," were one of the Thirty-nine Articles.

She wrote her letter without difficulty or hesitation. It was after Horace had joined them, and he laid his hand lightly on her shoulder as she was contemplating her new signature.

"Ah!" There was something of uneasiness in his tone, as if an unpleasant idea had been presented to him. Horace had felt, when he arranged his secret marriage, that he and Lottie were doing a daring and romantic deed, and risking all for love in a truly heroic fashion. But when she told him that she had written to Addie the matter wore a less heroic aspect. Lottie might be unconscious of this in her sweet sincerity, thought the ardent lover, but he remembered old days and felt like anything but a hero.

"Do you want to see what I have said?" She tilted her chair backward and looked up at him with her great clear eyes.

"No," Horace answered with a smile: "I'm not going to pry into your letters." In his heart he knew that it was impossible to put the revelation of their secret to Addie into any words that would not be painful to him to read.

"Oh, I'm not going to invent your messages, you lazy boy! A likely story!" Lottie sprang up and put the pen into his hand: "There! write for yourself, sir."

Horace thought that a refusal would betray his feelings about Addie, and he sat down, wondering what he was going to say. But his eye was caught by the last two words of the letter, "Lottie Thorne;" and as he looked at them the young husband forgot Addie and his lips curved in a tender smile.

"Dear Addie: I suppose Lottie has told you everything. It was a reckless thing to do, no doubt: perhaps you will say it was wrong and underhand. Some people will, I dare say, but I hope you won't, for I should like to start with your good wishes. May I call myself

"Dear Horace: I will not pass judgment on you and your doings: I am not clever in arguing such matters. I will only say (which is more to the point, isn't it?) that you and Lottie have my best wishes for the safe-keeping of your secret, and anything I can do to help you I will. We are having very cold damp weather, so[Pg 67] I am glad you are safe in a warmer climate, and hope you are the better for it.

Horace showed this to Lottie, and then thrust it away and forgot it all as quickly as he could. Addie had read this little scrap in her own room, had stood for a moment staring at it, had kissed it suddenly, then torn it into a dozen pieces and stamped upon it. Then she gathered up the fragments, sighed over them, burnt them, and vowed she would think no more of it or him. But as she went about the house there floated continually before her eyes, "Your brother, H.T.;" and the word which had been so sweet to her, which had always meant her dear old Noll, and which she had uttered so triumphantly to Percival in Langley Wood when she said "I have a brother," became her torment.

Horace felt like a hero again when he forgot Addie, and only remembered how he was risking his grandfather's displeasure for his love's sake. He fully thought, as he had said, that he was Esau, and that smooth Jacob would win a large share of the inheritance; but when he stood with his back to the fireplace at Brackenhill, and knew that he was master of all, Percival's parting sneer awoke his old doubts as to his heroism once more. He had succeeded too well, and the risk which had ennobled his conduct in his own eyes would never be realized by others. Percival's attempt to supplant him had been foiled, and Horace was triumphant, yet he regretted the glaring contrast in their positions which rendered comparisons of their respective merits inevitable. But he could do nothing. Percival had said, "Don't let him offer me money." Horace, keener-sighted than Aunt Harriet, had not the slightest intention of doing so. He knew how such overtures would be received; and, after all, Brackenhill was his by right! And had not Percival plenty to live on?

And as for himself, let who would turn their backs on him—even Aunt Harriet, if it must be so—he had Lottie, and could defy the world.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A START IN LIFE.

For some days after he left Brackenhill, Percival was busy arranging his affairs. His ruin was remarkably complete. He had been running up bills in every direction during the last month or two, intending to pay for everything before his marriage out of the funds which were in Mr. Lisle's hands. He had plenty there, he knew, for his method of saving had been to live principally on his grandfather's supplies, and to leave his own to accumulate under his guardian's care—a plan which had always seemed to him admirably simple, as indeed it had proved to be. Lately he had not received much from the squire, because the old man so fully intended to provide for his favorite once and for all on the approaching wedding-day. Percival got some of the tradesmen to take back their goods, and sold off everything he had to meet the rest of the claims against him. Even the watch his grandfather had given him went, on Bombastes Furioso's theory that

Hammond was urgent that he should accept a loan. "It isn't friendly to be so infernally proud," said Godfrey.

"What do you call being 'infernally proud'?" Percival retorted. "I've been living on you for the last fortnight; and I bought myself a silver watch this morning, and I've got two pounds seventeen shillings and sevenpence and a big portmanteau full of clothes. I don't want your money."

It was after dinner. Hammond filled his glass and pushed the bottle to his guest. "What do you mean to do?" he asked.

"Ah, that's the question," answered Percival. "Do you happen to know if one has to pass much of an examination to qualify one for breaking stones on the roads now-a-days? Not that I should like that much;" and he sipped his claret reflectively. "It would be rather monotonous, wouldn't it? And I can't help thinking that bits would get into one's eyes."[Pg 68]

"That advice would be good in some cases. But addressed to any one who is notoriously helpless its meaning is obvious."

"It is a civil way of saying, 'Ruin is inevitably before you—gradual descent in the social scale, ending in misery and starvation. Would you be so kind as to go through the process a few thousand miles away, instead of just outside my front door?' I don't say you mean that—"

"I'm sure I won't say I don't," Hammond interrupted him. "Very likely I do: I don't pretend to be any better than my neighbors. But that doesn't matter. If you are so clear-sighted that there's no sending you off under a happy delusion, it would be mere brutality to urge you to undergo sea-sickness in the search for such a fate. As you say, it is attainable here. Will you turn tutor?"

Percival winced: "That sort of thing isn't easy to get into, is it? I doubt if I've the least aptitude for teaching, and I never went to college. I should be a very inferior article—not hall-marked."

"Cudgel my lazy brains to produce trash, and hate my worthless work, which probably wouldn't sell. I haven't it in me, Godfrey." There was a pause.—"By Jove, though, I will write!" said Percival suddenly.

"But, my good fellow, you'll have to pay to be articled. I fear you won't make a living for years."

"Articled? nonsense! I'll be a copying-clerk—one of those fellows who sit perched up on high stools at a desk all day. I can write, at any rate, so that will be an honest way of getting my living—the only one I can see."

Hammond was startled, and expostulated, but in vain. The relief of a decision was so great that Percival clung to it. Hammond talked of a situation in a bank, but Percival hated figures. His scheme gave him a chance of cutting himself loose from all former associations and beginning a new, unknown and lonely life. "No one will take any notice of a lawyer's clerk," he said. "I want to get away and hide myself. I don't want to go into anything where I shall be noticed and encouraged, and expected to rise—don't let any one ever expect me to rise, for I certainly sha'n't—nor where any one can say, 'That is Thorne of Brackenhill's grandson.' I'm shipwrecked, and I've no heart for new ventures."

"Never," said the other. "I'm not the stuff a successful man is made of, and what I want isn't likely to be gained in business. I might earn millions, I fancy, if I set them steadily before my eyes and loved the means for the end's sake, easier than I could get what I covet—three or four hundred a year, plenty of leisure, and brain and habits unspoilt by money-making. There's no chance for the man who not only hasn't the necessary keenness, but wouldn't like to have it. If you want to say, 'More fool you!' you may."

"Stick to your money, Godfrey," said Thorne with a melancholy smile, "or you'll feel some day as if the ground were cut away from under your feet. It isn't pleasant."

Percival mused a little. "It's hard, somehow," he said. "I didn't want much and I wasn't reckless: upon my word, it's hard. Well, it can't be helped. Look here: do you know a lawyer who would suit me?"

"Is that the way you mean to apply for a situation? Let us see: will Your Highness stay in town?"

"No, a big town—the bigger the better—some great manufacturing place,[Pg 69] where every one has smuts on his face, money in his pocket, and is too busy improving machinery to have time to look at his neighbor."

"I know a man there: I dare say he would as soon oblige me as not. What shall I say?"

"Say that I want employment as a clerk, and that, though I am utterly inexperienced, I write a good hand and am fairly intelligent. Don't say that I am active and obliging, for I'm neither. Tell him that if he can give me a fair trial it is all that you ask, and that he may turn me out at the end of a week if I don't do."

"I think you may as well write it now," said Percival. "I shall find it difficult to live for any length of time on this private fortune of mine without making inroads on my capital."

Hammond stretched himself and crossed the room to his writing-table. "Are you sure you won't change your mind?" he said. "It will be a horrible existence. Clerks receive very poor pay: I don't believe you can live on it."

"At any rate, I can die rather more slowly on it, and that will be convenient just now."

Percival shook his head: "No. I promised Sissy that if I took help from any one, it should be from her. I must try to stand by myself first."

Godfrey wrote, and Percival sat with bent head, poring over the little note which Sissy had sent to entreat that the past might be forgotten. "Let me do something for you," she wrote. "Come back to me, Percival, if you have forgiven me; and you said you had. I was so miserable that miserable night, and we were so hurried, I hardly know what I said or did. It was like a bad dream: let us forget it, and wake up and begin again. Can't we? Come and be good to me, as you were last autumn. You remember your song that day in the garden, 'You would die ere I should grieve;' and I have grieved so bitterly since last Wednesday night! You will be good to me—won't you?—and I promise I will tell you everything always. I promise, Percival, and you know I will really when I say I promise."

He had answered her with tender and sorrowful firmness. "I knew your letter was coming," he said. "I was as certain of it, and of what you would say, as if I held it in my hand. But, Sissy, you wouldn't have written so to me if I had been a rich man, as you hoped I should be; and I can't take from your sweet pity what you couldn't give me when I asked it for love's sake. It is impossible, dear, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I love you for it. I hardly know yet where I shall go and what I shall do; but if I should want any help I will ask it first of you, and I will be your friend and brother to my dying day."

Thus he closed the page of his life on which he had written that brief story of love. Yet Sissy's letter was an inexpressible comfort to him. It was something to know that elsewhere a little heart was beating—so true and kind that it would have given up its own happiness—to help him in his trouble.

A few days later Percival was going north in a slow train. On his right sat a stout man with his luggage tied up in a dirty handkerchief. On his left was an old woman in rusty black nursing an unpleasant grandchild, who made hideous demonstrations of friendship to young Thorne. Opposite was a soldier smoking vile tobacco, a clodhopping boy in corduroy, and a big girl whose tawdry finery was a miracle of jarring and vulgar colors.

Never, I think, could a young hero have set forth to make his way through the world with less hope than did Percival Thorne. He was already disheartened and disgusted, and questioned within himself whether life were worth having for those who went third-class. The slow train and the lagging hours crawled onward through the dust and heat. "And this," he thought, "should have been my wedding-day!"[Pg 70]

CHAPTER XXXIV.

NO. 13 BELLEVUE STREET.

June gave way to July, July to August, August to September. Lottie reigned at Brackenhill, and Mrs. Middleton, whose heart clung to the neighborhood where she had lived so long, had taken a house on the other side of Fordborough. Between it and her old home lay an impassable gulf—none the less real that it was not marked on the county map. It appeared there as a distance of five miles and a quarter, with a good road, but Mrs. Horace Thorne, as well as Mrs. Middleton, knew better. Lottie laughed, and Horace's resentment was so keen that he was almost unconscious of his pain.

Percival's utter disappearance was a nine days' wonder in Fordborough, and when curiosity was dying out it flamed up again on the discovery that the marriage was not only put off, but was off altogether. This fact, considered in connection with the old squire's will, gave rise to the idea that there was something queer about Mr. Percival Thorne—that he had been found out at the last moment, and had lost both wife and legacy in consequence. "No doubt it was hushed up on condition he should take himself off. The best thing they could do, but how sad for an old county family! Still, there will be black sheep, and what a mercy it was that Miss Langton was saved from him!" So people talked, and generally added that they could not tell why—just a feeling, you know—but they never had liked that Percival Thorne.

In September, Godfrey Hammond cut a tiny slip out of the Times and sent it to the banished man: "On the 15th, the wife of Horace Thorne, Esq., Brackenhill, Fordborough, of a son."

Percival ate his breakfast that morning with the scrap of paper by his plate, and looked at it with fierce, defiant eyes. Lottie was avenged indeed—she would never know how bitterly. He had sworn that he would never think of Brackenhill, yet without his knowledge it had been the background to his thoughts of everything. And now the cruel injustice of his fate had taken a new lease of life in this baby boy: it would outlive him, it would become eternal. Percival leapt to his feet with a short laugh: "Well, that's over and done with! Good luck to the poor little fellow! he's innocent enough. And I don't suppose he'll ever know what a scoundrel his father was." So saying, he glanced at his watch and marched off to his work.

Those three months had left their trace on him. He loathed his life; he had no companions, no hope; he was absorbed in the effort to endure his suffering. His indolence made his daily labor hateful as the treadmill. He was fastidious, and his surroundings sickened him. His food disgusted him, and so did the close atmosphere of the office. But he had chosen his fate, and he had no heart to try to escape from it, since it gave him the means of keeping body and soul together. Day after day, as that hot September wore away, he looked out on a dreary range of roofs and chimney-pots. He learned to know and hate every broken tile. From his bedroom he looked into a narrow back yard, deep like a well, at the bottom of which children swarmed, uncleanly and unwholesome, and women gossiped and wrangled as they hung out dingy rags to dry. The fierce sun shone on it all, and on Percival as he leant at his window surveying it with disgust, yet something of fascination too. "I fancied the sun wouldn't seem so bright in holes like this," he mused. "I thought everything would be dull and dim. Instead of which, he glares into every cranny and corner, as if he were pointing at all the filth and squalid misery, and makes it ten times more abominable." Nor did the slanting rays light up anything pleasant and fresh in the bedroom itself. It was shabby and small, with coarsely-papered walls and a discolored ceiling. Percival remarked that his window had a very wide sill. He never found out the reason, unless it were intended that he should take the air by sitting on it and dangling his legs over the foulest of water-butts. But when night came the broad sill was the favorite battlefield for all the cats in the neighborhood. It might have been pointed out[Pg 71] as readily as they point you out the place where the students fight at Heidelberg.

From his sitting-room he looked on a melancholy street. The unsubstantial houses tried to seem—not respectable, no word so honest could be applied to them, but—genteel, and failed even in that miserable ambition. Percival used to watch the plastered fronts, flaking in the sun and rain, old while yet new, with no grace of bygone memory or present strength, till he fancied that they might be perishing of some foul leprosy like that described in Leviticus. And the wearisome monotony! They were all just alike, except that here and there one was a little dingier than its neighbors, with the railings more broken and the windows dirtier. One day, when his landlady insisted on talking to him and Percival was too courteous to be absolutely silent, he asked where the prospect was from which the street took its name. She said they used to be able to see Three-Corner Green from their attic-windows. In her mother's time there was a tree and a pond there, she believed, and she herself could remember it quite green, a great place for Cheap Jacks and people who preached and sold pills. But now it was all done away with and built over. It was Paradise Place, and Paradise Place wasn't much of a prospect, though there might be worse. But it was no detriment to Mr. Thorne's rooms, for it was only the attic that ever had the view. However, folks must call the place something, if only for the letters; and Bellevue looked well on them and sounded airy, and she was never the one for change. This sounded so like the beginning of a discourse on things in general that Percival thanked her and fled.

It was about ten minutes' walk to Mr. Ferguson's office. There, week after week, he toiled with dull industry. He could not believe that his drudgery would last: something—death perhaps—must come to break the monotony of that slowly unwinding chain of days, which was like a grotesquely dreary dream. To have flung himself heart and soul into his work not only demanded an effort of which he felt himself incapable, but it seemed to him that such an effort could only serve to identify him with this hideous life. So, with head bowed over interminable pages, he labored with patient indifference. On his left sat a clerk ten or fifteen years older than himself, a white-faced man, who blinked like an owl in sunlight and had a wearisome cough. There was always a sickly smell of lozenges about him, and he was fretful if every window was not tightly closed. On Percival's right was a sallow youth of nineteen. He worked by fits and starts, sometimes driving his pen along as if the well-being of the universe depended on the swift completion of his task and the planets might cease to revolve if he were idle, while a few minutes later he would be drawing absently on his blotting-paper or feeling for his whiskers, as if they might have arrived suddenly without his being aware of it. Probably he was thinking over his next speech at the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society. They debated high and important matters at their weekly meetings. They inquired, "Was Oliver Cromwell justified in putting King Charles to death?" they read interesting papers about it, and voted the unlucky monarch into or out of his grave with an energy which would have allowed him little rest if it could have taken effect. They marshalled many arguments to decide the knotty and important question, "Does our Country owe most to the Warrior or the Statesman?" and they made up their minds and voted about that too. The sallow young man was rather a distinguished member of the society, and had much to say on such problems as these.

The clerks did not like Thorne. They felt that he was not one of themselves, and said that he was stuck up and sulky. They resented his silence. If you do not like a man you always understand his silence as the speech you would most dislike—veiled. Above all, they resented his grave politeness. They left him alone, with an angry suspicion that it was exactly what he wanted them to do; as indeed it was, though he was painfully[Pg 72] conscious of the atmosphere of distrust and ill-will in which he lived. But he could have found no pleasure in their companionship, and in fact was only interested in their coats. He was anxious to learn how shabby a man might become and pass unnoticed in the office; so he would glance, without turning his head, at the white-faced man's sleeve, and rejoice to see the same threadbare cuff travelling slowly across a wide expanse of parchment.

When he wrote to Hammond he said that he was getting on very well. He could not say that his work was very amusing, but very likely he should get more used to it in time. He wished to be left alone and to give it a fair trial. How was Sissy?

Hammond replied that Mrs. Middleton had aged a good deal, but that she and Sissy were both pretty well, and had got an idea—he could not think from whom—that Percival had gone in for the law and was going to do something very amazing indeed. "They are waiting to be surprised," Godfrey wrote, "like children on their birthdays. St. Cecilia especially wouldn't for worlds open her eyes till the right moment comes and you appear in your glory as lord chancellor or attorney-general, or something of the kind. I'm afraid she's a little hazy about it all, though of course she knows that you will be a very great man and that you will wear a wig. Mrs. Middleton is perhaps a trifle more moderate in her expectations. I left them to build their castles in the air, since you had bound me to secrecy, but I wish you would tell them the truth. Or I would help you, as you know, if I knew how."

Percival answered that Godfrey must not betray him: "I couldn't endure that Horace and his wife should know of my difficulties; and as to living on Aunt Harriet—never! And how could I go back to Fordborough, now that Sissy and I have parted? She would sacrifice herself for me—poor child!—out of sheer pity. No: here I can live, after a fashion, and defy the world. And here I will live, and hope to know some day that Sissy has found her happiness. Till then let her think that I am prospering."

Godfrey shrugged his shoulders over Percival's note. It was irrational, no doubt, but Thorne had a right to please himself, and might as well take care of his pride, since he had not much else to take care of. So he attempted no persuasion, but simply sent any Fordborough news and forwarded occasional letters from Mrs. Middleton and Sissy. As the autumn wore on, Percival began to feel strange as he opened the envelopes and saw the handwriting which belonged to his old life. He had an absurd idea that the letters should not have come to him—that his former self, the self Sissy had known, was gone. He read her letters by the light of what Hammond had told him, and saw the delicate wording by which she tried to show her sympathy, yet almost repelled his confidence. She was so anxious not to thrust herself into his secrets—it was so evident that she would not be troublesome, but would wait with shut eyes, as Hammond had said, for a birthday surprise and triumph! O poor little Sissy! O faith which he felt within himself no strength to vindicate! He answered her in carefully weighed sentences, and smiled as he wrote them down because they amused him—a smile sadder than tears. Percival Thorne was dead, and he was some one else, trying to think what Percival would have said, and to hide his death from Sissy, lest her heart should break for pity.

It was very foolish? Yes. But if you had parted yourself from every one you knew; if for five months you had never heard a friendly word; if you had a secret to hide and a part to play; if you lived alone, surrounded by faces of people with whom you had no faintest touch of sympathy—faces which were to you like those of swarming Chinese or men and women in a nightmare,—perhaps you might have some thoughts and fancies less calm and less rational than of old. And the more changed Percival felt himself, the more he shrank from the friends he had left.

November came. One day he looked[Pg 73] at the date on the office almanac and remembered that it was exactly a year since he went down to Brackenhill and heard of old Bridgman's death. He could not repress a short sudden laugh. It was half under his breath, but his neighbor, who was at that moment gazing fiercely into space and turning a sentence, heard it, and felt that it was in mockery of him. Percival was thinking how seriously he had considered that important question, "Would he stand as the Liberal candidate for Fordborough?" Percival Thorne, Esq., M.P.! He might well laugh as he sat at his desk filling in a bundle of notices. But from that moment the sallow youth on his right hated him with a deadly hatred.

December came—a dull, gray, bitter December—not clear and sparkling, as December sometimes is, nor yet misty and warm, as if it would have you take it for a lingering autumn, but bitter without beauty, harsh and pitiless. Keen gusts of wind whirled dust and straws and rubbish in dreary little dances along Bellevue street, the faces of the passers-by were nipped and miserable with the cold, and the sullen sky hung low above the pallid row of houses opposite. Percival looked out on this and thought of Brackenhill, which he left in leafy June. He was very miserable: he had always been quickly sensitive to the beauty or dreariness around him, and the gray dulness of the scene entered into his very soul. Warmth, leisure, sunlight and blue sky! There was plenty of sunlight somewhere in the world. O God! what had he done that it should be denied him?

There was a weary craving upon him that might have led to terrible results, but his pride and fastidiousness saved him. His delicately cultivated palate loathed the coarse fire of spirits, and he had a healthy horror of drugs. Once or twice he had thought of opium when he could not escape, even in dreams, from the grayness of his life. "This is unendurable," he would say; and he played in fancy with the key which unlocks the gates of that strange region lying on the borders of paradise and hell. But his better sense questioned, "Will it be any more endurable when I have ruined my nerves and the coats of my stomach?" It did not seem probable that it would be. If death had been the risk he might have faced it, but he recoiled from the thought of a premature and degraded old age, still chained to the hateful desk.

There are times when a man may be cheaply made into a hero. What would not Percival have given for the chance of doing some deed of reckless bravery?

We had been a long time in Suda Bay—one of the numerous indentations on the north coast of Crete—in company with Turkish, Egyptian, Russian and Austrian men of war. Fighting was going on at intervals on the mountains—of which Mount Ida and some of the other peaks were covered with snow—and we could sometimes see from our anchorage the spirts of white smoke where the Cretans (not "slow-bellies" now) were ambushing the Turkish columns as they struggled up the mountain-defiles. Egyptian transports came in and landed their long-legged, white-uniformed troops, who perhaps bivouacked that night on the shores of the bay, and the next day were absorbed in the great reticulations of the mountain-island, which must have seemed a strange country indeed to the Fellah recruits, to whom the Mokattam Hills were mountains.

We could do nothing in Crete. We were closely bound down by orders, and[Pg 74] sympathies had no play. Hundreds of women and children, the families of the insurgents, were interned at Retimo in an old fort and in other similar strongholds. Some were hovering about the south coast, not far from St. Paul's Fair Havens, in hopes of being taken off from there. The condition of these people was very pitiable. The Russian frigate General Admiral had taken one load of them to Greece, but the pacha in command, Mustapha Kiritli, positively refused to allow us or the Russians to take any more. The blockade-runners (one of which, at least, had distinguished herself in our own then recent war) took off a few, but could not, of course, stay on the coast long enough to accomplish much without having a Turkish cruiser down upon them. As a war-measure the refusal of the pacha was right, for the possession of the women and children gave the Turks a certain hold upon the Cretans who were bushwhacking in the mountains.

The pacha did give us permission to go down to Retimo to see for ourselves the condition of the families detained there. They were not so badly off, according to Levantine notions. They had lentils, oil, flour and firewood, a shelter for their heads, and their rugs and rags to sleep under. The Turkish officers asked, What more could people want? What they wanted was the Turks out of the island for ever, but it was of no use to say that. Such a remark on our part might have been thought personal.

Sometimes during our stay we went over to the town of Canea, where the only things of interest were—first, a red-hot consul, who sympathized so violently with the Cretans that he had lost all his influence with the Turks, to whom, of course, he was accredited; and, secondly, the fine old Venetian slips and galley-houses, in such preservation as almost to make one fancy that the days of Francesco Prioli, the admiral, had not yet departed.

At Suda Bay there was a large Turkish camp, which was interesting for an hour or two. About its outskirts it had a curious collection of half-savage camp-followers and hangers-on, the close inspection of whom on their own ground, with their queer ways of butchering and cooking and what not, was interesting, but not altogether unattended with a spice of danger to a solitary Giaour. We had visited and entertained the Russians and the Austrians, and they had returned our civilities and tried to make things cheerful; but we were very weary of Suda Bay long before orders came permitting us to go over to Smyrna; which place, when we got there, seemed a very Naples by comparison with Canea.

The Bay of Smyrna is far famed as a fine one. The imbat, or sea-breeze, usually blows every day and all day long, so that, however close one may lie to the town, the odors from its filthy, narrow streets are all blown the other way—sufficiently rich, one would think, to fertilize any soil over which they may be wafted. I suppose there is no better instance of the whited sepulchre than Smyrna. The view of the city and its environs from an anchorage in the bay, with the sun shining upon its blue waters dancing and crisping under the brisk imbat; the Greek spires and the minarets of the mosques relieved by the cypresses of the graveyards; the amphitheatrical situation of the whole place, crowned by Mount Pagus with its picturesque ruined castle, and the fine mountain-scenery in the background,—must impress every visitor. And yet nowhere has the plague so often reaped its harvest, owing to neglect of everything which goes to make life clean and decent.

We had been many days in Smyrna, and had eaten many bunches of grapes, each as fine as any the spies brought from Eshkol. We had seen the famous rahat-li-coom boiling in the caldrons, and then flavored and beaten and drawn, and then had eaten it. We had smoked many okes of Latakia. We had spent pleasant evenings among the foreign residents at Bournabat, where the dress-coat and claret-jug and piano represent Western civilization to the merchants and consuls tired after a long day in the hot, reeking, noisy town. We had learned to find our way through the bazaar without a guide,[Pg 75] and had bought shawls and rugs in the Persian khan, driving close bargains, as we thought, after hours of patient sitting and much smoking and coffee-drinking, and being cheated frightfully, as we found out afterward on comparing notes with resident ladies. We had ridden up, on donkeys, to the huge ruined castle dominating the city, said, popularly, to have been built by the English Richard, and certainly dating from the thirteenth century, and we had come down from there in a high state of heat, dust and disgust. We had been to see figs packed for the market in a place and after a manner which made us think of the motto of the Garter. We had gone to see the Whirling Dervishes, and had witnessed the drill of the Turkish nizam at the grand new barracks. We had visited the English military cemetery formed in Crimean days, and had experienced a strange home-feeling as we read the familiar names on the headstones. We had had sailing-parties on the bay for consuls and consulesses, landing at Sanjak Kalessi to take luncheon and to see the huge old-fashioned guns in the fort, with their stone balls (of granite or marble, two feet in diameter), once thought so formidable. We had been the round of the Greek cafés which flourish in such numbers in Smyrna, where polyglot concerts and the worst features of the café chantant seem never to tire their patrons. We had seen a Persian caravan start—a sight well worth rising early for, if only to see their outlandish drivers lash the loads upon the camels, which groan and bellow and scold during the operation, retracting their hare-lips, showing their long yellow teeth, and projecting from their mouths the very hideous and peculiar bag of flesh and blue color; in which condition they attain a point of repulsiveness possessed by no other animal I know of.

