In a graveyard in Watertown, a village near Boston,
Massachusetts, there is a tombstone commemorating the claims of
the departed worthy who lies below to the eternal gratitude of
posterity. The inscription is dated in the early part of this
century (about 1810), but the name of him who was thus
immortalized has faded like the date of his death from my
memory, while the deed for which he was distinguished, and
which was recorded upon his tombstone, remains clear. “He built
the famous bridge over the Charles River in this town,” says
the record. The Charles River is here a small stream, about
twenty to thirty feet wide, and the bridge was a simple wooden
structure.

THE LYMAN VIADUCT.

Doubtless in its day this structure was considered an
engineering feat worthy of such posthumous immortality as is
gained by an epitaph, and afforded such convenience for
transportation as was needed by the commercial activity of that
era. From that time, however, to this, the changes which have
occurred in our commercial and industrial methods are so fully
indicated by the changes of our manner and method of
bridge-building that it will not be a loss of time to
investigate the present condition of our abilities in this most
useful branch of engineering skill.

In the usual archaeological classification of eras the Stone
Age precedes that of Iron, and in the history of
bridge-building the same sequence has been preserved. Though
the knowledge of working iron was acquired by many nations at a
pre-historic period, yet in quite modern times—within
this century, even—the invention of new processes and the
experience gained of new methods have so completely
revolutionized this branch of industry, and given us such a
mastery over this material, enabling us to apply it to such new
uses, that for the future the real Age of Iron will date from
the present century.

The knowledge of the arch as a method of construction with
stone or brick—both of them materials aptly fitted for
resistance under pressure, but of comparatively no tensile
strength—enabled the Romans to surpass all nations that
had preceded them in the course of history in building bridges.
The bridge across the Danube, erected by Apollodorus, the
architect of Trajan’s Column, was the largest bridge built by
the Romans. It was more than three hundred feet in height,
composed of twenty-one arches resting upon twenty piers, and
was about eight hundred feet in length. It was after a few
years destroyed by the emperor Adrian, lest it should afford a
means of passage to the barbarians, and its ruins are still to
be seen in Lower Hungary.

With the advent of railroads bridge-building became even a
greater necessity than it had ever been before, and the use of
iron has enabled engineers to grapple with and overcome
difficulties which only fifty years ago would have been
considered hopelessly insurmountable. In this modern use of
iron advantage is taken of its great tensile strength, and many
iron bridges, over which enormous trains of heavily-loaded cars
pass hourly, look as though they were spun from gossamer
threads, and yet are stronger than any structure of wood or
stone would be.

BLAST-FURNACES.

Another great advantage of an iron bridge over one
constructed of wood or stone is the greater ease with which it
can, in every part of it, be constantly observed, and every
failing part replaced. Whatever material may be used, every
edifice is always subject to the slow disintegrating influence
of time and the elements. In every such edifice as a bridge,
use is a process of constant weakening, which, if not as
constantly guarded against, must inevitably, in time, lead to
its destruction.

DUMPING ORE AND COAL INTO BLAST-FURNACES.

In a wooden or stone bridge a beam affected by dry rot or a
stone weakened by the effects of frost may lie hidden from the
inspection of even the most vigilant observer until, when the
process has gone far enough, the bridge suddenly gives way
under a not unusual strain, and death and disaster shock the
community into a sense of the inherent defects of these
materials for such structures.

The introduction of the railroad has brought about also
another change in the bridge-building of modern times, compared
with that of all the ages which have preceded this nineteenth
century. The chief bridges of ancient times were built as great
public conveniences upon thoroughways over which there was a
large amount of travel, and consequently were near the cities
or commercial centres which attracted such travel, and were
therefore placed where they were seen by great numbers. Now,
however, the connection between the chief commercial centres is
made by the railroads, and these penetrate immense distances,
through comparatively unsettled districts, in order to bring
about the needed distribution; and in consequence many of the
great railroad bridges are built in the most unfrequented
spots, and are unseen by the numerous passengers who traverse
them, unconscious that they are thus easily passing over
specimens of engineering skill which surpass, as objects of
intelligent interest, many of the sights they may be traveling
to see.

ELEVATOR.

The various processes by which the iron is prepared to be
used in bridge-building are many of them as new as is the use
of this material for this purpose, and it will not be amiss to
spend a few moments in examining them before presenting to our
readers illustrations of some of the most remarkable structures
of this kind. Taking a train by the Reading Railroad from
Philadelphia, we arrive, in about an hour, at Phoenixville, in
the Schuylkill Valley, where the Phoenix Iron-and Bridge-works
are situated. In this establishment we can follow the iron from
its original condition of ore to a finished bridge, and it is
the only establishment in this country, and most probably in
the world, where this can be seen.

THE ENGINE-ROOM.

These works were established in 1790. In 1827 they came into
the possession of the late David Reeves, who by his energy and
enterprise increased their capacity to meet the growing demands
of the time, until they reached their present extent, employing
constantly over fifteen hundred hands.

RUNNING METAL INTO PIGS.

The first process is melting the ore in the blast-furnace.
Here the ore, with coal and a flux of limestone, is piled in
and subjected to the heat of the fires, driven by a hot blast
and kept burning night and day. The iron, as it becomes melted,
flows to the bottom of the furnace, and is drawn off below in a
glowing stream. Into the top of the blast-furnaces the ore and
coal are dumped, having been raised to the top by an elevator
worked by a blast of air. It is curious to notice how slowly
the experience was gathered from which has re suited the
ability to work iron as it is done here. Though even at the
first settlement of this country the forests of England had
been so much thinned by their consumption in the form of
charcoal in her iron industry as to make a demand for timber
from this country a flourishing trade for the new settlers, yet
it was not until 1612 that a patent was granted to Simon
Sturtevant for smelting iron by the consumption of bituminous
coal. Another patent for the same invention was granted to John
Ravenson the next year, and in 1619 another to Lord Dudley; yet
the process did not come into general use until nearly a
hundred years later.

CARRYING THE IRON BALLS.

The blast for the furnace is driven by two enormous engines,
each of three hundred horse-power. The blast used here is, as
we have said, a hot one, the air being heated by the
consumption of the gases evolved from the material itself. The
gradual steps by which these successive modifications were
introduced is an evidence of how slowly industrial processes
have been perfected by the collective experience of
generations, and shows us how much we of the present day owe to
our predecessors. From the earliest times, as among the native
smiths of Africa to-day, the blast of a bellows has been used
in working iron to increase the heat of the combustion by a
more plentiful supply of oxygen. The blast-furnace is supposed
to have been first used in Belgium, and to have been introduced
into England in 1558. Next came the use of bituminous coal,
urged with a blast of cold air. But it was not until 1829 that
Neilson, an Englishman, conceived the idea of heating the air
of the blast, and carried it out at the Muirkirk furnaces. In
that year he obtained a patent for this process, and found that
he could from the same quantity of fuel make three times as
much iron. His patent made him very rich: in one single case of
infringement he received a cheque for damages for one hundred
and fifty thousand pounds. In his method, however, he used an
extra fire for heating the air of his blast. In 1837 the idea
of heating the air for the blast by the gases generated in the
process was first practically introduced by M. Faber Dufour at
Wasseralfingen in the kingdom of Würtemberg.

In this country, charcoal was at first used universally for
smelting iron, anthracite coal being considered unfit for the
purpose. In 1820 an unsuccessful attempt to use it was made at
Mauch Chunk. In 1833, Frederick W. Geisenhainer of Schuylkill
obtained a patent for the use of the hot blast with anthracite,
and in 1835 produced the first iron made with this process. In
1841, C.E. Detmold adapted the consumption of the gases
produced by the smelting to the use of anthracite; and since
then it has become quite general, and has caused an almost
incalculable saving to the community in the price of iron.

The view of the engines which pump the blast will give an
idea of the immense power which the Phoenix company has at
command. Twice every day the furnace is tapped, and the stream
of liquid iron flows out into moulds formed in the sand, making
the iron into pigs—so called from a fancied resemblance
to the form of these animals. This makes the first process, and
in many smelting-establishments this is all that is done, the
iron in this form being sold and entering into the general
consumption.

The next process is “boiling,” which is a modification of
“puddling,” and is generally used in the best iron-works in
this country. The process of puddling was invented by Henry
Cort, an Englishman, and patented by him in 1783 and 1784 as a
new process for “shingling, welding and manufacturing iron and
steel into bars, plates and rods of purer quality and in larger
quantity than heretofore, by a more effectual application of
fire and machinery.” For this invention Cort has been called
“the father of the iron-trade of the British nation,” and it is
estimated that his invention has, during this century, given
employment to six millions of persons, and increased the wealth
of Great Britain by three thousand millions of dollars. In his
experiments for perfecting his process Mr. Cort spent his
fortune, and though it proved so valuable, he died poor, having
been involved by the government in a lawsuit concerning his
patent which beggared him. Six years before his death, the
government, as an acknowledgment of their wrong, granted him a
yearly pension of a thousand dollars, and at his death this
miserly recompense was reduced to his widow to six hundred and
twenty-five dollars.

ROTARY SQUEEZER.

BOILING-FURNACE.

When iron is simply melted and run into any mould, its
texture is granular, and it is so brittle as to be quite
unreliable for any use requiring much tensile strength. The
process of puddling consisted in stirring the molten iron run
out in a puddle, and had the effect of so changing its atomic
arrangement as to render the process of rolling it more
efficacious. The process of boiling is considered an
improvement upon this. The boiling-furnace is an oven heated to
an intense heat by a fire urged with a blast. The cast-iron
sides are double, and a constant circulation of water is kept
passing through the chamber thus made, in order to preserve the
structure from fusion by the heat. The inside is lined with
fire-brick covered with metallic ore and slag over the bottom
and sides, and then, the oven being charged with the pigs of
iron, the heat is let on. The pigs melt, and the oven is filled
with molten iron. The puddler constantly stirs this mass with a
bar let through a hole in the door, until the iron boils up, or
“ferments,” as it is called. This fermentation is caused by the
combustion of a portion of the carbon in the iron, and as soon
as the excess of this is consumed, the cinders and slag sink to
the bottom of the oven, leaving the semi-fluid mass on the top.
Stirring this about, the puddler forms it into balls of such a
size as he can conveniently handle, which are taken out and
carried on little cars, made to receive them, to “the
squeezer.”

THE ROLLS.

To carry on this process properly requires great skill and
judgment in the puddler. The heat necessarily generated by the
operation is so great that very few persons have the physical
endurance to stand it. So great is it that the clothes upon the
person frequently catch fire. Such a strain upon the physical
powers naturally leads those subjected to it to indulge in
excesses. The perspiration which flows from the puddlers in
streams while engaged in their work is caused by the natural
effort of their bodies to preserve themselves from injury by
keeping their normal temperature. Such a consumption of the
fluids of the body causes great thirst, and the exhaustion of
the labor, both bodily and mental, leads often to the excessive
use of stimulants. In fact, the work is too laborious. Its
conditions are such that no one should be subjected to them.
The necessity, however, for judgment, experience and skill on
the part of the operator has up to this time prevented the
introduction of machinery to take the place of human labor in
this process. The successful substitution in modern times of
machines for performing various operations which formerly
seemed to require the intelligence and dexterity of a living
being for their execution, justifies the expectation that the
study now being given to the organization of industry will lead
to the invention of machines which will obviate the necessity
for human suffering in the process of puddling. Such a
consummation would be an advantage to all classes concerned.
The attempts which have been made in this direction have not as
yet proved entirely successful.

In the squeezer the glowing ball of white-hot iron is
placed, and forced with a rotary motion through a spiral
passage, the diameter of which is constantly diminishing. The
effect of this operation is to squeeze all the slag and cinder
out of the ball, and force the iron to assume the shape of a
short thick cylinder, called “a bloom.” This process was
formerly performed by striking the ball of iron repeatedly with
a tilt-hammer.

COLD SAW.

The bloom is now re-heated and subjected to the process of
rolling. “The rolls” are heavy cylinders of cast iron placed
almost in contact, and revolving rapidly by steam-power. The
bloom is caught between these rollers, and passed backward and
forward until it is pressed into a flat bar, averaging from
four to six inches in width, and about an inch and a half
thick. These bars are then cut into short lengths, piled,
heated again in a furnace, and re-rolled. After going through
this process they form the bar iron of commerce. From the iron
reduced into this form the various parts used in the
construction of iron bridges are made by being rolled into
shape, the rolls through which the various parts pass having
grooves of the form it is desired to give to the pieces.

HOT SAW.

RIVETING A COLUMN.

These rolls, when they are driven by steam, obtain this
generally from a boiler placed over the heating-or
puddling-furnace, and heated by the waste gases from the
furnace. This arrangement was first made by John Griffin, the
superintendent of the Phoenix Iron-works, under whose direction
the first rolled iron beams over nine inches thick that were
ever made were produced at these works. The process of rolling
toughens the iron, seeming to draw out its fibres; and iron
that has been twice rolled is considered fit for ordinary uses.
For the various parts of a bridge, however, where great
toughness and tensile strength are necessary, as well as
uniformity of texture, the iron is rolled a third time. The
bars are therefore cut again into pieces, piled, re-heated and
rolled again. A bar of iron which has been rolled twice is
formed from a pile of fourteen separate pieces of iron that
have been rolled only once, or “muck bar,” as it is called;
while the thrice-rolled bar is made from a pile of eight
separate pieces of double-rolled iron. If, therefore, one of
the original pieces of iron has any flaw or defect, it will
form only a hundred and twelfth part of the thrice-rolled bar.
The uniformity of texture and the toughness of the bars which
have been thrice rolled are so great that they may be twisted,
cold, into a knot without showing any signs of fracture. The
bars of iron, whether hot or cold, are sawn to the various
required lengths by the hot or cold saws shown in the
illustrations, which revolve with great rapidity.

FURNACE AND HYDRAULIC DIE.

For the columns intended to sustain the compressive thrust
of heavy weights a form is used in this establishment of their
own design, and to which the name of the “Phoenix column” has
been given. They are tubes made from four or from eight
sections rolled in the usual way and riveted together at their
flanges. When necessary, such columns are joined together by
cast-iron joint-blocks, with circular tenons which fit into the
hollows of each tube.

To join two bars to resist a strain of tension, links or
eye-bars are used from three to six inches wide, and as long as
may be needed. At each end is an enlargement with a hole to
receive a pin. In this way any number of bars can be joined
together, and the result of numerous experiments made at this
establishment has shown that under sufficient strain they will
part as often in the body of the bar as at the joint. The heads
upon these bars are made by a process known as die-forging. The
bar is heated to a white heat, and under a die worked by
hydraulic pressure the head is shaped and the hole struck at
one operation. This method of joining by pins is much more
reliable than welding. The pins are made of cold-rolled
shafting, and fit to a nicety.

The general view of the machine-shop, which covers more than
an acre of ground, shows the various machines and tools by
which iron is planed, turned, drilled and handled as though it
were one of the softest of materials. Such a machine-shop is
one of the wonders of this century. Most of the operations
performed there, and all of the tools with which they are done,
are due entirely to modern invention, many of them within the
last ten years. By means of this application of machines great
accuracy of work is obtained, and each part of an iron bridge
can be exactly duplicated if necessary. This method of
construction is entirely American, the English still building
their iron bridges mostly with hand-labor. In consequence also
of this method of working, American iron bridges, despite the
higher price of our iron, can successfully compete in Canada
with bridges of English or Belgian construction. The American
iron bridges are lighter than those of other nations, but their
absolute strength is as great, since the weight which is saved
is all dead weight, and not necessary to the solidity of the
structure. The same difference is displayed here that is seen
in our carriages with their slender wheels, compared with the
lumbering, heavy wagons of European construction.

VIEW OF MACHINE-SHOP.

Before any practical work upon the construction of a bridge
is begun the data and specifications are made, and a plan of
the structure is drawn, whether it is for a railroad or for
ordinary travel, whether for a double or single track, whether
the train is to pass on top or below, and so on. The
calculations and plans are then made for the use of such
dimensions of iron that the strain upon any part of the
structure shall not exceed a certain maximum, usually fixed at
ten thousand pounds to the square inch. As the weight of the
iron is known, and its tensile strength is estimated at sixty
thousand pounds per square inch, this estimate, which is
technically called “a factor of safety” of six, is a very safe
one. In other words, the bridge is planned and so constructed
that in supporting its own weight, together with any load of
locomotives or cars which can be placed upon it, it shall not
be subjected to a strain over one-sixth of its estimated
strength.

NEW RIVER BRIDGE ON ITS STAGING.

After the plan is made, working drawings are prepared and
the process of manufacture commences. The eye-bars, when made,
are tested in a testing-machine at double the strain which by
any possibility they can be put to in the bridge itself. The
elasticity of the iron is such that after being submitted to a
tension of about thirty thousand pounds to the square inch it
will return to its original dimensions; while it is so tough
that the bars, as large as two inches in diameter, can be bent
double, when cold, without showing any signs of fracture.
Having stood these tests, the parts of the bridge are
considered fit to be used.

BRIDGE AT ALBANY.

When completed the parts are put together—or
“assembled,” as the technical phrase is—in order to see
that they are right in length, etc. Then they are marked with
letters or numbers, according to the working plan, and shipped
to the spot where the bridge is to be permanently erected.
Before the erection can be begun, however, a staging or
scaffolding of wood, strong enough to support the iron
structure until it is finished, has to be raised on the spot.
When the bridge is a large one this staging is of necessity an
important and costly structure. An illustration on another page
shows the staging erected for the support of the New River
bridge in West Virginia, on the line of the Chesapeake and Ohio
Railway, near a romantic spot known as Hawksnest. About two
hundred yards below this bridge is a waterfall, and while the
staging was still in use for its construction, the river, which
is very treacherous, suddenly rose about twenty feet in a few
hours, and became a roaring torrent.

LA SALLE BRIDGE.

The method of making all the parts of a bridge to fit
exactly, and securing the ties by pins, is peculiarly American.
The plan still followed in Europe is that of using rivets,
which makes the erection of a bridge take much more time, and
cost, consequently, much more. A riveted lattice bridge one
hundred and sixty feet in span would require ten or twelve days
for its erection, while one of the Phoenixville bridges of this
size has been erected in eight and a half hours.

The view of the Albany bridge will show the style which is
technically called a “through” bridge, having the track at the
level of the lower chords. This view of the bridge is taken
from the west side of the Hudson, near the Delavan House in
Albany. The curved portion crosses the Albany basin, or outlet
of the Erie Canal, and consists of seven spans of seventy-three
feet each, one of sixty-three, and one of one hundred and ten.
That part of the bridge which crosses the river consists of
four spans of one hundred and eighty-five feet each, and a draw
two hundred and seventy-four feet wide. The iron-work in this
bridge cost about three hundred and twenty thousand
dollars.

The bridge over the Illinois River at La Salle, on the
Illinois Central Railroad, shows the style of bridge
technically called a “deck” bridge, in which the train is on
the top. This bridge consists of eighteen spans of one hundred
and sixty feet each, and cost one hundred and eighty thousand
dollars. The bridge over the Kennebec River, on the line of the
Maine Central Railroad, at Augusta, Maine, is another instance
of a “through” bridge. It cost seventy-five thousand dollars,
has five spans of one hundred and eighty-five feet each, and
was built to replace a wooden deck bridge which was carried
away by a freshet.

BRIDGE AT AUGUSTA, MAINE.

The bridge on the Portland and Ogdensburg Railroad which
crosses the Saco River is a very general type of a through
railway bridge. It consists of two spans of one hundred and
eighty-five feet each, and cost twenty thousand dollars. The
New River bridge in West Virginia consists of two spans of two
hundred and fifty feet each, and two others of seventy-five
feet each. Its cost was about seventy thousand dollars.

The Lyman Viaduct, on the Connecticut Air-line Railway, at
East Hampton, Connecticut, is one hundred and thirty-five feet
high and eleven thousand feet long.

