All the languages of continental Europe have some phrase by
which a parting people express the hope of meeting again. The
French au revoir, the
[pg 266] Italian à
rivederla, the Spanish hasta mañana, the
German Auf Wiedersehen,—these and similar
forms, varied with the occasion, have grown from the need of
the heart to cheat separation of its pain. The Poles have an
expression of infinitely deeper meaning, which embodies all
that human nature can utter of grief and despair—”To
meet nevermore.” This is the heart-rending farewell with
which the patriot exiled to Siberia takes leave of family
and friends.

There is indeed little chance that he will ever again return
to his country and his home. Since Beniowski the Pole made his
famous romantic flight from the coal-mines of Kamschatka in the
last century, there has been but a single instance of a
Siberian exile making good his escape. In our day, M. Rufin
Piotrowski, also a Polish patriot, has had the marvelous
good-fortune to succeed in the all but impossible attempt; and
he has given his story to his countrymen in a simple,
unpretending narrative, which, even in an abridged form, will,
we think, be found one of thrilling interest.

In January, 1843, we find Piotrowski in Paris, a refugee for
already twelve years, and on the eve of a secret mission into
Poland of which he gives no explanation. By means of an
American acquaintance he procured a passport from the British
embassy describing him as Joseph Catharo of Malta: he spoke
Italian perfectly, English indifferently, and was thus well
suited to support the character of an Italian-born subject of
Queen Victoria. Having crossed France, Germany, Austria and
Hungary in safety, he reached his destination, the town of
Kamenitz in Podolia, on the Turkish frontier. His ostensible
object was to settle there as a teacher of languages, and on
the strength of his British passport he obtained the necessary
permission from the police before their suspicions had been
roused. He also gained admission at once into the society of
the place, where, notwithstanding his pretended origin, he was
generally known as “the Frenchman,” the common nickname for a
foreigner in the Polish provinces. He had soon a number of
pupils, some of them Poles—others, members of the
families of Russian resident officials. He frequented the
houses of the latter most, in order not to attract attention to
his intercourse with his compatriots. He spoke Russian
fluently, but feigned total ignorance both of that and his own
language, and even affected an incapacity for learning them
when urged to do so by his scholars. Among the risks to which
this exposed him was the temptation of cutting short a
difficult explanation in his lessons by a single word, which
would have made the whole matter clear. But this, although the
most frequent and vexatious, was not the severest trial of his
incognito. One day, while giving a lesson to two
beautiful Polish girls, daughters of a lady who had shown him
great kindness, the conversation turned upon Poland: he spoke
with an indifference which roused the younger to a vehement
outburst on behalf of her country. The elder interrupted her
sharply in their native language with, “How can you speak of
holy things to a hare-brained Frenchman?” At another Polish
house, a visitor, hearing that M. Catharo was from Paris, was
eager to ask news of his brother, who was living there in
exile: their host dissuaded him, saying, “You know that
inquiries about relations in exile are strictly forbidden. Take
care! one is never safe with a stranger.” Their unfortunate
fellow-countryman, who knew the visitor’s brother very well,
was forced to bend over a book to hide the blood which rushed
to his face in the conflict of feeling. He kept so close a
guard upon himself that he would never sleep in the room with
another person—which it was sometimes difficult to avoid
on visits to neighboring country-seats—lest a word spoken
in his troubled slumbers should betray him. He passed nine
months in familiar relations with all the principal people of
the place, his nationality and his designs being known to but
very few of his countrymen, who kept the secret with rigid
fidelity. At length, however, he became aware that he was
watched; the manner of some of his Russian friends grew
inquiring and constrained; he received private warnings,
[pg 267] and perceived that he was
dogged by the police. It was not too late for flight, but he
knew that such a course would involve all who were in his
secret, and perhaps thousands of others, in tribulation, and
that for their sakes it behooved him to await the terrible
day of reckoning which was inevitably approaching. The only
use to which he could turn this time of horrible suspense
was in concerting a plan of action with his colleagues. His
final interview with the chief of them took place in a
church at the close of the short winter twilight on the last
day of the year. After agreeing on all the points which they
could foresee, they solemnly took leave of each other, and
Piotrowski was left alone in the church, where he lingered
to pray fervently for strength for the hour that was at
hand.

The next morning at daybreak he was suddenly shaken by the
arm: he composed himself for the part he was to play, and
slowly opened his eyes. His room was filled with Russian
officials: he was arrested. He protested against the outrage to
a British subject, but his papers were seized, he was carried
before the governor of the place, and after a brief examination
given into the custody of the police.

THE ARREST.

He was examined on several successive days, but persisted in
his first story, although aware that his identity was known,
and that the information had come from St. Petersburg. His
object was to force the authorities to confront him with those
who had been accused on his account, that they might hear his
confession and regulate their own accordingly. One day a number
of them were brought together—some his real accomplices,
others mere acquaintance.
[pg 268] After the usual routine of
questions and denials, Piotrowski suddenly exclaimed in
Polish, as one who can hold out no longer, “Well, then, yes!
I am no British subject, but a Pole of the Ukraine. I
emigrated after the revolution of 1831: I came back because
I could bear a life of exile no longer, and I only wished to
breathe my native air. I came under a false name, for I
could not have come in my own. I confided my secret to a few
of my countrymen, and asked their aid and advice: I had
nothing else to ask or tell them.”

CROSSING THE COURTYARD OF THE PRISON.

The preliminary interrogatories concluded, he was sent for a
more rigid examination to the fortress of Kiow. He left
Kamenitz early in January at midnight, under an escort of
soldiers and police. The town was dark and silent as they
passed through the deserted streets, but he saw lights in the
upper windows of several houses whose inmates had been
implicated in his accusation. Was it a mute farewell or the
sign of vigils of anguish? They traveled all night and part of
the next day: their first halt was at a great state prison,
where Piotrowski was for the first time shut up in a cell. He
was suffering from the excitement through which he had been
passing, from the furious speed of the journey, which had been
also very rough, and from a slight concussion of the brain
occasioned by one of the terrible jolts of the rude vehicle: a
physician saw him and ordered repose. The long, dark, still
hours of the night were gradually calming his nerves when he
was disturbed by a distant sound, which he soon guessed to be
the clanking of chains, followed by a chant in which many
voices mingled. It was Christmas Eve, old style, as still
[pg 269] observed in some of the
provinces, and the midnight chorus was singing an ancient
Christmas hymn which every Polish child knows from the
cradle. For twelve years the dear familiar melody had not
greeted his ears, and now he heard it sung by his captive
fellow-countrymen in a Russian dungeon.

Two days later they set out again, and now he was chained
hand and foot with heavy irons, rusty, and too small for his
limbs. The sleigh hurried on day and night with headlong haste:
it was upset, everybody was thrown out, the prisoner’s chain
caught and he was dragged until he lost consciousness. In this
state he arrived at Kiow. Here he was thrown into a cell six
feet by five, almost dark and disgustingly dirty. The wretched
man was soon covered from head to foot with vermin, of which
his handcuffs prevented his ridding himself. However, in a day
or two, after a visit from the commandant, his cell was
cleaned. His manacles prevented his walking, or even standing,
and the moral effect of being unable to use his hands was a
strange apathy such as might precede imbecility. He was
interrogated several times, but always adhered to his
confession at Kamenitz; menaces of harsher treatment, even of
torture, were tried—means which he knew too well had been
resorted to before; his guards were forbidden to exchange a
word with him, so that his time was passed in solitude, silence
and absolute inoccupation. Since Levitoux, another political
prisoner, fearful that the tortures to which he was subjected
might wring from him confessions which would criminate his
friends, had set fire to his straw bed with his night-lamp and
burned himself alive, no lights were allowed in the cells, so
that a great portion of the twenty-four hours went by in
darkness. After some time he was visited by Prince Bibikoff,
the governor-general of that section of the country, one of the
men whose names are most associated with the sufferings of
Poland: he tried by intimidation and persuasion to induce the
prisoner to reveal his projects and the names of his
associates. Piotrowski held firm, but the prince on withdrawing
ordered his chains to be struck off. The relief was ineffable:
he could do nothing but stretch his arms to enjoy the sense of
their free possession, and he felt his natural energy and
independence of thought return. He had not been able to take
off his boots since leaving Kamenitz, and his legs were bruised
and sore, but he walked to and fro in his cell all day,
enjoying the very pain this gave him as a proof that they were
unchained. Several weeks passed without any other incident,
when late one night he was surprised by a light in his cell: an
aide-de-camp and four soldiers entered and ordered him to rise
and follow them. He thought that he was summoned to his
execution. He crossed the great courtyard of the prison
supported by the soldiers; the snow creaked under foot; the
night was very dark, and the sharp fresh air almost took away
his breath, yet it was infinitely welcome to him after the
heavy atmosphere of his cell, and he inhaled it with keen
pleasure, thinking that each whiff was almost the last. He was
led into a large, faintly-lighted room, where officers of
various grades were smoking around a large table. It was only
the committee of investigation, for hitherto his examinations
had not been strictly in order.

This was but the first of a series of sittings which were
prolonged through nearly half a year. During this time his
treatment improved; his cell was kept clean; he had no cause to
complain of his food; he was allowed to walk for an hour daily
in the corridor, which, though cold and damp, in some degree
satisfied his need of exercise. He was always guarded by two
sentinels, to whom he was forbidden to speak. He learned in
some way, however, that several of his co-accused were his
fellow-prisoners: they were confined in another part of the
fortress, and he but once caught a glimpse of one of
them—so changed that he hardly recognized him. His
neighbors on the corridor were common criminals. The president
of the committee offered him the use of a library, but he only
asked for a Bible, “with which,” he says, “I was no longer
[pg 270] alone.” His greatest
suffering arose from the nervous irritability caused by the
unremitting watch of the sentinel at his door, which drove
him almost frantic. The sensation of being spied at every
instant, in every action, of meeting this relentless,
irresponsive gaze on waking, of encountering it at each
minute of the day, was maddening. From daybreak he longed
for the night, which should deliver him from the sight.
Sometimes, beside himself, he would suddenly put his own
face close to the grating and stare into the tormenting eyes
to force them to divert their gaze for a moment, laughing
like a savage when he succeeded. He was in this feverish
condition when called to his last examination. He perceived
at once, from the solemnity of all present, that the crisis
had come. His sentence was pronounced: death, commuted by
Prince Bibikoff’s intercession to hard labor for life in
Siberia. He was degraded from the nobility, to which order,
like half the inhabitants of Poland, he belonged, and
condemned to make the journey in chains. Without being taken
back to his cell, he was at once put into irons, the same
rusty, galling ones he had worn already, and placed in a
kibitka, or traveling-carriage, between two armed
guards. The gates of the fortress closed behind him, and
before him opened the road to Siberia.

OUTSTARING THE
GUARD.

His destination was about two thousand miles distant. The
incidents of the journey were few and much of the same
character. Charity and sympathy were shown him by people of
every class. Travelers of distinction, especially ladies,
pursued him with offers of assistance and money, which he would
not accept. The only gifts which he did not refuse were the
food and drink brought him by the peasants where they stopped
to change horses: wherever there was a
[pg 271] halt the good people plied
him with tea, brandy and simple dainties, which he
gratefully accepted. At one station a man in the uniform of
the Russian civil service timidly offered him a parcel
wrapped in a silk handkerchief, saying, “Accept this from my
saint.” Piotrowski, repelled by the sight of the uniform,
shook his head. The other flushed: “You are a Pole, and do
not understand our customs. This is my birthday, and on this
day, above all others, I should share what I have with the
unfortunate. Pray accept it in the name of my patron saint.”
He could not resist so Christian an appeal. The parcel
contained bread, salt and some money: the last he handed
over to the guards, who in any case would not have let him
keep it: he broke the bread with its donor. His guards were
almost the only persons with whom he had to do who showed
themselves insensible to his pain and sorrow. They were
divided between their fears of not arriving on the day
fixed, in which case they would be flogged, and of his dying
of fatigue on the route, when they would fare still worse.
The apprehension of his suicide beset them: at the ferries
or fords which they crossed each of them held him by an arm
lest he should drown himself, and all his meat was given to
him minced, to be eaten with a spoon, as he was not to be
trusted for an instant with a knife. Thus they traveled
night and day for three weeks, only stopping to change
horses and take their meals; yet he esteemed himself lucky
not to have been sent with a gang of convicts, chained to
some atrocious malefactor, or to have been ordered to make
the journey on foot, like his countryman, Prince Sanguzsko.
At last they reached Omsk, the head-quarters of Prince
Gortchakoff, then governor-general of Western Siberia. By
some informality in the mode of his transportation, the
interpretation of Piotrowski’s sentence depended solely on
this man: he might be sent to work in one of the government
manufactories, or to the mines, the last, worst dread of a
Siberian exile. While awaiting the decision he was in charge
of a gay, handsome young officer, who treated him with great
friendliness, and in the course of their conversation, which
turned chiefly on Siberia, showed him a map of the country.
The prisoner devoured it with his eyes, tried to engrave it
on his memory, asked innumerable questions about roads and
water-courses, and betrayed so much agitation that the young
fellow noticed it, and exclaimed, “Ah! don’t think of
escape. Too many of your countrymen have tried it, and those
are fortunate who, tracked on every side, famished,
desperate, have been able to put an end to themselves before
being retaken, for if they are, then comes the knout and a
life of misery beyond words. In Heaven’s name, give up that
thought!” The commandant of the fortress paid him a short
official visit, and exclaimed repeatedly, “How sad! how sad!
to come back when you were free-in a foreign country!” The
chief of police, a hard, dry, vulture-like man, asked why he
had dared to return without the czar’s permission. “I could
not bear my homesickness,” replied the prisoner. “O native
country!” said the Russian in a softened voice, “how dear
thou art!” After various official interviews he was taken to
the governor-general’s ante-chamber, where he found a number
of clerks, most of whom were his exiled compatriots and
received him warmly. While he was talking with them a door
opened, and Gortchakoff stood on the threshold: he fixed his
eyes on the prisoner for some moments, and withdrew without
a word. An hour of intense anxiety followed, and then an
officer appeared, who announced that he was consigned to the
distilleries of Ekaterininski-Zavod, some two hundred miles
farther north.

Ekaterininski-Zavod is a miserable village of a couple of
hundred small houses on the river Irtish, in the midst of a
wide plain. Its inhabitants are all in some way connected with
the government distillery: they are the descendants of
criminals formerly transported. Piotrowski, after a short
interview with the inspector of the works, was entered on the
list of convicts and sent to the guard-house. “He is to work
with his [pg 272] feet in irons,” added the
inspector. This unusual severity was in consequence of a
memorandum in Prince Gortchakoff’s own writing appended to
the prisoner’s papers: “Piotrowski must be watched with
especial care.” The injunction was unprecedented, and
impressed the director with the prisoner’s importance.
Before being taken to his work he was surrounded by his
fellow-countrymen, young men of talent and promise, who were
there, like himself, for political reasons. Their emotion
was extreme: they talked rapidly and eagerly, exhorting him
to patience and silence, and to do nothing to incur corporal
punishment, which was the mode of keeping the workmen in
order, so that in time he might be promoted, like
themselves, from hard labor to office-work. At the
guard-house he found a crowd of soldiers, among whom were
many Poles, incorporated into the standing army of Siberia
for having taken up arms for their country. This is one of
the mildest punishments for that offence. They seized every
pretext for speaking to him, to ask what was going on in
Poland, and whether there were any hopes for her. Overcome
by fatigue and misery, he sat down upon a bench, where he
remained sunk in the gloomiest thoughts until accosted by a
man of repulsive aspect, branded on the face—the
Russian practice with criminals of the worst sort—who
said abruptly, “Get up and go to work.” It was the overseer,
himself a former convict. “O my God!” exclaims Piotrowski,
“Thou alone didst hear the bitter cry of my soul when this
outcast first spoke to me as my master.”

CHARITY TO THE
EXILE.

Before going to work his irons were struck off, thanks to
the instant entreaties of his compatriots: he was then given a
broom and shovel and set to clear
[pg 273] rubbish and filth off the
roof of a large unfinished building. On one side was a
convict of the lowest order, with whom he worked—on
the other, the soldier who mounted guard over them. To avoid
the indignity of chastisement or reproof—indeed, to
escape notice altogether—he bent his whole force to
his task, without raising his head, or even his eyes, but
the iron entered into his soul and he wept.

The order of his days knew no variation. Rising at sunrise,
the convicts worked until eight o’clock, when they breakfasted,
then until their dinner at noon, and again from one o’clock
until dark. His tasks were fetching wood and water, splitting
and piling logs, and scavenger-work of all sorts: it was all
out of doors and in every extreme of the Siberian climate. His
companions were all ruffians of a desperate caste: burglary,
highway robbery, rape, murder in every degree, were common
cases. One instance will suffice, and it is not the worst: it
was that of a young man, clerk of a wine-merchant in St.
Petersburg. He had a mistress whom he loved, but suspected of
infidelity; he took her and another girl into the country for a
holiday, and as they walked together in the fields fired a
pistol at his sweetheart’s head: it only wounded her; the
friend rushed away shrieking for help; the victim fell on her
knees and cried, “Forgive me!” but he plunged a knife up to the
hilt in her breast, and she fell dead at his feet. He gave
himself up to justice, received the knout and was transported
for life.

A RUSSIAN OTHELLO.

The daily contact with ignorant, brutish men, made worse
than brutes by a life of hideous crime, was the worst feature
in his wretched existence. He had determined never to submit to
blows, should the forfeit be his own life or another’s, and the
incessant apprehension kept his
[pg 274] mind in a state of
frightful tension: it also nerved him to physical exertions
beyond his strength, and to a moral restraint of which he
had not deemed himself capable in the way of endurance and
self-command. But in the end he was the gainer. After the
first year he was taken into the office of the
establishment, and received a salary of ten francs a month.
He was also allowed to leave the barracks where he had been
herded with the convicts, and to lodge with two
fellow-countrymen in a little house which they built for
themselves, and which they shared with the soldiers who
guarded them. It was a privilege granted to the most
exemplary of the convicts to lodge with one or other of the
private inhabitants of the village; but besides their own
expenses they had to pay those of the soldier detailed to
watch them. In the course of the winter they were comforted
by the visit of a Polish priest. A certain number are
permitted, to travel through Siberia yearly, stopping
wherever there are Polish prisoners to administer the
sacraments and consolations of their Church to them: there
is no hardship which these heroic men will not encounter in
performing their thrice holy mission. Piotrowski, who, like
all Poles, was an ingrained Roman Catholic, after passing
through phases of doubt and disbelief had returned to a
fervent orthodoxy: this spiritual succor was most precious
to himself and his brother-exiles.

One idea, however, was never absent from his mind—that
of escape. At the moment of receiving his sentence at Kiow he
had resolved to be free, and his resolution had not faltered.
He had neglected no means of acquiring information about
Siberia and the adjacent countries. For this he had listened to
the revolting confidences of the malefactors at the
barracks—for this he heard with unflagging attention, yet
with no sign of interest, the long stories of the traders who
came to the distillery from all parts of the empire to sell
grain or buy spirits. The office in which he passed his time
from eight in the morning until ten or eleven at night was
their rendezvous, and by a concentration of his mental
powers he acquired a thorough and accurate knowledge of the
country from the Frozen Ocean to the frontiers of Persia and
China, and of all its manners and customs. The prisoner who
meditates escape, he says, is absorbed in an infinitude of
details and calculations, of which it is only possible to give
the final result. Slowly and painfully, little by little, he
accumulated the indispensable articles—disguise, money,
food, a weapon, passports. The last were the most essential and
the most difficult: two were required, both upon paper with the
government stamp—one a simple pass for short distances
and absences, useless beyond a certain limit and date; the
other, the plakatny, or real passport, a document of
vital importance. He was able to abstract the paper from the
office, and a counterfeiter in the community forged the formula
and signatures. His appearance he had gradually changed by
allowing his hair and beard to grow, and he had studied the
tone of thought and peculiar phraseology of the born Siberian,
that he might the better pass for a native. More than six
months went by in preparations: then he made two false starts.
He had placed much hope on a little boat, which was often
forgotten at evening, moored in the Irtish. One dark night he
quietly loosed it and began to row away: suddenly the moon
broke through the clouds, and at the same instant the voices of
the inspector and some of his subordinates were heard on the
banks. Piotrowski was fortunate enough to get back unperceived.
On the second attempt a dense fog rose and shut him in: he
could not see a yard before him. All night long he pushed the
boat hither and thither, trying at least to regain the shore;
at daybreak the vapor began to disperse, but it was too late to
go on; he again had the good luck to land undiscovered. Five
routes were open to him—all long, and each beset with its
own perils. He decided to go northward, recross the Uralian
Mountains, and make his way to Archangel, nearly a thousand
miles off, where, among the hundreds of foreign ships
constantly in the docks, he trusted
[pg 275] to find one which would
bring him to America. Nobody knew his secret: he had vowed
to perish rather than ever again involve others in his fate.
He reckoned on getting over the first danger of pursuit by
mingling with the crowds of people then traveling from every
quarter to the annual fair at Irbite at the foot of the
Urals.

VAIN ATTEMPT TO
ESCAPE.

Finally, in February, 1846, he set out on foot. His costume
consisted of three shirts—a colored one uppermost, worn,
Russian fashion, outside his trousers, which were of heavy
cloth, like his waistcoat—and a small sheepskin burnous,
heavy high boots, a bright woolen sash, a red cap with a fur
border—the dress of a well-to-do peasant or commercial
traveler. In a small bag he carried a change of clothing and
his provisions: his money and passports were hidden about his
person; he was armed with a dagger and a bludgeon. He had
scarcely crossed the frozen Irtish when the sound of a sleigh
behind him brought his heart to his mouth: he held his ground
and was hailed by a peasant, who wanted to drive a bargain with
him for a lift. After a little politic chaffering he got in,
and was carried to a village about eight miles off at a gallop.
There the peasant set him down, and, knocking at the first
house, he asked for horses to the fair at Irbite. More
bargaining, but they were soon on the road. Erelong, however,
it began to snow; the track disappeared, the driver lost his
way; they wandered about for some time, and were forced to stop
all night in a forest—a night of agony. They were not
twelve miles from Ekaterininski-Zavod: every minute the
fugitive fancied he heard the bells of the pursuing
kibitkas; he had a horrible
[pg 276] suspicion, too, that his
driver was delaying purposely to betray him, as had befallen
a fellow-countryman in similar circumstances. But at
daybreak they found the road, and by nightfall, having
changed horses once or twice and traveled like the wind, he
was well on his way. At a fresh relay he was forced to go
into a tavern to make change to pay his driver: as he stood
among the tipsy crowd he was hustled and his pocket-book
snatched from his hand. He could not discover the thief nor
recover the purse: he durst not appeal to the police, and
had to let it go. In it, besides a quarter of his little
hoard of money, there was a memorandum of every town and
village on his way to Archangel, and his plakatny. In
this desperate strait—for the last loss seemed to cut
off hope—he had one paramount motive for going on:
return was impossible. Once having left Ekaterininski-Zavod,
his fate was sealed if retaken: he must go forward. Forward
he went, falling in with troops of travelers bound to the
fair. On the third evening of his flight, notwithstanding
the time lost, he was at the gates of Irbite, over six
hundred miles from his prison. “Halt and show your
passport!” cried the sentinel. He was fumbling for the local
pass with a sinking heart when the soldier whispered,
“Twenty kopecks and go ahead.” He passed in. The loss of his
money and the unavoidable expenses had reduced his resources
so much that he found it necessary to continue the journey
on foot. He slept at Irbite, but was up early, and passed
out of an opposite gate unchallenged.

Now began a long and weary tramp. The winter of 1846 was one
of unparalleled rigor in Siberia. The snow fell in enormous
masses, which buried the roads deep out of sight and crushed
solidly-built houses under its weight. Every difficulty of an
ordinary journey on foot was increased tenfold. Piotrowski’s
clothes encumbered him excessively, yet he dared not take any
of them off. His habit was to avoid passing through villages as
much as possible, but, if forced to do so to inquire his way,
only to stop at the last house. When he was hungry he drew a
bit of frozen bread from his wallet and ate it as he went
along: to quench his thirst he often had no resource but
melting the snow in his mouth, which rather tends to increase
the desire for water. At night he went into the depths of the
forest, dug a hole under the snow, and creeping in slept there
as best he might. At the first experiment his feet were frozen:
he succeeded in curing them, though not without great pain.
Sometimes he plunged up to the waist or neck in the drifts, and
expected at the next step to be buried alive. One night, having
tasted to the full those two tortures, cold and hunger—of
which, as he says, we complain so frequently without knowing
what they mean—he ventured to ask for shelter at a little
hut near a hamlet where there were only two women. They gave
him warm food: he dried his drenched clothes, and stretched
himself out to sleep on the bench near the kitchen stove. He
was roused by voices, then shaken roughly and asked for his
passport: there were three men in the room. With amazing
presence of mind he demanded by what right they asked for his
passport: were any of them officials? No, but they insisted on
knowing who he was and where he was going, and seeing his pass.
He told them the same story that he had told the women, and
finally exhibited the local pass, which was now quite
worthless, and would not have deceived a government functionary
for a moment: they were satisfied with the sight of the stamp.
They excused themselves, saying that the women had taken fright
and given the alarm, thinking that, as sometimes happened, they
were housing an escaped convict. This adventure taught him a
severe lesson of prudence. He often passed fifteen or twenty
nights under the snow in the forest, without seeking food or
shelter, hearing the wolves howl at a distance. In this savage
mode of life he lost the count of time: he was already far in
the Ural Mountains before he again ventured to sleep beneath a
roof. As he was starting the next morning his hosts said, in
answer to his inquiries as to the road, “A little farther on
you will find a guard-house,
[pg 277] where they will look at
your papers and give you precise directions.” Again how
narrow an escape! He turned from the road and crossed hills
and gorges, often up to the chin in snow, and made an
immense curve before taking up his march again.

A SAMARITAN OF
THE STEPPES.

One moonlight night, in the dead silence of the ice-bound
winter, he stood on the ridge of the mountain-chain and began
to descend its eastern slope. Still on and on, the way more
dangerous than before, for now there were large towns upon his
route, which he could only avoid by going greatly out of his
way. One night in the woods he completely lost his bearings; a
tempest of wind and snow literally whirled him around; his
stock of bread was exhausted, and he fell upon the earth
powerless; there was a buzzing in his ears, a confusion in his
ideas; his senses forsook him, and but for spasms of cramp in
his stomach he had no consciousness left. Torpor was settling
upon him when a loud voice recalled him to himself: it was a
trapper, who lived hard by, going home with his booty. He
poured some brandy down the dying man’s throat, and when this
had somewhat revived him gave him food from his store. After
some delay the stranger urged Piotrowski to get up and walk,
which he did with the utmost difficulty: leaning upon this
Samaritan of the steppes, he contrived to reach the highway,
where a small roadside inn was in sight. There his companion
left him, and he staggered forward with unspeakable joy toward
the warmth and shelter. He would have gone in if he had known
the guards were there on the lookout for him, for his case was
now desperate. He only got as far as the threshold, and there
fell forward and rolled under a bench. He asked for hot soup,
but could not [pg 278] swallow, and after a few
minutes fell into a swoon-like sleep which lasted
twenty-four hours. Restored by nourishment, rest and dry
clothes, he set forth again at once.

During the first part of his journey he had passed as a
commercial traveler; after leaving Irbite he was a workman
seeking employment in the government establishments; but now he
assumed the character of a pilgrim to the convent of Solovetsk
on a holy island in the White Sea, near Archangel. For each
change of part he had to change his manners, mode of speech,
his whole personality, and always be probable and consistent in
his account of himself. It was mid-April: he had been
journeying on foot for two months. Easter was approaching, when
these pious journeys were frequent, and not far from
Veliki-Oustiog he fell in with several bands of men and
women—bohomolets, as they are called—on
their way to Solovetsk. There were more than two thousand in
the town waiting for the frozen Dwina to open, that they might
proceed by water to Archangel. It being Holy Week, Piotrowski
was forced to conform to the innumerable observances of the
Greek ritual—prayers, canticles, genuflexions,
prostrations, crossings and bowings, as manifold as in his own,
but different. His inner consciousness suffered from this
hypocrisy, but it was necessary to his part. They were detained
at Veliki-Oustiog a mortal month, during which these acts of
devotion went on with almost unabated zeal among the
boholomets. At length the river was free, and they set
out. Their vessel was a huge hulk which looked like a floating
barn: it was manned by twenty or thirty rowers, and to
replenish his purse a little the fugitive took an oar. The
agent who had charge of the expedition required their
passports: among the number the irregularity of Piotrowski’s
escaped notice. The prayers and prostrations went on during the
voyage, which lasted a fort-night. One morning the early
sunshine glittered on the gilded domes of Archangel: the vessel
soon touched the shore, and his passport was returned to him
uninspected, with the small sum he had earned by rowing.

He had reached his goal; a thousand miles of deadly
suffering and danger lay behind him; he was on the shores of
the White Sea, with vessels of every nation lying at anchor
ready to bear him away to freedom. Yet he was careful not to
commit himself by any imprudence or inconsistency. He went with
the pilgrims to their vast crowded lodging-house, and for
several days joined in their visits to the different churches
of Archangel; but when they embarked again for the holy island
he stayed behind under the pretext of fatigue, but really to go
unobserved to the harbor. There lay the ships from every part
of the world, with their flags floating from the masts. Alas!
alas! on every wharf a Russian sentinel mounted guard day and
night, challenging every one who passed, and on the deck of
each ship there was another. In vain he risked the consequences
of dropping his character of an ignorant Siberian peasant so
far as to speak to a group of sailors, first in French and then
in German; they understood neither: the idlers on the quays
began to gather round in idle curiosity, and he had to desist.
In vain, despite the icy coldness of the water, he tried
swimming in the bay to approach some vessel for the chance of
getting speech of the captain or crew unseen by the sentinel.
In vain he resorted to every device which desperation could
suggest. After three days he was forced to look the terrible
truth in the face: there was no escape possible from
Archangel.

Baffled and hopeless, he turned his back on the town, not
knowing where to go. To retrace his steps would be madness. He
followed the shore of the White Sea to Onega, a natural
direction for pilgrims returning from Solovetsk to take. His
lonely way lay through a land of swamp and sand, with a sparse
growth of stunted pines; the midnight sun streamed across the
silent stretches; the huge waves of the White Sea, lashed by a
long storm, plunged foaming upon the desolate beach. Days and
nights of walking brought him to Onega: there
[pg 279] was no way of getting to
sea from there, and after a short halt he resumed his
journey southward along the banks of the river Onega, hardly
knowing whither or wherefore he went. The hardships of his
existence at midsummer were fewer than at midwinter, but the
dangers were greater: the absence of a definite goal, of a
distinct hope which had supported him before, unnerved him
physically. He had reached the point when he dreaded fatigue
more than risk. In spite of his familiarity with the
minutiae of Russian customs, he was nearly betrayed one day
by his ignorance of tolokno, a national dish. On
another occasion he stopped at the cabin of a poor old man
to ask his way: the gray-beard made him come in, and after
some conversation began to confide his religious grievances
to him, which turned upon the persecutions to which a sect
of religionists is exposed in Russia for adhering to certain
peculiarities in the forms of worship. Happily, Piorowski
was well versed in these subjects. The poor old man, after
dwelling long and tearfully on the woes of his
fellow-believers, looked cautiously in every direction,
locked the door, and after exacting an oath of secresy drew
from a hiding-place a little antique brass figure of
Byzantine origin, representing our Saviour in the act of
benediction with two fingers only raised, according to the
form cherished by the dissenters.

THE
BENEDICTION WITH TWO FINGERS.

Following his purposeless march for hundreds of miles, the
fugitive reached Vytegra, where the river issues from the Lake
of Onega. There, on the wharf, a peasant asked him whither he
was bound: he replied that he was a pilgrim on his way from
Solovetsk to the shrines of Novgorod and Kiow. The peasant
[pg 280] said he was going to St.
Petersburg, and would give him a passage for his service if
he would take an oar. The bargain was struck, and that night
they started on their voyage to the capital of Poland’s
arch-enemy, the head-quarters of politics, the source whence
his own arrest had emanated. He had no design: he was going
at hazard. The voyage was long: they followed the Lake of
Onega, the Lake of Ladoga and the river Neva. Sometimes poor
people got a lift in the boat: toward the end of the voyage
they took aboard a number of women-servants returning to
their situations in town from a visit to their country
homes. Among them was an elderly woman going to see her
daughter, who was a washerwoman at St. Petersburg.
Piotrowski showed her some small kindnesses, which won her
fervent gratitude. As they landed in the great capital,
which seemed the very focus of his dangers, and he stood on
the wharf wholly at a loss what should be his next step, the
poor woman came up with her daughter and offered to show him
cheap lodgings. He followed them, carrying his protectress’s
trunk. The lodgings were cheap and miserable, and the woman
of the house demanded his passport. He handed it to her with
a thrill of anxiety, and carelessly announced his intention
of reporting himself at the police-office according to rule.
She glanced at the paper, which she could not read, and saw
the official stamp: she was satisfied, and began to dissuade
him from going to the police. It then appeared that the law
required her to accompany him as her lodger; that a great
deal of her time would be lost in the delays and formalities
of the office, [pg 281] which, being a
working-woman, she could ill afford; and as he was merely
passing through the city and had his passport, there could
be no harm in staying away. The next day, while wandering
about the streets seeking a mode of escape, the pilot of a
steam-packet to Riga asked him if he would like to sail with
them the next day, and named a very moderate fare. His heart
leapt up, but the next instant the man asked to see his
passport: he took it out trembling, but the sailor, without
scrutiny, cried, “Good! Be off with you, and come back
to-morrow morning at seven o’clock.” The next morning at
seven he was on board, and the boat was under way.

CROSSING THE
FRONTIER.

From Riga he had to make his way on foot across Courland and
Lithuania to the Prussian frontier. He now made a change in his
disguise, and gave himself out as a dealer in hogs’ bristles.
In Lithuania he found himself once more on his beloved native
soil, and the longing to speak his own language, to make
himself known to a fellow-countryman, was almost irresistible;
but he sternly quelled such a yearning. As he neared the
frontier he had the utmost difficulty in ascertaining where and
how it was guarded, and what he should have to encounter in
passing. At length he learned enough for his purpose: there
were no guards on the Prussian side. Reaching a rampart of the
fortifications, he waited until the moment when the two
sentinels on duty were back to back on their beats, and jumped
down into the first of the three ditches which protected the
boundary. Clambering and jumping, he reached the edge of the
third: shots were fired in several directions; he had been
seen. He slid into the third ditch, scrambled up the opposite
side, sprang down once more, rushed on until out of sight of
the soldiers, and fell panting in a little wood. There he lay
for hours without stirring, as he knew the Russian guards
sometimes violated the boundary in pursuit of fugitives. But
there was no pursuit, and he at last took heart. Then he began
a final transformation. He had lately bought a razor, a
pocket-mirror and some soap, and with these, by the aid of a
slight rain which was falling, he succeeded with much
difficulty in shaving himself and changing his clothes to a
costume he had provided expressly for Prussia. When night had
closed he set forth once more, lighter of heart than for many
long years, though well aware that by international agreement
he was not yet out of danger. He pushed on toward the grand
duchy of Posen, where he hoped to find assistance from his
fellow-countrymen, who, being under Prussian rule, would not be
compromised by aiding him. He passed through Memel and Tilsit,
and reached Königsberg without let or hindrance—over
two hundred miles on Prussian soil in addition to all the rest.
There he found a steamboat to sail the next day in the
direction which he wished to follow. He had slept only in the
open fields, and meant to do so on this night and re-enter the
town betimes in the morning. Meanwhile he sat down on a heap of
stones in the street, and, overcome by fatigue, fell into a
profound sleep. He was awakened by the patrol: his first
confused words excited suspicion, and he was arrested and
carried to the station-house. After all his perils, his
escapes, his adventures, his disguises, to be taken by a
Prussian watchman! The next morning he was examined by the
police: he declared himself a French artisan on his way home
from Russia, but as having lost his passport. The story imposed
upon nobody, and he perceived that he was supposed to be a
malefactor of some dangerous sort: his real case was not
suspected. A month’s incarceration followed, and then a new
interrogation, in which he was informed that all his statements
had been found to be false, and that he was an object of the
gravest suspicion. He demanded a private interview with one of
the higher functionaries and a M. Fleury, a naturalized
Frenchman in some way connected with the police-courts. To them
he told his whole story. After the first moment’s stupefaction
the Prussian cried, “But, unhappy man, we must send you back:
the treaty compels it. My God! my God!
[pg 282] why did you come
here?”—”There is no help for us,” said M. Fleury, “but in
Heaven’s name write to Count Eulenberg, on whom all depends: he
is a man whom everybody loves. What a misfortune!”

He was taken back to prison. He wrote; he received a kind
but vague reply; delays followed, and investigations into the
truth of his story; his anguish of mind was reaching a climax
in which he felt that his dagger would be his best friend after
all. A citizen of the place, a M. Kamke, a total stranger,
offered to go bail for him: his story had got abroad and
excited the deepest sympathy. The bail was not effected without
difficulty: ultimately, he was declared free, however, but the
chief of police intimated that he had better remain in
Königsberg for the present. Anxious to show his gratitude
to his benefactors, fearful, too, of being suspected, he
tarried for a week, which he passed in the family of the
generous M. Kamke. At the end of that time he was again
summoned to the police-court, where two officials whom he
already knew told him sadly that the order to send him back to
Russia had come from Berlin: they could but give him time to
escape at his own risk, and pray God for his safety. He went
back to his friend M. Kamke: a plan was organized at once, and
by the morrow he was on the way to Dantzic. Well provided with
money and letters by the good souls at Königsberg, he
crossed Germany safely, and on the 22d of September, 1846,
found himself safe in Paris.

AUSTRALIAN SCENES AND ADVENTURES.

TWO PAPERS.—1.

Australia is still the world’s latest wonder—a land
whose very existence was but a few years ago ignored by
geographers, but which they now acknowledge as a fifth
continent; a land of marvels that courts and repays the
investigation of the curious by its wild scenery, its strange
aboriginal inhabitants, its birds and beasts unlike all others,
its rich floral treasures, its mines of inexhaustible wealth,
its meadows and plains of dimensions so vast as to defy for
centuries to come a general cultivation; a land that has in
less than half a century experienced a growth and expansion
unprecedented in the history of nations. Yet is the
civilization an imported one, not indigenous, and to be traced
only here and there in the colonies, having as yet scarcely
touched the interior of the island or its aboriginal
inhabitants. These are, in our own day, hardly less untamed and
untamable than when visited by the great adventurer William
Dampier in the latter part of the seventeenth century, now
almost two hundred years ago. So little regard was paid to the
reports of Dampier that nearly another century elapsed without
further efforts at the exploration of Australia, till in 1770
Cook, in his first voyage around the world, visited this great
island, furnishing to his country the first accurate
information of its climate, soil and productions. Yet his
marvelous accounts, though exciting at first a sort of nine
days’ wonder, failed to awaken any permanent interest, and soon
Australia was again forgotten. But when England, in consequence
of the loss of her valuable American colonies, to which she had
been accustomed to transport her worst offenders, began to look
around for a substitute, the eyes of the government were for
the first time turned toward Australia. In May, 1787, the first
shipload [pg 283] of convicts was sent out,
and in the following January the foundation of Sydney, the
future capital of the penal settlement, was laid. Little,
however, was done in the way of exploring the country until
the discovery of gold within its borders. Then, indeed, the
world woke up, and long-forgotten, neglected Australia came
to be reckoned a point of interest, at least to
fortune-hunters.

Seen in the distance, the view of this great island is
scarcely attractive. Its abrupt shores wear a sombre hue, and
the traveler, ere he sets foot on the soil, detects a sort of
savage air that seems to reign triumphant over the
demi-civilization that has been the growth of only a score or
two of years. Tiny native huts, looking as though the architect
had studied how small, uncouth and inconvenient a human
dwelling could possibly be made, contrast strangely with the
tasteful white cottages surrounded by flower-gardens and
wreathed with vines, or the elegant mansions of stone and
slate, that form the homes of foreign residents; natives in
filthy garb, or no garb at all, prowl about the dwellings or
worm their devious way among the costly equipages of Europeans;
orchards and vineyards are planted under the very shadow of
forests where roam in all their savage freedom herds of wild
cattle and their wilder masters; and out from the rocks and
boulders of the most rugged spots rise clusters of the graceful
umbrella palm, with a foliage, fern-like and feathery, of the
loveliest emerald, and a cone expanding like a lady’s fan. The
odor of English cowslips mingles with the spicy aroma of
tropical fruits, and the perpetual snow of-lofty peaks is
reflected on fields of golden maize and on meadows that gleam
and glitter in the bright sunlight as if paved with emeralds.
It is contrast, not similitude, that attracts the eye, novelty
more than beauty, and quaintness rather than such gorgeous
sights as one meets everywhere within the tropics.

ABORIGINES OF THE EASTERN COAST.

The harbors are very marvels of commodiousness, that of Port
Jackson, the entrance to Sydney, being fifteen miles long. It
is landlocked on both sides, without a shoal or rock to mar its
perfectness, and broad enough to afford safe anchorage to all
the navies of the world. Here ride at anchor vessels of almost
every nation, their gay pennons flaunting
[pg 284] in the breeze, while
worming their way in and out among the shipping may be seen
multitudes of native boats made of bark, quaint as frail,
and looking for all the world like a shoal of soldiers’
cocked hats. A man on land carries his tiny craft on his
shoulders with less difficulty, apparently, than the boat
carries him on the water. Rowing one seems about as
difficult an operation as balancing one’s self on a straw
would, be; but it has an especial point of merit—it
never sink, only purls, and an Australian takes a good
ducking as nonchalantly as he smokes his pipe. The natives
usually paddle in companies of three, and when one of the
triad is purled the other two come to the rescue. One on
each side taking a hand of their unlucky comrade, and
reseating him, they move on rapidly as before, cutting the
blue water with their slender paddles and enlivening the
scene by occasional songs. The presence of numerous sharks
in these waters is the chief drawback to the pleasures of
boating, and many an ill-fated oarsman pays the forfeit of
life or limb for his temerity in venturing out too far. The
nose of the shark is his most vulnerable part; and the
natives, who eat this sea-monster as willingly as he eats
them, often inflict a fatal wound by slinging a huge stone
at his nose and battering it to a jelly as he rises out of
the water. The flesh is eaten raw by the aborigines in their
wild state, but the more civilized “burn it,” as they say,
“like white men;” that is, they cut off huge lumps of the
flesh, lay them before a fire to roast, gnaw off the surface
as fast as it burns, and put down the remainder to toast
again until the appetite is glutted.

KING TATAMBO.

DAUGHTER OF KING
TATAMBO.

These islanders were all cannibals when first discovered by
Europeans, intellectually inferior to other savages, ignorant
of agricultural and mechanical arts, going entirely naked, and
living more like brutes than human beings. Slowly and
mutinously have their barbarous customs been relinquished, even
by those brought into occasional contact with foreigners, while
those in the interior are savage as the monsters that prowl
about them in dens and holes of the earth. Even such as mingle
most freely with the colonists can seldom be prevailed on to
practice permanently the arts of civilized life, usually
preferring their original habits and pursuits to the restraints
of society. They readily admit the superiority of foreigners,
but cling tenaciously to their forest homes and rude lives of
unfettered freedom. In character they are cruel and vindictive,
improvident and thievish; and they
[pg 285] seem almost devoid of
gallantry in the treatment of their women, wooing their
wives with blows, and often inflicting death upon women and
children for the slightest offences. Yet they have some
ideas of a Supreme Being and a future state, they practice a
sort of religious worship, and they bury or burn their dead.
They call their chiefs be-à-na, or “father,”
but unless compelled by fear to obedience they treat them
with little respect or affection. Their language has a
musical sound, but the vocabulary is scanty; and thus far
the origin of these people and their language remains a
matter of doubt, though in many particulars they bear a
decided resemblance to the negroes of Guinea. In regard to
dress their habits are certainly primitive. A single ratskin
often forms the entire wardrobe of a native chief, and a
tomahawk with a brace of spears pointed with iron-wood or
flint his adornments. Opossum-skins tied together form a
sort of cloak used as a protection against the cold, but if
on the chase the wearer finds his upper garment oppressively
warm, he tosses it away, and trusts to finding or stealing
another when he needs it. Their dwellings are wretched
little huts, or rather sheds, composed of bark or dried
leaves, and so low-pitched that one must crawl on his knees
to enter them. They are ill-ventilated and filthy in the
extreme, utterly devoid of furniture and household
implements, and without any means of securing either privacy
or warmth—places where we should deem it impossible to
dwell content. Yet the native Australian seems always merry,
and he would not exchange his filthy hovel for the palace of
a prince. Unpretending as that of his subjects was the royal
abode of the venerable King Tatambo, an old man, whom the
count de Beauvoir describes as having a “skin black and
shiny as liquorice, with snow-white hair and beard,” his
only garment being a fur cloak that was cast aside during
the dance at which the count was present. He gives, in
connection with the king’s portrait, that of “the youngest
and most beautiful of His Majesty’s daughters,” which may
serve as a type of the female beauty of Australia.

NEGRO
WAR-DANCE, OR CORROBORI.

The Australians are extremely fond of dancing, especially
their corrobori or war-dance, performed always with
bodies perfectly nude, while they brandish a spear in one hand
and a flaming brand in the other. The night is invariably
selected for the performance of the corrobori, and the effect
upon unaccustomed eyes is startling in the extreme. The agile
movements of the lean forms, black as night, reflected by the
radiance of their gleaming torches, the yells and frantic
gestures, together with the fierce
[pg 286] onsets of the combatants
with spear and tomahawk, present a spectacle of weird
interest, quite in keeping with the wild scenery of the
defiles and ravines where the corrobori is usually
celebrated.

A GOLD-MINE.

The complexion of the Australians is black or very dark
brown, their hair straight, and their features of the negro
type. They are of medium stature, but generally thin, though
well-formed, athletic and agile. They are eager in the pursuit
of gain, and this characteristic, combined with their wonderful
powers of endurance both of hunger and fatigue, renders them
patient and successful miners, while all other causes combined
have tended less to the development and improvement of the
Australian than has the discovery of gold within his borders.
This discovery, that has so changed the aspect of everything in
Australia, was the result of a mere accident that a thinking
mind knew how to turn to advantage. An adventurer from
California, whose dreams by day and by night were all of the
land of gold he had so recently left, while searching in
company with another for a new pasturage-ground for their
sheep, came one day upon a range of low hills so like the
“Golden Range” of California as to bring back all his old
prepossessions in favor of mining. Stopping to examine, he
found the hills composed of granite, mica and quartz, the
natural home of gold, and his experience as a miner led to the
conviction that though the main body of the gold might have
been already washed out among the surrounding clay, yet enough
remained to repay a careful search and to indicate the
existence, somewhere in the immediate vicinity, of a mine of
untold wealth. Several days were spent in unprofitable search:
then more favorable indications led the shepherds to dispose of
their flocks and set out in good earnest to dig for gold. A
couple of spades, a trowel and a calabash were their only
tools, but our adventurer was
[pg 287] a knowing man, and
“knowledge is power.” His practiced eye knew just where the
precious metals would be most likely to exist if at all in
that locality—that in the old beds of rivers now dried
up gold would more naturally be found than in younger
streams, and especially that where round pebbles indicated a
strong eddy ten times as much gold might be expected as in
the level parts. Gravel and shingle were cleared away
without examination, then a bed of gray clay, as too porous
to hold gold; but when a stratum of pipeclay was reached the
diggers knew that not an ounce of gold would be found
beneath, and their search was confined to a little streak of
brownish clay, about an inch in thickness, just above the
pipeclay. Every particle of this was carefully washed, and
after hours of patient labor the toilers were rewarded by
about a thimbleful of the shining dust they were so eagerly
seeking. From this small beginning on the 10th of June,
1851, have grown the wonderful mining operations of
Australia; and in less than
[pg 288] a month after the little
incident related above twenty thousand diggers—in a
year increased to one hundred and fifty thousand—were
busy in the inexhaustible mines of that far-off land; and so
came those rugged, barren lands, hitherto scarcely broken
even by savages, to be peopled by men from every civilized
land.