An official reception and visit by the pacha had of course been accomplished, both parties seeming to be about equally bored by the ceremony, and Smyrna seemed, for us, to be pretty well "played out." We were reduced to dropping small coin over the taffrail for expectant men and boys to dive for through the clear blue water, and to betting upon the time of arrival of the Austrian Lloyds or the Russian mail-steamer.

Clearly, this was not a wholesome state to be in; and knowing this, a Good Samaritan, our acting consul, Mr. G——, proposed as a distraction trips to neighboring places of interest, especially to Ephesus and Magnesia. They were both to be reached by rail, and so near as to require but a single day's absence, which was of importance to us, as we were expecting orders to sail at any moment.

The first-mentioned place naturally attracted us most, from its association with our youthful studies, both biblical and secular; and so it was decided that we should make a day of it at Ephesus, and have a picnic. The party consisted of our consul and his two nieces, very excellent specimens of Levantine-born people of English stock; an Armenian gentleman, Mr. A——, and his wife; and three of our officers. Due preparation was made by kind Mr. G—— in the way of sending hampers of provision and wine, and in ordering horses to meet us at Aïasulouk, the nearest station to Ephesus, and about fifty miles by rail from Smyrna.

We were obliged to start very early in the morning, for there was only one daily passenger-train each way on the Smyrna and Aidin Railroad. The road was far from being remunerative to the bond- and stock-holders at that time, and I fancy it has not been so since. There seemed, indeed, scant reason for any passenger-train at all, for, besides our own party, there were only two or three Zaptiehs, truculent-looking fellows, a couple of English merchants and some rayahs.

The contrast between the bustling noise and modern associations of the railway-train and the mediæval-looking environs of Smyrna, through which it threaded its way, was sufficiently striking to occupy one's thoughts for some time after starting, especially as alongside the railway ran for some distance the caravan-route, already filled by strings of camels and[Pg 76] their drivers—most picturesque objects in such a landscape. Most of the native traders prefer that time-honored mode of transportation to the iron horse, and a large proportion of the merchandise received at this most important commercial centre came on the backs of camels, mules and asses. Aidin, the southern terminus of the road on which we were travelling, is a great dépôt of the figs which we have all eaten from infancy put up in drums; and the freight of these is one of the principal sources of revenue to the railway. That more products of the soil are not sent in this way is rather the fault of the wretched government than of the rayahs or agricultural laborers. They are ground to the very earth by iniquitous taxation, and only manage to live from hand to mouth in what should be a land of plenty.

After the railroad turns southward it follows a broad valley between two low mountain-ridges, the western one being rather precipitous. Here and there were ledges which were occupied by the flocks of Bedouins and of Yourouks (a true nomad race, speaking a Turkish dialect), as well as by their low, broad black tents, scarcely distinguishable at that elevation. These people had encroached upon land formerly cultivated and very fertile—in some places merely in the fallow-time, but in others in consequence of the proper tillers of the soil being driven away, hopeless from endless exactions on the part of the greedy pachas and kaimacans set over them. There was one comfort. They got little from the Bedawee or the Yourouks, who flitted when tax-time came. These hills had quite recently been the scene of the exploits of Kitterji Janni, a celebrated robber-chief not long gone to his account. From all we heard of him he was not altogether a bad fellow, but robbed the rich and gave to the poor in a quite Rinaldo-Rinaldini sort of style.

We were already on friendly terms with all our entertainers except the Armenian lady, the wife of Mr. A——, whom we now met for the first time. She was still a young woman, tall, with a very comely face and laughing black eyes, but hugely fat, as Armenians are apt to become very early. She was dressed in bright colors and in the latest Parisian style, including the bonnet and parasol. A jolly, wholesome, honest look and manner prepossessed us in her favor, but, unfortunately, she did not speak a word of either English or French. Her husband, tall and fat too, was a good fellow, and, unlike his wife (who possessed only Turkish, Greek and Armenian), spoke in addition French, Italian and English with great ease and fluency. Indeed, the Armenians are the best of the different nationalities of Asia Minor and Syria: diligent in business, moderately honest, good linguists and accountants, they have more dignified manners and stability than the Fanariot Greeks, and more brains than the Turks. They retain their physical type as distinctly as do the Parsees in India, and are equally ready to turn an honest penny, en gros and en détail.

We rattled along the excellent railway in a style calculated to make the "limited express" look to its laurels, and in less than two hours drew up at the station of Aïasulouk. Here the western chain of hills which we had skirted ceases, and the great marshy plain of Ephesus opens out, the river Cayster meandering through it. The insignificant station-house and platform, with a small coffee-house and some dwellings, reminded me of a prairie station in our Western country. But the eye was at once attracted by something we should not find in the Western World—to wit, some ruins, large, roofless, but with solid walls, two domes, some pinnacles and a graceful minaret. These are the ruins of the mosque of Sultan Selim, called by the Greeks the church of St. John, though it was certainly not the church under which the saint was buried. There are the remains of a Christian church behind those of the mosque, and below a ruined Turkish castle with a Roman gateway which crowns the hill still farther north. The apse of this ruined church, also called St. John by the native Greeks, is still visited and venerated by them.

A ruined aqueduct stalked across the plain from east to west, bearing high in[Pg 77] air the rude nests of numerous storks, which were to be seen sitting or standing on their nests or flying deliberately to and fro with that air of being perfectly at home which belongs to storks in whatever part of the world they may chance to make their sojourn. This aqueduct received its water from a tunnel in the eastern range, and was probably the principal source of supply for the city in Roman times. The ruins of another (tunnelled) aqueduct have been discovered of late years coming from the mountains to the south of the city; and this is probably much older than the first named, as the Greeks preferred that mode of conducting water wherever practicable, their subterranean channels, a sort of syphon arrangement, being in use long before any of the Roman aqueducts were built. The fact is, that the Greeks early found out that water would find its own level, while the Romans, if they knew the fact, did not always act upon it.

Far off from the railway-station, to the west and south-west, in the midst of the dreary marshy plain, rose Mount Coressus, about which as a centre formerly clustered the imperial city of Diana. Hardly a moving thing was in sight but the flying storks and the waving green patches of rushes and of grain bowed by the strong imbat, which wafted cloud-shadows over the rather melancholy landscape. The peasants who till the arable part of the plain only come down there to work at the planting and the harvest, and live at Kirkenjee, a town on the mountain-side. Malaria does not permit them to live nearer to their work. Indeed, the traces of the swamp-poison were plainly seen in the faces of the railway employés and other residents in the vicinity of the station. While we were taking this glance about us our hampers were deposited on the platform and the train rattled off again with great briskness, as if time were of any importance, and as if the whole arrangement were not an anachronism in this part of the world!

We were to return to have our picnic at the ruins on our right, after which we should be in readiness for the evening train; but just now the great thing was to get to horse and to finish the necessary sight-seeing before the heat of the day if possible. And so the horses were brought up. Such horses! Plucky enough, but small and lean and scraggy, of all colors and all degrees of ugliness. Three English side-saddles had been brought out in the train for the ladies, while the men of the party took the horse-gear provided by the owner of the animals, instruments of torture known as Turkish saddles. The two young ladies, light weights, were soon mounted. Then the horse intended for the Armenian lady was brought up alongside the platform, and her husband placed her upon the side-saddle after a careful tightening of girths. When the horse, which seemed lighter than his burden, moved away, the saddle at once began to turn in a very deliberate fashion, depositing the fair rider gently upon the ground. There they were, the rider seated quietly upon the turf, and the side-saddle pendulous between the horse's legs, the animal apparently much puzzled to know what to make of the strange machine, but evidently not intending any such nonsense as running away. The men rushed at the animal, righted the saddle, and hauled away at the girths until the horse became quite wasp-like in form. He was then led back to the platform, and the lady's ponderous form was once more placed on the side-saddle, only to repeat the turning operation, gravity asserting itself with all the ease and certainty belonging to natural laws. Our laughter was by this time uncontrollable, the good-natured Armenian joining in it heartily, and a consultation was held to determine what was to be done. She was out for a day's pleasure, and evidently did not mean to be left behind. Finally, it was determined that she should take one of the other saddles; and she mounted one accordingly, the horse then moving off slowly, but well enough, as the weight was evenly balanced. I have seldom seen a jollier sight than that portly dame, in her resplendent skirts and spick-and-span French bonnet and parasol, mounted en cavalier.

Having discreetly and safely [Pg 78]accomplished this difficult piece of business, we all set off by a narrow footpath, muddy in many places, toward the site of the ancient city. We passed patches of cultivated ground here and there, a good deal of which was tobacco, but for the most part our way was through marsh-grass and low bushes. Nearly a mile north-east of the ruins of the city we passed what the best authorities positively say are the ruins of the temple. The archæologists have been quarrelling over this point for generations, and some think that the ruins are those of a great Christian fane. The fact is, that almost all the ruins have been quarries of building- and lime-stone for centuries, and those edifices which stood farthest to the east and north-east, as the temple did, suffered most because most accessible.

I do not propose to inflict upon the reader a list of the ruins which we saw, some well authenticated, and some not. It is not every mind, however well regulated, that will bear the personal inspection of ruins, much less a catalogue of them.

We passed on, still westward, skirting the rocky Mount Coressus, on the western side of which was the great theatre, then in process of excavation by Mr. Wood, who has since published an elaborate account of his discoveries. Far toward the west stretched the ruins where had been the markets, the stadium and the ports, with crumbling walls and towers of all stages of antiquity, Greek, Roman and Byzantine. One of the towers or forts, on an elevation to the westward, and of somewhat cyclopean construction, passes popularly for "St. Paul's Prison."

Far to the west glittered the sea in the Bay of Scala Nova, and beyond rose the mountains of Samos, still famed for fruity wine. It is generally supposed that the sea once came up to the site of Ephesus, but there is no good reason for the belief. The Cayster has undoubtedly in the course of ages brought down and deposited much soil, and has formed a delta, but we know that in the palmy days of the city a long canal, with solid quays of cut stone, led the ships up to the two ports. The remains of these canals have been traced for a long way, showing that the distance to the sea was always considerable, while the ports are still defined by the extra-luxuriant growth of bulrushes and cat-tails.

We had stopped at the theatre to examine the curious sculptures collected there by the excavators, and to enjoy the view. To do this we all dismounted, with the exception of the Armenian lady, who mildly but firmly declined to descend, no doubt feeling that there would be a difficulty in remounting where there was no railway-platform. In her own mind she no doubt said with MacMahon, "J'y suis! j'y reste!" Mounting again, we rode round to the south of Coressus, passing along a regular street, with the remains of paving and curbing, parallel with the southern wall of the ancient city, which ran along the declivity of Mount Pion. Here was pointed out the tomb of St. Luke. Extensive excavations were being made near here under English auspices, and tombs were daily being discovered, both pagan and early Christian. On the very day of our visit a substantial tomb had been exposed, cut clearly and deeply into the stone of which was the inscription in Greek, "Alexander the Rich."

The sun by this time was more than warm, and we were three or four miles from our luncheon. So the horses' heads were turned toward Aïasulouk; on which sign of being homeward bound they developed a speed little to be expected from their looks and previous conduct. Passing a breach in the wall of the ancient city, more tombs and the remains of an extensive colonnade, we came out upon the marshy plain which we had crossed once before, having completely circled Coressus. On the left, as we rode along, the ruins of the church dedicated to the Seven Sleepers were pointed out to us. The church or chapel was cut out of the solid rock as to the walls, with a groined roof of stone. We have all heard of the "Seven Sleepers" from our boyhood, perhaps the toughest yarn incident to that period. The Turks and Persians have their legends about them as well as the Christians. The Mohammedans[Pg 79] preserve one set of names and the Christians another, so an inquirer may take his choice. The Moslems certainly make the most of the legend, for they place the names of the Sleepers upon buildings to prevent their being burned, and upon swords to prevent them from breaking; and they preserve the name of the dog which was shut up with them. The legend refers to the persecution of the Christians in the reign of Diocletian—some say the Decian persecution. The story goes that seven noble youths of Ephesus (being Christians and under persecution) fled to this cave for refuge—were pursued, discovered and walled in. In this dreadful condition they were miraculously put into a sleep which lasted, some say two, some three, hundred years.

The Koran relates the tale in a circumstantial way, regarding Moslems persecuted by Christians of course. It declares that the sun, out of respect for these young martyrs, altered his course, so that twice in the day he might shine upon the cavern. The name of the dog, "Kit Mehr," has always appeared in the traditions of the Mussulmans, but I believe no name has been preserved for him in the Christian story. This dog, having consumed three hundred years in standing erect, growling and guarding his masters' slumbers, was for his faithfulness considered worthy of translation to heaven. He was admitted to that beatitude in company with Abraham's ram, Balaam's ass, the foal upon which Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and Mohammed's mare upon which he ascended to heaven.

What says Alcoran?—"When the youths betook them to the cave they said, 'O our Lord! grant us mercy from before thee, and order for us our affairs aright!' ... And thou wouldst have deemed them awake, though they were sleeping; and we turned them to the right and to the left; and in the entrance lay their dog with paws outstretched. Hadst thou come suddenly upon them thou wouldst surely have turned thy back on them in flight, and have been filled with fear of them.... Some say, 'There were three, their dog the fourth;' others say, 'Five, their dog the sixth,' guessing at the secret; others say, 'Seven, and their dog the eighth.' Say, 'My Lord best knoweth the number: none save a few shall know them.' Therefore be clear in thy discussions about them, and ask not any Christian concerning them. Haply, my Lord will guide me that I may come near to the truth of this story with correctness.... And they tarried in this cave three hundred years, and nine years over."

Half an hour brought us back to Aïasulouk and the mosque of Sultan Selim. Here everything seemed still more quiet than when we left. Even the storks were sitting or standing in a meditative posture, not one flying about. The railway porters and some rayahs were lying on the platform in the enjoyment of their midday slumbers, their heads and faces carefully wrapped up in their capotes, while their bare, bronzed shanks and huge feet, in shapeless red shoes, projected in what seemed absurd disproportion to the rest of their bodies. I must make an exception. There was one wide-awake individual awaiting us, the owner of the horses. He was no sooner paid for the hire of his animals than, tying them fast, he went into the miserable little café; and we found the animals still made fast, still saddled, unwatered and unfed, when we took the evening train, the owner being descried in the house of entertainment at work at a nargileh, and evidently the worse for raki.

It is rather a difficult thing to acknowledge, in the face of the great ruins then about us, with all their associations, that the thought of our dinner was by this time uppermost in the minds of nearly all our company. I have generally found, however, in much journeying about this wicked world, that the amount of condescension and interest with which one looks upon ancient remains depends very much upon the company in which one finds one's self, the state of the weather and the state of one's stomach.

Our worthy entertainer was a man of the world, and understood this little trait of humanity; so he led us straight to the[Pg 80] roofless mosque, where we were shaded from the afternoon sun, but at the same time had his cheerful reflection from the upper part of the marble walls, from which trailed and waved lovely vines and parasites. There we found, spread upon a spotless cloth which rested on a clean-swept though cracked pavement parqueted in different marbles, a most delightful and plentiful luncheon. Shawls and rugs were placed, and we fell to at once, the Armenian lady playing her part as manfully as she had done in the saddle, and causing grilled fowls, kibabs and claret-cup to disappear in a way which reflected upon the capacity of some of the males of the party.

We had nearly finished our repast when a gypsy-woman peeped in at one of the doorways, but with instinctive good manners retired again until we had done with dessert and cigarettes were lighted. Then she came into the huge unroofed hall in which we were, and brought a pretty girl of about twelve and a boy of ten, who danced for our amusement a wild sort of prance with a castanet accompaniment. The mother then begged leave to divine our fortunes from the coffee-grounds in the cups, with the contents of which we had just wound up our feast. There is this difference between Levantine coffee and that made in our Western World: grounds are essential to the one, and are eagerly shaken up and swallowed, while in our parts the grounds are the opprobrium of the cook. There were, however, grounds enough left for the gypsy. But she made a very mild use of them mostly, predicting "good health and a good fig-season" to an American officer who did not grow figs and who had the constitution of a horse. Then she took a handful of pebbles, shells and the small cubes of stone extracted from ancient mosaic floors, and threw them broadcast upon a very dirty cotton handkerchief, predicting from their relative positions the fortunes of the two young ladies. As interpreted by one of the servants the prediction was decidedly hazy. It may have lost in being translated, but it amounted to this: "Him husband hab—werry good: plenty piastre got." A very small gratuity sent our gypsy friend off perfectly satisfied after salaams and kissing the hands of all the men of the party. Nobody ever kisses women's hands in the East—at least in public.

The conscientious member of the party, who "understood we had come mainly to inspect the ruins, and not for a picnic," and who had all day been very uncomfortable at the slight put upon antiquity by our light conduct in the face of so many centuries, now insisted upon at least a glance at the fine ruins in which we then were. They were well worthy of a close inspection, but I don't propose to inflict a description upon the reader. I may, however, mention a particularly picturesque minaret of very solid construction. Up the winding steps of this we all filed except the fat lady, who sat on the pavement below cross-legged, smoking a cigarette and smiling up at us benignly through the blue wreaths circling round her head from under the Paris hat.

After enjoying the view of the plain and the encircling hills with the satisfaction of persons who had "done" the thing and had not to do it again, we began to inspect the minaret itself and the dressed stone parapet against which we leaned; and there we found the name of the everlasting English (or American) snob who seems to pervade the universe for the sake of cutting or writing his name and the date of his visit upon every coign of vantage to which he can get access. Our Armenian friend, Mr. A——, pointed out that there were few Italian names in this record of fools, and scarcely any French or German; but Herostratus appears weak in comparison with our English and American travellers in the desire for cheap fame, for he had only to make a fire, a thing done in a very few moments, while the travelling snob must have worked industriously for an hour or two, and made his hands very sore, and probably spoiled a knife, in satisfying his aspirations.

The portals of this mosque are very fine. No doubt the greater part of the material for the building came from the[Pg 81] ruins of Ephesus, but the portals and other principal points are of original design, and most undoubtedly erected by true architects and sculptors. They are Saracenic, not quite up to the examples we find in Spain and in Sicily, and in a modified and debased form in Morocco and elsewhere on the coast of Barbary. The inscriptions from the Koran are most elaborately and beautifully cut, and still in excellent preservation. The Moslem peasantry would not touch them, and the Christian rayahs are afraid to do so. There are, of course, no figures of men, or even of animals, but the charmingly correct arches and doorways, and the delicate tracery above them intermingled with Arabic characters, give a lightness to the portals which is hardly to be found anywhere east of the Alhambra or the Sevillian Alcazar.

But I must leave the ruins, for by this time the sun was sinking, giving the plain on which so many important events had occurred a more weird and deserted look than ever. The cavass in charge of the servants was beginning to be fussy, in fear that while we were dawdling about the one train might come and go, and the sitts and effendis be left to the limited accommodations of Aïasulouk for the night. So we filed down to the station, the servants preceding us with the hampers upon their heads, and the Armenian lady stepping out after them fresh and fair—indeed, much fresher than most of us, who were rather tired after the unusual exertions of the day.

As we retraced our morning's track we saw the same black tents of the Yourouks and Bedawee, the smoke from the fires of which mingled with the evening exhalations from the valley. Hundreds of sheep, horses and camels were now gathering close about the tents which had seemed so entirely deserted as we passed in the morning. There was no other moving thing to be seen as we rode north and the evening closed in—no lights in peasants' houses or fires on their hearths, for the Levantines are "early to bed and early to rise;" in addition to which custom they have, under the present paternal rule, acquired the habit of remaining as much out of sight as possible.

When we came into the station at Smyrna the night had fallen. A few flickering lamps and lanterns made the darkness visible, and except the porters and necessary officials there was not a soul there, Turk or Frank, to take the slightest interest in our movements. The place was perfectly deserted and dismal. At last we saw lights approaching, and another cavass (belonging to our excellent consul) appeared with lots of lanterns and men "with staves and swords," as becometh a Levantine consul, and, escorted by these, we walked a long way over the rough, slippery paving-stones before we reached the Armenian and Greek quarters. Here people were seen sitting in family groups at their doors and windows, gossiping with their neighbors and enjoying such evening air as is afforded by the streets of Smyrna. But they showed, at any rate, some human interest and enjoyment of life, and we must remember that they had been accustomed to the smells from childhood. Perhaps the weaker ones had all died off, for those we saw were very stout and hearty. In all respects their streets presented a pleasant contrast to the dark, filthy, windowless, cheerless lanes in the Turkish town, with the skulking, snarling, mangy dogs disputing one's right of way, and an occasional encounter with a scowling Moslem, lantern in hand and homeward bound, who drew up to the wall, and showed by the gleam of our lanterns upon his yellow face that he inwardly cursed us all for Giaours, and wondered that Allah in His providence permitted us to exist. In fact, the Anatolian Turk is still a good Mohammedan of the time of Solyman, and not one of the degenerate race of Stamboul.

Visible from my study-window, and less than a stone's throw away, is a cottage, all tree-embowered and vine-covered, which its owners call "The Nest." All over the house, wherever a bird-box can be placed, there you are sure to find one. These little homes nestle under the eaves among the supporting brackets; they hide under the nooks of the gables; they are perched above the windows; they are indeed to be found wherever you would be likely to look for them, and in a good many places where you would never think of looking. Besides these bird-boxes on the house, there are bird-boxes in the trees, bird-boxes airily placed on high poles—bird-boxes in all forms, from the plain four-sided salt-box to the elaborate Swiss chalet and the pretentious be-spired and be-columned meeting-house. Then there are bird-cages—pretty brass cages, with tarlatan petticoats to keep the seeds from flying out, and tied with such dainty bows of ribbon that one has no need to be told there is a woman in the house; there are capacious cages in which brown mocking-birds sit all day long echoing back the other birds' songs they hear; there are dainty glass cages from Venice, in which Java sparrows carry on their ceaseless love-making, billing and cooing for hours and hours, as if all life to them was an interminable honeymoon. There is also a great white parrot, who, perched in a brass ring, mutters and mutters to himself for hours, and hums snatches of tunes, and calls imaginary dogs and visionary cats; and when he sees a certain manly form coming up the garden-walk is wont to cry out in a miserable mockery of tenderness, "Oh, my darling! I'm so glad to see you!" and then smack his bill as near like a kiss as he can, and chuckle and laugh and turn somersaults, and otherwise disport himself as parrots do when they are pleased.

And while all this is going on there comes running out of the house a pretty little figure in a fresh muslin dress and with outstretched arms; and, strangely enough, she says just what Polly has said, and there is a kiss that is no imitation, and a responsive kiss that fairly puts Polly to shame; but the bird chuckles and laughs nevertheless.

When all this takes place—and it is no more of an event than the daily home-coming of our good neighbor and dear friend Arthur Sterling, Esq., barrister-at-law,—when this home-coming takes place, all the birds at The Nest break forth into a merrier song—get so enthusiastic in their pipings that you'd think, to hear them, that they would split their throats; and still gladder and sweeter and merrier than their song is the voice of our dear neighbor's wife, Mistress May Sterling, who pours forth, in a ceaseless chattering song, a whole day's accumulation of love—yes indeed, a whole lifetime's accumulation; and while the rippling flow goes on their two fond hearts sing louder with joy than any birds would ever dare to think of singing.

How they love the birds! And why not? Since but for a little bird they would not have been together in this sweet little nest, outbilling and outcooing the Java sparrows, dwelling in the land of Love's young dream, in the sunshine of each other's affection, and ready to declare upon oath that there is no night in their lives that isn't radiant with the sheen of the honeymoon.

And now I'll tell you the story of a little bird as Mistress May Sterling told it to me one evening while her Arthur and I smoked our cigars in the moonlight on The Nest's piazza. No: on the whole, Mistress Sterling shall tell the story herself: she tells it much better than I can.

"Why, yes," she says, "I'll tell it: why not? I love to tell it, for, taken altogether, it is the best story I ever heard of.—Kiss me, dear."[Pg 83]

Arthur having done as he was bidden, Mrs. Sterling begins at once, and all you and I have to do is to listen:

"When I was young and giddy—ever and ever so long ago, of course: indeed I was quite a girl then, only eighteen—I was, as you may imagine, quite a pet with my father—don't laugh, Arthur: you know I was—and quite a belle too, I can assure you, with lots of young men flinging themselves at my feet and swearing all kinds of oaths about fidelity and everlasting affection, and all the other things that young and enthusiastic—"

"Don't interrupt me, sir. Where was I? Oh yes!—that young and enthusiastic and inexperienced people are accustomed to swear. And my father, who was very stern and had old-fashioned notions—and has now, for that matter, dear old papa!—said that, whatever befell, he would not on any account give the least encouragement or the slightest permission to any lover till I was past twenty years old. Not that I cared, only it was such fun to hear the men talk, and me looking unutterable things and saying softly, 'You must never say anything to me on this subject again till you have papa's consent: he would be very angry if he knew what you've said already'! You see, I knew papa's will—it is unchangeable as granite: at least I thought it was—and I felt perfectly safe.

"This was, you know—no, you don't know—but it was the year I came out in society. And I used to go to receptions and all sorts of things with papa, and receive his company, and sit at the head of the table, and keep house, just as my mother would have done if she'd been living. I hardly remember mamma: I was not four years old when she died. And society and people's admiration seemed so glorious! I declared I'd never marry, but go on to the end of my days saying 'No' to any man that asked me, and enjoying such a lot of pity for the poor fellows. I deliberately hardened my heart, as many a girl does at that age, and fairly pitied—yes, actually pitied—the girls that were so weak as to fall in love and get married. I think papa used to encourage me in the feeling, for he didn't like to think of losing me out of the house, and he a judge and a Congressman, and having ever so much company, and nobody but dear old-fashioned Aunt Jane to help him receive them if I was to leave him.

"When father was re-elected to Congress we had a glorious reception at our house in the country, and among others that came to it was a Mr. Sterling, the son of my father's college chum, and a promising young sprig of the law, father said. He came to stay a day or two in the house as a visitor before the reception, and was to leave the morning after it took place."

At this point in the narrative Mr. Arthur bethought him of a letter he must write, and begged to be excused for a time—a piece of rare good sense on his part, considering how much the story had to do with himself.

"During his stay we had been a good deal together. I had been his guide to all the famous spots in the neighborhood, and he had been chatty and bright, and amused me greatly. We had a little chat in the conservatory that evening of the reception, and I told him I was sorry to have him leave.

"'Thank you,' he said. 'I would rather hear you say that than anything you could have said, except one.'

"'Oh,' I replied, 'I never give invitations: papa does that. Of course he'll be glad to see you again.'

"'Why, since you insist upon my saying it, I shall be glad too: you amuse me greatly.'