These specimens will show the general character of the iron
bridges erected in this country. When iron was first used in
constructions of this kind, cast iron was employed, but its
brittleness and unreliability have led to its rejection for the
main portions of bridges. Experience has also led the best iron
bridge-builders of America to quite generally employ girders
with parallel top and bottom members, vertical posts (except at
the ends, where they are made inclined toward the centre of the
span), and tie-rods inclined at nearly forty-five degrees. This
form takes the least material for the required strength.

SACO BRIDGE.

The safety of a bridge depends quite as much upon the design
and proportions of its details and connections as upon its
general shape. The strain which will compress or extend the
ties, chords and other parts can be calculated with
mathematical exactness. But the strains coming upon the
connections are very often indeterminate, and no mathematical
formula has yet been found for them. They are like the strains
which come upon the wheels, axles and moving parts of
carriages, cars and machinery. Yet experience and judgment have
led the best builders to a singular uniformity in their
treatment of these parts. Each bridge has been an experiment,
the lessons of which have been studied and turned to the best
effect.

PHOENIX WORKS.

There is no doubt that iron bridges can be made perfectly
safe. Their margin is greater than that of the boiler, the
axles or the rail. To make them safe, European governments
depend upon rigid rules, and careful inspection to see that
they are carried out. In this country government inspection is
not relied on with such certainty, and the spirit of our
institutions leads us to depend more upon the action of
self-interest and the inherent trustworthiness of mankind when
indulged with freedom of action. Though at times this
confidence may seem vain, and “rings” in industrial pursuits,
as in politics, appear to corrupt the honesty which forms the
very foundation of freedom, yet their influence is but
temporary, and as soon as the best public sentiment becomes
convinced of the need for their removal their influence is
destroyed. Such evils are necessary incidents of our
transitional movement toward an industrial, social and
political organization in which the best intelligence and the
most trustworthy honesty shall control these interests for the
best advantage of society at large. In the mean time, the best
security for the safety of iron bridges is to be found in the
self-interest of the railway corporations, who certainly do not
desire to waste their money or to render themselves liable to
damages from the breaking of their bridges, and who
consequently will employ for such constructions those whose
reputation has been fairly earned, and whose character is such
that reliance can be placed in the honesty of their work.
Experience has given the world the knowledge needed to build
bridges of iron which shall in all possible contingencies be
safe, and there is no excuse for a penny-wise and pound-foolish
policy when it leads to disaster.

EDWARD ROWLAND.

SEARCHING
FOR THE QUININE-PLANT IN PERU.

SECOND PAPER.

The crystal peaks of the Andes were behind our explorers:
before, were their eastward-stretching spurs and their
eastward-falling rivers. On the mountain-flanks, as the last
landmark of Christian civilization, nestled the village of
Marcapata, whose square, thatched belfry faded gradually from
sight, reminding the travelers of the ghostly ministrations of
the padre and the secular protection of the gobernador. Neither
priest nor edile would they encounter until their return to the
same church-tower. Their patron, Don Juan Sanz de Santo
Domingo, was already picking his way along the snowy defiles of
the mountains to attain again his luxurious home in Cuzco.
Behind the adventurers lay companionship and
society—represented by the dubious orgies of the House of
Austria—and the security of civil
government—represented by the mortal ennui of a Peruvian
city. Before them lay difficulties and perhaps dangers, but
also at least variety, novelty and possible wealth.

Colonel Perez, Marcoy and the examinador retained their
horses, and a couple of the mozos their mules, the remainder of
the beasts being kept at livery in Marcapata, and the muleteers
volunteering to accompany the troupe as far as Chile-Chile: at
this point the bridle-path came to an end, and the gentlemen
would have to dismount, accompanying thenceforth their peons on
a literal “footing” of equality.

Two torrents which fall in perpendicular cataracts from the
mountains, the Kellunu (“yellow water”) and the Cca-chi
(“salt”), run together at the distance of a league from their
place of precipitation. They enclose in their approach the hill
on which Marcapata is perched, and they form by their
confluence the considerable river which our travelers were
about to trace, and which is called by the Indians Cconi
(“warm”), but on the Spanish maps is termed the river of
Marcapata.

“THE FIRST FORD OF THE CCONI WAS PASSED JUST OUTSIDE THE
TOWN.”

The first ford of the Cconi was passed just outside the
town, at a point where the right bank of the river, growing
steeper and steeper, became impracticable, and necessitated a
crossing to the left. The ford allowed the peons to stagger
through at mid-leg on the uneven pavement afforded by the large
pebbles of the bed. At this point the valley of the Cconi was
seen stretching indefinitely outward toward the east, enclosed
in two chains of conical peaks: their regular forms, running
into each other at the middle of their height, clothed with
interminable forests and bathed with light, melted regularly
away into the perspective. Indian huts buried in gardens of the
white lily which had seemed so beautiful in the chapel of
Lauramarca, hedges of aloe menacing the intruder with their
millions of steely-looking swords, slender bamboos daintily
rocking themselves over the water, and enormous curtains of
creepers hanging from the hillsides and waving to the wind in
vast breadths of green, were the decorations of this Peruvian
paradise.

The pretty lilies gradually disappeared, and the thatched
cabins became more and more sparse, when from one of the
latter, at a hundred paces from the caravan, issued a human
figure. The man struck an attitude in the pathway of the
travelers, his carbine on his shoulder, his fist on his hip and
his nose saucily turned up in the air. Neither his
Metamora-like posture nor his dress inspired confidence.

“He is evidently waiting for us,” remarked Colonel Perez, an
heroic yet prudent personage: “fortunately, it is broad day. I
would not grant an interview to such a salteador
(brigand) alone at night and in a desert.”

The salteador wore a low broad felt, on whose ample brim the
rain and sun had sketched a variety of vague designs. A gray
sack buttoned to the throat and confined by a leathern belt,
and trowsers of the same stuffed into his long coarse woolen
stockings, completed his costume. He was shod, like an Indian,
in ojotas, or sandals cut out of raw leather and laced
to his legs with thongs. Two ox-horns hanging at his side
contained his ammunition, and a light haversack was slung over
his back. This mozo, who at a distance would have passed for a
man of forty, appeared on examination to be under twenty-two
years of age. It was likewise observable on a nearer view that
his skin was brown and clear like a chestnut, and that his
lively eye, perfect teeth and air of decision were calculated
to please an Indian girl of his vicinity. To complete his
rehabilitation in the eyes of the party, his introductory
address was delivered with the grace of a Spanish cavalier.

“The gentlemen,” said he, gracefully getting rid of his
superabundant hat, “will voluntarily excuse me for having
waited so long with my respects and offers of service. I should
have gone to meet them at Marcapata, but my uncle the
gobernador forbade me to do so for fear of displeasing the
priest. Gentlemen, I am Juan the nephew of Aragon. It is by the
advice of my uncle that I have come to place myself in your
way, and ask if you will admit me to your company as
mozo-assistant and interpreter.”

The colonel, whose antipathy to the salteador did not yield
on a closer acquaintance, roughly asked the youth what he meant
by his assurance. Mr. Marcoy, however, was disposed to
temporize.

“If you are Juan the nephew of Aragon,” said he, “you must
have already learned from your uncle that we have engaged an
interpreter, Pepe Garcia of Chile-Chile.”

“Precisely what he told me, señor,” replied the young
man; “but, for my part, I thought that if one interpreter would
be useful to these gentlemen on their journey, two interpreters
would be a good deal better, on account of the fact that we
walk better with two legs than with one: that is the reason I
have intercepted you, gentlemen.”

This opinion made everybody laugh, and as Juan considered it
his privilege to laugh five times louder than any one, a quasi
engagement resulted from this sudden harmony of temper. Colonel
Perez shrugged his shoulders: Marcoy, as literary man, took
down the name of the new-comer. The nephew of Aragon was so
delighted that he gave vent to a little cry of pleasure, at the
same time cutting a pirouette. This harmless caper allowed the
party to detect; tied to his haversack, the local banjo, or
charango, an instrument which the Paganinis of the
country make for themselves out of half a calabash and the
unfeeling bowels of the cat.

“GENTLEMEN, I AM JUAN THE NEPHEW OF ARAGON.”

The priest, who had recommended Pepe Garcia, had made
mention of that person’s fine voice, with which the church of
Marcapata was edified every Sunday. The gobernador, while
putting in a word for his nephew, and particularizing the
beauty of his execution on the guitar, had insinuated doubts of
the baritone favored by the padre. Happy land, whose disputes
are like the disputes of an opera company, and where people are
recommended for business on the strength of their musical
execution!

Aragon quickly understood that his friend in the expedition
was not Colonel Perez, who had insultingly dubbed him the
Second Fiddle (or Charango). He attached himself therefore with
the fidelity of a spaniel to Mr. Marcoy, walking alongside and
resting his arm on the pommel of his saddle. After an hour’s
traverse of a comparatively desert plateau called the Pedregal,
covered with rocks and smelling of the patchouli-scented
flowers of the mimosa, Aragon pointed out the straw sheds and
grassy plaza of Chile-Chile. This rustic metropolis is not
indicated on many maps, but for the travelers it had a special
importance, bearing upon the inca history and etymological
roots of Peru, for it was the residence of their
interpreter-in-chief, Pepe Garcia.

Introduced by the latter, our explorers made a kind of
triumphal entry into the village. The old Indian women dropped
their spinning, the naked children ceased to play with the pigs
and began to play with the garments and equipage of the
visitors, and a couple of blind men, who were leading each
other, remarked that they were glad to see them.

Garcia the polyglot, radiant with importance, lost no time
in dragging his guests toward his own residence, a large straw
thatch surmounting walls of open-work, which took the fancy of
the travelers from the singular trophy attached above the door.
This trophy was composed of the heads of bucks and rams, with
those of the fox and the ounce, where the shrunken skin
displayed the pointed sierra of the teeth, while the
horns of oxen and goats, set end to end around the borders,
formed dark and rigid festoons: all vacancies were filled up
with the forms of bats, spread-eagled and nailed fast, from the
smallest variety to the large, man-attacking
vespertilio. As a contrast to this exterior decoration,
the inside was severely simple: it was even a little bare. A
partition of bamboo divided the hut into kitchen and bed-room,
and that was all. Into the latter of these apartments Pepe
Garcia dragged the saddles of his guests, and in the former his
two twin-daughters, melancholy little half-breeds in ragged
petticoats, assisted their father to prepare for the wanderers
a hunter’s supper.

Every moment, in a dark corner or behind the backs of the
company, Garcia was observed caressing these little girls in
secret. Being rallied on his tenderness, he observed that the
twins were the double pledge of a union “longer happy than was
usual,” and the only survivors of fifteen darlings whom he had
given to the world in the various countries whither his
wandering fortunes had led him. Still explaining and
multiplying his caresses, the man of family went on with his
exertions as cook, and in due time announced the meal.

This festival consisted of sweet potatoes baked in the
ashes, and steaks of bear broiled over the coals. The latter
viand was repulsed with horror by the colonel, who in the
effeminacy of a city life at Cuzeo had never tasted anything
more outlandish than monkey. Seeing his companions eating
without scruple, however, the valiant warrior extended his tin
plate with a silent gesture of application. The first mouthful
appeared hard to swallow, but at the second, looking round at
his fellow-travelers with surprise and joy, he gave up his
prejudices, and marked off the remainder of his steak with
wonderful swiftness. Standing behind his boarders, Pepe Garcia
had been watching the play of jaws and expressions of face with
some uneasiness, but when the colonel gave in his adhesion his
doubts were removed, and he smiled agreeably, flattered in his
double quality of hunter and cook.

The beds of the gentlemen-travelers were spread side by side
in the adjoining room, and Garcia gravely assured them that
they would sleep like the Three Wise Men of the East. Unable to
see any personal analogy between themselves and the ancient
Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar, the tired cavaliers turned in
without remarking on the subject. They paused a moment,
however, before taking up their candle, to set forth to Garcia
in full the circumstances and nature of Juan of Aragon’s
engagement. This explanation, which the close quarters of the
troop had made impossible during the journey, was received in
excellent part by the interpreter-in-chief.

“THE STRAW SHEDS AND GRASSY PLAZA OF CHILE-CHILE.”

“Oh, I am not at all jealous of Aragon,” said he, “and the
gentlemen have done very well in taking him along. He will be
of great use. He is a bright, capable mozo, who would walk
twenty miles on his hands to gain a piastre. As an interpreter,
I think he is almost as good as I am.”

Having thus smoothed away all grounds of rivalry, the
colonel, the examinador and Marcoy took possession of their
sleeping-room. Here, long after their light was put out, they
watched the scene going on in the apartment they had just left,
whose interior, illuminated by a candle and a lingering fire,
was perfectly visible through the partition of bamboo. The
dark-skinned girls, on their knees in a corner, were gathering
together the shirts and stockings destined for the parental
traveling-bag. Garcia, for his part, was occupied in cleaning
with a bit of rag a portentous, long-barreled carbine,
apparently dating back to the time of Pizarro, which he had
been exhibiting during the day as his hunting rifle, and which
he intended to carry along with him.

The sleep under the thatched roof of Pepe Garcia, though
somewhat less sound than that of the Three Magi in their tomb
at Cologne, lasted until a ray of the morning sun had
penetrated the open-work walls of the hut. The colonel rapidly
dressed himself, and aroused the others. A disquieting silence
reigned around the modest mansions of Chile-Chile. The
interpreter was away, Juan of Aragon was away, the muleteers
had returned, according to instructions received over-night, to
Marcapata with the animals, and the peons were found dead-drunk
behind the mud wall of the last house in the village.

After three hours of impatient waiting there
appeared—not Garcia and Aragon, whose absence was
inexplicable, but—the faithful Bolivian bark-hunters in a
body. Not caring to stupefy themselves with the peons, they had
gone out for a reconnoissance in the environs. Contemplating
the nodding forms of their comrades, they now let out the
discouraging fact that these tame Indians, madly afraid of
their wild brothers the Chunchos, had been fortifying
themselves steadily with brandy and chicha all the way from
Marcapata. Disgusted and helpless, Perez and the examinador
betook themselves to reading tattered newspapers issued at Lima
a month before, and Marcoy to his note-book. Suddenly a
ferocious wild-beast cry was heard coming from the woods, and
while the Indian porters tried to run away, and the white men
looked at each other with apprehension, Pepe Garcia and Aragon
appeared in the distance. Their arms were interlaced in a
brother-like manner, they were poising themselves with much
care on their legs, and they were drunk. Well had the elder
interpreter said that he was not jealous of Aragon. They rolled
forward toward the party, repeating their outrageous duet,
whose reception by the staring peons appeared to gratify them
immensely.

The mozo, feeling his secondary position, had enervated
himself slightly—the superior was magisterially tipsy. He
wore a remarkable hat entirely without a brim, and patched all
over the top with a lid of leather. His face, marked up to the
eyes with the blue stubble of that beard which filled him with
pride as a sign of European extraction, was swollen and hideous
with drunkenness. He carried, besides the fearful blunder-buss
of the night before, a belt full of pistols and hatchets. A
short infantry-sword was banging away at his calves, and two
long ox-horns rattled at his waist. The interpreters had been
partaking of a little complimentary breakfast with the
muleteers in whose care the animals had gone off to
Marcapata.

“CHAUPICHACA WAS MARKED WITH A SQUARE TERMINAL
PILLAR.”

A concentration of energy on the part of the chiefs of the
expedition was required to set in movement this unpromising
assemblage. The examinador undertook the peons: he rapped them
smartly and repeatedly about the head and shoulders, until they
staggered to their feet and declared that they were a match for
whole hordes of Indians: this courage, borrowed from the flask,
gave strong assurance that at the first alarm from genuine
Chunchos they would take to their heels. Mr. Marcoy, feeling
unable to do justice to the case of the nephew, turned him over
to Perez, whose undisguised dislike made the work of correction
at once grateful and thorough. Marcoy himself confronted the
stolid and sullen Pepe Garcia, insisting upon the example he
owed to the Indian porters and the responsibility of his
Caucasian blood. The half-breed listened for a minute, his eyes
fixed upon the ground: he then shook himself, looked an instant
at his employer, and planted himself firmly on his legs. Then,
determined to prove by a supreme effort that he was
clear-headed and master of his motions, he suddenly drew his
sword, hustled the Indians in a line by two and two, pointed
out to Aragon his position as rear-guard, and cried with a
voice of thunder, “Adelante!” The porters and peons
staggered forward, knocking against each other’s elbows and
tottering on their stout legs. The three white men, burdenless,
but regretting their horses, walked as they pleased, keeping
the train in sight. And John the nephew of Aragon’s guitar,
dangling at his back, brought up the rear, with its suggestions
of harmony and the amenities of life.

The first trait of aboriginal character (after this
parenthetical alacrity at drunkenness) was shown after some
hours of marching and the passage of a dozen streams. The
porters, weakened by their drink and the extreme heat, squatted
down on the side of a hill by their own consent and with a
single impulse. With that lamb-like placidity and that
mule-like obstinacy which characterize the antique race of
Quechuas, they observed to the chief interpreter that they were
weary of falling on their backs or their stomachs at every
other step, and that they were resolved to go no farther. Pepe
Garcia caused the remark to be repeated once more, as if he had
not understood it: then, convinced that an incipient rebellion
was brewing, he sprang upon the fellow who happened to be
nearest, haled him up from the ground by the ears, and, shaking
him vigorously, proceeded to do as much for the rest of the
band. In the flash of an eye, much to their astonishment, they
found themselves on their feet.

A judicious if not very discriminating award of blows from
the sabre then followed, causing the Indians to change their
resolve of remaining in that particular spot, and to show a
lively determination to get away from it as quickly as
possible. Each porter, forgetting his fatigue, and seeming
never to have felt any, began to trot along, no longer
languidly as before, but with a precision of step and a
firmness in his round calves which surprised and charmed the
travelers. Pepe Garcia, much refreshed by this exercise of
discipline, and perspiring away his intoxication as he marched,
began to give grounds for confidence from his steady and
authoritative manner. By nightfall the whole troop was in
harmony, and the strangers retired with hopeful hearts to the
privacy of the hammocks which Juan of Aragon slung amongst the
trees on the side of Mount Morayaca.

No effect could seem finer, to wanderers from another
latitude, than this first night-bivouac in the absolute
wilderness. The moon, seeming to race through the clouds, and
the camp-fire flashing in the wind, appeared to give movement
and animation to the landscape. The Indians, grouped around the
flame, seemed like swarthy imps tending the furnace of some
fantastic pandemonium. Meanwhile, amidst the constant murmurs
of the trees, the nephew of Aragon was heard drawing the notes
of some kind of amorous despair from the hollow of his
melodious calabash. The examinador and Colonel Perez lulled
themselves to sleep with a conversation about the beauties and
beatitudes of their wives, now playing the part of Penelopes in
their absence. To hear the eulogies of the examinador, an angel
fallen perpendicularly from heaven could hardly have realized
the physical and moral qualities of the spouse he had left in
Sorata. The Castilian tongue lent wonderful pomp and
magnificence to this portrait, and as the metaphors thickened
and the superb phrases lost themselves in hyperbole, one would
have thought the lady in question was about to fly back to her
native stars on a pair of resplendent wings. Colonel Perez
furnished an equally elaborate delineation of his own fair
helpmate. As for the wife of Lorenzo, nobody knew what she was
like, and the panegyric from the lips of her faithful lord
rolled on in safety and success. But the personage called by
Perez “his Theresa” was a female whom anybody who had passed
through the small shopkeeping quarters of Cuzco might have seen
every day, as well as heard designated by her common nickname
(given no one knows why) of Malignant Quinsy; and, arguing in
algebraic fashion from the known to the unknown, it was not
difficult to be convinced that the poetic flights of the
examinador were equally the work of fond flattery.