KANGAROO HUNT.

CATTLE-HUNTING.

Ballarat, the centre of one of the chief mining districts,
is connected now by railway with Melbourne, so that in the
interval of only four hours one passes from the commercial
metropolis to the “City of Gold.” Over the fertile belt of
cultivated lands that surrounds Melbourne, through rugged rocks
and barren sands, runs this road, on which one meets crowds of
pedestrians, many of them barefoot, the sole capital of each a
tent and a pickaxe. Nearing the mines, the aspect of everything
is changed: whole forests of trees demolished as if by a
thunderbolt; rivers turned out of their natural bed; fertile
meadows laid waste; gaping chasms and frightful depths here and
there, in which are men toiling half naked, begrimed with mud,
and fierce, reckless, cadaverous faces that tell of hardships
and strife and sin in the eager pursuit of riches. Ballarat was
at first only a mining-camp of immense size, and its environs
are still occupied by tents, where transient visitors find very
passable accommodations. But the city proper, now some sixteen
years old, with a population already of thirty thousand, is an
exact transcript of Melbourne, with beautiful dwellings, and
broad streets thronged with carriages by day and lighted with
gas by night. It boasts already its clubs and theatres, its
banks and libraries and reading—rooms, where the
successful miner may invest his earnings, cultivate his
intellect and seek recreation for his leisure hours.

COMPANIONS OF THE
HUNT.

There are over two thousand mining districts in Australia,
of which one of the [pg 289] richest is “Black Hill
Mine,” but why called “Black Hill” it would be difficult to
say, as its beautiful glistening sands are far nearer white
than black. Next to gold, the most valuable ore is mercury,
immense quantities of which are shipped annually to England
from these mines. Iron-ore is found in nearly every part of
the island, much of it so rich as to produce nearly
three-fourths of its weight of metal. Topazes of rare beauty
are frequently obtained, and coal is both good and abundant.
In addition to these the island possesses an almost
inexhaustible store of granite, slate and freestone, well
adapted to building purposes. Sometimes gold is found
diffused with wonderful regularity within a few inches of
the surface, and so abundant that a single cradleful will
yield an ounce of pure gold-dust, the miners readily
realizing two or three thousand dollars per diem. As the
grass is torn up, flecks of bright gold are found clinging
to the roots, and the clay as it is turned over glitters
with the precious dust. Again, the digger has to search for
his treasure deep in the bowels of the earth, or among
flinty rocks, or far down beneath a river’s bed, and, it may
be, spend weeks [pg 290] or months without realizing
a bawbee. Nothing else is so uncertain as to results as the
search for gold, and few vocations are at once so
fascinating and so cruelly exacting in regard to health,
ease, and even life.

Among the mines, and amid barren, rugged scenery in
Australia, one is often surprised by glimpses of rare
beauty—flowers of wondrous brilliancy, odorless though
they be; a gigantic tree twined about by a delicate creeper of
exquisite loveliness; or one of those magnificent Australian
lakes that show nothing at first but the greenest grass, tall
and luxuriant as under the equator; then, as he attempts to
ride through the grass, he suddenly finds his horse’s feet
growing moist and the spongy vegetation getting fuller and
fuller of water, till he discovers that he has entered a lake
so wide and deep that his only safety lies in a quick retreat.
This phenomenon is repeated on a small scale all through the
jungle-lands, little tufts of grass here and there, known
readily by their brighter green, furnishing water enough to
meet the wants of a thirsty animal. A calabash full of pure,
sweet water may be expressed from one of these tiny clumps of
grassy sponge, as many a weary traveler has attested while
roaming over sterile regions destitute alike of wells and
springs.

But of surprises there is no end in Australia. Flowers
fascinating to the eye have no smell, but uncouth—looking
shrubs and bushes often fill the air with their delicate aroma;
crows look like magpies, and dogs like jackals; four-footed
animals hop about on two feet; rivers seem to turn their backs
on the sea and run inland; swans are black, and eagles white;
some of the parrots have webbed feet; and birds laugh and
chatter like human beings, while never a song, or even a
chirrup, can be heard from their nests and perches. So an
English lark or nightingale is at a premium; and many a rough
miner, with his shaggy beard and uncouth ways, his oaths and
lawlessness and crimes, has been known to walk on Sunday
evenings to a little English cottage twelve miles out of the
settlement just to hear the sweet song of a pet lark.

FERN TREES
NEAR HOBART TOWN.

The variety of vegetable productions is so great that above
five thousand species, more than half of which are peculiar to
the country, have been described and classed. Among the most
remarkable is the species of Eucalyptus, or gum tree,
that forms some of the largest timber yet discovered, having
been seen of the height of one hundred and fifty feet, and
thirty to forty in girth near the root. The leafless acacias
are also found here, as well as the Nepenthes
distillatoria and the Cephalotus follicularis, two
remarkable varieties of the monkey-cup or pitcher-plant; while
many very beautiful ferns and flowering vines adorn the coasts
and lave their graceful fringes in the blue ocean waves. The
timber of the country is of gigantic size, and with other
varieties may be found cedar, rosewood, tulip and mahogany.

But the most wonderful products of Australia belong to the
animal kingdom, among them the kangaroo, the wombat, and that
strange anomaly of the animal creation, the
Ornithorynchus, or “duck-billed quadruped.” Emus,
eagles, parrots, white swans and overgrown pelicans of many
varieties, enrich the ornithological kingdom, while among
insects and reptiles are found some less desirable specimens,
such as tarantulas. The natives of the island hold the old
tradition of the ancients, that one bitten by a tarantula will
dance himself to death. The plumage of Australian birds is
varied and brilliant, and the natives make pretty fans by
arranging the feathers in assorted colors; while a sort of
head-dress worn by both men and women on the occasion of their
marriage, and composed entirely of feathers made into
many-tinted flowers, is a very gorgeous affair. Among the
varieties of birds peculiar to the island are the “lyre-bird”
and that known as the “satin-bower,” so called from its glossy
plumage, which is green while the bird is young and jet black
at maturity. Before building their nests these birds gather a
large quantity of twigs, weaving them into a sort of bower,
which they tastefully decorate with bones,
[pg 291] feathers, leaves and such
other adornments as they are able to collect. Here in this
arena the courting is done, the male bird chasing his mate
up and down, bowing his pretty head and playing the
agreeable generally, while she indulges in all manner of
airs and graces, pretends to be very coy, and acts the
coquette to perfection. But her lover’s devotion conquers at
last, and in due time the fair flirt surrenders, yields up
her liberty and settles down as a dutiful wife and loving
mother, bringing up a family of sons and daughters, and no
doubt duly instructing them in the part they in their turn
are to take in life’s drama. The black swans are not
prettier than white ones, but they are rarer, and when both
are floating together over the smooth surface of those
lovely Australian lakes they present a picture of which one
never wearies, see it as often as one may.

FOREST OF FERNS.

The count de Beauvoir, in describing a hunt of several days,
speaks with enthusiasm of the flocks of wild-turkeys and blue
cranes, but bewails his ill-success in running down the huge
emus that stalked before the hunters faster than their horses
could gallop. He describes also a kangaroo-hunt, and a single
[pg 292] combat with an old
kangaroo, grizzled and gray, that in a hand-to-hand fight
for a long time parried all the hunter’s efforts to take
him, either living or dead. He was brought down at last by a
revolver, and his skin was carried off as a trophy of
victory. The cattle-hunt was even more exciting, in the wild
flight of four or five thousand terrified beeves, rushing
pell-mell through the tall grass or over sandy plains,
stopping occasionally to hide their terrified faces from the
dangers that beset them, but one occasionally succumbing to
the trusty weapons of the count and his comrades. The
hunters were certainly not encumbered with superfluous
garments, several of the boys being clothed only in a pair
of boots, and none with more than a single garment. The
immense droves of cattle and sheep herded together in
Australia cannot fail to awaken the surprise of the visitor
on his first arrival in the country, an Australian herdsman
reckoning his flocks by hundreds, and even a thousand or two
heads of cattle owned by one man being no unusual
occurrence. Indeed, everything seems on a mammoth scale in
Australia—forests of timber trees that outlive
generation after generation of men, and yet have no thought
of dying; ferns like those near Hobart Town, that lift their
graceful fringes high over men’s heads or serve as shade
trees to their dwellings; gigantic emus flying like the
fabled Mazeppa over plains the extent of which the eye
cannot measure; and those fathomless mines of inexhaustible
wealth that seem to promise gold enough for all the world
for the centuries yet unborn.

LIBRARY OF
MELBOURNE.

Aristocracy is a queer thing in Australia. Many of those now
claiming “respectability” and holding themselves aloof from the
members of the settlements did not have their expenses paid out
by government, because they were born on the island—not
convicts, but only the offspring of those who were. In the race
for wealth educated and refined gentlemen are generally
outstripped by those who with less mind have greater physical
strength, more practical knowledge of the world and more tact
in overcoming difficulties; so that one meets wealthy miners
who cannot write their own names, and learned bootblacks and
cooks who have taken their degrees in mathematics and the
languages. One millionaire who had a fancy to be thought
literary sent regular contributions to the English magazines,
every line of which was written by his footman, to whom he paid
an enormous salary, not so much for writing as for keeping his
secret, and it was years before it leaked out. In the struggle
for position the man of gold gains the day, and not
unfrequently brute force or unscrupulous trickery is called in
to keep that which wealth has purchased.

Melbourne is the commercial metropolis of Australia, as
Sydney is the capital of the penal colony, and though both are
large, well-built and thriving cities, they are strikingly in
contrast with each [pg 293] other. One is the scion of
a lordly house, “to the manner born”—the other, the
parvenu of yesterday, whose gold makes his position.
Melbourne is to all intents a European city, with its
boulevards and regular streets, whole blocks of costly
stores and princely dwellings, and environed by elegant
villas and country-seats adorned with gardens, vineyards and
choice shrubbery. It has its English and Chinese quarters,
the latter as essentially Chinese as if built in the
Celestials’ own land, and brought over, mandarin buttons,
tiny teapots, opium-pipes and all, in one of their own
junks. The English quarter contains, besides the government
buildings, several schools, hospitals, churches and
benevolent institutions, the public library, a polytechnic
hall, a national museum, theatres and opera-houses, all
built in a style alike elegant and substantial. The library
only ten years after it was opened numbered 41,000 volumes,
and has since been largely increased. Science rather than
literature, and practical utility more than entertainment,
have been kept in the ascendency in the management of this
institution. The hall is open for daily lectures, and some
valuable telescopes [pg 294]
and other apparatus belong to the institution. The cabinet
of natural history contains many rare specimens that serve
to elucidate the ancient and modern history of the country,
especially in regard to some of the animals and vegetables
indigenous to the island. The museum is built on a
commanding eminence, and from its spacious windows one sees
clearly to the opposite side of Hobson’s Bay.

THE ENVIRONS OF
MELBOURNE.

The city is not built on the sea-coast, but two or three
miles from the shore, its port being Sandridge, with which it
is connected by railway. Vessels of all nations crowd the
harbor, and the streets are as full of busy life and gay
frivolity as those of Havre or Marseilles. The drives in the
environs of the city are replete with picturesque
beauty—meadows dotted with many—tinted flowers and
magnificent forest trees, about which are festooned flowering
vines and creepers. Their thick branches are the resort of
cockatoos, parrots and paroquets in brilliant plumage, and
perhaps most beautiful of all, because most rare, sparrows, not
clothed, like ours, in sombre gray, but rejoicing in vestments
of green and gold. But brilliancy of plumage is the solitary
charm of these feathered beauties, for their voices are harsh
and their song a very burlesque on the name of
music.

FORECAST.

When I, for ever out of human sight,

Shall seem beyond the wish for
anything,

Oh then believe at morning and at night

My soul shall listen for thy
whispering.

The work of life may so fill up the day

That not a thought of me shall venture
there;

And after labor Love may charm away

What could not enter for the press of
care.

But when thou’st bidden all this world
good-night,

And enterest that which lies so close to
mine,

Call me by name—-it is my angel’s
right—

And I shall hear thee, though I give no
sign.

When morn undoes the high, white gates of sleep,

Pause, as thou comest forth, to speak to
me:

It may seem vain, for silence will be deep,

But uttered wishes wait on prophecy.

And when some day far distant thou dost feel

That night and morrow will no longer
come,

The pitying heart will let me then reveal

My presence to thee on the passage
home.

CHARLOTTE F. BATES.

[pg 295]

THE MATCHLESS ONE:

A TALE OF AMERICAN SOCIETY, IN FOUR CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER III.

I was nearly asleep, though my thoughts were entertaining
enough, when again footsteps entered the arbor below. This time
the intruder did not pause. A woman’s voice humming an air
seemed to approach, and in a moment more a swift hand parted
the bushes behind me, and Blanche Furnaval appeared. I was very
much surprised, but stood up to make way for her, at the same
time throwing aside my cigar.

“I beg your pardon,” she exclaimed immediately, clearly as
much astonished as I: “I did not know any one had found this
pretty spot but myself.”

“I think I know how to look for pretty things,” I replied,
gazing at her face, which was glowing from quick walking,
though her breath came evenly through her parted lips.

“Do you never tire of making those silly speeches?” she
asked, lifting her gray eyes candidly to my face. “Excuse me,
you need not answer: I am very brusque. You see I did not
expect to find any one here, and consequently left my company
manners at home. I am sorry to have disturbed you,” she
continued, turning to go.

“Let us compare notes, Miss Blanche, and see to whom the
rock belongs by right of discovery. Won’t you be seated?” I
said, making a place for her.

“I came to see the sunset,” she replied after a moment’s
hesitation, “and if it won’t incommode you I will stay. Should
you not care to talk, please read on: I shall not mind. And
won’t you light another cigar? I have no objection to cigars in
the open air, though I think them disgusting in the house.”

“Thank you,” I said as she sat down and I took another
Havana for the one I had thrown away at her arrival. “Will you
relate to me the manner of your discovery? I would rather not
read.”

“About two weeks ago,” she began, looking over the
landscape, and not at me, “I was sitting in the arbor below,
and I heard Mrs.—well, a lady coming whom, to be sincere
with you, I dislike. If I stayed, I knew she would have a long
talk with me: if I walked on, she might call me back. I looked
about in haste for a hiding-place. The bushes near me appeared
as if I might get behind them: I pushed through, saw a little
path, which I followed, turned round the base of a hillock, and
found two rocks, upon which I raised myself with the help of a
sapling. Then, carefully parting the branches, I saw this,”
waving her small hand that I might see it, but still not
looking at me. “The sun was just setting; away down in yonder
field the sorrel was as fire in its rays; a catbird was
reciting a merry pastoral in the thicket beyond; two goats
stood high on a bank, like satyrs guarding the place. You see
why I come again.”

“I have the right of discovery,” I cried gayly: “I made the
path and placed the rocks. I claim it, that I may lay it at
your feet.”

“Do you like it?” she asked, turning to me and laying a
slight stress on “you.”

“I told you I admired pretty things, and you know, Miss
Blanche, I am a bit of a poet.”

She smiled: “Ah yes; but do you really admire this?”

“Of course I do—think it dem foine.”

She laughed outright—a laugh so gay that I joined her,
though I could not tell why. “As for sorrel,” I added, “you
ought to see The Beauties: the fields are full of it, though
the farmers don’t seem to admire it much.”

“Well, I am very fond of the sorrel,” she replied, “with the
clover-tops, the seed-globes of dandelion and the daisies by
the water: it makes quite a bouquet in yonder field.”

I looked at her to see if she was chaffing
[pg 296] me: not at all—she
was sober as a judge.

“Dem foine! I beg pardon, very nice indeed. How would you
like to carry it to the ball this evening?”

“I never take anything to a ball that I care to have
appreciated,” she answered dryly.

“Aw! That is the reason you won’t sing down there: isn’t it,
now? But, really, they thought it fine the other
night—quite clever, I heard some of them say.”

“Oh yes,” with a weary smile that had a little contempt in
it.

“Did that ugly little Italian know very much about singing?
You seemed pleased with his admiration.”

“That ugly Italian, as you call him, has heard some of the
best prima donnas in Europe. He is poor, he is seedy—for
his voice left him just as he was on the eve of
success—but he was the only person in the room who could
tell me that I sang as well as the greatest of them.” Her voice
quivered as she spoke.

“You are mistaken indeed, Miss Blanche,” I said. “Any fellow
there would have paid you the same compliment if you had given
him a chance; but you were so confoundedly wrapped up in that
Italian chap that you would not look at the rest of us.”

“I don’t care for the compliment,” she said, cooling down
directly: “I care for the truth. They don’t know if I sing well
or not.”

“Then you only sing to be admired, Miss Furnaval?”

“I don’t sing at all,” she said, coloring.

“But you should sing.”

“Why?” she asked.

“To please—to give pleasure to others.”

“I don’t care to please any one but myself.”

“But that is not right, you know. Now, I try to please
everybody.”

“Do you always succeed, Mr. Highrank?”

“Yes, always; and though it’s tiresome at times, I bear it.
Last autumn you never saw anything to compare to it—in
the country, you know. But it’s my vocation, and I try to live
up to it. People do wrong who have talents and do not use them.
That is why I blame you, Miss Blanche.”

“It is not worth the trouble. I have withdrawn my hand from
market, and intend to please myself the remainder of my
life.”

“From what market? What do you mean?”

“I mean the matrimonial market, of course.”

“Why won’t you marry? if I may ask.”

“It is too much trouble. I won’t be a slave to the caprices
of the world so that I may be called amiable. Now, if I don’t
wish to appear in the parlor, I stay in my room; if I don’t
wish to receive callers, I refuse; if I don’t wish to attend a
party, I stay at home. I need not visit to keep myself ‘before,
the public.’ I can be as eccentric as I like. When I disagree
with a gentleman, I can contradict him; if I do not feel like
smiling, I frown; and when I want to walk alone, I go. I can
please myself from morning till night, and I enjoy it.”

“You like clever fellows, don’t you?” I asked, remembering
the conversation I had just overheard.

“Yes,” she answered, and then speaking decidedly, added,
“and I like ‘poor devils,’ as you call them: they are not so
dreadfully conceited as some men are.”

“I tell you what,” I said—just for the purpose of
getting her opinion of myself, you know—”I am a clever
fellow: I hope you like me.”

She glanced round—I suppose to see if I was in
earnest—then turning away said, “Y-e-s, pretty well.”

It was rough on a chap, but she looked so sweet as she said
it, and sat so very unconscious that I was looking at her, that
I thought I would give her a little advice. I could not get it
out of my head how Mrs. Stunner said she would end badly, and
it seemed a pity for a charming girl such as she was. So I
said, persuasively, “Now, don’t you go and marry one of those
poor chaps, Miss Blanche. You see, you will be regularly
unhappy, and all that sort of thing, if you do.”

“How do you know?” she
asked.

[pg 297]

“Oh,” I replied, not knowing what to to say for an instant,
“I heard it.”

“Heard what?” she said, looking at me curiously.

“That you would do it, and would be unhappy.”

“A report made to order by those good people whom you want
me to take pains to please. ‘Tis a method to make a harmless
rival of me. Rumor that I am engaged, and to a man beneath me,
and of course other gentlemen will not pay me attention. Mean!
mean! But no matter,” she continued after a moment: “it won’t
hurt me. I am not engaged, and don’t intend to be; and it is
nothing new for me to know that the world is not particularly
truthful.”

“But why not marry? You had better change your
mind—indeed you had: I advise you for your good.”

“You say I must not select a poor man, and the rich require
too much devotion from the ladies. You gentlemen let us take
all the trouble to please: you present yourselves, and expect
us to fall at your feet.I am waiting for a chevalier who
will go the world over to win me—who will consider it an
honor if I finally accept him, instead of fancying, that I am
honored by his choice.”

“I used to have ideas of that kind, but found them false. It
is an honor to receive a proposal, you know. Every one
thinks so, else they would not tell of it and brag as they do.
By being so unlike the rest of the world you will end
badly—indeed you will, Miss Blanche.”

“Look for a moment at the case as I put it. A man asks me to
marry him: he likes me—thinks I shall make him a good
wife. He woos me to please himself, not to please me, and you
think I should be grateful because his vanity prompts him to
believe that I am highly honored. But this is only one of the
many fallacies which people adopt without question. It is good
for a man to be refused several times: it takes some little
conceit out of him, and makes him more humble and nice for the
poor woman who is ultimately to be his wife. I am convinced
that there is no gentleman who makes his first proposal that
has a doubt of his being accepted. Now, is there?” she asked,
appealing to me.

“Well, you are about right. Women are not so particular
about making a choice, you know. It isn’t so hard for them to
find, somebody that suits. I suppose I should be accepted by
any girl I might ask. Frankly, now,” I said, wishing to give
her a poser, “wouldn’t you accept me?”

“Frankly,” she replied, taking my own tone, “I would
not.”

“And why not?” I asked.

“There would be too many young ladies made unhappy through
losing you,” she answered banteringly.

“But you know I should not care for that: I can’t marry them
all.”

“You told me you thought it your duty to please
everybody.”

“Come, now, think of it, and tell the real truth: you know
if I marry it would have to be but one girl.”

“You might go to Utah.”

“You won’t answer. Silence gives consent, don’t it?” I said
in a tone of triumph.

“Do you really want me to answer your question?” she asked,
looking at me queerly.

“By Jove!” I thought, “it’s coming now. I’ve pushed it too
far—never thought what I was doing: she will certainly
accept me, and I cannot retract.” It took me but a moment to
see my danger and to make up my mind. A gentleman will always
sustain his word. My voice was shaking a little from the
greatness of the resolution I had made, but I managed to say
pretty steadily, “Of course I do.” It was so very sudden, you
know. I felt I should be an engaged man in five minutes
more.

“You are awfully funny,” she exclaimed after quite a
pause.

“I believe I am considered witty,” I replied, hardly knowing
what I said: I tell you, that sort of thing makes a man
confoundedly nervous.

Then she began laughing, and I thought she, would never
stop. I did not feel like laughing, so I just sat and looked at
her.

“Oh my! oh my!” she gasped, trying
[pg 298] to control herself, “why
didn’t you say No? You never intended to ask me at all. It
is the funniest thing I ever heard of. Oh my! I shall die of
laughing. I think you will ‘end badly’ if you go on
so,” she said, quoting what I had repeated. “What induced
you to act in this manner?”

I saw that she had found me out and thought I was a fool.
This provoked me, and I replied, rather warmly, pretending I
did not know what she meant, “It appears to me an odd manner
you have of receiving an offer, Miss Blanche. I think you
should at least treat me with politeness.”

She became serious in a moment when she saw I was hurt, and
did not lose her good-temper at my rude speech, but said
pleasantly, “You are not fond of being teased, Mr. Highrank.
Never mind: I don’t intend to take advantage of your blunder,
nor keep you long in suspense. Go “—and she smiled as if
she really could not help it—”go, and be sensible in
future.”

“You mean that you won’t marry me?” I asked.

“Don’t talk of that: let us pretend we were in fun—as
of course we were—and let me thank you for a very
agreeable afternoon.”

I declare she looked so bewitching as she spoke that I
wished she had thought me in earnest and accepted me. It was
real good in her, giving a fellow a second chance when she
might have snapped him up directly. I think girls ought to give
a man two chances, but they seldom do. Many a poor soul repents
the moment the words are spoken, but he can’t help himself.
Generally, when ’tis done ’tis done.

She made a motion to rise: I could not permit her to go
without an explanation. She had been so generous, and she was
so beautiful, that I began to desire quite earnestly that she
would be my wife, and that we could settle down at The Beauties
together: she would like the sorrel at any rate. Perhaps
Fortune had sent her to me this very afternoon, and I ought not
to let the opportunity slip, but ask her seriously before she
left. Of course she would accept me if she knew I was in
earnest. She was too delicate to take advantage of a
mistake—mighty few girls so particular. The more I
entertained the idea, the more I liked it, so I resolved to
speak. I fancied that she was a little cool in her manner:
possibly she thought I ought not have jested on such a subject,
but I would make it all right now. I was sitting on a stone a
little lower than she. I leaned forward and placed my arm on
the rock and round her—just near enough to keep her
there, you know. Then I spoke: “I want to beg your pardon, Miss
Blanche. You are offended, but I did not mean to annoy you: I
esteem you too highly for that.”

“I am not at all offended, not at all,” she said heartily,
at the same time trying to rise, but as I was leaning on her
dress she could not. “I must beg you to move: I am going home,”
she added, looking round: then seeing where my arm was, her
tone became slightly angry: “Will you allow me to rise?”

“Not until you listen to me. Do not be displeased when I
tell you the truth. I was jesting, or at least did not think
what I was asking, a moment ago, but now I am in real earnest.
I want you to marry me—truly I do. I love you, and am
willing to do everything you can desire. See, I will kneel if
you like devotion;” and I fell on my knees before her, catching
her little white hands and kissing them. “Won’t you love me?” I
felt as I looked into her sweet face that I could do anything
in the world for her.

“A little less devotion and more respect would suit me
better, Mr. Highrank. Will you stop this farce and release my
dress? I shall certainly be offended if you do not rise
instantly.”

“I will obey you if you will give me one kind word.”

“I have none for you,” she said frigidly.

“You think I have been too hasty—that I am not really
in love with you; but I am, I assure you. I fall, in love very
quickly—indeed I do. I have often been in love with a
girl the first time I saw her, and I have known you ever so
long. Won’t you believe me,
Blanche?”

[pg 299]

“I believe you are treating me in a most ungentlemanly
manner in keeping me here when I don’t wish to stay.”

“I can’t let you go,” I said as I rose, but standing so that
she could not pass, “till you are convinced that I love you,
for I do, and shall always. Surely I have a right to an
answer.”

“I thought you were good-natured”—now she spoke
reproachfully—”and you are teasing me in the most
disagreeable way. Please let me pass.”

“Do you think me so base as to tease you on such a subject?
What shall I do to persuade you that I am sincere.”

“Let me go home.”

“May I go with you?”

“I would rather you did not come, please.”

“Why are you so unkind?” I asked, taking her hand. “Tell me
you love me, and let us be happy.”

“But I don’t love you,” she said, trying to withdraw her
hand, and the tears coming into her eyes. “I don’t love you,
and I want to go home.” She turned from me to hide her face,
looking about at the same time for some way of escape.

“But you will love me by to-morrow,” I replied soothingly.
“I may ask you again, may I not?” and then she looked so
pitiful, with the tears rolling from her frightened eyes and
her hand trembling in mine, that I thought I would put my arm
around her—to comfort her, you know. “Poor child!” I
said, drawing her to me as they do in the theatre, “you don’t
know your own heart: rest here.”

I wish you had seen her!—I wish you had seen
her! She drew herself from me quivering with indignation, her
eyes% sparkled, and she was in such a rage that she could
hardly speak, but after an effort she broke forth in a torrent
of words: “I have an utter contempt for you, and I will bear
this no longer. You think you are irresistible—that all
the girls are in love with you—that your wealth buys you
impunity—that your position will excuse your
rudeness—and that you can dispense with politeness
because your name is Highrank! I would like to box your ears. I
despise you and your behavior so thoroughly that were you a
hundred times in earnest in asking me to marry you, I would
refuse you a hundred times!” Then she rushed past me, and I was
so astonished that I did not try to prevent her.

The idea of her refusing me, and in such a manner! No
wonder if she should end badly. Mrs. Stunner was right.
However, I am glad she did refuse me, for she must
certainly be a little wrong in her head. Wonder if her
ancestors were insane or anything. She was deuced handsome when
she got angry. Never saw a woman angry at me before: something
very queer about her. Had a contempt for me, too! Why should
she have that? I don’t understand it. Said I was
conceited—that I thought all the girls would marry me.
And so they would, all but herself; and that shows there is
something odd about her—not at all like any other woman.
Deuced glad she did not take me at my word. Queerest thing! She
cried when I put my arm around her: never knew a woman would
cry at that before. Little Eva wouldn’t. I believe I
like tender women best—at one time I thought they were
not nice. What a fool I was! What should I do with a wife I
could not kiss? I wonder if Blanche will speak to me again?
Maybe all this was a dodge, women have so many; but she looked
in earnest. I might have frightened her by being so sudden, but
why the deuce should women be frightened at proposals, when
they pass their lives in trying to get them? So Mrs. Stunner
said. Poor birdie!, what a soft hand she has! Maybe some women
are modest: I will ask Hardcash about it. She may not have
known what she was saying—agitated, and all that sort of
thing. I will see how she acts to-night—need not ask her
again if she is not civil. Eva will comfort me if I need it.
What a sweet voice she had till she got angry! but she was very
odd.

I strolled home to the hotel, musing over the adventure of
the afternoon. Blanche was a girl who might be included in the
star type that I had once sought [pg
300] for: wanted to be worshiped and play the superior.
Now that I had found her I was surprised how little I liked
that style. Just as if a good-looking fellow like me was a bear
or a wild Indian, to be afraid of! I don’t see that she would
have been any the worse for it if I had kissed her; and
wasn’t I as respectful as her nearest relation? ‘Pon honor I
was. A very odd girl. I shall ask Ned Hardcash about it.

CHAPTER IV.

I never saw Eva looking better than she did that night. I
lounged around the room until I came to her crowd, attached
myself there, and did some heavy flirting. I asked her to take
a moonlight stroll, but her aunt overheard me and gave her a
look, upon which she said the air outside was too cool. I saw
the play was to be above-board. Aunt Stunner had taken matters
into her own hands, and the game had commenced in earnest. Mr.
David Todd, Jr., was there, and Eva paid him a good deal of
attention: I did not like it.

Presently she went off to dance with him, and Aunt Stunner
sat down by me. Fanning herself energetically, she said in a
confidential tone, “Eva is looking sweetly to-night: don’t you
think so, Mr. Highrank?”

“Miss Eva always looks jolly,” I said shortly. I did not
want to talk to the old lady.

“Mr. Todd appears to think so too,” she went on with a nod
and a knowing look at me. Evidently she was playing Todd
against Highrank.

“Mr. David Todd, Jr.?” I asked languidly: “he has thirty
thousand a year, hasn’t he?”

She looked at me sharply for an instant, then smiled and
said, “How should I know, dear Mr. Highrank? It is his rare
personal merit that pleases me. I own I am happy to see him so
attentive to the child for her sake. She is so impulsive and
innocent, so likely to fancy a younger, more dashing kind of
man”—here she glanced at me—”that I acknowledge I
do feel anxious to have her settled happily. Not but that some
young men are exceptions,” she continued amiably, “and make
excellent husbands.”

“There are two classes of men,” I remarked quietly. “They
can be divided into those who make good husbands and those who
don’t. Wealthy men are the most superior, and are best fitted
to fill the situation.”

“I agree with you entirely: you are a very sensible young
man,” enthusiastically replied the old lady, not recognizing
the quotation.

We talked on until Eva came back: then I claimed the next
waltz, and decided I would carry her off from Todd. I pressed
her hand, but she would not respond: it was plain she was
obeying orders.

“Won’t you walk with me?” I whispered as we were near an
open window in a pause of the dance.

“I can’t, Charley—indeed I can’t,” as I tried to draw
her outside: “I will explain another time.”

“You are very cruel,” I continued in the same undertone.

“You don’t care if I am,” she said a little bitterly.

“As if I do not care when you use me badly! Won’t you tell
me what is the matter?” I asked tenderly.

“Oh, Mr. Highrank, I am so unhappy!” she whispered.

“Why so, my dear?” No one could help calling Eva “my dear”;
besides, we were hidden by the heavy window curtain and no one
overheard us.

“I—I—am going to be married,” she said.

“It appears to me that ought to make you particularly merry,
oughtn’t it?”

“But it don’t,” she answered, sighing.

“Why not, you foolish girl?”

“Oh, everything is so different from what I expected.”

“In what way?”

“W-h-y,” she answered slowly, “I thought it would be
romantic, and that he would ask me in the moonlight.”

“Like to-night, for instance?” I said, taking her hand and
drawing her through the low window on to the
piazza.

[pg 301]

“Yes,” she replied, “and instead of that—”

Well, instead of that?” I repeated, seeing she paused.

“Instead of that, it was in that old parlor of ours. I have
never had a nice time since we took it two weeks ago, odious
green place! I detest green furniture; it is so unbecoming,”
she said pathetically.

“And who is the happy dog—I mean gentleman’—Eva?
I may call you Eva, just for this evening yet, mayn’t I?”

“I don’t care if—if—Oh my! what a name! Charley,
did you ever hear such a dreadful name as David?”

“What! old Todd? It isn’t old Todd?” I asked, laughing.

“It is very unkind of you to laugh when you know I must
marry him.”

“I won’t laugh,” I said, putting her arm in mine and walking
down the verandah. “Come, sit on this sofa and tell me all
about it.”

“Well,” she said, half pouting and half crying, “I must
marry some one this season—both mamma and auntie say
so—and I can’t marry Ned.”

“Ned Hardcash? You don’t mean to say he was spooney on
you?”

“Yes he was, but I told him he was too poor.”

“You are very reasonable, Eva.”

“You need not talk that way. Mamma would not hear of it. I
could not let him ask her, for she would have been so angry,
and she and auntie would have scolded me; and you don’t know
how fearfully auntie can abuse one when she begins.”

“How did Ned take your answer?”

“Oh, he just went away, and did not care a bit, and I have
not seen him since.”

“He did not care?” thinking I now had the clew to Ned’s
savage manner for the week past. “When did it happen?”

“I can’t exactly remember: it was soon after we took the
parlor. Auntie would not let me invite him there, and he got
angry and jealous of Mr. Todd, who was with me all the time,
and—”

“But that showed he loved you, don’t you think so?”

“Well, perhaps he did a little: he told me if I Would trust
him he would not let mamma or auntie scold; but you know that
was nonsense. I would like to see any one prevent them if they
want to do it. And he hadn’t any money, and we should have
starved: I told him so. Then he said there was no danger of
that: he could manage to keep the wolf from the door. I knew of
course that be could easily keep wolves away, for there are
none here, and I would not live in that horrid West; but that
would not prevent us starving: auntie said we would
starve.”

“Poor Ned!” I murmured.

“You pity poor Ned,” said she, now sobbing, “but you don’t
pity poor me at all, and I am the most wretched.”

“Come, don’t cry, Eva,” I said, putting my arm around her:
it was very dark in that corner, and I knew Eva would not fuss
about it, as a certain other person did not long ago. “What
shall I do for you, my dear? Do you want Ned back? I’ll tell
him and make it up between you: shall I?”

“No, no! He is so cross and fierce that I should be afraid
of him: he was dreadfully ill-tempered when he left me that
night.”

“But that was because he loved you, Eva.”

“When people love me I don’t want them to be disagreeable: I
should not want to vex any one if I loved him.”

“You will make a dear, kind, amiable little wife, I
know.”

“But I don’t want to marry Mr. Todd,” she said, still
sobbing on my shoulder. “Oh, Charley, what shall I do?”

Could I find a lovelier, more tender, sweeter wife than the
girl now in my arms? My ideas of affectionate women had
changed, dating from about two weeks back, and the conduct of
Miss Blanche, who would neither see me nor speak to me since
that afternoon, strengthened me in the opinion that a woman is
best with some heart. Was it any wonder, then, that I decided
on the spot to answer Eva’s question of “Charley, what shall I
do?” by saying “Marry me, my dear: ’tis the only way I
see for you to [pg 302] get out of the scrape”?
Just as my resolve became fixed I heard footsteps near. In
another moment, scarcely giving Eva time to wipe her eyes,
those three sisters, the Greys, came trooping by, and
stopped in front of us.

“Spooning as usual?” remarked one of them to me.

“Miss Eva, won’t you ask Mr. Todd to give him a lesson in
proposing? I don’t believe he knows how to do it. A deplorable
state of ignorance!” said another.

A merry group soon joined them, and I did not get another
chance that evening. However, I went to my room happy, for I
knew I should be successful on the morrow. Eva loved me: her
mother had said as much when I overheard her in the arbor on
the mountain-side, and I knew Aunt Stunner would have no
objection, as my income exceeded Todd’s. In an easy-chair by
the open window I thought over my resolution, and counted
myself a fortunate man. In the midst of this reverie the door
burst open, shut with a bang, and Ned Hardcash threw himself on
a fauteuil opposite me.

“What’s up now?” I cried. “Has Harry Basset lost?” Ned was
always deep on the turf, and I could think of nothing else that
would cut him up so much.

“D—n Harry Basset! I say, Charley, haven’t you some
brandy?”

“Too hot for brandy to-night,” I said: “take some of this,”
pushing him a bottle.

“Stuff!” and he looked at it contemptuously. “If you can’t
treat a poor devil more like a man when he comes, he will go;”
and he rose with a jerk.

“Sit down, old fellow! or rather go to that closet and get
what you want—enough there for a night or two.”

He looked the worse for hard drink already, but of course I
could not refuse him if he wanted it. It is true politeness, if
your friend wants to commit suicide, to sharpen the razor for
him and ask no questions. I leaned back while he mixed a glass
with seltzer and drank it greedily. Finally, when he looked
more composed, I said, “I want to ask you a question, Ned.” I
thought of Blanche Furnaval’s strange conduct on seeing Ned
before me, and resolved to ask him if he could explain it. “I
believe you know something about the queer ways of women. Can
you tell—”

“Look here, Charley,” he broke out savagely: “I want one
thing understood. You are always teasing and bothering about
the women; and as you have not got a piece of flesh as big as a
pea for a heart, you will never understand anything about them;
so, if you don’t want to set me crazy, just let that subject
down while I am here.”

“It’s a woman, then,” I said, forgetting in my surprise to
be angry. “Cheer up, old boy! You will soon get over it: no
woman’s worth it.”

“Not to you, perhaps, but it may be the contrary with me,”
he answered moodily.

There was a long silence. I smoked, he drank: at last I
broke it by saying unconsciously, “She is a dear little thing.”
My thoughts had reverted to Eva.

“Ah, you saw it?” cried Ned eagerly. “Then I can talk to you
about it. You may well say she is a dear little thing. She is
an angel—too good for a fellow like me. But the poor
child dotes on me: that is the hardest part of the cursed
thing. How she laid her head on my shoulder and cried, and said
she did not want to marry that other fellow, d—n him! It
almost broke my heart,” he continued dejectedly, “and it is not
of the stuff that breaks easily. I told her I would take her
off and we would run for it, though Heaven knows what we should
do afterward. Sometimes it seems as if I could not bear it. I
wish I could strangle Todd: that would be some comfort.”

“What makes you so savage against old Todd?”

“Don’t you know he and Eva are engaged? All owing to the
interference of that old Stunner. What business was it of hers,
I wonder? And poor Eva disliking him as she does, and so
unhappy about it, and I can’t help her! My cursed luck,
always;” and Ned heaved a brandy-and-seltzer sigh.

Yes, it was Eva. I had forgotten all
[pg 303] she had told me about
Ned, or rather she had not told me as much as he did. She
sobbed on his shoulder, did she? His shoulder! disgusting! She
dote on him! he comfort her! It was horrible! A sudden idea
struck me. “Did you kiss her, Ned?” I asked gruffly.

“You are asking a d——d impertinent question, old
fellow, and of course I sha’n’t answer you;” and he tried to
make his drunken face look grave.

I should have liked to throw him out of the window, but the
question was, as he said, hardly one to be asked; and then, if
she allowed it, what right had I—It was enough. It might
be pleasant to have an affectionate wife, but no drinking
gambler like Ned Hardcash should ever be able to say or
remember that he had kissed the mistress of The Beauties.

I was sad at heart: hope now failed me. Poor little Eva! I
must bury her image with the “wild rose,” with “my star,” with
the “sympathizing friend.” All, all are emptiness—are
names, are dreams. The poets were old-fogy chaps: they never
saw the women of to-day, and well for them they did not.

I am still unmated: I bear the loneliness that awaits all
great excellence. The sun has no companion in glory; the moon
shines alone; there was but one phoenix; the white elephant is
solitary. So it must be with me. I am not misanthropic: I have
learned to bear my superiority with philosophy. I was groomsman
at Eva’s wedding the other day, and gave her a handsome
present, as it was expected I should. I still like my
fellow-beings, and fulfill the duties of life to the best of my
abilities. I flirt, I dance, walk, drive, pursue my usual
occupations, give bachelor-parties at The Beauties, and have
grown contented from habit, but I am a confirmed old—or
shall I say young?—bachelor.

ITA ANIOL PROKOP.

MUNICH AS A PEST-CITY.

From a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the
contrary, Munich has had the reputation of being an
exceptionally unhealthy place. All ancient towns have their
legends of desolating plagues, the record of an ignorant
defiance of sanitary laws, but such stories are especially
numerous in the traditions of Munich, and are connected with
circumstances which show that epidemic diseases were formerly
extremely frequent and virulent in that City.

The absurd festival of the “Metzger-Sprung” (Butchers’
Leap), which takes place annually on the Monday before
Ash-Wednesday, when butcher-boys attain to the second grade of
their apprenticeship by dressing themselves in long robes
trimmed with calves’ tails, and springing into the old fountain
in the Marien-Platz in the face of an admiring crowd, is held
in commemoration of a similar frolic contrived several hundred
years ago by lads of the same trade during the prevalence of a
horrible epidemic, for the purpose of tempting the frightened
citizens out of their gloomy houses into fresh air and
merriment, which these sensible youths had concluded to be the
best safeguards against disease. The grotesque procession of
the “Schäffler-Tanz” (Coopers’ Dance), which occurs once
in every seven years, just before the Carnival, has a similar
origin. One of the favorite myths of Munich is that of an
enormous dragon which lived in the ground beneath the city and
poisoned all the wells with his venomous breath, until, being
at last lured to the surface by seeing his reflection in a
mirror held above a certain spring, a brave knight slew him and
saved the [pg 304] people from further
destruction. The former imminence of danger from pestilence
is shown also in the songs of the night-watchmen, who every
hour exhorted to prayer for exemption from the plague, as
well as from the terrors of fire, sword and famine.

And this evil fame still clings to Munich, in spite of all
that has been done to improve its condition, and of all that
has been written to purge it of its contempt. Efforts of the
latter kind have indeed been prodigious, increasing with the
growing importance of the place as a centre of education in
science and art. Local medical authorities issue from time to
time ingenious pamphlets on hygienic investigations, with
particular application to the suspicion under which their city
labors in this regard; the newspapers keep up the whitewashing
process with diligence, not forgetting to hold up frequently
before their readers the sanitary shortcomings of Vienna and
Berlin; nay, the traveler is met at the very threshold of his
hotel by a tiny tract containing not only a list of the
principal sights, but also a comforting assurance that the
climate is not so bad as has been represented, and that by
wearing sufficient wrappings and avoiding the ordinary drinking
water, strangers may hope to accomplish their visit and escape
unharmed. Surely no other city takes such benevolent pains to
reassure its inhabitants and instruct and warn its
stranger-guests: perhaps it is because deeds have not kept pace
with words that assertion and argument have hitherto failed of
the desired effect. The protracted, repeated cholera epidemic
of 1873-74 may well challenge a close observation of the
situation, surroundings and sanitary condition of Munich as a
means of ascertaining the causes of this exceptional
visitation, as well as of the continual existence of an
indigenous disease which, more than almost any other, is
dependent upon circumstances within the power of man to
control.

Instead, therefore, of constructing the cholera and the
typhus out of our “inner consciousness,” as certain of the
physicians and hygienists of Munich, in true German fashion,
appear disposed to do, let us look at some of the facts of the
case—facts sufficiently obvious to be perceptible to any
person of intelligence, and the nature of which is so well
understood as to be accepted at once as bearing closely upon
the subject in question.

And first, as to climate. Considering that the cholera, from
which Munich suffers more at every visitation than almost any
other European city, and typhus, which is always at home within
its limits, are not, properly speaking, climatal diseases, it
would seem at first sight unnecessary to consider the situation
of Munich in this respect. But while the principal object of
the present paper is to indicate the causes of the
above-mentioned plagues, the fact should not be lost sight of
that nearly all known diseases flourish in this unfortunate
city, many of them owing to its exceptionally bad climate,
while the sudden and extreme changes of temperature which occur
in every season of the year have a tendency to aggravate those
ills which find their sources in more preventable
conditions.

Munich stands upon a high, barren plain, sixteen hundred
feet above the level of the sea, exposed to the full power of
the sun in summer, brooded over by chilly fogs in spring and
autumn, and swept the whole year through by all the storms that
accumulate upon the mountains filling the horizon to the south
and east. The air is mountain-air, minus the aroma and
stimulus of evergreen forests, and plus the miasma of
miles of marsh and peat-land and the foulnesses of the city
exhalations. It is the thin air of a high elevation, pleasantly
bracing to persons so fortunate as to possess nerves of iron
and lungs of leather, but extremely irritating to sensitive
brains and delicate chests, and too exhausting, after a time,
in its demands upon the most abundant vitality. It is the boast
of certain physicians in Munich that consumption is rare in
that city, but the weekly report of deaths would seem to
contradict this assertion. Certain it is that diseases of the
throat and lungs are very common,
[pg 305] especially during the
spring, and that all the rest of the year the whole
population suffers more or less from catarrh. Perhaps if
there be less of consumption than one would expect to find
in such a climate, it is because those who would otherwise
be its victims are carried off early by acute inflammation
of the implicated organs. “Of course, if these die in the
beginning, they cannot die at a later period,” as a recent
medical writer has wisely and wittily pointed out to certain
amateur statisticians who would fain reduce the mortality of
Munich by leaving out of view the immense percentage of
infant deaths.

The evil effects of the harsh air are increased by the
clouds of dust which the wind is continually raising in the
broad graveled streets—dust the more irritating to eyes,
nose and lungs because largely composed of lime, and which
dries with marvelous rapidity after the frequent heavy showers
and protracted rains for which this region is also remarkable.
It is the last resort of the citizens of Munich, when driven
out of every other defence of their climate, to say, “But it is
a good climate for the nerves.” One would like to know for
what nerves and whose nerves, since strangers who
reside here for any length of time generally find that any
constitutional tendency to ailments in which the nerves are
principally involved is increased, instead of lessened; and
among the natives themselves brain diseases, strokes of all
kinds, fits and cramps, are frequent and fatal, while the enemy
which they fear the most, and which presses them the hardest,
is known by them as “nervous fever,” The air is too stimulating
for any but the most robust constitutions; and the sudden
blasts of fierce wind that continually interrupt the enjoyment
of even the few days of otherwise pleasant weather, and the
intolerable glare of the sun upon the dusty streets and squares
and monotonous rows, of light-colored houses, unrelieved, for
the most part, by trees or vines or any green thing, are
perpetual irritants which must react unfavorably upon the
general health. Indeed, one begins at last to find in the
harshness of the climate some explanation, if not excuse, for
the roughness of disposition and manner which have made the
people of Munich a proverb among their countrymen and a terror
to foreign residents.

Another cause of the unhealthiness of Munich is the nature
of the soil. The ground upon which the city is built, as also
the land for a considerable distance round about, was formerly
the bed of a lake, and consists of a loose gravel to the depth
of many feet, there being scarcely enough earth upon the top to
furnish subsistence for the commonest grass and weeds, while
trees, esculent vegetables and flowers can only be raised by
preparing a new soil, which must be continually enriched by
artificial means. A proverb says, “Scratch a Russian and the
Tartar shows through;” so one has only to stir the soil of
Munich to find just below the surface the coarse gravel,
defying cultivation. Of course, all the fluid matter deposited
upon the surface that does not exhale in the atmosphere
percolates through this loose stratum until it reaches the
rock, where it stagnates and corrupts, returning into the air
in the form of poisonous gases, instead of undergoing the
healthy transformation which is effected in all soils capable
of sustaining vegetable life. If the fluid thus held in
solution were only the rain from heaven, the result would not
be so disastrous; but, unfortunately, there is scarcely any
kind of filth that is not allowed to contribute constantly to
the subterranean supply of moisture. It has been estimated that
of the seventy-five thousand tons of refuse matter which Munich
furnishes within a year, scarcely one-third is carried out of
the city: the rest is suffered to go into the ground upon the
spot. Nor can that third which is gathered up be considered as
taken out of harm’s way, since all of it that can be regarded
as manure is spread at once upon the neighboring fields, whence
it sends back its stenches upon every wind that blows.