"'No: I don't care for such amusements. I like to hear the talk of bright men, and you strike me as a very bright man.'

"'It is only the reflection of yourself, Miss Bronson,' he said in a cold society tone, which, strange to say, pained me, and I replied that I didn't care for [Pg 84]compliments: I had plenty of them, and they palled on me.

"Then he said, 'Do you want me to tell you the truth, the out-and-out truth—the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God?'

"'I do commit myself—I came here to commit myself. I want you to hear me out and believe that I realize fully the solemnity of what I am saying. I have sought this opportunity to tell you that I love you, Miss Bronson.'

"Strangely enough, I wasn't the least moved: I don't think my heart beat the least bit faster; and I said, 'Why, Mr. Sterling, how can you know anything about me? How can you love me, when you've known me only two days, and seen me always on my best behavior? I am a very unlovable person: if you only knew me well you'd soon find it out. Of course, if you love me, it is all very well for you to tell me so, but I can't understand why you should.'

"'Why, what can I say? You don't know me, and I don't know you; and you think you love me, and I don't love you at all. I'm fond of you in a certain way, to be sure, but love is quite a different thing. I never shall love anybody very much except papa: I never intend to. I'm very kind to you, Mr. Sterling, to talk to you as I do. In a few weeks, when you've all but forgotten my existence, you'll think of me just enough to be grateful to me for talking to you as I have. Love isn't a mushroom to spring up in a night: it is an oak to grow and grow, and only come to perfection after years and years. You don't love me at all, Mr. Sterling: you only think you do.'

"All this time he stood silent, looking more awkward than I ever saw him before or have seen him since. Then he put out his hand and said, 'I'll bid you good-bye, Miss Bronson: I'm going early in the morning. I shall not see you then, so I'll say good-bye now. I am going abroad in a few days.'

"'Abroad! where?' I hadn't heard of it, and I felt a strange sort of pang—of surprise, I thought.

"'To Leipsic, to finish my studies. I shall be gone a considerable time—two years at least. When I return I shall come to you and repeat what I've said to-night.'

"'Oh no, you won't: you'll forget all about it. I'd much rather you would. Please don't feel bound to come back: I release you from your oath, and I shall not expect you.'

"I don't know what more we might have said, but there was a flutter among the vines by the door, and we thought some one was near us. We were just returning into the adjoining dining-room when a little brown bird flew out into the light, and, hopping about among the flowers, began chirping in a sad sort of way that caught our attention at once.

"'Lost her mate, eh?' Arthur said carelessly. He wasn't Arthur then, you know, but Mr. Sterling.

"'Yes: he's deserted her. She built here in the vines last spring when the conservatory was all thrown open. They were such a pair of lovers, she and her mate! She raised two broods of little ones, and it was quite a domestic revelation for me to see them, they seemed so fond of each other, and so happy, and so loving. But a month ago, when the plants were brought in and the cold nights began to come on, he left her, and she has been sad and heartbroken ever since.'

"'Then he's sure to come,' replied Arthur; and just then my father came to look for me and bid me join the other guests.

"I didn't see Arthur again that night, and the next day he was gone. I never missed anybody so much. Nobody and nothing seemed to fill his place. I went into the room he had occupied, and found there a glove that he had left behind. I took it to my room and said, 'I'll keep[Pg 85] it for him till he comes back.' I tried to speak lightly, and was surprised and angry at myself that the trivial thought seemed to mean so much.

"The winter wore on, and the little forsaken bird remained in the conservatory, and sometimes would fly into the room, and I felt a lonely sort of sympathy with it. I used to take the bird in my hand sometimes and call it a poor thing, and talk to it, and tell it that it was no worse off than many a poor girl or many a young wife, for men were like her mate, and promised all sorts of things they didn't mean, and couldn't be faithful if they tried. After a while we went to Washington, and I saw a great many people and received a great deal of attention. The Prussian ambassador had a brother visiting him—a Baron Dumbkopf—very handsome, very rich, very distingué, and soon very attentive to me. He was constantly at our house, and he was agreeable enough and easy to talk to, and very obedient, and very seldom a bore. I rather liked him, and papa liked him exceedingly. I wasn't at all surprised when one day he suddenly became sentimental and ended by offering me his hand.

"He had not: would I give him permission to do so? I told him that I should not even consider his proposition for a moment till he had talked with my father; that I never intended to marry without my father's consent; and as for falling in love, I was sure I should never do that.

"So he went away to talk with my father, and I felt safe. I hadn't an idea papa would do as he did, you see; but the truth is, papas are not to be depended upon—at least, not always.

"The next day my father called me into the library and asked me if I loved Baron Dumbkopf.

"'I can't say that I wish you to, my daughter, but if you loved him I should be pleased for you to have such a husband.'

"I was never more surprised in my life. Then he told me a great many things about the baron—how universally he was esteemed, what a position he held in society, how wealthy he was, how honorable and how good. These things I knew before. They certainly had weight with me in favor of the baron: I think they would have had with almost any girl. I asked my father if he had given the baron any encouragement, and he replied that he had left everything between the baron and myself for settlement.

"The next evening the German came again to woo me with my father's sanction. He became very earnest, and I told him that I would not, could not, give him any hope. He asked me if it might ever be otherwise, and I told him I thought not. 'Well,' he said, 'I shall certainly ask you again. I return to Germany in April, and I shall hope to carry home the tidings of my betrothal.'

"It was then late in the winter, and pretty soon we returned to the country, for father liked to be close to Nature when it burst into its new life.

"How nice it seemed to be once more in the old house! I soon found myself interested in my old occupations, and most of all in the care of the conservatory, which was then all abloom with azaleas and other spring-flowering plants. There too was the little widow, as sad as ever, but glad to see me back, and more than ready to resume the old friendship. We had hardly got into our old routine ways before my father announced one morning that the baron Dumbkopf was coming down to say good-bye before leaving for Germany. I knew very well what it all meant, and I began to think that as it was my father's wish that I should marry some time, and that as I could hardly find a husband more suited[Pg 86] to his ideas, and that as I probably should never fall in love, I might as well accept him as anybody. Then I began to think of Arthur. Thoughts of the two men crossed and recrossed in my mind, closely woven like the threads in a cloth. I used to go and look at his glove and talk to the little bird-widow about him, and really was quite angry with myself for having him so much in my mind and he so long gone.

"At last the baron came. He was a splendid-looking man, and his manners were perfect. These things tell for so much with girls! He came, and one morning—I remember it well: it was a cold, blowy spring morning—he found me alone in the conservatory and renewed his suit. I was petting the little bird when he found me, and he said, 'Dear little bird! he is to be envied in having so much tenderness shown him.'

"'It is a female bird,' I said, 'and a forsaken bird, for its mate has flown away and left it broken-hearted;' and I began at once to think of Arthur, and fell into a reverie.

"The baron interpreted my little speech and my subsequent silence as favorable to himself. He really thought I was beginning to pity myself because he was going away. 'Ah,' he said, 'you know why I have come?'

"'Perhaps, but to say first that I love you still, and to ask you to be my wife.'

"My heart beat rapidly now, and I think the little bird that I was holding to my bosom must have felt it, for it began to chirp in a low murmur as if it would comfort me.

"'Give me a little time to think,' I said; and, strangely enough, all my thinking was of Arthur and his going away, and his promised return; and then I said to myself, 'What folly! he has forgotten me. If he had loved me he wouldn't have gone till he had my word of love in return. He's forgotten all about me.'

"The baron was gaining ground with me: I was reasoning myself into something above esteem for him, and I turned to put my hand in his, when there was a tap at the window, and the little bird, struggling from my hand, burst into such a flood of singing that the whole place was drowned with melody.

"'Oh,' I cried, 'her mate has come back! her mate has come back! He is fluttering against the window. Do let him in, baron, the poor dear, happy little thing!' and I sat down among the azaleas and the budding Easter lilies and cried like a baby.

"The poor baron did let the little bird in, and side by side we witnessed the joy of their meeting, expressed in a hundred tender little caresses.

"At last the baron said, 'You forget, Miss Bronson, you haven't given me my answer.'

"'And I can't answer you now,' I said. 'Please forget me. Indeed, I don't know what to say to you: I believe I shall say No.'

"'Don't say anything,' he replied. 'I have done wrong. I have not given you time to think. I must go now, but a year from now I shall ask you the same question again, and then you must say Yes or No; and God grant it may be the first!'

"'You are very good,' I said; 'and a year hence I will tell you if I can be your wife or not.'

"So the baron went away, and he had hardly been gone a week when I was ashamed of having been so much affected by the bird's return. The idea of believing in omens! Then a little time further on there came a letter from a friend of mine in Leipsic which mentioned Arthur Sterling, spoke of him as a young man very popular in society—you know Arthur is most fascinating—and said that he was very attentive to a young American girl there, a beautiful blond: they were seen everywhere together, and report said he was to marry her.

"'It is a lie!' I said to myself: 'he promised to come back to me.' And then I said again, 'Why should I be angry? why should I believe him? I hardly knew him, and most men are false.' I was such a silly girl, I thought. Then father was always speaking of the[Pg 87] baron: I could see that he was sorry I had not accepted him at once. And Aunt Jane, she had to talk to me about it, and say that she couldn't last long, and that father was getting old, and that I ought to think about getting married, and—Well, you know how women talk to each other about marrying. Considering that Aunt Jane had never thought of marrying herself, it oughtn't to have had much weight with me, but it did.

"The year wore on. Of course I thought a great deal about Arthur, but I thought a good deal about the baron too. The little bird was no longer lonesome; and as she and her mate had built themselves a nest, and had domestic duties to perform in rearing a brood of young ones, they were too much wrapped up in their own affairs to be very companionable. But when autumn came again, and the leaves were falling and the cold winds blew out of the north, that foolish little mate flew off to the south, and the little forsaken thing came back into the conservatory and wanted to be comforted. And we did comfort her as best we could. All the winter through she was in and out from the conservatory to the dining-room, becoming very friendly and answering to her name instantly: papa had named her Niobe.

"In due course of time the early spring came round again, and one April morning there came a letter from the baron. He asked me for my answer: should he come and take me with him to his German home? I showed the letter to papa, and all he said was, 'My daughter, he would make you an excellent husband—such a one as your poor mother would wish for you were she alive. I hope you'll consider the matter well before you say No.'

"I thought it all over. Why not? Yes, I would write to the baron and say Yes. Arthur was away; he'd never come back; he was in love with that pretty blond. Was it likely I was going to ruin my life for him? I had too much sense for that. I would just go and throw his old glove into the fire and all thoughts of him to the winds. So I went for the glove, and kissed it—foolish thing!—and put it back in my treasure-box, and went on thinking of Arthur more than ever. Then I remonstrated with myself for my foolishness, and took my writing-desk in my lap and sat down in the conservatory to write to the baron. I began my letter 'My dear Arthur,' and then had to begin again, and started fairly with 'My dear baron.' Then I tried to frame a proper sentence to start with, but that desolate little bird came flying to my shoulder, and chirped so sadly and so persistently that it put me all out.

"'Oh, you poor foolish little thing!' I said: 'anybody would think there were no other birds in the world but your faithless mate.'

"The bird fluttered and chirped and talked with a purring song, which I fancied to say, 'Oh, my poor heart! poor heart! poor broken heart! Alas!' and it was such a strong impression that I put my hand to my own heart and held on there, while I laid my head on one side till it touched the feathers of the bird on my shoulder; and so we sat silently musing.

"What do you think roused us? There was a quick fluttering in the bird's breast. She flew away from my shoulder: she flew to the top of the highest azalea, and she sung—oh, how she sung! Joy, victory over doubt, faith crowned, glimpses of heaven in the spring sunlight,—they were all in that song. I knew in a minute what had come. I threw open the sash, and out of the sunshine, borne in with the odors of the new grass and budding trees, came a little brown bird, tired as from a long journey, but with a song of greeting that overtopped even the song of welcome that awaited him.

"I watched them a moment, as if in a spell, and then I tore up my letter to the baron and tossed it among the flowers; and the tears came in my eyes, and I said aloud, 'Oh, Arthur, I do love you—I know I do! If you don't come back I shall die.'

"'Then, dear, you shall not die, for I am here;' and the foolish boy—for it was Arthur come back and stolen upon me to surprise me—put his dear strong arms about me, and I was ready to faint, and[Pg 88] cried a little on his shoulder, and he kissed me, and we went in to papa and talked it all over; and he told me about his finishing his studies and hurrying home, and all about the blond, a cousin of his who was out in Leipsic with her mother studying music, and they'd made a home for him, and said I should know them and they should know me; and it was all lovely. And the result of it all is, here we are, and we love birds, and we love each other. And do you wonder at it? And here's Arthur, coming back from his letters. And, and—Come and kiss me, Arthur."

And so the little lady finished with a kiss, as she had begun, and the parrot moved uneasily on his perch at being disturbed with conversation at so late an hour, and the Java sparrows twittered a little; and I rose to go, only asking, "And the baron?"

"Oh! he's married since—such a lovely wife!—and I dare say is as grateful to the bird as Arthur and I. You see, he was only infatuated—Arthur and I were in love."

"Good-night, good-night," from them; and I heard another kiss as I went down the walk.

A golden pallor of voluptuous light
Filled the warm Southern night:
The moon, clear orbed, above the sylvan scene
Moved like a stately queen.
So rife with conscious beauty all the while,
What could she do but smile
At her own perfect loveliness below,
Glassed in the tranquil flow
Of crystal fountains and unruffled streams?
Half lost in waking dreams,
As down the loneliest forest-dell I strayed,
Lo! from a neighboring glade,
Flashed through the drifts of moonshine, swiftly came
A fairy shape of flame.
It rose in dazzling spirals overhead,
Whence, to wild sweetness wed,
Poured marvellous melodies, silvery trill on trill:
The very leaves grew still
On the charmed trees to hearken; while for me,
Heart-thrilled to ecstasy,
I followed—followed the bright shape that flew,
Still circling up the blue,
Till as a fountain that has reached its height
Falls back, in sprays of light
Slowly dissolved, so that enrapturing lay
Divinely melts away
Through tremulous spaces to a music-mist,
Soon by the fitful breeze
How gently kissed
Into remote and tender silences.

The customs of the Sicilian people in regard to the celebration of marriages are so numerous and so strange that were I to attempt to describe them all I should furnish not only the material for a volume, but also for a series of quaint pictures. I shall not pretend to collect the most of them, but only present a few which will awaken, I trust, some interest in those who study popular traditions and the comparative history of customs and usages.

Let us begin by supposing two young people in love with each other. The parents of the young girl are aware of the fact, but have shut their eyes because the match is a good and fitting one. When, on taking her daughter to mass, the mother has noticed her blush on meeting the young man more than once, she has pretended not to notice it. At night she has heard some love-song at the door, and seen that her daughter was the first to awaken at it, but has remained oblivious of this also. She knows all, and pretends to know nothing—sees her daughter careful about her dress, often hears mentioned a name dear to her, mentions it herself with praise, and contributes without seeming to do so to increase that love which sooner or later becomes a subject of conversation to neighbors, to friends, to all. The matter is known, and it is time for the parents of the young man to go or send to the parents of the young girl to ask her hand.

Here begins the business of the future marriage. The young man's mother visits the girl's mother, and gives her to understand that they wish to make the match, and therefore would like to know whether their proposal is agreeable and what dower the girl will have. The other mother, after the usual compliments have been exchanged, either gives at once, or promises to give, a memorandum of all that she is able to bestow on her daughter as dower.

This is the most usual way of arranging a marriage, but the manner formerly varied, and still varies, in places. In Noto, in the province of Syracuse, fifty years ago the mother of the young man put under her Greek mantle the reed of a loora, and going to the house of a young girl asked her mother if she had a reed like that. If the match was acceptable, the reed was found at once: if not, there was no reed, or they could not find it, or they would look for it.[14] In the county of Modica the mother selected the future daughter-in-law by trial. She went to one of the young girls of the neighborhood, and if she found her busy the matter was settled: if idle, she went home again, repeating three times the word abrenuntio, Sicilianized as well as possible.[15]

The memorandum above mentioned, written, according to traditional usage, by some one for this particular occasion, is sent wrapped up in a silk handkerchief which belongs by right to the young man. As soon as the memorandum is sent and accepted the announcement of the engagement or the betrothal takes place. On this occasion the relatives of the parties are present, and at the proper moment one of the parents of the young girl announces in a solemn tone the future marriage, and makes known the time (generally it is a matter of years) which will elapse before it is celebrated. Everything is religiously accepted by the guests and the interested parties, and after congratulations have been offered a banquet or supper (technically termed trattamento, "entertainment") takes place, in which a sort of fried pastry called sfincuini plays an important part, accompanied by filberts, almonds and chestnuts. The whole is washed down by copious draughts of wine.

The manner in which the betrothal is celebrated is sometimes very curious. At Salaparuta, in the province of Trapani, the girl takes her place in the centre of the room: her future mother-in-law then enters and parts her hair, places a ring on her finger, gives her a handkerchief and kisses her. At Assaro, in the province of Catania, the young man presents his betrothed with a red ribbon, which she braids into her hair as a sign of her betrothal, and does not leave off until the wedding. This custom is observed in many places in Sicily, and is called the 'nzingata (from 'nzinga, "sign"). In the county of Modica the girl is veiled in a broad white veil, tied under the chin with a purple ribbon. This custom of the ribbon (also called 'ntrizzaturi, "head-dress") often takes the place of the formal proposal and announcement of the betrothal. In a popular song a young man in making love to a girl offers her a red ribbon, which is the same as offering her his hand.[16] As soon as the betrothal has taken place, the fiancé must think at once about a present for his fiancée. This varies, of course, according to the ability and taste of the giver. Formerly it was a tortoise-shell comb, a silver needlecase, a silk handkerchief, ear-rings, finger-rings, gloves, etc. Now-a-days nothing is left but rings and a certain silver arrangement to support the hair, and called, like the ribbon above mentioned, 'ntrizzaturi. In Milazzo and its territory the fiancé makes a present of a small gold cross for the neck, an engagement-ring and a dish of fish.

The fiancée returns the gift, usually with under-clothing, handkerchiefs, etc. During the betrothal, while the lovers are enjoying their love, the fiancé does not let the principal festivals of the year pass without expressing his affection by suitable presents—at Easter, a piece of pastry containing an egg, or a little wax lamb; on the feast of St. Peter, keys made of pastry, with honey or confectionery or cinnamon, according to the ability of the giver. On All Souls' Day he gives candy, fruit, etc.; on St. Martin's, a kind of biscuit named after the saint; at Christmas, cakes and pastry containing dried fruit; and finally, for his fiancée's birthday, something still finer.

We have now reached the eve of the wedding, and the time has arrived for the valuation of the bride's trousseau—a ceremony known by different names in different parts of Sicily, but usually termed stima. Let us enter for a moment the house of the bride. Everything is in a pleasant state of confusion. Friends and relatives of the betrothed have been invited to the ceremony, and take part in it with an air of satisfied curiosity. Upon the large bed of the bride's mother is displayed the trousseau, sorted according to the various articles composing it, while from lines stretched across the room hang the dresses and suits of clothes. Near by are tables, chairs and chests of drawers. A woman called the stimatura ("appraiser") examines each article of the outfit and appraises its value, announcing the approximate price, sometimes publicly, sometimes secretly to the accountant. The appraisal is final, and generally in favor of the fiancée, for the value of the trousseau goes to increase the dower. Not infrequently the mother of the fiancé complains of the exaggerations of the stimatura, and disagreeable recriminations follow. Finally, the parents of the bride bestow on her a certain number of "ounces,"[17] which the stimatura announces in a solemn tone. If the parents have anything else to give their daughter in the way of money or silver, they announce it with the utmost gravity, while the fiancé, for his part, declares that he will give his wife after his death the sum of twenty or thirty ounces as a gift. This present is known at Salaparuta by the name of buon amore, at Palermo as verginista'—true pretium sanguinis which the giver does not possess, and which the wife will never receive. At this valuation, in some parts of the island, each one of the relatives offers to the parties gifts of[Pg 91] jewelry and clothing, which are requited by similar gifts from the bride and groom.

The civil marriage precedes the religious, which, however, is more important to the people than the former: hence the evening after the civil marriage the groom goes about his business as though he were not yet married. The religious marriage, on the contrary, is a festal occasion. The hour differs according to habits and family tastes. In Salaparuta the marriage takes place before night—in Ficarazzi, before daybreak, a favorite time for those contracting a second marriage. In Palermo the wedding formerly took place late in the evening or in the night, whence there was a necessity for attendants with lighted torches. If the Sicilian Jews preferred to go in the dark to their synagogues, and considered themselves favored by King Peter when in 1338 he allowed them to go to their weddings with a single lantern, the Christians were not satisfied with four or six lights, but wanted twenty or more—an actual procession. Frederick II. in 1292 limited the number of lights to twelve only, six for each party. Now, at Palermo, the wedding takes place at any hour of the day or night, and only the poorest walk to the church: the others ride in carriages paid for by those using them at so much apiece. In the first carriage are the bride and her mother and intimate friends—in the second, the other women in the order of relationship. The groom occupies the first place in the carriages assigned to the men: then come his father, brothers and others. The bride is dressed in various ways, and her dress is called l'abitu di lu 'nguaggiu ("wedding-dress"). In Salaparuta she wears the Greek peplum, gathered under the arms; in Terrasini, a dress of blue or some other bright color; in Milazzo, a blue silk skirt with wide sleeves; in Palermo, a white dress, the tunica alba of the Romans, with a veil kept on the head by a wreath of orange-flowers. In Assaro (province of Catania) by an old baronial custom the wedding-ring is presented by a young man of noble family. Speaking of the wedding-ring, it may be noted that formerly it was carefully preserved on a table for many purposes, as at Valledolino the whole dress is kept to be used some day as a shroud.[18]

There are some parts of the country where the entrance to the church is also a ceremony. An old tradition of Palermo, grafted on a popular tale, informs us that in certain districts esteemed somewhat rude by the inhabitants of the old capital the bride entered the church on horseback, erect and proud.[19] In Salaparuta she enters by the lesser door of the cathedral and departs by the principal one, afterward passing beneath the belfry. In Palermo the newly-wedded pair on leaving the church enter the same carriage, and followed by relatives and friends take a drive about the city. It is on this occasion that they throw to their neighbors confectionery, which they are also accustomed to present personally. This custom is a Roman one, in spite of the fact that candy has taken the place of the nuts which the bridegroom bestowed on the children after the wedding. Outside of Palermo and other large cities the confectionery is replaced by roasted chickpeas, alone or mixed with beans, almonds, filberts, etc. On the other hand, relatives and friends as the bride and groom go by throw after them not only confectionery, but dried or roasted fruits, wheat and barley; which they call a sign of abundance. In Milazzo the simple ceremony is turned into a spectacle: when the pair come out of the church they are suddenly received by a perfect hail of confectionery thrown by their nearest relatives, from which they strive to escape by quickening their pace or running away.[20] In Syracuse salt and spelt are thrown as a symbol of wisdom, which recalls the confarreatio of the Romans; in Assaro, salt and wheat; nuts and wheat in Modicano; in Terrasini, nuts, chestnuts, beans and sweetmeats of honey and flour; in Camporeale, wheat alone. In Avola (province of Syracuse) one of the bride's most intimate lady friends, upon the arrival of the pair, presents the bride with[Pg 92] an apronful of orange-leaves, and tossing them in her face exclaims, congratulating her, "Contentment and sons!" and scatters orange-leaves also over the sill where the bride must pass. Sometimes she breaks at her feet two eggs—a truly Oriental symbol of fruitfulness. In the county of Modica wine is sprinkled before the door and the bottle broken: when the married pair have entered, the husband is offered a spoonful of honey, of which he takes half and gives the rest to his wife. There gifts of sweetmeats, dried fruits, etc. are given to the guests.[21] In Avola a spoonful of honeyed almonds is presented to each of the lady-guests—in Marineo (province of Palermo) and in Prizzi clear honey and a sip or two of water.

The house of the wedded pair is ornamented with flowers, as we learn from the popular Sicilian song: "Flowers of roses: the bride when she returns from the church finds the house adorned with flowers." The marriage pro verbo de præsenti in faciem ecclesiæ is termed 'nguaggiàrisi (and hence the dress above mentioned, l'abitu di lu 'nguaggiu), but the contracting parties are not yet man and wife; and to become so it is necessary to undergo another religious ceremony, which consists in hearing mass and kneeling before the altar holding a lighted wax candle while the priest bestows on them the benediction pro sponso et sponsa. The old legal grants (concessi) to young girls who married could not, nor can they now, be claimed without this ceremony; and the bride does not enter into possession of the legacy which she has acquired until she shows to the proper person the certificate of her parish priest that she has been married and espoused ('nguaggiatu e sposatu). The latter ceremony may take place within a year after the marriage. Widows, according to the Roman ritual approved by Pope Paul V., were not formerly, nor are they now, ever espoused: nevertheless, in the seventeenth century there were many examples [22] of widows blessed a second time in the parish church of St. Hippolytus in Palermo.

We are face to face with a newly-married couple in the midst of people who have a good breeding of their own; and we, who measure our words and are ashamed to eat our soup with a wooden spoon, must enter their cottage and take part in the poor but sincere, joyful and cordial festival of the evening. Let us betake ourselves for a short time to Trapani, and look in on one of those modest houses during a wedding-night.

When the bride and groom return from the church they find at the house of the former a drink prepared from the milk of almonds and some small cakes. While at table the groom leaves his wife a moment to go to his father's house, and returns when the meal is half finished. He remains with her until midnight, when he takes her to his mother's, where there is a new celebration, similar to the one that has already taken place at the bride's mother's. The hour at which the groom goes for the bride is so scrupulously observed that any delay would be a grave cause of complaint, and perhaps of quarrels. The first day of the celebration is called the "festival of the bride" (fistinu di la zita), and the guests are all selected by the bride's mother. The second day is called the "festival of the groom" (fistinu di lu zitu), and the guests are all the friends of the groom. This ceremonial is, however, not so fine as that called "of the bride," di lu macadàru. The bride, elegantly dressed, is seated beneath a mirror to receive the congratulations of her friends. At her right and left are placed seats for relatives and friends, arranged according to certain traditional laws which no one ever thinks of violating. The right side is reserved for the relatives of the groom; and if any one is prevented by ill-health from attending the festival, the seat belonging to him is either left vacant, or some friend is sent to occupy it, or a pomegranate is placed in it, or it is turned upside down. We may note, in passing, that the women alone are allowed to be seated in the circle: the men, of every age and rank, remain standing.[Pg 93] This custom, and especially the position assumed by the bride at that time, has given rise to the proverbial expression of comparison: Pari la zita di lu macadàru, which is said of a woman in gala-dress.[23]

Let us now pass to other parts of the island and share the nuptial-banquet. Everywhere great quantities of macaroni or of fried fish are prepared, and the guests eat and drink to repletion. Even the most miserly are liberal on this occasion, and a proverb advises one to attend the weddings of the avaricious: A li nozzi di l'avaru trovaticci. The bride and groom, as can be easily imagined, have their heads full of other things than macaroni and fried fish. At Borghetto baked beans and pease are served not only to the bridal-party, but also to the others, to whom, during the banquet, it is the custom to send a dish of maccarruna di zitu—a dish in use also in Modica until within fifty years. In Assaro there are the accustomed sweetmeats, the cakes of honey and flour, and roast pease and almonds. At the banquet, where usually these things are not lacking, they begin with macaroni, which in Milazzo is poured out on a napkin, with cheese grated over it. Then follow sausages or roast meat. At the nuptial-banquet of the peasants of Modica a dish is placed on the table intended to receive the gifts of the guests for the bride: one gives money, another gold; one a ring, another a dollar; nor do those who come last wish to be outdone by the first. At the end of the banquet come the toasts, more or less lively and witty.