Surprised by a midnight storm, the camp was broken up before
the early daylight, and our explorers’ caravan moved on without
breakfast. This necessary stop-gap was arranged for at the
first pleasant spot on the route. An old clearing soon
appeared, provided with the welcome accommodation of an
ajoupa, or shed built upon four posts. At the command of
Alto alli!—”Halt there!”—uttered by Perez in
the tone he had formerly used in governing his troops, the
whole band stopped as one person; the porters dumped their
bales with a significant ugh! the Bolivian bark-hunters
laid down their axes; and the gentlemen arranged themselves
around the parallelogram of the hut, attending the commissariat
developments of Colonel Perez. The site which hazard had so
conveniently offered was named Chaupichaca. It was the scene of
an ancient wood-cutting, around which the trunks of the antique
forests showed themselves in a warm soft light, like the
columns of a temple or the shafts of a mosque.

A detail which struck the travelers in arriving was very
characteristic of these lands, filled so full of old traditions
and inca customs. Chaupichaca was marked with a square terminal
pillar, one of those boundaries of mud and stones, called
apachectas, which Peruvian masonry lavishes over the
country of Manco Capac. A rude cross of sticks surmounted this
stone altar, on which some pious hand had laid a nosegay, now
dried—signifying, in the language of flowers proper to
masons and stone-cutters, that the work was finished and left.
A little water and spirits spared from the travelers’ meal gave
a slight air of restoration to these mysterious offerings, and
a couple of splendid butterflies, whether attracted by the
flowers or the alcoholic perfume, commenced to waltz around the
bouquet; but the corollas contained no honey for their
diminutive trunks, and after a slight examination they danced
contemptuously away.

At seven or eight miles’ distance another streamlet was
reached, named the Mamabamba. It is a slender affluent of the
Cconi, to be called a rivulet in any country but South America,
but here named a river with the same proud effrontery which
designates as a city any collection of a dozen huts
thrown into the ravine of a mountain. The Mamabamba was crossed
by an extemporized bridge, constructed on the spot by the
ingenuity of Garcia and his men. Strange and incalculable was
the engineering of Pepe Garcia. Sometimes, across one of these
continually-occurring streams, he would throw a hastily-felled
tree, over which, glazed as it was by a night’s rain or by the
humidity of the forest, he would invite the travelers to pass.
Sometimes, to a couple of logs rotting on the banks he would
nail cross-strips like the rungs of a ladder, and, while the
torrent boiled at a distance below, pass jauntily with his
Indians, more sure-footed than goats. The wider the abyss the
more insecure the causeway; and the terrible rope-bridges of
South America, or the still more conjectural throw of a line of
woven roots, would meet the travelers wherever the cleft was so
wide as to render timbering an inconvenient trouble.
Occasionally, on one of these damp and moss-grown ladders, a
peon’s foot would slip, and down he would go, the load strapped
on his back catching him as he was passing through the
aperture: then, using his hands to hold on by, he would
compose, on the spur of the moment, a new and original language
or telegraphy of the legs, kicking for assistance with
all his might. Juan of Aragon was usually the hero to extricate
these poor estrays from the false step they had taken, the
other peons regarding the scene with their tranquil stolidity.
A glass of brandy to the unfortunate would always compose his
nerves again, and make him hope for a few more accidents of a
like nature and bringing a like consolation.

“THE MAMABAMBA WAS CROSSED BY AN EXTEMPORIZED
BRIDGE.”

The bridge of the Mamabamba conducted the party to a site of
the same name, through an interval of forest where might be
counted most of the varieties of tree proper to the equatorial
highlands. Up to this point the vegetation everywhere abounding
had not indicated the presence, or even the vicinage, of the
cinchona. The only circumstance which brought it to the notice
of the inexperienced leaders of the expedition would be a halt
made from time to time by the Bolivian bark-hunters. The
examinador and his cascarilleros, touching one tree or another
with their hatchets, would exchange remarks full of meaning and
mysteriousness; but when the colonel or Mr. Marcoy came to ask
the significance of so many hints and signals, they got the
invariable answer of Sister Anna to the wife of Bluebeard: “I
see nothing but the forest turning green and the sun turning
red.” The most practical reminder of the quest of cinchona
which the travelers found was an occasional ajoupa alone
in the wilderness, with a broken pot and a rusted knife or axe
beneath it—witness that some eager searcher had traveled
the road before themselves. The cascarilleros are very
avaricious and very brave, going out alone, setting up a hut in
a probable-looking spot, and diverging from their head-quarters
in every direction. If by any accident they get lost or their
provisions are destroyed, they die of hunger. Doctor Weddell,
on one occasion in Bolivia, landed on the beach of a river well
shaded with trees. Here he found the cabin of a cascarillero,
and near it a man stretched out upon the ground in the agonies
of death. He was nearly naked, and covered with myriads of
insects, whose stings had hastened his end. On the leaves which
formed the roof of the hut were the remains of the unfortunate
man’s clothes, a straw hat and some rags, with a knife, an
earthen pot containing the remains of his last meal, a little
maize and two or three chuñus. Such is the end to
which their hazardous occupation exposes the
bark-collectors—death in the midst of the forests, far
from home; a death without help and without consolation.

It was not until after passing the elevated site of San
Pedro, and clambering up the slippery shoulders of the hill
called Huaynapata—the crossing of half a dozen
intervening streamlets going for nothing—that the
explorers were rewarded with a sight of their Canaan, the
bark-producing region. To attain this summit of Huaynapata,
however, the little tributary of Mendoza had to be first got
over. This affluent of the Cconi, flowing in from the
south-south-west, was very sluggish as far as it could be seen.
Its banks, interrupted by large rocks clothed with moss,
offered now and then promontories surrounded at the base with a
bluish shade. At the end of the vista, a not very extensive
one, a quantity of blocks of sandstone piled together resembled
a crumbling wall. Other blocks were sprinkled over the bed of
the stream; and by their aid the examinador and the colonel
hopped valiantly over the Mendoza, leaving the peons, who were
less afraid of rheumatism and more in danger of slipping, to
ford the current at the depth of their suspender-buttons.

It was on the top of Huaynapata, while the interpreters
built a fire and prepared for supper a peccary killed upon the
road, that Marcoy observed the examinador holding with his
Bolivians a conversation in the Aymara dialect, in which could
be detected such words as anaranjada and morada.
These were the well-known commercial names of two species of
cinchona. The historiographer interrupted their conversation to
ask if anything had yet been discovered.

“Nothing yet,” replied the examinador; “and this valley of
the Cconi must be bewitched, for with the course that we have
taken we should long ago have discovered what we are after. But
this place looks more favorable than any we have met. I shall
beat up the woods to-morrow with my men, and may my patron,
Saint Lorenzo, return again to his gridiron if we do not date
our first success in quinine-hunting from this very hillock of
Huaynapata!”

“THE EXAMINADOR AND THE COLONEL HOPPED VALIANTLY OVER
THE MENDOZA.”

The above style of threatening the saints is thought very
efficacious in all Spanish countries. Whether or not Saint
Lawrence really dreaded another experience of broiling, at the
end of certain hours the Bolivians reappeared, and their chief
deposited in the hands of the colonel a few green and tender
branches. At the joyful shout of Perez, the man of letters, who
had been occupied in making a sketch, came running up. Two
different species of cinchona were the trophy brought back by
Lorenzo, like the olive-leaves in the beak of Noah’s dove. One
of these specimens was a variety of the Carua-carua,
with large leaves heavily veined: the other was an individual
resembling those quinquinas which the botanists Ruiz and Pavon
have discriminated from the cinchonas, to make a separate
family called the Quinquina cosmibuena. After all, the
discovery was rather an indication than a conquest of value.
The examinador admitted as much, but observed that the presence
of these baser species always argued the neighborhood of
genuine quinine-yielding plants near by.

In the presence of this first success on the part of the
exploration set on foot by Don Juan Sanz de Santo Domingo, we
may insert a few words on the nature of the wonderful plant
toward which its researches were directed.

It is doubtful whether the aboriginal inhabitants of Peru,
Bolivia and Ecuador were acquainted with the virtues of the
cinchona plant as a febrifuge. It seems probable, nevertheless,
that the Indians of Loxa, two hundred and thirty miles south of
Peru, were aware of the qualities of the bark, for there its
use was first made known to Europeans. It was forty years after
the pacification of Peru however, before any communication of
the remedial secret was made to the Spaniards. Joseph de
Jussieu reports that in 1600 a Jesuit, who had a fever at
Malacotas, was cured by Peruvian bark. In 1638 the countess Ana
of Chinchon was suffering from tertian fever and ague at Lima,
whither she had accompanied the viceroy, her husband. The
corregidor of Loxa, Don Juan Lopez de Canizares, sent a parcel
of powdered quinquina bark to her physician, Juan de Vega,
assuring him that it was a sovereign and infallible remedy for
“tertiana.” It was administered to the countess, who was
sixty-two years of age, and effected a complete cure. This
countess, returning with her husband to Spain in 1640, brought
with her a quantity of the healing bark. Hence it was sometimes
called “countess’s bark” and “countess’s powder.” Her famous
cure induced Linnaeus, long after, to name the whole genus of
quinine-bearing trees, in her honor, Cinchona. By modern
writers the first h has usually been dropped, and the
word is now almost invariably spelled in that way, instead of
the more etymological Chinchona. The Jesuits afterward
made great and effective use of it in their missionary
expeditions, and it was a ludicrous result of their patronage
that its use should have been for a long time opposed by
Protestants and favored by Catholics. In 1679, Louis XIV.
bought the secret of preparing quinquina from Sir Robert
Talbor, an English doctor, for two thousand louis-d’or, a large
pension and a title. Under the Grand Monarch it was used at
dessert, mingled with Spanish wine. The delay of its discovery
until the seventeenth century has probably lost to the world
numbers of valuable lives. Had Alexander the Great, who died of
the common remittent fever of Babylon, been acquainted with
cinchona bark, his death would have been averted and the
partition of the Macedonian empire indefinitely postponed.
Oliver Cromwell was carried off by an ague, which the
administration of quinine would easily have cured. The bigotry
of medical science, even after its efficacy was known and
proved, for a long time retarded its dissemination. In 1726, La
Fontaine, at the instance of a lady who owed her life to it,
the countess of Bouillon, composed a poem in two cantos to
celebrate its virtues; but the remarkable beauty of the leaves
of the cinchona and the delicious fragrance of its flowers,
with allusions to which he might have adorned his verses, were
still unknown in Europe.

The cinchonas under favorable circumstances become large
trees: at present, however, in any of the explored and
exploited regions of their growth, the shoots or suckers of the
plants are all that remain. Wherever they abound they form the
handsomest foliage of the forest. The leaves are lanceolate,
glossy and vividly green, traversed by rich crimson veins: the
flowers hang in clustering pellicles, like lilacs, of deep
rose-color, and fill the vicinity with rich perfume. Nineteen
varieties of cinchonae have been established by Doctor Weddell.
The cascarilleros of South America divide the species into a
category of colors, according to the tinge of the bark: there
are yellow, red, orange, violet, gray and white cinchonas. The
yellow, among which figure the Cinchona calisaya,
lancifolia, condaminea, micrantha, pubescens, etc., are
placed in the first rank: the red, orange and gray are less
esteemed. This arrangement is in proportion to the abundance of
the alkaloid quinine, now used in medicine instead of
the bark itself.

The specimens found by the examinador were carefully wrapped
in blankets, and the march was resumed. After a slippery
descent of the side of Huaynapata and the passage of a
considerable number of babbling streams—each of which
gave new occasion for the colonel to show his ingenuity in
getting over dry shod, and so sparing his threatening
rheumatism—the cry of “Sausipata!” was uttered by Pepe
Garcia. Two neat mud cabins, each provided with a door
furnished with the unusual luxury of a wooden latch, marked the
plantation of Sausipata. The situation was level, and within
the enclosing walls of the forest could be seen a plantation of
bananas, a field of sugar-cane, with groves of coffee,
orange-orchards and gardens of sweet potato and pineapple. The
white visitors could not refrain from an exclamation of
surprise at the neatness and civilization of such an Eden in
the desert. At this point, Juan of Aragon, who had been going
on ahead, turned around with an air of splendid welcome, and
explained that the farm belonged to his uncle, the gobernador
of Marcapata, who prayed them to make themselves at home.
Introducing his guests into the largest of the houses, Juan
presented them with some fine ripe fruit which he culled from
the garden. Colonel Perez, who never lost occasion to give a
sly stab to the mozo, asked, as he peeled a banana, if he was
duly authorized to dispose so readily of the property of his
uncle: the youth, without losing a particle of his magnificent
adolescent courtesy, replied that as nephew and direct heir of
the governor of Marcapata it was a right which he exercised in
anticipation of inheritance; and that just as Pepe Garcia, the
interpreter-in-chief, had regaled the party in his residence,
he, Juan of Aragon, proposed to do in the family grange of
Sausipata.

Meantime, the examinador, who had pushed forward with his
men, returned with a couple more specimens of quinquina, which
they had discovered close by in clambering amongst the forest.
Neither had flowers, but the one was recognizable by its flat
leaf as the species called by the Indians
ichu-cascarilla, from the grain ichu amongst
which it is usually found at the base of the Cordilleras; and
the other, from its fruit-capsules two inches in length, as the
Cinchona acutifolia of Ruiz and Pavon. To moderate the
pleasures of this discovery, the examinador came up leaning
upon the shoulder of his principal assistant, Eusebio,
complaining of a frightful headache, and a weakness so extreme
that he could not put one foot before the other.

The sudden illness of their botanist-in-chief cast a gloom
upon the party, and utterly spoiled the festive intentions of
young Aragon. Lorenzo was put to bed, from which retreat, at
midnight, his fearful groans summoned the colonel to his side.
The latter found him tossing and murmuring, but incapable of
uttering a word. His faithful Eusebio, at the head of the bed,
answered for him. The honest fellow feared lest his master
might have caught again a touch of the old fever which had
formerly attacked him in searching for cascarillas in the
environs of Tipoani in Bolivia. These symptoms, recurring in
the lower valleys of the Cconi, would make it impossible for
the brave explorer safely to continue with the party. As the
mestizo propounded this inconvenient theory, a new burst of
groans from the examinador seemed to confirm it. The grave news
brought all the party to the sick bed. Colonel Perez, whom the
touching comparison of wives made in the hammocks of Morayaca
had sensibly attached to Lorenzo, endeavored to feel his pulse;
but the patient, drawing in his hand by a peevish movement,
only rolled himself more tightly in his blanket, and increased
his groans to roars. Presently, exhausted by so much agony, he
fell into a slumber.

In the morning the examinador, in a dolorous voice,
announced that he should be obliged to return to Cuzco. This
resolution might have seemed the obstinate delirium of the
fever but for the mournful and pathetic calmness of the victim.
Eusebio, he said, should return with him as far as Chile-Chile,
where a conveyance could be had; and he himself would give such
explicit instructions to the cascarilleros that nothing would
be lost by his absence to the purposes of the expedition.
Yielding to pity and friendship, the colonel gave in his
adhesion to the plan, and even proposed his own hammock as a
sort of palanquin, and the loan of a pair of the peons for
bearers. They could return with Eusebio to Sausipata, where the
party would be obliged to wait for the three. After sketching
out his plan, Colonel Perez looked for approval to Mr. Marcoy,
and received an affirmative nod. The proposition seemed so
agreeable to the sick man that already an alleviation of his
misery appeared to be superinduced. He even smiled
intelligently as he rolled into the hammock. In a very short
time he made a sort of theatrical exit, borne in the hammock
like an invalid princess, and fanned with a palm branch out of
the garden by the faithful Eusebio.

“Poor devil!” said Perez as the mournful procession
departed: “who knows if he will ever see his dear wife at
Sorata, or if he will even live to reach Chile-Chile?”

“Do you really think him in any such danger?” asked the more
suspicious Marcoy.

“Danger! Did you not see his miserable appearance as he left
us?”

“I saw an appearance far from miserable, and therefore I am
convinced that the man is no more sick than you or I.”

On hearing such a heartless heresy the colonel stepped back
from his comrade with a shocked expression, and asked what had
given him such an idea.

“A number of things, of which I need only mention the
principal. In the first place, the man’s sickness falling on
him like a thunder-clap; next, his haste in catching back his
hand when you tried to feel his pulse; and then his smile, at
once happy and mischievous, when you offered him the peons and
he found his stratagem succeeding beyond his hopes.”

“Why, now, to think of it!” said the colonel sadly; “but
what could have been his motive?”

“This gentleman is too delicate to sustain our kind of
life,” suggested Marcoy. “He is tired of skinning his hands and
legs in our service, and eating peccary, monkey and snails as
we do. His Bolivians are perhaps quite as useful for our
service, and while he is rioting at Cuzco we may be enriching
ourselves with cinchonas.”

In effect, on the return of the peons ten days after, the
examinador was reported to have got quit of his fever shortly
after leaving Sausipata, and to have borne the journey to
Chile-Chile remarkably well. He charged his men to take back
his compliments and the regrets he felt, at not being able to
keep with the company.

Nothing detained the band longer at Sausipata. The ten days
of hunting, botanizing, butterfly-catching and sketching had
been an agreeable relief, and young Aragon had assumed, with
sufficient grace, the task of attentive host and first player
on the charango. The returning porters had scarcely enjoyed two
hours of repose when the caravan took up its march once
more.

As usual, the interpreters assumed the head of the command:
the Indians followed pellmell. Observing that some of them
lingered behind, Mr. Marcoy had the curiosity to return on his
steps. What was his surprise to find these honest fellows
running furiously through the farm, and devastating with all
their might those plantations which were the pride and the hope
of the nephew of Aragon! They had already laid low several
cocoa groves, torn up the sugar-canes, broken down the bananas,
and sliced off the green pineapples.

Indignant at such vandalism, Marcoy caught the first
offender by the plaited tails at the back of the neck. “What
are you doing?” he cried.

“I am neither crazy nor drunk, Taytachay” (dear little
father), calmly explained the peon with his placid smile. “But
my fellows and I don’t want to be sent any more to work at
Sausipata.” As the white man regarded him with stupefaction,
“Thou art strange here,” pursued the Indian, “and canst know
nothing about us. Promise not to tell Aragon, and I will make
thee wise.”

“Why Aragon more than anybody else?” asked Marcoy.

“Because Senor Aragon is nephew to Don Rebollido, the
governor, and Sausipata belongs to Rebollido; and if he were to
learn what we have done, we should be flogged and sent to
prison to rot.”

The explanation, drawn out with many threats when the
Indians had been driven from their work of ruin and placed once
more in line of march, was curious.

The able gobernador of Marcapata had had the sagacious idea
of making the local penitentiary out of his farm of Sausipata!
It was cultivated entirely by the labor of his culprits. When
culprits were scarce, the chicha-drinkers, the corner-loungers,
became criminals and disturbers of the peace, for whom a
sojourn at Sausipata was the obvious cure. Aragon, the nephew,
shared his uncle’s ability, and visited the plantation month by
month. But the life in this paradise was not relished by the
convicts. The regimen was strict, the food everywhere
abounding, was not for them, and the vicinity of the wild
Chunchos was not reassuring. Often a peon would appear in the
market-place of Marcapata wrapped merely in a banana leaf,
which, cracking in the sun, reduced all pretence of decent
covering to an irony. This evidence of the spoliation of a
Chuncho would be received in the worst possible part by the
gobernador, who would beat the complainant back to his
servitude, remarking with ingenuity that Providence was more
responsible for the acts of the savages than he was.

This strange history, told with profound earnestness, was
enough to make any one laugh, but Marcoy could not be blind to
its side of oppression and tyranny. This was the way, then,
that the humble and primitive gobernador, who had presented
himself to the travelers barefoot, was enriching himself by the
knaveries of office! Marcoy could not take heart to inform Juan
of Aragon of the devastation behind him, but on the other hand
he resolved to correct the abuse on his return by appeal, if
necessary, to the prefect of Cuzco.