The people of Munich, according to one of their most famous
chroniclers, have always been noted for their piety
[pg 306] (“Fromm waren die
Münchner zu jeder Zeit”), but they have never been
celebrated for that virtue of cleanliness which is said to
be akin to godliness: indeed, they are known amongst other
Bavarians as die dreckigen Münchner (“the filthy
Munichers”); and certain it is that their city is far behind
the times in all sanitary matters. The introduction of
sewers is a very recent improvement. It will scarcely be
believed that many of the broad, showy streets which came
into existence under the patronage of Ludwig I. were laid
out and built up without any reference to this first
necessity of all thoroughfares. Even the Theresien Strasse
has not long rejoiced in a “canal;” and the sewer was laid
in that finest part of the Gabelsberger Strasse which runs
past the Pinakothek and the Polytechnic School as late as
the summer of 1873, while the upper end of the same street,
which is notoriously unhealthy, is still unpaved and
undrained. The Munich sewers, however, are not so great a
boon as one might suppose: indeed, they may be considered as
mere receptacles and condensers of the evil substances and
odors that would be promiscuously diffused. Owing to a want
of knowledge or of skill in their construction there is not
sufficient fall to carry away their contents, nor is there
any system of flushing to drive out the sediment and cleanse
the pipes. Consequently, there is a horrible odor ascending
at all times from the open gratings, and frequently the
pipes become choked, so as to necessitate the uncovering of
the receptacle at a junction, and the taking out and carting
away of the hideous slime—an operation which, of
course, adds temporary intensity to the usual stench.

Another source of polluted air is the cellars of a great
proportion of the houses. Of course the families living in the
several flats of each building are all dependent upon one
cellar, which is divided off into compartments according to the
number of stories in the house. These compartments, however,
are in many instances separated from each other by a mere
partition of laths or rough boards, so that any want of
cleanliness on the part of an individual house-keeper is sure
to disturb all her neighbors. Owing to the custom of allowing
small shops to be kept in the ground-floor of dwelling-houses
there is apt to be a mingling of articles for storage in the
cellar such as is neither agreeable nor wholesome. Thus, for
instance, a dairywoman will fill the shelves of her compartment
with pans of milk: her next neighbor is perhaps a small dealer
in wood, coal and turf, and raises a dust accordingly; the
greengrocer opposite makes the air damp and bitter with his
heaps of neglected vegetables; while the butcher not only has a
right to hang up his newly-slaughtered animals and chop his
sausage-meat inside of his particular compartment, but may
allow a living pig or calf, whose death-hour has not yet
arrived, to roam up and down the dark passages, to the increase
of the general dirt and discomfort. In this connection it may
be well to enter a protest against the Munich regulation, or
absence of regulation, which allows every butcher to slaughter
pigs, calves and sheep upon his own premises. To say nothing of
the shocking sights and sounds which are thereby forced upon
the attention of the dwellers in the neighborhood of such
shops, it is impossible, considering the defective drainage and
insufficient water supply, that the practice should not be of
serious injury to the public health. There are also many
cellars which are rented out entirely to fruiterers and
green-grocers not living in the buildings as a place to store
their goods for the winter. In such cases the cellars are apt
to remain in a filthy condition, and the smells that pour from
the windows are at once a nuisance to passers-by and a source
of danger to the inhabitants of the houses. But it is not only
the living inhabitants of Munich that are corrupting the
heavens above, the earth beneath and the waters under the
earth: the dead in their graves are busy at the same work. It
is a pity that all thinking persons who still object to the
practice of cremation as unnecessary and impious could not be
compelled to take up their residence for
[pg 307] a while in the neighborhood
of the two great cemeteries of Munich: they would not be
long in crying out for the adoption of purifying flames and
the innoxious columbarium.

The Old (or Southern) Cemetery at the time of its first
enclosure was a short distance outside of the city, though not
so far as it ought to have been; but by degrees the streets
have been extended to its very walls, and property-owners build
without hesitation handsome dwelling houses whose windows look
directly down upon that field of corruption, piously
denominated “God’s Acre.” The New Cemetery, on the north side
of the town, has been in use only five or six years, and was
from the beginning but a block or two removed from the nearest
houses. The air in the vicinity of the Old Cemetery is so laden
with the smell of death that even the natives are aware of it,
while strangers generally avoid a second visit. It is a rule
that every seven years a portion of the ground occupied by
rented graves shall be dug over for new tenants, the partially
decayed remains found therein being brought together and buried
again in an indiscriminate heap. This method is about as bad as
it could be, but the graves that are left undisturbed are not
much less harmful to the living. These can be leased for a
period of seventy years, the lease to be renewed if desired,
but never for a longer term than seventy years without renewal.
Whole generations of families are thus buried together, each
grave being dug deep enough to hold several coffins one above
another, the last one coming to within a few feet of the
surface. Now, when one considers the nature of the soil, the
closeness of the cemetery to the abodes of the living, the
frequency with which the earth is turned over, and the great
number of corpses which in a city of the size of Munich must be
interred every year, an idea can be formed of the
disagreeableness and unhealthiness of the cemeteries. Moreover,
bodies are not brought there to be buried at once, but are
placed within twelve hours after death in the dead-house, where
they are allowed to remain forty-eight hours before burial.
This provision, which is in force in most of the cities of
Germany, is a wise one in view of the number of families
inhabiting a single house: it would seem also to offer
additional securities against the horrible fate of being buried
alive, though the time allowed is not sufficient to ensure
certainty in suspicious cases, and is apt to be infringed upon
in seasons of epidemic. But, be that as it may, the continual
presence of scores of corpses lying in open coffins, and
separated only by glass doors from the hundreds of spectators
who come daily to gaze upon the ghastly sight, cannot be
otherwise than injurious to the general health. Also, the
practice of the citizens using the cemeteries as a favorite
promenade, and of spending hours in wandering amongst the
graves, is highly pernicious: it would seem as though the
people of Munich had fed upon stenches so long that they could
not be satisfied with the ordinary smells of the houses and
streets, but must seek the fountain-head of corruption to still
their morbid craving for the odors of decay. During the height
of the cholera epidemic of the winter of 1873-74 an article
appeared in one of the newspapers, written by a citizen who
signed himself “A Constant Visitor of the Dead-houses;” and the
article was answered by an opponent who signed himself “Another
Constant Visitor of the Dead-houses;” as though no more worthy
occupation could be imagined than this of prowling like ghouls
among the victims of the pestilence!

It is now time to speak of another principal cause of the
unhealthiness of Munich, perhaps the most important one of
all—the water. As before stated, Munich is situated on
what was formerly the bed of a lake: the ground, therefore, is
full of springs, and from these the water-supply of the
inhabitants has always been obtained. There is a well in the
court of almost every house, in close proximity to the vault,
the refuse-pit and the drain, and well impregnated also,
doubtless, with that bugbear of Munich hygienists, “the
ground-water.” The most ignorant citizen knows that the
well-water is not [pg 308] fit to drink, and avoids it
as a beverage; still, its use necessarily enters largely
into all domestic arrangements. Children are frequently
thirsty, and cannot be kept from the pumps and fountains;
the poor are not able to afford a constant supply of beer
(and, for that matter, the beer itself is made with the same
material); it is used in cooking and for washing and
bathing; and though its impurities are lessened through
boiling, it is so corrupt that nothing short of complete
distillation could make it wholesome for either outward or
inward application. Strangers are warned against drinking
it, and in numerous instances among the citizens bowel
complaints and typhus have been traced directly to its
poison. It is true that a small portion of the inhabitants
are more favored in respect to their water-supply. Within a
few years the water of two springs rising a little way out
of the city, at Brunnthal and Thalkirchen, has been
introduced into a few streets and houses, and, though by no
means pure, it is vastly better than that of the wells. But
the whole yield from these sources is not sufficient for
more than a third of the inhabitants; and the Thalkirchner
water has recently been corrupted by the breaking in of the
Isar, in consequence of an attempt to enlarge the
spring.

But besides the unfavorable nature of the climate and soil
of Munich—which cannot be helped—and the shameful
condition of its sewerage and water-supply—for which the
city government is mainly responsible—there are many
accessory causes of disease to be found in the habits and
customs of the people. The open-air gatherings of the Germans
are, in many respects, a pleasant-and praiseworthy trait of
their social life, but the practice needs to be held in
judicious restraint to make it safe for the citizens of Munich.
The changes of temperature in that region are so frequent and
so severe, and the atmosphere at night is so heavily charged
with moisture and malaria, that the mere tarrying late in
public gardens is dangerous; but when to this source of danger
are added the imbibing of copious draughts of ice-cold beer and
the eating of suppers of heavy food, such as sausages, roast
pork, radishes, etc., it is easy to see how a sudden check of
perspiration might react upon a gorged stomach and produce the
fevers and inflammation which abound.

Attention has been called to the peculiar soil of Munich as
a disadvantageous characteristic of the locality. There is,
however, a strip of land following the course of the Isar and
bordering the city on the north-eastern side, which is an
exception to the general barrenness, it having been gradually
formed out of the soil and vegetation brought down the river
from more fruitful regions during periods of inundation. It is
a low, marshy, heavily-timbered tract, which has been partially
drained and laid out as a public park, the so-called English
Garden—spot beloved of the people for its welcome shades,
where artificial waterfalls, from the “Isar rolling rapidly,”
add chill to the natural dampness; where unwilling streamlets
creep slowly through tortuous channels toward a stagnant pond,
and pestiferous miasma, rising like incense at the going down
of the sun, broods over the meadows until his rising again. It
was in one of the streets bordering this park that the cholera
broke out in 1873, and there too, Kaulbach, one of its last
victims, had his home. So notorious is the spot as a
breeding-place of typhus that it is generally abandoned at
sunset; but the same crowd that hurry out of its dripping
shades at twilight return in the early summer mornings before
the dew has dried on the grass or the poisonous damps have
exhaled from the glens and thickets.

So long as the sun is in the sky it is fine weather to a
Municher, no matter what wind may blow or what evil the earth
may be bringing forth. Thus, on Christmas Day of 1873, when the
weather, though unusually mild for the season, was still windy
and chilly, and utterly unfit for any open-air enjoyment other
than a brisk walk, every beer-garden in the city was filled
with an eating and drinking multitude; and this, too, when a
cold was especially to be deprecated, as the cholera was
increasing every hour. [pg 309] And so on all Sundays and
feast-days and fast-days and fairs there is a general
pouring out of the population into places of amusement near
and remote, no matter what may be the state of the weather
or what the condition of the public health.

But, though the people of Munich are extremely fond of
staying out of doors, they are by no means lovers of fresh air
in their houses. With the dread of fever always before their
eyes, they make all close when they go to bed, forgetting that
“the only air at night is night air;” and, hardened by habit,
they spend long winter evenings in concert-rooms and tavern
beer-halls, made stifling with tobacco smoke and foul with
accumulated breaths; while at home, especially among the poorer
classes, the air is purposely unchanged in order to economize
heat. Even the Odeon Music-Hail, the place where aristocratic
concerts are given, is so badly constructed with respect to
ventilation that when crowded, as it generally is, women
frequently faint away, while many persons avoid going there
entirely through dread of the discomfort and fear of its
effects. So, too, the theatres show a shameful negligence of
the health and comfort of the audiences as to this particular,
the Royal Theatre especially becoming almost a “Black Hole of
Calcutta” by the end of a six hours’ Wagner opera. The close
air of the crowded lecture-rooms of the Polytechnic School is a
source of positive injury to the students, and the same may be
said of the halls appropriated to pupils in the Academy of
Art.

With respect to bathing, there is no danger of the people of
Munich being mistaken for an amphibious race. The tiny bowls
and pitchers that furnish an ordinary German washstand, and the
absence of slop-pail and foot-bath, are sufficient proof that
only partial ablutions are expected to be performed in the
bed-chamber; while the lack of a bath-room in even genteel
houses, and the smallness and rarity of bathing establishments,
show that the practice is by no means frequent or general among
the better classes. The fiercest radical who should find
himself for a time in the midst of a crowd of the populace
would scarcely hesitate (supposing him to be possessed of
delicate olfactories) to bestow upon them the epithet of “The
Great Unwashed.” Indeed, it would be hardly reasonable to
expect that people should indulge often in a full bath at home
in a city where the water must be drawn from wells, and carried
up long flights of stairs in pitchers and pails by women and
children.

The notions of the lower classes with regard to dress have
doubtless a good deal to do with their health. The same notions
prevail in most parts of Germany, but are especially hurtful in
a climate so severe and variable as that of Munich. Thus, it is
considered improper for a servant-girl to wear a hat or a
bonnet in the street when she is about the business of her
calling. On Sundays and holidays, indeed, or when she has an
outing in the afternoon, she may adorn herself with such an
appendage; but to go to market or to the grocer’s with her head
covered would be a piece of presumption which would at once
expose her to ridicule from all the members of her class.
Hence, all day and every day women and girls may be seen in the
streets without any covering on the head, though, by way of
compensation, most of them are obliged to go about a good share
of the time with their faces bound up on account of swelled
jaws and tonsils, the natural result of such unnatural
exposure. Occasionally, in the coldest weather some few, more
prudent than the others, wear a hood or a small shawl over the
head, but these cases are rare, and excepting in the depth of
winter such a precaution is not thought of, although the gusty,
chilly weather of spring and autumn and the frequent cold
blasts that occur in summer are quite as dangerous, if not
prepared for, as are the winter storms. As a general thing, a
servant goes out on errands in precisely the same clothes that
she wears in the kitchen, and paddles about in rain and snow in
the thin, low house-shoes which, on account of their cheapness,
are the favorite foot-gear of the ordinary Munich
women.

[pg 310]

Children, too, are sent to school in the same unprotected
manner: one may meet them any day trooping through the streets,
their bare heads shining in the sun or glistening in the rain,
according as the fickle sky may smile or weep; and babies are
drawn about in the open air, two, and sometimes three of them,
crowded into a small carriage and sweltering under a feather
bed which covers them to their chins, and yet with their bald
pates exposed to all the winds that blow. The ignorant
recklessness with which the changes of temperature are met is
well exemplified in the attire of little girls and young
maidens who participate in the religious processions which take
place so frequently in Munich, especially during the spring and
early summer. On such occasions, although the weather may be so
chilly that the bystanders are wrapped up to their eyes in
shawls and cloaks, these young creatures appear clad in thin
white muslin dresses, with necks and arms bare, and with no
covering upon the head more substantial than a wreath of
flowers or a gauze veil: and in this condition they march
through the wet and windy streets, and settle down finally to a
prolonged service in a church as cold and damp as a cellar.

Another source of harm is the ordinary diet of the citizens.
There is probably no large city of the Old World where the
lower classes are able to obtain so much substantial food as in
Munich. Indeed, there is, properly speaking, no abject poverty
in that city, although the population, as a whole, possesses
less wealth than is usually found in capitals; one reason of
this being the fact that many families who are rich enough to
choose their place of residence avoid Munich on account of its
notorious sickliness, while their places are filled by
tradesmen and artisans of all kinds, who must make a living at
whatever risk of life. But, at any rate, no one dies there of
starvation, and the great majority of the citizens are able to
have meat for dinner every day. Unfortunately, veal—and
very young veal at that—is the favorite dish of all
classes, so that the benefit derived from animal juices is not
so great as it might be. During the recent Franco-German war it
was remarked that the Bavarian soldiers were able neither to
resist nor to endure so well as the troops of North Germany;
and by many this difference was ascribed to the habitual use by
the former of veal as the chief article of diet. There is no
doubt, too, that the immoderate drinking of beer tends to
weaken instead of strengthen the inhabitants, especially as so
many of them drink when they ought to eat, even beginning a
day’s work by chilling their stomachs with this cold beverage,
and necessitating thereby a supplementary draught of
“schnapps,” thus creating excitement instead of nourishment,
and superinducing a second bad habit upon a first. Pure
Bavarian beer, taken in moderation, would be an excellent
thing, for its stimulating and nutritive properties are a good
counterpoise to the exhausting effects of the harsh climate;
but, alas! this renowned specialty of Munich is losing its
ancient fame: the beer is no longer under governmental
inspection, and bitter is the general complaint against the
brewers on account of its alleged adulteration through the use
of foreign drugs and poisonous indigenous plants, to say
nothing of its dilution by the retailers with Munich water,
itself a poison sufficiently strong. For the rest, the amount
of pork and sausages consumed is enormous: the favorite
vegetable is the indigestible sauerkraut, and the bread in
general use is uniformly bad. Nor can tobacco be considered as
otherwise than an article of diet, since the men and boys are
hardly ever seen without a pipe or cigar in their mouths, while
the women and girls spend the greater part of their lives in an
atmosphere blue and heavy with tobacco smoke.

Having now given many reasons why the citizens of Munich
ought to be sick, it is time to see to what degree effects
correspond to causes in the sanitary condition of the city.
Munich is known all over the world as a nest for typhus fever;
nor will it soon be forgotten that within a year it has
suffered from two distinct outbreaks of cholera, besides
[pg 311] being the only city in
Europe where that epidemic continued to rage during the
winter. The population is estimated at one hundred and
eighty-eight thousand, but this number is generally
considered as greater than the truth. Statistics show that
between two and three thousand sicken annually of typhus,
and that of these between two and three hundred die. Some
idea of the special tendency to this disease may be obtained
by comparing the statistics of Munich with those of Berlin,
which is also an unfavorably situated and very unhealthy
city. In Berlin, the regiment most exposed to fever loses
annually three men: in Munich, the first regiment of
artillery loses annually thirteen men. In Berlin, of the
whole body of the soldiery—over eighteen thousand
men—sixteen men die annually of typhus; in Munich,
where the number of the soldiers is only twelve thousand,
fifty men die annually of typhus. The disease, too, has been
on the increase for the last three years. In 1872 four
hundred and seven persons died of it, and during the first
four months of 1873 one hundred and twenty-two died.
Moreover, it must not be forgotten that many persons
visiting Munich contract the fever there, but return home to
sicken with it, and that this number has greatly increased
since the recent facilities for travel have been extended in
all directions from the capital. If all these cases were to
be added to the list of victims—and they properly
belong to it—the number would be appalling indeed.
Even that small body, the Bavarian Parliament, loses one or
more of its members every year from the same disease and yet
these men are more favorably situated than almost any others
as regards protective circumstances. So patent is the
danger, and so many are the instances of disease contracted
during a short stay in the capital and carried away to
spread contagion in remote places, that frequently persons
chosen to honorable and lucrative official positions refuse
to accept because, in order to hold such situations, they
must reside temporarily or entirely in Munich. Finally, the
general unhealthiness of Munich cannot be questioned, since
statistics show that nearly fifty per cent, of the children
born there die in infancy, and that the death-rate for the
whole population is nearly forty in a thousand.

But is there no help for this state of things? The foregoing
account of the principal causes of disease suggests naturally
the means of at least partial cure for the accumulated evils
under which the benighted city is suffering. It is true that
the climate must always be unfavorable to persons of a certain
constitution, but its bracing air is a tonic to those who are
able to bear it, and its fierce winds serve to sweep away many
an impurity. It is true, also, that the soil must always be in
some degree a manufactory of injurious effluvia, and that the
vicinity of that long strip of marshy bottom known as the
English Garden must continue to be a source of mischief; but if
the dead had never been buried in the neighborhood of the town,
and if the excreta of the living had not from the beginning
until how been allowed to corrupt the air and the water, the
occasional prevalence of vegetable miasma would give
comparatively little trouble. In fact, the extreme backwardness
of the people with regard to knowledge of, and obedience to,
the simplest sanitary laws is a great aggravation of both their
necessary and unnecessary ills. During the recent cholera
epidemic the physicians complained that all rational means of
abating the plague were continually thwarted by the ignorance
and obstinacy of the lower classes. Very few families kept
remedies in their houses, and yet in many cases medical aid was
not applied for, lest the regulations concerning the
disinfection of furniture and the burning of bedding, and other
clothing should be enforced. There was the greatest
dissatisfaction with the prohibition against the holding of
public balls and other amusements wherein health would be
particularly exposed; and the foolish citizens crowded all the
more into the unventilated, tobacco-poisoned beer-cellars and
concert-halls, and persisted in supping on heavy food and cold
beer in the open air, as though on purpose to spite the
over-anxious [pg 312] magistrates and doctors.
Nor was the stupidity confined entirely to the lower
classes. People who ought to have known better defied the
cholera in excess of rioting, while those of another turn of
mind gave way to superstitious fears, and as soon as they
felt the first symptoms of the disease fled to the cold,
damp churches and wasted in prayer upon their knees the few
precious hours which, spent in a warm bed and under the
influence of proper remedies, might have ensured them the
salvation of at least their temporal life.

To go still higher. Although Munich had warning of the
approach of the epidemic months before it broke out, no
sufficient means were adopted by the authorities to fortify the
city against its attack. All summer long the street-drains sent
up their concentrated stenches and the undrained streets spread
far and wide their promiscuous abominations. The general daily
disinfection ordered by the city government was never
thoroughly enforcedly the police, and as often as a lull
occurred in the virulence of the pestilence it was almost
totally neglected by the citizens. When the plague ceased for a
few days in the autumn, the chief medical authorities announced
that it was at an end; and when it broke out again, these wise
ones comforted the public by assuring them that it was only a
“Nach-epidemie“—an after
epidemic—that is, a final effort of the mysterious
poison, like the last flashing up of an expiring flame. And yet
this “after epidemic” lasted more than five months, and was
more virulent in its workings than had been the three months’
visitation in the previous summer! The official reports and
scientific discussions of the subject were unsatisfactory to
the last degree. The principal object seemed to be, not to
cleanse Munich and get rid of the pestilence, but to
substantiate the proposition that the variations in the
sanitary condition of the city are intimately connected with
the rising and falling of the ground-water
(grund-wasser)—a theory which, whether true or
not, is of small practical value under existing circumstances,
since the ground-water, so far as quality is concerned, is
entirely beyond human control, while the drinking-water and the
sewers are capable of improvement.

It is but justice to say that a few physicians—who,
having recently come to Munich, are properly impressed with its
sanitary deficiencies, and one, at least, who, long a resident,
has a thorough knowledge of what is wanted, and sufficient
common sense and courage to speak out—do not hesitate to
declare that the bad water and bad drainage of that city are
the principal causes of its everlasting typhus and its frequent
epidemics. But these men are in bad odor with their colleagues,
and are denounced on all sides as enemies of the fair fame and
prosperity of Munich. Certain physicians of high standing there
laugh at the fuss made about the water, and tell their
patients, even foreigners, to drink all the water they want;
while it may be doubted whether any, excepting the few referred
to above, have any adequate idea of the injury constantly
accruing from the unwashed drains and the crowded
cemeteries.

And Munich will be visited with a succession of “after
epidemics,” and physicians will continue to talk nonsense and
make blunders and be at their wits’ end, so long as they
persist in ignoring the true causes of these plagues and in
delaying to apply the only remedy. Water is what Munich
needs—pure water for the people to drink and to cook
with; plenty of water for them to bathe in; water to wash out
the vaults and drains; water for a daily flushing of the
sewers. As long ago as 1822 a competent authority pointed out
an inexhaustible source from which water might be obtained,
with a fall sufficient to obviate the necessity of any
hydraulic works for its elevation. There is in the Bavarian
Mountains, not far away, a lake of remarkably pure water,
situated at such a height that the level would be above the
loftiest houses in Munich. The estimated cost of bringing the
water into the city is only five millions of gulden (about two
millions of dollars). It seems surprising that with this
excellent opportunity [pg 313] at
hand there should be any hesitation about accepting it. And
yet, after having been possessed of the knowledge for more than
fifty years, there was only one vote in favor of the enterprise
when the subject was discussed in a meeting of the municipal
and medical authorities a short time ago. The proverbial
thriftiness of the German is apt to degenerate into stinginess
when the object to be attained is of general rather than
individual benefit; and though Munich claims a high place as an
art-centre, it would take a long time to convince its citizens
that three hundred millions of kreuzers are but as dust in the
balance when weighed against the value to the world of
Kaulbach.

One step, however, has been gained. The urgent need of an
abundant supply of good water, which is so patent a fact to all
strangers visiting Munich, is beginning to dawn upon the
intelligence of the community. The connection between cause and
effect was so evident during the cholera epidemic of last year
that even Ignorance recognized the Law, while Superstition
dared only whisper of “judgments,” and refrained from
attempting to propitiate the destroying angel by religious
mummeries until it was certain that his wrath was nearly spent.
But it is to be feared that, taking counsel of penuriousness,
an attempt will be made to utilize certain sources which have
recently been discovered near the city, and which are not only
insufficient, but impure, instead of bringing, once for all, a
full supply for every purpose from the neighboring mountain
lake.

The dragon that haunted the soil of Munich in the old days
is still poisoning the springs and the atmosphere with his
pestilent breath, nor can he be tempted forth to his
destruction until he shall see his reflection mirrored in
fountains of pure water.

AMONG THE BLOUSARDS.

When the misèrables of the horrible and
fascinating old Paris that people used to read about in the
works of Eugène Sue and the elder Dumas were drawn into
the streets of modern Paris by the ragings of the last
revolution, people asked, “Where did these dreadful creatures
come from?” Not only did the well-to-do citizen of Paris, who
has his habitudes, and never departs from them, and
knows nothing outside of them, ask this question, but the
American or English tourist who was caught in Paris at the
moment asked it. These frightful creatures were not Parisians,
surely? Parisians! Why the very word is redolent of ess.
bouquet! The well-to-do citizen, sipping his black coffee after
dinner in his favorite corner on the Boulevard, explained that
they came from the provinces—”Oui, they were provincials,
these misèrables” And the tourist knew no better
than the citizen where the Communist demon came from, with his
flaring torch, his red eyes, his flying hair, his hoarse howl,
his sturdy tramp, which trampled civilization in the dust, and
his reckless spirit, which let loose all the devils of
incarnate vice for a mad riot. There are no such creatures as
this under the shadow of the Madeleine! We never meet them on
the Boulevard des Italiens! They don’t live in the Faubourg St.
Germain! There are none such in the Champs
Élysées, even on Sunday, when, as everybody
knows, the lower orders invade the haunts of the better
classes—to wit, ourselves, the tourists.

Nevertheless, these very creatures are still in Paris in
great numbers. The most elegant tourist who has walked the
streets of the French capital this year,
[pg 314] though he kept strictly to
the choicer quarters, has touched elbows with these
creatures unconsciously; and if he has ventured into the
Belleville quarter, into the regions beyond the Place of the
Bastile, into the neighborhood of the Panthéon or the
Gobelins tapestry-mill, he has been jostled against, on the
narrow sidewalks of narrow streets, by thousands of them.
They are not such a conspicuous feature of the city’s daily
life now as they were when the volcano of revolution was
belching its lava torrent through the streets; but they are
there. They are not now occupied in the way they were then;
they make less noise; they dress more quietly; they attend,
in one way or other, to the business of getting a living.
Some are working at trades; some are playing at soldiers;
some are keeping cabarets; some are driving fiacres. I am
morally certain the rascal who drove me home from the
Gymnase one night was a petroleum-flinger at the most active
period of his existence. “Give me your ticket, cocher,” I
said to him; for the law requires the cabman to give to his
fare, without solicitation, a, ticket with his number, and
the legal rates of fare printed on it. He cracked his whip
at the left ear of his steed, and drove on without paying
any attention. “Give me your ticket,” I repeated. This time
he shrugged his shoulders—it requires a really
superhuman effort on the part of a Frenchman to refrain from
letting his shoulders fly up to his ears, whatever his
determination to control himself—but drove on in
silence. Then I brandished my umbrella, and punching him
with that weapon in the back in an energetic manner,
repeated, “Cocher, oblige me with your ticket, tout de
suite.” He turned round on his seat in a fury. “Ah,
ça!” he roared, thee-thou-ing me as an expression of
his direst rage and power of insult, “where hast thou come
out of, then, that thou hast no sense left thee at the
last?” Yes, I am morally certain he helped burn the
Tuileries, that fellow!

Others of the former demons who howled in the Commune mobs
are now doing the congenial work of thievery which they did
before the Commune days, and especially during them. They are
not the worst-looking of the demons. A thief is generally a
rather sleek-looking person in his station. Rich thieves treat
themselves to the best of broadcloth and the shiniest of tall
hats. Poor thieves usually at least shave their faces, and try
to look unforbidding. If they wear a blouse, it is because they
belong on a social scale which does not dream of wearing a
coat. The blousard of Paris may be either a thief or a
working-man: he is always the one or the other, and sometimes
he is both.

The great mass of those who rioted in the Commune—the
rank and file of that turbulent army—may be found
wherever there are blouses in Paris. Occasionally, arrests are
made, even now, of men who were prominently active, unduly
noisy, in that terrible time: the French police has got a list
of such, and will go on tracking them down and bringing them to
punishment for years to come, or until the next revolution
arrives. In a most respectable street in the Faubourg St.
Germain, where I lived, a quiet wine-seller next door to me was
arrested and his business broken up nearly two years after the
war was over, his only offence being that he had been too
active a Communist. Later, an industrious blousard of my
acquaintance was arrested at his work, and sent to prison for
the same offence: he was a carriage-maker. In the Rue de
Provence an old woman who begged very assiduously with a
drugged baby, and whom I used to watch from my window by the
half hour, fascinated by her practical methods of doing
business, was hauled up one day on the same charge, and went
her way with the gendarme, to be seen no more. A meeker-looking
old creature I never saw as she leaned against the wall over
the way, and collected sous industriously from the passers-by,
and hid them in a pocket in the small of the poor baby’s back;
but I was told she displayed tremendous energy as a
pétroleuse in those other days when robbery was a better
trade than even beggary.

You may have observed, when you have been returning home
from the [pg 315] opera some night in Paris,
in the gloom succeeding midnight, a dusky figure moving
along by the paved gutter in the shadow of a large square
lantern which he carries. The lantern has a light only in
front, and catches your eye as it glides along two or three
inches above the paving-stones, so that you see the figure
in the shadow behind it but dimly. Close down to the stones
it throws its glare for two or three feet about, and into
that glare-emerges a hook—an iron hook—which
pokes and prods at>out in the gutters, and now and then
fastens like a finger on a wisp of paper and disappears
behind the lamp. Following the hook with your eye, you see
that it deposits the wisps of paper in a deep basket
fastened on the back of a man. The is shaggy, dirty and
begrimed. He wears a hat which he has at some fished out of
a gutter, a ragged blue blouse, a raggeder apron, which was
in its brighter days a coffee-sack, and wooden shoes upon
his feet. A short pipe, sometimes alight, but more often
empty, is in a corner of his mouth. No one needs to be told
who he is or what his calling. In the argot of the blousards
he is known as the Chevalier of the Hook.

The ragpicker of Paris has been often written of, but what I
have read of him has never shown him to me in quite the colors
I have found him in by personal observation and inquiry
concerning his ways of life. He has been somewhat idealized in
print, I find. Victor Hugo has presented him in a light not
unlike that of Cooper’s noble savage—with large
difference of color and pose, of course. The average Frenchman
knows Cooper’s noble savage as well as we know Hugo’s romantic
ragpicker, and he knows nothing of the American Indian besides.
(It is a curious fact, which I may note in passing, that the
only American author whose writings appear to be really well
known in Paris to-day is Fenimore Cooper. Next to him stands
Edgar Poe—Poaye, as the French call him,
pronouncing both the vowels.) There is a street in the crowded
quarter of Paris back of the Panthéon which has the,
reputation of being the especial haunt of the ragpickers. It is
called the Rue Mouffetard, and includes many of this class of
blousards among its population; but as there are over twenty
thousand ragpickers in Paris, it needs little argument to show
that they are not all hived in the Rue Mouffetard. Great
numbers live in the Brise Miche quarter, behind the church of
St. Méry; at Montmartre, along the Canal de
Bièvre; in the purlieus of Belleville; out beyond the
Bastile; in fact, wherever there is dirt enough to suit their
tastes. For if the truth is to be written here, it must be said
that the ragpicker of Paris is the most degraded creature ever
met in the guise of a human being. I have met Digger Indians,
too, in California. There is something to be said in defence of
the bestiality of a Digger: he has not been exposed to the
refining influences of surrounding civilization; he was reared
in darkness and ignorance; so were his fathers before him for
many generations; the white man and his ways have just dawned
upon the poor Digger’s consciousness; and so on. These things
cannot be said for the ragpicker of Paris. He is almost equally
dirty with the Digger, and he lives in the gayest capital of
the world. He is also almost equally ignorant with the Digger:
neither can read or write; neither has any idea whether the
world is round or flat; neither is aware, save dimly, that
there are other lands and other peoples than his own; but the
ragpicker is in a city full of books and newspapers (and, oddly
enough, is a principal purveyor for the mills that make paper
for printing); and the Digger has the advantage in the
comparison. The Digger lives in vicious sexual relations, but
in this particular point the comparison leaves the Indian far
in advance of his rival, for the ragpicker’s customs in this
regard are worse by far than those of even the most degraded
Indians of America. There is nothing in any savage country more
horrible, more astounding and incredible than the practices of
the ragpickers of Paris in respect of the relations between the
sexes. They are so atrociously vile that it is difficult to
state the truth in cleanly
words.

[pg 316]

You may have heard that a ragpicker who has risen to the
rank of a boss in his trade, and so remains at home in a shop
and goes out with his hook no more, is called an ogre. A
woman attaining this dignity is called an ogress. The
terms are not idle ones. Like many of the words and phrases of
slang they are based on the clearest conception of the merits
of the case. An ogre or ogress without a daughter, real or
adopted, lacks the first requisite for doing a successful
business. The ogre or ogress has his or her especial workmen,
who go out and scour the streets, bringing home their load, and
being paid in board and lodging simply. When there is a
daughter in the business the workmen are her husbands. The
process of divorce is easy, and consists simply in the
ragpicker’s returning with his hotte (la hotte is
the basket which hangs on the back) to some other ogre or
ogress after his daily or nightly tour of the streets. Marriage
among the ragpickers of Paris is so rare an incident as to be
virtually no part of their plan of life.

The Paris ragpicker is seldom seen in the streets by day:
his most profitable season is the night. And what meagre
pickings are his at the best! what despicable bits of paper, of
twine, of coal-refuse, of rejected food, bones, potato-skins,
he gathers carefully in his hoard! A bit of paper no larger
than a postage-stamp he saves. A crust of bread no bigger than
a walnut is a prize, for rare are the households in Paris in
which a crust that is large enough to be visible to the naked
eye is allowed to be thrown into the street. Standing and
watching this poor wretch prodding in a gutter after hopeless
infinitesimals, I have pictured to myself what emotions would
surge through his breast if a New York garbage-barrel were to
be set down before him. I am not sure he would be able to
refrain from fainting away at sight of such a mine of wealth.
Happy ragpicker of New York who takes his morning stroll and
his lordly pick from the contents of the teeming barrels our
servants set out on the pavement for him! He does not
have to work at night: he is a sort of prince, compared to his
Paris fellow. If a Paris ragpicker could have the monopoly of
the barrels in a single block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues,
I am convinced he would retire from business at the end of ten
years with an independent fortune—that is, if with the
New York barrels he could have the Paris market and live on
Paris fare. It is an old story that in Paris nothing is wasted.
The very mud in the streets is gathered up and sold. There is a
market for everything.

An important division of the army of blousards is that
composed of the street-sweepers of Paris. They share the Rue
Mouffetard and the Place Maubert with the ragpickers, and, like
them, are scattered about in various poorer quarters of the
city. Ever-picturesque argot has given them a name of ridicule,
and calls them les peintres and their brooms their
inspired brushes. Every tourist has seen those unhappy wretches
at work, sometimes alone, sometimes in gangs of three or four,
men and women together. There is no distinction of sex in this
branch of industry, as indeed there is in none of the lowest
fields of labor in Paris. Women and girls are quite often
ragpickers; among the street-sweepers they form a good half of
the force; they are also street—peddlers, dragging
cartloads of vegetables about and crying aloud their wares;
they are porters, lugging bundles on their backs; they are
oyster-openers, hacking away with iron knife at coarse shells;
they even drive drays and big market-wagons; they split wood
and shovel coal, and in a hundred ways confound and confuse
those theorizers who pretend that male bone and muscle is by
nature brawnier than female. The female scavengers are quite as
strong, quite as coarse, quite as dirty, and can smoke their
pipes with quite as much gusto as their male compeers.

The scavengers are six thousand in number, and are employed
by contractors, who pay them at the rate of four to eight sous
per hour. They use up seventy thousand brooms a year, and the
filth they gather is rotted in pits and sold for manure,
yielding about seven [pg 317] hundred thousand dollars a
year. Until the rubbish of New York streets is made to yield
a profit in a similar manner our streets will never be
cleaned as they should be. But I fear it is hopeless to
expect that New York streets will ever be cleaned as they
are in Paris, from lack of the human element that does the
work in the French capital. A hard ten hours’ work would
yield the Paris scavenger forty to eighty sous, and on this
sum he would be rich, for he can clothe and feed himself on
a sum which would scarcely buy a New York laborer what drink
he needs alone, to say nothing about food and clothing. But
the Paris scavenger is rarely privileged to work ten hours a
day, and his earnings the year round will barely exceed on
an average twenty-five cents a day. For this sum he can have
sufficient food, and as for clothing, it is hardly an
exaggeration to say that he never buys any. At various
stages in his career he becomes possessed by a stroke of
fortune of some article of cast-off clothing, which he
wears, as it were, for life. Ordinarily, the poorest
blousard has a new blouse once in five or ten years, and a
new pair of wooden shoes in the same time; but the
scavenger’s apparel is for ever old, and he never lays it
off. I have seen thousands of men and women in Paris of whom
it would be mere idle dreaming to suppose that they
undressed themselves at night. Their clothing was
practically as much a part of them as their skins. It is
only in the matter of lodging that the lowest classes of
Paris are hard pressed. Rents in Paris are high. Few
families, even of the better sort of blousards, have a home
attractive enough to compete with the fascinations of the
street or the café. Even in the Rue Mouffetard there
are cafés where wine is sold at two sous the glass,
and even cheaper, which would put to the blush some of the
most frequented “saloons” of Broadway in point of elegance
and comfort for the lounger. Stuccoed walls, frescoed
ceilings, huge mirrors, velvet sofas, marble-topped tables,
gleaming chandeliers, gilt and glitter that would be called
“palatial” in New York, make the place attractive. Yet a man
could hardly be too ragged to be welcome therein if he had a
few sous in his pocket.

The scavenger and the ragpicker, being the lowest grade of
blousards, do not always rise to the dignity even of a blouse.
They wear a coat sometimes, but it is a marvel of a coat, and
was in the last stages of tottering old age before it fell to
the blousard. They wear leather boots too sometimes, instead of
the wooden shoes belonging to their station, but they are boots
which are but a mockery and a delusion, and yield the wearer no
comfort. A respectable blousard—a carpenter or a
shoemaker or a member of any honest trade—would scorn to
be seen in any other dress but his neat blouse, unless on some
great day, a fete, his wedding or at church, when he wears his
only coat, or his father’s or a friend’s. The blouse is in its
sphere a badge of respectability to the wearer, and honest
blousards look upon the assumption of a blouse by a thief as a
gross imposition upon the public at large and an outrage upon
honest workingmen. There is a wide range of quality in blouses,
too. I bought one in the Rue Mouffetard, to wear as a
protection in some of my night-wanderings, for the sum of forty
cents: it was a plain frock of coarse stuff, with a string at
the neck. But there were blouses of several degrees of fineness
in the shop—some of very fine linen, tied with a white
silk ribbon, and neatly embroidered. The usual color of blouses
is white, blue or black. The material is often a coarse, warm
cloth, such as one might make a very respectable overcoat of, I
should think. In cold weather it is common to see men wearing
two or even three blouses, one over the other. Caps are sold at
from twenty to sixty cents each in the same street. It will be
seen that clothing is inexpensive to the blousard, and as the
fashions never change with him, he never lays aside a
garment till it is quite worn out.

One of the peculiar features of low Paris is the shop for
the sale of articles at the uniform price of one son. One
before which I paused in the Rue Mouffetard was presided over,
by two women—evidently
[pg 318] grandmother and
granddaughter. The former was as grotesque a type of the
jolly old vendeuse of Paris as it would be possible
to find. A low, winey humor twinkled in her little black
eyes, hidden in wrinkly wads of fat; her nose glowed with
good feeling; her toothless mouth smirked good-naturedly. A
worn shawl covered her chunky shoulders, and a cap like a
muslin and flannel extinguisher protected her bald old head
from the weather. The granddaughter, being young and rather
pretty, was less interesting as a picture of a curious type.
The shop occupied a corner, and seemed to literally overflow
upon the sidewalks of the two streets, so that care was
needful in moving about to avoid stumbling over the profuse
array of objects which littered the way. A group of old
women were standing near, laughing and chattering in
toothless merriment over some mysterious cause of amusement,
which I grievously suspected to be myself, the apparition of
a foreigner being no doubt an uncommon one in that quarter.
But the women of the shop, having an eye to sales, were
obsequiously polite to the stranger. I engaged in
conversation with the old woman, who proved quite
communicative, and set me off on a path of inquiry which
yielded information of curious interest.

“Voyez!” cried out the younger woman from behind the broad
counter open to the street, and spread with a literally
innumerable variety of articles—”Voyez! All one sou! your
choice in the sale!”

To study the shop was to find many suggestions of the types
of people living in the surrounding buildings—alphabets
and whistles for children; playing-cards for gamesters; camphor
cigarettes for invalids; sewing-cases for work-girls; mirrors
for coquettes; and toys innumerable, “all one sou.” In the
grand shops on the fashionable boulevards you may see the last
new mode in toys—for no season goes by in Paris without
bringing some especial toy or toys to become “the
rage”—but in the Rue Mouffetard the toys are all
classics. They have been handed down from generation to
generation precisely in the forms you see them here. Babies who
are now tottering grandfathers and grandmothers played with the
toys of the “boutique à un sou” in their day, as the
babies of the present do, and paid the same price for them, in
spite of the changes of time and the decreased purchasing value
of the son in most respects. I bought a large collection of
these toys purely as objects of curiosity, and it was really
amazing to see, when spread out on a table, what a collection I
had gathered for the incredible price of sixteen cents. Many of
the toys would be readily recognized as old acquaintances in
America, but others, common here for a hundred years past, I
never saw at home. The articulated monkey chasing his nose over
the end of a stick; the wooden snake undulating in a
surprisingly life-like manner; the noisy “watchman’s rattle,”
which in our village was popularly supposed to be the constant
companion of the New York policeman on his beat; the
jumping-jack, the wooden sword, the whip and the
doll,—all these are household friends in the humblest
American homes. But not so the frog which jumps with a spring,
the wooden hammers which fall alternately on their wooden anvil
by the simplest of contrivances, and the horseman without legs,
whose horse has a whistle instead of a tail. How any one of
these articles could be sold for a sou passed my comprehension
until I learned details so surprising as to throw this one
quite into the shade.

There are blousards whose whole lives are passed in carving
these toys from the wood of the linden tree, and daubing them
with the most flaming reds, the most glittering yellows, the
most dazzling blues, that ever colorist beheld. The toy whips
with handles decorated with gilt paper wrapped about them
spirally are said to be exclusively made by Israelites, but the
ingenuity of the human mind has not devised an explanation of
this curious fact. The papier-mâché sheep is one
of the most elaborately fashioned toys sold for a sou, and
[pg 319] the mode of making it is
this: The workman takes old scraps of paper and mashes them
in water to a pulp: this he sticks around the inside of a
rude mould, which is in two parts, one for each side of the
sheep. When the two sides are moulded, he sticks them
together and dips the whole in a pot of white mucilaginous
paint. When this coating is dry, he tattoos the sheep
according to his fancy, covers its back with a bit of
sheepskin, and ties a red string around its neck. And all
this work for a sou? is one’s incredulous question. Why, our
blousard would think his fortune was made if he could get a
sou for it. The retailer in the Rue Mouffetard sells it for
a sou: the man who made it would be happy if he could sell
it at the rate of eight sous the dozen, but, like most other
workers, he must deal with a middleman. No retailer could
take his stock off his hands in sufficient quantities: he
must sell to a wholesale dealer in the first place, and the
wholesale dealer sells to the little shopkeeper at eight
sous the dozen. All this work for half a sou, then! And when
it is added that the workman has to furnish the materials
for his work besides, it really entitles the toy to a niche
in the realms of the marvelous. I have found my eyes growing
moist in New York as I listened to the tales of sewing-girls
who made coarse shirts at six cents apiece, and found the
thread, but such cases were exceptional, and could only be
viewed in the light of intolerable hardships; while the poor
wretches who make these toys at these prices are following
the trade to which they were bred, and which their fathers
followed before them, and their only fear is that they may
be unable to get enough of this work to do. Each of the
other toys in my collection is made at the same or a smaller
price. The little lead candlestick is sold by the wholesale
dealer at four sous the dozen. Whistles are sold at
two sous the dozen. There are little watches of
stamped brass with a crystal, movable hands, and a cord of
yellow cotton with an occasional gold thread running through
it, which are sold wholesale at seven sous the dozen.

“Voyez! Make your choice, brave parents! If the little one
pulls in pieces the object of his affection, no matter: it will
not derange your resources to replace it.”

Courier, in the preface to his translation of Herodotus,
tells us that Malherbe, the courtier, used to say, “I learn all
my French at the Place Maubert,” and that Plato, who was a poet
and did not like the lower orders, nevertheless called them his
“masters of language.” The gamin of Paris, who is the father of
argot, long ago gave to the quarter of the city through which
the Rue Mouffetard runs a name which clings to it tenaciously.
He called it the “quartier souffrant”—the suffering
quarter. A designation like this, given by a magazinist, would
be fitting enough, certainly, but received into the current
slang of Paris, it becomes a really striking phrase. It is
nothing to read of a suffering quarter, but it is almost
startling to hear an omnibus conductor call out, “Place
Maubert! Rue St. Victor! Panthéon! Quartier Souffrant!
Anybody for the Suffering Quarter?” and to see a rheumatic old
woman, tottering with years and clad in dirty rags, get down
and go clattering off into the quarter to which she so palpably
belongs.

The Rue Mouffetard, which in old times was a continuation of
the Place Maubert from the river Seine, then extended in an
unbroken line to the Barrière d’Italie, at the remote
southern limit of the city of Paris. The Haussmannizing reform
which set in under the Empire went at the horrible neighborhood
with a sort of sublime fury of destruction. Whole blocks of
dark, forbidding buildings were obliterated by the pickaxes of
the blousards, who thus assisted at their own regeneration. The
result is, that there is a long and wide avenue now stretching
its lines of lamps into the distance from the point where the
Rue Mouffetard stops and the Avenue Gobelins begins. The old
street—the portion of it which remains—looks with a
dazed and dirty sorrowfulness up the broad, clean avenue which
once was dirty and narrow like itself. The work of
transformation ceased with the breaking out
[pg 320] of the war with Germany.
So did the like work in numerous other quarters of the town
which needed it quite as badly as the Rue Mouffetard. But under
the government of the Septennat the work has been resumed in
some degree. The double purpose is hereby served of letting in
light on the dark spots of the town, and of giving employment
to the needy blousards, who might get into obstreperous moods
again if crowded too hard by poverty and want. It seems at
first sight an awful destruction of property, this work of
demolition, but I believe it has been proved that the rise in
value of the real estate thus regenerated more than compensates
for the losses sustained, in the long run. All the blousard
cares about the matter, however, is that it gives him work, and
that is what he craves.