After the banquet follows the ball, which at Favaratta is held eight days after the wedding. The orchestra consists of two or three violins, which play the whole evening, or afternoon if the marriage took place in the daytime. The répertoire is that of the people, and embraces the dances known as the fasòla,[24] the tarantella, the tarascùri, the 'nglisina, the capona, the chiovu, etc. In some of the towns in the province of Palermo it is the groom who engages the musicians and conducts them to the house. In Modica they dance the ciovu (the chiovu above mentioned) to the accompaniment not only of violins, but also of tambourines, etc. The groom opens the ball, holding his hat in his hand and making a profound bow to the bride, who rises with alacrity and begins to dance with all her might. The groom makes another bow and sits down again, and the bride, dancing alone, makes a turn round the room and selects a partner from the guests, who in turn choose a woman, and so on in graceful alternation.

In general, in large cities, there is no one who calls out the figures at the ball: the musicians play what they please, unless they are asked to change or continue a tune that has tired or pleased any one of the guests. The dancing is without any rule or order: nevertheless, there is some regularity in its execution, especially in the pantomime that accompanies it. The bride and groom dance their share: the first one with whom the bride dances is the groom, who permits her to dance with others.

An interesting subject in the history of the Sicilian people would be this ball after the nuptial-banquet if it could be illustrated in all the varieties of ancient and modern customs. Buonfiglio, the historian of Messina, has left us in his larger work an account of these customs two centuries and a half ago. The peasants, he says, have not abandoned the ancient custom of dancing in a crowd and in a circle to the sound of the lyre and flute, although these have been changed for the songs of the musicians; and they dance with the handkerchief, being extremely jealous of allowing the hands of their wives to be touched. So also with the collection of the presents from the relatives and guests in profusion; and this takes place after the groom has offered them something to eat three times, on which account the ovens are filled with meat, with kettles of rice cooked in milk, the wine constantly going the rounds. [25] [Pg 94]

In Milazzo the dance "threatens the existence of the bride," to cite an historian of the place. Here, as elsewhere, the groom has a patron, a gentleman to whom he lends his services, and by whom he is rewarded, not always generously. At the ball the bride knows that if the patron or other gentleman of the city dance with her, he will leave a silver piece in her hand; and if her partner is of her own rank, it will not remain empty. So she summons up all the strength of her limbs and spends hours and hours in dancing; for dancing with the new bride that evening is an occasion for boasting.

However rich the popular songs of Sicily are, they are very poor in nuptial-songs. Among the many thousand that have seen the light the following, from Cianciana and Casteltermini, is characteristic, because peculiar to the evening of the wedding: "Come and sing this evening to the bride and groom. Oh what joy! what delight! (You, O wife!) hold the seat of power: when the sun appears you rise. There are pleasant sights, with dress of gold and all embroidered. This song is sung to the bride and groom. Good-day! long life and health!"[26] The following song, from Borghetto, is a greeting to the pair on their return from the church: "Long live in health the bride and groom! What a beautiful and fortunate marriage! Let the mind be firm and the heart constant. And so we come to the happy day. I would that my words were as sweet as those of a song, and my lute well tuned! A hundred years I would sing new songs. Long live love and marriage!" This other song, from Palermo, a variant of one already published, is also an expression of good wishes for the pair: "Health to this excellent pair! What a fine and gallant wedding! The bridegroom seems like a resplendent sun, and the bride like a Greek from the Levant. How many obstacles there have been! The stars of heaven go before. Now the bride and groom are happy: the diamond is set in gold."

At the ball the singing is done alternately by some of the guests. The favorite song in the cities is that of the class called arie—in the country, canzoni. The three songs above cited are those which are heard on such occasions.

Song, dance and music alternate, and are prolonged for hours, until the guests are tired out and prepare to leave the bride and groom, who are already sleepy.

Let the reader accompany the pair to their abode. The door is open, the room lighted, the bed prepared: some sighs and laments are heard among the bystanders. It is the mother, the married sisters (young girls do not accompany to her home the sister who marries), who are grieved at seeing their sister leave her home and become another's, uncertain of the lot that will be hers in the future. An old custom requires the bride to be undressed and put to bed by her mother-in-law. In lack of the mother-in-law the right belongs to the oldest sister-in-law. Woe to whoever dares to transgress this custom! Grave quarrels would arise, and even worse. I have myself been present when a family having wished to do as they pleased and not adhere to custom, blows and wounds followed, and the bride and groom were obliged to spend the night in jail.

The first visits paid to the newly-married pair are by their mothers, who hasten to congratulate them. These are followed later by friends, who go to make the bon lirata.

The bride remains at home a week to receive the visits of relatives, friends and acquaintances who either did or did not share in the wedding-festivities. After this time she leaves the house solemnly for the first time to go and hear mass, high mass being ordinarily preferred. The white dress which in some localities constitutes the wedding-dress, in others is the one worn on the first occasion of leaving the house and in returning the visits of the guests.

The last act of this drama or comedy of life is a journey on which the husband must take his wife within a year after their marriage. In the marriage-contract, written or verbal, there is a clause by which the husband assumes the [Pg 95]obligation of taking his wife within the year to such and such a festival of some town more or less remote—the farther away the more important to the contracting parties and their relatives. Where no contract is made the custom is enough, the "word"—which, as the proverb says, "is more than the contract"—is sufficient. In Piana dei Greci, an Albanian colony of Sicily, the husband obliges himself to take his wife a journey in honor of St. Rosalia on the 4th of September to the sanctuary of Monte Pellegrino in Palermo. In many of the villages of the Conca d'oro ("the golden shell," the plain of Palermo) the husband binds himself to take his wife to the festino of St. Rosalia in Palermo, the 13th-15th of July; and this is an obligation that involves much expense, because the statue of Charles V. in the Piazza Bologni (Palermo) says, according to the people, "Palermu un saccu tantu!"[27] The husband of Noto was accustomed, and perhaps still is, to take his wife to the festival of St. Venera in Avola.

The wife of Monte Erice (province of Trapani) by a very old custom should be taken, the first time she leaves the house, on an excursion out of Erice—the longer the better for the reputation of her husband. The one who is worth anything will take her to the sanctuary of St. Vito lo Capo or to the festival of the Madonna of Trapani in the middle of August: the worthless husband will take her a short distance from Erice, as, for example, to the church of the Capuchins or to the neighborhood delle Ficàri. Here are four proverbs which refer to these marriage-journeys: "The beautiful bride the first time goes to the Annunciation;" "Who has a fine husband goes the first time to St. Vito;" "Who has a mean husband goes the first time to the Capuchins;" "Who has a worthless husband goes the first time to the Ficàri."

Not every season is propitious for weddings. From ancient times the months of May and August have been deemed unlucky, and no one would marry during these months, mindful of the proverb, "The bride of May will not enjoy her marriage;" and the other, "The bride of August, the torrent will carry her away." Instead of these months, February, the Carnival, April, June and September are preferred. This last month is recommended in another proverb: "In September tender marriages are made." Likewise two days of the week are avoided for weddings—Tuesday, and especially Friday—it being a common saying that on Friday and Tuesday one should not marry or set out on a journey. Friday is a fatal day, on which one would believe he ran a certain danger not only in marrying, but also in beginning any work. On the other hand, Sunday is a lucky day, on which marriages always turn out according to the wishes of the parties.

These are not all the superstitious beliefs relating to marriage, which extend so far as to ordain that if, for example, the bride or one of the company slips, or the ring falls in the house, or one of the candles on the altar takes fire or goes out, something unlucky is to be expected, as these are bad omens; that if two sisters are married the same evening, the younger must suffer; finally, that marriages between relatives always turn out badly.

In addition, it must not be believed that a marriage can be made, or is made, with any one without due regard being had to the relations and spirit of the family of the bride or groom. The intimate, unwritten history of Sicily and the Sicilians is full of facts that show how between natives of this town and that, of this ward and that, and between the partisans of different factions, marriages cannot, and ought not, and will not, be made. Municipal and country contentions kept many parts of Sicily in such enmity that they quarrelled even about the thing most sacred to Sicilians—religion. It was not enough that hatred grew up between the natives of two different but neighboring localities: it was often born and perpetuated "between those whom one wall and one fosse shut in," and assumed[Pg 96] considerable proportions. Thus we see as far back as the fifteenth century the inhabitants of a certain "fifth" (Palermo was divided into five wards) so hostile to those of another ward that the intervention of the senate was necessary in order to obtain from King Alfonso (in 1448) supplementary laws to obviate the evil.[28] In like manner the members of different confraternities are often unfriendly. In Modica it is a rare thing for a man devoted to St. George to marry a woman devoted to St. Peter. An excellent young lady of Syracuse, devoted to St. Philip and engaged to a distinguished young man of the same city who was a member of the confraternity of the Holy Ghost, a few days before the wedding broke her engagement because on visiting her betrothed, who was ill, she found hanging above his head a picture of the Holy Ghost, which she tore down and broke to pieces in anger and scorn.

Men engaged on the sea do not marry into families employed on the land. The sailors consider themselves, and are, better and milder than other classes, as is shown by the criminal cases [29] and the words and phrases which they use (especially those of the Kalsa of Palermo). Then there are the social differences, which are an obstacle to many marriages. We do not speak of the large cities, where certain prejudices are more or less overlooked; but in the smaller and less populous towns there are distinctions and sub-distinctions, so that he is fortunate who does not lose himself in that labyrinth. The gentleman (galantuomo, who is also called cappeddu or cavaleri) forms the highest caste, and is above the master (maestro), who in turn must not be confounded with the countryman (villano), the lowest grade in the social scale. Among the countrymen of Modica a shepherd who lives on his own property is above a reduced massarotto (who is a countryman proprietor of lands), and yet the massarotto would refuse him for a son-in-law: the mechanic would not be accepted by a family of drivers, nor these by another the head of which is the keeper of swine or of cattle. The husbandman who can prune the vines is above the one who can only till the ground; the cowherd looks down on the one who guards the oxen; the last named scorns the keeper of calves; the one who keeps sheep deems himself noble in comparison with the one who guards goats; and so with other most minute distinctions. When a countryman woos a young girl of a different rank, he hopes to overcome the difficulties in his way by choosing a matchmaker from among the foremost men of his native place, but the matchmaker will inevitably receive the answer, "The young man is honest, laborious, he owns a vineyard and land, he possesses all the qualities, but—he is not of my rank."

"There is a destiny which shapes our end;" and I am a firm believer in it, for how else can I explain my adventures and their results while travelling in Austria in the year of the Welt-Ausstellung at Vienna?

As is usual with a novice in European travel, I received during the week prior to sailing the ordinary amount of advice as to what I should and should not do. Meantime, my aunt Edith, who had spent a year in Europe ten or twelve years before, rather surprised me by her reticence in regard to my proposed voyage. However, the night before I was to sail I suggested to her that she might be able to give me some valuable advice, as she had probably not "forgotten how one should behave in Paris."

"Forgotten!" she exclaimed with a[Pg 97] start, and then, raven-like, "nothing more." I played with the tassel of the window-curtain and wondered how I should ever get on without this aunt, the dearest, bravest and handsomest woman in all the world—to me. She was thirty-six years old, just ten years older than myself, for by a happy coincidence our birthdays fell in the same month, and upon the same day of the month, the twenty-fifth of August.

Aunt Edith was a great comfort to the maiden sisterhood. Spinsters referred to Edith Mack with a sense of triumph whenever any disrespectful allusions were cast upon "old maids." She was always bright, charming and witty, and people wondered, like so many idiots, why she had never married, instead of wondering why most other women did. When questioned about it, which was rarely, she usually replied that she never "had the time," or that she had been "warned in dreams," or that she awaited her "king from over the seas"—some such bêtise. But to me the fact that she had never married was never a matter for wonder: she had never loved, I supposed, which was reason enough. She had her work in life—had written two very delightful books, made occasional illustrations for publishers, and played German music à ravir. At length she spoke, this Aunt Edith.

"Yes, my dear niece, I have some advice to give you," she said in a low voice: "don't fall in love with a European."

"Not with a Frenchman or German," she quickly replied. "But let me tell you my experience. I was not far from your age when I went to Europe with Cousin Helen. I had just refused an offer of marriage from a very noble fellow because I could not love him. He lacked the power to control me: I felt myself the stronger of the two. Not that women like to be ruled, but that they like that power in men which can rule if need be, generously, but never despotically. I had only in my imagination a conception of that love 'which passeth understanding'—which lifts a woman out of herself into a willing sacrifice that looks to calmer eyes as the height of folly. I liked men well, but none had ever stirred more than the even surface of my feelings, and I so firmly believed that no one ever could as to regard my 'falling in love' as most improbable. I really desired the experience, feeling that something is lost out of life if every phase of human feeling and emotion be not awakened. But I went to Europe, and walked straight into my fate.

"The day after my arrival in Paris, in passing through the court of the hotel where I was stopping, I encountered a gentleman who lifted his hat, and who looked at me in a manner that caused me to observe his eyes, which were large, black and exceptionally splendid. In figure he was tall and firmly built, an aquiline nose and clearly-cut chin giving a high-bred look to his face, and he wore some sort of a decoration which caught Helen's notice. At the table-d'hôte that evening I found myself seated next to him. Our table-talk, begun early in the meal, was the beginning of an acquaintance that developed into that strongest of affections which makes slaves of us all. I never forgot my proud birthright, and well understood the danger of a European alliance—or misalliance. The gentleman was quite Oriental, belonging to that country which has Bucharest for its capital. His family was of high distinction, connected with that of the reigning prince. He possessed a modest fortune, had been educated in Athens and Paris, and spoke four or five languages. He was ardent, jealous, passionate, but possessed a heart at once so loving, so full of every tender and winning quality, that it was easy to forgive outbursts of feeling and similar offences. He had spent some time in England, without, however, learning to speak much of the language. The history of his past life, as he related it to us, was quite in keeping with his character as a man. He had been affianced when quite young to a beautiful girl, quarrelled with her, broke off the engagement, then joined the Greek[Pg 98] army, fought against the Turks, and was four times wounded.

"It was early in June when we arrived in Paris, and at the occurrence of my birthday in August we had become very well acquainted, as also with a number of his friends to whom he had introduced us. Wishing to observe my fête, he sent me a tiny bouquet—a rose and some sprays of fragrant flowers. In the evening he begged for some souvenir of the day, when I declared I had nothing to give.

"'Then I shall take something,' he replied, and clipped from a curl a ring of my hair, which he placed in a locket attached to his watchguard, in the back of which he previously made a note of the day.

"'Which means six months, at the end of which time you will have forgotten me,' I replied.

"As the autumn months wore away, and he began to talk to me of marriage, the seriousness of his love frightened me, and it was not until I was assured by what seemed unmistakable proofs that all his statements in regard to himself were true that I in any sense considered the question of marriage with him. To be obliged always to talk French or Italian was not to my liking, and to marry anybody but a compatriot seemed very unpatriotic. But I loved him, and that was the solution of the whole matter. His kindness to us was without limit, and tendered in the most graceful and grateful manner. He knew some excellent English families who were living in Paris, whose acquaintance we afterward made, and who spoke of him in the highest terms of esteem.

"As the winter set in, Helen and I arranged to go to Italy. My friend was to take advantage of our departure to go to his 'provincial estates' on business, and afterward to join us in Italy. He gave us a letter to the Greek consul at Rome, a friend of his, to whose care he would confide his letters, and who, he thought, might be of real service to us notwithstanding our own ambassadorial corps there.

"My separation from him proved to me in a thousandfold manner how deep and strong was the bond that bound me to him. We had scarcely more than become well settled in Rome than a letter arrived which he had mailed at Vienna, and which the polite consul came and delivered in person. And what a letter it was!—only a page or two, but words alive with the love and passion of his heart. And that was the last letter, as it was the first, that I ever received from him. The cause of his silence none of us could tell. He knew that a letter sent to me in care of any one of the American consuls in Paris or in Italy would reach me. As the mystery of his silence deepened the attentions of the consul became more assiduous. For some reason I did not like the man, although he was very kind and gentlemanly. Once he lightly remarked that doubtless 'our friend had been épris by some fair Austrian blond;' and the suggestion filled me with shame. Who knew but it might be true—that the man fell in love with every pretty new face—for mine was called beautiful then—and that after an entertaining season of flirtation he had bid me adieu? Of course I blamed myself for having been so confiding as to be deceived by a handsome adventurer without principle or honor. I cannot tell you what agony I suffered. I begged Helen to go on to Naples, for Rome had become very hateful to me. But at Rome, as you know, Helen fell ill with Roman fever, and died, and I returned to Rome to bury her body there in the Protestant cemetery. Four months had gone by, and not a word from my friend. Alone as I was, my troubles drove me nearly frantic. I returned to Paris. That I was so sad and changed seemed naturally due to Helen's death: nobody suspected that I was the victim of a keener sorrow. None of his friends had received news of him. I was too proud to show that my interest in him had been of more than ordinary meaning. Nobody knew of my love for him but Helen, and the secret was buried in her grave.[Pg 99]

"I tarried a month or two in Paris, hoping against hope for news of him, without even the consolation of addressing him letters, as I did not know where one would reach him. To know he was dead would have been a relief: to think he had abandoned me, that he had been false, was insupportable. It was the most probable solution of the mystery, but I have never believed it, and I love him as deeply to-day as ever. I have schooled myself to cheerfulness and gayety, but having known him spoiled me for loving again. Here is his portrait," drawing a case from a drawer: "I wish you to see how handsome and good and noble a man may look to be, and yet—"

"So you see," she smiled, "how apropos my advice to you is: have nothing to do with foreigners."

I returned her the portrait without comment, kissed her good-night, and next day sailed out to sea, with Aunt Edith waving her handkerchief after me like a flag of warning. We lived in the country, six hours' ride from New York, and my oldest brother and Aunt Edith had followed me to the "water's edge," as she playfully expressed it. At London I was to join Cecilia Dayton, a handsome widow of forty-five, an old friend of ours, who was to act the part of "chaperone." We called her "St. Cecilia," although she was anything but saintly.

Late in the following winter we left Paris and went to Nice, where "the romance of a serviette" began; and I trust the reader will not question my truthfulness when I observe that what I am writing is, without exaggeration, strictly true.

St. Cecilia, from nervousness brought on by drinking strong tea (as I firmly believe), kept a small night-lamp burning in her room at night, so she should not be afraid to sleep. For this purpose she used tiny tapers, which float on the top of oil poured in a tumbler half full of water. We breakfasted in our own rooms, and the breakfast napkins of the Grand Hôtel, where we were stopping, were decidedly shabby and only about six inches square. On the morning of our leavetaking of Nice, St. Cecilia wanted a "rag" to tie over her bottle of oil, which she carried with her for her night-tapers, and cast her eyes about for one: she seized upon the raggedest of the serviettes.

"I don't consider this stealing, ma chère," she murmured in apology. "My bill is enormous! I feel that I've paid for this rag twice over."

So the serviette went with us by sea to Naples. There we were obliged for a time to occupy the same apartment, and the napkin taken off the bottle was lying about the room, for it was warm and there was no fire to throw it in. Tucking it away with soiled linen, it came back from the laundry clean and white, save one round oil-spot on it, and was thrown into my trunk along with the refreshed linen; and there it remained untouched until four months later, when I arrived at Vienna.

At Venice, Cecilia was obliged to return to Paris: she was to rejoin me a fortnight later at Vienna. Meantime, a young Englishwoman, Kate Barton, whose acquaintance we had made at Rome, was going to Vienna to join a party of cousins; and as we were both alone, we arranged to make the journey together. Kate was one of the merriest of English girls (a native, however, of Cape Town), a tall, rosy-cheeked blond, with a half dozen brothers distributed in the British army and provincial parliaments.

We left Venice at midnight in an Adriatic steamer, and arrived next morning at Trieste, a town which during our forced stay in it of forty-eight hours filled my mind with nothing but most disagreeable souvenirs. Life there was in complete contrast to the quiet, poetic, graceful existence at Venice, and the change from the one to the other had been so sudden as to act like a stunning blow. A detention caused by illness and the loss of a train through the purposed maliciousness of a hotel-waiter led to two results. One was our sending a telegram to the proprietor of the W——Hôtel in Vienna to inform him of the[Pg 100] delay, as rooms had been engaged for us by a gentleman who was in the habit of lodging in that hotel when in Vienna, and who before leaving the city had shown the kind thoughtfulness of sending us a letter of introduction to the proprietor commending us to his courtesy. The other result was to bring about an acquaintance with a Prussian, Herr Schwager, which happened in this wise: Kate, whose wrath was fully aroused at the troubles we encountered in Trieste, was extravagant in her denunciations of those "horrid Germans" after we were once fairly seated in the cars bound for Gratz. Neither of us spoke German with any degree of ease or much intelligibility, and consequently gave vent to our opinions in plain English. A young man of a studious, gentlemanly appearance, but of unmistakable Teutonic descent, sat in one corner of the compartment, and from his frequent smiling at our talk I concluded that he understood English, and made bold to ask him if he did.

"Happily, I do," he replied, his handsome brown eyes twinkling with increased merriment, "and I am one of those 'horrid Germans.'"

His reply greatly amused Miss Barton, and opened the way to a very animated conversation, in which we learned that he had just come from Italy, had been on the same steamer as ourselves coming from Venice, and had stopped in the same hotel and suffered the same agonies. Then we talked of what we liked best in Italy, and he spoke of an American friend, Mr. Fanton, with whom he had greatly enjoyed Rome. The fact that he was a friend of John Fanton, whom I had known for years, and who was the last to bid me good-bye in Rome, was recommendation enough for any stranger, and constituted us friends at once. I forgot all about Aunt Edith's advice to have "nothing to do with foreigners," but placed at once the most unlimited confidence in Herr Schwager, who from the beginning of our acquaintance attached himself in a most brotherly way to our fortunes, proving himself in every particular a rare honor to his sex. However gross and brusque the German character may be, I must for ever make an exception of our Herr, whose genuine politeness, delicacy of kindness, refinement and manliness I have rarely seen equalled and never excelled.

Kate kept up her banter about the "horrid Germans," for which she had abundant reason in our journey from Gratz to Vienna. We had hoped to have a compartment to ourselves, to which end Herr Schwager had expended a florin; but at the last moment a portly Gratzian entered and settled himself by one of the windows which would command the Semmering Pass. He too spoke some English, and endeavored to be sociable. As we neared the pass he insisted upon my taking his seat the better to see the marvellous scenery, with which he was already familiar. I had been too long on the Continent not to have become suspicious of a voluntary sacrifice on the part of a European. It invariably means something: it covers an arrière pensée. He offers you a paper to read or a peach or a pear to eat, or buys a bouquet of flowers at a station, and if you accept the proffer of either he takes advantage of the obligation under which he has placed you and proceeds generally to smoke, remarking for form's sake that he "hopes it is not offensive," while you, under the burden of his kindness, smile a fashionable lie, and reply, "Not in the least." So our Gratzer withdrew to the farther end of the seat and began to smoke a most villainous cigar, and continued to smoke, lighting another when one was finished. I soon began to succumb to the poisonous effects of the close atmosphere, for, although we kept our windows open—it was the middle of June—the Gratzer with true German caution kept his firmly closed. But the effect upon Kate was even worse, and her pallid face plainly told how much she was suffering. We cast entreating looks upon Herr Schwager, who never smoked, but understood our annoyance without knowing just how to ask the Gratzer to cease. We poked our heads out of the window, opened cologne-bottles and indulged in various manifestations of disgust; but to no purpose: the[Pg 101] Austrian smoked on. Finally, when he began on the fourth cigar, Kate, whose patience was utterly exhausted, begged me to ask him to stop. I naturally demurred, being under obligation to him, and replied, "You're the sicker, Kate: you tell him."

When suddenly she lifted her pale face and shouted at him, "Oh, you horrid German! we are nearly smoked to death! For mercy's sake, stop!"

"Ah, pardon!" he replied unconcernedly, taking the cigar from his mouth and putting it in his pocket.

Herr Schwager's amusement was boundless, and our satisfaction also, as we had no more smoke on the road to Vienna.

The landlord of the Hôtel W——, to whom we were recommended, received us with a pleasant cordiality, and at the same time apologized because he could not give us the rooms engaged for us until the next day; so we were temporarily lodged in a large room leading from an anteroom designed for a servant—an arrangement which is common in Austrian hotels. On the following morning, as Kate was waiting half dressed in the anteroom for the kammer-mädchen to bring her warm water, who should walk in upon her, sans cérémonie, but a long, black-gowned priest! He stared at her, nonchalantly looked about the room, and walked out with never a word. She might have regarded the intrusion as a mistake if a like visit from the same personage had not been made at the same hour next morning in our own rooms, to which we were that day transferred. The two successive intrusions were to us inexplicable, unless, in the light of succeeding events, we were to regard the priest as a detective officer or spy. Our apartments communicated, both being reached through an entry, while my room, lying beyond Kate's, was only reached by passing also from the entry through hers.

On the fourth day of our sojourn in the hotel, about nine o'clock in the morning, Kate tapped on the door leading into my room, and at my cry of "Entrez," came in. She was in a dressing-gown, her long, curling brown hair hanging over her shoulders and a very unusual expression on her face.

"Police!" she exclaimed. "If we ever get out of this town alive I shall be thankful! I had rung as usual for water, and just as I had finished my bath I heard a knock at the outside door, and asking 'Wer ist da?' the chambermaid replied that she was. I then opened the door a bit, and saw looking over her shoulders two strange men. My first thought was that they were friends of yours wishing to give you a surprise, and I cried out, 'Oh, you can't come in, for we are not dressed.' Then one of the men said in broken English, 'We shall and we will come in;' and they forced the door in upon me, while I hastened to close and fasten the other, but was too late, for they followed at my heels. 'You are Miss W——?' the one who had already spoken said.—'No, I am not.'—'Then she is in the next room?'—'But you cannot go in, for she isn't dressed,' I said.—'You are her sister, and you come from the Grand Hôtel,' he continued; and you've no idea with what a ferocious face. It was dreadful! Then he said something about the police—that we must go to the police-court; and finally said he would give you five minutes to dress in. Now, there they are, banging at the door. Oh, what have we done? Why did we ever come into this barbarous land?" and poor merry Kate was on the brink of hysterics.

"Oh, 'tis all a mistake," I replied, adjusting my necktie. "I will see the men, and the matter will be explained at once."