A frightful night in a deserted hut on a site called
Jimiro—where Marcoy had for mattress the legs of one of
the porters, and for pillow the back of a
bark-hunter—followed the exodus from Sausipata. The
Guarapascana, the Saniaca, the Chuntapunco, flowing into the
Cconi on opposite sides, were successively left behind our
adventurers, and they bowed for an instant before the tomb of a
stranger, “a German from Germany,” as Pepe Garcia said, “who
pretended to know the language of the Chunchos, and who
interpreted for himself, but who starved in the wilderness near
the heap of stones you see.” Leaving this resting-place of an
interpreter who had interpreted so little, the party attained a
stream of rather unusual importance. The reputed gold-bearing
river of Ouitubamba rolled from its tunnel before them,
exciting the most visionary schemes in the mind of Colonel
Perez, to whom its auriferous reputation was familiar. Nothing
would do but that the California process of “panning” must be
carried out in these Peruvian waters, and the peons, multum
reluctantes, were summoned to the task, with all the
crow-bars and shovels possessed by the expedition, supplemented
by certain sauce-pans and dishes hypothecated from the culinary
department. The issue of the stream from under a crown of
indigenous growths was the site of this financial speculation.
Pepe Garcia was placed at the head of the enterprise. A long
ditch was dug, revealing milky quartz, ochres and clay. The
deceptive hue of the yellow earth made the search a long and
tantalizing one. At the moment when the colonel, attracted by
something glistening in the large frying-pan which he was
agitating at the edge of the stream, uttered an exclamation
which drew all heads into the cavity of his receptacle, an
answering sound from the heavens caused everybody suddenly to
look up. An equatorial storm had gathered unnoticed over their
heads. In a few minutes a solid sheet of warm rain, accompanied
by a furious tornado sweeping through the valley, caused whites
and Indians to scatter as if for their lives. The golden dream
of Colonel Perez and the similar vision entertained by Pepe
Garcia were dissipated promptly by this answer of the elements.
On attaining the neighboring sheds of Maniri the
gold—seekers abandoned their implements without remark to
the services of the cooks, and betook themselves to wringing
out their stockings as if they had never dreamed of walking in
silver slippers through the streets of Cuzco. They made no
further attempt to wring gold from the mouth of the Ouitubamba.
As for Maniri, it was the last site or human resting-place of
any, the very most trivial, kind before the opening of the
utter wilderness which proceeded to accompany the course of the
Cconi River.

“THE REPUTED GOLD-BEARING RIVER OR OUITUBAMBA ROLLED
FROM ITS TUNNEL.”

The Bolivians imagined an exploration of a little stream on
the left bank, the Chuntapunco, which they thought might issue
from a quinine-bearing region. They built a little raft, and
departed with provisions for three or four days. They returned,
in fact, after a week’s absence, with seven varieties of
cinchona—the hirsuta, lanceolata, purpurea and
ovata of Ruiz and Pavon, and three more of little value
and unknown names.

During the absence of the cascarilleros a flat calm reigned
in the ajoupa of Maniri. Garcia and the colonel, the day after
their unproductive gold-hunt, betook themselves into the
forest, ostensibly for game, but in reality to review their
hopeful labors by the banks of the Ouitubamba. Aragon was
detailed by Mr. Marcoy to accompany him in his botanical and
entomological tours. On these excursions the acquaintance
between the mozo and the señor was considerably
developed. The youth had naturally a gay and confident
disposition, and added not a little to the liveliness of the
trips. Marcoy profited by their stricter connection to converse
with him about the cultivation of the farm at Sausipata, making
use of a venial deception to let him think that the plan of
operations had been communicated by the governor himself.
Aragon modestly replied that the plantation in question was
only the first of a series of similar clearings contemplated by
his uncle at various points in the valley. Arrangements made
for this purpose with the governors of Ocongata and Asaroma,
who were pledged with their support in return for heavy
presents, would enable him soon to cultivate coffee and sugar
and cocoa at once in a number of haciendas. The enterprise was
a splendid one; and if God—Aragon pronounced the name
without a particle of diffidence—deigned to bless it, the
day was coming when the fortune of his uncle, solidly
established, would make him the pride and the joy of the
region.

It may as well be mentioned here that the subsequent career
of the chest-nut-colored interpreter is not entirely unknown.
In 1860, Mr. Clement Markham, collecting quinine-plants for the
British government, came upon a splendid hacienda thirty miles
from the village of Ayapata, in a valley of the Andes near the
scene of this exploration. Here, on the sugar-cane estate named
San José de Bellavista, he discovered “an intelligent
and enterprising Peruvian” named Aragon, who appears to have
been none other than our interpreter escaped from the
chrysalis. His establishment was very large, and protected from
the savages by two rivers, Aragon had made a mule-road of
thirty miles to the village. He found the manufacture of
spirits for the sugar-cane more profitable than digging for
gold in the Ouitubamba or hunting for cascarillas along the
Cconi. In 1860 he sent an expedition into the forest after wild
cocoa-plants. An india-rubber manufactory had only failed for
want of government assistance. He contemplated the
establishment of a line of steamers on the neighboring rivers
to carry off the commerce of his plantations. “Any scheme for
developing the resources of the country is sure to receive his
advocacy,” says Mr. Markham: “it would be well for Peru if she
contained many such men.”

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

PROBATIONER LEONHARD;
OR, THREE NIGHTS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.

CHAPTER I.

OUR HERO.

Young Mr. Leonhard Marten walked out on the promenade at the
usual hour one afternoon, after a good deal of hesitation, for
there was quite as little doubt in his mind as there is in mine
that the thing to do was to remain within-doors and answer the
letters—or rather the letter—lying on his table.
The brief epistle which conveyed to him the regrets of the new
female college building committee, that his plans were too
elaborate and costly, and must therefore be declined, really
demanded no reply, and would probably never have one. It was
the hurried scrawl from his friend Wilberforce which claimed of
his sense of honor an answer by the next mail. The letter from
Wilberforce was dated Philadelphia, and ran thus:

“DEAR LENNY: Please deposit five thousand for me in some
good bank of Pennsylvania or New York. I shall want it, maybe,
within a week or so. I am talking hard about going abroad. Why
can’t you go along? Say we sail on the first of next month.
Richards is going, and I shall make enough out of the trip to
pay expenses for all hands. You’ll never know anything about
your business, Mart, till you have studied in one of those old
towns. Answer. Thine,

“WIL.”

When I say that Leonhard had, or had had, ten
thousand dollars of Wilberforce’s money, and that he was now
about as unprepared to meet the demand recorded as he would
have been if he had never seen a cent of the sum mentioned, the
assertion, I think, is justified that his place was at his
office-table, and not on the promenade. What if the town-clock
had struck four? what if at this hour Miss Ayres usually
rounded the corner of Granby street on her way home? But, poor
fellow! he had tried to think his way through the
difficulty. Every day for a week he had exercised himself in
letter—writing: he had practiced every style, from the
jocular to the gravely interrogative, and had succeeded pretty
well as a stylist, but the point, the point, the bank deposit,
remained still insurmountable and unapproachable.

Once or twice he had thought that probably the best thing to
do was to go off on a long journey, and by and by, when things
had righted themselves somehow, find out where Wilberforce was
and acknowledge his letter with regrets and explanations. He
was considering this course when he destroyed his last effort,
and went out on the promenade to get rid of his thoughts and
himself and to meet Miss Ayres. The present contained Miss
Ayres; as to the future, it was dark as midnight; for the past,
it was not in the least pleasant to think of it, and how it had
come to pass that Wilberforce trusted him.

The days when he and Wilberforce were lads, poor,
sad-hearted, all but homeless, returned upon him with their
shadows. It was in those days that his friend formed so lofty
an estimate of his exactness in figures and his skill in
saving, and thus it had happened that when the engine
constructed by Wilberforce began to pay him so past belief, he
was really in the perplexity concerning places of deposit which
he had expressed to Marten. Leonhard chanced to be with this
young Croesus—who had begun life by dipping water for
invalids at the springs—when the ten thousand dollars
alluded to were paid him by a dealer; and the instant transfer
of the money to his hands was one of those off-hand
performances which, apparently trivial, in the end search a man
to the foundations.

What had become of the money? Seven thousand dollars were
swallowed up in a gulf which never gives back its treasure. And
oh on the verge of that same gulf how the siren had sung! A
chance of clearing five thousand dollars by investing that
amount presented itself to Leonhard: it was one of those
investments which will double a man’s money for him within
three months, or six months at latest. The best men of
A—— were in the enterprise, and by going into it
Leonhard would reap every sort of advantage. He might give up
teaching music, and confine himself to the studies which as an
architect he ought to pursue; and to be known among the
A—- landers as a young gentleman who had money to invest
would secure to him that social position which the
music-lessons he gave did no doubt in some quarters
embarrass.

It was while buoyed up by his “great expectations,” and
flattered by the attentions which strangely enough began to be
extended toward him by some of the “best men”—who also
were stockholders in the new sugar-refining process—that
Leonhard took a room at the Granby House, and began to manifest
a waning interest in his work as a music-master.

This display of himself, modest though it was, cost money.
Before the letter quoted was written Leonhard had begun to feel
a little troubled: he had been obliged to add two thousand
dollars to his original investment, and the thought that
possibly there might be a demand for a yet further
sum—for some unforeseen difficulty had arisen in the
matter of machinery—had fixed in his mind a misgiving to
which at odd moments he returned with a flutter of spirits
amounting almost to panic.

On the promenade he met Miss Ayres. She stood before the
window of a music-dealer’s shop, looking at the photograph of
some celebrity—a tall and not too slightly-formed young
lady, attired in a buff suit with brown trimmings, and a brown
hat from which a pretty brown feather depended. On her round
cheeks was a healthy glow, deepened perhaps by exercise on that
warm afternoon, and a trifle in addition, it may be, by the
sound of footsteps advancing. Yet as Leonhard approached, she,
chancing to look around, did not seem surprised that he was so
near. Not that she expected him! What reason had she for
supposing that from his office-window he would see her the
instant she turned the corner of Granby street and walked down
the avenue fronting the parade-ground? No reason of course; but
this had happened so many times that the meeting of the two
somewhere in this vicinity was daily predicted by the wise
prophets of the street.

A rumor was going about A—— in those days which
occasioned the mother of our young lady a little uneasiness.
When Leonhard came to A—— it was to live by his
profession—music. He was an enthusiast in the science,
and the best people patronized him. He might have all the
pupils he pleased now, and at his own prices, thought Mrs.
Washington Ayres, who had herself taught music: why doesn’t he
stick to his business? But then, she reminded herself, they say
he has money; and he is so bewitched about architecture that he
can’t let it alone. Too many irons in the fire to please me!
Perhaps, though, if he has money, it makes not so much
difference. But I don’t like to see a young man dabbling in too
many things: it looks as if he would never do anything to speak
of. It is the only thing I ever heard of against him; but if he
can’t make up his mind, I don’t know as there could be anything
much worse to tell of a man.

She was not far wrong in her thinking, and she had seen the
great fault in the character of young Mr. Marten. It was his
nature to take up and embrace cordially, as if for life, the
objects that pleased him. Perhaps the tendency conduced to his
popularity and reputation as a music-master, for his
acquaintance with the works of composers was really vast; but
the effect of it was not so hopeful when it set him to studying
a difficult art almost without instruction, in the confidence
that he should soon by his works take rank with Angelo, Wren
and other great masters.

At the music-dealer’s window Mr. Leonhard stood for a moment
beside Miss Marion, and then said with a queer smile, “How cool
it looks over yonder among the trees! I wish somebody would
like to walk there with an escort.”

“Anybody might, I should think,” answered the young lady. “I
have waded through hot dust, red-hot dust, all the afternoon.
Besides, I want to ask you, Mr. Marten, what it means.
Everybody is coming to me for lessons. Are you refusing
instruction, or are you growing so unpopular of late? I have
vexed myself trying to answer the question.”

“They all come to you, do they? Yes, I think I am growing
unpopular. And I am rather glad of it, on the whole,” answered
Leonhard, not quite clear as to her meaning, but not at all
disturbed by it.

“I know they must all have gone to you first,” she said. “Of
course they all went to you first, and you wouldn’t have
them.”

Leonhard smiled on. Her odd talk was pleasant to him, and to
look at her bright face was to forget every disagreeable thing
in the world. “You know I have been thinking that I would give
up instruction altogether,” said he; “but I suppose that unless
I actually go away to get rid of my pupils, I shall have a few
devoted followers to the last. The more you take off my hands
the better I shall like it.”

“But how should everybody know that you think of
giving up instruction?” Miss Marion inquired.

“Oh, I dare say I have told everybody,” he answered
carelessly.

“Ah!” said she; and two or three thoughts passed through the
mind of the young lady quite worthy the brain of her mother. “I
am half sorry,” she continued. “But at least you cannot forget
what you know. That is a comfort. And I am sure you love music
too well to let me go on committing barbarisms with my hands or
voice without telling me.”

Leonhard hesitated. How far might he take this dear girl
into his secrets? “My friend Wilberforce is always saying that
I ought to study abroad in the old European towns before I
launch out in earnest,” said he finally.

“As architect or musician?” asked the “dear girl.”

“As architect, of course,” he answered, without manifesting
surprise at the question. “He is going himself now, and he
wants me to go with him.”

“Why don’t you go?” The quick look with which he followed
this question made Miss Marion add: “It would be the best thing
in the world for—for a student, I should think. You said
once that your indecision was the bane of your life. I beg your
pardon for remembering it. When you have heard the best music
and seen the best architecture, you can put an end to this
‘thirty years’ war,’ and come back and settle down.”

“All very well,” said he, “but please to tell me where I
shall find you when I come home.”

“Oh, I shall be jogging along somewhere, depend.”

“With your mind made up concerning every event five years
before it happens? If you had my choice to make, you think, I
suppose, that you would decide in a minute which road to fame
and fortune you would choose.” Mr. Leonhard used his cane as
vehemently while he spoke as if he were a conductor swinging
his baton through the most exciting movement.

“I don’t understand your perplexity, that is the fact,” said
she with wonderful candor; “but then I have been trained to do
one thing from the time I could wink.”

“It was expected of me that I should rival the greatest
performers,” said Leonhard with a half-sad smile. “If I go
abroad now, as you advise—”

“Advise? I advise!”

“Did you not?”

“Not the least creature moving. Never!”

“If you did you would say, ‘Keep to music.'”

“I should say, ‘Keep to architecture.’ Then—don’t you
see?—I should have all your pupils.”

“That would matter little: you have long had all that I
could give you worth the giving, Miss Ayres.”

Were these words intent on having utterance, and seeking
their opportunity?

In the midst of her lightness and seeming unconcern the
young lady found herself challenged, as it were, by the stern
voice of a sentinel on guard. But she answered on the instant:
“The most delicious music I have ever heard, for which I owe
you endless thanks. I have said architecture; but I never
advise, you know.”

“She has not understood me,” thought Leonhard, but instead
of taking advantage of that conclusion and retiring from the
ground, he said, “Perhaps I must speak more clearly. I don’t
care what I do or where I go, Miss Marion, if you are
indifferent. I love you.”

What did he read in the face which his dark eyes scanned as
they turned full upon it? Was it “I love you”? Was it “Alas!”?
He could not tell.

“You are pledged to love ‘the True and the Beautiful,'” said
she quite gayly, “and so I am not surprised.”

Leonhard looked mortified and angry. A man of twenty-two
declaring love for the first time to a woman had a right to
expect better treatment.

“I have offended you,” she said instantly. “I only followed
out your own train of thought. You may have half a dozen
professions, and—”

“I am at least clear that I love only you,” he said. “I
hoped you would feel that. It is certain, I think, that I shall
confine myself to the studies of an architect hereafter. I will
give no more lessons. And shall you care to know whether I go
or stay?”

Miss Ayres answered—almost as if in spite of herself
and that good judgment for which she had been sufficiently
praised during her eighteen years of existence—”Yes, I
shall care a vast deal. That is the reason why I say, ‘Go, if
it seems best to you’—’Stay, if you think it more wise.’
I have the confidence in you that sees you can conduct your own
affairs.”

“If I go,” he cried in a happy voice, in strong contrast
with his words, “it will be to leave everything behind me that
can make life sweet.”

“But if you go it will be to gain everything that can make
life honorable. I did not understand that you thought of going
for pleasure.” Ah, how almost tender now her look and tone!

“Say but once to me what I have said to you,” said Leonhard
joyfully, confident now that he had won the great prize.

“Now? No: don’t talk about it. Wait a while, and we will see
if there is anything in it.” What queer lover’s mood was this?
Miss Marion looked as if she had passed her fortieth birthday
when she spoke in this wise.

“Oh for a soft sweet breeze from the north-east to temper
such cruel blasts!” exclaimed Leonhard. “Was ever man so
treated as I am by this strong-minded young woman?”

“Everybody on the grounds is looking, and wondering how she
will get home with the intemperate young gentleman she is
escorting. Did you say you were going to talk with your friend
Mr. Wilberforce about going abroad with him for a year or
two?”

“I said no such thing, but perhaps I may. I was going to
write, but it may be as easy to run down to Philadelphia.”

“Easier, I should say.”

So they talked, and when they parted Leonhard said: “If you
do not see me to-morrow evening, you will know that I have gone
to Philadelphia. I shall not write to let you know. You might
feel that an answer was expected of you.”

“I have never been taught the arts of a correspondent, and
it is quite too late to learn them,” she answered.

Miss Marion will probably never again feel as old as she
does this afternoon, when she has half snubbed, half flattered
and half accepted the man she admires and loves, but whose one
fault she clearly perceives and is seriously afraid of.

The next day Leonhard sat staring at Wilberforce’s letter
with a face as wrinkled as a young ape’s in a cold morning fog.
After one long serious effort he sprang from his seat, and I am
afraid swore that he would go down to Philadelphia that very
afternoon. Therefore (and because he clung to the determination
all day) at six o’clock behold him passing with his satchel
from the steps of the Granby House to the Grand Division
Dépôt. He was always going to and fro, so his
departure occasioned no remark. He supposed, for his own part,
that he was going to talk with his friend Wilberforce, and his
ticket ensured his passage to Philadelphia; and yet at eight
o’clock he found himself standing on the steps of the
Spenersberg Station, and saw the train move on. At the moment
when his will seemed to him to be completely demoralized the
engine-whistle sounded and the engine stopped. Utterly unnerved
by his doubts, he slunk from the car like an escaping convict,
and looked toward the narrow moonlit valley which was as a gate
leading into this unknown Spenersberg. The path looked obscure
and inviting, and so, without exchanging a word with any one,
he walked forward, a more pitiable object than is pleasant to
consider, for he was no coward and no fool.

CHAPTER II.

IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.

About the time that Leonhard Marten was paying for his
ticket in the dépôt at A——, how many
events were taking place elsewhere! Multitudes, multitudes
going up and down the earth perplexed, tempted, discouraged.
What were you doing at that hour? I wonder.

Even here, at this Spenersberg, was Frederick
Loretz—with reason deemed one of the most fortunate of
the men gathered in the happy valley—asking himself, as
he walked homeward from the factory, “What is the use?”

When he spied his wife on the piazza he seemed to doubt for
a second whether he should go backward or forward. Into that
second of vacillation, however, the voice of the woman
penetrated: “Husband, so early? Welcome home!”

The voice decided him, and so he opened his gate, passed
along the graveled walk to the piazza steps, ascended, wiping
the perspiration from his bald head, dropped his handkerchief
into his hat and his hat upon the floor, and sat down in one of
the great wide-armed wooden chairs which visitors always found
awaiting them on the piazza.