To see gangs of brawny fellows tearing down walls, ripping
off doors, carrying away timbers on their shoulders when a
street is in its decaying stage, is to see a most interesting
sight. At the entrance of the street a sign is put up: “RUE
BARRÉE.” The front walls of buildings torn away, winding
staircases are seen climbing up with all their burden of years
upon them and all their secret weaknesses exposed. Sometimes
these stairways are of stone, sometimes of wood: when the
latter, if in a fair state of preservation, they are taken away
bodily, to be put up again in some remote quarter of the town.
Shop-windows are offered for sale for like purposes. At night
the scene is made lurid by the glare of triangular lanterns,
which throw out their warning red light, and the entrance to
the street is carefully guarded. Gradually the old buildings
are taken to pieces and removed, bit by bit. New walls of
creamy stone, with modern windows, handsomely carved cornices,
stone piazzas, and the like, are built up. The street has
become widened where it was narrow, and straightened where it
was crooked. The very sidewalks on either side of the new
boulevard or avenue are as wide as was the whole of the old
street which has now disappeared. And with the old street the
old tenants have disappeared too. Handsome shops occupy the
ground-floors, wealthy citizens live in the richly adorned
apartments on the upper floors. The blousards who hived in the
old street have found a nook in some other old street, or they
have fled to the suburbs—the best place for them, as it
is for all people of limited resources in all large towns.

WIRT SIKES.

SONNET.

If thou didst love me for imagined fame,

Or for some reason bred within thy
mind

By teeming Fancy, till thy sense grew
blind,

And wish and its possession seemed the same,

Was it my fault that I was not endowed

With all the virtues of thy
paragon—

That clearer light did shine my flaws
upon,

And showed the actual presence free from cloud?

Ah, no! the fault, if blame there be, was thine.

If thou hadst loved me for myself
alone,

Thy love had lent its graces unto mine,

Until my frailties had to merits
grown—

Till light, reflected from thy soul divine,

Had so transfused me that I too had
shone.

>F.A.
HILLARD.

[pg 321]

THREE FEATHERS.

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF “A PRINCESS OF THULE.”

CHAPTER XXVI.

A PERILOUS TRUCE.

The very stars in their courses seemed to fight for this
young man.

No sooner had Wenna Rosewarne fled to her own room, there to
think over in a wild and bewildered way all that had just
happened, than her heart smote her sorely. She had not acted
prudently; she had forgotten her self-respect; she ought to
have forbidden him to come near her again—at least until
such time as this foolish fancy of his should have passed away
and been forgotten.

How could she have parted with him so calmly, and led him to
suppose that their former relations were unaltered? She looked
back on the forced quietude of her manner, and was herself
astonished. Now her heart was beating rapidly; her trembling
fingers were unconsciously twisting and untwisting a bit of
ribbon; her head seemed giddy with the recollection of that
brief and strange interview, Then, somehow, she thought of the
look on his face when she told him that henceforth they must be
strangers to each other. It seemed hard that he should be badly
used for what was perhaps no intentional fault. If anybody had
been in fault, it was herself in being blind to a possibility
to which even her own sister had drawn her attention; and so
the punishment ought to fall on her.

She would humble herself before Mr. Roscorla. She would
force herself to be affectionate toward him in her letters. She
would even write to Mabyn, and beg of her to take no notice of
that angry remonstrance.

Then Wenna thought of her mother, and how she ought to tell
her of all these things. But how could she? During the past day
or two Mrs. Rosewarne had been at times singularly fretful and
anxious. No letter had come from her husband. In vain did Wenna
remind her that men were more careless of such small matters
than women, and that it was too soon to expect her father to
sit down and write. Mrs. Rosewarne sat brooding over her
husband’s silence; then she would get up in an excited fashion
and declare her intention of going straight back to Eglosilyan;
and these fitful moods prayed on the health of the invalid.
Ought Wenna to risk increasing her anxiety by telling her this
strange tale? She would doubtless misunderstand it. She might
be angry with Harry Trelyon. She would certainly be surprised
that Wenna had given him permission to see her again—not
knowing that the girl, in her forced composure, had been
talking to him as if this avowal of his were of no great
moment.

All the same, Wenna had a secret fear that she had been
imprudent in giving him this permission; and the most she could
do now was to make his visits as few, short and ceremonious as
possible. She would avoid him by every means in her power; and
the first thing was to make sure that he should not call on
them again while they remained in Penzance.

So she went down to the small parlor in a much more equable
frame of mind, though her heart was still throbbing in an
unusual way. The moment she entered the room she saw that
something had occurred to disturb her mother. Mrs. Rosewarne
turned from the window, and there was an excited look in her
eyes. “Wenna,” she said hurriedly, “did you see that carriage?
Did you see that woman? Who was with her? Did you see who was
with her? I know it was she: not if I live a hundred years
could I forget that—that devil in human shape!”

“Mother, I don’t know what you mean,” Wenna said, wholly
aghast.

Her mother had gone to the window again, and she was saying
to herself, hurriedly and in a low voice, “No, you don’t
know—you don’t know: why
[pg 322] should you know? That
shameless creature! And to drive by here! She must have
known I was here. Oh, the shamelessness of the woman!”

She turned to Wenna again: “Wenna, I thought Mr. Trelyon was
here. How long has he gone? I want to see him most
particularly—most particularly, and only for a moment. He
is sure to know all the strangers at his hotel, is he not? I
want to ask him some questions. Wenna, will you go at once and
bid him come to see me for a moment?”

“Mother!” Wenna said. How could she go to the hotel with
such a message?

“Well, send a note to him, Wenna—send him a note by
the girl down stairs. What harm is there in that?”

“Lie down, then, mother,” said the girl calmly, “and I will
send a message to Mr. Trelyon.”

She drew her chair to the table, and her cheeks crimsoned to
think of what he might imagine this letter to mean when he got
the envelope in his hands. Her fingers trembled as she wrote
the date at the head of the note. Then she came to the word
“Dear,” and it seemed to her that if shame were a punishment,
she was doing sufficient penance for her indiscretion of that
morning. Yet the note was not a compromising one. It merely
said—

“DEAR MR. TRELYON: If you have a moment to spare, my mother
would be most obliged to you if you would call on her. I hope
you will forgive the trouble.

“Yours sincerely,

WENNA ROSEWARNE.”

When the young man got that note—he was just entering
the hotel when the servant arrived—he stared with
surprise. He told the girl he would call on Mrs. Rosewarne
directly. Then he followed her.

He never for a moment doubted that this note had reference
to his own affairs. Wenna had told her mother what had
happened. The mother wished to see him to ask him to cease
visiting them. Well, he was prepared for that. He would ask
Wenna to leave the room. He would attack the mother boldly, and
tell her what he thought of Mr. Roscorla. He would appeal to
her to save her daughter from the impending marriage. He would
win her over to be his secret ally and friend; and while
nothing should be done precipitately to alarm Wenna or arouse
her suspicions, might not these two carry the citadel of her
heart in time, and hand over the keys to the rightful lord? It
was a pleasant speculation: it was at least marked by that
audacity that never wholly forsook Master Harry Trelyon. Of
course he was the rightful lord, ready to bid all false
claimants, rivals and pretenders Beware!

And yet, as he walked up to the house, some little tremor of
anxiety crept into his heart. It was no mere game of brag in
which he was engaged. As he went into the parlor Wenna stepped
quietly by him, her eyes downcast, and he knew that all he
cared to look forward to in the world depended on the decision
of that quiet little person with the sensitive mouth and the
earnest eyes. Fighting was not of much use there.

“Well, Mrs. Rosewarne,” said he, rather shamefacedly, “I
suppose you mean to scold me?”

Her answer surprised him. She took no heed of his remark,
but in a vehement, excited way began to ask him questions about
a woman whom she described.

He stared at her. “I hope you don’t know anything about that
elegant creature?” he said.

She did not wholly tell him the story, but left him to guess
at some portions of it; and then she demanded to know all about
the woman and her companion, and how long they had been in
Penzance, and where they were going. Master Harry was by chance
able to reply to certain of her questions. The answers
comforted her greatly. Was he quite sure that she was married?
What was her husband’s name? She was no longer Mrs. Shirley?
Would he find out all he could? Would he forgive her asking him
to take all this trouble? and would he promise to say no word
about it to Wenna?

When all this had been said and done the young man felt
himself considerably [pg 323] embarrassed. Was there to
be no mention of his own affairs? So far from remonstrating
with him and forbidding him the house, Mrs. Rosewarne was
almost effusively grateful to him, and could only beg him a
thousand times not to mention the subject to her
daughter.

“Oh, of course not,” said he, rather bewildered.
“But—but I thought from the way in which she left the
room that—that perhaps I had offended her.”

“Oh no, I am sure that is not the case,” said Mrs.
Rosewarne; and she immediately went and called Wenna, who came
into the room with rather an anxious look on her face. She
immediately perceived the change in her mother’s mood. The
demon of suspicion and jealousy had been as suddenly exorcised
as it had been summoned. Mrs. Rosewarne’s fine eyes were lit by
quite a new brightness and gayety of spirits. She bade Wenna
declare what fearful cause of offence Mr. Trelyon had given,
and laughed when the young man, blushing somewhat, hastily
assured both of them that it was all a stupid mistake of his
own.

“Oh yes,” Wenna said rather nervously, “it is a mistake. I
am sure you have given me no offence at all, Mr. Trelyon.”

It was an embarrassing moment for two, at least, out of
these three persons; and Mrs. Rosewarne, in her abundant
good-nature, could not understand their awkward silence. Wenna
was apparently looking out of the window at the bright blue bay
and the boats, and yet the girl was not ordinarily so occupied
when Mr. Trelyon was present. As for him, he had got his hat in
his hands; he seemed to be much concerned about it or about his
boots; one did not often find Master Harry actually showing
shyness.

At last he said, desperately, “Mrs. Rosewarne, perhaps you
would go out for a sail in the afternoon? I could get you a
nice little yacht and some rods and lines. Won’t you?”

Mrs. Rosewarne was in a kindly humor. She said she would be
very glad to go, for Wenna was growing tired of always sitting
by the window. This would be some little variety for her.

“I hope you won’t consider me, mother,” said the young lady
quickly lady and with some asperity. “I am quite pleased to sit
by the window: I could do so always. And it is very wrong of us
to take up so much of Mr. Trelyon’s time.”

“Because Mr. Trelyon’s time is of so much use to him!” said
that young man with a laugh; and then he told them when to
expect him in the afternoon, and went his way.

He was in much better spirits when he went out. He whistled
as he went. The plash of the blue sea all along the shingle
seemed to have a sort of laugh in it: he was in love with
Penzance and all its beautiful neighborhood. Once again, he was
saying to himself, he would spend a quiet and delightful
afternoon with Wenna Rosewarne, even if that were to be the
last. He would surrender himself to the gentle intoxication of
her presence. He would get a glimpse, from time to time, of her
dark eyes when she was looking wistfully and absently over the
sea. It was no breach of the implied contract with her that he
should have seized this occasion. He had been sent for. And if
it was necessary that he should abstain from seeing her for any
great length of time, why this single afternoon would not make
much difference. Afterward he would obey her wishes in any
manner she pleased.

He walked into the hotel. There was a gentleman standing in
the hall whose acquaintance Master Harry had condescended to
make. He was a person of much money, uncertain grammar and
oppressive generosity: he wore a frilled shirt and diamond
studs, and he had such a vast admiration for this handsome,
careless and somewhat rude young man that he would have been
very glad had Mr. Trelyon dined with him every evening, and
taken the trouble to win any reasonable amount of money of him
at billiards afterward. Mr. Trelyon had not as yet graced his
table.

“Oh, Grainger,” said the young man, “I want to speak to you.
Will you dine with me to-night at eight?”

“No, no, no,” said Mr. Grainger, shaking his head in humble
protest, “that isn’t fair. You dine with me. It
[pg 324] ain’t the first or the
second time of asking, either.”

“But look here,” said Trelyon, “I’ve got lots more to ask of
you. I want you to lend me that little cutter of yours for the
afternoon: will you? You send your man on board to see she’s
all right, and I’ll pull out to her in about half an hour’s
time. You’ll do that, won’t you, like a good fellow?”

Mr. Grainger was not only willing to lend the yacht, but
also his own services to see that she properly received so
distinguished a guest; whereupon Trelyon had to explain that he
wanted the small craft merely to give a couple of ladies a sail
for an hour or so. Then Mr. Grainger would have his man
instructed to let the ladies have some tea on board; and he
would give Master Harry the key of certain receptacles in which
he would find cans of preserved meat, fancy biscuits, jam, and
even a few bottles of dry sillery; finally, he would
immediately hurry off to see about fishing-rods. Trelyon had to
acknowledge to himself that this worthy person deserved the
best dinner that the hotel could produce.

In the afternoon he walked along to fetch Mrs. Rosewarne and
her daughter, his face bright with expectation. Mrs. Rosewarne
was dressed and ready when he went in, but she said, “I am
afraid I can’t go, Mr. Trelyon. Wenna says she is a little
tired, and would rather stay at home.”

“Wenna, that isn’t fair,” he said, obviously hurt. “You
ought to make some little effort when you know it will do your
mother good. And it will do you good too, if only you make up
your mind to go.”

She hesitated for a moment: she saw that her mother was
disappointed. Then, without a word, she went and put on her hat
and shawl.

“Well,” he said approvingly, “you are very reasonable and
very obedient. But we can’t have you go with us with such a
face as that. People would say we were going to a funeral.”

A shy smile came over the gentle features, and she turned
aside.

“And we can’t have you pretend that we forced you to go. If
we go at all, you must lead the way.”

“You would tease the life out of a saint,” she said with a
vexed and embarrassed laugh; and then she marched out before
them, very glad to be able to conceal her heightened color.

But much of her reserve vanished when they had set sail; and
when the small cutter was beginning to make way through the
light and plashing waves Wenna’s face brightened. She no longer
let her two companions talk exclusively to each other. She
began to show a great curiosity about the little yacht; she
grew anxious to have the lines flung out; no words of hers
could express her admiration for the beauty of the afternoon
and of the scene around her.

“Now, are you glad you came out?” he said to her.

“Yes,” she answered shyly. “And you’ll take my advice
another time?”

“Do you ever take any one’s advice?” she said,
venturing to look up.

“Yes, certainly,” he answered, “when it agrees with my own
inclination. Who ever does any more than that?”

They had now got a good bit away from land.

“Skipper,” said Trelyon to Mr. Grainger’s man, “we’ll put
her about now and let her drift. Here is a cigar for you: you
can take it up to the bow and smoke it, and keep a good lookout
for the sea-serpent.”

By this arrangement they obtained, as they sat and idly
talked, an excellent view of all the land around the bay, and
of the pale, clear sunset shining in the western skies. They
lay almost motionless in the lapping water: the light breeze
scarcely stirred the loose canvas. From time to time they could
hear a sound of calling or laughing from the distant
fishing-boats; and that only seemed to increase the silence
around them.

It was an evening that invited to repose and reverie: there
were not even the usual fiery colors of the sunset to arouse
and fix attention by their rapidly-changing and glowing hues.
The town itself, lying darkly all around the sweep
[pg 325] of the bay, was dusky and
distant: elsewhere all the world seemed to be flooded with
the silver light coming over from behind the western hills.
The sky was of the palest blue; the long mackerel clouds
that stretched across were of the faintest yellow and
lightest gray; and into that shining gray rose the black
stems of the trees that were just over the outline of these
low heights. St. Michael’s-Mount had its summit touched by
the pale glow: the rest of the giant rock and the far
stretches of sea around it were gray with mist. But close by
the boat there was a sharper light on the lapping waves and
on the tall spars, while it was warm enough to heighten the
color on Wenna’s face as she sat and looked silently at the
great and open world around her.

They were drifting in more ways than one. Wenna almost
forgot what had occurred in the morning. She was so pleased to
see her mother pleased that she conversed quite unreservedly
with the young man who had wrought the change, was ready to
believe all that Mrs. Rosewarne said in private about his being
so delightful and cheerful a companion. As for him, he was
determined to profit by this last opportunity. If the Strict
rules of honor demanded that Mr. Roscorla should have fair
play, or if Wenna wished him to absent himself—which was
of more consequence than Mr. Roscorla’s interest—he would
make his visits few and formal, but in the mean time, at least,
they would have this one pleasant afternoon together.
Sometimes, it is true, he rebelled against the uncertain pledge
he had given her. Why should he not seek to win her? What had
the strict rules of honor to do with the prospect of a young
girl allowing herself to be sacrificed, while here he was, able
and willing to snatch her away from her fate?

“How fond you are of the sea and of boats!” he said to her.
“Sometimes I think I shall have a big schooner yacht built for
myself, and take her to the Mediterranean, going from place to
place just as I have the fancy. But it would be very dull by
one’s self, wouldn’t it, even if one had a dozen men on What
one wants is to have a small party all very friendly with each
other, and at night they would sit up on deck and sing songs.
And I think they would admire those old-fashioned songs that
you sing, Miss Wenna, all the better for hearing them so far
away from home—at least, I should, but then I’m an outer
barbarian. I think you, now, would be delighted with the grand
music abroad—with the operas, you know, and all that. I
have had to knock about these places with people, but I don’t
care about it. I would rather hear ‘Norah, the Pride of
Kildare,’ or ‘The Maid of Llangollen,’ because, I suppose,
those young women are more in my line. You see, I shouldn’t
care to make the acquaintance of a gorgeous creature with black
hair and a train of yellow satin half a mile long, who tosses
up a gilt goblet when she sings a drinking-song, and then gets
into a frightful passion about what one doesn’t understand.
Wouldn’t you rather meet the ‘Maid of Llangollen’ coming along
a country road—coming in by Marazion over there, for
example—with a bright print dress all smelling of
lavender, and a basket of fresh eggs over her arm?
Well—What was I saying? Oh yes!, Don’t you think if you
were away in the Adriatic, and sitting up on deck at night, you
would make the people have a quiet cry when you sang ‘Home,
Sweet Home’? The words are rather silly, aren’t they? But they
make you think such a lot if you hear them abroad.”

“And when are you going away?—this year, Mr. Trelyon?”
Wenna said, looking down.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said cheerfully: he would have no
question of his going away interfere with the happiness of the
present moment.

At length, however, they had to bethink themselves of
getting back, for the western skies were deepening in color and
the evening air was growing chill. They ran the small cutter
back to her moorings: then they put off in the small boat for
the shore. It was a beautiful, quiet evening. Wenna, who had
taken off her glove and was allowing her bare hand
[pg 326] to drag through the
rippling water, seemed to be lost in distant and idle fancies
not altogether of a melancholy nature.

“Wenna,” her mother said, “you will get your hand perfectly
chilled.”

The girl drew back her hand and shook the water off her
dripping fingers. Then she uttered a slight cry. “My ring!” she
said, looking with absolute fright at her hand and then at the
sea.

Of course they stopped the boat instantly, but all they
could do was to stare at the clear, dark water. The distress of
the girl was beyond expression. This was no ordinary trinket
that had been lost: it was a gage of plighted affection given
her by one now far away, and in his absence she had carelessly
flung it into the sea. She had no fear of omens, as her sister
had, but surely, of all things in the world, she ought to have
treasured up this ring. In spite of herself, tears sprang to
her eyes. Her mother in vain attempted to make light of the
loss.

And then at last Harry Trelyon, driven almost beside himself
by seeing the girl so plunged in grief, hit upon a wild fashion
of consoling her. “Wenna,” he said, “don’t disturb yourself.
Why, we can easily get you the ring. Look at the rocks there: a
long bank of smooth sand slopes out from them, and your ring is
quietly lying on the sand. There is nothing easier than to get
it up with a dredging machine: I will undertake to let you have
it by to-morrow afternoon.”

Mrs. Rosewarne thought he was joking, but he effectually
persuaded Wenna, at all events, that she should have her ring
next day. Then he discovered that he would be just in time to
catch the half-past six train to Plymouth, where he would get
the proper apparatus, and return in the morning.

“It was a pretty ring,” said he. “There were six stones in
it, weren’t there?”

“Five,” she said. So much she knew, though it must be
confessed she had not studied that token of Mr. Roscorla’s
affection with the earnest solicitude which most young ladies
bestow on the first gift of their lovers.

Trelyon jumped into a fly and drove off to the station,
where he sent back an apology to Mr. Grainger. Wenna went home
more perturbed than she had been for many a day, and that not
solely on account of the lost ring.

Everything seemed to conspire against her and keep her from
carrying out her honorable resolutions. That sail in the
afternoon she could not well have avoided, but she had
determined to take some; opportunity of begging Mr. Trelyon not
to visit them again while they remained in Penzance. Now,
however, he was coming next day, and whether or not he was
successful in his quest after the missing ring, would she not
have to show herself abundantly grateful for all his
kindness?

In putting away her gloves she came upon the letter of Mr.
Roscorla, which she had not yet answered. She shivered
slightly: the handwriting on the envelope seemed to reproach
her. And yet something of a rebellious spirit rose in her
against this imaginary accusation; and she grew angry that she
was called upon to serve this harsh and inconsiderate
task-master, and give him explanations which humiliated her. He
had no right to ask questions about Mr. Trelyon. He ought not
to have listened to idle gossip. He should have had sufficient
faith in her promised word; and if he only knew the torture of
doubt and anxiety she was suffering on his behalf—She did
not pursue these speculations farther, but it was well with Mr.
Roscorla that she did not at that moment sit down and answer
his letter.

CHAPTER XXVII.

FURTHER ENTANGLEMENTS.

“Mother,” said Wenna that night, “what vexed you so this
morning? Who was the woman who went by?”

“Don’t ask me, Wenna,” the mother said rather uneasily. “It
would do you no good to know. And you must not speak of that
woman: she is too horrid a creature to be mentioned by a young
girl, ever.”

Wenna looked surprised, and then she said warmly, “And if
she is so, mother, [pg 327] how could you ask Mr.
Trelyon to have anything to do with her? Why should you
send, for him? Why should he be spoken to about her?”

“Mr. Trelyon!” her mother said impatiently. “You seem to
have no thought now for anybody but Mr. Trelyon. Surely the
young man can take care of himself.”

The reproof was just: the justice of it was its sting. She
was indeed thinking too much about the young man, and her
mother was right in saying so; but who was to understand the
extreme anxiety that possessed her to bring these dangerous
relations to an end?

On the, following afternoon Wenna, sitting alone at the
window, heard Trelyon enter below. The young person who had
charge of such matters allowed him to go up stairs and announce
himself as a matter of course. He tapped at the door and came
into the room. “Where’s your mother, Wenna? The girl said she
was here. However, never mind: I’ve brought you something that
will astonish you. What do you think of that?”

She scarcely looked at the ring, so great was her
embarrassment. That the present of one lover should be brought
back to her by another was an awkward, almost humiliating
circumstance, Yet she was glad as well as ashamed. “Oh, Mr.
Trelyon, how can I thank you?” she said in a low earnest voice.
“All you seem to care for is to make other people happy. And
the trouble you have taken, too!”

She forgot to look at the ring, even when he pointed out how
the washing in the sea had made it bright. She never asked
about the dredging. Indeed, she was evidently disinclined to
speak of this matter in any way, and kept the finger with the
ring on it out of sight.

“Mr. Trelyon,” she said then with equal steadiness of voice,
“I am going to ask something more from you; and I am sure you
will not refuse it.”

“I know,” said he hastily; “and let me have the first word.
I have been thinking over our position during this trip to
Plymouth and back. Well, I think I have become a nuisance to
you—Wait a bit, let me say my say in my own way. I can
see that I only embarrass you when I call on you, and that the
permission you gave me is only leading to awkwardness and
discomfort. Mind, I don’t think you are acting fairly to
yourself or to me in forbidding me to mention again what I told
you. I know you’re wrong. You should let me show you what sort
of a life lies before you—But there! I promised to keep
clear of that. Well, I will do what you like; and if you’d
rather have me stay away altogether, I will do that. I don’t
want to be a nuisance to you. But mind this, Wenna, I do it
because you wish it: I don’t do it because I think any man is
bound to respect an engagement which—which—which,
in fact, he doesn’t respect.”

His eloquence broke down, but his meaning was clear. He
stood there before her, ready to accept her decision with all
meekness and obedience, but giving her frankly to understand
that he did not any the more countenance or consider as a
binding thing her engagement to Mr. Roscorla.

“Mind you,” he said, “I am not quite as indifferent about
all this as I look. It isn’t the way of our family to put their
hands in their pockets and wait for orders. But I can’t fight
with you. Many a time I wish there was a man in the
case—then he and I might have it out—but as it is,
I suppose I have got to do what they say, Wenna, and that’s the
long and short of it.”

She did not hesitate. She went forward and offered him her
hand, and with her frank eyes looking him in the face she said,
“You have said what I wished to say, and I feared I had not the
courage to say it. Now you are acting bravely. Perhaps at some
future time we may become friends again—oh yes, and I do
hope that—but in the mean time you will treat me as if I
were a stranger to you.”

“That is quite impossible,” said he decisively. “You ask too
much of me, Wenna.”

“Would not that be the simpler way?” she said, looking at
him again with the [pg 328] frank
and earnest eyes; and he knew she was right.

“And the length of time?” he said.

“Until Mr. Roscorla comes home again, at all events,” she
said.

She had touched an angry chord. “What has he to do with us?”
the young man said almost fiercely. “I refuse to have him come
in as arbiter or in any way whatever. Let him mind his own
business; and I can tell you, when he and I come to talk over
this engagement of yours—”

“You promised not to speak of that,” she said quietly, and
he instantly ceased.

“Well, Wenna,” he said after a minute or two, “I think you
ask too much, but you must have it your own way. I won’t annoy
you and drive you into a corner: you may depend on that, to be
perfect strangers for an indefinite time—Then you won’t
speak to me when I see you passing to church?”

“Oh yes,” she said, looking down: “I did not mean strangers
like that.”

“And I thought,” said he, with something more than
disappointment in his face, “that when I proposed to—to
relieve you from my visits, you would at least let us have one
more afternoon together—only one—for a drive, you
know. It would be nothing to you: it would be ‘something for me
to remember.”

She would not recognize the fact, but for a brief moment his
under lip quivered; and somehow she seemed to know it, though
she dared not look up to his face.

“One afternoon, only one—to-morrow—next day,
Wenna? Surely you cannot refuse me that?” Then, looking at her
with a great compassion in his eyes, he suddenly altered his
tone. “I think I ought to be hanged,” he said in a vexed way.
“You are the only person in the world I care for, and every
time I see you I plunge you into trouble. Well, this is the
last time. Good-bye, Wenna.” Almost involuntarily she put out
her hand, but it was with the least perceptible gesture, to bid
him remain. Then she went past him, and there were tears
running down her face. “If—if you will wait a moment,”
she said, “I will see if mamma and I can go with you to-morrow
afternoon.”

She went out, and he was left alone. Each word that she had
uttered had pierced his heart; but which did he feel the more
deeply—remorse that he should have insisted on this
slight and useless concession, or bitter rage against the
circumstances that environed them, and against the man who was
altogether responsible for these? There was now at least one
person in the world who greatly longed for the return of Mr.
Roscorla.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

FAREWELL!

“Yes, it is true,” the young man said next morning to his
cousin: “this is the last time I shall see her for many a day.”
He was standing with his back to her, moodily staring out of
the window.

“Well, Harry,” his cousin said, gently enough, “you won’t be
hurt if I say it is a very good thing? I am glad to see you
have so much patience and reasonableness. Indeed, I think Miss
Rosewarne has very much improved you in that respect; and it is
very good advice she has given you now.”

“Oh yes, it is all very well to talk!” he said, impatiently.
“Common sense is precious easy when you are quite indifferent.
Of course she is quite indifferent, and she says, ‘Don’t
trouble me,’ What can one do but go? But if she was not so
indifferent—” He turned suddenly: “Jue, you can’t tell
what trouble I am in. Do you know that sometimes I have fancied
she was not quite as indifferent—- I have had the cheek
to think so from one or two things she said—and then, if
that were so, it is enough to drive one mad to think of leaving
her. How could I leave her, Jue? If any one cared for you,
would you quietly sneak off in order to consult your own
comfort and convenience? Would you be patient and reasonable
then?”

“Harry, don’t talk in that excited way. Listen! She does not
ask you to go away for your sake, but for
hers.”

[pg 329]

“For her sake?” he repeated, staring. “If she is indifferent
how can that matter to her? Well, I suppose I am a nuisance to
her—as much as I am to myself. There it is: I am an
interloper.”

“My poor boy,” his cousin said with a kindly smile, “you
don’t know your own mind two minutes running. During this past
week you have been blown about by all sorts of contrary winds
of opinion and fancy. Sometimes you thought she cared for
you—sometimes no. Sometimes you thought it a shame to
interfere with Mr. Roscorla; then again you grew indignant and
would have slaughtered him. Now you don’t know whether you
ought to go away or stop to persecute her. Don’t you think she
is the best judge?”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “I think she is no judge of what is
best for her, because she never thinks of that. She wants
somebody by her to insist on her being properly selfish.”

“That would be a pretty lesson.”

“A necessary one, anyhow, with some women, I can tell you.
But I suppose I must go, as she says. I couldn’t bear meeting
her about Eglosilyan and be scarcely allowed to speak to her.
Then when that hideous little beast comes back from Jamaica,
fancy seeing them walk about together! I must cut the whole
place. I shall go into the army: it’s the only profession open
to a fool like me; and they say it won’t be long open, either.
When I come back, Jue, I suppose you’ll be Mrs. Tressider.”

“I am very sorry,” his cousin said, not heeding the
reference to herself: “I never expected to see you so deep in
trouble, Harry. But you have youth and good spirits on your
side: you will get over it.”

“I suppose so,” he said, not very cheerfully; and then he
went off to see about the carriage which was to take Wenna and
himself for their last drive together.

At the same time that he was talking to his cousin, Wenna
was seated at her writing-desk answering Mr. Roscorla’s letter.
Her brows were knit together: she was evidently laboring at
some difficult and disagreeable task.

Her mother, lying on the sofa, was regarding her with an
amused look: “What is the matter, Wenna? That letter seems to
give you a deal of trouble.”

The girl put down her pen with some trace of vexation in her
face: “Yes indeed, mother. How is one to explain delicate
matters in a letter? Every phrase seems capable of
misconstruction. And then the mischief it may cause!”

“But surely you don’t need to write with such care to Mr.
Roscorla?”

Wenna colored slightly, and hesitated as she answered,
“Well, mother, it is something peculiar. I did not wish to
trouble you, but, after all, I don’t think you will vex
yourself about so small a thing. Mr. Roscorla has been told
stories about me. He is angry that Mr. Trelyon should visit us
so often. And—and—I am trying to explain. That is
all, mother.”

“It is quite enough, Wenna; but I am not surprised. Of
course, if foolish persons liked to misconstrue Mr. Trelyon’s
visits, they might make mischief. I see no harm in them myself.
I suppose the young man found an evening at the inn amusing;
and I can see that he likes you very well, as many other people
do. But you know how you are situated, Wenna. If Mr. Roscorla
objects to your continuing an acquaintance with Mr. Trelyon,
your duty is clear.”

“I do not think it is, mother,” Wenna said, an indignant
flush of color appearing in her face. “I should not be
justified in throwing over any friend or acquaintance merely
because Mr. Roscorla had heard rumors: I would not do it. He
ought not to listen to such things: he ought to have greater
faith in me. But at the same time I have asked Mr. Trelyon not
to come here so often—I have done so already; and after
to-day, mother, the gossips will have nothing to report.”

“That is better, Wenna,” the mother said. “I shall be sorry
myself to miss the young man, for I like him, but it is better
you should attend to Mr. Roscorla’s wishes. And don’t answer
his letter in a vexed or angry way, Wenna.”

She was certainly not doing so. Whatever
[pg 330] she might be thinking, a
deliberate and even anxious courtesy was visible in the
answer she was sending him. Her pride would not allow her to
apologize for what had been done—in which she had seen
no wrong—but as to the future she was earnest in her
promises. And yet she could not help saying a good word for
Trelyon.

“You have known him longer than I,” she wrote, “and you know
what his character is. I could see nothing wrong in his coming
to see my family and myself; nor did you say anything against
him while you saw him with us. I am sure you believe he is
straightforward, honest and frank; and if his frankness
sometimes verges upon rudeness, he is of late greatly improved
in that respect, as in many others, and he is most respectful
and gentle in his manners. As for his kindness to my mother and
myself, we could not shut our eyes to it. Here is the latest
instance of it, although I feel deeply ashamed to tell you the
story. We were returning in a small boat, and I was carelessly
letting my hand drag through the water, when somehow the ring
you gave me dropped off. Of course, we all considered it
lost—all except Mr. Trelyon, who took the trouble to go
at once all the way to Plymouth for a dredging-machine, and the
following afternoon I was overjoyed to find him return with the
lost ring, which I had scarcely dared hope to see again. How
many gentlemen would have done so much for a mere acquaintance?
I am sure if you had been here you would have been ashamed of
me if I had not been grateful to him. Now, however, since you
appear to attach importance to these idle rumors, I have asked
Mr. Trelyon—”

So the letter went on. She would not have written so calmly
if she had foreseen the passion which her ingenuous story about
the dredging-machine was destined to arouse. When Mr. Roscorla
read that simple narrative, he first stared with astonishment
as though she were making some foolish joke. Directly he saw
she was serious, however, his rage and mortification were
indescribable. Here was this young man, not content with
hanging about the girl so that neighbors talked, but actually
imposing on her credulity, and making a jest of that engaged
ring which ought to have been sacred to her. Mr. Roscorla at
once saw through the whole affair—the trip to Plymouth,
the purchasing of a gypsy-ring that could have been matched a
dozen times over anywhere, the return to Penzance with a
cock-and-bull story about a dredging-machine. So hot was his
anger that it overcame his prudence. He would start for England
at once. He had taken no such resolution when he heard from the
friendly and communicative Mr. Barnes that Mr. Trelyon’s
conduct with regard to Wenna was causing scandal, but this
making a fool of him in his absence he could not bear. At any
cost he would set out for England, arrange matters more to his
satisfaction by recalling Wenna to a sense of her position; and
then he would return to Jamaica. His affairs there were already
promising so well that he could afford the trip.

Meanwhile, Wenna had just finished her letter when Mr.
Trelyon drove up with the carriage, and shortly afterward came
into the room. He seemed rather grave, and yet not at all
sentimentally sad. He addressed himself mostly to Mrs.
Rosewarne, and talked to her about the Port Isaac fishing, the
emigration of the miners and other matters. Then Wenna slipped
away to get ready.

“Mrs. Rosewarne,” he said, “you asked me to find out what I
could about that red-faced person, you know. Well, here is an
advertisement which may interest you. I came on it quite
accidentally last night in the smoking-room of the hotel.”

It was a marriage advertisement, cut from a paper about a
week old. The name of the lady was “Katherine Ann, widow of the
late J.T. Shirley, Esq., of Barrackpore.”

“Yes, I was sure it was that woman,” Mrs. Rosewarne said
eagerly. “And so she is married again?”

“I fancied the gay young things were here on their
wedding-trip,” Trelyon said carelessly. “They amused me. I like
[pg 331] to see turtle-doves of
fifty billing and cooing on the promenade, especially when
one of them wears a brown wig, has an Irish accent and
drinks brandy-and-water at breakfast. But he is a good
billiard-player—yes, he is an uncommonly good
billiard-player. He told me last night he had beaten the
Irish secretary the other day in the billiard-room of the
House of Commons. I humbly suspect that was a lie. At least,
I can’t remember anything about a billiard-table in the
House of Commons, and I was two or three times through every
bit of it when I was a little chap with an uncle of mine,
who was a member then; but perhaps they’ve got a
billiard-table now. Who knows? He told me he had stood for
an Irish borough, spent three thousand pounds on a
population of two hundred and eighty-four, and all he got
was a black eye and a broken head. I should say all that was
a fabrication too; indeed, I think he rather amuses himself
with lies—and brandy-and-water. But you don’t want to
know anything more about him, Mrs. Rosewarne?”

She did not. All that she cared to know was in that little
strip of printed paper; and as she left the room to get ready
for the drive she expressed herself grateful to him in such
warm tones that he was rather astonished. After all, as he said
to himself, he had had nothing to do in bringing about the
marriage of that somewhat gorgeous person in whom Mrs.
Rosewarne was so strangely interested.

They were silent as they drove away. There was one happy
face amongst them, that of Mrs. Rosewarne, but she was thinking
of her own affairs in a sort of pleased reverie. Wenna was
timid and a trifle sad: she said little beyond “Yes, Mr.
Trelyon,” and “No, Mr. Trelyon,” and even that was said in low
voice. As for him, he spoke to her gravely and respectfully: it
was already as if she were a mere stranger.

Had some of his old friends and acquaintances seen him now,
they would have been something more than astonished. Was this
young man, talking in a gentle and courteous fashion to his
companion, and endeavoring to interest her in the various
things around her, the same daredevil lad who used to clatter
down the main street of Eglosilyan, who knew no control other
than his own unruly wishes, and who had no answer but a mocking
jest for any remonstrance?

“And how long do you remain in Penzance, Mr. Trelyon?” Mrs.
Rosewarne said at length.

“Until to-morrow, I expect,” he answered.

“To-morrow?”

“Yes: I am going back to Eglosilyan. You know my mother
means to give some party or other on my coming of age, and
there is so little of that amusement going on at our house that
it needs all possible encouragement. After that I mean to leave
Eglosilyan for a time.”

Wenna said nothing, but her downcast face grew a little
paler: it was she who was banishing him.

“By the way,” he continued with a smile, “my mother is very
anxious about Miss Wenna’s return. I fancy she has been trying
to go into that business of the sewing club on her own account;
and in that case she would be sure to get into a mess. I know
her first impulse would be to pay any money to smooth matters
over, but that would be a bad beginning, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would,” Wenna said, but somehow, at this moment,
she was less inclined to be hopeful about the future.

“And as for you, Mrs. Rosewarne,” he said, “I suppose you
will be going home soon, now that the change seems to have done
you so much good?”

“Yes, I hope so,” she said, “but Wenna must go first. My
husband writes to me that he cannot do without her, and offers
to send Mabyn instead. Nobody seems to be able to get on
without our Wenna.”

“And yet she has the most curious fancy that she is of no
account to anybody. Why, some day I expect to hear of the
people in Eglosilyan holding a public meeting to present her
with a service of plate and an address written on parchment
with blue and gold
letters.”

[pg 332]

“Perhaps they will do that when she gets married,” the
mother said, ignorant of the stab she was dealing.

It was a picturesque and pleasant bit of country through
which they were driving, yet to two of them at least the
afternoon sun seemed to shine over it with a certain sadness.
It was as if they were bidding good-bye to some beautiful scene
they could scarcely expect to revisit. For many a day
thereafter, indeed, Wenna seemed to recollect that drive as
though it had happened in a dream. She remembered the rough and
lonely road leading up sharp hills and getting down into
valleys again, the masses of ferns and wild-flowers by the
stone walls, the wild and undulating country, with its
stretches of yellow furze, its clumps of trees and its huge
blocks of gray granite. She remembered their passing into a
curious little valley, densely wooded, the winding path of
which was not well fitted for a broad carriage and a pair of
horses. They had to watch the boughs and branches as they
jolted by. The sun was warm among the foliage: there was a
resinous scent of ferns about. By and by the valley abruptly
opened on a wide and beautiful picture. Lamorna Cove lay before
them, and a cold fresh breeze came in from the sea. Here the
world seemed to cease suddenly. All around them were huge rocks
and wild-flowers and trees; and far up there on their left rose
a hill of granite, burning red with the sunset; but down below
them the strange little harbor was in shadow, and the sea
beyond, catching nothing of the glow in the west, was gray and
mystic and silent. Not a ship was visible on that pale plain;
no human being could be seen about the stone quays and the
cottages; it seemed as if they had come to the end of the
world, and were its last inhabitants. All these things Wenna
thought of in after days, until the odd and plain little harbor
of Lamorna, and its rocks and bushes and slopes of granite,
seemed to be some bit of Fairyland, steeped in the rich hues of
the sunset, and yet ethereal, distant and unrecoverable.

Mrs. Rosewarne did not at all understand the silence of
these young people, and made many attempts to break it up. Was
the mere fact of Mr. Trelyon returning to Eglosilyan next day
anything to be sad about? He was not a school-boy going back to
school. As for Wenna, she had got back her engaged ring, and
ought to have been grateful and happy.

“Come now,” she said: “if you propose to drive back by the
Mouse Hole, we must waste no more time here. Wenna, have you
gone to sleep?”

The girl started as if she really had been asleep: then she
walked back to the carriage and got in. They drove away again
without saying a word.

“What is the matter with you, Wenna? Why are you so
downcast?” her mother said.

“Oh, nothing,” the girl said hastily. “But—but one
does not care to talk much on so beautiful an evening.”

“Yes, that is quite true,” said Mr. Trelyon, quite as
eagerly, and with something of a blush: “one only cares to sit
and look at things.”

“Oh, indeed!” said Mrs. Rosewarne with a smile: she had
never before heard Mr. Trelyon give expression to his views
upon scenery.

They drove round by the Mouse Hole, and when they came in
sight of Penzance again, the bay and the semicircle of houses
and St. Michael’s Mount were all a pale gray in the twilight.
As they drove quietly along they heard the voices of people
from time to time: the occupants of the cottages had come out
for their evening stroll and chat. Suddenly, as they were
passing certain huge masses of rock that sloped suddenly down
to the sea, they heard another sound—that of two or three
boys calling out for help. The briefest glance showed what was
going on. These boys were standing on the rocks, staring
fixedly at one of their companions, who had fallen into the
water and was wildly splashing about, while all they could do
to help him was to call for aid at the pitch of their
voices.

“That chap’s drowning,” Trelyon said, jumping out of the
carriage.

The next minute he was out on the
[pg 333] rocks, hastily pulling of
his coat. What was it he heard just as he plunged into the
sea?—the agonized voice of a girl calling him
back?

Mrs. Rosewarne was at this moment staring at her daughter
with almost a horror-stricken look on her face. Was it really
Wenna Rosewarne who had been so mean? and what madness
possessed her to make her so? The girl had hold of her mother’s
arm with both her hands, and held it with the grip of a vice,
while her white face was turned to the rocks and the sea. “Oh,
mother!” she cried, “it is only a boy, and he is a man; and
there is not another in all the world like him!”

“Wenna, is it you who are speaking, or a devil? The boy is
drowning.”

But he was drowning no longer. He was laid hold of by a
strong arm, dragged in to the rocks, and there fished out by
his companions. Then Trelyon got up on the rocks and calmly
looked at his dripping clothes. “You are a nice little beast,
you are!” he said to the small boy, who had swallowed a good
deal of salt water, but was otherwise quite unhurt. “How do you
expect I am going home in these trousers? Perhaps your
mother’ll pay me for a new pair, eh? And give you a jolly good
thrashing for tumbling in? Here’s half a crown for you, you
young ruffian! and if I catch you on these rocks again, I’ll
throw you in and let you swim for it: see if I don’t.”

He walked up to the carriage, shaking himself, and putting
on his coat as he went with great difficulty: “Mrs. Rosewarne,
I must walk back: I can’t think of—”

He uttered a short cry. Wenna was lying as one dead in her
mother’s arms, Mrs. Rosewarne vainly endeavoring to revive her.
He rushed down the rocks again to a pool and soaked his
handkerchief in the water: then he went hurriedly back to the
carriage and put the cold handkerchief on her temples and on
her face.

“Oh, Mr. Trelyon, do go away or you will get your death of
cold,” Mrs. Rosewarne said. “Leave Wenna to me. See, there is a
gentleman who will lend you his horse, and you will get to your
hotel directly.”

He did not even answer her. His own face was about as pale
as that of the girl before him, and hers was that of a corpse.
But by and by strange tremors passed through her frame: her
hands tightened their grip of her mother’s arm, and with a sort
of shudder she opened her eyes and fearfully looked around. She
caught sight of the young man standing there: she scarcely
seemed to recognize him for a moment. And then, with a quick
nervous action, she caught at his hand and kissed it twice,
hurriedly and wildly: then she turned to her mother, hid her
face in her bosom and burst into a flood of tears. Probably the
girl scarcely knew all that had taken place, but her two
companions, in silence and with a great apprehension filling
their hearts, saw and recognized the story she had told.

“Mr. Trelyon,” said Mrs. Rosewarne, “you must not remain
here.”

Mechanically he obeyed her. The gentleman who had been
riding along the road had dismounted, and, fearing some
accident had occurred, had come forward to offer his
assistance. When he was told how matters stood, he at once gave
Trelyon his horse to ride in to Penzance; and then the carriage
was driven off also at a considerably less rapid pace.

That evening, Trelyon, having got into warm clothes and
dined, went along to ask how Wenna was. His heart beat
hurriedly as he knocked at the door. He had intended merely
making the inquiry and coming away again, but the servant said
that Mrs. Rosewarne wished to see him.

He went up stairs and found Mrs. Rosewarne alone. These two
looked at each other: that single glance told everything. They
were both aware of the secret that had been revealed.

For an instant there was dead silence between them, and then
Mrs. Rosewarne, with a great sadness in her voice, despite its
studied calmness, said, “Mr. Trelyon, we need say nothing of
what has occurred. There are some things that are best not
spoken of. But I can trust to you not to seek to see Wenna
before you[pg 334] leave here.
She is quite recovered—only a little nervous, you know,
and frightened. To-morrow she will be quite well again.”

“You will bid her good-bye for me?” he said.

But for the tight clasp of the hand between these two, it
was an ordinary parting. He put on his hat and went out.
Perhaps it was the cold sea-air that made his face so pale.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

LA MADONNA DELLA SEDIA.

A TRADITION.

Raphael. Still in this free, clear air that vision
floats

Before my brain. I may nor banish it

Nor grasp it. ‘Tis too fine, too spirit-like,

To offer as the type of motherhood.

Color and blood and life and truth it lacks.

Gods! can it be that our imaginings

Excel your handiwork? Must life seem dull,

Must earth seem barren and unbeautiful,

For ever unto him who can create

This rarer world of delicate phantasy?

I lift mine eyes, and nothing real responds

To those ideal forms. God pardon me!

There in the everlasting sunshine sits

The Mother with the Infant at her breast.

Hence, ghostly shadows! let me learn to draw

Mine inspiration from the common air.

A peasant-woman auburn-haired, large-eyed,

Within the shade of overhanging boughs

Suckles her babe, and sees her eldest born

Gambol upon the grass: the elf has wrought

With two snapt boughs the semblance of a cross,

And proudly holds the sacred symbol high

Above his head to win his mother’s praise.

Mine art may haply reproduce that wealth

Of brilliant hues—the dusk hair’s glimmering
gold,

The auroral blush, the bare breasts shining
white

Where the babe’s warm rose-face is pressed
against

That fount of generous life; but ah! what craft

May paint the unearthly peace upon her brow,

The holy love that from her dark moist orbs

Beams with no lesser glory than the eyes

Of the Maid-Mother toward her heaven-born Child.

Little Boy with the Cross.

Oh, mother, such a stranger comes this way!

I saw him as I climbed the olive tree

To break the branches for my crucifix—

tall, fair youth with floating yellow curls.

Is he an angel?

Maria. Silly darling,
peace!

[pg 335]

No longer dwell the angels on the earth,

And see, he comes.

Raphael. Madonna mia, hail!

God bless thee and thy cherubim!

Maria. Amen!

God bless thee also for the pious wish!

No cherubim are these, but, Heaven be thanked,

Two healthy boys. Pray, sit and rest with us:

The heat has been too fierce for wayfarers,

And ‘neath these shady vines the afternoon

Is doubly fresh.

Raphael. Thanks, ’tis a grateful air:

The weariness of travel it uplifts

From heavy brow and body with its breath,

Delicious as cool water to the touch.

Maria. Bernardo, climb yon trunk again and
pluck

Some ripened clusters for this gentleman.

Raphael. Ah, ’tis a radiant child: what full,
lithe limbs!

What cream-white dimpling flesh! what golden
lights

Glance through the foliage on his crisp-curled
head!

What rosy shadows on the naked form

Against gray olive leaves and blue-green vine!

And see, where now the bright, round face peers
down,

And smiles and nods, and beckons us as one

Who leaneth out of heaven.

Maria. A wanton imp,

And full of freaks. I marvel much thereat,

Since I have named him from a holy saint,

Who bode among us many years, and gave

His dying blessing unto me and mine.

Raphael. The child could be no other than he
is

Without some loss, mother. But what saint

Had here his hermitage?

Maria. Nay, pardon me,

‘Twas but my reverent love that sainted him;

Yet was he one most worthy of the crown,

If austere life of white simplicity,

Large charity and strict self-sacrifice

Can sanctify a mortal.