The noise from the street coming in from my open windows had prevented me from hearing the conversation in Kate's room, and I should have been inclined to regard her startling narrative as one of her jokes if it had not been for the loud banging on the door. I hastened to open it: the men came in, and, wishing to relieve Kate of their presence, I asked them to pass into my room. This they refused to do, taking a decided stand in Kate's. I was too curious to lose[Pg 102] my presence of mind or show that I was annoyed, and with my blandest smile inquired why I was honored with so matinal a visit from two strangers, when the following dialogue ensued:

"Here it is;" and I opened the document bearing the American eagle and the signature of Hamilton Fish.

The two men put their heads together, neither being able to tell what sort of a paper it was, which secretly amused me. The men were in civilian's dress. Turning to Kate, her passport was demanded. She had none.

She refused to answer that. The poor girl had become so nervous under the ordeal, which for her had been of a very violent character, that she imagined nothing could be more disgraceful and humiliating than to have her name mixed up with a police-affair.

Finding that she was inexorable, they returned to me with, "Well, miss, you must go with us to the police," and showed me a paper of arrest.

I rang the bell, and asked that the proprietor of the house come at once to my room. He came, and I demanded an explanation of the mystery.

"You must know, mademoiselle," he began, "that in Vienna we are all in the power of the police: they must have the name, nationality, business and address of every person who comes into the city. The morning after your arrival these men came and asked if two English ladies were stopping here. I said 'Yes.' They then said they believed you were persons they had been trying for two weeks to catch, and that you were very suspicious characters who had been stopping here in the Grand Hôtel. I told them it was not possible—that you had come direct from Italy; and I mentioned the telegram you had sent from Trieste, and that you had been recommended to my courtesy by a gentleman whom I well knew and who had many times lodged here. But they went away, and came back again next day, making some inquiries about you, and asking if numbers so and so were those of your rooms. You were out, and whether they visited your rooms or not I cannot say. This is all that I know. Now they are here again, and if they say you must go to the police-court, there will be no other way but to go."

"But I don't understand. I have my passport: there is my bill, receipted at the hotel in Trieste six days ago. I never knew before it was a crime for two English-speaking women to travel alone or to stop at a Grand Hôtel. Of what are we suspected? and upon what grounds suspected?"

"Why, a napkin has been seen among your effects with the mark of the Grand Hôtel upon it."

After a moment's thought it flashed into my mind that it was that Nice serviette, and, more amused than annoyed, I exclaimed, "Oh, I have it. 'Tis that serviette St. Cecilia took at Nice;" and opening my trunk soon had it in my hands, holding it up by two corners for the men to see and explaining how it came into my possession.

"It will go very hard with Madame Cecilia," observed the spokesman: "you will please give us her address."

My indiscretion at once became apparent, but I was a complete novice in "being arrested." To involve Cecilia in the affair would be but an aggravation of matters, and I at once decided,[Pg 103] come what might, I would not give the police her address. Looking at the half-obliterated stamp in the corner of the napkin, there was unmistakably the mark "Grand Hôtel," but directly underneath "Nice," which the police, in their ardor to find me guilty of something which I could not find out, had undoubtedly mistaken for Wien, the German name for Vienna. I called their attention to the "Nice," asking what jurisdiction the Austrian government had over matters relating to hotels in Italy. They replied by looking very closely at the stamp, and then one of them took my passport and the napkin and went out, leaving the other man to guard our apartment, and soon returned with a new arrest for myself and my gesellschafterin, Miss Barton still refusing to give her name. The landlord had only placed mine in the visitors' book, thereby making himself liable to a fine of eight or ten dollars.

Nothing could have been more widely different than the effect produced upon Kate and myself. To me the whole affair was inexpressibly mysterious and ludicrous, notwithstanding the insolence of the police, and, as it seemed to me, their amazing stupidity. Poor Kate was the wrathfullest woman I ever saw, while her obstinate refusal to answer any questions about herself only increased the ferocity of the men, whose treatment of her was shameful in the extreme. They threatened to search our trunks, which aroused Kate's wrath the more. I observed that as they had assumed the right to unlock and search mine during my absence, they were probably already acquainted with its contents. They, however, abandoned the searching scheme, and ordered us to get ready to go to the police-court, which was about two minutes' walk distant. Kate declared that to the police-court she would not go, unless she were dragged there by her hair, while the men declared that she would then be taken by armed force. I concluded to telegraph to the American embassy for help, but that was denied me. Herr Schwager had called to see us only the day previous, saying his lodgings were quite in our neighborhood, but we had not asked his address. There seemed nothing to do but to go to the court and be my own lawyer. It never occurred to me that the landlord to whose courtesy I had been recommended would refuse to go with me; but when I asked him for his protection he begged to be excused, on the ground of being very busy and that he could be of no service to me. I do not wish any reader to infer from this that he was an exceptional Viennese hotel-keeper—that is, exceptionally ungentlemanly: he was, on the contrary, a fair representative both of his trade and his countrymen. Austrian military officers and diplomatic attachés of the government have won in fashionable society a reputation for extreme politeness and gallantry toward women; which may be true, as neither under such conditions costs any earnest sacrifice. But the rank and file of the middle class of Austrians, the class with which travellers have naturally most to do, are most brusque and ungracious in manner as well as in deed, unembellished with any hint of courtesy.

I enjoyed a fling at the landlord by expressing surprise at his refusal to accompany me to the police-court, adding maliciously that American gentlemen were not famous for polished manners, but there was not one mean enough in the whole country to refuse his protection to a lady, a guest under his own roof and in a strange land, where the help of friends was denied her. I then appealed to Kate to go with me, as it would only end the trouble sooner, and that I would never allow her to go to such a place alone, but with tears streaming from her eyes she resisted my entreaties, and I followed one of the men to the court: the other remained behind to watch Kate.

I had no more idea of a police-court than I had of the reason why I was being taken there. It was mystery and curiosity that sustained me. I undoubtedly looked like an amused interrogation-mark, for the moment I was introduced into the presence of the grand interrogator of that inquisition, upon whose desk lay my passport and "that serviette," he smiled and remarked in French, "It[Pg 104] is very evident, mademoiselle, that you have nothing to do with this affair."

"With what affair, monsieur? I haven't the faintest idea what I was brought here for," I responded.

"Why, just this: about a fortnight ago two Englishwomen stopped at the Grand Hôtel in this city, and left without paying their bills, carrying off with them all the household linen they could lay their hands on."

And so we had been arrested as house-linen thieves! It was too humiliating. I was then interviewed as to my companion's refusal to give her name, etc., which argued very much against her. I explained as well as I could the extreme annoyance and brutal treatment to which she had been subjected, her horror of having anything to do with a police-court, and how the disgrace of being suspected of a crime was aggravated by intense nervous excitement brought on by the insolence of the police. After considerable pleading on my part in her behalf—for I felt that I was the sole cause of the trouble—it was agreed upon that she should be relieved from coming to the court upon condition that she would sign a paper giving her name, nationality, etc., and I was dismissed without the slightest apology for the trouble to which I had been subjected. At that point the affair ceased to be funny, and, turning back after I had reached the door of exit, I made a short and as effective a speech as the polite language of the French would allow, in which I conveyed a frank idea of my opinion of Austrian courtesy. I succeeded well enough to convince my examiner of something—probably that he had caught a Tartar—and I left him tugging furiously at his moustache. My official escort led the way back to the hotel with a very crestfallen air, savage and sullen.

I found Miss Barton in a worse condition than ever, the persecutions of the guarding policeman having continued with increased ferocity. He had dogged every movement she made, until the poor girl had nearly gone mad; and it was only after long persuasion that I induced her to sign the paper, such a one as most travellers without passports in Austria are obliged to fill out. She finally wrote her name in a great scrawl which nobody could decipher, and gave as her country "Cape Town, Africa;" which again confounded the men, as they had no idea how a "Hottentot" could be an English subject. But they swallowed their ignorance, and finally went away.

When Kate had become restored to her normal condition she heaped upon herself all sorts of self-reproaches, and paid me extravagant compliments for what she called "good sense" and "presence of mind." As she demanded redress for the insults she had suffered, and as I wished to know by what right an Austrian policeman privily searched the trunks of American women who had the misfortune to come into the Austrian dominions, we posted off to our respective national ambassadors. Kate had the satisfaction of being told that she ought to congratulate herself upon getting off as well as she did, since two of her countrywomen had been arrested, put in jail and kept there for two weeks upon even less grounds for suspicion. The result of our complaints was, that the amplest official apologies were made by the Foreign Office, the two policemen severely censured and degraded from rank, while, through the influence of Herr Schwager, who went to the president of the police, an officer was sent from that organization to apologize to us in person. But what I cared most for I never got—an acknowledgment of the right of the police to search baggage à plaisir.

As might have been expected, our liking for Vienna had been thoroughly damped. From that moment Kate never saw an officer without fear and trembling, and officers were everywhere. "To think," she exclaimed, "that I have grown to be such a ninny! My brothers always said, 'Oh, we can trust Kate to go anywhere: she never gets nervous or afraid;' and here I am actually afraid to cross a street! I shall never have a moment's peace until I get out of this horrid country."[Pg 105]

At the end of a fortnight, having entirely missed her cousins, she joined a party of Americans going to England. St. Cecilia meantime had arrived, and was of course entertained by the napkin adventure. But she could not abide Vienna, and quickly returned to Paris. As I wished to "do" the Exposition and run no more risks of arrest, I decided to withdraw to Baden, a half hour's ride by express from the Südbahn station of the Austrian capital, as the town was strongly recommended by Herr Schwager and several American friends residing in Vienna. Herr Schwager declared that with my small stock of Deutsch sprechen the Badenites would cheat me out of my eyes, and very kindly volunteered to help me get installed. A history of the trials attending that transaction would alone "fill a volume," but I mention only one, and that simply because it seemed another link in the manifest chain of destiny.

An hour after our arrangement for my accommodation for the season had been settled "meine Wirthin" received a letter from her son-in-law that he was coming, and she informed me that she would need her guest-chamber for him, returning to me my advanced guldens at the same time she broke her bargain. Nothing was to be done but to look elsewhere, and eventually lodgings were obtained in the Bergstrasse, in quite another part of the town. The locality was excellent, being very near the promenade and music-gardens: then I liked the face of the Haus-meisterin, as did Herr Schwager, who wisely remarked that he thought kindness of heart should rank high in that "benighted land."

I frequently went to Vienna, spending the day at the Exposition and returning to Baden in the evening. Upon one of these occasions I found upon my return to the Südbahn that I had a half hour to wait for the train. As I was hungry, I ordered a cup of coffee in the café waiting-room. Upon putting my hand in my pocket for my portemonnaie, lo! I had none, not a kreutzer to my name, and my portemonnaie contained also my return railway-ticket! I was alone: it was seven o'clock in the evening. My situation was dramatic, even comic, and I laughed to myself and smiled upon a gentleman and two ladies who sat at the same table, calmly remarking that I had been robbed of my Gelttasche: they smiled in return, and nothing more. I sent a kellner to bring me the master of the café, whom I informed of my loss and my inability to pay my debt to him. He at once led me off to a commissaire de police—of whom there are always plenty about in civilian's dress—to whom I made a statement of my loss, describing my lost treasure and where I thought it had in all probability been taken. While we were talking a very distinguished-looking man, perhaps forty-five years of age, with magnificent black eyes, passed near, evidently interested. When through with the police I remarked that I did not know how I was to get back to Baden; whereupon the master of the café—who, by the way, spoke English well—exclaimed, "Oh, as to that, I will lend you what you need." Hearing this, the distinguished-looking stranger came up with a salaam, and, begging the conventional number of pardons, graciously volunteered any service he might be able to render me. I thanked him, explaining to him in a few words my misfortune, but that the master of the café—who had meantime purchased a railway-ticket for me—had gallantly come to my rescue. At this moment the car-bell rang: I gave my card to the Meister, took down his name, and hurried away to get a seat in the train, the owner of the black eyes following me, helping me as best he could, and, "if madame had no objections, would take a seat near her, as he too was en route for Baden." He spoke in French, with a pure French accent, although it was evident he was not a Frenchman. He evinced a desire to continue an acquaintance so oddly begun, but I was obliged to doom him to disappointment. My mind was occupied with the grave question of finance, and about how long I should be obliged to remain in Baden before I should receive a remittance from London. I remembered having seen the gentleman once or twice in the park at[Pg 106] Baden, and thought him, with his splendid eyes, graying hair and military bearing, a man of no ordinary appearance. He had the air of a person looking for some one, and the expression was sad. Under ordinary circumstances I should have been curious to learn more of him. My coolness of manner, accompanied by the almost rude brevity of my replies to his few ventured remarks, seemed to amuse him, for he smilingly observed that I was a true "Anglaise."

To be taken for English always aroused my honest indignation, and I quickly retorted, "Pardon, mais je ne suis pas Anglaise."

"Quite possible, monsieur, as English is my mother tongue, but I am a vrai Américaine."

"Américaine! Américaine!" he repeated eagerly. "I once knew an American lady, and I should prize above all things some knowledge of her. I hope I may have the honor—" A blast from the engine broke upon his speech at that juncture: we were at Baden.

Hastily thanking him—for abroad one falls into the continental habit of thanking people "mille fois" for what they do not do, as for what they do do—and saying "Bon jour," I hurried off to the Bergstrasse. The next morning I refunded my borrowed guldens to the master of the café by post (as I had not placed my entire bank in my purse), and feeling conscience-smitten at having, in my direst extremity, been befriended by one of those "dreadful Austrians" whom I had so bitterly berated, I hinted my amazement, along with my thanks, at having been the recipient of so graceful and needed a courtesy from a Viennese. He acknowledged the receipt of the money, adding, "I hope you do not take me for a Viennese: I am a Bavarian, and have lived twelve years in England."

Among the occupants of the house and dwellers in the garden where I lodged and lived was a young Austrian woman, two years married, with whom I formed a pleasant acquaintance, and whose chatty ways rapidly revived my knowledge of the German, in which language only she could express herself. I shall not soon forget her, for she told me that she married to please the "Eltern"—that she "had never loved," and was so naïve in her mode of reasoning as to prove a source of infinite surprise. She had no conception of any destiny for a girl but that of marriage, and never tired of asking about "American girls," whom I described as oftentimes living and dying unmarried.

"And do not the parents force them to marry? And what do they do if not marry? And when they get old, what becomes of them? And they are doctors even? Did you ever see a woman-doctor?" etc., etc., and hundreds of similar questions.

One evening, two or three days after the "robbery," we went to sit in the park and listen to the music. On the end of a bench where we sat down was a poorly-clad, miserable-looking woman, who occupied herself in dozing and waking. I had no money in my pocket, but I could not rid myself of the idea that the poor wretch was dying of hunger, and her sharp contrast to the hundreds of elegantly-dressed people all about her and constantly moving to and fro only gave more force to her isolation and misery. At length, perhaps more to relieve my mind than otherwise, I begged my Nachbarin to lend me a coin, which I slipped without a word into the creature's hand. To the surprise of both of us, she made no sign of acceptance or thanks. Ten or fifteen minutes later she rose, and coming near us she began to stammer out her thanks and to tell us how poor she was—that she could not work, and that for a month she had been coming to the park, hoping that where there were so many rich people some would kindly give her a trifle; but that in all that time but one person had done so—a gentleman who had given her a gulden; and if we would look she would point him out. We looked: it was the distinguished stranger. I confess to have been gratified, and to feeling confident that if he was one of the foreigners[Pg 107] that Aunt Edith had bade me beware of, he was at least a gentleman and a Christian.

The last of August was nearing, and, as the heat was intense, I often went up a hill at the back of the park to be alone and enjoy the breezy atmosphere and the charming view the elevation commanded. On one of these occasions—it was the twenty-fifth and my birthday—I was more than usually absorbed in my thoughts when my attention was caught by a shadow passing over the declivity a little removed from where I sat, and looking up I recognized the giver of alms. He lifted his hat, begged pardon and hoped it was not an indiscretion to ask if I had recovered my purse; which opened the way to further conversation. The sun was fast setting, and the scene on earth and sky was resplendent. Leaning upon a rock, he contemplated the miracle in silent adoration.

After a moment he replied, "For many years no land has so much interested me as America, and upon no people do I look with so much interest. America gave me my supremest joy and my profoundest sorrow. Perhaps this confession may, in a measure, excuse my impolite intrusion upon you, as I am so thoroughly a stranger."

"Yes, and a foreigner," I laughed. "I have a dear, beautiful aunt Edith at home who warned me against foreigners. This is my fête, and as her birthday is the same as mine, I am naturally thinking of her just now, and recall her sage advice. As the sun is down, I will follow it and bid you good-night."

As I rose to go he made no reply, as if he had been indifferent to what I had said. I glanced at his face: it was ashen white. He was opening a locket attached to his watchguard, from which he lifted a ring of dark hair, and then drawing it nearer his eyes he spoke as if reading a date: "Le vingt-cinq août."

The pallor of his face, joined to its outline, which was in full profile, held me where I stood as if spellbound. Somewhere, a long time ago, I had seen that face.

"Yes, it is an unusual coincidence," he remarked, as if just comprehending what had been said. "But your aunt Edith must be much older than you?"

"Nor I, monsieur. We belong to the noble army of old maids, which on the other side is a more honorable and obstinate sisterhood than here."

"If I should go to America," he observed, "I should greatly desire to visit the locality where women like you live and die unmarried."

"Oh, for that matter, you can't miss them," I replied laughingly: "they're common from Maine to California. Spinsterhood is an outgrowth of our Declaration of Independence—'liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'"

"But, really, I desire to know the name of the place where you live: I am sure it will interest me greatly. Will you not write it for me?" And he offered me a blank card.

"I may possibly go and see your aunt Edith and tell her I saw you on the top of a mountain. Perhaps you would like to send her a message?"

"Well, if you see her," I replied in the same tone, moving away, "tell her I haven't forgotten to beware of foreigners."

"Just one more word," he entreated, following me. "Is your aunt Edith, Edith Mack?"

"Yes, but how should you know?" and in that moment it flashed upon my mind like sudden daybreak. "And you are—" I stammered.

"A man who has loved her many a year. To-morrow I leave Vienna for England, to sail for New York. I cannot say more to you now than that I begin to see my way through a sad, sad mystery. Here is my card. Adieu!"[Pg 108]

The bright glow left in the atmosphere by the brilliant sunset had quite died away, but it was light enough for me to read the superscription: "Le Chevalier Achille Roma."

I walked back to my lodgings in a manner probably quite sane to other people, although the distance was compassed by myself in a condition of complete unconsciousness as to how. Like the phantasmagoria of fated events swept before my mind the train of complicated circumstances that had led to my finding Aunt Edith's lost lover. And the beautiful romance at the end had resulted from my having disregarded her warning to "beware of foreigners."

There is not much more to tell. I left Baden at the end of the month, and returned to Paris. Six weeks later I had a letter from Aunt Edith urging me to come home for her wedding, which would take place prior to the holidays. The Chevalier Roma had long since become convinced that his "friend," the consul at Rome, was the key to the whole mischief, but his suspicions in that direction came too late for him to regain a clue to Aunt Edith. Several letters sent to her name at New York of course had never reached her. The surest and quickest way to accomplish his desire, to prove to the heart he had through so many years cherished how true and loyal had been his allegiance, how deep and sincere his love, was the one he had chosen and acted upon with such alacrity.

A few weeks after my aunt's marriage I received the wedding-cards of Herr Schwager and Miss Kate Barton. After all, merry Kate had accepted a "horrid German" for her husband, and thereby the truth suddenly dawned upon my mind that I had been the recipient of the Herr's exceeding kindness because I was "neighbor to the rose."

The taking of the census of the United States is, at any time, an event of national interest and importance. That of the tenth census, in 1880, will be especially interesting, as marking the completion of the first century of our declared independence. We shall then ascertain, more fully and concisely than we have yet been able to do, exactly what progress has been made in one hundred years by a people left free to work out its own destiny, alike in form of government and in material, moral and intellectual development, under no check except its own self-imposed restraints. The record of such progress ought to be the most valuable contribution ever made to political, economic and social science. Whether it shall prove so or not depends chiefly on the manner in which the essential work is done. It is already time that public attention should be drawn to this important event, since the law under which the census is to be taken must, if it shall be at all adequate to the occasion, be passed by the present Congress.

The United States is the first nation which ever implanted in its Constitution a provision for taking at regular periods a census of its people. The makers of that instrument seemed to have an intuitive sense of the importance of such a step, for they had no guide and borrowed from no precedent. It is true the fundamental law provides only for an enumeration of persons, but under the authority given to Congress to "provide for the general welfare" such laws have heretofore been passed as have rendered our census reports documents of inestimable value. It is doubtful if any people have ever taken so great pains[Pg 109] to find out "how they are getting along," or have ever made so great and immediate use of that information. So marked is the fact that the Constitution requires a decennial census that a distinguished French writer on statistics declares, "The United States presents in its history a phenomenon which has no parallel. It is that of a people who instituted the statistics of their country on the very day when they formed their government, and who regulated in the same instrument the census of their citizens, their civil and political rights and the destinies of their country."

To understand the progressive steps by which our census has reached its present magnitude and importance a brief glance is necessary at the successive laws under which the enumeration has been made and the manner in which their results have been presented.

The first census was taken in 1790, under the act of March 1 of that year, and many of the worst features of that tentative experiment still remain to vex the soul of every one who desires a census which shall be in accord with the demands of science and the times. Then, as now, the United States marshals were designated to conduct the enumeration. They were authorized to employ as many assistants as might be needful, and each assistant was required, prior to making his return, to "cause a correct copy of the schedule, signed by himself, to be set up at two of the most public places within his division, there to remain for the inspection of all concerned." It is from this crude law that the mischievous custom is borrowed of having a copy of the census returns deposited with the county court clerk. As originally conducted, the system was harmless, since only the names of heads of families were given and only the number of persons constituting the family reported. The compensation was also based on the number of persons returned by the assistant marshals. The form of schedule was as follows:

Such and so simple were the results sought at the first census, the enumeration for which was to commence on the 1st of August, 1790, and to close within nine months thereafter, and the returns were to be made to the President of the United States on or before September, 1, 1791. These results were published in an octavo pamphlet of fifty-two pages. No officer of the government seems to have had any supervision of the work of preparing it for the press. The returns were doubtless handed by the President to some clerk for compilation, and communicated to Congress along with other routine and miscellaneous documents accompanying the annual message.

The second census was taken under the act of February 28, 1800, and, like the first, was confined to an enumeration of the population under the care of the United States marshals, but the whole work was prosecuted under the direction of the Secretary of State. The number of facts to be returned was somewhat enlarged by further inquiries into the ages of the inhabitants: otherwise there was no substantial change.

The act providing for the taking of the third census was passed March 26, 1810, and was almost identical with that for the second census.

A great step in advance was, however, taken in the act of May 1, 1810, which imposed upon the marshals and their assistants the additional duty of taking, under direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, an account of the manufacturing establishments and manufactures of the several districts, at an aggregate expense not exceeding thirty thousand dollars.

The only changes introduced into the act of March 14, 1820, for taking the fourth census, provided for a return of the number of males between sixteen and eighteen, the number of foreigners not naturalized, and the colored population by[Pg 110] age and sex. The provisions for a return of manufactures were re-enacted, the results to be reported to the Secretary of State (J.Q. Adams). But these returns, like those of the third census, were of very slight value.

In the act of March 23, 1830, for taking the fifth census, provision is made for ascertaining the number of blind and deaf and dumb, and the returns of age and sex were required with greater fulness than before. The time for commencing the enumeration was changed from August 1 to June 1, and the work was to be completed in six instead of nine months. The return of manufactures required by the two preceding census laws was omitted.

The act of March 3, 1839, for the sixth census, differed very slightly from that for the fifth, except that returns were also required of the number of insane and idiotic, the number of Revolutionary pensioners, and of the manufacturing, agricultural and educational statistics. By an amendment adopted February 26, 1840, the time for completing the enumeration was reduced to five months from June 1, and, for the first time provision is made for special supervision of the work by requiring the appointment of a superintending clerk.

Thus it appears that down to the taking of the sixth census, in 1840, the chief object aimed at was the enumeration of the population. No effort was made to arrive at, or even approach, by any thorough and scientific process the great facts relating to our material progress and prosperity, or to supervise the publication of such returns as were required. But the report for that year shows a great advance over any preceding one both in quantity and quality of information. The decade then closing was one of great life and movement. The States west of the Alleghanies were rapidly filling up with immigrants, whose arrival was followed by speculations hitherto unknown. Fabulous wealth was speedily followed by utter bankruptcy. The railroad, the steamship and the telegraph foreshadowed the approaching revolution in methods of commerce and communication. A new life was dawning.

These commercial changes and social revolutions were continued with increasing intensity during the next decade. The great famine in Ireland sent us swarms of laborers. The Mexican war brought us California, and the discovery of gold there marked the beginning of a new era in our material condition. It was under the influence of these stimulating events that the seventh census was undertaken. To make such preparations that it should, to some extent, embody the spirit of the time and furnish us with a correct statement of our condition under the new impulses and burdens of the nation, an act was passed March 3, 1849, creating a census board, whose duty it should be to prepare, and cause to be printed, forms and schedules for the enumeration of the population, and also for collecting "such information as to mines, agriculture, commerce, manufactures, education and other topics as will exhibit a full view of the pursuits, industry, education and resources of the country; provided, the number of said inquiries, exclusive of enumeration, shall not exceed one hundred." On the same day the Department of the Interior was established, and all matters relating to the census were transferred to that department. The census board reported "an act for taking the seventh and subsequent censuses of the United States," which became a law May 23, 1850, and under that law the censuses of 1850, 1860 and 1870 were taken.

However far that law was an improvement upon either of those under which the preceding censuses were taken, it is now wholly inadequate—so much so, indeed, that the superintendent of the ninth census (1870) declared, "It is not possible for one who has had such painful occasion as the present superintendent to observe the workings of the census law of 1870 to characterize it otherwise than as clumsy, antiquated and barbarous. The machinery it provides is as unfit for use in the census of the United States in this day of advanced statistical science as the smooth-bore muzzle-loading 'queen's arm' of the Revolution would be for service against the repeating rifle[Pg 111] of the present time." It includes many inquiries which are practically worthless, and excludes many vitally necessary to an understanding of our social and industrial condition. Thus the questions, "Has this season produced average crops?" "What crops are short?" "What are the average wages of a female domestic per week, without board?" "How much road-tax did you pay, and how?" may be of some interest, if regarded as conundrums, but are practically of as little value as the color of one's hair or the average number of hours one sleeps; while, as matters of fact, the answers to them have been so unsatisfactory that no attempt has ever been made to classify them, and in the census of 1870 they were discarded altogether, though still forming part of the law. Nor is the method required for ascertaining the facts relating to manufactures of any greater value. The inquiries are the same in regard to every kind of industry, whether the product be cloth, leather, iron or silver, and are confined solely to wages, kinds and quantities. No means are provided for ascertaining with skill and exactness the necessary details of the varied manufactures of the country. The schedules for agricultural returns are also the same for all sections—for cotton and sugar-cane in Maine, for maple-sugar and hops in Louisiana. These, however, are merely superficial defects, some of which might easily be remedied in the hands of a competent superintendent, as was the case with the census of 1870. The graver inherent defects are equally obvious, but not equally susceptible of remedy. Nothing short of a new law will accomplish that result.