His wife, having bestowed upon him one brief glance, quickly
arose and went into the house: the next moment she came again,
bringing with her a pitcher of iced water and a goblet, which
she placed before him on a small rustic table. But a second
glance showed her that he was suffering from something besides
the heat and fatigue. There was a look on his broad honest face
that told as distinctly as color and expression could tell of
anguish, consternation, remorse. He drank from the goblet she
had filled for him, and said, without looking at his wife, “I
have brought you the worst news, Anna, that ever you heard.”
She must have guessed what it was instantly, but she made
neither sign nor gesture. She could have enumerated there and
then all the sorrows of her life; but for a moment it was not
possible even for her to say that this impending affliction
was, in view of all she had endured, a light one, easy to be
borne.

“It has gone against us,” said Mr. Loretz, picking up his
red silk handkerchief and passing it from one hand to another,
and finally hiding his face within its ample dimensions for a
moment.

“Do you mean the lot?” Her voice wavered a little. Though
she asked or refrained from asking, something had taken place
which must be made known speedily. Wherefore, then, delay the
evil knowledge?

He signified by a nod that it was so.

“And that is in store for our poor child!” said the
mother.

Mr. Loretz was now quite broken down. He passed his
handkerchief across his face again, and this time made no
answer.

Then the mother, with lips firmly compressed, and eyes bent
steadily upon the floor, and forehead crumpled somewhat, sat
and held her peace.

At last the father said, in a low tone that gave to his
strong voice an awful pathos, “How can the child bear it, Anna?
for she loves Spener well—and to love him
well!”

“Oh, father,” said the wife, who had by this time sounded
the depth of this tribulation, and was already ascending, “how
did we bear it when we had to give up Gabriel, and Jacob, and
dear little Carl?”

“For me,” said the man, rising and looking over the piazza
rail into the gay little flower-garden beneath—”for me
all that was nothing to this.”

“O my boys!” the mother cried.

“We know that they went home to a heavenly Parent, and to
more delight and honor than all the earth could give them,” the
father said.

“It rent the heart, Frederick, but into the gaping wound the
balm of Gilead was poured.”

“There is no man alive to be compared with Albert
Spener.”

“I know of one—but one.”

“Not one,” he said with an emphasis which sternly rebuked
the ill-timed, and, as he deemed, untruthful flattery. “There
is not his like, go where you will.”

“Ah, how you have exalted him above all that is to be
worshiped!” sighed the good woman, putting her hands together,
and really as troubled and sympathetic, and cool and
calculating, as she seemed to be.

“I tell you I have never seen his equal! Look at this place
here—hasn’t he called it up out of the dust?”

“Yes, yes, he did. He made it all,” she said. “It must be
conceded that Albert Spener is a great man—in
Spenersberg.”

“How, then, can I keep back from him the best I have when he
asks for it —asks for it as if I were a king to refuse
him what he wanted if I pleased? I would give him my life!”

“Ah, Frederick, you have! It isn’t you that denies
now—think of that! Remind him of it. Who spoke by
the lot? Where are you going, husband?”

Mr. Loretz had turned away from the piazza rail and picked
up his hat. His wife’s question arrested him. “I—I
thought I would speak with Brother Wenck,” said he, somewhat
confused by the question, and looking almost as if his sole
purpose had been to go beyond the sound of his wife’s
remonstrating voice.

“Husband, about this?”

“Yes, Anna.”

“Don’t go. What will he think?”

“Nobody knows about it yet, except Wenck, unless he spoke to
Brother Thorn.”

“Oh, Frederick, what are you thinking?”

“I am thinking”—he paused and looked fixedly at his
wife—”I am thinking that I have been beside myself,
Anna—crazy, out and out, and this thing can’t stand.”

“Husband, it was our wish to learn the will of God
concerning this marriage, and we have learned it. The
Lord——”

“I will go back to the factory,” said Mr. Loretz, turning
quickly away from his wife. “I must see if everything is right
there before it gets darker.” He had caught sight of the tall
figure of a woman at the gate when he snatched up his hat so
suddenly and interrupted his wife. Then he turned to her again:
“Is Elise within?”

“No, husband: she went to the garden for twigs this
afternoon.”

“She had not heard?”

“No. It is Sister Benigna that is coming. Must you go back?”
She poured another glass of water for her husband, and walked
down the steps with him; and coming so, out from the shade into
the sunlight, Sister Benigna was startled by their faces as
though she had seen two ghosts.

Two hours later, Mr. Loretz again turned his steps homeward,
and Mr. Wenck, the minister, walked with him as far as the
gate. They had met accidentally upon the sidewalk, and Mr.
Loretz must of necessity make some allusion to the letter he
had received from the minister that day acquainting him with
the allotment which had made of him so hopeless a mourner. The
good man hesitated a moment before making response: then he
took both the hands of Loretz in his, and said in a deep,
tender voice, “Brother, the wound smarts.”

“I cannot bear it!” cried Loretz. “It is all my doing, and I
must have been crazy.”

“When in devout faith you sought to know God’s will
concerning your dear child?”

“I cannot talk about it,” was the impatient response. “And
you cannot understand it,” he continued, turning quickly upon
his companion. “You have never had a daughter, and you don’t
understand Albert Spener.”

“I think,” said the minister patiently—”I think I know
him well enough to see what the consequence will be if he
should suspect that Brother Loretz is like ‘a wave of the sea,
driven with the wind and tossed.'”

Yet as the minister said this his head drooped, his voice
softened, and he laid his hand on the shoulder of Mr. Loretz,
as if he would fain speak on and in a different strain. It was
evident that the distressed man did not understand him, and
reproof or counsel was more than he could now bear. He walked
on a little faster, and as he approached his gate voices from
within were heard. They were singing a duet from The
Messiah.

“Come in,” said Loretz, his face suddenly lighting up with
almost hope.

Mr. Wenck seemed disposed to accept the invitation: then, as
he was about to pass through the gate, he was stayed by a
recollection apparently, for he turned back, saying, “Not
to-night, Brother Loretz. They will need all the time for
practice. Let me tell you, I admire your daughter Elise beyond
expression. I wish that Mr. Spener could hear that voice now:
it is perfectly triumphant. You are happy, sir, in having such
a daughter.”

As Mr. Wenck turned from the gate, Leonhard—our
Leonhard Marten—approached swiftly from the opposite side
of the street. He had been sitting under the trees half an hour
listening to the singing, and, full of enthusiasm, now
presented himself before Mr. Loretz, exclaiming, “Do tell me,
sir, what singers are these?”

Mr. Loretz knew every man in Spenersberg. He looked at the
stranger, and answered dryly, “Very tolerable singers.”

“I should think so! I never heard anything so glorious. I am
a stranger here, sir. Can you direct me to a public-house?”

To answer was easy. There was but the one inn, called the
Brethren’s House, the sixth below the one before which they
were standing. It was a long house, painted white, with a deep
wide porch, where half a dozen young men probably sat smoking
at this moment. Instead of giving this direction, however,
Loretz said, after a brief consultation with himself, “I don’t
know as there’s another house in Spenersberg that ought to be
as open as mine. I live here, sir. How long have you been
listening?”

“Not long enough,” said Leonhard; and he passed through the
gate, which had been opened for the minister, and now was
opened as widely for him.

CHAPTER III.

HIGH ART.

The room into which Mr. Loretz conducted Leonhard seemed to
our young friend, as he glanced around it, fit for the court of
Apollo. Its proportions had obviously been assigned by some
music-loving soul. It occupied two-thirds of the lower floor of
the house, and its high ceiling was a noticeable feature. The
furniture had all been made at the factory; the floor-mats were
woven there; and one gazing around him might well have wondered
to what useful or ornamental purpose the green willows growing
everywhere in Spenersberg Valley might not be applied. The very
pictures hanging on the wall—engraved likenesses of the
great masters Mozart and Beethoven—had their frames of
well-woven willow twigs; and the rack which held the books and
sheets of music was ornamented on each side with raised wreaths
of flowers wrought by deft hands from the same pliant
material.

At the piano, in the centre of the room, sat Sister
Benigna—by her side, Elise Loretz.

It seemed, when Elise’s father entered with the stranger, as
if there might be a suspension of the performance, but Loretz
said, “Two listeners don’t signify: we promise to make no
noise. Sit down, sir: give me your bag;” and taking Leonhard’s
satchel, he retired with it to a corner, where he sat down, and
with his elbows on his knees, his head between his hands,
prepared himself to listen.

Sister Benigna said to her companion, “It is time we
practiced before an audience perhaps;” and they went on as if
nothing had happened.

And sitting in that cool room on the eve of a scorching and
distracted day, is it any wonder that Leonhard composed himself
to accept any marvel that might present itself? Once across the
threshold of the Every-day, and there is nothing indeed for
which one should not be prepared.

If in mood somewhat less enthusiastic than that of our
traveler we look in upon that little company, what shall we
see?

In the first place, inevitably, Sister Benigna. But describe
a picture, will you, or the mountains, or the sea? It must have
been something for the Spenersberg folk to know that such a
woman dwelt among them, yet probably two-thirds of her
influence was unconsciously put forth and as unconsciously
received. They knew that in musical matters she inspired them
and exacted of them to the uttermost, but they did not and
could not know how much her life was worth to all of them, and
that they lived on a higher plane because of those half dozen
wonderful notes of hers, and the unflagging enthusiasm which
needed but the name of love-feast or festival to bring a light
into her lovely eyes that seemed to spread up and around her
white forehead and beautiful hair like a supernatural lustre.
There was a fire that animated her which nobody who saw its
glow or felt its warmth could question. Without that altar of
music—But why speculate on what she might have been if
she had not been what she was? That would be to consider not
Benigna, but somebody else.

She was accompanying Elise through Handel’s “Pastoral
Symphony.” Elise began: “He is the righteous Saviour, and He
shall speak peace unto the heathen.” At the first notes
Leonhard looked hastily toward the window, and if it had been a
door he would have passed out on to the piazza, that he might
there have heard, unseeing, unseen. While he sat still and
looked and listened it seemed to him as if he had been engaged
in foolish games with children all his life. He sat as it were
in the dust, scorning his own insignificance.

The young girl who now sat, now stood beside her, must have
been the child of her training. For six years, indeed, they
have lived together under one roof, sharing one apartment.
Within the hour just passed, that has been said by them toward
which all the talk and all the action of the six years has
tended, and the heart of the girl lies in the hand of the
woman, and what will the woman do with it?

Perhaps all that Benigna can do for Elise has to-day been
accomplished. It may be that to grow beside her now will be to
grow in the shade when shade is needed no longer, and when the
effect will be to weaken life and to deepen the spirit of
dependence. Possibly sunlight though scorching, winds though
wild, would be better for Elise now than the protecting shadow
of her friend.

Looking at Elise, Leonhard feels more assured, more at home.
She has a kindly face, a lovely face, he decides, and what a
deliciously rich, smooth voice! She is rather after the willowy
order in her slender person, and when she begins to sing
“Rejoice greatly,” he looks at her astonished, doubting whether
the sound can really have proceeded from her slender throat. He
is again reminded of Marion, but by nothing he hears or sees:
poor Marion has her not small reputation as a singer in
A——, yet her voice, compared with this, is as
wire—gold wire indeed—wire with a color of
richness at least; while Elise’s is as honey itself—honey
with the flavor of the sweetest flowers in it, and, too, the
suggestion of the bee’s swift, strong wing.

Into the room comes at last Mrs. Loretz. It is just as Elise
takes up the final air of the symphony that she appears. She
would look upon her daughter while she sings, “Come unto Him,
all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and He shall give you
rest. Take His yoke upon you, and learn of Him,” etc. Chiefly
to look upon her child she comes—to listen with her
loving, confident eyes.

But on the threshold of the music-room she pauses half a
second, perceiving the stranger by the window: then she nods
pleasantly to him, which motion sets the short silvery hair on
her forehead waving, as curls would have waved there had she
only let them. She wears a cap trimmed with a blue ribbon tied
beneath her chin, and such is the order of her comely gown and
apron that it commands attention always, like a true work of
art.

She sits down beside her husband, and presently, as by the
flash of a single glance indeed, has taken the weight and
measure of the gentleman opposite. She likes his appearance,
admires his fine dark face and his fine dark eyes, wonders
where he came from, what he wants, and—will he stay to
tea?

Gazing at her daughter, she looks a little sad: then she
smooths her dress, straightens herself, shakes her head, and is
absorbed in the music, beating time with tiny foot and hand,
and following every strain with an intentness which draws her
brows together into a slight frown. Elise almost smiles as she
glances toward her mother: she knows where to find enthusiasm
at a white heat when it is wanted. With the final repetition,
“Ye shall find rest to your souls,” the dame rises quickly, and
hastening to her daughter embraces her; then passing to the
next room, she pauses, perhaps long enough to wipe her eyes;
then the jingle of a bell is heard.

At the ringing of this bell, Sister Benigna rose instantly,
saying, “Welcome sound!” Loretz also came forth from his
corner. He was about to speak to Leonhard, when Benigna took up
the trombone which was lying on the piano, and said, “I am
curious to know how many rehearsals you have had, sir. It is
time, Elise, that our trombonist reported.”

Loretz, casting an eye toward his daughter, said, “Never
mind Sister Benigna. Our quartette will be all right.” Then he
turned to Leonhard: it was not now that he felt for the first
time the relief of the stranger’s presence. “We are going to
take food,” said he: “will you give me your name and come with
us?”

Leonhard gave his name, and moreover his opinion that he had
trespassed too long already on the hospitality of the
house.

To this remark Loretz paid no attention. “Wife,” he called
out, “isn’t that name down in the birthday
book—Leonhard Marten? I am sure of it. He was a
Herrnhuter.”

“Very likely, husband,” was the answer from the other room.
“Will you come, good people?” The good people who heard that
voice understood just what its tone meant, and there was an
instant response.

“Come in, sir,” said Loretz; and the invitation admitted no
argument, for he went forward at once with a show of alacrity
sufficient to satisfy his wife. “This young man here was
looking for a public-house. They are full at the Brethren’s, I
hear. I thought he could not do better than take luck with us,”
he said to her by way of explanation.

“He is welcome,” said the wife in a prompt, business-like
tone, which was evidently her way. “Daughter!” She looked at
Elise, and Elise brought a plate, knife and fork for “this
young man,” and placed them where her mother
indicated—that is, next herself. Between the mother and
daughter Leonhard therefore took refuge, as it were, from the
rather too majestic presence opposite known as Sister Benigna.
He should have felt at ease in the little circle, for not one
of them but felt the addition to their party to be a diversion
and a relief. As to Dame Anna Loretz, thoughts were passing
through her mind which might pass through the minds of others
also in the course of time should Leonhard prove to be a good
Moravian and decide to remain among them. They were thoughts
which would have sent a dubious smile around the board,
however, could they have been made known just now to Elise and
her father and Sister Benigna; and what would our young
friend—from the city evidently—have looked or said
could they have been communicated to him? Already the mind and
heart of the mother of Elise, disconcerted and distracted for
the moment by that untoward casting of the lot, had risen to a
calm survey of the situation of things; and now she was
endeavoring to reconcile herself to the prospect which
imagination presented to the eye of faith, If she had
perceived in the unannounced appearing of the young gentleman
who sat near her devouring with keen appetite the good fare
before him, and apologizing for his hunger with a grace which
ensured him constant renewal of vanishing dishes,—if she
had perceived in it a manifestation of the will of Providence,
she could not have smiled on Leonhard more kindly, or more
successfully have exerted herself to make him feel at home.

And might not Mr. Leonhard have congratulated himself? If
there was a “great house” in Spenersberg, this was that
mansion; and if there were great people there, these certainly
were they. And to think of finding in this vale cultivators of
high art, intelligent, simple-hearted, earnest, beautiful!

CAROLINE CHESEBRO’.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE IRISH CAPITAL.

The metropolis of Ireland about the middle of the last
century was the fourth in Europe in point of size. Since then
it has made little progress in comparison with many others. Yet
it is a large place, covering a great area, and holding a
population which numbers some three hundred thousand souls.

It may further be said that notwithstanding the withdrawal,
consequent on the Union, of the aristocratic classes from
Dublin, the city has improved more in the last fifty years than
at any previous period. Dublin, at the Union, and for some time
after, was a very dirty place indeed. To-day, although, from
that antipathy to paint common to the whole Irish
nation—which can apparently never realize the Dutch
proverb, that “paint costs nothing,” or the English one, that
“a stitch in time saves nine”—much of the town looks
dingy, it is, as a whole, cleaner than almost any capital in
Europe, so far as drainage and the sanitary state of the
dwellings are concerned. And here we speak from experience,
having last year, in company with detective officers, visited
all its lowest and poorest haunts.

The cause of this sanitary excellence is that matters of
this kind are placed entirely in the hands of the police, who
rigorously carry out the orders given to them on such points.
It is devoutly to be hoped that a similar system will ere long
be in vogue in the towns of our own country.

The noblesse have now quite deserted the Irish capital.
Besides the lord-chancellor, there is probably not a single
peer occupying a house there to-day. Houses are excellent and
very cheap. An immense mansion in the best situation can be had
for a thousand dollars a year. The markets are capitally
supplied, and the prices are generally about one-third of those
of New York. Not a single item of living is dear. But,
notwithstanding these and many other advantages, the place has
lost popularity, has a “deadly-lively” air about it, and, it
must be admitted, is in many respects wondrously dull,
especially to those who have been used to the brisk life of a
great commercial or pleasure-loving capital.

“Cornelius O’Dowd” paid a visit to Dublin in 1871 after a
long absence, and said some very pretty things about it. Never
was the company or claret better. Well, the fact was, that
while the great and lamented Cornelius was there he was
fêted and made much of. Lord Spencer gave him a dinner,
so did other magnates, and his séjour was one prolonged
feasting; but nevertheless the every-day life of the Irish
capital is awfully and wonderfully dull, as those who know it
best, and have the cream of such society as it offers, would in
strict confidence admit. From January to May there is an
attempt at a “season,” during the earlier part of which the
viceroy gives a great many entertainments. These are remarkably
well done, and the smaller parties are very agreeable. But
politics intervene here, as in everything else in Ireland, to
mar considerably the brilliancy of the vice-regal court. When
the Whigs are “in” the Tory aristocracy hold off from “the
Castle,” and vice versâ. Dublin is generally much
more brilliant under a Tory viceroy, inasmuch as nine-tenths of
the Irish peerage and landed gentry support that side of
politics. The vice-reign of the duke of Abercorn, the last
lord-lieutenant, will long be remembered as a period of
exceptional splendor in the annals of Dublin. He maintained the
dignity of the office in a style which had not been known for
half a century, and in this respect proved particularly
acceptable to people of all classes. Besides, he is a man of
magnificent presence, and has a fitting helpmate (sister of
Earl Russell) and beautiful daughters; and it was universally
admitted that the round people had got into the round holes, so
far as the duke and duchess were concerned.

The lord-lieutenant’s levees and drawing-rooms take place at
night, and are therefore much more cheerful than similar
ceremonials at Buckingham Palace. His Excellency kisses all the
ladies presented to him. The vice-regal salary is one hundred
thousand dollars, with allowances, but most viceroys spend a
great deal more. There are in such a poor country, where people
have no sort of qualms about asking, innumerable claims upon
their purses.

The office of viceroy of Ireland is one which prime
ministers find it no easy task to fill. Just that kind of
person is wanted for the office who has no wish to hold it. A
great peer with half a million of dollars’ income doesn’t care
about accepting troublesome and occasionally anxious duties,
from which he, at all events, has nothing to gain. For some
time Lord Derby was in a quandary to get any one who would do
to take it, and it may be doubted whether the marquis of
Abercorn would have sacrificed himself if the glittering
prospect of a coronet all strawberry leaves (for he was created
a duke while in office) had not been held before his eyes. The
vice-regal lodge is a plain, unpretending building. It is
charmingly situated in the Phoenix Park (1760 acres), and
commands delightful views over the Wicklow Mountains. Within,
it is comfortable and commodious. The viceroy resides there
eight months in the year. He goes to “the Castle” from December
to April. The Castle is “no great thing.” It is situated in the
heart of Dublin. Around it are the various government offices.
St. Patrick’s Hall is a fine apartment, but certainly does not
deserve the name of magnificent, and is a very poor affair
compared with the reception-saloons of third-rate continental
princes.