Raphael. Yet I see

No convent nigh.

Maria. Nay, sir, no convent his.

Beyond our comfortable homes he dwelt,

Not lonely though alone: ‘neath yonder hill

His hut was reared; a tall full-foliaged oak

O’ershadowed it. ‘Tis not so long agone

Since he was here to comfort, help and heal,

Yet now no earthly trace of him remains.

Spring freshets from the hills have washed away

The last wrecked fragments of his hermitage,

And though I pleaded hard, I could not save

The oak, his dear dumb daughter, from the axe,

Albeit ’twas she preserved him unto us.

Forgive me, sir, my chatter wearies you,

[pg 336]

Here be the grapes my boy has plucked: they sate

Both thirst and hunger, pray refresh yourself.

Raphael. Dear mother, it is rest to hear thee
speak.

‘Tis not my hale young limbs that are forespent,

But an outwearied spirit, seeking peace,

Hath found it in thy voice. Speak on, speak on.

What of this holy saint? how chanced the tree

To save his life?

Maria. Ah, ’twas a miracle.

Through summer’s withering heats and blighting
droughts

His own hands gave the thirsty roots to drink.

In spring the first pale growth of tender green

Thrilled him with scarcely less delight than
mine

At my babe’s earliest glance of answering love.

Daily he fed the tame free birds that went

Singing among its boughs; he tended it,

He watched, he cherished, yea he talked to it,

As though it had a soul. God gave to him

Two daughters, he was wont to say—one
mute,

And one who spake, the oak tree and myself.

A child, scarce older than my Bernard now,

I nestled to the quaint, kind hermit’s heart,

And grew to girlhood with my hand in his.

I loved to prank his wretched cell with flowers.

Twisting bright weeds around his crucifix,

Or trailing ivy wreaths about his door.

One winter came when half my father’s vines

Were killed with frost; the valley was as white

As yonder boldest mountain-top; the air

Cut like a knife; the brooks were still and
stiff;

The high drifts choked the hollows of the hills.

When spring approached and swollen brooks ran
free.

And in the ponds the blue ice cracked and brake,

The hard snows melted and the bladed green

Put forth again, then from the mountain-slopes,

The avalanches rolled; the streams o’erflowed;

The fields were flooded; flocks were swept away,

And folk fared o’er the pasture-ground in boats.

Two days and nights the sun and stars seemed
drowned,

The air was thick with water, and the world

Lay ruined under rain and sliding snows.

Then day and night my thoughts were with the
saint

Whose poor hut clung to yonder treacherous
slope:

My dreams, my tears, my prayers were all for
him.

Not till the flood subsided, and again

A watery sun shone forth, my prayers prevailed

Upon my father, and he went with me

To seek the holy man. “Just God!” he cried,

And I, with both hands pressed against mine
eyes,

Burst into sobs. No hermitage was there:

Naught save one broken, tottering wall remained

Beneath the unshaken, firmly-rooted oak.

Then from the branches came a faint, thin voice,

“My children, I am saved!” and looking
up,

[pg 337]

We found him clinging with what strength was
left

Unto the boughs. We led him home with us,

Starving and sick, and chilled through blood and
bone.

Our tenderest care was needed to revive

The life half spent, and soon we learned the
tale

Of his salvation. He had climbed at first

Unto his roof, but saw ere long small chance

For that frail hut to stand against the storm.

It rocked beneath him as a bark at sea,

The hard wind beat upon him, and the rain

Drenched him and seemed to scourge him as with
flails.

He gave himself to God; composed with prayer

His spirit to meet death; when overhead

The swaying oak-limbs seemed to beckon him

To seek the branches’ shelter and support.

His prayer till death was that the Lord would
bless

His daughters, and distinguish them above

All children of the earth. For me his suit

Hath well prevailed, thank God! A happy wife,

A happy mother, I have naught to ask:

My blessings overflow.

Raphael. Thanks for thy tale,

Most gracious mother. See thy babe is lulled

To smiling sleep.

Maria. Yea, and the silence now

Awakens him. Ah, darling rogue, art flushed

With too much comfort? So! let the cool air

Play with thy curls and fan the plump, hot
cheek.

Raphael. Hold, as the child uplifts his
cherub face,

Opens his soft small arms to stroke thy cheek,

Crowing with glee, while the slant sunbeams
light

A halo of gold fire about thy hair,

I see again a canvas that is hung

Over the altar in our church at home.

“Mater amabilis,” yet here be traits,

Colors and tones the artist never dreamed.

Sweet mother, let me sketch thee with thy babe:

So rare a picture should not pass away

With the brief moment which it illustrates.

Maria. Art thou a painter too, Sir
Traveler?

Where be thy brush and colors?

Raphael. Ah, ’tis true,

Naught have I with me. What is this? ’twill
serve

My purpose.

Maria. ‘Tis the cover of a cask,

Made of the very oak whereof I spake:

My father for his wine-casks felled the tree.

Raphael. A miracle! the hermit’s daughters
thus

Will be remembered in the years to come.

My pencil will suffice to scratch the lines

Upon the wood: my memory will hold

The lights, the tints, the golden atmosphere,

The genius of the scene—the mother-love.

EMMA
LAZARUS.

[pg 338]

EARLY TRAVELING EXPERIENCES IN INDIA.

In August, 1849, when I had been living at Calcutta nearly
three years, I was warned by my doctor that I must go on a
sea-voyage or else to the Himalaya Mountains, if life was an
object with me. Such it was, and very keenly. The
four-and-twenty years of it which I had divided between study
and rollicking had approved themselves, like this poor old
world when it was new, “very good,” and I had a strong
objection to parting with it on so short an acquaintance. True,
my hepatic apparatus, as the doctors grandly call the liver,
had got miserably out of gear, though I was a water-drinker,
and though I had a wholesome horror of tropical sunshine. But I
had a good constitution, and I had the word of the medical
faculty for it that many a man with not half so good a one as
mine had pulled through a much worse condition than I was in.
To go away somewhere, however, was proposed as my only
alternative to migrating down to the hideous cemetery among the
bogs and jackals of Chowringhee. But where should I go? After
having been shot once and drowned twice when a boy, I had been
ship-wrecked at the mouth of the sacred and accursed Ganges,
and had just escaped with my life and Greek lexicon.
Shooting—and I may throw in hanging—I felt proof
against, and as for drowning, I had no fear of that.
Nevertheless, I had been very near five months in coming out
from Boston under the blundering seamanship of Captain Coffin
(ominous cognomen!), and salt water, hard junk and weevilly
biscuit were as unattractive to me in possible prospect as they
were in retrospect. The sea I had weighed in the balance and
had found it much wanting. I would, then, go to the
Himalayas.

So I prepared to make for Simla, which, however, I never
saw, nor had occasion to see, my liver complaint seeming to
have been left behind, with my good wishes, in the City of
Palaces. In the early days of Indian civilization to which I
refer the most convenient way of journeying on high-roads was
by palanquin. One of the black packing-cases so called was
purchased, and an arrangement entered into, after the custom of
the country, with the post-office to have relays of bearers
provided on the road at stated times and places. Thus, I was to
go as far as Ghazeepore, where I had a friend living, and there
I was to give due notice if I wished to proceed farther.
Traveling in India has so frequently been a subject of
description that I shall not describe it anew. I allow myself,
however, to say that if, before venturing on it, you lay in a
stock of boiled tongues, sardines, marmalade, and tea and
sugar, you could not do better by way of forestalling
starvation and repentance. Every day I stopped once or twice at
a travelers’ bungalow, or rest-house; and I managed,
notwithstanding that my stock of Urdú was scanty, to
make my wants understood. That a great part of the copious
monologue which my purveyors expended, as we settled the
details of breakfast or dinner, was lost on me, did not seem,
in the final result, to matter in the least. What I needed I
asked for, and then listened attentively for the barbaric
representative of “yes” or “no” in the Babel of sounds that
followed, neglecting the flux of verbiage that engulfed it with
the same lofty indifference which a mathematician professes
toward infinitely small quantities. With a view to avoiding
cross-purposes there is nothing like economy of speech. But how
my tawny hosts could contrive to realize such a fortune of talk
out of their very meagre capital of subject-matter excited my
never-ending wonder. They could provide forlorn pullets,
certainly from the same farmyard with the lean kine of Egypt,
and to these they could add, what was much better left unadded,
a villainous species of unleavened
[pg 339] bread, a sort of hoecake,
not at all improved—precisely like the run of
travelers—by leaving home and wandering in the Orient.
And this was about all they could provide. But, I repeat,
how could expatiate on them! And how bespattered one with
compound epithets of adulation!

A friend of mine, a lady, when fresh in the country once
compromised herself rather astonishingly by lending an ear to
their multiloquence, instead of resolutely refusing her
attention to all communication but that consisting of “yea,
yea,” and “nay, nay.” She had noted down, in her tablets, the
Urdú wherewith to ask whether a thing is procurable, and
to order it, if procurable, to be forthcoming, with the
appropriate outlandish words for “pullet” and “hoecake,” and
also those for straightforward answers, affirmative and
negative. She was certain that with this lingual accoutrement
she could not possibly be taken at a disadvantage. The
experience of a few hours, however, unsettled her
self-confidence very considerably. She alights at a wayside
hostelry. Khudâbakhsh, the chief servant in attendance,
arrayed in more or less fine linen, without the purple,
surmounted by a turban after the likeness of Saturn and his
rings in a pictorial astronomy-book, presents himself, and
worships her with lowly salutations. “Is a fowl to be
had?”—”Gharîb-parwar,” is the prompt
reply.—”Is hoecake to be had?”—”Dharm-antâr,”
officiously cuts in Khudâbakhsh’s mate, a low-caste
Hindoo; and the principal thinks it unnecessary to respond to
the question a second time. Now, what is to be done? What do
they mean? Have they fowl and hoecake? Have they not fowl and
hoecake? Here, to be sure, is a very bivium of
perplexities. The lady at last, with quiet nonchalance, demands
the production of a gharîb-parwar and a
dharm-antâr, thus unconsciously ordering a “cherisher of
the poor” and an “incarnation of justice,” the pretty
appellations used to designate herself. “Queer things for
breakfast!” Khudâbakhsh and his mate mentally reflect,
exchanging glances, but without moving a muscle. Breakfast is
served, and my friend sees before her just what she meant to
order. On one dish reeks the bony contour of a chicken,
grinning thankfulness for extinction at every joint, and on a
second dish towers a pile of things like small wooden trenchers
pressed flat. Of course she has been puzzled, she
self-flatteringly concludes, by some less common names of the
very common viands which lie displayed before her. By and by,
however, she discovers that gharîb-parwar and
dharm-antâr are not articles of gastronomic indulgence,
at least beyond the borders of those islands of the blest where
slices of cold missionary come on with the dessert. When fully
aware of her little blunder she marvels, and not unreasonably,
that any one should address a lady as “cherisher of the poor”
or as “incarnation of justice,” rather than as plain “madam;”
and she thinks it equally strange that any one should so beat
about the bush as to substitute polysyllables of compliment for
hân, the much more expeditious equivalent of
“yes.”

Everything went on smoothly and monotonously enough till I
was within twenty miles, roughly computed, of Ghazeepore. At
this point, on reaching the end of a stage, my bearers woke me
to say there was no relay waiting for them. It may have been
midnight. I told them to set me down, to make up a fire and to
go to sleep around it, but keeping watch, turn and turn about,
each for an hour. Matters being thus disposed, I shut and
hooked the palanquin doors, readjusting my blankets, and was
soon dreaming of another hemisphere. At sunrise no new bearers
had yet shown themselves. My men belonged to the region we were
in, and I learned from them that the nearest European dwelt
only eight miles distant. I bargained with them to take me to
his bungalow. The unexpected wages which they were promised
being liberal, they trotted off with unwonted briskness. In due
course the bungalow loomed in sight, and as I approached it a
burly figure, in shirt-sleeves and with arms akimbo, appeared
in the verandah, his eyes turned in the direction of his
unlooked-for visitor. “God bless you, Hugh Maxwell!
[pg 340] I’m devilish glad to see
you,” shouted the burly figure, benedictory, but even in
benediction not oblivious of the Old Teaser. “I wish to
Goodness I was Hugh Maxwell!” I returned, stepping to the
ground. “Oh, never mind,” rejoined the hearty
indigo-planter, perceiving his mistake and offering me his
hand. “There is just time for a bath before breakfast,” he
added; and a good tubbing, in sufficient light to see and
evade creeping things by, was far from unacceptable. I
stayed with my good-natured host two days and nights,
picking up, in the mean while, much curious information
touching the cultivation and manufacture in which he was
occupied. Like most persons of his calling, he was an ardent
sportsman. The early hours of the morning he gave almost
daily to a stroll with his gun; and the first evening I
passed with him he invited me, in startlingly piebald
phraseology, to accompany him on the morrow. “Be up by
top dage,” said he: “we will have chhotî
hâzirî, and then a chal over the
khets for some shikâr” Why he did not
prefer to say “gun-fire,” “tea and toast,” “run,” “fields,”
and “game,” probably he could not have told himself. His way
of peppering his English with Urdú was characteristic
of his class, and till I got accustomed to it I found it
somewhat perplexing. If he had known me all his life he
could not have been more friendly. Yet his kindness and
hospitality were not exceptional things in the India of a
quarter of a century ago. All is changed there
now—whether much for the better I am skeptical.
Twenty-two hours after they were due my missing bearers made
their appearance. Arrived at Ghazeepore, I addressed a
complaint to the postmaster-general. Thereupon two sides of
a large sheet of paper were spread for me with base official
circumlocution, through the darkness of which I groped out,
after some labor, the audacious libel that the blame, if
there were any, rested entirely with myself. This stuff,
signed by the functionary aforesaid, but doubtless concocted
without his privity by one of his graceless subordinates, I
knew to be the only satisfaction I was to look for. A
request for revision of judgment would have been received
with silent scorn, and appeal there was none. Digesting my
disgust as best I could, I lighted my cheroot with the
mendacious foolscap and blushed for my species.

Let us pass on to the beginning of 1851. Having then been
stationary at Benares for a whole year, I was longing for a
little variety. Oude, deservedly called the Garden of India,
was, by all accounts, well worth visiting. I resolved to visit
it. But not merely was independent exploration in that kingdom
attended with risk: in strict propriety, one had no business
there except by royal authority, which royal authority, as
concerned a traveler, strongly recommended itself to respectful
consideration from including a guard, and that free of expense.
An acquaintance of mine wrote a letter for me to the Resident
at Lucknow, Sir Henry Sleeman. The royal authority was
obtained, and the guard inclusive was to meet me on the Oude
frontier. Tents were borrowed; servants and camels were hired;
long consultations were held with old stagers in the marching
line. The canvas which was to shelter me for six weeks was
built up in front of my house, and already I felt myself half a
nomad. The last evening was spent with veterans in the ways of
camping out, and at three o’clock the next morning I mounted my
horse and began my journey. My road lay through Jaunpoor, and
here I encountered a violent thunderstorm in the middle of the
night, with floods of rain. At the cost of being almost drowned
out and blown away, I learned the expediency of trenching one’s
tabernacle, and the wisdom of putting one’s confidence in none
but brand-new cordage. In the city of Jaunpoor there is not
much to arrest notice, saving its very durable bridge, dating
from the time of Akbar, and the Atâlâ Masjid, a
mosque deformed from a rather ancient Hindoo temple; and the
rest of the district of Jaunpoor which my route lay through was
altogether uninteresting.

The borders of the district crossed, after traversing a
narrow strip of Oude [pg 341] I came again to British
territory. This fragment formed a perfect island, so to
speak, the domains of the nawab hemming it in on every side.
The one European inhabitant of this isolated but fertile
spot was an indigo-planter, near whose bungalow and factory
I encamped for a night. His establishment was of long
standing, but he had no neighbor within many miles, and
there was that about the place which filled me with a sense
of utter dreariness and depression. Hard by the house was a
burial-ground, and wholly by that house it had been peopled
with all its many tenants. Saddening were the brief and
almost unvaried histories recorded on its unpretending
monuments. There was a name, and then a date, and then that
word at the bare mention of which there are few old Indians
who, as it calls up memories of bygone shocks and griefs,
can refrain from a sickening shudder—”cholera.” Among
all who rested there in peace, so far away from every
reminder of childhood and of home, not one had passed the
prime of life. It was easy to picture to one’s self the last
gloomy hours of those hapless exiles, stricken down by the
fell scourge in the pride of their strength, and perhaps at
the full tide of their prosperity, with none to succor, and
with no hope from the first but that they must perish. Nor
was this quite all. How could their sole companions, their
servants, people of the country, and bound to their masters
by none but the mercenary tie of a hireling, soothe their
dying moments with any genuine sympathy, or supply in the
dread travail of mortality the room of a friend, or even of
a fellow-countryman? This is no baseless sketch of fancy.
Familiar facts dispense with all need to draw on the
imagination in outlining the end of one who meets a destiny
like theirs. The planter suddenly finds himself ill; he
rapidly grows worse; a few hours of agony in his solitude,
and all is over. Tidings of the event are carried to the
nearest factory, and then to another and another. Two or
three of his former acquaintances ride over to his bungalow,
knock up a rude coffin, mumble a few sentences about “the
resurrection and the life,” “our dear brother here
departed,” and “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” bury him out
of sight, and set up a decent stone over his grave. His
place is filled again in a few weeks or months, and his
successor, regardless of warnings, toils on in the old
routine, possibly to share his miserable fate.

As I have said above, a guard was directed to await me on
the Oude borders. Various, conflicting, and all of them wide of
the mark, were my speculations on its outward and visible form,
and the martial equipment by which it was to strike terror in
all beholders. Was it to consist of horse or of foot? and of
how many men? and so forth. The mystery was resolved at the
time and place appointed. A camel—a picked sample,
seemingly, for general ugliness and the vicious way it writhed
its mouth—shambled up to my tent. Its rider, who in all
specialties of repulsiveness tallied with the beast to a hair,
impaled a letter on the tip of his spear and handed it down. It
was from the Resident at Lucknow. In its unpromising bearer I
beheld my guard. If the look of a thorough ruffian, much
unwashed, with the spear just mentioned, a matchlock, and an
assortment round his waist of what resembled carving-knives and
skewers, was to be my sufficient defence in time of trouble, I
was well provided for. However it was to be explained, no harm
came to me anywhere on my march. But my guard, if he looked
zealously after my interests, looked full as zealously after
his own. For what I knew he was licensed, as a servant of the
state, to billet himself at free quarters on his royal master’s
subjects: at any rate, so he did. But, greatly to his vexation,
I would not hear of his compelling the shopkeepers with whom my
butler had daily dealings in buying necessaries for me to
provision my camp at their own charge. The man was for carrying
things with a high hand; and at the period of which I am
writing to do so was in Oude wellnigh the universal rule.
Justice was fast dying out in the land, and violence already
reigned prevalent in its stead.
[pg 342] The taxes, exorbitant as
apportioned at the court, were farmed by merciless wretches
who made them more exorbitant still, and who collected them,
for the most part, at the point of the sword. Open robbery,
deadly brawls and private assassination had become matters
of perpetual occurrence. There was scarcely a day during my
tour that I was not in the close vicinity of fatal
skirmishes, and that I did not fall in with parties carrying
away from them the dead or wounded. Obviously, this state of
affairs could not exist for any very long duration. The
nawab was advised, warned, and then menaced with deposal,
provided things were not righted in his dominions, radically
and speedily, to the satisfaction of the East India Company.
Harsh measures, equally with mild, were, however, altogether
wasted on him. Personally, he was a groveling debauchee,
exhausted alike in mind and in body to sheer imbecility; and
his courtiers and counselors were little better than
himself. To anarchy, insurrection seemed inevitably
imminent. It was precluded by annexation, and the kingdom of
Oude, not an hour in advance of its deserts, took its place
in finished history.

Game of a humbler description I met with in abundance
everywhere in Oude, but I had hunted the tiger with the rajah
of Benares, and since then had conceived a disdain of feathered
things, bustards excepted. Moreover, I had lately bought a
superb double-barreled Swiss rifle, as yet untested in real
work. With inviting jungles constantly within easy reach, not
to experiment with this lordly implement on something bigger
than a wild pig demanded abnegation beyond my philosophy. I had
no companion, but then I would control my impetuosity, do
nothing rash, and, if I could, keep out of the way of
temptation. One day, therefore, breakfast despatched, I
shouldered my lovely Switzer, and struck off at random across
the open. Woodland was not far to seek, and before I had been
away an hour I was in the heart of a dense jungle. Ordinary
deer and “such-like” I might have shot at will, but I happened
to be in an exclusive mood of mind, and was determined to drop
a blue-cow, if anything. But let not my Occidental reader
reproach me with having meditated such an atrocity as bovicide.
I have literally translated the Hindoo nîl
gâe, the misleading name given in India to the
white-footed antelope, sometimes called also rojh. At
last my slaughterous appetite was gratified, and a blue-cow
bore witness to the merit of my rifle, if not to my
marksmanship. It had cost me a tiresome search, and, being a
shy animal, much stealthy tracking. Yet when the beautiful
creature lay stretched at my feet it seemed as if I had been
guilty of wanton cruelty, and I wished my aim had miscarried,
proud as I had just before been of having done execution at
what looked to be an impracticably long range. Not improbably I
tried to extenuate my inhumanity by the argument that if I had
not killed it somebody else would have done so. Be this how it
may, I could never bring myself to shoot another, though I had
many a fair chance. All things considered, then, I am disposed
to strike a balance in my favor.

However, a little while previously I had done a bit of
bloodshed which could not have lain on the very tenderest of
consciences. The circumstances were these: Near my camp was a
patch of sugar-cane, which I noticed bore marks of visitation
by some creature with a taste for sweets. The neighborhood, I
ascertained, was infested with wild hogs. In the afternoon I
surveyed the fields adjoining the sugar-cane, and made my
dispositions against night. The moon was at the full. As soon
as it rose I took my rifle and repaired to a position selected
with reference to a certain tree. This tree had a low—but
not too low—horizontal branch, strong enough, as proved
by experiment, to bear my weight. Presently, an unmistakable
concert of snorting and grunting announced the approach of
swine. I picked out their fugleman, a well-grown boar, and
fired. He was only wounded, and immediately gave chase after
me. I might discharge my second barrel at him, but suppose I
should miss? Perched out of his reach, I might miss him with
impunity, and [pg 343] load again. All this I had
pondered beforehand. So I started for my tree, which I
reached some ten seconds sooner than the boar, swung myself
up on its low branch, and there took my seat. The boar
rushed furiously to and fro, raging like the heathen of the
Psalmist, and also, like the Psalmist’s people—not a
well-ordered democracy like ours, of course—imagining
a vain thing. Again and again he quixotically charged the
bole of the tree, no doubt thinking it to be myself in a new
shape. A fine classical boar he must have been, with his
poetic faith in instantaneous metamorphosis. His
classicality, however, what with his unmannerly savageness
and my own suspension between heaven and earth, I did not
feel bound to respect. So, without the slightest emotion of
sentimentality, I put a ball through his head.

Let us now hark back to the blue-cow, beautiful and
breathless. Satisfied, for the nonce, with my prowess in laying
it low, I plunged into the forest, just to explore. I must have
rambled several miles, when I suddenly came upon an impervious
barrier of quickset. Following its course a little way, I found
that it curved, and at one point I espied through it a broad
ditch filled with water, and a wall beyond. By and by I reached
a gap in the barrier, and a drawbridge leading up to a large
gate. I crossed the bridge, knocked at the gate, parleyed with
an invisible porter, and was admitted. My visit was evidently
viewed with a mixture of dislike and suspicion, but with no
sign of alarm when it was seen that I was really unaccompanied,
as, while still outside, I had said I was. Looking around, I
perceived that I was in a substantial fortress. Eight or ten
ruffianly fellows came about me and wished to know what I
wanted. I asked who lived there, and they informed me, adding
an expression of surprise at my putting such a question. Was
their master at home? He was. And could I see him? They would
let me know directly. On this I was conducted to a small room,
and left there, The roughs paced backward and forward before
the door, casting glances at me which I fancied to be sinister.
In a few minutes their chief, a stalwart, brawny biped,
swaggered in, twirling his moustaches, clanking his sword, and
studying to seem truculent. He, no less than his men, was at a
loss to know what I could have come there for. So I told him
the unvarnished facts of the case, and paused for his reply. He
had none to make. The latest news from Lucknow he inquired for,
indeed, but as I had come from the opposite direction, and
withal did not know the latest news of the capital from the
stalest, I could contribute nothing to his enlightenment.
Besides my rifle, I had in my belt a pair of loaded pistols. He
desired to look at them, but took in good part enough my
objection that I never trusted them in any hands but my own. We
went on talking for a little while, when he called for betel
and pan. This meant that I might go. I helped myself, took
leave and recrossed the drawbridge. It was a notorious
freebooter, a Hindoo Robin Hood, that I had dropped upon. But
why did he not tumble me into his ditch and enrich his armory
with my rifle and pistols? It may be that prudence operated, in
his letting me go free, as a check on his lust for a very small
gain. Despite the then disordered condition of the
country—or, in some instances, by very reason of
it—people of his stamp were every here and there called
to a summary reckoning. A bandit would know the haunts of other
bandits, and either to conciliate the government or in the hope
of reward occasionally betrayed or slew a fellow-outlaw. While
in Oude, one morning just after breakfast I was told there was
something to show me in a basket. The cover was removed, and
there I saw sixteen human heads. Their late proprietors were a
famous brigand and his merry men, only looking quite the
reverse of merry in the grim ghastliness of decapitation. I
scarcely recovered my appetite before tiffin.

By an odd concurrence of circumstances, when near Fyzabad I
was for three days thrown on the hospitality of a wealthy
Mohammedan. Nothing could have exceeded his kindness, but the
[pg 344] peculiar nature of the
entertainment he gave me may be conjectured when I mention
that he had not such a thing as a chair, table, knife, fork
or spoon to his name. Perforce, I had to dine sitting on the
floor and with the sole aid of my fingers. However, I
accepted my fate without a murmur, and soon learned to feed
after the fashion of Eden as deftly as if I had been bred to
it. Hindoo cookery I could rarely screw up my courage so
heroically as to venture upon. Even the odor of my Calcutta
washerman, redolent with the fragrance of castor oil, was
too much for my unchastised squeamishness; and as to
assafoetida, the favorite condiment of our Aryan cousins, I
was so uncatholic as to bring away from India the same
aversion to it that I had carried out there. But a
Mohammedan has, with some unimportant reservations, highly
rational notions as concerns the eatable and the drinkable.
His endless variety of kabobs and pilaus is worthy of all
commendation; and his sherbets, which refresh without a
sting or a resipiscent headache next morning, are no doubt
the style of phlegm-cutters and gum-ticklers which one had
better patronize pretty exclusively while between the
tropics. The gentleman of the circumcision whom I had for
host was, I suspect, something of an epicure, and his
cooking was such as I found eminently toothsome. My dinner
was on the floor at the polite hour of eight, after which he
would come to me for a short talk and to chant a little
Persian poetry. At nine he was due in his harem, which, he
gave me to understand, was a populous establishment.

For my special service he detailed, to my surprise, not a
man, but a young woman, who, I take it, was in bonds. Under
considerate Hindoo and Mohammedan masters slavery is, however,
the lightest of hardships, and the damsel appropriated to wait
on me, if she were not a slave, could not have been
lighter-hearted. A student of all the natural products of the
East, I did not neglect while there to bestow a proper share of
study on Indian womankind; and as my Fyzabad abigail was a
noteworthy specimen of her species, I may as well gratify the
curiosity of the untraveled to know what she was like. Such as
she was the queen of Sheba would perhaps have been if scoured
very bright and pared shapely. Her name was Dilrubâ,
which signifies, being interpreted, “Heart-ravisher.” She may
have been seventeen or eighteen; she was of a good height and
elegantly proportioned, with a well-set neck, sloping
shoulders, and fine bust; and her carriage had that stately and
sylph-like grace which no words can depict, and which is found
nowhere on earth but among the Orientals. Her hands and feet
were exquisitely small and symmetrical. Her arms, which were
bare to the shoulder, displayed everything of fullness,
rotundity and lines of beauty that could be desired. Their hue
and delicacy of texture would have reminded a connoisseur of
brownish satin. Her waist, tight-cinctured, was—which is
the highest praise—not ultra-fashionable, and the
undulations of her gauzy drapery disclosed, as she receded,
enough of ankle and crural adjacency to furnish hints of
improvement to most classical sculptors. Her lips, I regret to
say, were too liny, and not of the true ruby tint, but with the
exception of her mouth all her features were, not to say more,
good. As to her eyes, I should do injustice by any attempt to
describe them. An object must be susceptible of calm and
dispassionate contemplation if one would analyze it afterward
without complete disaster. A very irresistible little piece of
orientality she must indeed have been, perchance the reader
will conclude. And yet, if the reader is a man and a
brother—that is to say, a brother white man—I
answer him he is altogether in too great a hurry. He has
forgotten her color; and color is a matter which we
narrow—minded dwellers in the North find it impossible to
be liberal about. Not by five-and-twenty shades, at the least,
did the trim creature resemble any lily of the valley but a
very dark one; and of the rose she was totally unsuggestive. If
I had been so cosmopolitan as to make love to her, she could
not have called up a blush to save her
[pg 345] pretty little soul and
body. She might have turned green or yellow, for aught I know,
but by no possibility could she have done what she ought to
have done.

At Fyzabad there is but little to see, and that little is
rather uninteresting. What impressed me there, more than
anything else, was a particular private dwelling, and
especially a certain room in it. The edifice to which I refer
belonged to an opulent Mohammedan, and had been erected by an
English architect. Being constructed pretty closely on the
model of a mansion in Belgravia, it was wholly unsuited in a
hot climate to any purpose except that of torture. In all
probability, its constructor, as he roasted over his work,
omitted of set intention to fit it up with fireplaces. In this
omission, however, there was a breach of contract, for in all
its details the building was to be thoroughly English. The
defect was pointed out at the last moment, and strict
injunctions were given to repair it. Fireplaces there must be,
and a full complement of them. The matter was finally
compromised by providing a single small square room at the top
of the house with one in each of its side walls. In the same
spirit of determination not to come short of the mark, a rich
Bengalee baboo whom I once knew furnished his drawing-room, a
large apartment, with thirty-two round tables and an equal
number of musical boxes.

A great deal more might be said of Oude as I saw it, but the
region, since it became English territory, has been so often
and so fully described that I forbear to dwell on it. At
Lucknow, its capital, I spent a week as guest of Sir Henry
Sleeman, with whom, from that time to the end of his life, I
was in constant correspondence. That Sir Henry was a man
altogether out of the common must be evident from his various
publications. I came to know his mind on most subjects very
intimately. In every respect he was original and peculiar, and
but for a rooted aversion to anything like Boswellism I might
here depict a character such as one seldom meets with in these
days. To his personal influence it was largely owing that for
many a long year the annexation of Oude to the Indian empire
was suspended in disastrous balance.

FITZEDWARD HALL.

ONCE AND AGAIN.

Once and again I have nestled in the lap of a small village
and wondered at the necessity of any world beyond my peaceful
horizon. Once and again, after long years, I have entered the
old school-room with the fearful and impatient heart of a boy:
I have paced the play-ground and gone to and fro in the village
streets singing, but the song I once sang came not again to my
lips, for it no longer suited the time or the occasion.

I thought to take up the thread of life where I had dropped
it near a score of years before, and complete the web which
fancy had embroidered with many a flower of memory and hope and
love. I had forgotten that the loom weaves steadily and
persistently whether my hand be on it or not, and that I can
never mend the rent in the fabric I so long neglected.

My record elsewhere is replete with numerous accidents by
flood and field—with the epochs of meetings and
marryings, of births and deaths. Meanwhile, the friends who had
held fast to me through all these changes wrote ever in the
selfsame vein, and plotted for my return with such even and
sturdy faith that I had grown to look upon them as having drunk
at the fountain of immortal youth.

Of course the delectable spring gushed
[pg 346] out of the heart of one of
those dear old hills that walled in the village, for how
else could they have quaffed it? The bones of more than two
centuries pave the highway between New England and
California. As jubilant as young Lochinvar, I came out of
the West one summer dawn, and took train for Heartsease. I
had resolved to compass in a single week the innumerable
landmarks that dot mountain and desert and prairie—to
leap as it were from sea to sea, from the present to the
past, from manhood to early youth.

Is it any wonder that I forestalled the time, and was a day
and a night distant before inquiring friends discovered my
flight? Is it any wonder that the shrieking and swaying train
seemed slow to me, for already my spirit had folded its swift
wings in the nest-like village of Heartsease? I had, moreover,
by this brilliant manoeuvre, left the bitter cup of parting
untasted—but nothing more serious than this—and
seemed to have won a whole day from the clutches of Time, who
deals them out so stingily to the expectant and impatient
watcher.

San Francisco faces the sunrise, but there is a broad
glittering bay and a coast range with brawny bare shoulders
between them: I sailed over the flashing water, rode under the
mountains and threaded three tunnels before I began to realize
that I was a fugitive from home. It was midsummer; the
car-windows were half open; whiffs of warm wind blew in upon me
scented with bay-leaves and sage. For a moment I forgot
Heartsease and the home of my youth, and turned tenderly to
take a last farewell of the beloved land of my adoption. The
corn was cut and stacked in long dusty rows: it looked like a
deserted camp; the grain was down; small squirrels skipped
lightly over the shining stubble, whisking their bushy tails
like puffs of smoke. It seemed to me that no fairer land ever
baked in summer’s sunshine. Even the parched earth, with its
broken and powdered crust, was lovely in my eyes. Small
day-owls sat in the corners of the fences, when there were any
fences to sit in, and nodded to me from behind their feather
masks: all the birds of the air taunted me with heads on one
side and drooping wings. I might escape trusting humanity and
steal away betimes, but these airy messengers waylaid me and
chirped a sarcastic adieu from every field we crossed.

In the compulsory solitude of travel a man is thrown back
upon himself: at any rate, I am, and with waning courage and a
growing regret I sank into a corner of my seat by the window,
and glowered at the interminable slices of landscape that slid
past me on both sides of the rocking train. Have you ever noted
the refrain of the flying wheels as they hurry from town to
town? There is a sharp shriek from the locomotive, and a groan
from one end of the train to the other, as if every screw were
rheumatic and nothing but a miracle held it in its place. Then
the song begins, very slowly at first, and in the old familiar
strain: “Ko—ka—chi—lunk,
ko—ka—chilunk, koka—chilunk, kokachilunk,”
repeated again and again, varied only when the short rails are
crossed, where it adds a few extra syllables in this style:
“Kokachilunk—chilunk, chilunk,” growing faster and faster
every moment until the utmost speed is attained: it then soars
into this impressive refrain: “Lickity-cut, lickity-cut,
lickity-cut, lickity-cut,” repeated as often and as rapidly as
possible. All the world goes by in two dizzy landscapes, yet
the song is unvaried until you approach a town with a
straggling and unfinished edge, where the houses are waltzing
about as if they had not yet decided upon any permanent
location. Here you slacken speed and drop into a third
movement, as monotonous as the others and far more drowsy, for
it suggests all that is soothing and nerve-relaxing and
sleep-begetting. It is “Killi-kinick, killi—kinick,
killi—kin—nick; eh! ah! bang!” A long groan from
the wheels, a deep sigh from the locomotive, and you are
stockstill at some inland hamlet that knows no emotion greater
than that occasioned by your arrival.

To this dull accompaniment I climbed out of the golden
lowlands, the basins of the San Joaquin and the Sacramento,
[pg 347] into the silver mountains
where the full moon was just rising. The train seemed to
soar through space; we passed from cliff to cliff, above
dark ravines, on bridges like spider-webs; we whirled around
sharp corners as if we had started for some planet, but
thought better of it and clung to earth, with our hair on
end and half the breath out of our bodies. We were
continually ascending; the locomotive panted hideously;
every throb of the powerful machine sent a shudder through
the whole length of the train.

Again and again we paused: it seemed that we could not go
farther without rest. Sometimes we hung on the edge of a chasm
in whose fathomless shadow were buried a forest and a stream,
both of which sent upward to us a fragrant and melodious
greeting; sometimes we rested under a mighty mountain, whose
adamantine brow scowled upon us, and we were glad when we once
more resumed the toilsome ascent of the Sierras and escaped
unharmed from that giant’s lair.

Once we tarried on the brink of a wild cañon.
Midnight and silence seemed to slumber there: the moon flooded
one half the mysterious gulf with light, revealing a slender
waterfall whose plash was faintly heard: it served only to make
the silence more profound. Near at hand the torn and ragged
earth, robbed of its treasure, looked painful even in that
softening light. On the dark side of the cañon, in among
the trees, a flame danced. I saw the gaunt forms of rough-clad
men gathered about the camp-fire, and beyond them a rude cabin
of un-barked logs, looking cheerful enough in the rosy
light.

There was nothing lovelier than this or more characteristic
in the glorious ride over the Sierras—not even the lake,
above whose green shores we rushed with half a mountain between
us; nor the ice-gorges, nor the black forests, nor the chaos of
rock and ravine that has defied the humanizing touch of time. I
felt the burden of the mountains then, and it is for ever
associated with a memory of the high Sierras, caught and fixed
as we swept onward into the wild, wide snow-lands.

The burden of the mountains: There shall come a day when the
ravine for the silver is drained and the gold-seekers turn from
thee disconsolate, but thy years are unnumbered and thy
strength unfailing: the grass shall cover thy nakedness and the
pine-boughs brood over thee for ever and ever; the clouds shall
visit thee and the springs increase; the snows shall gather in
the clefts of thy bosom; thy breasts shall give nourishment,
thy breath life to the fainting, and the sight of thy face joy.
The people shall go up to thee and build in thy shadow; their
flocks shall feed in peace: out of thy days shall come fatness,
and out of thy nights rest, for thou hast that within thee more
precious than silver, yea, better than much fine gold.

When the burden was past I looked out into the night. A soft
wind was stirring; I scented the balsam of the piny woods; the
moon had descended beyond the crest of the mountain, and above
me the sky was flooded with pale and palpitating stars. We slid
out of the mountains into the broad Humboldt desert one
cloudless day: it was like getting on the roof of the
world—the great domed roof with its eaves sloping away
under the edges of heaven, and whereon there is nothing but a
matting of sagebrush, looking like grayish moss, and a deep
alkali dust as white and as fine as flour.

There were but two features in the landscape on which to fix
the eye, and these were infrequent—the dusty beds of the
dead rivers and the wind-sculptured rocks. It was the
abomination of desolation: the air was thin, but spicy; the sky
was bare. When we had followed with eager glance the
shadow-like gazelle in his bounding flight, and brought the
heavy-headed buffalo to a momentary stand, with his small evil
eye fixed upon us, he wheeled suddenly and disappeared in a
cloud of dust; and we were alone in the desert.

Those mellow hours by the inland sea, where sits the Garden
City, with its wide grass-grown streets and its vine-veiled
cottages basking in summer sunshine, were precious indeed! We
had ample [pg 348] opportunity for developing
philosophy, sentiment and politics at one sitting. Coming
out of the fair and foul refuge of the fleshly saints, I
thought of the wisdom of the French poet who once said to
me, “Oui, monsieur: life is an oasis in which there is many
a desert.” In the unfruitful shoots of those thorn-bearing
vines and withered fig trees I learned the burden of the
desert: Though it blossom as the rose, if it yield not honey
it shall be laid waste; though it deck itself with beauty,
though it sing with the voice of the charmer, its fairness
is a mock and its song is the song of the harlot. Harbor it
not in your hearts. Let it be purged of uncleanness, let the
stain be washed from it. Though the builders build
cunningly, they have builded in vain. There is blood on
their lintels, and their hearts are full of lust. He that
sits in the seat of the scornful and is girded about with
pride, let him fall as the tree falls, even the king of the
forest, for there is rottenness at the core.

Like pilgrims in the earthly paradise we ploughed the long
grass of the prairies; like a fiery snake our train trailed
over the flowering land; its long undulations were no
impediment; the grassy billows parted before us; we cleft the
young forests that have here and there sprung up at the call of
patient husbandry; myriads of wild-fowl wheeled over the
fragrant and boundless fields; every flower in the floral
calendar seemed at home in those meadow-lands of the world: the
sunset was not more glorious than the gentle slopes that swept
to our feet like a long wave of the sea, and then broke in a
foam of flowers. Not only was the delicious day
promise-crammed, but the night, loud with the chirp of the
cricket and the cry of the sentinel owl, seemed the realization
of some splendid dream.

Out of the redundant and prophetic life of that land I heard
a prophecy, and the prophecy was the burden of the prairies. It
is the chant of the future, full of life and hope. I see now
rows of men and women, the toilers of the earth; they have
planted forests and the strong wind is stayed; they have broken
the soil and the grain is breast-high; they are merry, for they
are free, and their stores increase with the years. Wine and
oil are their portion, and fat kine and all manner of cunning
workmanship; their cities are greater and better than the old
cities, for they are builded on virgin soil; and the day shall
come when the jubilee of the prairies will assemble the hosts
from the borders of the two seas, and they will hear their
praises sung and receive tribute, for the strength of the land
is theirs.

And we came into other countries that were full of people,
and of cities great and small. A thousand strange faces were
turned upon us as we shot past the open doors of houses wherein
the table was spread for the domestic meal. We hailed the
field-laborers and the town-artisans at their toil, and every
hour plunged deeper and deeper into the old civilization of the
East, which in some respects differs greatly from that of our
breezy West. It was time to be thinking on my journey’s end and
its probable results. I seemed to read it all beforehand: Ellen
would greet me at the gate of the parsonage on the edge of
Heartsease, looking just as she looked when I parted with her
long, long years before. Ellen had not changed with time: she
had written me the same sweet, placid, sympathetic letters from
the beginning, and the beginning was when, a mere child, I had
worn out my heart with longing for home, and had at last been
welcomed back over the two seas and across the slender chain of
flowers that binds the two Americas together—back to the
land I love, California. Ellen would lead me in all the old
paths; we would see the garden in which, as a beautiful boy, I
more than once sought her to confess some grief, knowing there
was no ear so willing as hers, no heart tenderer, no counsel
more comforting. We would row up the stream that runs under the
hill by the willows, and strand in the same shallow nook, in
honor of the festal Saturdays dead and gone. We would gather
the old friends about us, and eat very large apples by the
study-window; we would hunt nests in the hayloft and acorns in
the wood; the [pg 349] school-room would take us
back again, and all the half-obliterated memories of the
past would glow with fresher color. A hundred hands would be
stretched out to me, and I would recognize the clasp of
each. Ah, happy day when I again returned to Heartsease and
found the lost thread of my youth unbroken, and I had only
to weave on and complete the fabric so long neglected!

There were a dozen trains to enter and get out of before I
could be whirled across the country to Heartsease. Now that
Heartsease was easily attainable, all the restless world would
be fleeing thither, and it would no longer be worthy of its
name. I felt my way from town to town, pausing an hour here,
another hour there, in an impatient mood, for the last train
was behind time, and I feared I should not arrive in the
village at the moment of all others I most desired to. Why
should I not come at sunset to the parsonage—one from the
land of the sunset wearing, as it were, his colors on his
heart? The hour is so mysterious and pathetic—the very
hour to step in upon the village, for so you can gloat over it
all night, before the sun has laid the whole truth bare to you
on the following morning. And moreover I had not written Ellen
of my intended visit: why should I, when she had been looking
for me these ten years at least? Why should I say, “At last I
am coming,” when a thousand things might have prevented me? Was
it not better to walk up the long road from the station at
twilight, pass silently through the quiet, familiar streets,
and then, as I approached the gate of the parsonage, discover a
form waiting there as if expecting some one, but whom it was
hard to say? Drawing nearer, I would recognize the form,
slender and graceful, and then the face, placid and pale, with
the soft hair drawn smoothly over the temples and the thin
hands folded in peace. Oh yes, it was much better thus.

At the last change of trains, ten miles from Heartsease, a
heavy summer shower was drenching the town; the very rain was
hot, and the earth steamed lustily. I feared, my plan was
spoiled, my meeting at the gate after long years of patient and
hopeful waiting. But the rain passed over, and I was again
under way. Now every inch of the land was familiar: I
recognized old houses and barns and strips of fence and streams
that had not been in my mind once in all these years. I knew
every block of forest that had been left on the border of the
upland fields, and all the meadows, marshy or dry: the very
faces of the people seemed to recall some one I had known
before. The hills were like lessons learned by heart; and now I
came upon the actual haunts of my school-boy days—the
wood where we gave our picnics; the red house, a little out of
the village, where one of the boys lived—strangely
enough, the house I remembered, but the boy’s looks and name
had gone from me—and then the train stopped. I felt a
tingling sensation, as if the blood were coming to the surface
all over me.

A switchman, and a stranger, waved us welcome with a yard of
flaming bunting. I hurried out of the car and alighted within
half a mile of Heartsease. On the platform, where I had parted
with my schoolmates fifteen years before, I waited till the
train had passed onward and out of sight. I was alone: the
switchman asked no odds of me, but furled his bunting and
immediately withdrew. For a moment I looked about me in
bewilderment. I think I could have turned back had I been
encouraged to do so, for I felt half guilty in thus surprising
my friends. A moment later I plucked up heart and struck into
the road that leads up to the village.

The road has a margin of grass and weeds, and there are
meadows on both sides. I walked in the very middle of it, with
my portmanteau in my hand, and looked straight ahead. Before me
lay the village, a cluster of white houses embowered in trees.
It was sunset; the rain had washed the leaves and laid the dust
in the road; the air was exquisitely fragrant and of uncommon
softness; the white spire of the village church, flanked by a
long line of poplars, was gilded with a sunbeam, but the lowly
roofs of the villagers were bathed in the radiant twilight that
had deepened under the [pg 350] western hills. Cattle were
lowing in the meadows; the crickets chirped everywhere; a
barbed swallow clove the air like an arrow whose force is
nigh spent; and a child’s voice rang out on the edge of the
village as clear as a clarion. I paused and laughed aloud. I
was mad with joy; an exquisite thrill ran through me; it
seemed to me that the most delicious moment of my life had
come.

I entered the village a boy again, with all the wild
ambition of a boy and with a boy’s roguish spirit. I resolved
to play upon them at the parsonage. If Ellen were not at the
gate waiting for me, I would enter as a stranger and remain a
season before throwing off disguise. I would cunningly lead the
conversation from topic to topic until we came naturally to the
past, and there in the past my shadow would appear, and then at
the right moment I would throw myself at Ellen’s feet and bury
my head in her lap and weep for very joy.

These dreams beguiled me as I drew near the village. My step
was buoyant; I scarcely felt the weight of my portmanteau; I
was drunk with expectation and delight. In the village I found
the streets and houses and signs for the most part unchanged,
but I looked in vain for a familiar face. A few lads were
playing about “the corners,” and when I saw them it suddenly
occurred to me that all those youngsters under fifteen were not
born when I was a schoolboy in Heartsease. I turned away from
them with a feeling of unutterable disappointment. Why should
not all my playmates be married or dead or have moved out of
the village if changes had come to it? I had not thought much
of change in this connection, and it was a hard blow.

A faint flush was in the evening sky: it was the afterglow,
and in its light I pressed onward toward the parsonage. A
hollow in the road, through which a stream rippled, lay between
me and the grove that sheltered Ellen’s home: I hastened down
it, and began climbing the easy ascent on the other side of the
stream. I seemed to grow years older with every step I took,
for I knew that the change which comes to all must have come to
me in like measure, though I was a boy again when I came up the
road laughing and heard the first sweet village voice.

There was no form at the gate awaiting me, but the house was
quite unaltered, and I knew every leaf in the garden. The flush
in the sky had turned to gold and the air throbbed with light
as I hid my portmanteau under the rosebush by the gate and
stole up to the study-door. I would not give so palpable a clew
to my identity as that: I wished to appear like one who had
dropped in for a moment to ask the hour or the loan of a late
journal. I rapped at the shutters that enclosed the outer door,
and waited in a tremor of expectation: there was no response.
Again I rapped, and again waited in vain for a reply.