In the first place, the officer designated to take the census is, in every point of view, objectionable. That officer is the United States marshal, originally selected, probably, for no better reason than that, as there was such an officer in every State whose services could be made available, it was better to use him than to create a new office. But neither the legitimate duties of his office nor the department to which he belongs justify such a selection. His duties are chiefly connected with violations of law, and he is necessarily associated in public opinion with the criminal side of life. A police-officer is not a good census-taker. Moreover, many of the States are divided into several marshalships from considerations which do not at all enter into the taking of the census. Thus, New York has three districts, the largest of which contains more than two and a quarter millions of inhabitants, while Florida has two districts, the smaller of which, but by far the more important so far as the legitimate duties of the marshal are concerned, contains scarcely six thousand inhabitants. Massachusetts is a district with over a million and a third of people: so is Arizona, with less than ten thousand.

Then the methods of payment are unfair, irrational and cumbersome. They bear no relation to the amount of work performed, are irregular in their operation, are obscure in their manner of calculation, and impose needless labor alike on the officer to be paid and the census office. To say that the square root of an area multiplied by the square root of the number of horses indicates the number of miles travelled in taking a census is as absurd as to say that the square root of the yards of cloth in a suit multiplied by the square root of the number of stitches taken to make the suit will give the length of the thread used. In its practical working in 1860 the result was to give to one assistant marshal a per diem of $1.66 and to another $31.32 for the same labor. A proposition which works out such a result may serve for a joke in negro minstrelsy: it will hardly be accepted as honest figuring by the recipient of the minimum pay.

But the greatest objection of all is to the schedules created by the law of 1850. The number of inquiries is limited by that law to one hundred, though why that number should be selected as the limit, except at haphazard, is a mystery. It is purely arbitrary, and in its practical working is mischievous. Statistical inquiries ought to be exhaustive, whether the questions asked are ten or ten thousand. To limit the number to one hundred requires the lumping together[Pg 112] of incongruous facts or the entire omission of some of prime importance. Of what real value is the answer to the question, "Kind of motive-power?" in relation to manufactures unless other details are given? Yet only such questions can be asked where the margin is so narrow. In the census of Massachusetts for 1875, 304 inquiries were made, embracing 1337 topics; and so satisfactorily was the work done that out of a population of 1,651,912 only 43 persons were unaccounted for when the statistics of occupations were compiled; while in the United States census of 1870 the number thus unaccounted for exceeded 1,000,000. In Rhode Island no less than 561 inquiries were made in the census of 1875, and the result is the most complete census—not merely of persons, but of every kind of manufacture and production—yet taken in any State. The returns of cotton, woollen and iron manufactures show what can and ought to be done in that direction for the whole nation in 1880. They answer the requirements set forth by the superintendent of the census of 1870 by presenting "tables so full of technical information as to become the handbook of manufacturers."

By the side of the census reports for 1875 of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and even of the young State of Iowa, those of the United States hitherto published appear like incomplete, vague and childish efforts. For instance, in the census of Massachusetts for 1875, in the agricultural statistics, 140 different items are reported, exclusive of 10 included among "domestic products," but reckoned in the United States census among agricultural products. Of these 150 items, only 24 are reported in the United States census of 1870, although some of those omitted are from $1,500,000 to $5,000,000 in annual value. In the case of manufactures the defects are still more striking—ludicrously so but for the importance of the subject. By the schedules of 1850 the facts called for in regard to manufactures are simply these: number of establishments, horse-power, hands employed, capital, wages, materials, products. The 1 establishment which employed 3 hands and turned out $3000 worth of artificial eyes demanded and received exactly the same treatment with the 22,573 flouring- and grist-mills with their army of 58,448 workmen and $444,985,143 of products. On this Procrustean bed all are stretched or shrunken—the giant industries by which men are fed, clothed, housed and shod, with their 1,000,000 of men and $2,000,000,000 of products, and the pigmy occupations of making skewers, calcium-lights, mops, dusters, etc., employing 150 persons and aggregating $150,000 of products.

And this leads directly to a consideration of the measures necessary to secure a proper census of the United States in 1880. To begin with, as already reiterated, a new law is imperatively demanded: no good thing can come of the present statute. As early as possible during this present Congress a committee on the tenth census should be appointed, which should carefully study the laws and methods of every civilized state and country in which a census is taken, and from these collect whatever is best, giving at the same time ample power to the superintendent in all matters of administration and appointment. Such a law might be as short and simple as that of Rhode Island, which is comprised in eight brief sections, yet is so comprehensive that under its provisions was compiled the most complete census yet taken in this country, if not in the world.

The time at which the census is taken should be changed from June 1 to at least November 1, if not to January 1, when the labors of the year are ended, when the harvest has been gathered in, the books made up and the family naturally talk over the events of the past twelve-month. Then, if ever, is the time when full, frank and honest answers will be given, and the census-taker will be hailed rather as a friend than an enemy in disguise. The method adopted years ago in all other civilized countries, and in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 1875, of leaving the blank schedules in advance at each house and manufactory, to be filled up carefully and thoughtfully, and to be called for on a given day,[Pg 113] should also be adopted. The result of the first attempt in Massachusetts was that 37 per cent. of the schedules was found ready for delivery to the enumerator, and for the remaining 63 per cent. the labor was greatly diminished by the readiness of the people to answer all inquiries intelligently. The number who at first failed or refused to comply was only one hundred, and of manufacturers less than twenty; and these all subsequently made the necessary returns. The total answers of all kinds received at the census office was 13,000,000, at a cost to the State of one dollar for each hundred answers.

Under such a law, enacted by the present Congress, and by such methods, the census report of 1880 would become a document to which every good citizen could point with pride and congratulation. We should no longer be mortified with such errors and shortcomings as are so frankly commented on in the census report of 1870. We should have not merely a correct enumeration of the population, with all the important facts connected with their domestic and social condition, but also such a return of the occupations, manufacturing industries, education and commercial operations, and all the elements which go to make up the material well-being of the races on this portion of the continent, as would mark a new departure in our national life. The absurd inanities which characterize so much of the report of the superintendent of the census of 1860, and the doctrinaire theories injected into the report of 1850, ought never again to find expression in any public document bearing the official sanction of the United States.

The census report of 1860, as compared with that of 1870, is as the Serbonian bog to a well-appointed lawn. For the first time since its inception the taking of the census was in 1870 placed in thoroughly competent hands. By inherited ability, as well as by previous training, General Walker possesses in an eminent degree the qualities essential to the fitting and successful execution of such a task. At every step he shows the skill and readiness of a master workman; and it will be fortunate for the country if he shall be selected as superintendent of the tenth census under a law of his own devising.

As to the results to be revealed by the tenth census, it is not worth while to speculate. That they will be disappointing in many aspects to the national pride, or at least to the national vanity, there can be little doubt; but it is to be hoped we have outlived the period when the truth can make us angry. Of course there will be no such increase of population as marked our earlier career down to 1860, nor should we expect much increase in the reported wealth of the country since 1870. For the first time, except in the decade from 1820 to 1830, there will be no increase of area, unless all signs fail. Whatever the changes may be, they will more fully concern our social and political condition than in any previous decade, except perhaps the last.

An early and intelligent interest in this important subject is all that is requisite to secure the needed reform. It is not creditable to the country that the census of 1870 was taken under the provisions of the law of 1850: it will be disgraceful should that of 1880 be subjected to the same fate, as it must be unless a new law is passed before the first of January of that year. The matter should be pressed upon the attention of Congress during its present session. In 1870 an admirable law was passed by the House of Representatives under the skilful and intelligent leadership of Hon. James A. Garfield, but it failed in the Senate because of the apathy of some and the personal pique of others. It seems incredible that in that dignified body so little attention was paid to this vast subject. Again and again its consideration was postponed because a sufficient attendance could not be secured to act upon the proposed law, which at last fell to the ground, a victim to the indifference and prejudice of those who ought to have acted more wisely in a matter that so nearly concerns the welfare and good name of a great nation.

A dismayed silence while Anarky, our cook—black as night, eyes set square in her head, that head set level on her stout black shoulders—walked around the Chinese youth my husband had brought home as an experiment in our domestic life—around the Chinese youth with his wiry frame and insinuating stoop of the shoulders, and a smile of neutral tint lying placid but wary on his buff countenance.

"Lordy-mussy!" quoth Anarky. Another vehement, aggressive pause on her part, a silence observant and self-defensive on his. "Name o' Satan, Mis' Maud! what is it?"

"Thought he bought it at de sukus in New York, an' gif to you like he did dat monkey. Ef it ain't no rat, an' ain't a monkey, name o' Satan, what kin it be? 'Tain't a 'ooman, for all dem gret long sleeves: you know dat yo'se'f. An' 'tain't like no man as eber I seed. What dat hangin' on to its head? An' what motter wid its eyes, sot crank-sided right 'ginst its nose, kickin' up der heels, pintin' ebry way for Sunday—one en' uv um ez sharp as a 'nittin'-needle, an' tudder en' ez roun' ez a marble?"

Chang-how sent one eye skirmishing in my direction, and the other toward Anarky, and the same deprecatory yet wary smile rested like moonlight on his placid face.

"That will do, Anarky," said I. "I wish you to understand that this is to be your fellow-servant. You will cook and wash as usual. Chang-how will attend in the dining-room, and do I don't know yet exactly what else; but I wish you to be kind to him, remembering that he is a stranger in a strange land. Also, I will have no further remarks on his personal appearance."

Silenced by authority, but unmoved by my eloquence, Anarky made another tour of inspection—silently raised the end of Chang-how's queue, disgustedly let it fall, and went to the door. There she stopped and looked at him again. "Good Lord!" said she under her breath by way of parting salute.

The look of mild unconcern that had rested on Chang-how's features was rippled by a quaint, cunning smile, and for the first time he cast a quick glance full at her, then stood again with folded hands, calm, submissive, apparently unobservant.

Seeing the antagonism that was likely to exist between them, I myself showed Chang-how and his bundle to the room he was to occupy, and in a short time he emerged clad in a neat white jacket, his queue deftly bound around his head, ready for business.

The fellow was exceedingly bright and quick, and, though he never seemed to be "takin' notes," nothing escaped his observation. He learned our ways in an incredibly short time, and when those ways did not come in conflict with any habit previously formed he adapted himself to them at once; but woe to any pet notion that interfered with Chang's preconceived ideas! That notion had to go to the wall. However, that has nothing to do here.

Whether Chang-how had been "takin' notes" was a debatable point, but that somebody was taking everything takable on the premises soon became a self-evident proposition; and this was uncomfortable for more reasons than one. Mr. Smith and I almost quarrelled about it. He would not believe it to be Chang-how, and I was determined it should not be Anarky. Said he, "Anarky is taking advantage of the popular idea that the Chinese are invariably dis—"

"Now, who ever heard anything like[Pg 115] that?" I interrupted. "What does Anarky know about the popular idea concerning the Chinese? About as much as I should know if you were to talk to me about the Teutonic idiom for mezzo-tinted phonetics."

"You have convinced me, my dear, that Chang-how is the guilty party; but the idea I meant to convey before you knocked me down with those big words was this—that Anarky, knowing what people think of the Chinese, indulges her dishonest yearnings, believing we shall suppose the thief to be Chang-how."

"But I know it isn't Anarky, because Anarky always had a blundering, awkward, above-board way of stealing that made it only taking things, and she was always getting caught; and Chang-how always manages not to be found out. And I know it is Chang-how; I know it by that. It shows he is used to it."

Chang-how would come to me (he was dining-room servant, you remember): "Evly one spoonee no come homee."

"I am sure I don't know were you are to look. And two forks were missing last week!"

I stared reflectively at a June-bug on the window-sill. Chang-how stood with folded hands and drooping shoulders, a seraphic calm upon his features, as of one who had stood upon the burning deck when all but he had fled. Evidently he had done his duty. I was so impressed with this fact, and that the responsibility, if not the guilt, was now mine, that I simply said, "Go set the table then, Chang-how. Mr. Smith will have to tell us what to do when he comes home."

"You see dat again? Ain't but fo' par lef'! Ef I don't beat him, shoze I'm a nigger!"

"'Tain't nobody but dat yaller varmint dat's stealin' roun' de lot.—Lor'! Lor'! ef I jes' could cotch him!"

"Anarky, while we are talking about it, I—I really wish you would manage a little better about the biscuit and—well, the eggs, and—and a good many little things of the kind. I am sure we have an abundance of everything, and it mortifies me exceedingly not to have it at table. Haven't you and Chang everything you want, and as much?"

"We gits more'n 'nuff. An' what goes outen de kitchen goes correc'. Whar dey lands 'tween dar an' de din'-room don't nobody know but dat yaller dorg. I misses things cornstant—things dat I ain't took my eyes off 'em, 'cep' ter wink; an', bless de Lord! while I wor a-winkin' de lard done took to its heels or de flour flewed away."

The next evening, when Chang brought in supper, Anarky walked by his side in solemn state, empty-handed, dignified, watchful. He appeared totally unconscious of his escort, and I made no remark; but Mr. Smith sent him into the hall on an errand, and during his absence Anarky rose to explain: "Which you see all dem biskit, Mis' Maud?"

"Well, I got dat many mo' in de ub'n now—jes' like I use ter hab 'fo' dat—" Here an appalling idea seemed to strike her. "War dat Chow-chow nigger?" she exclaimed, and made a dash toward the door. As she reached it Chang-how quietly glided in and handed Mr. Smith the paper he had gone for.[Pg 116]

The next moment a sound came from the kitchen—something between a howl and a roar—and following in its wake came Anarky. Almost inarticulate with rage, she shook her brawny fist in Chang-how's face. "You good-fur-nuthin' yaller houn'!" she exclaimed.

Mr. Smith wheeled around on his chair and looked at her in stern surprise. Chang-how stood his ground and gazed at her with the unruffled calm of a full moon beaming o'er a raging sea.

She turned to us, trembling with excitement: "Well, ef dat ain't de beatinest trick et ebber I seed! Think dat yaller houn' ain't stole de biskit outen de ub'n? An', 'fo' Gord! I didn't know he'd been out o' here long 'nuff for a dog to snap at a fly! Ef you ain't de oudaishusest—" She stopped and glared at him with the despairing, silent venom of one who felt herself a pauper in words, a verbal failure, a wretched creature who in the supreme hour of trial was proving herself the wrong person in the wrong place.

Chang-how's hands were folded, and his eyes rested dreamily on the floor. Evidently, he was contentedly rolling tea-leaves in his native land.

Suspiciously regarding the abnormal appearance of Chang-how's neat white jacket, I forbore to rebuke my sable favorite, but Mr. Smith, not having observed the little protuberances which had attracted my attention toward his more delicately-tinted protégé, said with decision, "Go to the kitchen, Anarky, and send in supper or bring it yourself; and make haste about it."

Anarky turned again to Chang-how and fixed her great black eyes on him in silence. Then she sounded a note of solemn warning: "Lord! Lord! Shang-hai!" said she, "ef ebber I does cotch you out an' out, ef ebber I does git a good square holt on you, I'll t'ar you all to pieces! Yo' mammy won't want what'll be left uv you, 'cos' 'twon't be wuf berryin'!"

"Shut upee! too much jawee," said Chang-how benignly, and dreamed again of his native land. But for three days nothing was missing in Anarky's department, and so far Chang-how escaped with unbroken bones.

On the evening of the fourth day I received a letter announcing the coming of visitors, and it unfortunately occurred to me that Chang-how might assist Anarky in the laundry, thus affording her an opportunity for greater display in the culinary department; so I called him up: "You washeeman, Chang-how?"

"Very well. As soon, then, as you leave the dining-room go to the laundry. And, Chang, no make cook cross."

Going to the laundry, I said to Anarky, "Chang-how will assist you in the ironing to-day, so that you can get through quickly and show my friends some of your best cooking, Anarky. I do hope—"

"Oh, he knows ever so much," said I with cheerful faith; "and I do hope you will try to get on nicely with him this time. You know what the Bible says about brothers dwelling together in unity, and all that?"

"Chang-jaw ain't none o' my brudder, an' I ain't none o' his'n," resisted Anarky.

"Oh yes, we are all brothers; and if[Pg 117] you will only be Chang-how's long enough to get through with the ironing, I will give you almost anything you want."

"Gimme a nigger all day long," said Anarky: "I fa'rly hates a Chinee an' a Orrisher."

"Try it to-day, though, Anarky, for my sake," said I persuasively; and she consented, though sulkily enough.

Hearing Chang-how coming, I seated myself on the stairway leading into the laundry, curious to see how they would work together.

Anarky pointed authoritatively to a heap of dried linen. "Sprinkle dem ar cloze," said she to Chang. "I'm gwine out in de yard to git what's on de line."

While she was gone, Chang-how, as is the manner of his people, filled his mouth with water, and was blowing it in a fine spray over the linen when Anarky appeared in the doorway, a basket of clothes on her head, her knuckles on her hips. As she caught sight of Chang-how moistening the linen with water from his mouth she stopped: she staggered, her basket fell to the floor, and, stooping down, she threw her hands above her head, then brought them down again with a violent slap on her knees.

"Good Lor'! come down," said she, "an' look at dat yaller houn' a-spittin' on Mis' Maud's cloze.—I got you now! Can't nobody blame me fur beatin' you 'bout dat."

Then she flew at him, and what a scene it was! She, black, brawny, of immense physical power—he, lithe, sinewy, supple as a panther. It was a spectacle! First one, then the other, seemed to have the advantage. She would catch him in her powerful grasp, and, lifting him off his feet, swing him in the air as if about to slam him to his final resting-place, when by some inexplicable manœuvre he would writhe from between her fingers or wriggle himself to the back of her neck and mash her nose flat against her breast as if bent on suffocating her or breaking her neck. In a moment she would reach back with both hands and pull him over her head very much as men doff a shirt. Likely as not, Chang came down with his heels in the air, and at it they would go again. Presently she was tripped, and fell with a violence that should have broken every bone in her body, but before Chang-how could pursue his advantage she had wheeled on her side, wound his queue halfway up her arm and had her knee on his breast.

"Good for you, An—! I mean, aren't you ashamed of yourself? Stop! for Heaven's sake, stop! You might kill him."

As well have spoken to the winds. And as they became more terribly in earnest I began to scream for help: "Stop, Anarky! (Murder! murder!)—Here, Chang, take the poker. (Mu—u—u—r—der!) Great Heaven! don't hit her with it! Stop, Chang-how! (Mur—d—e—r! Oh, mercy! somebody come!)—Here, Anarky, take the pota- (Mur—d—e—r—rr!)—potato-masher and don't kill (M—u—r—der!)—kill him with it, unless he kills you first.—Oh, mercy! mercy! I don't know what else to give you all to keep you from killing (Murder!)—killing each other with.—Anarky, you are breaking his neck!—Here's a flatiron, Chang! (Murder! Fire! fire! fire!)"

This brought the neighbors and the neighbors' children, and their neighbors and their neighbors' children, and finally a forlorn policeman, who marched Anarky to the magistrate's office and left Chang to do up his pigtail at leisure, and reflect how often he had sinned and gone unwhipt of justice, and now, in the hour of peace and in the act of duty, retribution had deliberately sought him out, and found him and disposed of him as afore told.

It seems that Anarky went quietly enough to the magistrate, who gave her the choice between going to jail and depositing five dollars as security for her appearance next morning for examination. Not having five dollars to deposit, she was allowed an hour in which to seek some one who would go bail for her. At the end of that time she returned to the office panting, exhausted, wiping the perspiration from her face with her blue cotton apron.[Pg 118]

Calmly turning down the sleeves that had been rolled above her shining black elbows, she replied with contempt, "I ain't been arter no bail: I dun been home an' finish beatin' de lites outen dat yaller houn'. Dat all de bail I wants! Which ef ennybody's lookin' fur him, dey kin fin' his pigtail, an' maybe a piece uv his head a-stickin' to it, hin' de chick'n-coop at Mas' Jim's. Now kyar me to jail an' lemme res'. I boun' he don't spit on no mo' cloze I got ter han'le!"

A dusky opening in a range of purpling hills; a vision of a cluster of small white human homes; a shining, murmuring little river spanned by a wooden bridge; a towering background of bald, steep rock, cleft at its base into a shadowy cavern,—such is the first of my memories of the Vaucluse. At the entrance of the little town stands a low white-walled building, over the door of which is a tablet inscribed thus: "On the site of this café Petrarch established his study. Here he wrote the lines—

On the banks of the classic Sorgue I was offered the photographs of Petrarch and Laura. I took them, and there, with the sweet May sunlight flooding all the sod, with the fresh spring grass and buds bursting into life beneath my feet, with the murmur of the glad young river in my ears, I stood and gazed upon the faces of those lovers of five hundred years ago, whose love was as a spring-time idyl. For they met in the spring, they parted in the spring, their intercourse was like the mingling of young winds with woodland violets; and, dust and ashes though they have been for centuries, they still prefigure to our hearts the eternal spring-time of the world.

And yet, could the picture that I held in my hand be a faithful reproduction of the famous portrait of Laura which was painted at the request of Petrarch by Simon Menimi and charmed him into verse with its loveliness? It represented simply the head and bust. The face was elongated, the cheeks hollow, the hair smoothed down below the ears. The long, oval, half-shut eyes wore a horrible leer, as though the owner were making a painful effort to close them. On the head was a stiff, ungainly jewelled helmet, which terminated low on the forehead in a triangular ornament. The long, slender throat was encircled by three rows of pearls. The dress was cut squarely across the neck, and was checkered off like a draught-board, while over one shoulder was thrown a small lace scarf. The whole expression of the figure was that of serious, earnest sobriety and saintliness, as understood by a mediæval painter and treated according to his conception of his art, which recognized no difference between a man's earthly love and his spiritual patron, and made them equally crude, righteous, quaint and angular.

But I felt that these harsh distorted outlines had naught in common with Petrarch's Laura. For she had golden hair that floated loose in the breeze and was the prison of enchained and captive Love, and she had roses, red and white, upon her face, and a throat of snowy purity, and a smile of such rare gentleness that when she passed them by men said, "Sure this is an angel come from heaven!" That is the Laura who for centuries has beamed upon [Pg 119]humanity—a sweet, benign, refreshing presence—from within her lover's sonnets. That is the Laura in whose reality I believe, but the Laura who lies imprisoned and disguised behind the grotesque mask of mediæval art I cannot, will not, recognize. In Petrarch's utterance I find Laura, a pure spiritual shape in mind and body and soul; but in her portrait I see only Laura clogged and choked and bound about with the trammels of early art and the weight of crude, untruthful detail. Thus, I believe that art at its best is but a dull, material, mechanical means for the translation or reproduction of thought and Nature, and that for the swift, living, electric flame of truth we must refer in all ages and climes to speech pure and simple—the speech of the poet.

There are many who doubt that the words in which Petrarch clothed his love for Laura were words of sincerity and truth, and who blame his fatal tendency to utilize every incident and feeling connected with her. Unquestionably, there was a strong element of earthliness, a dilution of the pure essence of his affection, in much that Petrarch wrote. It could hardly have chanced otherwise with a man into whose life worldly intercourse entered so largely. There must have been times when the pure light of revelation was hidden from him, and he unknowingly supplied its place with fancies of a lower kind. His experiences as he met them one by one were, I doubt not, faithfully and sincerely treated, but after they had fallen into the past he was enabled to view them by the cold strong light of the intellect, and the instincts of his nature led him to incorporate them in verse. It has always been a concomitant of the poetic character, except perhaps in those lofty organizations whose utterances are revelations, to regard its own personality objectively and treat it as material for expression in speech. The very word-crystallization that a thought or sentiment, however full of inspiration, must needs undergo to make it palpable, denotes an amount of conscious effort which detracts in a measure from its apparent spontaneity. But in spite of the quaint conceits, the frequent play upon words, the unworthy tricks of speech, the painful sacrifice to rhyme which occasionally mar his verse, I believe Petrarch was sincere. If he was only a pretence and a sham, then all the amatory poetry that has been written since his time, intellectual or analytic, passionate or sensuous, is a pretence and a sham. Petrarch's utterance must needs have been founded on truth, else never could it have stood the test of five centuries, and never would it have assimilated itself, as it has done, with the poetic speech of an entire race. I know of hardly an English poet in whose rhymes in the matter of love, and particularly among those of a narrower range of thought and a lower plane of vision, one cannot trace in a greater or less degree the influence of Petrarch. Thus, to me, Petrarch remains the very king of spring-time poets. There are summer poets, autumn poets and winter poets, but Petrarch was none of these. Neither his passion nor his poetry ever ripened into summer or faded into autumn. He will always typify the early youth of love and song. I can never open his book of sonnets that I do not hear the rustle of young winds in green boughs, and do not catch the faint sweet odor of violets and primroses—the violets and primroses that grow on the banks of the Sorgue in the Vaucluse—the violets and primroses that Laura wore in her hair when Petrarch saw her kneeling in the church of Santa Chiara in Avignon, and loved her all at once.

The bright little river Sorgue is here a rushing brook, tumbling and foaming over the great stones in its bed, and imprisoned between two green sloping banks covered with low trees and bushes and tendrils of creeping ivy. It finds birth, this merry, roaring brook, in a dark, mysterious, shadowy pool, overhung by wild fantastic masses of rock, which loses itself far back in a dim cavern beneath the cliffs. Black and motionless, sullen and inscrutable, it lies, this source of the river Sorgue, a very pool of Lethe, looking as though it knew it drew its sustenance from the deepest heart of the[Pg 120] earth, held communication with the hidden powers of Nature, and was one at the core with all the mighty waters of the creation. What a type of the poet's own genius—nourished deep down under the ground in the universal soul of humanity, fed by the elements that centuries of solution have infused into the hidden springs of the intellect, one in thought with all the great minds that have watered the arid fields of lower human intelligence, profound, unsearchable as the earth itself! And yet when it rises to the surface of the world it becomes only a sunny, murmuring river, which dances along among green banks and bushes; and, being noticed by the careless passer-by, who cannot see the deep infinity of waters of which it is the symbol, and knows not even whether they exist, is termed "a pretty stream of thought and fancy, but one that hath no profundity nor seriousness."

Across the river, on a hill just above its banks, a mass of tawny ruin fades away into the blue of the sky and the gray of the cliffs. Wild flowers grow all about it, dark brambles stretch their wanton arms over all its space, and through the clefts in its jagged surface gleam the shining walls of the village below and the hazy brightness of the wide Rhone country. The people call this bit of rare coloring the castle of "La Belle Laure," but we know that it was the home of a great cardinal, Petrarch's trusty friend and generous patron.