The Dublin season culminates, so far at least as the
vice-regal entertainments go, in the ball given here on St.
Patrick’s Day (March 17). On such occasions it is de
rigueur to wear a court-dress. Even those who venture to
appear in the regulation trowsers admissible at a levee at St.
James’s are seriously cautioned “not to do it again.”

Though Dublin is now deserted by the aristocracy, most of
the grand-seigneur mansions are still standing. Leinster
House, built about 1760, and said to have served as a model for
the “White House,” was in 1815 sold by the duke to the Royal
Dublin Society. Up to 1868 the duke of
Leinster [1] was Ireland’s only duke, and the
house is certainly a stately and appropriate ducal
residence.

It must, however, be confessed that there is something
decidedly triste and severe about this big mansion. A
celebrated whilom tenant of it, Lord Edward Fitzgerald,
appeared to think so, for in 1791 he writes to his mother,
after his return from the bright and sunny atmosphere of
America: “I confess Leinster House does not inspire the
brightest ideas. By the by, what a melancholy house it is! You
can’t conceive how much it appeared so when first we came from
Kildare. A country housemaid I brought with me cried for two
days, and said she thought that she was in a prison.” It was at
Leinster House that “Lord Edward”—he is to this day
always thus known by the people of Ireland, who never think it
needful to add his surname—after having joined “the
United Irishmen,” had interviews with the informer Reynolds,
who, it is believed, afterward betrayed him.

Lady Sarah Napier, mother of Sir William Napier, the
well-known historian of the Peninsular War, and other eminent
sons, was aunt to Lord Edward, being sister of his mother.
These ladies were daughters of the duke of Richmond, and Lady
Sarah was remarkable as being a lady to whom George III. was
passionately attached, and whom, but for the vehement
opposition of his mother and her entourage, he would
have married. In a journal of this lady’s I find the following
interesting account of the search for her nephew: “The separate
warrant went by a messenger, attended by the sheriff and a
party of soldiers, into Leinster House. The servants ran to
Lady Edward, who was ill, and told her. She said directly,
‘There is no help: send them up.’ They asked very civilly for
her papers and for Edward’s, and she gave them all. Her
apparent distress moved Major O’Kelly to tears, and their whole
conduct was proper.”

Lady Edward Fitzgerald (whose husband had served under Lord
Moira in America) was at Moira House on the evening of her
husband’s arrest. Writing from Castletown, county Kildare, two
days after that event, Lady Louisa Connolly, Lord Edward’s
aunt, says: “As soon as Edward’s wound was dressed he desired
the private secretary at the Castle to write for him to Lady
Edward and tell her what had happened. The secretary carried
the note himself. Lady E. was at Moira House, and a servant of
Lady Mountcashel’s came soon after to forbid Lady Edward’s
servants saying anything to her that night.” She continued,
after Lord E.’s death, to reside at Moira House till obliged by
an order of the privy council to retire to England, where she
became the guest of her husband’s uncle, the duke of
Richmond. [2]

Lady Moira, who so kindly befriended Lady Edward, was
unquestionably a very remarkable woman, and had considerable
influence, politically and socially, in the Dublin of her day.
Although an Englishwoman, she became in some respects ipsis
Hibernis Hibernior, and for a very long period prior to her
death never quitted the soil of Ireland. Had the Irish
aristocracy generally been of the complexion of those who
assembled in the more intimate reunions at Moira House, the
history of that country during the past century would have been
a widely different one. The members of that brilliant circle
were thorough anti-Unionists, and Lord Moira and his
sons-in-law, the earls of Granard and Mountcashel, proved that
they were not to be conciliated by bribes, either in money or
honors, by entering their formal protest against that measure
on the books of the Irish House of Lords.

When the delegates on behalf of Catholic claims came to
London in 1792, it was this enlightened Irish nobleman who
received them, and who, in the event of the minister declining
to admit them, intended as a peer to have claimed an audience
of the king. Lord Moira both in the English and Irish Houses of
Peers denounced the oppressive measures of the government, and
his opposition gave so much offence that the English general
Lake was reported to hayer declared that if a town in the North
was to be burnt, they had best begin with Lord Moira’s, causing
him so much apprehension that he removed his collection, which
was of extraordinary value, from his seat, Moira Hall, in the
county Down, to England.

The celebrated John Wesley visited Lady Moira at Moira House
in 1775, “and was surprised to observe, though not a more
grand, a far more elegant room than he had ever seen in
England. It was an octagon, about twenty feet square, and
fifteen or sixteen high, having one window (the sides of it
inlaid throughout with mother-of-pearl) reaching from the top
of the room to the bottom: the ceiling, sides and furniture of
the room were equally elegant.” It was here that two of the
greatest members of their respective legislatures—Charles
Fox and Henry Grattan—first met in 1777, and Moira House
continued to be the scene of splendid entertainments up to the
death of the first Lord Moira, in 1793. Wesley concludes his
letter about Moira House by asking, “Must this too pass away
like a dream?” Whether like a dream or no, it certainly has
been signally the fate of this whilom proud mansion to pass
from the highest to the very humblest almost at a bound. For
some years after Lady Moira’s death (in 1808) the house was
kept up by the family, but in 1826 it was let to an
anti-mendicity society. The upper story was removed, the
mansion was stripped throughout of its splendid
decorations—some of the furniture is now at Castle
Forbes, the seat of the earl of Granard, Lady Moira’s
great-grandson, a worthy descendant—and the saloons which
were wont to be thronged with the most brilliant and splendid
society of the Irish metropolis in its heyday are now the abode
of perhaps the very poorest outcasts who are to be found in the
whole wide world.

The district in which Moira House stands has long ceased to
be fashionable. The mansion stands close to the Liffey, a few
yards back from the road. An elderly man who has charge of the
mendicity institution for whose purposes the house is at
present used, told me that he remembered it when kept up by the
family, although its members were not actually residing there.
What is now a fearfully dreary courtyard, where the outcasts of
Dublin disport themselves, was then, he said, a fine garden
with splendid mulberry trees, which he, being a favorite with
the gardener, was permitted to climb—a circumstance which
had naturally impressed itself on his childish memory. I told
him that I had heard that long after the difficulties of the
first marquis—who lent one hundred thousand pounds to
George the Magnificent when that glorious prince was at the
last gasp for £ s. d.—had compelled him to
part with his large estates; in the county Down, he had
retained possession of this mansion, and that it had even
descended to the last marquis, whose wild career concluded when
he was only six-and-twenty; but the old man thought it had
passed from them long before. He remembered, he said, the last
peer (with whom the title became extinct) coming to Dublin,
because he had an interview with him about some furniture for
his yacht, my informant being at that time in business, and he
thought he should have heard if the property had been still
retained. I asked if the marquis had exhibited any interest as
to the old historical mansion of his family. “Not the
slightest,” he replied.

Hardy, in his well-known life of Lord Charlemont, says: “His
(Lord Moira’s) house will be long, very long, remembered: it
was for many years the seat of refined hospitality, of good
nature and of good conversation. In doing the honors of it,
Lord Moira had certainly one advantage above most men, for he
had every assistance that true magnificence, the nobleness of
manners peculiar to exalted birth, and talents for society the
most cultivated, could give him in his illustrious
countess.”

Powerscourt House, a really noble mansion in St. Andrew
street, is now used by a great wholesale firm, but is so little
altered that it could be fitted for a private residence again
in a very brief time. The staircase is grand in proportion, and
the steps and balustrades are of polished mahogany, the last
being richly carved.

Tyrone House is now the Education Office, and Mornington
House, where Wellington’s father resided, and where or at
Dangan—for it is a doubtful point—the duke was
born, is also used for government purposes.

The great squares of Dublin are St. Stephen’s Green,
Rutland, Mountjoy, Merrion and Fitzwilliam Squares. The first
of these dates from the latter half of the seventeenth century,
and is probably in a far more prosperous condition now than it
ever was before. If we are to judge by Whitelaw’s history, it
presented in 1819 an aspect such as no public square out of
Dublin—the enclosure of Leicester Square, London,
excepted—could present. “Of that kind of architectural
beauty,” he says, “which arises from symmetry and regularity,
here are no traces.” Some houses were on a level with the
streets, others were approached by a grand perron. The
proprietors were of all degrees: here was the great house of a
lord, there a miserable dramshop. The enclosure consisted of no
less than thirteen acres, making Stephen’s Green the largest
public square in Europe. It was simply a great treeless field,
with an equestrian statue of George II. stuck in the middle of
it. The principal entrance to the ground is described as
“decorated with four piers of black stone crowned with globes
of mountain granite, once respectable, but exhibiting shameful
symptoms of neglect and decay.” There had been a gravel walk
called the “Beaux’ Walk,” from its having been a fashionable
resort, “but,” says Whitelaw, “the ditch which bounds it is now
usually filled with stagnant water, which seems to be the
appropriate receptacle of animal bodies in a disgusting state
of putrefaction.” At night this charming recreation-ground was
illumined by twenty-six lamps, at a distance of one hundred and
seventy feet from each other, stuck on wooden poles. Such an
account of the grand square of Dublin does not make one
surprised to learn that the main approach to it from the heart
of the city was of a very miserable description.

In reading Whitelaw’s history of Dublin it is impossible not
to be struck with the fact that it records a degree of neglect
and indifference on the part of the people and the local
authorities to beauty, decency and order such as could scarcely
be found in another country. In the centre of Merrion Square
was a fountain of very ambitious expense and design, erected to
the honor of the duke and duchess of Rutland, a lord and lady
lieutenant. The fountain was only finished in 1791, but “from a
fault in the foundation, or some shameful negligence in the
construction, is already cracked and bulged in several places;
and though intended as a monument to perpetuate the memory of
an illustrious nobleman and his heroic father (the famous Lord
Granby), is, after an existence of only sixteen years,
tottering to its fall.” Mr. Whitelaw continues: “Unhappily,
a savage barbarism that seems hostile to every idea of order
or decency, of beauty and elegance, prevails among but too many
of the lower orders; and hence the decorations of almost
every public fountain have been destroyed or disfigured: the
figure, shamefully mutilated, of the water-nymph in this
fountain has been reduced to a disgusting trunk, and the
alto relievo over it shows equal symptoms of decay,
arising partly from violence, and partly, perhaps, from the
perishable nature of the materials.” Truly a forcible picture
of art and the appreciation thereof in Ireland!

During the last century some Italians came to Dublin, who
left their mark upon the interior decorations of rich men’s
houses. Many of the old houses retain the beautiful
mantelpieces designed and executed by these accomplished
artists. A leading house-fitter of Dublin has, however, bought
up a good many, and they are finding their way to London, where
it is to be hoped they may produce a revolution in taste, for
London mantelpieces are, as a rule, hideous. Some of these
specimens of art have been bought by wealthy Irishmen and
transferred to their country-houses. One nobleman, Lord
Langford, whose ancestral home was wrecked in the rebellion of
1798, has lately been restoring it, and bought up many of the
Dublin mantelpieces.

The ornamentation of Belvedere House, in Gardener Row, is
particularly elaborate and in wonderfully good repair.

Irish family history contains few sadder stories than that
of the first countess of Belvedere. Lord Belvedere was a man of
fashion who much frequented St. James’s, and indeed owed his
elevation, first to a barony and then to an earldom, to the
favor of that highly uninteresting monarch, George II. Leaving
his wife sometimes for long periods at Gaulston, a vast and
dreary residence (since pulled down) in Westmeath, he betook
himself to London, and Lady Belvedere at such times lived much
with her husband’s brother, Mr. Arthur Rochfort, and his
family. It is said that some woman with whom Lord Belvedere had
long been connected was determined to make mischief between him
and his wife. Eight years after their marriage, Lady Belvedere
was accused of adultery with Mr. Rochfort: in an action of
crim. con. damages to the extent of twenty thousand
pounds were given, and the defendant was obliged to fly the
country. For many years he lived abroad, but at length ventured
to return, when his brother caused him to be arrested, and he
died in confinement, protesting to the last, as did Lady
Belvedere, his innocence. For Lady Belvedere a terrible
punishment for her alleged misdeeds was in store. Her husband
quitted Gaulston for a cheerful retreat in another part of the
county, and henceforth that gloomy mansion became the
prison-house of the unhappy countess.

When her imprisonment commenced Lady Belvedere was
twenty-five. For eighteen years she remained a prisoner. Her
husband often visited Gaulston, but uniformly avoided all
personal communication with her. Once she succeeded in speaking
to him, but her entreaties were in vain, and thenceforward,
whenever he was about the grounds at Gaulston, the attendant
accompanying Lady Belvedere in her walks was instructed to ring
a bell to give warning of her approach. At length, after twelve
years of captivity, Lady Belvedere contrived to escape, but
Lord Belvedere, who had been apprised of the fact, reached her
father’s house in Dublin before her, and she found that his
representations had weighed so strongly with Lord
Molesworth—who had married a second time—that
orders had been given that she was not to be admitted. She then
took a very unfortunate step by repairing to the house of her
friends, the wife and family of the brother-in-law with whom
she had been accused of being guilty of misconduct, Mr.
Rochfort himself being in exile. She was presently seized and
reconveyed to Gaulston, where a much more rigorous treatment
was henceforth pursued toward her. At length her husband’s
death set her free.

Lady Belvedere passed the rest of her days in peace and
comfort at the house of her daughter and son-in-law, Lord and
Lady Lanesborough. She did not long survive her husband, and on
her deathbed, after partaking of the holy communion, affirmed
with a most solemn oath her perfect innocence of the crime for
which she had suffered so much.

But perhaps in many respects Charlemont House has the most
interesting recollections connected with it of all the
grand-seigneur mansions of the Irish metropolis. It was
here that the first earl of Charlemont, the best specimen of a
nobleman that Ireland has to boast of, passed the greater
portion of his later life. Lord Charlemont’s name is to be
found in all the memoirs of eminent political and literary men
of his time. He was the friend of Burke and Johnson, a popular
member of the club, and a munificent patron of
literature and art. But more than all this, he stuck bravely to
his country, and to no man in Ireland did the Stopford motto,
Patriæ infelici fidelis, more correctly apply. Had
more of his order been like him, what a different country might
Ireland have been!

I found Charlemont House full of painters and glaziers. The
mansion, which was retained in statu quo by the late
earl, although, for fifty years no member of the family had
slept there, has now been sold to the government, and is being
prepared for the accommodation of the survey department. The
mouldings of the beautiful ceilings are still extant in some of
the rooms, although what once was gilt is now white-wash. The
library is much as it was, minus the very valuable collection
of books, which were sold some time since by the present earl,
and fetched a large sum, albeit many of the most valuable were
destroyed in a fire which broke out at the auctioneer’s where
they were deposited in London.[3]

With his friend Edmund Burke, Lord Charlemont maintained a
close correspondence. One of Burke’s published letters relates
to an American gentleman, Mr. Shippen, whom he was introducing
to the hospitalities of Charlemont House, and whom he describes
as very agreeable, sensible and accomplished. “America and we,”
he concludes, “are not under the same crown, but if we are
united by mutual good-will and reciprocal good offices, perhaps
it may do almost as well. Mr. Shippen will give you no
unfavorable specimen of the New World.”

From the middle of the last century Henrietta
street, [4] on the north bank of the Liffey,
was the residence of many of the leading members of the
aristocracy. The street is a cul-de-sac, with the
King’s Inn (the Temple and Lincoln’s Inn of Dublin) at the
farther end. The houses are extremely spacious and richly
ornamented; in fact, far finer in point of proportion and
design than ordinary London houses of the first class.

Through the politeness of a gentleman who possesses half the
street, I went over some of the houses, which are extremely
spacious, and contain beautifully-proportioned rooms richly
ornamented with carving and moulding. In what was formerly
Mountjoy House I found a dining-room whose cornices and
ceilings were of the most elegant design and execution. This
house had seen many curious scenes. It was formerly the
town-house of the earl of Blessington—whose second title
was Viscount Mountjoy—to whom the whole street belonged.
The founder of this family, Luke Gardiner, rose from a humble
origin by energy and intrigue, and his son married the heiress
of the Mountjoys. It was occupied up to 1830 by the last earl
of Blessington, husband of the celebrated literary star. Soon
after their marriage Lady Blessington accompanied her husband
to Ireland, and he invited some of his friends who were
ignorant of the event to dine at his house in Henrietta street.
These latter were somewhat startled when he entered the room
with a beautiful woman leaning on his arm whom he introduced as
his wife. Among the guests was a gentleman who had been in that
room only four years before, when the walls were hung with
black, and in the centre, on an elevated platform, was placed a
coffin with a gorgeous velvet pall, with the remains in it of a
woman once scarcely surpassed in loveliness by the lady then
present in bridal costume. This was the first Lady
Blessington.

The last of the Irish noblesse in this street was Lady
Harriet, widow of the Right Hon. Denis Bowes-Daly, on whom
Grattan passed such warm eulogies, and who was the original of
Lever’s happiest creation, The Knight of Gwynne.

It has been a frequent subject of conjecture why the Phoenix
Park was so called. The best explanation seems to be that on a
site within its boundaries there formerly stood, close to a
remarkable spring of water, an ancient manor-house. The manor
was called Fionn-uisge, pronounced finniské,
which signifies clear or fair water, and this term easily
became corrupted into Phoenix. The land became Crown property
in 1559, and was made into a park in 1662. It was immensely
improved and put into its present shape by the earl of
Chesterfield, author of the Letters—one of the
best viceroys Ireland ever had—about 1743. The area is
seventeen hundred and sixty acres. With the exception of
Windsor and our own Fairmount, no public park in the world can
compare with it. The ground undulates charmingly, the views are
extensive and beautiful.

Grouped around the Phoenix Park are many beautiful seats:
the finest is Woodlands. This belonged formerly to the
Luttrells, a notorious family, the head of which was raised to
the Irish peerage as earl of Carhampton. It was with a Lord
Carhampton that his son declined to fight a duel, not at all
because he was his father, but because he “did not consider him
a gentleman.” Early in the century, Woodlands, then known as
Luttrellstown, became the property of Luke White, one of the
most remarkable men that Ireland has produced. In 1778, Luke
White was in the habit of buying cheap odds and ends of
literature from a bookseller, named Warren, in Belfast to
peddle about the country. In 1798 he loaned the Irish
government, then in great difficulty, a million of pounds! Mr.
Warren, who found him very punctual and exact, used to permit
him to leave his pack behind his counter and call for it in the
morning. No one would then have dreamed that the greasy bag was
to lead to such results. By degrees, White scraped together
some means. He used to take odd volumes to a binder in Belfast
and employ him to get the “vol.” at the beginning and end of an
odd volume erased, so as to pass it off among the unwary as a
perfect book, and generally furbish it up. Then he used to sell
his literary wares by auction in the streets of Belfast. The
knowledge he thus acquired of public sales procured him a
clerkship with a Dublin auctioneer. He opened first a
book-stall, and then a regular book-shop, in Dawson street, a
leading thoroughfare of Dublin. There he became eminent. He
sold lottery-tickets, speculated in the funds and contracted
for government loans. In 1798, when the rebellion broke out,
the Irish government was desperately in need of funds. They
came into the Dublin market for a loan of a million, and the
best terms they could get were from Luke White, who offered to
take it at sixty-five pounds per one hundred pound share at
five per cent.—not unremunerative terms.

At the time of his death, in 1824, he had long been M.P. for
Leitrim, and his son was member for the county of Dublin. He
left property worth a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars
a year. Eventually almost the whole of it devolved on his
fourth son, who some years ago was created a peer of the United
Kingdom as Lord Annaly.