The shadows deepened in the grove; a thin light sifted down
through the leaves and fell upon the doorstep in pale disks
that seemed to tremble with agitation and suspense. I grew
uneasy, and feared it was not wise of me to have come without
announcement, and my heart beat heavily. I walked nervously to
the side of the house and glanced in at the deep bow-window; a
shadow crossed the room: it was Ellen’s shadow, and unchanged,
thank God! I knew she would not change, for she was one whom
time wearied not and fear fretted not, but to whom all things
were alike welcome, inasmuch as they came from the Hand that
can work no ill.

I returned to the study-door and rapped again, and then grew
suddenly much excited: I almost wished I had not summoned her
so soon, but already I heard her step upon the carpet, her hand
on the latch and the shutters swung apart. I strove to calm
myself and ask carelessly if she were at home, when I thought I
saw a difference in the form and face before me: they were so
like Ellen’s, but not hers. Had it been in my power to do so, I
would have turned at that moment and gone out into the world
without questioning any one: I would gladly have avoided any
revelation of ill that might have befallen that household, and
gone on as before, thinking it
[pg 351] was well with them. But it
was too late: at the same instant we recognized one
another.

“Is it Emma?” I asked fearfully.

“You are not—”

Ah, yes, it was he who had promised all these years to come,
and had come at last!

Then she added, “You have come too late: Ellen left us one
week ago.”

I knew what that meant: it was the leaving that takes all
along with it, and there remains nothing but a memory instead.
It was the leaving that lays bare the heart of hearts, and
strikes blind and dumb the agonized soul—the leaving and
the leave-taking that is all bitterness, call it by what name
you will—that makes weak, the strong and confounds the
wise, and strikes terror to the breast of stone—the
leaving which is the leaving off of everything that is near and
dear and familiar, and the taking on of all that is new and
strange—Death! Death! at the thought of which even the
Son of God faltered and cried, “If it be possible let this cup
pass from Me,” alone in that wild night in the garden, with
watching and prayers and tears.

I had dreamed out my dream: it was glorious while it lasted,
but I wakened to a reality that was as cruel as it was
unexpected.

Emma was a mere child when I left Heartsease: she had grown
into the living image of her sister. Whenever Emma spoke I
seemed to hear the voice and feel the presence of the one who
had been gone a whole week when I came in search of her. I
entered the stricken home: father, mother and maiden
aunt—that good angel of all homes—were to me as if
I had parted with them but yesterday. We sat in silence for a
time: it seemed to me that if any one spoke there the very
walls of the house would distill sorrowful drops. Our hearts
were brimming, our lips were quivering, with inexpressible
grief. It was a solemn and a holy hour; the night closed in
about us with unutterable tenderness; the summer stars shed
down their radiant beams.

The vesper-song of some invisible bird called me into the
garden, and I walked there alone. Did I walk utterly alone? A
spirit was with me. I wandered out to the gate and drew my
portmanteau from its hiding-place: I placed my hand upon the
latch; the gate swung easily, but I paused a moment. Shall I go
or shall I stay? asked my heart: “Stay,” said the spirit that
was with me. I returned to the house and joined in the evening
meal: sorrow sat at the board with us, but not a hopeless
sorrow. The magnetism of her touch had not yet left that home:
it never need, it never will leave it, for it is treasured
there. Her piano was closed, and I would not open it: any
harmony would have been too harsh for the hallowed silence of
the place. Her books, her pictures, her dainty needlework,
her words—all that had been a part of her
life—still lived, though she had left us.

Those were sweet days to me. Emma and I went side by side to
the old haunts—to most of them, but not all, for there
were some I cared no longer to revisit. Before we had compassed
the narrow limits of Heartsease I began to wonder if there was
a stone left that would give back to me the impression of my
early days: they all told another story now, and most of them a
sad one. Even the school-room was as a dead thing, though I sat
on the old benches and mounted the rostrum whereon I was wont
to “speak my piece” with much trepidation of spirit and an
inexplicable weakness of the knees. I wrote my name on the wall
in an obscure corner, simply because I didn’t want it to be
stricken off from the roll entirely, and then turned back into
the street with less regret than I had reckoned on.

Of all the old friends I had known in boyhood, I saw but two
besides Emma—two sisters whose histories were strange and
wonderful. They greeted me as of yore, and we talked of the
past with pity mingled with delight. Dick, my old chum, Emma’s
soldier-brother, was miles and miles away: not a boy of all our
tribe was left in Heartsease to tell me the story of the past.
I began to be glad that it was so, for the great gulf that lay
between me and the boy I had been [pg
352] seemed to render up no ghosts but were shrouded in
sorrow.

There was one spot I might have visited, but did not: it
seemed to me better to wander to and fro about the dear old
parsonage with the living spirit near me, and to go out again
into the world with the softened influences of that lessened
but unbroken circle consoling me, than to seek the new grave
that had not yet had time to clothe itself with violets, and
the sight of which could have given me nothing but pain. By and
by, I thought, let me return, and when it has healed over and
is sweet with summer flowers I will sprinkle rue upon it and
breathe her name. I went back from Heartsease like the bearer
of strange news. We had all sat together and thought, rather
than uttered, the memories of the past: they weighed me down,
but they were precious freights. When I looked once more, and
for the last time, upon the darling village drowsing in the
sunshine, I felt that I had learned the burden of the hearth:
Not length of days is given, but the sweetness and strength
thereof: their memory shall live even though the dead be dust.
Out of the loam of this corrupting body springs heavenward the
invisible blossom of the soul. You have watered it with tears:
let the performance thereof comfort you. Though ye die, yet
shall ye live: thus saith the Lord. But shall the old days
delight us and the past live? Yea, verily, saith the
Spirit—once, but never again!

CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.

THE SCIENTIFIC LIFE.

It has been my good fortune to be thrown much with men of
science, and to find among them companions made agreeable by
the best of social qualities and by many larger capacities.
Perhaps it is their life apart, their consciousness of
belonging to a distinct class, that has made them, as I have
found them, so strikingly individual, and partly for this very
reason so interesting. Indeed, it is curious to observe how
varied and how utterly different maybe the non-essentials,
moral and mental, of the beings to whom God has given the rare
gift of power to look into the secrets He has scattered around
us in plant and earth and animal life. Consistently with
various grades of competence for investigation, the man may be
social, or may flee his fellows; may be witty, or incapable of
seeing the broadest fun; a poet, or almost devoid of creative
imagination; full of refinement and rife with multiple forms of
culture, or neither scholarly nor well-informed outside of his
especial line of work. According as he is endowed with mental
graces and forms of culture, apart from his science, will be
his charm as a companion; but while the absence of these means
of pleasing is sometimes met with, and while their lack in no
wise lessens his power of investigation, I have found most men
of science to possess in a high degree qualities which rendered
them delightful as comrades at the camp-fire or as guests at
the dinner-table. Indeed, the best talkers I know are men of
science—not the mere students of a knowledge already
garnered, but those who discover new facts or who spend their
lives in original research. The most mirthful, cheery, happy
and liberal-minded of men are to be found in the limited ring
of those who are known in this country as investigators. On the
European continent the same remark holds true, but in Europe
this class is very often less refined than with us. In England
the same class is undoubtedly notable for a curious absence of
the wide range of general information constantly found in
America, so that English men of science often amaze us in
social life by their lack not so much of culture, as
[pg 353] of wide knowledge of
matters outside of their own studies, as well as by their
inaptitude to share the lighter chat of the
dinner-table.

Even in Great Britain—and yet more in Germany and
France—the habits of life make it less of a sacrifice
than here for men to abandon all that money gives and to devote
themselves to the quiet life of the closet and the laboratory.
Once set in a groove, the average man abroad is less apt, to
seek to rise out of it or depart from it; while with us the
constant flow of a too intensely active life is for ever luring
men with baits of greed to take the easy step aside from pure
science into the golden ways of gain. Honored be they in this
land of eager money-getting who withstand the temptation, and
in quiet and peace, undisturbed by the turmoil about them,
pursue those noble quests which give to humanity its highest
training! What these men lose we know: to them are neither
great houses nor the hoards of successful commerce. Their lives
are often vexed by the trouble and worry of wretchedly
incompetent incomes, and what trials they endure those they
love must also share. Their incomes, in fact, are usually such
as a well-paid bank-clerk or dry-goods salesman would despise.
Officers of the navy or army are, as a rule, as well paid as
men of science who hold the chairs of teachers; but while the
former class are the most signal and steady grumblers, the
latter are, of all the men I know, the most tranquilly content.
What they miss in life we can well imagine; what they gain the
general public little comprehends; but those who know them best
will readily understand why it is that their lives are
seemingly so happy.

And here, again, I would remind the reader that the class I
speak of are not the mere college professors, useful as they
are, but those men, in or out of that class, whose lives are
devoted to the acquisition of facts fresh from Nature—to
the original study of bird and beast and stone and
flower—and those who, on a yet higher plane of work, are
busy with the patient investigation of physics and physiology.
Such men do not rely for success in their pursuits on their
knowledge of human nature, or the passions and foibles and
lower wants of their fellows, but, for ever turning toward a
more quiet life, are living among those strange problems which
haunt the naturalist, or among those awful forces which rule
the stars and pervade the dead and living world of matter.
There must be something quieting and ennobling in this steady
contemplation of vast machineries, which have all the force and
terror of human passions, and yet the serene steadiness and
certainty of unchanging law. It is “a purer ether, a diviner
air,” from whence its citizens can afford to look down in
peace, perhaps in scorn, upon the ignoble strifes beneath
them.

I suppose, too, that other men can hardly dream of the one
vast pleasure which comes to these searchers when ever so
little a new truth or a fresh analogy reaches them as the
result of their work. The pursuit itself is all absorbing, all
exacting, and when at last the purpose is attained, and out of
darkness flashes the light of some novel law, the knowledge of
some new connecting link, some simple explanation of a range of
facts or phenomena, or even the discovery of a fresh analogy or
homology, or of an undescribed fossil being, the purity of the
pleasure which they win is something which to be understood
must have been felt. “I think,” said Jeffries Wyman once to the
writer, “that the most happy and heartfilling thing in the
world is to come face to face with something which no one but
God ever saw before.” How transcendent must have been this form
of joy when it rewarded the first who saw the spectrum analysis
of starlight in its fullness of meaning, or to him who first
knew where and how the blood runs its wonderful courses!

Then, too, the life of other men, of the merchant and the
lawyer, palls as age advances and its rewards are paid in
dollars or in honor. Their experiences are limited and work
out, but the naturalist or investigator only gathers day by day
new interests about his life of duties. His work is as pleasant
as play, and his play is usually only some new
[pg 354] form of work. Nature is
his—a mistress whose charms are unfading, and who is
his for life. Go to some meeting of men of science and see
how this is. The oldest has as keen a zest as the youngest,
and while life becomes to others a weariness, to these men
the pleasure in their steady work is absolutely unfailing. I
heard the other day a half-jesting remark at a dinner-table
of men of science to the effect that life might become a
tiresome thing as we grew older. “Not for me,” said one of
them, whose name is known wherever science is held in honor:
“there must be no end of Rhizopods I have never studied.”
Thus it is that men who live ever gazing at the surely
widening horizon of truth, who know that they at least need
never sigh for new worlds to conquer, who day by day are
coming into closer company with the yet unwhispered thoughts
of the great Maker, are happy and contented in the tasks to
which their lives are given, and serenely patient of what
their duties deny them of luxury and wealth and freedom to
wander or to rest.

It might well be thought that men living so far apart from
the general paths, and pursuing purposes so remote from those
of the trader, would become obnoxious to that bitterest of
American reproaches, the charge of being unpractical. The
directness of aim of scientific training and the lofty code of
honor among students of science, with their fair share of
cis-Atlantic pliability, makes them, however, most useful and
trustworthy people whenever it becomes requisite to entrust to
them the mixture of commercial and scientific labor which is
needed by heads of boards of weights and measures, of
lighthouses, of coast surveys, and for the affairs and mere
business conduct of societies and colleges or museums. Indeed,
as regards this kind of work, they have too much of
it—too much of that sort of labor which in England is
well and wisely done by wealthy aristocrats who are amateurs in
science or eager to find work of some kind. The popular opinion
certainly conceives of the man of true science as being almost
unfit for the practical every-day duties which bring him into
working contact with his fellow-men. This is, as it were, a
reversed form of the prejudice which believes that a physician
or a lawyer will be a worse doctor or advocate because he
writes verses or amuses an hour of leisure by penning a
magazine article. As regards medicine, this popular decree is
swiftly fading, though it still has some mischievous power. It
was once believed, at least in this country, that a doctor
should be all his life a doctor, and nothing else: the notion
still lingers, so that young medical men who at the outset of
their career seek to become known as investigators in any of
the sciences related to medicine are, I fear, liable to be
looked upon by many older physicians, and by a part of the lay
public, as less likely than others to attain eminence in the
purely practical part of medical life. It is time that this
phantom of vulgar prejudice faded out. “Whatever you do,” said
a late teacher of physiology in my presence to a young doctor,
“do not venture to become an experimental
physiologist—that is, if you wish afterward to succeed as
a doctor. It is fatal to that. It is sure to ruin you with the
public.” Yet Brodie, Cooper, Erichson and many others so
employed their earlier years of leisure, and I might point in
this country to some noble instances of like success in
practice following upon careers which at first were purely
scientific. But, in truth, every physician is more or less an
investigator, and those who have been early trained to the
sternly accurate demands of work in the laboratory of the
experimental physiologist are only the better fitted for study
at the bedside.

There is, however, a long list of physicians who have begun
life in the pursuit of science, and have found its charms too
potent to allow them to depart thence into the more lucrative
ways of medical practice. One of this class was Jeffries Wyman,
whose character and career well illustrate all that I have said
of the scientific life, its trials and rewards. There are some
graves on which we cannot lay too many flowers; and if,
therefore, after those who knew him best, I venture to
[pg 355] add my words of honor and
affection, and to state the impressions derived from my
intercourse with the very remarkable student of science
whose loss we have all lamented, I trust that the strong
feeling which prompts me may be held a sufficient
excuse.

I had three or four sets of associations with Wyman, no one
of which fails to come back to my remembrance filled with the
charm of a man whose whole nature was simple, wholesome, pure
and generous. Others have said all that need be said of what he
did for his much-loved science: it is less easy to convey to
those who knew him not an impression of the influence he
exerted upon younger workers, and a sense of the social
pleasure which came of his remarkable combination of vast
knowledge and general culture, combined with a certain
loveliness of character and an almost childlike simplicity. I
once heard our greatest preacher nobly illustrate, with
Samson’s riddle as his text, the delightfulness of that form of
human character in which sweetness and strength are blended. As
I listened, somehow I began to recall Wyman, for it was just
here that his social charm resided. He was intellectually
stronger even than any of his completed work showed, but he was
also the most lovable of men. His mind was very active and
remarkably suggestive—so much so that in social chat,
even the most careless, he was constantly saying things which
made you think or left you thoughtful. For many years he wrote
to me frequently, and his letters are filled with the most
lucid and happy suggestions, explanations or comments. After
the failure on the part of one of his friends to attain a
deserved object of just ambition, he wrote to me to state his
own extreme regret; and this not once, but thrice, as if he was
haunted by the sorrow of another’s disappointment. At times he
was full of the most boyish spirit of jesting, as when in 1862
he wrote to me grieving over the secession of Virginia, because
we had both of us thus lost our easiest supply of rattlesnakes.
Then he rejoiced over the fact that we still had the bull-frog;
and in an another note regrets that the rattlesnakes had not
been allowed to vote on the question of seceding.

As I write I pause to turn over these records of a
dearly-valued friendship. They begin years ago with words of
encouragement as to certain investigations in which both of us
felt interest. Here and there they touch on matters of social
or personal value, but for the most part they deal only with
science. I used to wonder in those days, and still am surprised
anew as again I turn over these letters, at the amount of what
I might call suggestiveness in Wyman. He replies, for example,
in one letter to the gift of a scientific essay, and then in a
postscript runs off over eight pages of comment, explanation
and novel suggestions which put the subject in a new light;
while every here and there, amidst the wealth of scientific
illustration and useful hints given to aid another’s work,
there is some pause to express a courteous doubt of his own
opinions. Everywhere, indeed, his letters, which made the most
of our intercourse, were full of the broadest sympathy in
pursuits which often were—but often were not—in the
same direction as his own lifelong studies. At times, too, the
sympathy broke out into the extreme of generosity. Thus, having
learned from me that certain very important and hitherto
undescribed anatomical structures would probably be found in
serpents and frogs, he tells me soon after that he has found
them; also, that he has discovered them in birds, and that he
has been led finally to a series of unlooked-for discoveries in
the anatomy of the nerves of the frog; and he wishes
experiments made on living frogs to learn the physiological use
of the structures thus found. Then not long after he proposes
that as the first discovery came from this writer, he should
take and use the notes and drawings which recorded his own
researches, and should use them in a second paper. It is
needless to say that this was declined, and the results
appeared under Wyman’s name. It was characteristic of the man,
and was not the only time when I had to thank him for the
kindest offers of aid.

To see Dr. Wyman in his museum
[pg 356] was one of the most
pleasant exhibitions of the man at his best. I well remember
one Sunday afternoon in May three years ago, when, walking
in Cambridge with H——, one of the most prominent
of our great railway presidents—and, better than this,
a man notable for genial social qualities, high culture and
a broad range of the readiest sympathies—I proposed to
him to call on Wyman and ask him to show us the
Archaeological Museum. We found Wyman at home, and if you
had asked a bright little girl to show you her baby-house
she could have been no better pleased than he. At first, as
we went from case to case, he was quiet and said little, but
as we showed the interest and admiration we so warmly felt,
he also grew eager and vivid in description, until as he
went on his talk became a marvel of illustrative
learning—so wide, so varied, so complete, that we were
carried along the current of his thoughts in wonder at this
strange combination of intense interest, of almost childlike
satisfaction, of a concentration on his subject of vast
antiquarian knowledge and of absolutely perfect anatomical
skill. Mr. H—— called his attention to the
curious distortions and odd enlargements of the protruded
tongue in some of the Alaskan wooden masks, and on this
little text he was away in a moment from case to case in the
museum, and from century to century, pointing out the use of
the tongue as an organ of facial expression in various ages.
Here were Roman or Greek examples, here Sioux or Alaskan
types of the same usages, and here was a new thought he had
never had before, and we were thanked for awakening it; and
so in his talk over this little point he showed us how
barbarian natures had like thoughts everywhere, and, as much
amused as we, he quoted and laughed and talked, still always
pleased and easy under the vast weight of learning which,
coming from his lips, was so utterly free from the least
appearance of being ponderous or tiresome. I think I never
knew any other man whose learning sat upon him as lightly or
was given to others as gracefully.

I had once a like pleasure in raking over an Indian
shell-heap with Wyman. The quiet, amused amazement of the
native who plied the spade for us was an odd contrast to
Wyman’s mood of deep interest and serious occupation. He had a
boy’s pleasure in the quest, and again displayed for me the
most ready learning as to everything involved in the search.
Bits of bones were named as I would name the letters of the
alphabet: bone needles, fragments of pottery and odds and ends
of nameless use went with a laugh or some ingenious comment
into his little basket. In truth, a walk with Wyman at Mount
Desert was something to remember.

The acquaintances of the merchant or lawyer grow fewer as
age comes on, but the naturalist is always enlarging his circle
of living or dead things in which he takes interest, and none
more profited thus by the years as they came than Wyman. The
bird, the tree, the flower, the rock, tiny worlds beneath damp
stones, little dramas of minute life within mouldy tree-trunks,
the quaint menageries in the sea-caves, shifted with every
tide, whatever the waves brought or the winds carried or the
earth bore were one and all acquaintances of this delightful
and delighted companion. Not without a manly interest in the
world of men and politics, he lived for the most part serenely
above its ferment and passions. Without the large means which,
had they been his, had been in the truest sense and for the
best purposes means, he lived a life of quiet, studious
content, made somewhat hard by ill-health, but, so far as I
know, undisturbed by envy of easier lots than his. Whatever
were his crosses in this world—and they must have been
many—no man who knew Wyman could now wish them to have
been changed, if, as no doubt was the case, they helped to
build up a character so filled with honest labor, so pure, so
lofty and so generous—

Nor could Humanity resign

A life which bade her heart beat
high,

And blazoned Duty’s stainless shield,

And set a star in Honor’s sky.

S. WEIR
MITCHELL.

[pg 357]

PLAYING WITH FIRE.

Apple-blossoms and the pale wild roses that grow in the
shadow of woody lanes were things of which she always reminded
you, she was so slight and so fair, with just a suggestion of
bloom about her—the bloom of youth. Hardly beautiful, but
then seventeen summers have a beauty of their own—a
beauty of firm round curves and velvety color, whose absence a
dozen years later works utter transformation. When Lilian
should approach thirty, and the blush that shifted now with
every word she spoke, almost with every thought, should have
paled—when time and tears should perhaps have dimmed the
soft eyes—then she might be, to those who love fleshly
magnificence alone, of sufficiently commonplace appearance, but
just now there was something about her so unique and so
attractive that every one when she passed by turned to discover
what it was. For the clear blue of her eye and the lofty purity
of her brow seemed to tell of a spirit whose beauty far
exceeded that of its temple, and the brightness of the glance
and the sweetness of the smile warmed the heart in her behalf
as regular outline and perfect contour are seldom known to do.
Happiness, too, is a crowning charm to any woman, and Lilian
was deeply and contentedly happy: a smile perpetually played in
the little, half-guessed dimples at the corners of her mouth,
and her wide clear eyes were full of peace. No; though years
should rob Lilian of bloom, it was plain that they could but
add fresh charms to her soul; and Lilian’s lover must needs
love her soul.

She was to be married in a couple of years—her mother
would not hear of it at present—to one who had been her
lover from her cradle, and who loved her with a tender and
devoted passion, who thought her embodied loveliness, and who
would have made any sacrifice, even to death, for her welfare.
She had seemed to him from the hour when he first saw
her—a blue-eyed, rosy child with an aureole of palest
yellow hair—a being not made of clay—something
remote and different as the angels are; and when he first
discovered that he loved her he had felt momentarily as if he
committed a sacrilege, and though he lost that sensation soon
enough, she always, seemed to him a holy and perfect thing. The
only cloud that crossed her sky now was sometimes when this
passion of Sterling’s oppressed her or constrained her, and
made her feel that her love was less than his.

Sterling was in the first flush of manhood, some half dozen
years her senior—a hazel-eyed, bright-haired Saxon, and a
noble, upright fellow: he was as prosperous in his fortunes as
he had a right to expect, for his father had established him in
a good business, and with suitable thrift and care there was no
reason why he should not succeed. His father was a man of such
strict adherence to theory that he allowed the boy, as he still
called him, only the same chance that he himself had had: he
lent him his capital and exacted a rigid payment of the
interest. “John shall share my fortune equally with Helen and
his mother,” Mr. Sterling used to say, “when he has shown me
that he deserves it and can double it.” And John, sure that any
theory of his father’s was as right as a law of the universe,
was only anxious to keep the warm affection that he knew lay
behind the stern principle.

He lived with Lilian’s mother, whom he had persuaded, when
she found it necessary to make exertion, to come to the city
and rent a house there for himself and two or three of his
friends. He meant to take the house off her hands as soon as he
was able to afford so large an expenditure, and meantime he did
all he could to help her render it attractive and homelike. If
it was not yet all they wished, or all he intended it should
be, he knew that they were young, and felt
[pg 358] that they could wait; and
he said as much to Lilian when he saw her stand on tiptoe
before a picture or look longingly at a bit of bronze;
conscious the while that there was an artistic and luxurious
side to the child’s nature that he did not
gratify—with which, indeed, he had little
sympathy—and evidence of which it often vexed him to
observe, as if it were a barrier between them, when her rapt
face revealed feelings unknown to him as she looked into the
sunset; as she stood at the door on summer nights while
bell-notes and flower-scents went by on the wind; as she
listened to orchestral music which in his ears was a noisy
snarl. But, for all that, he said to himself that this ideal
intelligence, so to call it, of Lilian’s, was something
higher than his own rude senses; he had no wish to place her
on a lower level; he must do away the barrier by surmounting
it himself; and he used his leisure time to study pictures
and music, to discover the entrance to this world of art
whose atmosphere he fancied to be Lilian’s native air; and
already he began to be able to translate into ideas the
strange and awful thrill he felt before some great white
marble where genius and inspiration had wrought together,
and to find the thread by which he might one day follow the
vast windings of those symphonies which Lilian always grew
so pale to hear. But he was a person of singular reserves,
and Lilian learned nothing of such effort or accomplishment
as yet. “You think I am so perfect!” she would say. “You
have built up a great hollow idol around me, and it is like
living in a vacuum. Don’t you know it is very tiresome to be
chained up to such a standard?” And John only adored her all
the more for her candor, did not believe it, and hastened
home from business the sooner.

In fact, if this home, in which they all shared, was not
exactly as they would have liked it to be, it was nevertheless
a delightful place to John Sterling. He already had a sense of
proprietorship in it. He lined its walls with books as he grew
able, with prints, with now and then a painting, with plaster
till he could get marble; Lilian’s ivies clambered everywhere,
and her azaleas and great lilies seemed to have a secret of
perpetual flowering; a bright fire cast rosy lights and shadows
over it all; and John would declare, as he sank into his
easy-chair in the half twilight and surveyed the warm place,
which seemed only a ruddy background for Lilian’s fairness,
that he never wanted anything better than this as long as he
lived. It hurt him sometimes, though, to remember that Lilian
never made any response to such words. “Well, well,” he would
say to himself in a way he had, “why should she? and why should
I expect it of her? If people are born with wings, they do not
want to creep. She beautifies everything she touches, and she
is only in her right place when all the flower of the world’s
beauty is about her. But some day that shall be; and meantime
there is nothing to hinder my liking this.” He had almost an
ideal home with Lilian’s mother, as he wrote to his own mother,
and every time he went out of it in the morning he felt himself
a better man than he was when he went into it at night. His
mother and father journeyed a thousand miles to see it, and
felt as John did himself—thanked Heaven for the promise
of a child like Lilian—one so forgetful of herself, so
thoughtful for every one else, so candid, so generous, so
gentle, so good. “She is nothing but a child,” said Mrs.
Sterling for the thousandth time, “and yet how lofty she
is!—so lofty and so sweet! What will she be at thirty if
she is this at seventeen? It makes me tremble to think of
John’s being blest so, as if it were too much, as if some fate
must overtake him.”

“He must become a very superior man under the influence of
such a wife as Lilian will be,” said Mr. Sterling. “Helen shall
go on and spend the winter with John: they teach canaries to
sing,” said he, stroking Helen’s black hair, “by hanging up
their cages in the same room with a nightingale’s.”

And so Helen was despatched on the journey, and made another
member in the little family, for John’s friends merely had
rooms, and enjoyed no more sufferance than other guests in the
penetralia [pg 359] of the house. She was a
gaunt and big-eyed child, with a certain promise of
magnificence that, as Reyburn said, might be fulfilled in a
year or two in a sumptuous sort of beauty. But now she was a
morbid and retiring creature, fourteen or fifteen years old,
looking out askance and half suspiciously on the world from
under the shadow of her immense eyelashes, and singing from
room to room with a strange voice that a year or two would
ripen into tones fit for a siren. There was just the
difference in age between her and Lilian that, while it
allowed them companionship, gave Lilian, together with the
fact of her engagement to John, a glorious dignity in
Helen’s eyes that she would not have her abate a jot. Her
gowns, her shawls, her simple laces and few jewels seemed
the appanage of a superior state of existence; they brought
close to her the possibilities of that charmed time when she
too would be a woman grown. She could not tire of gazing at
the blush flitting over Lilian’s face as she spoke, at the
way her steady eyelid slanted toward her cheek as she read:
the sound of her voice had an intimate music that acted like
a charm; and when this wonderful being entertained her in
her well hours and cosseted her in her ill ones, listened to
her, waited on her and caressed her, Helen rewarded her by
worshiping her. It was Lilian who constantly procured Helen
pleasures, who shielded her little faults, who sympathized
with her joys and her griefs and her sentimentalities,
making merry with her to-day, crying with her to-morrow, and
who shone upon her with unvarying sunshine; it was Lilian
who did all this in another way for John; it was Lilian who
made every one’s happiness that came near her; and Helen’s
affection for her became something romantic and ideal. As
for her brother John, Helen had always held him in a place
apart: she loved him far better than she loved her strict,
stern father; he was a portion of herself; her universe
revolved around him; she had never formed a fancy of what
life and the world would be without him; and much as she
worshiped Lilian, she had more than once doubted if she were
altogether worthy of John—not because she was Lilian,
but because he was John. She used to watch Lilian sometimes
when John’s friends came in in the evening—used to
watch her and admire her flushing face, her perfect
toilette, her gracious manner; but used to wonder if all
betrothed women treated their lovers’ friends so exactly as
they did their lovers, with that same unchanging courtesy
and gentle sweetness. Once she saw the manner vary: it was
while she herself was singing to them all, facing down the
room, and John held his pawn suspended in the crisis of a
game of chess, while Mr. Reyburn walked familiarly up and
down, now turning the music for her, now bending with a word
in Lilian’s ear, now joining in the burden of the song:

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry—

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun.

“What a being Burns was!” interrupted John, without looking
up. “How precisely he knew my feelings toward any one who would
show me how to escape this checkmate!” And Lilian sprang to her
feet, upsetting her workbasket, and ran to him and commenced
talking hurriedly, while Mr. Reyburn, whose eyes had been
resting on her face for some time, kept on singing after Helen
ceased—

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun.

And Helen, child as she was, looking at him and listening to
him, recognized a veiled meaning in the tone of the singing,
and thought she hated the singer.

That night, when all the others had gone, and Lilian’s
mother was folding her work, and John was locking a window, and
Helen closing the piano, she saw Mr. Reyburn stoop over
Lilian’s hand as he said good-night—stoop low, and press
his lips upon its dimpled back. In after years Helen might
recall his manner of that moment and understand it, half
reverence, half passion, as it was, but now she only saw Lilian
turn white and tremble, and clasp her hand over her eyes in a
bewildered way when he [pg 360] had gone to his rooms on
the other side of the hall, and walk up stairs as though she
feared to rouse an echo.

“Oh, Lilian,” said Helen, following her into her mother’s
room, “how dared he kiss your hand? How dared he look at you so
while he sang? I hate him!”

“Hush, child,” said Lilian gently, almost solemnly. And
Helen, remembering who Lilian was, and the deep friendship
between her brother and the other, felt as if she had committed
an unpardonable sin, and crept away to bed, and did not see the
man again during the short remainder of her stay.

But Lilian saw him often. Perhaps she never went out without
seeing him, perhaps she never remained at home that he did not
come in: going by the parlor-door half a dozen times a day,
nothing was easier. In fact, few men have friends who think it
worth their while to pay such attentions to another’s chosen
wife as this friend of John’s did. To-day he gave flowers and
helped her heap them in the vases; on the morrow he brought in
for inspection a borrowed portfolio of the wonderful
water—colors that some mad artist had dashed off among
the painted canons, or brought perhaps the artist himself; when
he was absent he wrote her letters, sent to John’s care indeed,
and conveying messages to John—letters full of what John
called Reyburn’s transcendental twaddle, but which were meat
and drink to Lilian, living half alone in her world of fancy;
when he was in town again he took her through galleries of
pictures and statues where John had not an entree; he placed
his opera-box at her disposal; and when John, who insisted on
her acceptance of Reyburn’s courtesies, heard them talk
together about the mysteries of the music or the ballet there,
he could have found it possible to question the justice of Fate
that had mated such spirit with such clod in giving Lilian to
himself—for he felt that she was already given, and they
were mated by their long affection beyond all divorce but
death’s—could have found it possible to question the
justice of Fate if he had not remembered, with a sort of pain,
that, charming and brilliant as Reyburn was, having a sweet and
reckless gayety and generosity, winning friends who loved him
almost as men love women, he was nevertheless as inconstant as
the breeze that rifles a rose.

“Yes,” said he one day, in speaking of Reyburn to Lilian as
they looked at him through the open door of the
drawing-room—”yes, we men may love Reyburn safely enough,
as we ask for no devotion in return, but woe be to the woman
who builds her house on that sand!”

“Will it slide away?” asked Lilian, not glancing from her
needle.

“Well—Look at him now. Possession palls on him, they
say. Half an hour ago he plucked that bud. If it had hung as
high as heaven, he would have climbed for it, having once set
his heart on it, and have been tireless till he got it. On the
whole, the thing is lucky that he did not tear it to pieces in
his dissecting love of laying bare its heart. He has been
inhaling its delicious soul this half hour: let us see what he
does with it.” And as they looked they saw Reyburn lift the
half-forgotten flower, whose pale bloom had begun to tarnish
ever so little, glance at it lightly and give it a careless
fillip to the marble floor of the hall where he was walking up
and down, and where, as he came back, he set his heel upon it
without knowing that he did so.

It was just after Helen went home that Lilian’s health began
to fail—to fail gently and slowly, but surely. She shut
herself up at first, and lay all day listless and melancholy.
She did not come down in the morning before John went out, but
he usually found her on the sofa when he came in. And there she
stayed, either on the sofa or half lost among the cushions of
an arm-chair, during the evenings when John’s friends came. But
by and by the house-friends one by one ceased to drop in as
they passed down the hall; other friends ceased to ring the
bell: the old lively evenings were impossible with one so frail
and delicate to be cared for.

Reyburn, to be sure, came every day,
[pg 361] and no message could shut
him out. If Lilian was not in the parlors, he ran up stairs
into the little sitting-room: if he could not see Lilian, he
would walk in and see her mother. Sometimes John took her
out to drive—to give her a color, as he said—but
he was unable to do it often, and then Reyburn took his
place till she declared she would ride no more. It was not
so easy to discover what ailed Lilian as it was to see she
failed. One doctor said she had merely functional
derangement of the heart; another talked about complicated
depression of the nerves; and a third said she was
whimsical, and nothing at all was the matter with her, and
she had better marry and taste the hard realities of life,
and she would soon be cured of her follies. But Lilian
firmly and quietly refused to be married yet: possibly she
knew that her emotions were not what they should be for
marriage with the man to whom she was plighted; possibly
hoped that time might make it right; possibly wanted nothing
more definite than delay. Once John impressed Reyburn into
his service in the matter: they were so thoroughly intimate,
so like brothers of one family, that he appealed to him
without a second thought. What Reyburn meant by urging her
to fix the day for her wedding with John, Lilian might have
marveled had he not kept his eyes on the floor while he
spoke the few curt sentences, and held her hand with the
grip of death. It was no marriage with John that Reyburn
wanted for her, she knew too well: he also looked forward to
delay. But she told John that when she was herself again it
would be time enough to talk of marriage: she should not
bind him to a dead woman. And somehow, though the relation
between her and John remained the same, the usual evidences
of it, one by one, had disappeared. If he took her in his
arms, she slipped away; if he bent to kiss her lips, she
held her cheek. Still, though caresses ceased, the tender
word and the kindly glance remained. John fancied the rest
to be but a part of the nervous whims of her illness, from
which she was to recover in time; and he waited with all the
old love in his soul. And as for Lilian, the old affection
was with her too—the affection of childhood and
girlhood, the deep and grateful feeling associated with all
her life—but it struggled and wrestled with a novel
power that while it promised pleasure gave only pain. It
made her suffer to see John suffer: she hurt him as little
as she could, but for the life of her she was able to do no
differently. She thought it would be better for him if she
should die; and when she found his great sad eyes fastened
on her, with their longing for her return to him, she wished
to disappear out of the world and his memory together. She
grew whiter and thinner, more tired and sore at heart, all
the time, till the two years that had been fixed as the
period of their engagement had passed—grew so
transparent and spiritual that sometimes, as John hung over
her in despair, he felt as if, instead of being bound to a
dead woman, he were already bound to an angel.

One evening, after an absence, Reyburn came in as John sat
reading by Lilian’s side: he brushed away the book and insisted
on their playing an odd new game of cards, and Lilian
unaccountably brightened and sparkled and laughed, as in the
old time, for more than an hour; and as he left them at last he
came back to declare his belief that a change was all Lilian
needed—other climates, other scenes. “Come, Sterling,”
said he, “my little yacht, the Beachbird, sails on a cruise
next week. I will have a cabin fitted up for Miss Lilian if you
will take her and her mother and come along. The house can keep
itself; your clerks can keep your books; we shall all escape
the east winds. It will be a certain cure for her, and do you
good yourself.”

And talking of it lightly at first, presently it grew
feasible—all the more so that Helen and her father were
spending their second winter down there in one of those “summer
isles of Eden,” and word could be sent to them in advance to be
in readiness to join the Beachbird. And the end of all the talk
was that at the close of the next week John’s business had been
left in the hands of others, and
[pg 362] John and Lilian and her
mother were on the Beachbird’s deck as she slipped down the
harbor.

Mr. Reyburn’s prophecy proved true: whether the sea-breeze
fanned Lilian into fresh life, whether there were healing balms
in the perpetual summer through which they sailed, or whether
she abandoned herself to the pleasures of the flying hours, she
began to regain strength and color, her languor disappeared,
she spent the day in the soft blissful air with her books or
work, her mother knitting and nodding near by; while John, if
not sick himself, yet feeling very miserable, lay on a mattress
on the deck, sometimes dozing, sometimes following with his eye
the graceful lines and snowy dazzle of the perfect little yacht
as mast and sheet and shroud made their relief upon the sky;
sometimes listening to Lilian and Reyburn; sometimes watching
them as they walked up and down in the twilight, her dress
fluttering round her and her fair hair blowing in the wind.
John wondered at her as he watched her: she seemed to be
possessed with an unnatural life; a flickering, dancing sort of
fire burned in her eye, on her cheek and lip, in her restless
manner: she was like one who after long slumber felt herself
alive and receiving happiness at every pore, but a strange,
treacherous sort of happiness that might slip away and leave
her at any moment, and which she was ever on the alert to
keep.

One night Lilian’s mother had gone below, John had followed,
and they were long since folded in their quiet dreams; and
Lilian, unable to sleep, had at last arisen and thrown on some
garments, and wrapping a great cloak about her, had stolen on
deck. The person still pacing the deck, who saw her ascend and
flit along with her fair hair streaming over her white cloak
and her face shining white in the starlight, might have taken
her for a spirit. But he was not the kind of man that believes
in spirits. He went and leaned with her as she leaned over the
vessel’s edge, and watched the glittering rent they made in the
water. They were side by side: now and then the wind blew the
silken ends of her hair across his cheek, and his hand lay over
hers as it rested on the rail; now and then they looked at one
another; now and then they spoke.

“Are you happy, Lilian?” he said.

“Oh, perfectly!” she answered him.

As she said it there was an outcry, a sudden lurch of the
vessel, a flapping of the sails and ropes, and a vast shadow
swept by them, the hull of a huge steamer, so near that they
could almost have touched it with an outstretched hand. But as
it ploughed its way on and left them unharmed and rocking on
its great waves, Reyburn released her from the arm he had flung
about her in the moment’s dismay—the arm that had never
folded her before, that never did again.

“Oh no! no!” sighed Lilian with a shiver as she quickly drew
away—”not perfectly, oh not perfectly! That is impossible
here, where that black death can at any moment extinguish all
our light.”

“Be still! be still!” said Reyburn. “Why do you speak of
it?” he cried roughly. “Isn’t it enough to know that some day
it must come?—

“The iron hand that breaks our band,

It breaks my bliss—it breaks my
heart!”

He left her side in a sudden agitation a moment, and walked
the deck again; and before he turned about Lilian had slipped
below.

The next afternoon the Beachbird anchored within sight of
shore and outside a long low reef where they saw a palm-plume
tossing, and a boat came off, bringing Helen and her
father.

John, who had begun at last to find his sea-legs, stood as
eager and impatient to welcome the new-comers, while every dip
of the shining oars lessened the distance between them, as if
the cruise were just beginning; but Lilian, in the evening
shadow behind him, knew that her share in the cruise was
over.

“Is it the fierce and farouche duenna who wanted to
annihilate me so when I bade you adieu one night?” asked
Reyburn, taking Lilian upon his arm for a promenade upon the
deck while they waited. “Let me see: she was very young, was
she not, and tall, and ugly?
[pg 363] Is it her destiny to watch
over you? If she proves herself disagreeable, I will rig a
buoy and drop her overboard. After all, she is only a child.
Ah no,” he said, half under his breath, “the end is not
yet.”

“She is no longer a child,” said Lilian, “Her father writes
that he hardly dares call her the same name, she is so changed.
While I have been withering up in the North, two equatorial
years down here have wrought upon her as they do upon the
flowers. He says no Spanish woman rivals her. Well, it will
please—”

Just then Reyburn handed her the glass he had been using,
and pointed it for her.

“Can it be possible?” said Lilian. “Has Helen been
transfigured to that?” and something, she knew not what, sent a
quiver through her and made the image in the glass
tremble—the image of a tall and shapely girl whose round
and perfect figure swayed to the boat’s motion, lithe as a reed
to the wind, while she stood erect looking at something that
had been pointed out, and the boatmen paused with their oars in
the air; the image of a face on whose dark cheek the rose was
burning, in whose dark eye a veiled lustre was shining, around
whose creamy brow the raven hair escaped in countless
tendril-like ringlets, and whose smile, as she seemed to speak
to some one while she stood in the low sunset light, had a
radiance of its own. As Lilian looked upon this dazzling
picture, backed by the golden and rosy sky, the golden and rosy
waters, the palm-plumes tossing in the purpling distance, the
silver flashing of the oars, the quiver came again, and she
gave the glass to Reyburn, who held it steadily till the boat
was within hailing distance, and who himself at last handed the
shining creature on board and led her to Lilian and her mother.
And then the Beachbird slowly spread her wings, and with her
new burden softly floated away into the dusk, and the great
colors faded, and the stars one after another seemed to drop
low and hang from the heavens like lamps, and rich odors
floated off from the receding land, and they moved along folded
in the dark splendor of the tropical night. But in some vague
way every soul on board the little yacht felt the presence of
another influence, and that, though they sailed in the same
waters as yesterday, it was in another atmosphere; for an
element had come among them that should produce a
transformation as powerful as though it wrought a chemic change
of their atoms.

Lilian and Reyburn still paced the deck, after their custom,
when the first greetings were over, leaving Helen and her
father with John for the present. But as the conversation
dropped more personal subjects, and John and his father were
discussing political matters, Helen began to look about, and
chiefly she surveyed Lilian. And as she saw the transparent
skin, the vivid flush, the restless air—saw the way
Reyburn had, as he walked with her, as he bent to her, as he
folded her shawl about her—the way he had of absorbing
her, a hasty remembrance of the night when he stooped over
Lilian’s hand came to her, and she remembered also how she
herself had hated him. “The man has bewitched her,” said Helen
an hour afterward—an hour of watching and puzzling. “She
is fond of John still: she cannot bear to break his
heart—she would rather break her own—and she is
dying of her attraction to the other.” As she sat there, still
observing them, wondering what could be done, she turned and
laid her arm on her brother’s shoulder, and rested her head
beside it with her eyes full of tears. And at the movement John
bent and kissed her forehead, and she saw that he himself was
at last awake; and Reyburn, looking at them, saw it too.
Perhaps the tears dimmed her sight a little, and gave Lilian a
sort of glorified look to her, standing still a moment with the
light of the late rising moon on her face; but then as her gaze
fell again on Reyburn, on his lofty form and kingly manner, his
proud face, his bold bright eye, it seemed to her as if it were
Lucifer tempting an angel; and all at once she had resolved
what she would do to save Lilian, to save her brother. She
could do it well, she said, well and safely—she
[pg 364] who already hated the man.
Courage came with the resolution, courage and strength: she
began to laugh and scatter jests across the grave
conversation of John and her father; presently she was
humming a gay Spanish air.

“That is right, Helen,” said her brother. “Sing something to
us. My father says your voice would fill the Tacon
theatre.”

And at that she sang—not the air of the little bolero
again, but a low, melancholy song that began with a sigh, but
swelled ever clearer and higher, till, like the bursting of a
flower, it opened and deepened into one breath of passionate
sweetness and triumph. The rich voice rose to all the meaning
of the music, and, though they could not understand the words,
they thrilled before the singer, Late into the midnight she
sang—the bunch of blossoms that was in her hand as she
came on board still shedding its pungent odors round her as the
blossoms died—strange wild songs that she had learned in
the two years of her tropic life; ancient and plaintive Spanish
airs; Moorish songs whose savage tunes were sweet as the honey
of the rocks; wild and mournful Indian airs that the Spaniards
might have heard in those Caribbean islands when first they
burst upon their peaceful seas; and by and by a sleepy nocturne
that seemed to lull the wind, to charm the ship, and hold the
great moon hovering overhead; and as they rocked from wave to
wave of the glimmering water, and that pure voice rose and
poured out its melody, the soft vast southern night itself
seemed to pause and listen.

Helen did not appear on the deck next day till the sunset
came again, for Lilian was ill, and she remained with her; nor
did Reyburn see her. But as the heat of the day passed, and the
sails, that had been hanging idle ever since the night-breeze
fell, began to fill again, Helen ascended.

“You come with the stars,” said Reyburn, giving her his hand
at the last step; but she merely put out her own hand with the
gesture of receiving aid, and passed on, her dark gauzy drapery
floating behind her, and the lace of her Spanish mantilla
falling round her from her Spanish comb. She went to her
brother’s side, and sat there and talked, or rose with him and
walked: there was everything to say and hear after their two
years’ separation. As for Reyburn, perhaps her manner was
courteous enough to him, but certainly she hardly seemed to see
him. Nor could he claim acquaintanceship with her: the gaunt
and big-eyed child whom he had known two years ago had a
different individuality from this dark girl with the rosy stain
on the oval cheek and the immense eyelashes. He heard her gay
laugh as John complimented her—a laugh as sweet as her
singing; he saw the smile that kindled all her beauty into
vivid life; he saw the still face listening to what was said;
but he scarcely learned anything further than was thus
declared. When at length she sang one parting strain, he
wondered if the singing and the beauty were all there was: it
occurred to him to find out. He remembered that moment of the
evening before when John had betrayed distrust. “I will mislead
him,” said Reyburn, “and Lilian will understand it all.” He
stood before Helen as she rose with her father to go down.

“Ask me no more whither doth haste

The nightingale when May is past;

For in your sweet dividing throat

She winters, and keeps warm her note!”

he said, and stepped aside.

“We’ve taken a mermaid aboard, sir,” said the
sailing-master. “Nothing else, they say, sings after that
fashion, and the men are on the lookout for foul weather.”

“Never mind what the men say,” said Reyburn, “while your
barometer says nothing.”

When Mr. Reyburn went on deck at sunrise he found Helen
standing there with Lilian—with Lilian, who, after her
day’s illness, looked strangely wan and worn, looked like the
feeble shadow of the other with her rich carnations, her
glowing eyes, her picturesque outlines. Reyburn went aft and
took Lilian’s hand. “You have been so ill!” he said; and then
he looked up and saw again this splendid creature, loosely clad
in white, [pg 365] her black hair, unbraided
and unbound, flowing in wave and ripple far down her back,
her sleeve falling from the uplifted arm and perfect hand,
that held a fan of the rose-colored spoonbill’s feathers
above her head, so beautiful and brilliant that she seemed
only a projection of that beautiful and brilliant hour, with
all its radiant dyes, before the sun was up; and he forgot
that Lilian had been ill, forgot for a moment that Lilian
existed. “I will find out what she is made of,” thought
Reyburn. “Are you made of clay?” he said boldly.

“He shall find that there is fire in my clay,” said Helen to
herself as she appeared not to heed his look or his words.