Down in the valley among the white village walls nestles a low brown house surrounded by a humble, sweet-smelling space of flowers. It is a dainty little spot of earth, this garden, hallowed by such rare associations. It is more precious than rubies, this small dark house, for it sheltered from the outer world the body and soul of Petrarch. The garden is enclosed by a hedge of sweet pale Provence roses and buds. I remembered, as I stood there with the breath of the beautiful blossoms creeping up about me, how Petrarch tells that walking one bright May day with Laura, a friend and confidant of both approached them and gave to each a rose, "all fresh and culled in Paradise," and said, "Such another pair of lovers the sun ne'er shone upon," and left them with a smile; and they remained all confused and trembling. Yes, I knew instinctively that it was here, on this very consecrated spot, that the sacred meeting had taken place; that he who gave the roses was no other than the good cardinal of the castle; and that those roses of five hundred years ago were the ancestors of the roses now blooming about me, and plucked from this very hedge. No wonder that the perfumes of Paradise are enchaliced in their hearts. Few flowers can boast such high and haughty lineage as these, the bright posterity of those transfigured love-tokens of centuries past. They are glorified for ever by association with the highest, purest phase of human relation. They have reached the apotheosis of flowerhood—the highest destiny vouchsafed to aught that grows. They have become one with thought in immortality.

In the heart of the little garden stands a laurel tree, a shoot from Petrarch's own sacred laurel tree. More young shoots and saplings are springing up about it, all issuing from the great root that lies deep underground—the root of five hundred years ago; and the tree overshadows all the garden and the little crystal brook that sparkles along by the side of the wall. As I gazed at the stately shape, with its shining black berries and its glossy dark leaves, I knew that I had found the keynote to much of Petrarch's music—not always that of his best and most inspired moods. The resemblance of the name of Laura to the laurel; the antique fable of the transformation of Daphne into a laurel, and its adoption by Apollo as his emblem; the old superstition that the laurel was shielded against thunderbolts; his desire to win the laurel crown as the guerdon of his pains, both amorous and poetic,—were chains of tradition and convention which Petrarch had not strength to break, pompous, meaningless hieroglyphics which he felt it his duty to interpret to men, hinderances and trammels to the development of his genius. The laurel tree of Petrarch's garden is a fair type[Pg 121] of one phase of the poet's own speech, prone to derive its significance from extraneous sources and overloaded with borrowed metaphor. But the laurel receives a new meaning if we picture to ourselves Madonna Laura reclining in its shadow on the banks of the little river, with flowers scattered all about her garments and little Loves disporting in the air about her wreathed head. Then it becomes instinct with life and vitality, and we wonder why Petrarch deemed it needful to resort to the dead and withered husks of antique fable for what lay there at his own cottage-door, and waited but to be lifted from the sod—a wealth of poetic illustration and conceit.

Since the day when I made the memory of the Vaucluse my own, I have read how a great festival was held there in the summer-tide in honor of Petrarch. I have read how they came, those intellectual debauchees, and rioted and revelled and wrangled and jarred, and poisoned the chaste, calm waters of the sacred river with the hot fumes of literary dissension and argument. I have read how they came, with their heads full of quotations and their notebooks full of impressions and hints for effective rhapsody—how they feasted on the silver trout of the Sorgue, and gathered Laura's roses to adorn their buttonholes, and stripped the consecrated laurel of its leaves to make garlands for their own dull heads, and poured forth international compliments, and glorified one another, and hugged themselves for delight at their fine comprehension of the poet, and fell on their knees before him, and immolated their individual hearts and souls at the shrine of his genius; and, lo! there was not a true appreciater of Petrarch among them all! The right appraiser of Petrarch has been there before and since, but he was not there then. The noise and the bustle and the wisdom of the multitude held him aloof, and he waited until a more convenient season. He comes by preference in the spring-time, knowing that then Nature and Petrarch sing in unison. He is a poet, because it takes a poet to understand a poet, no less than a hero a hero. He is of such simple, foolish mould that when he thinks there is no one near to spy him out he casts himself down upon the sod and kisses it with all tenderness, and caresses the daisies with his finger-tips, greeting them as his younger brethren; for there is something stirring in him which draws him nearer to earth's heart than other men, and he loves to dwell upon his common origin with flower and leaf. He does not fall down and worship Petrarch, because he knows that Petrarch is only one expression of the great power that lives behind all thought and speech—one part of the great whole that lies spread out before him on the river and the cliff. But he takes the old poet by the hand and looks straight into his eyes, and reads there what is written in his own heart, and says, "We twain are brethren and friends, sovereign and equal, for evermore."

If Petrarch had lived earlier in the centuries of Christianity, he would have been a monk. His genius would have found expression in the cloister-life, for the first monks were poets and philosophers. But he lived at a period when that beautiful principle of asceticism was no longer at one with genius. The fine essence of spirituality was gone from it, and it had hardened into senseless form and matter; and the law of his own mind forbade his pledging himself irrevocably to what in one mood seemed highest and most precious, but what another mood might contradict and openly defy. He knew that, although that ascetic temper which took possession of his soul at times when his genius was loudest, most clamorous, most importunate, was the basis of all monastic principle, he might not imprison it, fleeting, evanescent, within the dungeons of vows and formalism. And to-day, no less than in Petrarch's time, the same spirit walks the earth, shines through the actions and speech of all high souls, and yet refuses to bind itself to dull external shows and symbols.

If Petrarch had not withdrawn himself to the solitude of the Vaucluse, I doubt if we should know more of his passion for Laura to-day than could be told in a score of sonnets. For with his mind[Pg 122] overloaded by the sights and sounds and honors that were heaped upon him, he never could have separated her from the contingent circumstances that surrounded their intercourse in Avignon. But there, on the banks of the Sorgue, he viewed her image from afar, dismissed all the attendant episodes of palace and revel, court and council, and beheld only the ideal—or rather the real—Laura in her own worth and significance. Surely, never was there verse through which showed so plainly the Nature under whose auspices it was brought forth as those songs of Petrarch. I seem to feel that they were written in solitude, not sublime, but pleasing, and in a narrow valley shut out from contemplation of aught else. And I know, as I leave the Vaucluse behind me, how deep a hold the memory of the loved fountain must needs have taken upon the poet's mind, for I too have made me a picture of a river, and a grotto, and a shadowy pool, and a low brown house, and a stately laurel tree, which will always live in my sense. And these things resolve themselves into one with a few scattered sonnets, and a shadowy gold-haired form, and a handful of sweet small roses, and, lo! I have made incarnate and have bound fast to me for ever that beautiful old-time idyl of the Vaucluse.

Rooshia? Why, yes, I ought to know something about Rooshia, seein' I've lived there, off and on, this fifteen year and more; and if a young man was to come to me and ax me where's the best place for a workin' man to git on, I'd say to him, jist as I says it to you now, "Go to Rooshia!" Why so? says you. Well, jist this way. You see, cotton-mills and mowin'-machines and steam-ploughs and sich are quite new ideas out there; and they haven't got the trick of workin' 'em properly, not yet; so that any man as has got it is pretty safe to git anything he likes to ax in the way o' wages. Why, I knowed a man once—common factory-hand he was when he started: couldn't read nor write, nor nothin'; but he had his wits about him, all the same,—well, he cum out here 'bout ten year ago, and went to some place on the Volga, with some crack-jaw name or other that I can't reck'lect. First year he was there he got as good pay as any overseer at home; next year he was overseer himself; two year arter that he owned his own mill, he did; and now, jist t'other day I gits a letter from him to say he's goin' home ag'in, with money in both pockets, and a-goin' to buy a big house and a bit o' ground, and I don't know what all. And if that ain't gittin' on, I should jist like to know what is!

But you mustn't think, neither, as it's all jist as easy as supping porridge: it ain't that, nohow. I can tell yer, if you was to go into one o' them hot work-rooms on a roastin' day in July, with the thermometer anywhere you like above a hundred, you'd feel more like lyin' down in the shade and havin' a drink o' beer than workin' hard for nine or ten hours on end. They say we overseers have an easy life of it. I wish them as says so had jist got to try it themselves for a day or two. Then, ag'in, most likely there's only one road from your place to the nearest town, and jist when you want to send off your stuff it'll come on pourin' rain for ever so long, and the whole road'll be nothin' but plash and mash, like a dish of cabbage-soup; and there the stuff'll have to lie idle for weeks and weeks, and you've jist got to grin and bear it. And in them parts, instead of[Pg 123] one good pelt and have done with it, it keeps on drip, drip, drip, for days and days in a sneaking half-and-half kind o' way, as if it hadn't the pluck to come out with a good hearty pour. The very thunder don't make a good round-mouthed peal like it does at home, but a nasty jabberin' row, jist as if it was a-tryin' to talk French. And, altogether, it is a place to try a chap's temper: it is, indeed.

Are the native workmen good for much? says you. Well, that depends pretty much on how you look at it. When you've once shown 'em how to do a thing, they'll do it every bit as well as yourself; but they take a powerful deal o' showin', they do. You see, a Rooshan has his own way of doin' everything, and tryin' to teach him any other way is as bad as eating soup with a one-pronged fork. And then to see how thick some on 'em are! Why, they may well be brave in battle, for it 'ud take a precious clever bullet to git through one of their 'eads, it would. Here's one sample for yer: A friend o' mine in Mosker had got a Rooshan servant—one o' them reg'lar Derevenskis ("villagers"), and so one day he sends him to the shop with two o' them twenty-kopeck pieces,[30] tellin' him to buy bread with one and butter with t'other. Off goes the chap, and never comes back ag'in; so at last his master goes to see what's up; and there he finds Mr. Ivan at the door of the shop, holdin' out the money in one hand and scratchin' his head with t'other, as if he'd forgot his own name, and couldn't find hisself nowhow. "Oh, barin" ("master"), says he in a voice like a fit o' chollerer, "whatever am I to do now? I've been and mixed the two pieces, and now I don't know which was the one for the bread and which for the butter."

As for the Tartars, they're troublesome in another way. They make prime workmen—there's no denyin' it; and I had ought to know, seein' I was over a gang of 'em myself for more'n a year—but they're the hot-bloodedest lot as ever I saw yet, and reg'lar born imps for fightin'; and when they git up a shindy, look out! I can speak, for I saw the big fight betwixt them and the Rooshans at Kazan 'bout three year ago; and if you cares to hear the story, I'll tell yer jist how it all happened.

You tell me as you've been to Kazan, and so, o' course, you'll remember that the "Tartar Town," as they calls it, lies a mile or two east o' the reg'lar Rooshan quarter; and midway between 'em's a dry gully (leastways, it's dry in the summer-time, but you should jist see it arter the spring thaw!), with a little bridge over it. Now, the Rooshan gangs and the Tartar gangs, a-comin' from their work, used to cross each other jist at this bridge; and o' course there was a good deal o' chaffin' among 'em, and some fightin', too, now and then; for I needn't tell you that a Rooshan and a Tartar are jist about as fond of each other as a Rooshan and a Turk. Now-a-days, the masters have had the gumption to change the hours of work, and keep 'em out of each other's way; but in my time there was a scrimmage nearly every week, though nothin' like this 'un I'm tellin' of.

Well, sir, I'd knocked off early that evenin', and strolled back to my place with a young Rooshan merchant as I knowed—a right good feller, name o' Michael Feodoroff. Just at the bridge we stopped to have a look at the sunset; and a rare sight it was! There was the dark-red tower of the old Tartar gateway standin' out ag'in the bright evenin' sky, and the citadel-wall with all its turrets and battlements, and the gilt cupolers o' the churches in the town, and the great green plain of the Volga away below us, and the broad river itself a-shinin' wherever the light fell on it, and the purple hills beyond tipped with gold every here and there, jist like them Delectable Mountains as mother used to read about on Sundays when I was a boy.

While we were standin' lookin' at it up comes half a dozen Rooshan workmen, a-goin' home from their work, and four or five Tartars from t'other side, a-goin' home from theirn; and they meets jist on the bridge. As they crossed each other one o' the Rooshans pulls a bit o' sassage out of his pocket and holds it up to the foremost Tartar (a great[Pg 124] ugly-lookin' bruiser with one eye), and says to him, chaffin' like, "Hollo, Mourad! d'ye want a bit o' grease to make yer beard grow?"

Now, I needn't tell you that offerin' pork to a Mussulman is like drinkin' Dutch William's health at an Irish fair; and the words warn't well out o' the Rooshan's mouth afore the Tartar had him by the throat and was bangin' his head ag'in' the bridge-rails as if he was drivin' a nail with it.

Then, all in one minute, a whole crowd of 'em seemed to start up out o' the werry earth, and we found ourselves right in the middle of a reg'lar tearin' fight—tossin' arms and fierce faces whirlin' all round us; men strikin' and grapplin' and clawin' like fury; the broad, bearded faces of the Rooshans and the flat sallow mugs of the Tartars all blurred up together; and sich a yellin' and cursin' and screechin' a-goin' on that I a'most thought myself one o' them old Roman hemperors a-lookin' on at a wild-beast fight in the Call-and-see-'em.

I was so took aback that I jist stood and stared like a fool; but Feodoroff had his wits about him, and dragged me into a corner where we could see it all without bein' swep' in. I saw d'reckly that it was more than a plain bout o' fisticuffs, for several of the Rooshans had got out their knives, and were slashin' about like one o'clock; and the Tartars, on their side, had begun to tear out the rails o' the palisade and to crack the skulls of the Rooshans with them. Just then Ivan Martchenkoff, one o' my best men, came tumblin' down at my feet with half a dozen Tartars atop of him; and as he fell he caught sight of me, and cried to me for help.

Well, that was more'n I could stand. I busted loose from Feodoroff (who tried to hold me), and leapt right among 'em. I cotched the uppermost Tartar by the scruff o' the neck, and chucked him away like a kitten; and the second I hit sich a dollop behind the ear as made him look five ways at once; but just then two o' the rips jumped upon me from behind, and down I went. Then Feodoroff flew in to save me, but the crowd closed upon him, and down he went too; and I thought 'twas all up with us both.

Jist then I heerd a rumble of wheels up the slope leadin' to the bridge, and then a great shout of "Soldati! soldati!" ("The soldiers! the soldiers!").

Then I lay close to the ground and made myself as small as I could, for I knowed that if they fired into sich a crowd with cannon it 'ud just mow 'em down like grass. The next minute I heerd an orficer's voice singin' out, "Halt! front! fire!" But instead of the bang of a cannon there cum a hiss like fifty tea-kettles a-bilin' over, and then a great splash, and the crowd scattered fifty ways at once; and I found myself wringin' wet all in a minute. Then somebody gripped hold o' me and pulled me up, and there was Feodoroff, and beside him Lieutenant Berezinski of the garrison laughin' fit to burst. And when I looked round the whole place was a puddle o' water, with dozens of men rollin' in it like flies in treacle; and at the end of the bridge was ten or twelve sogers, and right in front of 'em a great steam fire-engine! Then I understood it all, and began laughin' as loud as anybody.

"I think I have," says the lieutenant; "and that, too, without wasting a cartridge or killing a man. When you go home to England, Yakov Ivanovitch (James son of John), you can say that if you haven't stood fire, you've stood water, and been at the battle of Voyevoda."[31]

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE COLORED CREOLES OF BALTIMORE.

It is well known that many French families, fugitives from St. Domingo, took refuge in Baltimore during the last decade of the eighteenth century. They gracefully and gratefully accepted favors and kindness of various kinds, but they were too proud and self-reliant to resign themselves to eat the bread of charity or lead lives of indolence. Some, born to fortune and ancient titles, employed their talents and accomplishments promptly and without hesitation. Counts and marquises became gardeners (introducing a great variety of fruits and vegetables unknown before in the United States), dancing-masters, music-teachers, drawing-masters, architects, chemists, confectioners, cigar-makers and teachers of their own beautiful language. The names of many of those émigrés are now borne by the most estimable citizens of the community which first sheltered their ancestors: they are ornaments of society, distinguished in the professions and skilled in the arts and sciences.

But it is not of this high and noble class that I desired to speak: it is of a more humble but not less worthy set of French people who came here at the same time. I allude to the colored creoles who were the born slaves of these ladies and gentlemen. Some shared the dangers of their flight from St. Domingo: others found a way, by tedious voyages, to join their old masters and tender their services, not as slaves, but as honest, humble, faithful servants. It was honorable both to master and slave that such cordial relations should have existed under such trying circumstances. Some of the creoles were good cooks, bakers, snuff-makers, laundry-women, etc.; and the most beautiful and touching part of this relation between the master and their former slaves was that hundreds of the latter laid the profits of their labor at the feet of their white friends with reverence and devotion. Many old ladies and gentlemen, accustomed to every attention from the best trained servants, were altogether incapable of helping themselves, and were dependent on the bounty and tender care of their former slaves. Most of the better class of French émigrés retained all their former habits of domestic life, such as taking a cup of coffee before rising in the morning and an eleven-o'clock déjeuner à la fourchette, while those who could afford it had a modest petit souper at nine o'clock in the evening. At the latter were often found the élite of this French society. Music, dancing and refined conversation were indulged in for two or three hours: old memories and stirring events were recalled and the bonds of nationality and family affection were more closely knit. French only was spoken at these soirées, and the elegant manners of the old school were observed in perfection.

The most remarkable of this set was a Madame Valanbrun, the widow of a gentleman of large fortune and high position in St. Domingo. He died before the Revolution. She was only twenty-five when the massacre took place, beautiful, accomplished and fascinating. Her estates were extensive, and she lived in one of the principal cities of the island. At the time of the outbreak she escaped to a Baltimore vessel, accompanied by several of her house-servants, and saved a part of her fortune—plate, jewels and some gold coin. Arriving in Baltimore, she found several of her friends already there. With the elastic temper peculiar to the French, she determined to make the best of her changed circumstances. Having purchased a large house in a cheap part of the city, she fitted up her own suite of rooms on the second floor. Here she received company, and was attended by her servants as if she had been a queen. At that period snuff-taking was very fashionable and almost universal. Some of madame's servants[Pg 126] were very expert in making snuff, cigars and cigarettes: these articles they sold at high prices, for they soon became well known. Others of her servants made confections, cakes, sweetmeats, which they carried around in baskets: some made dresses, and others went out as nurses. The arrangements for all these various employments were made by the servants themselves, but the profits were carefully reserved for the queen bee of the hive.

For many years Madame Valanbrun was the centre of the French society of Baltimore. She had few acquaintances outside of this circle, but the most distinguished foreigners who visited the city—French, Spanish and Italian—and several young Americans ambitious to become better acquainted with the French language, were glad to have the entrée of her salon.

Time wore on. The Bourbons were restored to the throne, and many French families returned to France to seek their lost fortunes. Some were successful, but most of them were doomed to disappointment and continued poverty. Madame Valanbrun remained contented with her humble but comfortable lot. By degrees her corps of servants was reduced by death, a new race of competitors sprang up, and her income each year grew less and less.

In 1832, when the Asiatic cholera fell upon Baltimore like an Alpine avalanche upon a quiet Italian village, the colored creoles suffered more, relatively, than any other portion of the population, probably because they lived in the more confined streets in the centre of the city. The venerable physician who furnished most of the particulars for this sketch said: "I was passing through a narrow and rather dirty street one day during the height of the cholera, when I met Dr. B——, who asked me whether I did not know Madame Valanbrun: if so, would I go with him to see her in one of the houses near? He had been there a few hours before, and thought she had a severe attack of cholera. We went, and found the venerable old lady in articulo mortis. She was much changed, and the surroundings indicated an equally great change in her circumstances which it was melancholy to witness. But one feature redeemed all that was disgusting in the picture: round the squalid bed five or six old negroes, men and women, knelt in deep devotion like fixed statues, offering up their prayers to the Throne of grace for the departing soul of their beloved mistress, whose life had been so chequered by the sunshine of pleasure and the clouds of adversity. She had just received the last rites of the Church. The priest had retired to perform similar duties elsewhere, leaving the humble but devoted blacks to watch the last breath of life and to close the eyes of their lifelong friend and mistress. I never felt more veneration at the deathbed of any of my own kindred, or deeper respect for mourners than I then felt for those faithful servants of Madame Valanbrun. The old lady died that evening. She devised the small remnant of her property to be divided among her old servants in common.

"Among these colored Creoles were some remarkable women. Well do I remember Suzette, Fanny, Clementine, as faithful watchers at sick beds: many precious lives did they save by their skill, judgment and fidelity. They were not eye-servants, working for money only: they worked from the purest motives of benevolence, from the sentiment of Christian charity.

"Another instance of fidelity came under my notice when I was a student of medicine in 1819. I boarded at a good old Frenchman's, whose few domestics were French creoles. One of these was the washerwoman. When quite young she had left St. Domingo with her old mistress, who had been kind to her in the days of prosperity on the island. The old lady managed to save a small portion of her wealth, and lived quietly with her former servant, now her faithful friend. Madame Curchon, as she grew older, required more comforts than her slender means could afford, and Lizette determined to take in washing. She soon obtained as much as she could attend to, and spent her earnings in making madame comfortable in her old age.[Pg 127]

"About this time appeared a fine-looking negro sailor from St. Domingo. He had heard that Lizette, his former sweetheart, was alone in Baltimore, and he came in search of her. He found her. She welcomed him joyously, with her affection for him unchanged. He told her he would marry her at once and take her back to the West Indies. Lizette explained to her lover that she considered herself bound in honor to her old mistress, though no longer her slave, adding that if he would give her five hundred dollars to leave with Madame Curchon her conscience would be free of all charge of ingratitude, and she would follow him to any part of the world. He said he would not pay a dollar for her, as she was a free woman and had worked for the old lady long enough.

"This little love-story came to the knowledge of the boarders through our kind-hearted landlady, and they agreed to subscribe one hundred dollars toward the payment of the amount fixed on by Lizette: the old mistress knew nothing of this romance in low life. Some weeks passed: the man remained stubborn in his idea of right, and she in her conscientious sense of what was due to her dear old mistress. Lizette positively refused to abandon madame to an old age of poverty. Her lover finally returned to the West Indies without her. Whatever disappointment the faithful creole may have suffered, she remained true to her trust, and was for many years the comfort and companion of this poor old French lady."

Another instance of creole gratitude and fidelity is worth recording. A lady who had enjoyed wealth and luxury at home escaped the massacre, but arrived in America entirely destitute. Her feeble health required constant care and delicate food. She was accompanied in her flight by her faithful servant Fanny, who devoted herself to the care and comfort of her former mistress. Fanny rented a small brick house containing five rooms—two chambers, two rooms below and a kitchen. In the upper rooms she made her dear old godmother as comfortable as any lady could be, and when her duties called her elsewhere she placed another in attendance there. The constant piety of this excellent creole was an edifying sight. Fanny still lives, but her dear friend is no more: she believes firmly that they will again be united, to part no more.

One fact connected with these colored Creoles is worthy of mention. Although they have been living in this country for more than three-quarters of a century, they have never united themselves, as social beings, with any of our American negroes. They have treated them with kindness and politeness, helped them in poverty and visited them in sickness, but have never intermarried with them, never gone to their churches, never joined any of the various African societies so conspicuous on certain days of parade. Distinguished for their honesty, they have seldom appeared in the courts either as plaintiffs or defendants. Respected by all, they have never demanded social equality.

Scarcely a dozen of the colored creoles who originally emigrated from St. Domingo are now alive, but their descendants are numerous. They form a very worthy part of the community in which they live. They retain many of the traditionary qualities of their ancestors, and among the shiftless, dependent and often destitute negroes around them they are conspicuous for their industry, integrity and morality.

GLIMPSES OF BRUSSELS.

To leave Paris for Brussels is to exchange excitement for tranquillity, a crowd for a few, the oppressive newness and vivacity of to-day for a mild animation tempered with a flavor of bygone ages. Brussels has been called a miniature Paris. I should rather consider her as the younger sister of the great city—less beautiful, less decked out, less accomplished, less versed in the ways of the world, yet keeping a certain freshness and virginity of aspect that is lacking in her more brilliant elder.

There is one thing that a foreign resident of Paris is apt to find very [Pg 128]enjoyable in Brussels, and that is the absence of the eternal crowd that mars for many people a full enjoyment of the pleasant places of Paris. Her thronging millions overwhelm you on every festive day or joyous occasion. Any little outside show or attraction calls together in some restricted space the population of a small city. Thirty thousand people rushed to hear the Spanish students play on the guitar in the garden of the Tuileries. Twenty thousand go every Sunday to the Salon during the period that it remains open. One hundred thousand go out to the races on ordinary days, and twice that number attend the Grand Prix. Hence comes a famine of conveyances and of seats, and a plethora of companions that are far from being uniformly agreeable.

In Brussels one has enough of human surroundings. There is no lack of companionship in her gardens, her galleries, her streets and her parks. She is not a solitude, as are some of the dead cities of Italy and Germany or some of the minor provincial towns in Belgium and France. The influence of her three hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants is very comfortably apparent. But where Paris pours forth her tens of thousands, Brussels sends out some hundreds. Hence there is always room and to spare. And she is well-to-do in the world, is this pretty capital of Belgium. She is growing and thriving, and wears every mark of an active and contented prosperity. New and handsome streets meet the view on every side. Foremost among these is the elegant Avenue Louise, named after the late queen of the Belgians, which leads out to the spacious and lovely Bois de la Cambre, a second Bois de Boulogne, omitting the traces of the siege. The Avenue Louise reminds me very much of South Broad street in Philadelphia. It forms an almost unbroken row of elegant private residences, extending for full two miles to the very gate of the Bois. The centre of the roadway is macadamized and bordered with rows of trees, thus forming a charming road to the Bois for the private carriages of the Belgian aristocracy.

The royal family of Belgium appear but little in public. A series of family misfortunes, combined with the ill-health of the king, has induced them to live in comparative retirement. Of the children of the late king Leopold, but three survive, the present king, the Count de Flandres and the luckless empress Charlotte. The last, still sunk in a state of hopeless insanity, inhabits the Château de Tervueren. The king, with his wife and family, passes most of his time at the Château de Laeken. He is a great sufferer from a disease which has attacked one of his legs. The queen, an Austrian archduchess, was formerly one of the most beautiful princesses of Europe, but she has never regained either her health or her spirits since the death of her only son some years ago, and looks faded and careworn. On the king's death the crown will pass to his only brother, the Count de Flandres. This gentleman, whose wife, a beautiful and spirited lady, is a princess of the house of Hohenzollern, is as deaf as a post. He inhabits a very handsome palace in the heart of Brussels, and his own sleeping apartments are on the ground floor. One summer night the sentinel in charge was amazed to see a crowd gathered in front of the windows of the count's room, and evidently highly amused. On approaching it was discovered that the attendants had failed to close the outside shutters, and had drawn the lace curtains merely. The room was brilliantly lighted, and of course every part of it was distinctly visible from without. And there,

the heir to the Belgian throne was peacefully walking to and fro in a brown study, unconscious that the eyes of some hundreds of his future subjects were fixed upon his lightly-draped form. His deafness prevented him from hearing the noise outside the window, and rendered all warnings by means of sounds ineffectual. So the prince's chamberlain was aroused, and after some delay His Royal Highness was released from his very undignified position.