The family has probably spent more than a million and a half
of dollars on elections. It has always been on the Liberal
side. The present peer has property in about a dozen counties,
and is lord-lieutenant of Langford, whilst his younger son
holds the same high office in Clare.

The University of Dublin consists of a single
college—Trinity. This edifice forms a prominent feature
in the Irish metropolis. It stands in College Green, almost
opposite to the Bank of Ireland, the former legislative
chambers. Since the Union, Trinity College has been but little
resorted to by men of the upper ranks of Irish society,
although it has certainly contributed some very eminent men to
the public service—notably, the late unfortunate
governor-general, Lord Mayo, and Lord Cairns,
ex-lord-chancellor of England. Trinity is one of the largest
owners of real estate in the country. The fellowships are far
better than those of the English universities. The provost, who
occupies a large and stately mansion, has a separate estate
worth some fifteen thousand dollars a year, which he manages
himself.

Trinity has a very fine library. It is one of the five which
by an act of Parliament has a right to demand from the
publisher a copy of every work published. The origin of the
library is quite unique. It dates from a benefaction by the
victorious English army after its defeat of the Spaniards at
Kinsale in 1603, when they devoted one thousand eight hundred
pounds—a sum equivalent to five times that money at
present rates—to establish a library in the university,
being, it may be presumed, instigated by some eminent
personage, who suggested that such a course would be acceptable
to the queen, who had founded the university.

Dr. Chaloner and Mr. (afterward Archbishop) Ussher were
appointed trustees of this donation; “and,” says Dr. Parr, “it
is somewhat remarkable that at this time, when the said persons
were in London about laying out this money in books, they there
met Sir Thomas Bodley, then buying books for his newly-erected
library in Oxford; so that there began a correspondence between
them upon this occasion, helping each other to procure the
choicest and best books on moral subjects that could be gotten;
so that the famous Bodleian Library at Oxford and that of
Dublin began together.”

The private collection of Ussher himself, consisting of ten
thousand volumes, was the first considerable donation which the
library received, and for this also, curiously enough, it was
again indebted to the English army. In 1640, Ussher left
Ireland. The insurgents soon after destroyed all his effects
with the exception of his books, which were secured and sent to
London. In 1642—when the troubles between King and
Parliament had broken out—Ussher was nominated one of the
Westminster Assembly of Divines, but having offended the
parliamentary authorities by refusing to attend, his library
was confiscated as that of a delinquent by order of the House
of Commons. However, his friend, the celebrated John Selden,
got leave to buy the books, as though for himself, but really
to restore them to Ussher. Narrow circumstances subsequently
caused him to leave the library to his daughter, instead of to
Trinity. Cardinal Mazarin and the king of Denmark made offers
for it, but Cromwell interfered to prevent their acceptance.
Soon after, the officers and, soldiers of Cromwell’s army then
in Ireland, wishing to emulate those of Elizabeth, purchased
the whole library, together with all the archbishop’s very
valuable manuscripts and a choice collection of coins, for the
purpose of presenting them to the college. But when these
articles were brought over to Ireland, Cromwell refused to
permit the intentions of the donors to be carried into effect,
alleging that he intended to found a new college, in which the
collection might more conveniently be preserved separate from
all other books. The library was therefore deposited in Dublin
Castle, and so neglected that a great number of valuable books
and manuscripts were stolen or destroyed. At the Restoration,
Charles II. ordered that what remained of the primate’s library
should be given to the university, as originally intended.

One of the most extraordinary persons who ever occupied the
position of provost, or indeed any position, was John Hely
Hutchinson. He was a man of great ability, and perfectly
determined to succeed, without being troubled with any very
tiresome qualms as to the means he employed in the process.
Such an officeholder as this man the world probably never saw.
He was at the same time reversionary principal secretary of
state for Ireland, a privy councilor, M.P. for Cork, provost of
Trinity College, Dublin, major of the fourth regiment of horse,
and searcher of the port of Strangford. When he was appointed
provost—a situation always filled since the foundation by
a bachelor—there was great indignation amongst the
fellows, and to appease them he ultimately procured a decree
permitting them to marry—a privilege which they, unlike
their brethren at Oxford and Cambridge, enjoy to this day. His
position as provost did not prevent his righting a duel with a
Mr. Doyle, but neither was hurt. Mr. Hutchinson had a great
dislike to a Mr. Shrewbridge, one of the junior fellows, who
had shown opposition to him. Mr. Shrewbridge died, and the
under—graduates attributed his death to the provost’s
having refused him permission to go away for change of air. A
thoroughly Hiber-man émeute was the consequence.
The provost ordered that the great bell, which usually tolls
for a fellow, should not toll, and that the body should be
privately buried at six A.M. in the fellows’ burial-ground. The
students immediately posted up placards that the great bell
should toll, and that the funeral should be by
torchlight. They carried the point. Almost all the students
attended the corpse to the grave in scarfs and hatbands at
their own expense, and when the funeral oration was pronounced
they flew in wild excitement to the provost’s house, burst open
his doors and smashed the furniture to pieces. The provost had
a hint given him, and with his family had retreated to his
house near Dublin. It was subsequently stated on good authority
that Mr. Shrewbridge could not in any case have recovered.

Any one who takes an interest in the most original
writer—not to say, man—of the eighteenth century
will not fail to find his way to “the Liberties,” as that queer
district is called which surrounds St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Some years ago the present writer made his way into the great
deserted deanery—the then dean resided in another part of
the city—got the old woman in charge of the house to open
the shutters of the dining-room, and gazed at the original
portrait of Jonathan Swift, which hangs there an heirloom to
his successors. Of the precincts of his cathedral he writes to
Pope: “I am lord-mayor of one hundred and twenty
houses,[5] I am absolute lord of the greatest
cathedral in the kingdom, and am at peace with the
neighboring princes—i.e., the lord-mayor of the
city and the archbishop of Dublin—but the latter
sometimes attempts encroachments on my dominions, as old
Lewis did in Lorraine.”

Again, he writes to Dr. Sheridan: “No soul has broken his
neck or is hanged or married; only Cancerina is
dead.[6] I let her go to her grave without a
coffin and without fees.”

St. Patrick’s, which was, in a deplorable state during
Swift’s deanship, and indeed for a century after, is now
restored to its original magnificence. Indeed, it may be
doubted whether it is not in a condition superior to what it
ever was. This superb work has been effected entirely by the
princely munificence of the Guinness family, the great
stout brewers of Dublin; and Mr. Roe, a wealthy
distiller, is now engaged in the work of restoring Christ
Church, the other Protestant cathedral.

I paid a visit to the Bank of Ireland, the edifice on which
the hopes of so many patriotic Irishmen have been centred,
insomuch as it is the old Parliament-house. The elderly
official who conducted us over the building took us first
through the bank-note manufacturing rooms, where we espied in a
corner a queer wooden figure draped in a queerer uniform.
Demanding its history, he said that the clothes had belonged to
an old servant of the establishment, and were discovered after
his decease a few years ago. Formerly the Bank of Ireland was
guarded by a special corps of its own, and the ancient
retainer, who had been a member of this very commercial
regiment, was proud of it, and had kept his dress as a
cherished memorial. When George IV. came to Ireland, on his
celebrated popularity-hunt, in 1821—previous to which no
English monarch had visited Ireland since William III.—he
graciously condescended to give the bank a military guard,
which has since been continued. On the day I went I found a
number of soldiers of the Scots Fusileer Guards occupying the
guard-room. The officer on duty receives an allowance of two
dollars and a half for his dinner. At the Bank of England he
gets instead a dinner for himself and a friend, and a couple of
bottles of wine.

The interior of the Parliament-house is almost the same as
when Ireland had her own separate legislature. The House of
Lords is in precisely the condition in which it was left in
1801. It is a large oak-paneled, oblong chamber of no
particular beauty, and might very well pass for the dining-hall
of a London guild. There is a handsome fireplace, and the walls
are in great part covered with two fine pieces of tapestry
representing the battle of the Boyne and the siege of Derry,
King William, “of glorious, pious and immortal,” etc., being of
course the most conspicuous object in the foreground. The
attendant stated that a special clause in the lease of the
buildings, to the Bank of Ireland Company stipulated that the
House of Lords was to remain in statu quo. Perhaps it
may return some of these days to its former use. The House of
Commons, a large stone hall of stately dimensions, is now the
cash-office of the bank. There seemed nothing about it
architecturally to call for special notice. I mooted the
probability of the Parliament being restored, but found, rather
to my surprise, that the attendant was by no means disposed to
regard such a step with unqualified approval. It would be a
blessing if the country was fit to govern itself, he said, or
words to that effect, but looking at the religious dissension
and political bitterness existing in the country, he feared
that it wouldn’t do yet a while; and I suspect he’s right.
Ireland is a house divided against itself: fifty years hence it
may resemble Scotland. Meanwhile, there is no doubt whatever
that a measure giving both Ireland and Scotland something in
the nature of State legislatures would find favor with many
English M.P.s, who greatly grudge having the valuable time of
the imperial legislature wasted over a gas-bill in Tipperary or
a water-works scheme for Dundee. The bank seemed to me to be
guarded with extraordinary care. I went all over the roof, on
which a guard is mounted at night. At “coigns of vantage” there
is a bullet-proof palisading, with peepholes through which a
volley of musketry might be poured. I should fancy that extra
precautions have probably been taken since the Fenian
émeutes of the last ten years.

Dublin swarms with soldiers, constabulary and police. The
metropolitan police is divided into six divisions, each two
hundred strong. Its men are, I believe, beyond a doubt the very
finest in the world in point of physique. Numbers of them are
six feet two or three inches high, and they are broad and
athletic in proportion. Indeed, the magnificence of some of
them who are detached for duty at certain “great confluences of
human existence” is such that you see strangers standing and
gaping at the giants in sheer amazement. The metropolitan
police is quite distinct from the constabulary, and under a
different chief.

Outside the bank, in College Green, is the celebrated statue
of William III. Its location has been more than once changed,
and it is now placed where the officer on guard at the bank can
keep an eye upon it. This fearful object, which would make a
Pradier or Chantrey shudder, is painted and gilt annually. It
has long served as a bone of contention between Protestant and
Papist, and has come off very badly several times at the hands
of the latter—a circumstance which probably accounts for
one of the horse’s legs being about a foot longer than the
rest—half of that limb having been renewed after it had
been lost in one of the many free fights in which this
remarkable quadruped has seen service. The greatest proprietor
of real estate in Dublin is the young earl of Pembroke, son of
the late Right Hon. Sidney Herbert, so well known in connection
with the Crimean war, who was created, shortly before his
death, Lord Herbert of Lea. His estate, which is the most
valuable in Ireland, comprises Merrion Square and all the most
fashionable part of the Irish metropolis, and extends for
several miles along the railway line running from Kingstown,
the landing-place from England, to the capital. The property
also includes Mount Merrion, a neglected seat about four miles
from the city. This mansion, which might easily be made
delightful, commands a charming view over the lovely bay, and
is surrounded by a small but picturesque park containing deer.
It was, with the rest of Lord Pembroke’s estate, formerly the
property of Viscount Fitzwilliam, who founded the Fitzwilliam
Museum in the University of Cambridge.

Lord Fitzwilliam was a somewhat eccentric person. His
nearest relation had displeased him by some very trivial
offence, such as coming down late for dinner, so he determined
to leave his estate to his distant cousin, Lord Pembroke.
Falling ill, Lord Fitzwilliam, desired that Lord Pembroke might
be summoned from London. Word came back that it was
unfortunately impossible for him to leave England immediately.
Presently news arrived from Dublin that Lord Fitzwilliam was
dead, and had bequeathed all—the property is now three
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year—to Lord
Pembroke, with remainder to his second son. By the death of the
late Lord Pembroke the English and Irish properties have become
united, and are to-day worth not less than six hundred thousand
dollars a year! It is this young nobleman who has lately
written The Earl and The Doctor.

REGINALD WYNFORD.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Fitzgeralds, of which family the
duke of Leinster is chief, became Protestant in 1611,
when George, sixteenth earl of Kildare, coming to the
title and estates when eight years old, was given in
ward, according to the custom of the time, to the duke
of Lenox (then lord privy seal), who bred him a
Protestant.

[2] In June, 1798, the corpse of Lord Edward
Fitzgerald was conveyed from the jail of Newgate and
entombed in St. Werburgh’s church, Dublin, until the
times would admit of their being removed to the family
vault at Kildare. “A guard,” says his brother, “was to
have attended at Newgate the night of my poor brother’s
burial, in order to provide against all interruption
from the different guards and patrols in the streets:
it never arrived, which caused the funeral to be
several times stopped on its way, so that the funeral
did not take place until nearly two in the morning, and
the people attending were obliged to stay in church
until a pass could be procured to permit them to go
out.”

[3]
Lord Charlemont had a seat called Marino,
beautifully situated within a few miles of Dublin.
There is within the grounds an exquisite building
erected from designs of Sir William Chambers. It is
a small villa, in its arrangements suggesting a
maison de joie. The furniture is just as it
was, and although sadly out of repair, the visitor
can easily judge how exquisite the place must once
have been. There is a superb mantelpiece, richly
mounted in bronze and inlaid with lapis lazuli.

[4] The occupants of Henrietta street in
1784 included—the primate (Lord Rokeby); the earl
of Shannon; Hon. Dr. Maxwell, bishop of Meath; the
bishop of Kilmore; the bishop of Clogher; Right Hon.
Luke Gardiner, M.P.; Viscount Kingsborough; Right Hon.
D. Bowes-Daly, M.P.; Sir E. Crofton, Bart.

Twenty years later, Dublin was nearly deserted by
the aristocracy on account of the Union. Up to that
time nearly all the peers, except those really English,
seem to have had residences in Dublin. In 1844, Lords
Longford, De Vesci and Monck were the only peers who
had houses there.

[5] The precincts, including a portion of
the Liberties, were then entirely under the
jurisdiction of the dean of St. Patrick’s.

[6] It was a part of the grim and ghastly
humor of this extraordinary man,

“Who left what little wealth he had

To found a home for fools or mad,

And prove by one satiric touch

No nation wanted it so much,”

to give nicknames, of which Cancerina was one, to
the poor old wretches he met in his walks, to whom he
gave charity.

Amongst Cancerina’s sisters in misery were
Stompanympha, Pullagowna, Friterilla, Stumphantha.

THE MAESTRO’S
CONFESSION.

(ANDREA DAL CASTAGNO—1460.)

I.

Threescore and ten!

I wish it were all to live again.

Doesn’t the Scripture somewhere say,

By reason of strength men oft-times
may

Even reach fourscore? Alack! who
knows?

Ten sweet, long years of life! I would
paint

Our Lady and many and many a saint,

And thereby win my soul’s repose.

Yet, Fra Bernardo, you shake your
head:

Has the leech once said

I must die? But he

Is only a fallible man, you see:

Now, if it had been our father the
pope,

I should know there was then no
hope.

Were only I sure of a few kind years

More to be merry in, then my fears

I’d slip for a while, and turn and
smile

At their hated reckonings: whence the
need

Of squaring accounts for word and
deed

Till the lease is up?… How? hear I
right?

No, no! You could not have said,
To-night!

II.

Ah, well! ah, well!

“Confess”—you tell me—”and be
forgiven.”

Is there no easier path to heaven?

Santa Maria! how can I tell

What, now for a score of years and
more,

I’ve buried away in my heart so deep

That, howso tired I’ve been, I’ve
kept

Eyes waking when near me another
slept,

Lest I might mutter it in my sleep?

And now at the last to blab it clear!

How the women will shrink from my
pictures! And worse

Will the men do—spit on my name,
and curse;

But then up in heaven I shall not
hear.

I faint! I faint!

Quick, Fra Bernardo! The figure
stands

There in the niche—my patron
saint:

Put it within my trembling hands

Till they are steadier. So!

My brain

Whirled and grew dizzy with sudden
pain,

Trying to p that gulf of years,

Fronting again those long laid fears.

Confess? Why, yes, if I must, I
must.

Now good Sant’ Andrea be my trust!

But fill me first, from that crystal
flask,

Strong wine to strengthen me for my
task.

(That thing is a gem of
craftsmanship:

Just mark how its curvings fit the
lip.)

Ah, you, in your dreamy, tranquil
life,

How can you fathom the rage and
strife,

The blinding envy, the burning smart,

That, worm-like, gnaws the Maestro’s
heart

When he sees another snatch the prize

Out from under his very eyes,

For which he would barter his soul? You
see

I taught him his art from first to
last:

Whatever he was he owed to me.

And then to be browbeat, overpassed,

Stealthily jeered behind the hand!

Why that was more than a saint could
stand;

And I was no saint. And if my soul,

With a pride like Lucifer’s, mocked
control,

And goaded me on to madness, till

I lost all measure of good or ill,

Whose gift was it, pray? Oh, many a
day

I’ve cursed it, yet whose is the blame, I
say?

His name? How strange that you
question so,

When I’m sure I have told it o’er and
o’er,

And why should you care to hear it
more?

III.

Well, as I was saying, Domenico

Was wont of my skill to make such
light,

That, seeing him go on a certain
night

Out with his lute, I followed. Hot

From a war of words, I heeded not

Whither I went, till I heard him
twang

A madrigal under the lattice where

Only the night before I sang.

—A double robbery! and I swear

‘Twas overmuch for the flesh to bear.

Don’t ask me. I knew not what I
did,

But I hastened home with my rapier
hid

Under my cloak, and the blade was
wet.

Just open that cabinet there and see

The strange red rustiness on it yet.

A calm that was dead as dead could be

Numbed me: I seized my chalks to
trace—

What think you?—Judas Iscariot’s
face!

I just had finished the scowl, no
more,

When the shuffle of feet drew near my
door

(We lived together, you know I said):

Then wide they flung it, and on the
floor

Laid down Domenico—dead!

Back swam my senses: a sickening pain

Tingled like lightning through my
brain,

And ere the spasm of fear was broke,

The men who had borne him homeward
spoke

Soothingly: “Some assassin’s knife

Had taken the innocent artist’s
life—

Wherefore, ’twere hard to say: all
men

Were prone to have troubles now and
then

The world knew naught of. Toward his
friend

Florence stood waiting to extend

Tenderest dole.” Then came my tears,

And I’ve been sorry these twenty
years.

Now, Fra Bernardo, you have my sin:

Do you think Saint Peter will let me
in?

MARGARET J. PRESTON.

MONSIEUR FOURNIER’S
EXPERIMENT.

“La transfusion parait avoir eu quelque
succes dans ces derniers temps.”

A dejected man, M. le docteur Maurice Fournier locked the
door of his physiological laboratory in the Place de
l’École de Médecine, and walked away toward his
rooms in the rue Rossini. At two-and-thirty, rich, brilliant,
an ambitious graduate of l’École de Médecine, an
enthusiastic pupil of Claude Bernard’s, a devoted lover of
science, and above all of physiology, yesterday he was without
a care save to make his name great among the great names of
science—to win for himself a place in the foremost rank
of the followers of that mistress whom only he loved and
worshiped. To-day a word had swept away all his fondest hopes.
Trousseau, the keenest observer in all Paris, formerly his
father’s friend, now no less his own, had kindly but firmly
called his attention to himself, and to the malady that had so
imperceptibly and insidiously fastened itself upon him that
until the moment he never dreamed of its approach. He had been
too full of his work to think of himself. In any other case he
would scarcely have dared to dispute the opinion of the highest
medical authority in Europe; nevertheless in his own he began
to argue the matter: “But, my dear doctor, I am well.”

“No, my friend, you are not. You are thin and pale, and I
noticed the other night, when you came late to the meeting of
the Institute, that your breathing was quick and labored, and
that the reading of your excellent paper was frequently
interrupted by a short cough.”

“That was nothing. I was hurried and excited, and I have
been keeping myself too closely to my work. A run to Dunkerque,
a week of rest and sea-air, will make all right again.”