And there it began. And swift and sudden it went on to the
end. She had come on board the yacht that first night to
startle it with her beauty and her voice; last night, silent
and stately, she had slipped through the evening like a dream;
now she stood before him a dazzling creature of the morning:
yesterday she was Penseroso; to-day she was Allegro; what would
she be to-morrow? How sparkling, as one day followed another,
her gayety was! and yet with no shallow sparkle: there was
always the shadow of still depths just beyond—seasons of
silence, moments of half sadness, times when he had to wonder
whither her thoughts had led her. She sang a little song of the
muleteers on the mountains, that he admired; then she must
teach it to him, she said; they sang the song together, their
voices lingering on the same note, rising in the same breath,
falling in the same cadence. He had a sonorous tenor of his
own: more than once she caught herself pausing in her part to
hear it. How soft, and yet how strong, was the language of the
song! he said; he must learn Spanish, she replied; and they
hung together over the same book, and he repeated the phrase
that fell from her lips—an apt pupil, it may be, for more
than once the phrase, as he uttered it, deepened the color on
her cheek. More than once she was conscious of gazing at him to
find the charm that Lilian had found; more than once he caught
her glance and held it there suspended; more than once you
might have thought, by the quick, impatient manner in which she
tore her eyes away, that she had found the charm herself.
Perhaps he made some ostentation of his attraction before the
others; perhaps the simulation of warmth was close enough to
melt a colder heart than hers; perhaps it was not wholly
simulation. It may be that her hand lay in his a moment longer
than need was, her glance fell before his a moment sooner: it
may be that as she fled all her manner beckoned him to follow.
She was confiding to him her thoughts, her aspirations, her
emotions, as if she wished that he, and he alone, should know
them: he was listening as though there were no other knowledge
in the world. If presently he thought of her as a creature of
romance, if presently she felt the need of that keen interest,
what wonder? They were playing with fire, and those that play
with fire must needs be burned. And meantime, whether he looked
at her languid in the burning noon, gay with the reviving
freshness of the dusk, leaning over the bulwarks in the night
and gazing up into the great spaces of the stars, he was always
fascinated to look again. There was the profile exquisite as
sculpture, there was the color as velvet soft as rose-petals,
there was the droop of the long silken lashes half belying with
its melancholy the rapture of the smile. Whether she spoke or
whether she sang, her voice was music’s self, and he was
longing for the next tone; and presently—presently Lilian
had faded like a phantom before this aurora who was fresh and
rosy and dewy, with song and color and light—a sad pale
phantom wan in a mist of tears.

And as for Lilian in this approaching trouble—in this
trouble that was already here—was it to her mother that
she turned as the good lady dozed and knitted there? Ah no, but
to John himself; and perhaps John comprehended it, and, if he
loved her all the more tenderly, suffered the more sharply.
Possibly, as she saw Reyburn follow Helen as an entranced man
follows a vision, as she saw Helen lead, Lilian knew that she
[pg 366] deserved her
punishment—knew that she had had her warning. Possibly
she realized that the passion which had usurped the place of
the love of years with her was but a selfish
idealism—possibly saw at last, and with an agony, of
what thin stuff the hero of her dream was
made—possibly knew that it must be, and knew that it
was best; but none the less she must have felt for a little
while that there was no place left for her in the world, and
she seemed to fade nearer and nearer the verge of it. Her
old languor overcame her, her old pallor returned, her eyes
were dull with their silent weeping: not yet twenty, she
looked twice her years. Reyburn himself saw the change in
her with trouble. “The voyage is doing you no good,” he
said.

“It is killing me!” she cried.

But he did not perceive the meaning of her unguarded cry: he
did not know how it was with her, for he had not yet dreamed
how it was with himself. But he was soon to discover.

Three weeks they had been wafted about from key to key, from
bay to bay; they landed and explored the quaint old towns; they
made trips into the tropical forests; great boatloads of juicy
mangoes and guavas and bananas came off to them; they scattered
coins on the clear bottom for the brown babies tumbling about
the shores to dive after. Now at noon they lay anchored in
still lagoons under the shadow of an overhanging orange-grove;
now at night they were flying across the broad seas. But Lilian
felt she could endure no more of it: her life was exhausted;
she longed for the yacht’s head to be turned northward, that
she might die in peace on shore. John also was impatient to be
gone. If he could have Lilian once more at home, he thought, he
would marry her in spite of her protest, and take her where
forgetfulness must needs soothe her, and strange faces make her
cling to him in the old way. The way in which she clung to him
now was too bitter to be borne. Her mother also began to think
of home, and Mr. Sterling had wearied long ago; and at length,
further pretences failing, they had been freshly provisioned
and had started on their homeward way.

Reyburn had, indeed, been loath to make any change in their
luxurious summering, but he was one of those who slide along
with the days.

Take the goods the gods provide thee:

The lovely Thais sits beside thee—

was a couplet that he was fond of humming, and he always
waited for some unnatural wrench to make the effort he should
have made himself. But he had consented at last to the return,
because while he was still floating in Southern waters, under
Southern skies, with this delicious voice in his ears, this
delicious beauty by his side, he could not think that a week’s
sailing must bring him under other conditions.

Perhaps, though, it would be more than a week’s sailing,
some one said, for the fair wind that had taken them hither and
yon so long, and had waited on their fancies, was apparently on
the point of deserting them at last, and the yacht was merely
drifting before a fitful breeze that lightly moved a scud of
low clouds which the sunset had kindled into a blaze of glory
hanging just above them, and whose ragged shreds only now and
then displayed a star.

“We are going to have nasty weather,” the sailing-master
said to his mate. “The barometer is going down with a
rush.”

“Yes, sir,” had come the answer: “we shall catch it in the
mid-watch.”

“Then stow the light sails, Mr. Mason,” the captain said,
“and get everything secure for a heavy blow. Keep a sharp
lookout, and call me as soon as the weather changes.”

“All right, sir.”

“I am going down for forty winks,” said the captain. Then as
he passed Mr. Reyburn: “I don’t much like the appearance of
things, sir.”

“Appearance?” said Reyburn. “Why the sea is as smooth as
glass!”

“Too smooth by half, sir, with the barometer falling. I’ve
sailed with that glass a long time, and she’s never told me a
lie yet. We’ve already shortened
sail.”

[pg 367]

“So I see. But why in the world did you do it, when you want
every stitch of it out to catch what wind there is? However, I
am in no hurry,” said Reyburn laughing. “Do as you please,
skipper: you’re sailing the ship.”

“I am sailing her, sir,” said the captain, a little nettled,
“and sailing her on the edge of a hurricane. You had better
take the lady below, sir: when it comes it will come with a
crack.” But Reyburn laughed at him again, and passed over to
Helen’s side.

They sat together on the deck, Helen and Reyburn, long after
all the others had gone to rest; for Mr. Sterling left the
arrangement of etiquette and decorum to Lilian’s mother; and
whether she were a purblind soul, looking delightedly at a new
love-match, or whether, with any surmise of the state of
things, she felt pleased that Reyburn, led by whatever
inducement, should step aside from Lilian’s path, she gave no
other sign than that when her early withdrawal from the scene
left the deck clear for action. As each in turn they fell away
into their dreams, those below could still hear Helen singing;
and if one there lay sleepless in the pauses of the singing, no
one guessed it. All the ship was in shadow save where a lantern
shone, but Helen lingered, still irresolute. Now and then she
touched the Spanish guitar in the measure of some tune that
flitted across her thoughts, now and then she sang the tune,
now and then was silent. She was half aware of what the
approaching moments held—was half afraid. Was she to
avenge herself upon the man who had destroyed her brother’s
peace? Faithful to Lilian should she go, or faithless stay? He
took the guitar himself and fingered the strings, making fewer
chords than discords; her own fingers wandered to correct him;
their hands met; the guitar slipped down unheeded; the grasp
grew closer, grew warmer—ah, Helen, was it Lilian of whom
you thought, whom you would save?—and then an arm was
around her; shining eyes, only half guessed in the glimmer that
the phosphorescent swells sent through the darkness, hung over
her rosy upturned beauty; she was drawn forward unresisting,
her head was on his breast, she, heard the heavy throbbing of
his heart, and his lips lay on hers and seemed to draw her soul
away. And so they sat there in the deepening shadow, whispering
in faint low whispers, thrilling with a great rapture, their
lips meeting in long kisses. Why should he think of Lilian?
Never once had he touched her mouth like this, had his
arms closed round her so, had he felt the sighing of her
breath. As a pale white rushlight burns in the sun, that love
seemed now, compared with this great sweet flame. He bowed his
face over Helen’s as she sat trembling in his embrace, and
neither of them remembered past or future in the passion of the
present; neither of them felt the yacht swing idly up and down
with scarcely a movement forward; neither of them heard the
listless flapping of the sails against the masts, or noticed
that no dew lay on the rail, or once looked up to see how black
and close the air had gathered round them, how deadly hot and
sulphurous—till suddenly, and as if by one accord, men
were running and voices were crying all about them. They sprang
to their feet to hear the sailing-master’s shout as one beholds
lightning fall out of a blue sky: “See your halyards all clear
for running.”

“Ay, ay, sir!” came the ringing answer.

“Stand by your halyards and down-hauls.”

“Ay, ay, sir!”

“Haul down the flying jib: take the bonnet off the jib, and
put a reef in her,” came the strong swift sentences. “Brail up
the foresail, and double reef the mainsail.”

There was a sound far, far off, like a mighty rush of
waters, coming nearer and swelling to a roar—an awful
roar of winds and waves. And Helen was wildly clasping Reyburn,
who was plunging with her down the companion-way.

“Here she comes!” cried the captain. “Hold on all!” And then
there was a shock that threw them prostrate, a writhing and
twisting of every plank beneath them, and the tornado had
struck the [pg 368] yacht and knocked her on
her beam-ends.

“Cut away the weather rigging!” they heard the captain
thunder through all the rout before they had once tried to
regain themselves. The quick, sharp blows resounded across the
beating of the billow and the shrieking of the wind and cloud.
“Stand clear, all!” and with a crash as if the heavens were
coming together the masts had gone by the board, and what there
was left of the Beachbird had righted and now rolled a wreck in
the trough of the sea.

A half hour’s work, but it had done more than wreck a ship:
it had wrecked a passion. For as Helen still clung round
Reyburn, sobbing and screaming, he had seen the opposite door
open, and Lilian landing there, white-robed, white-shawled,
with her bright hair about her face as white as a spirit’s.
“John,” she said, “we are in a hurricane.”

“Yes, Lilian,” he had answered from where he was stationed
close beside her door. “But the worst must be over. The wind
already abates, and as soon as the sea goes down—”

As he spoke there came the terrible cry, loud above all
other clamor, “A leak! a leak!” and then followed the renewed
trampling of feet overhead, and the hoarse wheeze of the
pumps.

“We are going down,” Lilian said, and turned that white face
away. “Oh, John!, before we go forgive me,” she cried; and John
held his outstretched arms toward her and folded her within
them.

Reyburn saw it, and even in that supreme moment, when life
and death swung in the balance, an awful revulsion seized him.
He beheld now with a sickening shudder the woman cowering at
his feet whose beauty an hour ago had melted his soul: she was
flesh to him only—her beauty was of the earth, and flesh
and the earth were passing, and it was other things on which
such moments as these were opening—things such as shone
in the transfigured face of Lilian—of Lilian whom, if
this marsh-light had not dazzled him from his way, he might now
be holding to his heart triumphant; for here disguises would
have fallen and he could have claimed his own. For, whether it
were the terror of the time, or the trancelike and spiritual
look of Lilian, or whether it were the jealous pang of seeing
her in another’s arms, the love on which he had been waiting
for two years and more, to which he had sacrificed time and
endeavor, which had brought him here to this danger and this
death, returned now and overwhelmed him, and the passion of a
day and night fell apart and left him in its ruins. This woman
at his feet filled him with a strange disgust: that other
woman—If this were the last hour of time, he would have
risked his chances in eternity to have held her as John did. He
threw himself, face down, on the divan, and he cursed God and
called upon the drowning wave to come.

The captain leaped down the companion-way, and caught his
pistols from a drawer. “Mr. Reyburn, we need you and the other
gentlemen,” he cried. “We are throwing out our ballast. All
hands must take spells at the pumps, for the leak gains, and I
shall have all I can do to keep the men at work and the yacht
afloat.”

“Let her sink!” yelled Reyburn into the cushions where he
lay. “Damn her! let her sink!” And he did not stir. But John
had gently released Lilian and placed her in a chair near the
sofa where her mother lay gasping, and had sprung on deck with
his father and the captain.

A horrid hour crept by—a bitter blank below, hard and
fierce work above—and then the pumps were choked. Lilian
and her mother had crept on deck, holding by whatever they
could find, and surveying the amazing scene around them. For
the great black storm-cloud was flying up and away, flying into
the north-east, and through the torn vapors that followed in
its rack a waning moon arose. A tremendous sea was running,
monstrous wave breaking on monstrous wave in a mad white frolic
far as the eye could see; as one billow bounded along, curling
and feathering and swelling on its path, a score leaped round
it to powder themselves in a common cloud of spray; and
[pg 369] every cloud of spray as it
shot upward caught the long ray of the half-risen moon, that
but darkly lighted and revealed an immensity of heaven, till
all the weltering tumult of gloom and foam was sown with a
myriad lunar rainbows.

The beauty of it almost overcame the terror with Lilian as
she grasped her mother’s hand.

“It is a fit gate to enter heaven by,” said John, coming to
her side. “We have done all we can,” he added.

At the moment the bows dipped with a prodigious sea.
Somebody forward sang out, “She’s settling, sir! she’s
settling, sir!” The cry ran along the deck like fire: there was
one panicstricken shriek that followed, and the men had jumped
for the boats, into which water and provision had been already
thrown. Reyburn came staggering up the companion-way with
Helen. The dingy and one of the quarter-boats were already
swamped in the wild haste: the men were crowding into the
other, which had been safely lowered.

“You brutes!” the captain shouted, “are you going to leave
the women?”

“Let them come, then,” answered a voice, “and make haste
about it;” and Lilian found herself drawn forward and looking
over the side into the shadow below.

“Are you going, John?” she said hurriedly.

“No, darling: it is impossible, you see, but—”

“Nor I, either,” she answered quickly.

“Lilian!”

“No,” she said, “no! We were to be together in life, and we
shall be in death. Oh, John, do you think I can leave you
now?”

“Make haste about it,” was repeated harshly from the
boat.

“I am going to stay,” repeated Lilian firmly.

“Here,” cried Reyburn, as he drew up the ropes to bind them
round Helen’s waist. “Take her.” But the boat was
already clear of the ship and away; and he flung the ropes down
again with a motion of abhorrence, and stood leaning against
the stump of the mast, where he could hear the murmurs of John
and Lilian, straining his ears to listen, as if he must needs
torment himself—to listen to those few low, fervent
whispers, with one eager to pour out the love so long
restrained, the other to receive it—both in the face of
death making the life so lately found too sweet a thing to
leave.

Soon the little company remaining on the wreck had clustered
around that portion of it; the captain and Mr. Mason were near
by, and Lilian’s mother sat beside her and kept her hand; Mr.
Sterling, not far off, held Helen, who lay faint with
fright—faint too with many a pang, snatched as she had
been from a dream of warmth and joy to a nightmare of horror;
one moment ruling in a heart that in the next moment had cast
her forth to be trampled on; bewildered by the repugnance she
had too plainly seen in the face of her passionate lover of two
hours ago; half heartbroken with the remembrance of the tone in
which he had called to the crew of the quarter-boat to take
her, and cold with the awful expectancy of the moment. The moon
swam slowly up, and the sky cleared about her; the sea rose and
fell less violently, its dark expanse everywhere running fire;
but the broken yacht still rolled like a log, and they clung to
each other as she rolled. She settled slowly, and another hour
had passed and left her still afloat.

“We are safe,” cried the captain, coming back to their side
after a brief absence with the mate. “Mr. Reyburn, do you see?”
But Mr. Reyburn did not even hear. A soft lustre began to
blanch the violet depths of the lofty sky; a rosy flare welled
up from the horizon and half drowned the shriveled moon; a star
that was steady in the east was shaking a countless host of
stars in the shaking waters round them. And then the rosy flare
was a yellow flame that filled the heavens; the long swells
that ran up to break against them were like sheets of molten
jewels—rubies and beryls and sapphires and chrysolites,
changing and flashing as they broke into a thousand splendors;
strange mild-eyed birds were hovering about them and alighting
on the wreck; the moon was gone; the [pg
370] vaporous gold that overflowed the east was burned
away in the increasing glory, and the sunshine fell about
them.

“We are not going down,” cried Lilian, her face aglow and
lovely in the light. “That smoke in the horizon is a steamer’s,
and she will take us off. Oh, John, we have our lives before us
yet!”

The captain and Mr. Mason had already signaled the steamer,
and before very long the wreck was quite abandoned, and those
whom it had carried were on their northward way again.

It was a singular wedding that I saw one day about two
months after the wreck of the Beachbird. I was going by the
church of St. Saviour, and being of an inquiring mind in the
matter of weddings, I went in. There were two brides there: the
husband of the first, the fair one, was just turning away with
her. So calm, so pure, so peaceful, so content, were the faces
of that new husband and wife, that I could long have looked
upon them, as on some picture of strong spirits in the presence
of God, had not the beauty of the second bride arrested me. But
that was a beauty one hardly sees twice in a lifetime—so
perfect in outline, under snowy veils and blossoms, the dark
eyes so softly, dewily dark, the white brow whiter for its
tendril-like rings of raven hair; and where had I ever seen
groom so stately, so lofty, so proud? But what did the
pantomime mean? a stranger might well have asked. Was that the
man’s natural demeanor? or had he brought his mind to the task
of taking her by an effort that had destroyed every sentiment
of his soul but scorn? And for her? Had the rose forsaken her
cheek and the smile her lip because she looked on life as on a
desert? Was that utter sadness and dejection a thing that
should one day fade away and leave a sparkle of hope behind it?
Or was it the scar of one who had played with fire, who had not
the strength to release a pledge, and was marrying a man who
she knew loathed her and her beauty together?

HARRIET PRESCOTT
SPOFFORD.

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE TUSCAN COURT UNDER THE GRAND DUKE
LEOPOLD.

When the wretched, worthless and worn-out debauchee Gian
Gaston dei Medici, grand duke of Tuscany, died on the 9th of
July, 1737, the dynasty of that famous family became extinct.
For some years before his death the prospect of a throne
without any heir by right divine to claim it had set the
cupidity of sundry of the European crowned heads in motion.
Various schemes and arrangements had been proposed in the
interest of different potentates. But the “vulpine cunning,” as
an Italian historian calls it, of Cardinal Fleury, the minister
of Louis XV., at length succeeded in inducing the European
powers to accede to an arrangement which secured the greater
part of the advantage to France. It was finally settled that
the duke of Lorraine should cede to France his ancestral
states, which the latter had long coveted, and that he should
be married to Maria Teresa, the heiress of the Austrian
dominions, carrying in his hand Tuscany, the throne of which
was secured to him at the death of Gian Gaston. It was further
promised to the Tuscans, discontented at the prospect of having
an absentee sovereign, that on the death of the emperor
Francis, Tuscany should have a ruler of its own in the person
of his second son. This Francis, who gave up the duchy of
Lorraine to become the husband of Maria Teresa, reigned over
Tuscany till his sudden death by apoplexy on the 18th of
August, 1765. His second son, Leopold, reigned in Tuscany till,
on the death of [pg 371] his elder brother on the
24th of December, 1789, he was in his turn also called to
ascend the imperial throne. Thereupon the second son of
Leopold became grand-duke in 1789, and reigned as Ferdinand
III. till 1824, when, on the 18th of June, his son succeeded
him as Leopold II. Now, though the sovereignty of Tuscany
was thus entirely and definitively separated from that of
Austria, all these princes were of the blood-royal of
Austria, and might in the course of Nature have succeeded to
the imperial throne. For this reason they were held, though
only dukes of Tuscany, to be entitled to the style and title
“imperial and royal,” according to the custom of the House
of Austria; and thus every grimy little tobacco-shop and
lottery-office in Tuscany, in the days when I first knew it,
in 1841, styled itself “imperial and royal.”

The Tuscans had been greatly discontented when the
arrangements of the great powers of Europe, entered into
without a moment’s thought as to the wishes of the population
of the grand duchy on the subject, had decided that they were
to be ruled over by a German prince of whom they knew
absolutely nothing. It was not that the later Medici had been
popular, or either respected or beloved. The misgovernment of
especially the last two of the Medicean line had reduced the
country to the lowest possible social, moral and economical
condition. But yet the change from the known to the utterly
unknown was unwelcome to the people. They feared they knew not
what changes and innovations in their old easy-going if
downward-tending ways. But Providence, in the shape of the
ambitions and intrigues of the great powers, had better things
in store for them than they dreamed of. The princes of the
Lorraine dynasty so ruled as not only quickly to gain the
respect and affection of their subjects, but gradually to
render Tuscany by far the most civilized and prosperous portion
of Italy. The first three princes of the Lorraine line were
enlightened men, far in advance not only of the generality of
their own subjects, but of their contemporaries in general.
They were conscientious rulers, earnestly desirous of
ameliorating the condition of the people they were called on to
govern. Of the last of the line the same cannot in its entirety
be said. A portion of the eulogy deserved by his predecessors
may be awarded to him unquestionably. He was, I fully believe,
a good and conscientious man, anxious to do his duty, and
desirous of the happiness and well being of his people. But he
was by no means a wise or enlightened man. It could hardly be
said that he was popular or beloved by his subjects at the time
when I first knew Florence. The Tuscans were very far better
off than any other Italians at that time, and they were fully
conscious that they were so. But this superiority was justly
credited to the wise rule of the grand duke’s father and
grandfather, rather than to any merit of his own. Yet he was
liked in a sort of way—I am afraid I must say in a
contemptuous sort of way. The general notion was that he was
what is generally described by the expressive term “a poor
creature.” He probably was so, in truth, from his birth upward.
It was said—and I believe with truth—that he had
been in his childish years reared with the greatest difficulty;
and strange as it may seem, it is, I believe, a fact that a
wet-nurse made an important part of the establishment of the
prince at the Pitti Palace till he was about twenty years old.
How far physiologists may deem that such an abnormal
circumstance may have been influential in producing a diathesis
of mind and body deficient in vigor, energy and “hard grit” of
any kind, I do not know. But if that is what such a bringing-up
may be expected to produce, then the expectation was in the
case in question certainly justified. Nevertheless, Italians
had been for so many generations and centuries taught by bitter
experience to consider kings and princes of all sorts as
malevolent and maleficent scourges of humanity that a sovereign
who really did no harm to any one was, after a fashion, as I
have said, popular. Accessibility is always one sure means of
making a sovereign acceptable to large
[pg 372] classes of his subjects;
and nothing could be easier than to gain access to the
presence of Leopold II., grand duke of Tuscany. A little
anecdote of an occurrence that took place at the time when
Lord Holland, to the regret of everybody in Florence,
English or Italian, ceased to be the representative of
England at the grand ducal court, will show the sort of
thing that used to prevail in the matter of the admission of
foreigners to the Pitti Palace.

English travelers on the continent of Europe are, and have
been for many years, as it is hardly necessary to state, a very
motley and heterogeneous crowd. The same thing may be said of
American travelers now, but it was not so much the case at the
time of which I am writing. It is not so with the people of any
other nation; and foreigners are apt to sneer on occasion at
the unkempt and queer specimens of humanity which often come to
them from the two English-speaking nations. We can well afford
to let them stare and smile, well knowing that if a similar
amount of prosperity permitted the people of other countries to
travel for their pleasure in similar numbers, the result would
be at the very least an equally—shall I say
undrawing-room-like contribution to cosmopolitan society? When
Sir George Hamilton assumed the duties of British
representative at Florence, the yearly throng of English
visitors was becoming more numerous and more heterogeneous, and
all wanted to be invited to the balls at the Pitti Palace.
Those were the most urgent in their applications, as will be
easily understood, whose claims to such distinction were the
most problematic. The practice was for the minister to present
to the grand duke whom he thought fit, and those so presented
went to the balls as a matter of course. The position of the
minister, it will be seen, was an invidious one. Under the
pressure of these circumstances, Sir George Hamilton declared
that he would in no case take upon himself to decide on the
fitness or unfitness of any person, but would act invariably
upon the old recognized rule of etiquette observed at other
courts in such matters—i.e., he would present anybody who
had been presented at the court of St. James, and none who had
not been so presented. The result was soon apparent in a
singular thinning of the magnificent suites of rooms of the
Pitti on ball-nights. The general appearance of the rooms might
be something more like what the receiving-rooms of princes are
wont to look like, but all that was gained in quality
was attained by a very marked sacrifice of quantity. In
a week or two Sir George received a hint to the effect that the
grand duke would be pleased if the minister would be less
strict in the matter of presenting such English as might desire
to come to the Pitti. “Oh!” said Sir George, “if that is
what is desired, there can be no difficulty about it. I am sure
I won’t stand in the way of filling the Pitti ball-room.
Let them all come.” And accordingly everybody who asked to be
presented was presented without any pretence of an
attempt at discrimination.

This was the manner in which the thing was done: All
new-comers were told that if they wished to go to the Pitti
balls they must notify to the English minister their desire to
be presented to the grand duke. In return, they received an
intimation that they must be in the ante-room of the suite of
receiving-rooms at eight o’clock on such an
evening—ladies in ball-dress; gentlemen in evening-dress
with white neckcloths. It may be observed here that this matter
of the white neckcloth was the only point insisted on. Both
ladies and gentlemen were allowed to exercise the utmost
latitude of private judgment as to what constituted
“ball-dress” and “evening-dress.” I have seen a black stuff
gown fitting closely round the throat pass muster for the
first, and a gray frockcoat for the second. But the officials
at the door would refuse to admit a man with a black
neckerchief; and I once saw a man thus rejected retire a few
steps into a corridor, whip off the offending black silk and
put it in his pocket, obtain a fragment of white tape from some
portion of a lady’s dress, put that round his
shirt-collar, and then again presenting himself be recognized
by the officials as complying with
[pg 373] the exigencies of
etiquette. The aspirants to “court society” having
assembled, from twenty to fifty, perhaps, in number,
according as it was earlier or later in the season,
presently the minister bustled in, and with a hurried “Now
then!” led his motley flock into the presence-chamber, where
they were formed into line. Much about the same moment (for
the grand duke had “the royal civility” of punctuality, and
rarely kept people waiting) His Serene Imperial and Royal
Highness came shambling into the room in the white-and-gold
uniform of an Austrian general officer, and looking very
much as if he had just been roused out of profound slumber,
and had not yet quite collected his senses. Walking as if he
had two odd legs, which had never been put to work together
before, he came to a standstill in front of the row of
presentees. If there was any person of any sort of
distinction among them, the minister whispered a word or two
in the grand ducal ear, and motioned the lion to come
forward. His Imperial and Royal Highness, after one glance
of helpless suffering at the stranger, fixed his gaze on his
own boots. A long pause ensued, during which courtly
etiquette forbade the stranger to utter a word. At last His
Highness shifted his weight on to his left foot, hung his
head down on his shoulder on the same side, and said “Ha!”
Another pause, the presentee hardly considering himself
justified in replying to this observation. The duke finding
he had made a false start and accomplished nothing, shifted
his weight to the right foot, simultaneously hanging his
head on his shoulder on that side, and said “Hum!” It would
often occur that when he had reached that point he would
make a duck forward with his head to signify that the
audience was at an end.

If there was anything that the presenting official thought
might be appropriately remarked to the distinguished presentee,
he would whisper a hint to that effect in the grand ducal ear,
of which His Highness was usually glad to avail himself. I
remember one amusing instance in point, when it needed all the
sense of the majesty of the sovereign presence to preserve in
the bystanders the gravity due to the occasion. It was in the
case of an American presentation. The United States had at that
time no recognized representative at the grand ducal court, and
Americans, much fewer in number then than of late years, were
generally presented by a banker who had almost all the American
business. This gentleman, having to present some one—I
forget the name—who was connected by blood or in some
other special manner with Washington, whispered to the grand
duke that such was the case. His Serene Highness bowed his
appreciation of the fact. Then, after going through the usual
foot-exercise, and after a longer pause than usual, he looked
up at the expectant visitor standing in front of him, and said,
but with evident effort, “Ah-h-h! Le grand Vaash!” There was
nothing more forthcoming. Having thus delivered himself, he
made his visitor a low bow, and the latter retired. It was
evident that the grand duke of Tuscany heard of “Le grand
Vaash” then for the first time in his life.

After any specialty of this sort had been disposed of, the
ruck of presentees, standing like a lot of school-boys in a
long row, were “presented,” which ceremony was deemed to have
been effectually accomplished by one duck of the grand ducal
head, to be divided among all the recipients, and an answering
duck from each of them in return. They were then as free to
amuse themselves in any manner it seemed good to them as if
they had been at a public place of entertainment and had paid
for their tickets. And not only that, but they were free to
return and do the same, without any fresh presentation
ceremony, every time there was a ball at the palace, which was
at least once a week from the beginning of the year to the end
of Carnival.

Nor were the amusements thus liberally provided by any means
to be despised. There was a magnificent suite of rooms, with a
really grand ball-room, all magnificently lighted; there was a
large and very excellent band; there was a great abundance of
card-tables, [pg 374] with all needed
appurtenances, in several of the rooms; ices and sherbets
and bonbons and tea and pastry were served in immense
profusion during the whole evening. At one o’clock the
supper-rooms were opened, and there was a really magnificent
supper, with “all the delicacies of the season,” and wine in
abundance of every sort. And the old hands, who would appear
knowing, used to say to new-comers, “Never mind the
champagne—you can get that anywhere—but stick to
the Rhine wine: it comes from the old boy’s own vineyards.”
To tell the truth, the scene at that supper used to be a
somewhat discreditable one. The spreading of such a banquet
before such an assemblage of animals as had gone up into
that ark was a leading them into unwonted temptation which
was hardly judicious. Not that the foreigners were by any
means the worst offenders against decent behavior there. If
they carried away bushels of bonbons in their loaded
pockets, the Italians would consign to the same receptacles
whole fowls, vast blocks of galantine, and even platefuls of
mayonnaise, packed up in paper brought thither for the
purpose. They were like troops plundering a taken town.
Despite the enormous quantity of loot thus carried off,
inexhaustible fresh supplies refurnished the board again and
again till all were satisfied. I never saw English or
Americans pocket aught save bonbons, which seemed to be
considered fair game on all sides, but the quantity of these
that I have seen made prizes of was something
prodigious.

The grand duchess had hardly more to say for herself than
the grand duke, and her manner was less calculated to please
her visitors. That which in the grand duke was evidently
shyness and want of ready wit, took in the grand duchess the
appearance of hauteur and the distant manner due to
pride. She was a sister of the king of Naples, and was liked by
no one. The one truly affable member of the court circle, whose
manner and bearing really had something of royal grace and
graciousness, was the dowager grand duchess, the widow of the
late grand duke, who to all outward appearance was as young as,
and a far more elegant-looking woman than, the reigning grand
duchess. She had been a princess of the royal family of Saxony,
and was no doubt in all respects, intellectual and moral as
well as social, a far more highly cultivated woman than the
scion of the Bourbon House of Naples. She was the late grand
duke’s second wife, and not the mother of the reigning
duke.

Why were all these balls given—at no small cost of
money and trouble—by the grand duke and duchess? Why did
his Serene Imperial and Royal Highness intimate to the English
minister his wish that every traveling Briton from Capel Court
or Bloomsbury should be brought to share his hospitality and
the pleasures of his society? The matter was simply this: His
Serene Highness was venturing a small fish to catch a large
one. As a good and provident ruler, anxious for the prosperity
and well-being of his subjects, he was making a bid for the
valuable patronage of the British Cockney. He was acting the
part of land-lord of a gratuitous “free-and-easy,” in the hope
of making Florence an attractive place of residence to that
large class of nomad English to whom gratuitous court-balls
once a week appeared to be a near approach to those “Saturnia
regna” when the rivers ran champagne and plum-puddings grew on
all the bushes. And it cannot be doubted that the grand duke’s
patriotic endeavors were crowned with success, and that his
expenditure in wax-lights, music, ices and suppers was returned
tenfold to the shopkeepers and hotel and lodging-house keepers
of his capital.

One other point may be mentioned with reference to these
balls, as a small contribution to the history of a system of
social manners and usages which has now passed away. The utmost
latitudinarianism, as has been mentioned, was allowed in the
matter of costume, but this rule was subject to one exception.
On the night of New Year’s Day, on which there was always a
ball at the Pitti, all those who attended it were
[pg 375] expected to appear in
proper court-dress. Those who were entitled to any official
costume, military or other, donned that. I have seen a
clergyman of the Church of England make his academical robes
do duty as a court-dress, as indeed they properly do at St.
James. But in the rooms at the Pitti His Reverence became
the observed of all observers to a remarkable degree. Those
who could lay claim to no official costume of any sort had
to fall back on the old court-dress of the period of George
I., still worn, oddly enough, at the English court. It is a
sufficiently handsome dress in itself, and had at all events
the advantage of looking extremely unlike the ordinary
costume of nineteenth-century mortals, It was often a
question with American civilians what dress they should wear
on these occasions, and I used to endeavor to persuade my
American friends to insist upon their republican right to
ignore in Europe court-tailor mummeries of which they knew
nothing at home; being perfectly sure that they would have
carried the point victoriously, and not unmindful of
Talleyrand’s remark when Castlereagh at Vienna appeared in a
plain black coat, without any decoration, among the crowd of
continental diplomatists bedizened with ribbons of every
color and stars and crosses of every form and kind: “Ma
foi! c’est fort distingué!” But I never could
prevail, having, as I take it, the female influence against
me on the subject; and Americans used to adopt generally a
blue cloth coat and trousers well trimmed with gold lace,
and a white waistcoat.

In later days, when popular discontent and the agitation
arising from it were gradually boiling up to a dangerous height
in every part of Italy, and the hatred felt toward the
different sovereigns was reflected in many an audacious squib
and satire, the grand duke of Tuscany never shared to any great
degree the odium which pursued his fellow-monarchs. It was with
a scathing vigor of satire that Giuseppe Giusti characterized
each of the Italian crowned heads of that period in burning
verses, which were circulated with cautious secresy in
manuscript from hand to hand, long before a surreptitious
edition, which it was dangerous (anywhere in Italy save in
Tuscany) to possess, appeared, to be followed in after years by
many an avowed one. These have given the name of Giusti a high
and peculiar place on the roll of Italian poets. But the
satirist’s serpent scourge is changed for a somewhat
contemptuously used foolscap when the Tuscan ruler is
introduced in the following lines:

Il Toscano Morfeo vien’ lemme, lemme,

Di pavavero cinto e di lattuga.

Then comes the Tuscan Morpheus, creepy, crawly,

With poppies and with lettuce crowned.

These lines, however, represent pretty accurately about the
worst that his subjects had to say of poor old “Ciuco,” as the
last of the grand dukes was irreverently and popularly called:
“Ciuco,” I am sorry to state, means “donkey.” And it must be
owned that the two lines I have quoted from Giusti’s verses,
with their untranslatable “lemme, lemme”—of which I have
endeavored, with imperfect success, to give the
meaning—present a very graphic picture of the man and the
nature and characteristics of his government. Everything went
“lemme, lemme,” in the Sleepy Hollow of Tuscany in those
days.

Used as he was to be laughed at, Leopold could occasionally
be made sleepily half angry by impertinences which had
something of a sting in them. Here is an amusing instance of
that fact, and of the way in which things used to be done in
Tuscany. Most of the Italian provinces—or larger cities,
rather—- have been from time immemorial personated in the
popular fancy by certain comic types, supposed to represent
with more or less accuracy the special characteristics of each
district. Venice, as all the world knows, has, and still more
had, her “Pantaloon,” Naples her “Pulcinello,” etc. The
specialties of the Florentine character are popularly supposed
to be embodied in “Stenterello,” who comes on the Florentine
stage, in pieces written for the purpose, every Carnival, to
the never-failing delight of the populace. Stenterello is an
absurd figure with a [pg 376] curling pigtail, large
cocked hat, and habiliments meant to represent those of a
Tuscan citizen of some hundred years or so ago. He is a sort
of shrewd fool, doing the most absurd things, lying through
thick and thin with a sort of simple, self-confuting
mendacity, yet contriving to cheat everybody, and always
having, amid all his follies, a shrewd eye to his own
interest. He talks with the broadest possible Florentine
accent and idiom, and despite his cunning is continually
getting more kicks than halfpence. Well, there was in those
days a famous Stenterello, really a very clever fellow in
his way, who for many years had been the delight of the
Florentines every Carnival. But one year a rival theatre
produced a new and rival Stenterello. Of course the old and
established Stenterello could not stand this without using
the license of the popular stage to overwhelm his rival with
ridicule. “This sort of thing,” said he, “will never do! How
many Stenterelli are we to have? Two is the regular
established number in Florence. There are I and my brother
over there at the great house on the other side of the Arno:
we are the Florentine Stenterelli by right divine, as is
well known. Who is this pretender who comes to interfere
with us?” etc. Now, this was a little too much, even for
Florence. And a day or two afterward the old original
Stenterello was ordered to go to prison. Nobody was ever
arrested, as we should call it, or taken to
prison. A man who for any cause was to suffer imprisonment
used to be told to go to prison. Stenterello told the
officer who announced his doom that it was out of the
question that he should go just then: he had to appear on
the boards that night. This was deemed to be a just
impediment, and he was told to go next day. The next day was
a “festa:” of course a sufficient reason for putting off
everything. The day after, on presenting himself at the
prison-door, the actor was told that the governor of the
prison was out of Florence, and he must “call again” in a
few days. When the governor returned, Stenterello was
indisposed for a few days. When he got well the governor was
indisposed, and when he got well there was another
“festa;” and when at last the offending actor did apply to
the prison official to be imprisoned, he was told there was
no room for him. Long before that the higher authorities had
totally forgotten all about the matter. That was the way
things were done in Tuscany in the good old time.

The more serious faults with which Leopold II. was
chargeable were due to the narrowness of his religious bigotry,
and, in the difficult and trying circumstances of the latter
years of his reign, the lack of the courage needed to enable
him to be truthful and to keep faith with his people. When the
frightened and fickle pope ran away from Rome, strong
influences were brought to bear on the grand duke of Tuscany to
induce him to refrain from following the example and to ally
himself with Piedmont. His confessor of course took the
opposite side, and strove with every weapon he could bring to
bear on his Serene penitent to induce him to throw in his lot
with the pope. At last the invisible world had to be appealed
to. Saint Philomena, who had been a special object of the
devotion of the grand ducal family, took to appearing to the
confessor, and expressing her earnest hope that her devotee
would not risk the salvation of a soul in which she took so
tender an interest by refusing to follow the path marked out
for him by the Holy Father. The saint became very importunate
upon the subject, and each one of her celestial visitations was
duly reported to the grand duke, and made the occasion of fresh
exhortations on the part of the holy man who had been favored
by them. The upshot is well known: Ciuco followed the advice of
Saint Philomena and lost his dukedom.

Sometimes, however, this submission of his mind to his
clergy was not altogether proof against a certain simple
shrewdness, aided perhaps by an inclination to save money, to
which he was said not to be insensible. Of course his
grandfather, the enlightened and reforming Duke Leopold I., had
not been at all in the good graces of the Church,
[pg 377] and for a series of years
Leopold II. had been in the habit of giving a sum of money
for masses for the repose of the soul of his grandfather.
But upon one occasion it happened that the archbishop of
Lucca (a very special hierarchical big-wig, and the greatest
ecclesiastical authority in those parts, being, by reason of
some ancient and peculiar privileges, a greater man than
even the archbishop of Florence), in the course of an
argument with the grand duke, the object of which was to
induce the latter to modify in some respects some of those
anti-ecclesiastical measures by which the elder Leopold had
made the prosperity of Tuscany, was so far carried away by
his zeal as to declare that the author of the obnoxious
constitutions which he wished altered had incurred eternal
damnation by the enactment of them. The grand duke bent his
head humbly before the archiepiscopal denunciation, and said
nothing in reply. But when the time came round for the
disbursement of the annual sum for masses for Leopold I.,
his pious grandson declared that it was useless to spend any
more money for that purpose, for that the archbishop of
Lucca had informed him that his unhappy predecessor’s soul
was in hell, and accordingly past help and past being
prayed—or paid—for.

I remember an amusing instance of the same sort of simple
shrewdness on the lookout for the main chance which was
exemplified in the above anecdote showing itself in quite a
different sphere. There was in those days living in Florence an
Englishman bearing the name of Sloane. He had made a large
fortune by the intelligent and well-ordered management of some
copper-mines in the neighborhood of Volterra, which in his
hands had turned out to be of exceptional and unexpected
richness. He was a man who did much good with his money, and
was considered a very valuable and important citizen of his
adopted country. He was a Roman Catholic too, which made him
all the more acceptable to the Florentines, and especially to
the grand duke, with whom he was a great favorite. This Mr.
Sloane had bought some years before the date of my anecdote the
ancient Medicean villa of Careggi, with a considerable extent
of land surrounding it. One day the grand duke paid him a visit
at his villa of Careggi, and in the course of it proposed a
walk up the slope of the Apennines through some fine woods that
made a part of Mr. Sloane’s property. They went together,
enjoying the delightful walk through the woods over a dry and
excellently well-made road, where everything betokened care and
good tending, till all of a sudden, near the top of the hill
they were climbing, they came to a place where the good road
suddenly ended, and the path beyond was all bog and the wood
utterly uncared for, so that their walk evidently had to come
to an end there, and they would have to retrace their
steps.

“Why, Sloane, how is this? This is not like your way of
doing things. Why did you stop short in your good work?” said
the grand duke, as they stood at the limit of the good road,
looking out at the slough beyond them.

“In truth, Your Highness, I was sorry that the good road
should break off here, but the circumstance is easily
explained. Here ends the property of your humble servant, and
there begins the property of Your Royal Highness,” said Sloane
with a low bow.

“Ha! Is it so? Well, then, I’ll tell you what you shall do.
You shall buy it, Sloane, and then you can finish your
job,” returned the grand duke.

It is very doubtful whether the Tuscans would have approved
of the liberality of the grand duke’s expenditure if he
had manifested it, as his neighbor-sovereigns did, by expending
his revenues on multitudes of show-soldiers. The Tuscan forces
of those days were not exactly calculated for brilliant
military display. They were about as likely to be called on to
fight as the scullions in the grand ducal kitchen, and neither
in number, appearance nor tenue were they such as would
have obtained the approval of the lowest officer in the service
of a more military-minded sovereign. However, such as they
were, the [pg 378] grand duke used
occasionally—generally on the recurrence of some great
Church festival—to review his troops. On such
occasions he was expected to say something to the men. Poor
Ciuco’s efforts in that line often produced effects more
amusing to bystanders than impressive to the objects of his
oratory. He was one day reviewing the troops who occupied
barracks in the well-known “Fortezza di S. Giovanni,”
popularly called by the Florentines “Fortezza da
basso”—the same in which the celebrated Filippo
Strozzi, then the prisoner of the vindictive Cosmo de’
Medici, was found dead one morning, leaving to the world the
still unsolved historical problem whether he died by his own
hand or by that of his jailer hired to do the murder. The
scene in the gloomy old fortress with which we are at
present concerned was of a less tragic nature. His Serene
Highness began by exhorting his “brave army”—which,
unlike that of Bombastes in the burlesque, certainly never
“kicked up a row” of any kind—to be attentive to their
religious duties. “It is particularly desirable that you
should show an example to the citizens by your regular
observance of the festivals of the Church;
and—and—” (here His Highness shuffled his feet,
and, hanging his head down, chanced to cast his eyes on the
line of feet of the men drawn up before him)
“and—and—always keep your shoes clean.” And with
that doubtless much-needed exhortation His Highness
concluded his address.

The fact that Leopold was not regarded by his subjects with
any bitterness of hatred—nay, that there was au
fond a considerable feeling of affection for him—is
shown by the circumstances of his deposition from the throne. A
little timely concession would have saved Charles I.: a still
less amount of concession would have preserved his throne to
Leopold II. As regarded his own power, he had no objection to
agree to all that was asked of him, but he could not make up
his mind to go against the head of his house and the head of
his religion. The last proposal made to him was to abdicate in
favor of his son, whom, if allied with Piedmont, the Tuscans
would have consented to accept as their sovereign. But the
grand duke felt that this would in fact be doing in an indirect
manner that which he had fully determined not to do; and he
refused. And then came the end, and that memorable April
morning (the 27th) when the present writer witnessed a
revolution such as the world had not seen before, and such as,
it may be feared, it is not likely soon to see again.
Revolutions, we have over and over again been told, “cannot be
made with rose-water.” The Tuscan revolution may have “proved
the rule by the exception,” but it assuredly proved it in no
other way. The revolution by which poor old Ciuco lost this
throne was essentially a rose-water revolution. The history of
that day, of the negotiations respecting the proposed
abdication of the duke, of the conduct and bearing of the
people, has already been told by the present writer, when he
was fresh from witnessing the events, in a little volume
published in 1859. He will not therefore repeat them now, but
will conclude this paper with an account of the manner of the
last grand duke’s farewell to Florence which is not given in
the volume spoken of.

It was at six o’clock in the evening that the carriages
containing the grand duke and his family passed through the
Porta San Gallo, from which proceeds the road to Bologna, and
thence to Vienna. The main preoccupation of the people at that
moment was to assure themselves by the evidence of their own
senses that the duke and dukelings were really gone. An immense
crowd of people assembled round the gate and lined the road
immediately outside it. Along the living line thus formed the
cortége of carriages proceeded at a slow pace. There was
no fear of violence. The Tuscan revolution had cost no drop of
blood—not so much as a bloody nose—to any human
being thus far, and there was no danger whatever that any
violence would be shown to the departing and totally
unprotected prince. But there might have been danger that the
populace would tarnish their hitherto blameless
[pg 379] conduct by some
manifestation of insult or exultation. There was not one word
of the sort spoken in all the crowd, or indeed a word of any
sort. The carriages, carrying away those who were never to see
the banks of the Arno and fair Florence again, passed on in
perfect—one might almost say in mournful—silence.
Of course the masses of the crowd were soon passed, and the
grand ducal heart, if it had beat a little quickly while his
unguarded carriage was passing between the lines of those who
declined to be any longer his subjects, resumed that “serenity”
supposed to be the especial property of royal highnesses. But
some half dozen carriages, containing a score or so of those
whose positions had brought them into personal acquaintance
with the sovereign, accompanied the royal cortége as far
as the Tuscan frontier between the grand ducal state and the
dominions of the Church. Arrived at that spot—it is on
the top of a high, bleak ridge among the Apennines—there
was a general alighting from the carriages for the mutual
saying of the last words of farewell. Of course an immense
amount of bowing, with backward steps according to true courtly
fashion, went to the due uttering of these adieux on that spot
of the high-road over the Apennines. Unfortunately, there
chanced to be a heap of broken stones for the mending of the
road which encroached a little on the roadway. And it so
happened that His Imperial and Royal Highness, never very
dexterous in the use of his limbs or an adept in the
performance of such courtly gymnastics, backed in bowing on
this unlucky heap of stones, and was tripped by it in such sort
that the imperial and royal heels went into the air, and the
grand duke made his last exit from Tuscany in a manner more
original than dignified.

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

OLD ENGLISH CHARITIES.