Among the proprietors of the new [Pg 129]buildings of Brussels is cited the empress Eugénie. Whole rows of newly-erected and handsome shops were pointed out to me as being her property. A very strong sympathy for the dethroned imperial family seemed to be prevalent in Brussels, as well as an equally strong dislike to the Germans. I was amused to find that two animals in the Zoological Garden, a very cross monkey and a savage-looking African boar, both bore the name of Bismarck.

This Zoological Garden, by the by, is unworthy of the beautiful city to which it belongs. It is small, shabby and ill-kept, contains very few animals, and has become a sort of beer-garden, with open-air concerts and a skating-rink for its chief attractions. A very large and beautiful aquarium, a vast grotto of artificial rock-work, is really worth seeing, but its contents are of the most commonplace kind.

The picture-gallery—or Musée Royal, as it is called—has recently been rearranged, and the modern paintings that used to be on view in the ducal palace are now installed in a series of new and beautifully-decorated rooms. Thither have also been removed a number of pictures by contemporary Belgian painters that used to adorn the public buildings of Brussels. Chief among these is Gallait's noble picture of the Abdication of Charles V. This fine work, considered by some critics as the masterpiece of the great Belgian artist, is worthy of the pencil of Delaroche. Nor is it in style unlike the best productions of that master, recalling the Death of Elizabeth by its admirable grouping and refinement of color. Verboeckhoven is seen here at his best, his Flock of Sheep in a Storm, a large and carefully-finished work, being replete with all the most striking characteristics of his genius. Madou's Interrupted Ball is a brilliant and vivacious representation of a village festival troubled by the intrusion of a group of dandies of the Directory—gay Incroyables who chuck the country damsels under the chin, rouse their swains to jealous wrath and otherwise misconduct themselves. Rohbe's pictures of still life are perfect feasts of coloring, warm, rich and glowing as the heart of a crimson rose brimming with the sunshine and sweetness of a summer's day.

The Musée itself is a noble building, and in point of arrangement and of decoration forms a contrast to the dreary halls of the Luxembourg. The gallery devoted to the old masters contains some valuable specimens of early Flemish art, and some extremely interesting historical portraits, the gem of the collection being a wonderfully fine portrait by Holbein of Sir Thomas More.

But the most interesting point in all Brussels is the Hôtel de Ville. That marvellous edifice, that looks as though it ought to be preserved in a velvet-lined case, so delicate and elaborate are its multitudinous sculptures, lifts the exquisite tracery of its spire against the summer sky, as perfect in its beauty as when Alva and Egmont and Orange passed beneath its shadow ages ago. No spot in Europe, save perhaps the Tower of London, is more haunted by historic memories than is this perfect marvel of architectural beauty. The centuries roll back as we stand beneath its shadow. There is a stain of blood upon the stones, and Philip of Spain rides by, and the duke of Alva comes through yonder doorway, and the air is full of thronging phantoms and of cries—the wail of the Netherlands beneath the sword of the oppressor.

Around the Hôtel de Ville are grouped a series of antique buildings, the one more exquisite than the other—the ancient halls of the corporations of Brussels, among which that of the brewers shows supreme by reason of the luxury of its carvings and the care wherewith its beauty and solidity have been maintained throughout the centuries. In one of the simplest houses of the square Victor Hugo first took refuge after the great catastrophe of the coup d'état. It bore the number 27. A tobacco-shop occupied the ground floor. The poet's parlor was furnished in a style of bald simplicity, with chairs and a sofa covered with black haircloth. But he was wont to say, pointing to the Hôtel de Ville,[Pg 130] "I have the most wonderful piece of carving in the world for a sideboard." In this modest abode he wrote Napoléon le Petit. Then, stirred by the historic memories around him, he chose the Inquisition itself for a subject, and planned his as yet unpublished tragedy of Torquemada. The dwelling in the Grande Place became the haunt of all the proscribed republicans of France. Yet Belgium gave them but a cold welcome and grudging hospitality. They were subjected to a series of humiliating formalities, chief among which was the requirement of the authorities that each should provide himself with a permit of residence. These permits were temporary and revocable, and their holders were obliged to go weekly to ask for their renewal at the central police-office. It is not surprising, therefore, that so few of the fugitives should have remained in Belgium. Seven thousand took refuge there after the coup d'état, but only two hundred and fifty took up their abode on Belgian soil. Yet Brussels remained, in some sense, the continental head-quarters of Victor Hugo, though never kindly or generous in her treatment of the great exile. In 1871, the rumor having gone abroad that he had offered shelter to some of the fugitive Communists, his house was attacked by an armed mob, and its inmates barely escaped with their lives.

Brussels possesses among her other sights a curiosity with which she could very well dispense—namely, the Wiertz Gallery. It is a collection of horrors depicted on a colossal scale by a man whose powers of painting were scarcely equal to those of a respectable scene-painter. A series of nightmares, expressed with a sort of epileptic violence and without any artistic value, clothe the walls of the immense studio with gigantic abominations. There is neither originality of conception nor intelligence of execution to redeem their hideousness: their horror is of the simplest bugaboo kind. A man blowing his head to pieces with a pistol-shot; a supposed corpse coming to life in its coffin; the First Napoleon in the flames of hell, with a multitude of women shaking at him the bloody severed limbs of their sons and husbands; a child burned alive in its cradle; the head of a decapitated criminal, and the visions that filled its brain,—such are some of the ghastly imaginings of this diseased and uneducated nature. Compare such works as these with Doré's crudest conceptions, and the difference between the inventions of genius and those of a morbid intellect becomes at once apparent.

AN OFF YEAR.

It is a great luxury to find ourselves and the country in the midst of what Marshal MacMahon might style a quadrennate, and to be at the neutral and central point from which a much-vexed people can look both ways for a Presidential election. The contest of two years ago is over, and that of two years hence not near enough to beget mentionable worry. This equator of partisanship, lying midway between the two polls, is a happy medium of repose. The trade-winds of party passion blow from both sides fiercely toward it, but fail to break its calm. The average American—even the average professional American politician—possesses his soul in patience. He looks forward to no revolution, and, when he thinks of the matter at all, is entirely certain that the night of the first Tuesday in November, 1880, will bring nothing more tremendous than the usual hubbub among the telegraph-operators, the reporters and the haunters of the clubs and leagues. He doubts the due abnormal succession of the Presidents as little as he does that of the British kings, and a great deal less than he does that of some of the continental monarchs, to say nothing of the French ruler, whose septennate happens also to be within about two years of its close.

So pleasant it is to be at leisure to bestow attention on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, without thought of the usually engrossing machinery so painfully and minutely contrived for facilitating our advance to those ends! To forget the means and for once look at the object; to ignore the strife for free [Pg 131]government, and be placidly and contentedly free; to shut our eyes on eternal vigilance, and realize that we have paid that price and have the receipt in our pockets; to intermit our nursing of the tree and enjoy the fruit; to feel that life in a republic is not necessarily and always "the fever called living,"—such is, for the present interval, our lot. Self-government is such very hard work that those engaged in it are entitled to occasional holidays. Nature demands it. Whether their stated Sabbath come once in four years or once in seven, it must come. No wonder that it is apt to prove too welcome and seductive, and that healthy relaxation should grow into harmful lethargy, Sunday into "Blue Monday." Examples of that result are abundant enough to warn us when we need warning. They have chromoed in brilliantly illuminated text, in all the languages and alphabets, the maxim about eternal vigilance, and hung it up over our council-fires and our domestic hearths. We can only venture, perhaps, to half close our eyes and view it sleepily as through cigar-smoke, or turn our backs upon it for a little while and go out into a world of other cares which takes no note of elections, constitutions, statutes or office-holding. The shorter the interval the less should our enjoyment of it be marred. Investigations into past elections serve only to interfere with it, or to assist the newspapers in interfering with it; and newspapers are our daily food or a part of it. Three-fourths of the reading-matter in the five or six thousand of them published in the Union are filled with politics, although the conductors of them, like the rest of us, are aware that politics are temporarily in eclipse. They can teach us nothing on that subject, and we want to learn nothing. Their occupation as trade-journals devoted to the art and science of government is gone. Other periodicals devoted to a specialty, whether iron, coal, calico or the Thirty-nine Articles, show judgment and compassion on their readers when a "slack" time comes by turning miscellaneous and slipping in choice literary tidbits among their regular "shop" items. The five thousand should do likewise. If they will not wholly exclude politics, they might at least sweep political news and disquisitions into a separate corner of the sheet—say among the jokes, base-ball accidents and last year's advertisements.

Could our legislators and their chroniclers only convince themselves that they are de trop, that the best they can do just now is to assist us in cultivating a transitory oblivion of them and their deeds, and that, instead, they are depriving us of the refreshment of our forty winks, they would show a correct understanding of the situation. If they cannot be altogether silent, they might at least give their noise another pitch, and direct it into some humdrum monotone that would not jar upon our slumbers. Do their worst, however, they cannot take from us the delicious consciousness that it will be two years before another Presidential campaign. Panoplied in that reflection, we can stand a good deal.

We sometimes think it must have been a vast relief to the Poles when partition came and the three powers for good and all put an end to their perpetually recurring agony of electing a king. To the masses of the people, who were serfs, and had no more the right of suffrage or any other attribute of liberty than their cattle, we have no doubt it was so. Only by the small minority of privileged and fussy nobles, who went armed to the hall of election, ready to silence effectually any troublesome minority-man who should undertake to defeat their choice with his veto, could the loss of the wonted excitement have been seriously felt. That it was a relief to the neighboring nations, whose peace was constantly compromised by the recurrence of Poland's stormy call for a new king, is certain enough. The change threw a few very worthy men out of business—the Kosciuskos, Pulaskis, Czartoriskis, etc.—but it did away with a much larger number who were standing nuisances, and it left the surplus energy of many more to seek more legitimate and profitable paths. Of course the fate of the Poles, prosperous though their [Pg 132]country is beyond anything dreamed of in the days of its nominal independence, is not enviable to us. It were to be wished that they had been cured of the regular—or irregular—spasms of selecting a chief without losing their national autonomy. What we remark is, that the strain of that convulsion was greater than they or their neighbors could bear, and that all concerned, with the trifling exceptions named, must have breathed freer and deeper when it was put an end to.

CONJUGAL DISCORDS.

The weaknesses and follies of woman are a theme on which men, from the sage to the clown, have at all times been eloquent. Her natural coquetry in dress, her maternal vanity, her devotion to the little elegancies of the home, to clean windows and fresh curtains, are inexhaustible sources of masculine merriment or abuse. What housekeeper ever complained of an aching back or of nervous irritation without being scolded by her "lord" for some extra work she had done in beautifying the home? Men never seem to learn that women, as a rule, cannot find life endurable in the atmosphere of dust and disorder which characterizes bachelor housekeeping, and which seldom disturbs the equanimity of the masculine mind in the least. Men and women are so different in their tastes and ways that there must always be discord and unhappiness in the household until the sexes give over trying to change or remodel those tastes and ways, and learn to respect them. Men must accept as inevitable the fact that women to be happy must have artistic, or at least dainty and cozy, environments; and women must learn to preserve their souls in quiet when men spill their tobacco and ashes over the carpets and tables, for probably no man ever lived who could fill a pipe, even from a wash-tub, without scattering the tobacco over the premises.

That the sexes will give over trying to reform each other does not seem likely to happen very soon. Indeed, one might be pardoned for believing that matrimony is specially adapted to develop all the imperfections and meannesses of human character, and that even of those matches that are made in heaven the devil arranges all the subsequent conditions. There is hardly a pure and innocent delight that unmarried women enjoy which they can carry into that blissful world bounded by the marriage-ring. One of those delights is that of squandering a little money, which is merely the equivalent of man's spending it as he likes, without accounting to any one. Few wives can do this and not be subjected to the humiliation of hearing the husband say, "My dear, are you not a little extravagant? Is all that money gone that I gave you last week?"

Men and women seem incapacitated, in the very nature of things, from understanding each other. While mutually enamored they meet as upon a bridge—a Bridge of Sighs perhaps: break this, and they are for ever separated as by an impassable gulf. Leaving aside entirely the enamored state, do men as a rule seek the society of women and prefer it to that of men? The thriving clubs, the billiard- and drinking-saloons, and the other resorts of men common all over the civilized world, seem very like a negative answer to the question. In savage life we know that the sexes do not hunt or fish or do any work together. In our modern drawing-rooms most men confess themselves "bored." They long to get away to their clubs or some other resort of their fellows. When husbands spend their evenings at home, if no one happens to call it is not common for them to enter into long and exhilarating conversations with their wives. To be sure, wives are too often ignorant of the subjects that interest intelligent men; still, not more ignorant than before marriage, when the one bridge upon which they could meet was unbroken. Then conversation never flagged: it was ever new and entrancing. Both talked pure nonsense, while having the art of "kissing full sense into empty words." On the other hand, it is, I think, quite a defensible proposition, despite the inferences to the contrary drawn from the failure of the Women's Hotel, that women[Pg 133] enjoy conversation with women more than with men when there is no possible question of gallantry or flirtation; and, finally, that the recognition of the fact that men and women are not by nature in sympathetic accord, but only attracted through the law of compensation or opposites, will do more than all other things combined to make them study each other's natures and to respect sexual biases and characteristics, the motive for that study being, of course, the consummation of the ideal marriage, where man and woman set themselves together "like perfect music unto noble words."

A RUSSIAN GENERAL IN CENTRAL ASIA.

Afternoon in Tashkent, the burning sun of Central Asia glaring upon the dusty streets and countless mud-hovels of the great city; files of camels gliding past with their long, noiseless stride, led by gaunt brown men in blue robes and white turbans; a deep archway in a high wall of baked earth, above which appear the trees of a spacious garden, and just within the entrance two tall, wiry, black-eyed Cossacks, in flat forage-caps, soiled cotton jackets and red goatskin trousers, leaning indolently on their long Berdan rifles.

At my approach, however, the two sentinels start up briskly enough—as well they may, for they are guarding one whom every man in Bokhara would give his best horse for a fair chance of murdering. My announcement that I am expected by the governor-general is received with evident suspicion and a crossing of bayonets to bar my way; but, happily, a passing aide-de-camp recognizes me and promptly leads me in.

The clustering trees, through which the sunshine filters in a rich, subdued light suggestive of some great cathedral, are deliciously cool and shady after the blinding glare outside; but there is life enough in the scene, nevertheless. White-frocked soldiers are hurrying to and fro; laced jackets, shining epaulettes, clinking spurs and sabres meet us at every turn; and in the centre of all, under a huge spreading tree planted years before any Russian had set foot in Turkestan, sits a towering form whose vast proportions and bold swarthy face seem to dwarf every other figure in the group. Twelve years ago, General Kolpakovski was a private soldier in the Russian army: to-day he is the commander of thirty thousand men and absolute master of a territory as large as the States of New York and Pennsylvania together.

"Fine fellow, isn't he?" says my conductor, looking admiringly at the stalwart form of his chief. "Did you ever hear of his ride across the steppes from here to Kouldja? He started with twelve Tartars, and you know what horsemen they are. Well, three of them broke down the first day, five more the second, and all the rest on the third; and the general got in by himself. Ever since then the Tartars have called him 'The Chief with the Iron Skin;' and the soldiers go about singing,

"Ay, and he did a better thing still two years ago. He was crossing the mountains with a Cossack squadron in the heat of summer. Presently up comes one fellow: 'Your Excellency, my horse is lame.'—'Go back, then.'—Another man, seeing that, thought he'd get off the same way; so he calls out, 'My horse is lame, Your Excellency.'—'Get off and lead him, then,' says Kolpakovski; and the unfortunate fellow had to tramp up hill all day, and tow his horse after him into the bargain, with the thermometer ninety-five in the shade."

But just at this moment my name is called, and I go up to the general's chair, to receive a cordial handshake, a few words of frank, manly kindness, and the passport which is to carry me northward across the steppes as far as the border of Siberia.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Memoir of William Francis Bartlett. By Francis Winthrop Palfrey. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co.

The Story of my Life. By the late Colonel Meadows Taylor. Edited by his Daughter. With a Preface by Henry Reeve. London: William Blackwood & Sons.

We put these two books together, not on account of any similarity in the scenes and events, the characters and careers, depicted in them, but because each in its way brings under a strong light the qualities on which nations rely in seasons of peril and emergency, but of which in ordinary times there is only a consciousness as of a latent source of strength, the sound and enduring pith beneath many accretions of questionable fibre and tenacity. General Bartlett may very well stand for a type of the "heroes" produced by our civil war—men who, neither bred to the profession of arms nor inspired by military or political ambition, quitting their homes and chosen vocations at the call of their country or their State, devoted themselves heart and soul to the duties and demands of the hour, distinguished themselves not more by their bravery than by their strict attention to discipline, and in seasons of discouragement and defeat, of bad generalship or defective organization, gave to the respective armies that "staying power," so rare in a citizen soldiery, which prolonged the contest until it ended in the sheer exhaustion of the weaker party. Conspicuous examples of this class were sent forth, perhaps, by every State, and within its borders were often regarded with a fonder admiration than the great commanders on whom a larger responsibility and more complex duties brought a more anxious and less partial scrutiny. Massachusetts, in particular, which could boast of no eminent professional soldier and whose "political generals" carried off the palm of a disastrous incapacity, turned with especial pride to those of her sons who in the camp and in the field were recognized as models of zeal, fidelity and gallantry. Of this number—and it was not small—Bartlett, though one of the youngest, was the most distinguished. He showed from the first equal coolness and daring in battle, as well as the special faculty of a minute disciplinarian. The regiments which he trained and led were among those that headed victorious charges and stemmed the torrent of defeat, besides presenting a faultless appearance on parade and resisting temptations to plunder. He himself was repeatedly disabled by severe wounds, and, being captured before Petersburg, passed many of the last months of the war in confinement, suffering from a disease which permanently injured his system and shortened his life. Yet he survived most of the comrades whose careers had opened with a like promise, and down to his death, in 1876, was full of enterprise and activity as a private citizen, bearing a spotless reputation, and displaying qualities which, it seems to have been generally believed, would have found their fittest field in some high public position. The story of his life is well and modestly told by his friend Colonel Palfrey, and may be specially commended to readers capable of being stirred and stimulated by memories and examples which have certainly not been dimmed by the greater lustre of those of a more recent date.

It would be unfair to expect in such a narrative the rich and varied interest that belongs to the autobiography of Meadows Taylor, whose career was as eventful and exciting as that of any hero of romance, and who has told it with a vividness and graphic power which few writers of romance have equalled. "He was one of the last of those," remarks Mr. Reeve, "who went out to India as simple adventurers." His boyhood and youth were full of precocious adventure and achievement. At the age of sixteen he obtained a commission in the military contingent of the Nizam. At seventeen he was employed as interpreter on courts-martial, and at eighteen was appointed "assistant police superintendent" of a district comprising a population of a million of souls. The duties of this post "involved not only direct authority over the ordinary relations of society, but the active pursuit of bands of Dacoits, Thugs and robbers," and occasional military expeditions to reduce some lawless chief to obedience. But the most remarkable and laborious years of his life were those during which he filled the[Pg 135] office of "political agent" at Shorapoor, administering the affairs of that principality and holding the guardianship of the young rajah during a long minority, while cut off from intercourse with Europeans and exposed to continual plottings and intrigues of native functionaries and court favorites. The skill, tact and courage with which he executed the delicate and complicated functions of this anomalous position, and encountered its difficulties and perils, make themselves felt and appreciated in all the details of the narrative, while the picture presented of Eastern character and manners is one which only the most intimate knowledge, combined with rare faculties of delineation, could furnish, and differs in many features from any other to be found in European descriptions of life in India. "Meadows Taylor was never, properly speaking, in the civil service of the East India Company or the Crown, nor did he hold any military appointment in the British Indian army. He was throughout life an officer of the Nizam. He never even visited Calcutta or Bengal." He was thus thrown out of the main line of advancement, and never attained the rank or emoluments that fell to the share of many less gifted contemporaries. Hence the peculiarly adventurous character of his career and the novelty of the scenes which he depicts. Hence, too, perhaps, the width of his attainments, the enlightened spirit he displayed in his intercourse with the natives, and his cultivation of his literary powers as the main resource of his leisure while isolated from the society of his own race. His start in life belonged to a period long antecedent to the days of competitive examinations, but his assiduity and desire for knowledge needed no stimulant and were the keys to his early success. "His perfect acquaintance with the languages of Southern India—Teloogoo and Mahratta, as well as Hindoostanee—was," we are told, "the foundation of his extraordinary influence over the natives of the country and of his insight into their motives and character." He taught himself land-surveying and engineering, and constructed roads, tanks and buildings. He studied geology, botany and antiquities, and applied the knowledge thus obtained to practical purposes. He gained an acquaintance with the principles of law, Hindoo, Mohammedan and English, that he might devise codes and rules of procedure for a country where there were no courts or legislation, and where he had to administer justice according to his own lights. In the midst of his thousand avocations he found time to write a series of novels portraying the manners and superstitions of India, and depicting the various epochs of its history, with a fidelity and liveliness that have gained for these works a wide popularity. Yet perhaps the strongest impression made by this record of his life comes from the evidence it affords of his humane and conciliatory spirit in his dealings with the native Indians of every class, his unselfish devotion to their welfare, his habit of treating them as equals and his power of inspiring them with confidence, with the result of enabling him to preserve a large and important district from participation in the Mutiny, without the aid of troops and against the constant pressure and appeals of surrounding populations all in full revolt. His autobiography has already gone through several editions in England, and we cannot but regret that it has not been republished in America, where the interest in the country and events to which it relates is of course far less general and intense, but where, we may hope, the appreciation of heroic energy and noble achievements is not less common. The book is not to be confounded with the class to which the lives of governor-generals and military commanders in India belong. Arrian complained that the expedition of the Ten Thousand was far more famous in his day than the exploits of Alexander; and this narrative of what must be considered an episode of the British rule in India is likely to hold the attention of most readers more closely than many volumes that recount the grander events of that wonderful history.

Walks in London. By Augustus J.C. Hare, author of "Walks in Rome," etc. New York: George Routledge & Sons.

Not many visitors to London would be likely to take all or half the walks described in Mr. Hare's two thick volumes, even if the word walks should be so interpreted as to include commoner modes of transit between distant points of interest and through interminable thoroughfares. In Rome or Venice the tourist may be expected to follow religiously the prescriptions of his guide-book: he is there for that purpose, he has no other means of employing his time, and he would be ashamed to report that he had omitted to[Pg 136] see or do anything that Jones or Smith had seen and done. But a few rapid excursions in a hansom cab will enable him to visit all the "sights" that are de rigueur in London—Westminster Abbey and Hall and the Houses of Parliament; the Museum, the Zoological and the National Gallery; St. Paul's, Guildhall and the Bank and Exchange; the Monument, the Tower and the Tunnel,—after which he may devote himself without scruple to an endless round of social amusements, or to "the proper study of mankind" with all varieties and countless specimens of the genus collected for his inspection. It is only the zealous investigator, primed with the associations of English literature from Chaucer to Dickens, who will be apt to put himself under Mr. Hare's guidance, and to explore patiently the widely-separated districts in which lie scattered and almost hidden the relics that attest the identity of London through the ages of growth and change that have transformed it from the "Hill Fortress" of Lud or the Colonia Augusta of the Romans into the commercial metropolis of the world, with a population, circumference and aggregate of wealth exceeding those of most of the other European capitals combined. Yet one who undertakes this labor with the due amount of knowledge and enthusiasm may be sure of finding his reward in it. Though London is the supreme embodiment of modern life, with its ceaseless absorption and accumulation, it is none the less imbued with a conservative spirit which has saved it from the wholesale demolitions and ruthless remodellings to which Paris has been subjected. Mr. Hare speaks with just indignation of the destruction of Northumberland House at Charing Cross, but this has so far been an exceptional instance, though it is perhaps an ominous one. The traveller may still step aside from the busy Strand into the silent and beautiful Temple Church with its tombs of Crusaders, pause as he leaves his banker's in Bishopsgate to take a survey of Crosby Hall and Sir Paul Pindar's house with their reminders of the financial magnates of a bygone time beautifying their homes in the City as visible proclamations of their prosperity, and find, as he wanders through Aldgate and Bevis Marks, Wych street, Holborn and Lincoln's Inn, Southwark and Lambeth, hundreds of quaint fronts or picturesque memorials linked with names and events, epochs and usages, that have been familiar to his mind from childhood. But many such scenes and objects will escape notice or fail of due appreciation unless an informant be at hand qualified to proffer the needed suggestions without indulging in wearisome garrulity. Mr. Hare seems to us to meet very well the requirements of this office, his book being a happy medium between the concise though comprehensive, and for ordinary purposes indispensable, manual of Baedeker and the voluminous works of Timbs and Cunningham.

Books Received.

Putnam's Art Hand-books. Edited by Susan N. Carter, Principal of the "Women's Art-School, Cooper Union." "Landscape Painting" and "Sketching from Nature." New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Current Discussion: A Collection from the Chief English Essays on Questions of the Times. By Edward L. Burlingame. Second volume: Questions of Belief. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Economic Monographs: France and the United States; Suffrage in Cities; Our Revenue System and the Civil Service—shall they be Reformed? New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Off on a Comet: A Journey through Planetary Space. From the French of Jules Verne, by Edward Roth. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger.

A Year Worth Living: A Story of a Place and of a People one cannot afford Not to Know. By William M. Baker. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

The Voyages and Adventures of Vasco da Gama. By George M. Towle. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

The Fall of Damascus: An Historical Novel. By Charles Wells Russell. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

New Music Received.

The Broken Ring, and The Young Recruit: Part-songs for Male Voices. Composed and arranged by A.H. Rosewig. (Lotus Club Collection.) Philadelphia: W.H. Boner & Co.

Strew Sweet Flowers o'er my Grave: Song and Chorus. Words and Music by M.C. Vandercook. Arranged by D.H. Straight. Philadelphia: W.H. Boner & Co.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] We have the history of one of them in a brief of Pope Clement VII. addressed to the chapter and senate of Geneva, in which he expresses his sorrow that in a city which he has carried in his bowels so long such high-handed doings should be allowed. One Francis Bonivard has not only despoiled the rightful prior of his living, but—what is worse—has chased his attorney with a gun and shot the horse that he was running away upon: "quodque pejus est, Franciscum Tingum ejusdem electi procuratorem, negocium restitucionis dicte possessionis prosequentem, scloppettis invasisse, et equum super quo fugiebat vulnerasse." His Holiness threatens spiritual vengeance, and explains his zeal in the case by the fact that the excluded prior is his cousin.

[12] It is needful to caution enthusiastic tourists that nearly all the details of Byron's poem are fabulous. The two brothers, the martyred father, the anguish of the prisoner, were all invented by the poet on that rainy day in the tavern at Ouchy. Even the level of the dungeon, below the water of the lake, turns out to be a mistake, although Bonivard believed it: the floor of the crypt is eight feet above high-water mark. As for the thoughts of the prisoner, they seem to have been mainly occupied with making Latin and French verses of an objectionable sort not adapted for general publication. (See Ls. Vulliemin: Chillon, Étude historique, Lausanne, 1851.)

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE, VOLUME 22. JULY, 1878. ***

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