The local charities connected with the family history of
great landowners in England form one of the most interesting
classes of public relief. They date chiefly from
ante-Reformation times, and often embody a hidden symbolism
into which none save the antiquary now cares to inquire. It is
a mistake to suppose that all the dying bequests of
pious folk in the Middle Ages were devoted to the “Church”
proper: the larger part certainly were, although the spirit
that prompted even the making of such bequests was symbolical
of the belief in the dispensing (rather than the appropriating)
powers of churchmen: but many were also the sums left to be
yearly spent in the relief of the poor and starving. Thus
originated the alms-(or bede-) houses so frequently met with in
the retired villages of England. Bede (from the German
beten, to “pray”) meant prayer, hinting at the pious
duty of those benefiting by the founder’s legacy to pray for
his eternal welfare. When the Reformation, among many abuses,
also obliterated many beautiful and poetical customs, the
meaning of these “houses of prayer” was forgotten, and their
chapels were often ruthlessly whitewashed. The material part of
the foundation, however, still remained, and the bedesmen,
twelve or thirteen (in commemoration of the number of the
apostles, or the apostles and their Master), continued to be
chosen by the clergyman of the parish and the lord of the
manor. In other places, instead of this more costly mode of
relief, a custom prevailed of distributing a “dole” at stated
times to a large number of poor people, the
[pg 380] number corresponding to the
age of the giver: if alive, of course the number increased
every year; if dead, it was fixed at the age at which he or
she had died. Many of these local customs continue to this
day: some have even been instituted lately, since the
revived taste for medievalism has beautified and refined
English homesteads and village churches. The queen, a
faithful upholder of ancient national manners, has given the
example by adhering to the time-honored custom called the
Royal Maundy. This word is from mandatum, or
commandment, and refers to the “new commandment” given by
Christ to his apostles at the Last Supper. In Catholic
countries it is still the custom for the sovereign to wash
the feet of twelve poor men (his wife performing the same
office for twelve poor and aged women) in public on the
Thursday before Easter, and to serve them at table
afterward: in Vienna this is done in a very solemn and
public manner. The chosen ones are brought to the palace in
court-coaches, and after the ceremony is over are carried
home in the same way, loaded with presents of clothing,
money, and all the dishes, spoons, forks, etc., used at
their dinner. In England the same charity, or its
equivalent, is dispensed, not by the sovereign in person,
but by her chaplains and almoners, in the midst of beautiful
formalities. The dignity with which the ceremony is
performed is a striking evidence of the national character,
and a contrast to the sometimes slovenly manner in which
great public religious functions are got through abroad. The
charities are distributed in the chapel of Whitehall, the
palace made tragically famous by the disgrace of Wolsey and
the death of King Charles I. Fifty-five old men, and as many
women, the number corresponding to the age of the sovereign,
were thus relieved last year. On an earlier occasion
witnessed by the writer a procession consisting of a
detachment of the yeomen of the guard, under the command of
a sergeant-major (one of the yeomen carrying the royal alms
on a gold salver of the reign of William and Mary), several
chaplains, almoners, secretaries and a few national
schoolchildren (allowed to take part in the ceremony as a
signal reward for good behavior), left the Royal Almonry
Office for the chapel of Whitehall. It was met at the door
by the lord high almoner and the subdeans of the Chapel
Royal, who joined the ranks and passed up to the altar. The
surpliced boys of the Chapel Royal, and the clergy and
gentlemen belonging officially to it, took their appointed
places right and left, and the gold salver was deposited in
front of the royal pew, generally tenanted by one or more
members of the royal family. Evening prayer, slightly varied
and adapted for the occasion, as custom has decreed for
several centuries, was then gone through; the forty-first
Psalm was chanted; and after the First Lesson an anthem by
Goss was sung. Then followed the distribution of £1
15s. to each woman, and a pair of shoes and stockings to
each man. The two next anthems were by Mendelssohn, and in
the intervals woolen and linen clothes were first
distributed to each man, and money-purses to each man and
woman. The Second Lesson was then read, and the fourth and
concluding anthem, by Greene, chanted, after which the usual
Thanksgiving and Prayer of St. Chrysostom were read. The
musical part of the service, being especially prominent, was
correctly and artistically performed by skillful musicians
(some of them composers), styled officially “gentlemen of
the Chapel Royal:” the solo in the first anthem was sung by
one of the boys.

In addition to this special ceremony, other Easter bounties,
styled “Minor Bounty,” “Discretionary Bounty,” and the “Royal
Gate Alms,” were, according to old custom, distributed at the
Almonry Office on Good Friday and Saturday, while Easter Monday
and Tuesday were devoted to the distribution of other
supplementary relief to old and infirm people previously chosen
by the clergy of the various London parishes. The recipients
included over a thousand persons.

Among the private local charities none is on so large a
scale as the [pg 381] famous “Tichborne Dole.”
The idea we now attach to the word dole is
ludicrously inappropriate in this case, where the gift is in
the proportion of one gallon of the best wheaten flour to
each adult and half a gallon to each child, and where the
number of the recipients is generally between five and six
hundred, including the inhabitants of two parishes. This
custom is seven hundred years old, and was first instituted
on the Tichborne estate by Dame Mabel, the wife of Sir Roger
de Tichborne, knight, in the beginning of the twelfth
century. The foundress was renowned for her piety and
charity, and by her own people was looked upon as a saint.
The family record says that she was so charitable to the
poor that, not content to exercise that virtue all her
lifetime, she instituted the “dole” as a perpetual memorial
of her goodness, and entailed it to her posterity. It is
distributed yearly on the 25th of March. A large
oil-painting, now hanging in the dining-room of Tichborne
House, and representing the distribution of the “dole,” was
painted in 1670, and is considered as one of the most
valuable family relics. The costumes of the period are
faithfully represented, most of the prominent figures are
portraits, and the scene is laid within the courtyard of the
old manor, with its sculptured gables and picturesque
mullioned windows. The present house, roomy and comfortable
as it is, is a plain, unpretending building, with no
architectural features to recommend it, but the park and
grounds are very beautiful, the old trees disposed in deep
glades and avenues, and the situation altogether very
picturesque. Since the famous trial has made everything
bearing the name of Tichborne a target for curiosity, the
occupants have been sadly annoyed, and access to the house
was at last, in self-defence, denied to strangers who came
simply as gaping sight-seers. The “dole” distribution, as we
have said, takes place every year. Last spring it was
attended with less show than usual, owing to the illness of
the little boy who now represents the old name (the nephew
of the lost Roger Tichborne), in consequence of which none
of the ladies of the family were present. But despite the
absence of the festal arrangements by which it is usually
accompanied, the main business was the same as it has always
been since Dame Mabel’s time. About nine o’clock the fine
old park became thronged with men, women and children, all
carrying bags and baskets in which to stow away the
“bounty.” The distribution was made at the back of the
house. The people gathered in groups, dressed in all sorts
of plain, dilapidated country garments—old men in
worn-out smock-frocks (a sight seldom seen even in
conservative England), gaiters such as they wear at work in
the fields, and slouched, unrecognizable hats that had
evidently seen better times; others stood in their “Sunday
clothes,” stiff and uncomfortable as a laborer looks in that
unusual and unartistic guise; some were old and toothless,
yet upright and almost martial-looking; while some, again,
had that pathetic look—sunken eyes, bent limbs and
general air of having given in to the attacks of time and
sorrow—which invariably speaks the same language and
stirs the same sympathy all over the world. The women were
in the majority, most of them hale and hearty, the wives and
daughters of laborers who were too busy to come in person.
Nine sacks, each containing fifty gallons of flour, were
emptied by two sturdy miller’s men into an immense tub. The
family being an old Roman Catholic one, a religious ceremony
was the prelude of the distribution. The domestic chaplain
offered up a short prayer, and after invoking the blessing
of Heaven on the gift, sprinkled the flour with holy water
in the form of a cross. It was no uncommon thing for one
person to carry away three or four gallons of flour: the
largest award was in the case of a family consisting of man,
wife and seven children, the wife carrying away with her
five and a half gallons. Many of those whose names appeared
as witnesses for the defence during the memorable trial were
present—John Etheridge, the blacksmith, and Kennett,
coachman to the dowager Lady Tichborne,
[pg 382] among the number. The
latter lives in a small freehold cottage, his own property,
at Cheriton, the next parish to Tichborne. Persons of all
denominations were relieved—Church people, Dissenters
and Roman Catholics alike—without the slightest
favoritism being shown to any.

The same kind of charity, though on a smaller scale, and by
the custom of living patrons instead of the will of deceased
ones, is dispensed at various times in the year through the
whole country by both large and small landed proprietors.

The 11th of November (St. Martin’s Day) is the one generally
chosen for the distribution of winter clothing to the poor of
the parish, and this in commemoration of the mediaeval legend
of the holy Bishop Martin, who gave half his ample cloak to a
shivering leper who begged of him in the street. Next night,
says the legend, he saw in a dream Christ himself clothed in
that cloak, and remembered the promise that “inasmuch as ye
have done it unto one of these, ye have done it unto Me.” The
writer has often assisted at such distribution of warm
clothing, both made and unmade. In every county squire’s house
there is a bi-or tri-weekly distribution of soup to the village
poor, and in most two or three sets of fine bed-linen and soft
baby-clothes, to be lent out on occasions requiring greater
comforts than the poor and too often thriftless women of
agricultural villages can afford. Private charity is
all-reaching: the “hall” is the dispensary and the general ark
of refuge for all county ills, moral, physical and pecuniary,
and its help is never thought degrading, like that of the
“parish.” Most families pay a doctor and a nurse by the year to
attend the poor free of expense, and an order from the doctor
for jellies, soup or wine, as well as for the ordinary sorts of
medicine, is always sure of being filled from the ample stores
of the “housekeeper’s room.” If the city poor were half as well
provided for as are the agricultural poor by their “lords of
the manor,” there would be far less destitution. Some affect to
sneer at a system which savors of what they call “feudalism,”
and which, they wisely suggest, encourages pauperism, but
warm-hearted and charitable people will probably disagree with
these searchers after new methods, and will be glad to find in
the ready sympathy of English landowners for their poor
neighbors a ray of the old-fashioned unquestioning charity
which distinguished biblical times.

B.M.

LANDORIANA.

I wish to supplement the “Recollections of Landor,”
published in a former number of the Magazine, by an anecdote
and two or three characteristic letters which by accident
escaped me when I was writing on the subject before. Here is
the story: Schlegel and Niebuhr had been for some time on
unpleasant terms. The historical skepticism of the latter was
altogether distasteful to Schlegel; and he was wont to deny
Niebuhr’s claim to the title of historian. Well, Landor was
dining at Bonn, and among the company immediately opposite to
him at table was Schlegel. Hardly had the soup been despatched
before Landor, with that stentorian voice of his which always
filled every corner of every room he spoke in, began: “Are not
you the man, Mr. Schlegel, who has recently discovered, at the
end of two hundred and fifty years, that Shakespeare is a poet?
Well, perhaps if you live two hundred and fifty years longer,
you may discover that Niebuhr is an historian.” “Schlegel did
not like it,” added Landor when telling the story
himself—very much as who should say, “I knocked him down
with an unexpected blow of my fist, and he did not like
it!”

And now for my letters. Here is one dated “Florence, June,
1861,” written to my wife when he was past eighty and within a
year or two of his death. The latter portion of the letter is
especially interesting, and will be none the less so to those
who may be disposed to dispute the correctness of the judgments
expressed in it.

“Do not be alarmed,” he writes, “at a letter which ‘like a
wounded snake drags its slow length along.’ Such, I
[pg 383] suspect, mine will be,
though it ought to contain only thanks for the admirable
ones you have sent to me on the late affairs of Tuscany.
Yesterday Mr. Trollope gave them to me as your present. I
then exprest a hope that he or you would undertake a history
of Italian affairs from the Treaty of Campo Formio down to
the present day. Indeed, I hope and trust that it may be
continued a year or two farther, until the recovery of Rome
from the most perfidious enemy she and Italy were ever
opprest by. And this under the title of deliverer! Lay your
two heads together, and let me have to boast that the best
and truest of our historians were my personal friends.
Southey and Napier were most intimately so. Hallam is a dull
proser—no discovery or illustration, no profound
thought, no vivid description, not even a harmonious period.
Macaulay is a smart reviewer, indifferent to truth, a
hanger-on of party. Lingard is more honest, and writes
better. He does not tag together loose epigrams with a
crooked pin. Now put the empty chairs of these people
against the wall, and sit down to your table with a long
piece of work before you. And now you must be tired, as I
foretold you would be. So hail the farewell of your
affectionate old friend,

“W. LANDOR.”

Here is another, undated, but shown by the Bath postmark to
have been written in 1857. The whole letter is strongly
characteristic of the writer, as indeed was everything that
Landor wrote, said or did, so thoroughly and in every sense of
the word was he original; but, as in the preceding
letter, the most interesting portion is that toward the end,
where he gives some amusing indications of his peculiar
political opinions and feelings. This letter also was written
to the same correspondent:

“My dear friend: It is now three years since I have been in
London, except in passing through it to the Crystal Palace,
without dismounting.” [How curiously the phrase indicates the
habits of the writer’s youth, when gentlemen’s journeys were
for the most part performed on horseback!] “At Sydenham I
remained three weeks, almost; but the air of London always
disagreed with me, added to which, the necessity of visiting
was always intolerable to me, and I have lost many friends by
refusing to undergo it. If Mr. Trollope should find a few days’
leisure for Bath, I can promise him a hearty reception and a
comfortable bedroom. Is it not singular that on your letter
being brought to me I laid down for it Town and Country
[a novel by Frances Trollope], which interests me as much on a
second reading as on the first? To-morrow I must
run—imagine a man of eighty-one running!—for the
Athenaeum. I myself have not thrown away the pen, which sadly
wants mending. They have published Scenes from the
Shades, and Alfieri and Metastasio, and Codrus
and Polio. These last three are in Fraser. If they
bring a few pounds or shillings, the money will be given to
Capera, a laboring man who has written some noble poetry.” [The
writer in question produced some very tolerable verses,
remarkable as coming from a man in his position, but in our
friend’s enthusiastic language they become “noble poetry”
directly he makes the man his protegé—a truly
Landorian touch!] “I could have collected three hundred pounds
for Kossuth from friends who wrote to me about it, and probably
ten or a dozen times as much from others, for no man ever had
so few friends or acquaintances as I have. Nearly all are dead,
and I have no leisure or inclination for new ones. It gave me
much pleasure to hear that the fine and pleasant Lord Normanby
is in part recovered from his paralysis. I parted from him at
Bath with few hopes. Never have I spent a winter in England so
free from every kind of malady as this last. A disastrous war
ends with a disgraceful peace. We are to have an illumination
and ringing of bells. Sir Claude Scott and myself will not
illuminate, but I have promised the ringers twenty shillings if
they will muffle the bells. Rejoice! The best generals and best
soldiers in the Crymea [sic] were Italians.

“W.S.L.”

[pg 384]

Landor had many queer crotchets about spelling, and always
absolutely declined to follow any rule but his own. It seems to
have been one of these crotchets to spell Crimea as he spells
it in the above-quoted letter—on what grounds I do not
pretend to be able to guess: With regard to the seemingly
unpatriotic sentiment contained in the last lines, it must be
remembered that the writer was addressing a person long
resident in Italy, and eagerly anxious for the well-doing of
the Italian troops in their struggle with the different
despotisms which oppressed the Peninsula. The bribing the
ringers to muffle the bells is a highly characteristic
trait.

Of a third letter I will print only a part, because the
remainder concerns the unfortunate affair which compelled the
writer finally to leave England—the result, as is well
known, of a trial for libel in which Landor was cast in heavy
damages which were far beyond his diminished means to pay. He
acted very wrongly, and still more imprudently, in attempting
to expose what he honestly deemed misconduct of a nature that
outraged all the generous feelings of his nature, by the
publication of a very gross libel. The passages in the letter
in question which refer to this business, then in the stage
preceding his conviction, abundantly testify to the fact that
the sentiments which had impelled him to act as he did were
wholly and solely those of generous indignation at wrong done,
in no-wise against himself, but against another, whom he deemed
to be oppressed and unprotected. But I think, on the whole,
that no good purpose would be served by raking up the matter
afresh. And (for Landor in his wrath was at no time a
Chrysostom) the letter bristles with assertions and accusations
couched in language which might, for aught I know, make the
publication of it a repetition of the offence for which he
suffered. The other matters touched on are not uninteresting
manifestations of opinion:

“My DEAR FRIEND,” he writes: “Whether I am ill or well it is
always with equal pleasure that I see the trace of your hand.
Surely, I must have written to you since I sent the scenes of
Anthony and Octavius. But I am too apt to believe that
what I ought to have done I have done. You ask me
what I think of the Neapolitan abominations.” [The allusion is
to some one or other of the many acts of grievous tyranny which
were at that time perpetrated by the Neapolitan Bourbon
government in its terrified attempts to protect itself against
the rising indignation of the people.] “We countenance them.
The despots are in Holy Alliance against constitutions.”
[Surely, Landor’s old antagonism to former English governments
led him into error and injustice when he accuses England of
“countenancing” the tyrannies of the Neapolitan government. How
much Gladstone’s celebrated letter and English sentiment in all
quarters contributed toward the overthrow of that tyranny was
not then known as well as it is now.] “On the other side of
this,” he continues, “you will find a few verses I wrote on
Agesiloa Milano, the finest and bravest patriot on record.”
[Agesilao Milano, whose name was just then in every mouth in
Italy, was one of the numerous victims of Austrian severity,
who had met his fate with admirable courage, and who willingly
gave his life for his country. But there was nothing to
distinguish him specially from hundreds of other Italians who
in those evil days did as much, and nothing save chance to
distinguish him from the tens of hundreds who were ready to do
as much had the lot fallen to them. But the mention of this
poor fellow in the letter is very specially Landorian. No
superlatives were with him strong enough to express his
sentiments on aught that immediately moved his feelings either
of admiration or indignation.] “The concessions in Lombardy,”
he goes on, “are fabulous. Thieves and assassins are turned out
of prison with quiet literary men and brave patriots…. With
kindest regards to your circle, ever your affec.

“W. LANDOR.”

The verses on Agesilao Milano announced as being “on the
other side” are [pg 385] there
preceded by two epigrams on the object of his indignation above
alluded to, which I suppress for the same reason that I have
suppressed that portion of the letter referring to the same
subject. The verses on the young Italian patriot and martyr run
as follows:

Sometimes the brave have bent the head

To lick the dust that despots tread.

Not so Milano; he alone

Would bow to Justice on the throne.

To win a crown of thorns he trod

A flinty path, and rests with God.

T.A.T.

THE DEATH OF DOCTORS’ COMMONS.

On the 20th of last October a venerable London institution
changed its quarters. Doctors’ Commons may almost be said to be
no more. Its heart is gone. The Principal Registry of the Court
of Probate—the successor to the Prerogative Court of
Canterbury—is no longer to be found there, and those who
seek their fortunes in wills have now to prosecute their
researches in that hub of British departmental records,
Somerset House. The knell of “the Commons” was rung about
twenty years ago, when a campaign against the abuses prevailing
in the ecclesiastical courts was begun in the London
Times. It unquestionably had been the home par
excellence of sinecures and monopolies, which culminated in
the office of registrar of the Prerogative Court of the
archbishop of Canterbury. This office was in the gift of the
archbishop, and was at the time these attacks began held by the
Rev. Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore was a member of a family which had
certainly good cause to stand steadfast in the faith of the
Church of England, and not to waver one inch in attachment
thereto. It may be doubted whether since its foundation any
family—we except, of course, those to whom grants were
made from abbey-lands—during the whole history of the
Church has drawn such vast sums from it. His father, a
singularly fortunate man, set the ball rolling. Having gone up
to Christ Church, Oxford, as a sizar, or poor scholar, he
happened about the time of taking his degree to cross the
quadrangle at the moment when a nobleman of great position was
asking the dean to recommend a tutor for his son. Young Moore
at that moment caught the very reverend functionary’s eye.
There is the very man, thought he. He called him up, presented
him to the peer, and an engagement was made. In those days the
patronage of a powerful peer was a ready road to preferment.
Young Moore gave satisfaction to his noble patron, and was
pushed up the ecclesiastical tree until he reached its topmost
branch, being created in 1783 archbishop of Canterbury. In 1770
he formed a very judicious marriage with Miss Eden. This lady
was sister of Sir Robert Eden, governor of Maryland in 1776
(who married the sister and co-heir of the last Lord
Baltimore), and of the first Lord Auckland, whom George III.
very justly stigmatized as “that eternal intriguer.” To the
“eternal intriguer” the elevation of Moore to the archbishopric
was probably mainly due. Lord Auckland was for many years as
intimate a friend as Pitt ever had, and his daughter (afterward
countess of Buckinghamshire) is the great minister’s only
recorded love. For twenty-three years Dr. Moore filled the
archbishopric, and in those days it was a far better thing
pecuniarily than it is now. He made hay whilst the sun shone,
and then and for long after did his relatives bask in the sun.
Registrarships, canonries and livings fell upon them in rich
profusion, and the great prize of all, the registrarship of the
Prerogative Court of the archbishop of Canterbury, fell to the
luckiest of the lot.

Of course the registrar never came near his registry: his
duties were discharged by three deputies. Not one penny,
moreover, beyond what was absolutely necessary did he expend on
the registry itself. Such a hole as it was! Cribbed, cabined
and confined were the clerks who ran the reverend sinecurist’s
business in one of the most extraordinary rabbit-warrens, to
use the epithet Bethell, Lord (Chancellor) Westbury, applied to
it in the writer’s hearing. In Great Knight Rider
street—a name derived from the days of the Knights
Templar—was a dingy passage-way leading into a
[pg 386] yet dingier little court.
Passing up a short flight of steps, you found yourself in a
large room, with deep alcoves furnished with shelves, on
which, above and on all sides, were ranged huge volumes with
massive clasps. “What are all these books?” inquired a
youthful visitor—”old Bibles?” “No, sir; they’re
testaments,” was a waggish official’s reply. They are, in
fact, copies of wills. The originals are deemed too precious
for exhibition except on special application, and the
stranger who pays his shilling only sees a copy. Formerly,
unless a searcher knew exactly when a will was proved, the
process of finding it was very troublesome, because he had
to search down indexes in Old English character arranged in
order of date only; but now the registers have been put into
alphabetical form.

The great change in Doctors’ Commons took place in 1858,
when the Probate Act came into operation. This was a very
sweeping measure, which at a blow superseded the whole system
of ecclesiastical courts, so far at least as wills were
concerned. For them it substituted a Court of Probate, with
jurisdiction over the whole of England. Attached to this court
are about forty registries for wills. That in London is called
the Principal Registry. A will must either be proved in the
district in which a man dies or in the Principal Registry. The
Principal Registry is a very large office, at the head of which
are four registrars, who are also registrars of the Divorce
Court, over which the judge of the Court of Probate presides,
being styled “judge ordinary” of this latter. There are about
forty registries scattered about the country, in most cases in
places where formerly ecclesiastical courts existed for the
proving of wills. The value of these registrarships ranges from
three hundred to fifteen hundred pounds. They are all in the
gift of the judge of the court, whose patronage is worth about
sixty thousand pounds a year, and may be reckoned the best in
England, inasmuch as he holds it continuously, whilst the lord
chancellor and other political officers merely hold their
patronage for the few years they may chance to continue in
office. Moreover, the judge of the Court of Probate, not being
a political officer, has no political pressure brought to bear
upon him in the distribution of his patronage, and can dispense
it precisely as he pleases. The registrars must, by the terms
of the act of Parliament, be barristers, solicitors, or clerks
who have served five years in the Principal Registry.

Doctors’ Commons twenty years ago was a unique corner of the
world. It lay so hid away that you might live for years in
London, and be within a stone’s throw of it, and yet never have
its existence brought to your mind; and it had a life all its
own. The ecclesiastical lawyers were called doctors and
proctors, instead of barristers and attorneys; and although the
former did not arrogate to themselves a higher rank socially
and professionally than that of barrister, a proctor considered
himself a great many cuts above an attorney, and indeed was,
for the most part, the equal of the best class of attorneys.
Proctors, it will be borne in mind, are sketched by Charles
Dickens in the opening pages of David Copperfield, for
Dora’s papa, Mr. Spenlow, was in proctorial partnership with
the reputably inexorable Jawkins. When the Probate Act came
into force it was a frightful blow to the tribe of Spenlows.
Not so much on account of the pecuniary loss. In that respect
the blow was considerably tempered to the shorn lambs by a
compensation all too liberal—for John Bull is unsurpassed
as a respecter of vested interests—and the proctors were
compensated on the basis of their incomes for the last five
years, their returns proving in some instances curiously at
variance with the amounts on which they had paid income-tax.
But they regarded themselves as terrible losers in prestige and
position by this rude invasion of the classic and aristocratic
ground of the Doctores Commensales, and above all by being
leveled down to the rank of attorneys. The clerks in the
Prerogative Court—of which the registrars and head-clerks
were all proctors, who, taking the cue from Chief Registrar
Moore, executed their work by deputy, the deputies being clerks
working [pg 387] long hours for
small salaries—had kotooed to them with the most servile
subserviency; but the Probate Office clerk was a government
official, who could not be removed, even by the judge of the
court, without the consent of the lord chancellor. What cared
he, then, for Spenlow and Jawkins? “I am astonished, Mr.
Spenlow,” said a young clerk of the new régime,
“that you should have made such a mistake!” Mr. Spenlow, in
turn, was too much astonished to utter a word. Speechless with
amazement and indignation, he left the “seat,” as the different
departments were called, to weep bitter tears in regret for the
past in the solitude of his dingy sanctum in Bell Yard, leaving
an emancipated clerk, who had served under the thraldom of the
old régime, exclaiming, “Good Heavens! Only
imagine any of us daring to use such language to a proctor two
years ago!”

R.W.

THE LAY OF THE LEVELER.

Among the less known writings of Francis Quarles, author of
the once famous Emblems, is a volume, now become very
scarce, entitled The Shepheards Oracles, delivered in
certain Eglogues. The copy of it to which I have access was
published in 1646, or two years after Quarles’s death. This
spirited poem must have been perused with intense interest by
Quarles’s contemporaries. But history is constantly repeating
itself with more or less of modification, and The Shepheards
Oracles, at least here and there, and with reference to
England, reads, but for its quaintness of manner and idiom,
like a production of the nineteenth century. In the course of
it there occur some verses, put into the mouth of Anarchus,
which are well worth resuscitating. These verses, to which I
have supplied a title as above, are, in a sufficiently exact
transcription, as follows:

Know, then, my brethren, heav’n is cleare,

And all the Clouds are gone;

The Righteous now shall flourish, and

Good dais are coming on.

Come, then, my Brethren, and be glad,

And eke rejoyce with me:

Lawn Sleeves and Rochets shall goe down:

And, hey! then up goe we.

Wee’l break the windows which the Whore

Of Babylon hath painted;

And, when the Popish Saints are down,

Then Barow shall be Sainted.

There’s neither Crosse nor Crucifixe

Shall stand for man to see:

Romes trash and trump’ries shall goe downe;

And, hey! then up goe we.

What ere [sic] the Popish hands have built,

Our Hammers shall undoe;

Wee’l breake their Pipes, and burn their Copes,

And pull downe Churches, too:

Wee’l exercise within the Groves,

And teach beneath a Tree;

Wee’l make a Pulpit of a Cart;

And, hey! then up goe we.

Wee’l down with all the Varsities,

Where Learning is profest,

Because they practise and maintain

The language of the Beast:

Wee’l drive the Doctors out of doores,

And Arts, what ere [sic] they be;

Wee’l cry both Arts and Learning down;

And, hey! then up goe we.

Wee’l down with Deans and Prebends, too;

But I rejoyce to tell ye

How then we will eat Pig our fill,

And Capon by the belly:

Wee’l burn the Fathers witty Tomes,

And make the Schoolmen flee;

Wee’l down with all that smels of wit;

And, hey! then up goe we.

If once that Antichristian crew

Be crusht and overthrown,

Wee’l teach the Nobles how to crouch,

And keep the Gentry down:

Good manners have an evil report,

And turn to pride we see:

Wee’l, therefore, cry good manners down;

And, hey! then up goe we.

The name of Lord shall be abhor’d;

For every man’s a brother:

No reason why, in Church or State,

One man should rule another.

But, when the change of Government

Shall set our fingers free,

Wee’l make the wanton Sisters stoop:

And, hey! then up goe we.

Our Coblers shall translate their soules

From Caves obscure and shady;

Wee’ make Tom T—— as good as my
Lord,

And Joan as good as my Lady.

Wee’l crush and fling the marriage Ring

Into the Romane See;

Wee’l ask no bans, but even clap hands;

And, hey! then up goe we.

By “Barow,” named in the second stanza, is intended, no
doubt, Henry Barrow, the Nonconformist enthusiast who was
executed at Tyburn in 1592. A follower of Robert Browne,
founder of the Brownists, whence sprang the sect of
Independents, he brought upon himself, by his zeal and
imprudence, a vengeance which his wary leader contrived
[pg 388] to evade. Browne himself
is alluded to punningly in The Shepheards Oracles, where
Philorthus, at sight of Anarchus approaching, asks whether he
is “in a Browne study.” Anarchus replies:

“Man, if thou be’st a Babe of Grace,

And of an holy Seed,

I will reply incontinent,

And in my words proceed;

But, if thou art a child of wrath,

And lewd in conversation,

I will not, then, converse with thee,

Nor hold communication.”

Philorthus rejoins, referring by his “we all three” to
Philarchus, with whom he had just been conversing:

“I trust, Anarchus, we all three inherit

The selfe same gifts, and share the selfe same
Spirit.”

Then follow the stanzas which I have first quoted. There is
certainly ground to surmise that Lord Macaulay had in mind what
I have called “The Lay of the Leveler” when in 1820 he wrote “A
Radical War-song.” In support of this opinion, I subjoin, for
comparison, its last stanza but one:

Down with your sheriffs and your mayors,

Your registrars and proctors!

We’ll live without the lawyer’s cares,

And die without the doctor’s.

No discontented fair shall pout

To see her spouse so stupid:

We’ll tread the torch of Hymen out,

And live content with Cupid.

F.H.

THE PHILOSOPHER STRAUSS AS A POET.

The writer of a sketch in a late number of a Leipsic journal
presents the famous author of the Life of Jesus, David
Friederich Strauss, in a new character. He mentions, first,
that in the Unterhaltungen am häuslichen Heerde
(“Conversations around the Homehearth”), published by Strauss
in 1856, the latter makes, in the introduction, the following
graceful reference to the deceased friend of his youth, E.F.
Kauffmann: “If I were a philosophical emperor and wrote
self-confessions, I would thank the gods for giving me, among
other blessings, a poet and musician for an early friend. He is
dead now, alas! the noble man whom alone I have to thank that
my ear, though still unskillful, has been opened to the world
of harmony. He was not a professional musician, but he had a
thoroughly musical nature. The laws of composition he had
studied theoretically, and he followed them practically. His
position, in reality, was that of a professor of mathematics.
But music was his secret love. He not only knew the great
masters, but he lived in them. He thought little of playing on
the piano the whole of one of Mozart’s operas, note for note,
without any written music before him. I have often seen him do
this. How much I have owed to those hours! How he could draw
his hearers into the right mood! How he could illuminate the
groping mind with the lightning flash of thought!”

To this friend Strauss sent from Munich in 1851 ten sonnets.
They were accompanied by a versified dedication to Kauffmann
himself, and they constitute his claim to be considered a poet
as well as a philosophic theologian. The sonnets are all on
musical subjects, and may be taken as the natural outgrowth of
that cultivation of his musical taste which he owed to his
intimate association with Professor Kauffmann. The metrical
dedication and the first five sonnets are given in the sketch
before referred to. The writer of that article looks upon the
tendency, thus displayed by Strauss, to “drop into poetry,” as
Mr. Wegg was accustomed to say, as another strong proof of the
affinity—elsewhere noticed—between the genius of
Strauss and that of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing; who, it will be
remembered, sometimes diverted himself with the composition of
light poetical pieces, such as his famous song, beginning
“Gestern, Brüder, könnt ihr’s glauben?”

The first sonnet is on Händel, the second on
Glück, the third on Haydn, the fourth on Don Juan,
and the fifth on Figaro.

The following attempt at a translation of the fourth sonnet
may serve to give some idea of how far the world-renowned
philosopher and skeptic has succeeded in his effort to assume
the anomalous rôle of a
sonneteer:

[pg 389]

DON JUAN.

How joyously life’s fountains here are flowing!

In crystal cups the purple flood is
foaming;

Through dusky myrtle-groves are lovers
roaming,

The dance begins in halls all bright and
glowing.

Be watchful, though! Here treachery is hiding.

Wild passion naught for truth or ruth is
caring:

As hawks do doves, mild innocence ’tis
tearing,

And human vengeance lightly is deriding.

But now, once more alive, the slain
appear!

They speak, with awful voice, the words of doom:

Death his cold hand is silently extending.

Now sinks the daring mood in ghastly
fear.

The golden dream of life dissolves in gloom;

The silent grave brings on the bright joy’s
ending.

It is very hard, if not impossible, to render into any other
language the true spirit of a German poem. But in the original
this sonnet is far above mediocrity. It idealizes the opera of
Don Juan very artistically, and displays a combination
of force with harmony and grace which gives the impression, in
connection with the other sonnets, that if Strauss had devoted
his mental energy to poetry alone, he would not have taken a
low rank among the poets of Germany.

W.W.C.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Life of Thomas Fuller, D.D., with
Notices of his Books, his Kinsmen and his Friends. By John
Eglinton Bailey. London: Pickering.

By no means to the credit of the nineteenth century, it is
hardly prudent, as yet, to speak to the general public about
Thomas Fuller without formally introducing him. Coleridge and
Southey and Lamb were, to be sure, familiar with his writings,
and prized them extremely. But they did the same by the
writings of many another old worthy now undeservedly slighted;
and, for all their eulogies on him, the great bulk of readers
were still content to continue in ignorance of the treasures he
has bequeathed to us. The neglect of him which at present
prevails is, however, in large measure, a delinquency of long
standing. His chief work is undoubtedly his Church
History; and Heylin’s elaborate impugnment of its accuracy
appears to have had great weight, as with Fuller’s
contemporaries, so with the generation which immediately
followed, and onward almost to our own time. To Heylin
succeeded Bishop Nicolson in exerting himself to discredit that
valuable work, and it is only within a few years that its
character has been substantially rehabilitated. Together with
the reputation of Fuller as an historian, his reputation in
other respects for a long while underwent eclipse; for, as it
is reviving again, we may not say that it passed away. His
matter quite apart—and it is always interesting—and
abstractedly from his pervasive pleasantry, which is always
original, it is a wonder that he is not more esteemed than he
is in an age which professes to set store by style. Mr. John
Nichols, an editor of his Worthies, timidly hazarded the
observation that, as against the strictures of Bishop Nicolson,
there might be much said in “vindication of the language of Dr.
Fuller”—a comment which excited Coleridge to a high pitch
of exasperation. “Fuller’s language!” he ejaculates. “Grant me
patience, Heaven! A tithe of his beauties would be sold cheap
for a whole library of our classical writers, from Addison to
Johnson and Junius inclusive. And Bishop Nicolson!—a
painstaking old charwoman of the Antiquarian and Rubbish
Concern! The venerable rust and dust of the whole firm are not
worth an ounce of Fuller’s earth.”

Of Fuller’s ancestry nothing is known, on the paternal side,
beyond his father, a college-bred clergyman, who died in 1632.
His mother was a Davenant, of an ancient and respectable
family. Fuller was born in June, 1608, at Aldwinkle, in
Northamptonshire, at his father’s rectory. When only about
twelve years of age he was entered at Queen’s College,
Cambridge, his progress in his studies having been such as to
authorize this unusually early transfer from school to the
university. In 1628 he exchanged Queen’s College for
Sydney-Sussex College, and in the following year he was
presented by the master and fellows of Corpus Christi College
to the curacy of St. Benet’s, Cambridge. Within a twelvemonth
after—namely, in 1631—HE
[pg 222] made his first appearance
as an author. His Davia’s Heinous Sin, Hearty Repentance,
Heavy Punishment, which came out in that year, was his
sole adventure of noteworthy compass as a versifier; and he
certainly testified his discretion in choosing thenceforward
to be satisfied with writing prose. A valuable prebend
attached to the Salisbury Cathedral was bestowed on him at
this time, near about which he is supposed to have
delivered, in discourses, his so-called Comment on
Ruth. Next we hear of him as rector of Broadwindsor,
where, probably, he composed his History of the Holy
War, published in 1639. His Holy State was given
to the world in 1642. Having just before this removed to
London under circumstances which are involved in some
obscurity, he was there appointed lecturer to the Inns of
Court and to the Savoy Chapel. But trouble awaited him, as
it then awaited all other loyalists whom it had not
overtaken already, and 1643 found him a refugee at Oxford.
There he was warmly welcomed by the king and his adherents,
but on his imprudently daring to urge lenient counsels, his
moderation gave as much dissatisfaction to the court party
as it had previously given to the Parliamentarians, and he
fell into temporary disgrace. Nevertheless, he suffered, at
the hands of the anti-royalists, the same spoliation which
would have been visited on a malignant of the extremest
stamp. To fill up the measure of his misfortune—as if
it were not enough that he should be deprived of his stated
means of livelihood—he was despoiled of his library.
For a while, also, his loyalty was held, though without the
slightest grounds, in considerable suspicion. On coming to
be better known, however, he was restored to favor, and was
enrolled among the royal chaplains. If the doubts as to the
sincerity of his adhesion to Charles were ever actually
thought to have good foundation, they must have been
dissipated by his voluntarily exposing himself to danger, as
he did at one of the sieges of Basing House. Like Isaac
Barrow, he would at need have done duty militant just as
effectually with carnal weapons as with spiritual. No longer
required at Basing House, he repaired to Oxford again, and
then to Exeter, where he was nominated chaplain to the
princess Henrietta Anne. But he held his new post for only a
short period. Leaving Exeter, he once more sought Oxford,
and thence went to London. Forbidden to preach there, he
retired to Northamptonshire, and then reappeared at the
metropolis, where he was sojourning in the memorable year
1649. Becoming in that year curate of Waltham Abbey, he
enjoyed an interval of quietude while all around him was
turbulence. Yet he was soon in London afresh, lecturer at
various churches from 1651 till near the end of his life. In
1658 he was appointed rector of St. Dunstan’s, Cranford, but
we read of him as subsequently journeying to The Hague and
to Salisbury, and as preaching at the Savoy Chapel. It must
have solaced his latter days to reflect that he had survived
to welcome the Restoration. He died, from what is reasonably
surmised to have been typhus fever, on the 16th of August,
1661, and lies buried in the chancel of the church to which
he last ministered, at Cranford, Surrey.

Considering the unsettled and wandering life which Fuller
led for many years, it may seem almost a marvel that in those
very years he should have accomplished such
laborious—nay, all but gigantic—enterprises as are
to be referred to them; for it was then that he composed his
voluminous Pisgah-sight of Palestine, Church History and
Worthies, not to speak of many minor writings. But the
secret of his prolificness amidst surroundings which would have
paralyzed most men into stark sterility admits of ready
elucidation. Besides being endowed with great physical vigor
and enjoying uninterrupted health. Fuller never wasted a
moment, was an unweariable student at odd hours, and moreover
supplemented the advantage of a matchless memory by the
strictest observance of method. Taken for all in all, he was
without question one of the most remarkable of
Englishmen—not of his own age merely, but of all bygone
ages. “Next to Shakespeare,” says Coleridge, “I am not certain
whether Thomas Fuller, beyond all other writers, does not
excite in me the sense and emotion of the marvelous…. Fuller
was incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced, great
man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men.” Others among
his countrymen have been more learned, and others have
surpassed him in this or that special faculty, but the whole
that we have in him it would be hard to find a parallel to.
Culeridge emphasizes the equity of his judgment; and this point
is one regarding which there can be no diversity of opinion. As
to his wit, granting that its quality may here and there be
somewhat inferior, still, it
[pg 391] has probably never been
surpassed in quantity by any one man. It has the laudable
character, too, of being nearly always impersonal, and while
it amuses it almost in equal measure instructs. Had Fuller,
with his mental agility and his mastery of incisive diction,
been poisoned with the bile of Swift, it is terrible to
think what a repertory of biting sarcasms and envenomed
repartees he might have transmitted for the study and
imitation of cynics and sneerers. Bitterer enemies no man
ever had to contend against; and unenviable indeed must have
been their disappointment at finding themselves wholly
impotent to discompose his sage and large-hearted serenity.
So impressive, withal, is his spirit of toleration and
benevolence that a diligent reader of his pages is, as it
were, perforce imbued by it. Indeed, we know of few writers
whom we can point to with more confidence as calculated, in
antidote to the fret and chafe inseparable from existence in
our day, to induce a tone of repose and resignation in
ourselves, and a disposition to take charity as our
watchword in our dealings with others.

From Fuller we pass to Fuller’s new biographer, the only
biographer he has hitherto had that at all deserves the
appellation. A completer life-history than that which Mr.
Bailey has produced is of rare occurrence in English
literature. There was no motive for his keeping back anything
that is known of Fuller; and he has really enabled us to form
wellnigh as distinct an idea of the portly and cheery old
divine as if we had known him in the flesh. Faithful to rigid
justice while reproducing the warmly eulogistic judgments which
have been passed on Fuller, especially in this century, he has
given us a circumstantial account of the censures which were
denounced on him by microscopic and malevolent criticasters and
Dryasdusts among his contemporaries. Some of the censures
referred to were grounded on the multitudinous dedications in
which Fuller indulged; and, in truth, it strikes one as rather
singular to find, as in his Church History, not only
every book, but every section of a book, prefaced by a long
string of compliments addressed to a separate dedicatee. But
these dedications meant money, and Fuller was poor.
Furthermore, if in his necessity he flattered, his flattery
was, for the most part, of a kind not irreconcilable with due
self-respect on the part of the flatterer. It is a very
different thing from the nauseous adulation to which
Dryden—to name but one out of numerous kindred
offenders—consented to abase himself. As auxiliary to a
full understanding of Fuller in his social relations, his
dedications are now of prime value. Though many of them are
inscribed to persons else quite unknown to fame, with a good
number of them it is otherwise; and they serve, by the
information which they embody, to show that Fuller was on terms
of familiar intimacy with a whole host of notabilities in
Church and State. Of these personages, and so of many others
with whom Fuller associated, Mr. Bailey, heedful of the adage
noscitur a sociis, has compiled very satisfactory
sketches, derived in all cases from the most trustworthy
authorities. In addition to a Life of Fuller, he has thus gone
far to give us a sort of biographical dictionary of the leading
men, political and ecclesiastical, who rallied round the
unfortunate First Charles, and who used their most strenuous
diligence to save his desperate cause from shipwreck.

One who has already made acquaintance with Fuller’s writings
must feel animated, under the guidance of the new light now
thrown upon them, to renew that acquaintance; and he to whom
the wise and witty old worthy is as yet a stranger must, unless
obdurately insensible, be moved to a suspicion that he ought to
remain a stranger no longer. To Mr. Bailey we are beholden
alike for a biography of the first excellence, and for a
sterling contribution to the history of an era which possesses
undying interest for every Englishman, be he conservative,
liberal or republican; and for every intelligent American as
well. We are given to understand that the author has now in
contemplation the publishing of Fuller’s sermons, of which
there has never been a collective edition, and of which several
are among the rarest books in our language. The design is one
which challenges the furtherance of every lover of good
literature; and the Life, which, in parting, we
emphatically commend to our readers, should avail to secure for
it the encouragement it unquestionably merits.

The Greville Memoirs: A Journal of the Reigns of King
George IV. and King William IV. By Charles C.F. Greville.
Bric-à-Brac Series. New York: Scribner, Armstrong
& Co.

The distillation from Mr. Greville’s copious memoirs which
Mr. R.H. Stoddard has made [pg
392] for his interesting series is perhaps quite enough
of a good but not very noble thing. Our gossip-loving part is
not the proudest part of our nature, and Mr. Greville has but
two crowned kings of gossip to celebrate, so far. It is amusing
enough to see the disgusted clerk of council coming out of the
audience in a fret, and hear him saying, as he does in good set
terms, that the Fourth George is a spoiled, selfish, odious
beast. What must inevitably strike the republican mind is that,
after all, this sceptered beast was allowed to govern the
country and defend the faith through a long, peaceful and
stupid reign, and that his company was, on the whole, thought
preferable to his room by a free people. As for the next
monarch, William, never was there such a Roi Carotte, and
Offenbach seems to have been born to immortalize him in one of
his peculiar versions of history. He was not exactly a king in
a pantomime, for he talked incessantly, but he was such a
vulgar, malapert, meddling, fatuous squireen of a king that
etiquette lost its raison d’être in his presence,
and government ministers and foreign ambassadors laughed almost
openly at his folly—all except Talleyrand, who sat with
composed face through his dinner-speeches, and said softly that
they were “bien remarquable.” We cannot but think, however,
that in this delineation of two nursery-rhyme kings the artist
has put a bit of himself. If Mr. Greville had been really in
the current of the social and political questions of the day,
which included some wonderful reforms, instead of the born
bureaucrat that he obviously was, he would perhaps have got a
little more rational human nature into his portraits, or at
least have given more importance to their background and
surroundings. He writes himself down very clearly as a watcher
of scandals and lover of backstairs history; a man of elegance
and gentlemanly instincts in a rather small way; a person very
easily shocked at social maladdress; a reading man intensely
fond of literary company; and a racing man who periodically
laments that he cannot cure himself of his love of the turf.
Amiable, frank, and of that graceful mental bearing that
bespeaks good blood rather than good marrow, he is keen but
superficial in what he notices, and tries his tooth constantly
on the really great figures of the day, Brougham and
Wellington, who are objects of his dislike. It is harsh to say
so, but, in fact, Mr. Greville completes a triad with his pair
of vicious and narrow monarchs as he sails down the same
stream, snarlingly protesting, but quite unconscious of the
currents that are modifying the age. At present, as we know,
nous avons changé tout cela. British Virtue in
person is on the throne, and she disarms satire by handing her
memoirs in person for revision to the Greville of the day, who
happens to be Sir Arthur Helps; and this secretary is no
turfman, never in his voluminous writings betraying the least
acquaintance with a horse; but he is what is a great deal
better, a sort of burgher Lord Bacon, a philosopher replete
with the wisdom of the nineteenth century, and able to give it
out in genial chapters for the use of schools. From Greville to
Helps—both attached to one single monarchy—we see
what a step has been made, and how short a time now-a-days will
change types completely: Greville, padded, full of deportment,
devoted to the great, with simple faith in the institutions of
family, and criticising royalty with that petulant ease of a
valet which, in its way, is adhesion and adoration; and Helps,
a pamphleteer in six easy lessons, a pedagogue in guise of an
essayist, a man in the current of all our reforms—above
all, the meek editor of the queen’s
diaries.

Books Received.

The Bhagavad Gitá. Translated from the Sanskrit by J.
Cockburn Thompson. Chicago: Religio—Philosophical
Publishing House. S.S. Jones.

A Practical and Critical Grammar of the English Language. By
Noble Butler. Louisville, Ky.: J.P. Morton & Co.

The Puddleford Papers; or, Humors of the West. By H.H.
Riley. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Critical and Historical Essays. Contributed by Lord
Macaulay. New York: Albert Mason.

For Better or Worse. By Jennie Cunningham Croley. Boston:
Lee & Shepard.

Three Essays on Religion. By John Stuart Mill. New York:
Henry Holt & Co.

The Babes in the Wood. By James De Mille. Boston: W.F. Gill
& Co.

School of Singing. By F.W. Root. Chicago: George F. Root
& Sons.

Treasure-Trove. Central Falls, R.I.: E.L. Freeman &
Co.

Our Helen. By Sophie May. Boston; Lee & Shepard.

LIPPINCOTT’S MAGAZINE

OF

POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

MARCH, 1875.

Vol. XV, No. 87

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

AN ESCAPE FROM SIBERIA.

AUSTRALIAN SCENES AND ADVENTURES.

TWO PAPERS.—1.

FORECAST.

THE MATCHLESS ONE:

A TALE OF AMERICAN SOCIETY, IN FOUR CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

MUNICH AS A PEST-CITY.

AMONG THE BLOUSARDS.

SONNET.

THREE FEATHERS.

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF “A PRINCESS OF THULE.”

CHAPTER XXVI.

A PERILOUS TRUCE.

CHAPTER XXVII.

FURTHER ENTANGLEMENTS.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

FAREWELL!

LA MADONNA DELLA SEDIA.

A TRADITION.

EARLY TRAVELING EXPERIENCES IN INDIA.

ONCE AND AGAIN.

THE SCIENTIFIC LIFE.

PLAYING WITH FIRE.

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE TUSCAN COURT UNDER THE GRAND DUKE LEOPOLD.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

OLD ENGLISH CHARITIES.

LANDORIANA.

THE DEATH OF DOCTORS’ COMMONS.

THE LAY OF THE LEVELER.

THE PHILOSOPHER STRAUSS AS A POET.

DON JUAN.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Books Received.

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE TUSCAN COURT UNDER THE GRAND DUKE
LEOPOLD.