But the great man shook his head gravely: “Not weeks, but
years, of a different life are needed. You must give up the
laboratory altogether if you want to live. Remember your
mother’s fate and your father’s early death—think of the
deadly blight that fell so soon upon the rare beauty of your
sister. Some day you will realize your danger: realize it now,
in time. Close your laboratory, lock up your library, say adieu
to Paris, and lead the life of a traveler, an Arab, a Tartar.
For the present cease to dream of the future: strength is
better than a professorship in the College of France, and
health more than the cross of the Legion of Honor.”

Fournier was at first surprised and incredulous: he became
convinced, then alarmed. After some thought he was horribly
dejected. At such a time an Englishman becomes stolid, a German
gives up utterly, an American begins to live fast, since he may
not live long; but he, being a Frenchman and a Parisian, had
alternations—first, the idea of suicide, which means
sleep; second, reaction, which is hopefulness.

He chose to react, and did it promptly. A little time, and
the rooms in the Place de l’École de Médecine,
opposite the bookseller’s, displayed a card stuck on the
entrance-door with red wafers, “à louer,” the
hammer of the auctioneer knocked down the comfortable furniture
of the apartments in the rue Rossini, while that of the
carpenter nailed up the well-beloved books in stout boxes, and
the places that had known M. le docteur knew him no more. None
but those who have experienced the pleasures of a life devoted
to scientific research can understand how hard all this was to
him. The fulfillment of long-cherished desires, the completion
of elaborate systematic investigations, the realization of pet
theories, the establishment of new principles,—all, all
abandoned after so much toil and care. To struggle painfully
through a desert toward some beautiful height, which, at first
dimly seen, has grown clearer and clearer and always more
splendid as he advances, and now at its very foot to be turned
back by a gloomy stream in whose depths lurks death itself; to
reach out his hand to the golden truth, fruit of much winnowing
of human knowledge, and as he grasps the precious grains to be
borne back by a grim spectre whose very breath is horrible with
the noisome odors of the tomb; to choose an arduous life, and
learn to love it because it has high aims, and then to give it
up at once and utterly!—alas, poor Fournier!

“Nevertheless,” he said as he turned his back on Paris,
“even idle wanderings are better than dying of
consumption.”

Behold the student of science a wanderer—sailing his
yacht among the islands of the Mediterranean; making long
journeys through the wild mountain-regions and lovely valleys
of untraveled Spain; stemming the historic current of the Nile;
among the nomad tribes, in Arab costume riding an Arabian mare,
as wild an Arab as the wildest of them; killing tigers in
India, tending stock in Australia, chasing buffaloes in Western
America,—everywhere avoiding civilization and courting
Nature and the company of men who either by birth or adoption
were the children of Nature. By day the winds of heaven kissed
his cheeks and the sun bronzed them: at night he often fell
asleep wondering at the star-worlds that gemmed the only canopy
over his welcome blanket-couch.

His treatment of consumption was certainly a rational one,
and perhaps the only one that is ever wholly successful. But,
alas! few can take so costly a prescription.

How often had his studies led him to dissect the bodies of
animals that had died in their dens in the Jardin des Plantes!
Often in the first generation of cage-life, almost always in
the second, invariably in the third, they grow dull, listless,
the fire goes out of their eyes, the litheness out of their
limbs: they forget to eat, they cough, and soon they die. Of
what? Consumption. Once our fathers were wild and lived in the
open air: they scarcely ever died, as we do, of consumption.
Crowded cities, bad drainage, overwork, want of healthful
exercise, stimulating food, dissipation,—these are human
cage-life. If a man is threatened with consumption, let him go
back to the plains and forests before it is too late.

Certainly the treatment benefited Fournier. By and by it did
more—it cured him. The cough was forgotten, the cheeks
filled out, the muscles became hard as bundles of steel wire,
his strength was prodigious: he ate his food with a relish
unknown in Paris, and slept like a child.

Nevertheless, his mind, trained to habits of thought and
observation, was not idle. When a city was his home he had been
a physiologist and had studied man: he made the world
his dwelling-place, and wandering among the nations he became
an ethnologist and began to study men.

A distinguished professor, writing of the influence of
climate upon man, for the sake of illustration supposes the
case of a human being whose life should be prolonged through
many ages, and who should pass that life in journeying slowly
from the arctic regions southward through the varying climates
of the earth to the eternal winter of the antarctic zone.
Always preserving his personal identity, this traveler would
undergo remarkable changes in form, feature and complexion, in
habits and modes of life, and in mental and moral attributes.
Though he might have been perfectly white at first, his skin
would pass through every degree of darkness until he reached
the equator, when it would be black. Proceeding onward, he
would gradually become fairer, and on reaching the end of his
journey he would again be pale. His intellectual powers would
vary also, and with them the shape of his skull. His forehead,
low and retreating, would by degrees assume a nobler form as he
advanced to more genial climes, the facial angle reaching its
maximum in the temperate zone, only to gradually diminish as he
journeyed toward the torrid, and to again exhibit under the
equator its original base development. As he continued his
journey toward the south pole he would undergo a second time
this series of progressing and retrograding changes, until at
length, as he laid his weary bones to rest in some icy cave in
the drear antarctics,

Multum ille et terris jactatus et alto,

he would be in every respect, save in age and a ripe
experience, the same as at the outset of his wanderings.

Extravagant as this illustration may appear, the professor
goes on to say, philosophically, on the doctrine of the unity
of the human race, it is not so; for what else than such an
imaginary prolonged individual life is the life of the race?
And what greater changes have occurred to our imaginary
traveler than have actually befallen the human family?

The facts are patent. Under the equator is found the negro,
in the temperate zones the Indo-European, and toward the pole
the Lapp and Esquimaux. They are as different as the climates
in which they dwell; nevertheless, history, philology, the
common traditions of the race, revelation, point to their
brotherhood.

How is it that climate can bring about such modifications in
man? Is it possible that the sun, shining upon his face and his
children’s faces for ages, can make their skin dark, and their
hair crisp and curly, and their foreheads low? Or that sunshine
and shadow, spring-time and autumn, summer’s showers beating
upon him and winter’s snows falling about his path, can make
him fair and free? Or that the dreary night and cheerless day
of many changeless arctic years can make him short and fat and
stolid as a seal? Surely not. These avail much; but other
influences, indirect and obscure in their workings, but not the
less essentially climatic, are required. Food, raiment,
shelter, occupation, amusement, influences that tell upon the
very citadel and stronghold of life—and all in their very
nature climatic, since they are controlled and modified by
climate—are the means by which such changes are effected.
The savage living in the open air, not trammeled with much
clothing, anointing his skin with oil, eating uncooked food,
delighting in the chase and in battle, and living thus because
his surroundings indicate it, becomes swart and athletic,
fierce, cunning and cruel—takes ethnologically the lowest
place. Of literature, science, art, he knows nothing: for him
will is justice, fear law, some miserable fetich God. Still, in
his nature lie dormant all the capabilities of the noblest
manhood, awaiting only favorable surroundings to call them into
glorious being. It might shock the salt of the earth to reflect
that some centuries of life among them and their fair
descendants would make him like them.

The arctic savage clad in furs and eating blubber does not
differ essentially from his brother of the tropics. So much of
his food is necessarily converted into heat that he cannot
afford to lead so active a life; but he also, like him of the
tropics, partakes with his surroundings in color. The one,
living amid snowclad scenery, where the sparse vegetation is
gray and grayish-green, and the birds and animals almost as
white as the snow over which they wander, is pale, etiolated.
The other, under a vertical sun, surrounded by a lush and lusty
growth, whose flowers for variety and intensity of color are
beyond description, and in which birds of brightest plumage and
black and tawny beasts make their home, has the most marked
supply of pigment—is dark-hued, black, in short a negro.
Between these two extremes is the typical man, fair of face,
with expanded brow and wavy hair, well fed, well clad, well
housed, wresting from Nature her hidden things and making her
mightiest forces the workers of his will; heaping together
knowledge, cherishing art, reverencing justice, worshiping God.
How startling the contrast between brothers!

Such changes do not take place in a few generations. For
their completion hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years must
elapse. The descendants of the blacks who were carried from
Africa to America as slaves two centuries and a half ago, save
where their color has been modified by a mixed parentage, are
still black. Already the influence of new climatic surroundings
and of association has wrought great changes upon them: they
are no longer savages. But their complexion is as dark as that
of their kidnapped forefathers. Their original physical
condition remains almost unaltered, and with it many mental
characteristics: their love of display and of bright colors,
their fondness for tune and the power of music to move them,
their weird and fantastic belief in ghosts and spirits, in
signs, omens and charms, and many other traits, still bear
witness to their savage origin. But even these are fading away,
and these men are slowly but not the less surely becoming
civilized and white.

The point of departure for every structural change in a
living organism lies in the apparatus by which nutrition is
maintained; and this in the higher classes is the blood. Most
complex and wonderful of fluids, it contains in unexplained and
inscrutable combination salts of iron, lime, soda and potassa,
with water, oil, albumen, paraglobulin and fibrinogen, which
united form fibrine—in fact, at times, some part of
everything we eat and all that goes to form our bodies, which
it everywhere permeates, vitalizes and sustains. Borne in
countless numbers in its ever-ebbing and returning streams are
little disks, flattened, bi-concave, not larger in man than
one-three-thousandth of an inch in diameter, called red
corpuscles, whose part it is to carry from the lungs to the
tissues pure oxygen, without which the fire called life cannot
be sustained, and back from the tissues to the lungs carbonic
acid, one of the products of that fire; and larger, yet
marvelously small, bodies called leucocytes or white
corpuscles, whose precise origin and use to this day, in spite
of all the labor that has been spent upon their study, remain
unknown. But that which makes the blood wonderful above all
other fluids is its vitality. Our common expression, “life’s
blood,” is no idle phrase. The blood is indeed the very throne
of life. If its springs are pure and bountiful, if its currents
flow strong and free, muscle, bone and brain grow in symmetry
and power, and there is cunning to devise and the strong right
arm to execute. But if it be thin and poor, and its circulation
feeble and uncertain, the will flags, the mind is weak and
vacillating, the muscles grow puny, and the man becomes an
unresisting prey to disease and circumstance. If it escape
through a wound, strength ebbs with it, until at length life
itself flows out with the unchecked crimson stream. Thus, then,
by acting upon the blood, climate has wrought and is working
such changes upon man. But why are constantly-acting causes so
slow in producing their effects? How is it that countless
generations must pass away before purely climatic causes,
potent as they are, begin to manifest themselves in physical
changes in the races of men exposed to them?

Fournier, physiologist, as I have said, by the education of
the schools, but by the broader education of his travels
sociologist and ethnologist, devoted himself again to science,
and framed this hypothesis: Climatic influences, acting upon
man, bring about physical changes exceedingly slowly, because
they are resisted by an inveterate habit of assimilation. This
habit pertains either to the blood or the tissues, possibly to
both, probably to the blood alone.

To establish an hypothesis experiment is necessary.
Physiology is a science of experiment. Hence the frequent
uncertainty of its results, since no two observers conduct an
experiment in exactly the same manner—certainly no two
ever institute it under precisely the same conditions.
Nevertheless, let us not decry science. Out of much searching
after truth comes the finding of truth—after long groping
in darkness one comes upon a ray of light.

An experiment was necessary. To the ingenious mind of
Fournier an elaborate one occurred. If he could perform it, not
only would his hypothesis be established and confirmed beyond
all cavil, but a, field of scientific research also be opened
such as was yet undreamed of. However, for this experiment
subjects were needed. Brutes, beasts of the field? Not so: that
were easy to achieve. Human beings, two living, healthy men,
one white, one black, were the requirements. Impossible! The
experiment could never be performed: its requirements were
unattainable. O tempora! O mores! Alas, for the degeneracy of
the age! In the days of the Roman emperors men were fed,
literally fed, to wild beasts in the arena—Gauls,
Scythians, Nubians, even Roman freedmen when barbarians were
scarce. This to amuse the populace alone. Frightful waste of
life! In India, a thousand lives thrown away in a day under the
wheels of Juggernaut; in Europe, tens of thousands to gratify
the imperious wills of grasping monarchs; in America, hundreds
to sate the greed of railroad corporations. And now not two men
to be had for an experiment of untold value to science, that
would scarcely endanger life in one of them, and in the other
would necessitate only the merest scratch! To what are we
coming? No one complains that tattooed heads are going out of
fashion—that the king of the Cannibal Isles no longer
flatters a ship’s master by inquiring which head of all his
subjects is ornamented most to his fancy, and the next day
sending him that head as a souvenir of his visit to the
anthropophagic shores. It is well that the custom is dead. But
is there not danger of drifting too far even toward the shore
of compassion? May it not be that there is something wrong with
the bowels of mercy when criminals are executed barbarously,
while science needs their lives, or at least an insight into
the method of their dying; when precise examination of the
manner of nerve and blood supply to the organs of a
superannuated horse is heavily finable; when charitable but
perchance too enthusiastic societies for the prevention of
cruelty to animals push their earnestness even to interference
with scientific researches, because, forsooth! they jeopardize
the lives of rabbits, guinea-pigs and dogs? The legend Cave
canem bears a deeper meaning now than it did in the inlaid
pavements of Pompeian vestibules. We dare not trample it under
foot.

Five years passed, and with restored health back came the
old desires in redoubled force. Fournier longed to return to
civilization and to work. The life that had been so delightful
while it did him good became utterly unbearable when he had
reaped its full benefit. I am tempted to quote a line about
Europe and Cathay, but refrain: it will recur to the reader. He
burned to renew the labors he had abandoned, to take up again
the work he had laid down to do battle with disease, now that
disease was vanquished. Thus the year 1863 found him in the
city of Charleston, homeward bound in his journey around the
world.

While still in the wilds west of the Mississippi he could
have shaped his course northward and readily proceeded directly
by steamer from New York to Europe. But a determined purpose
led him to choose a different course, though he was well aware
that it would involve indefinite delay in reaching Paris, and
great personal risk. The life he had been leading made him
think lightly of danger, and years would be well spent if he
could accomplish the plans that induced him to go into the
disorganized country of the South.

He straightway connected himself with the army as surgeon,
and solicited a place at the front. He wanted active service.
In this he was disappointed. Charleston, blockaded and
beseiged, was in a state of military inaction. Save the
occasional exchange of shot and shell at long range between the
works on shore and those which the Unionists had erected and
held upon the neighboring islands and marshes, nothing was
done, and for nearly a year Fournier experienced the
irksomeness of routine duty in a wretchedly arranged and
appointed military hospital. Nevertheless, the time was not
wholly wasted. From a planter fleeing from the anarchy of civil
war he procured a native African slave, one of the shipload
brought over a few years before in the Wanderer, the last
slave-ship that put into an American harbor. This man he made
his body-servant and kept always near him, partly to study him,
but chiefly to secure his complete mental and moral thraldom.
An almost unqualified savage, Fournier avoided systematiclly
everything that would tend to civilize him. He taught him many
things that were convenient in his higher mode of life, and
taught him well, but of the great principles of civilization he
strove to keep him in ignorance; and more, he so confused and
distorted the few gleams of light that had reached that
darkened soul that they made its gloom only the more hideous
and profound. He wanted a man altogether savage, mentally,
morally and physically. Instead of teaching him English or
French, he learned from him many words of his own rude native
tongue, and communicated with him as much as possible in that
alone, aided by gesture, in which, like all Frenchmen, he
possessed marvelous facility of expression. In the unexplored
back-country of Africa the negro had been a prince, and
Fournier bade him look forward to the time when he would return
and rule. He always addressed him by his African name and title
in his own tongue. He took him into the wards of his hospital,
and taught him to be useful at surgical operations and to care
for the instruments, that he might become familiar with them
and with the sight of blood, which at first maddened him. Once
he gave him a drug that made his head throb, and then bled him,
with almost instant relief. He affected an interest in the
amulets which hung at his neck, and besought him to give him
one to wear. He committed to his care, with expressions of the
greatest solicitude, a strong box, brass bound and carefully
locked, which he told him contained his god, a most potent and
cruel deity, who would, however, when it pleased him, give back
the life of a dead man for blood. This box contained a
silver cup, with a thermometer fixed in its side; a glass
syringe holding about a third of a pint; a large curved needle
perforated in its length like a tube, sharp at one end, at the
other expanded to fit accurately the nozzle of the syringe; a
little strainer also fitting the syringe; and last, a small
bundle of wires with a handle like an egg-beater.

For the rest, this savage was crooked, ill-shapen and
hideous. His skin was as black as night; his head small, the
face immensely disproportionate to the cranium; his jaws
massive and armed with glittering white teeth filed to points;
his cheeks full, his nose flat, his eyes little, deep-set,
restless, wicked. The usage he received from his new master was
so different from his former experience with white men, and so
in accord with his own undisciplined nature, that it called
forth all the sympathies of his character. He soon loved the
Frenchman with an intensity of affection almost
incomprehensible. It is no exaggeration to say that he would
have willingly laid down his life to gratify his master’s
slightest wish. The latter’s knowledge was to him so
comprehensive, his power so boundless and his will so imperious
and inflexible, that he feared and worshiped him as a god.

Fournier looked upon his monster with satisfaction, and
longed for a battle. His wish was at last gratified. On the
Fourth of July, 1864, an engagement took place three miles
north-west of Legaréville, near the North Edisto River.
A force of Union soldiery had been assembled from the Sea
Islands and from Florida, massed on Seabrook Island, and pushed
thence up into South Carolina. The object of this expedition
was unknown; indeed, as nothing whatever was accomplished, the
strategy of it remains to this day unexplained. However,
forewarned is forearmed. Every movement was watched and
reported by the rebel scouts; all the troops that could be
spared from Charleston were sent out to oppose the invaders;
roads were obstructed; bridges were destroyed, batteries
erected in strong positions, everything prepared to impede
their progress. Our story needs not that we should dwell upon
the sufferings of the Union soldiers on that futile expedition,
from the narrow, dusty roads, the frequent scarcity of water,
the intense heat. With infinite fatigue and peril they advanced
only five or six miles in a day’s march. Many died of
sunstroke, and many fell by the way utterly exhausted. There
was occasional skirmishing; but one actual battle. To that the
troops gave the name of “the battle of Bloody Bridge.” Picture
a slightly undulating country covered with thick low forest; a
narrow road that by an open plank bridge crosses a wide,
sluggish stream with marshy banks, and curves beyond abruptly
to the right to avoid a low, steep hill facing the bridge;
crowning this hill an earth-work, rude to be sure, but steep,
sodded, almost impregnable to men without artillery to play
upon it; within, two cannon, for which there is plenty of
ammunition, and six hundred Confederate soldiers, fresh, eager,
determined; on the road in front of the battery, but just out
of range of its guns, the Union forces halting under arms, the
leaders anxious and discouraged, the men exhausted, careworn,
wondering what is to be done next, heartily sick of it all, yet
willing to do their best; in the thicket on both sides the
road, not sheltered, only covered, within pistol-shot of the
enemy, six hundred United States soldiers, a Massachusetts
colored regiment, one of the first recruited, without cannon,
over-marched, overheated, a forlorn hope, sent forward to
take the battery! These men, stealthily assembling there
among the trees and bushes, are ready. Not one of them carries
a pound of superfluous weight. Their rifles with fixed
bayonets, a handful of cartridges, a canteen of water, are
enough. They wear flannel shirts and blue trowsers; numbers are
bareheaded, some have cut off the sleeves of their shirts: they
know there is work before them. Many kneel in prayer; comrades
exchange messages to loved ones at home, and give each other
little keepsakes—the rings they wore or brier pipes
carved over with the names of coast battles;
others—perhaps they have no loved ones—look to the
locks of their pieces and await impatiently the signal to
advance. The officers—white men, most of them Boston
society fellows, old Harvard boys who once thought a six-mile
pull or a long innings at cricket on a hot day hard work, and
knew no more of military tactics than the Lancers—move
about among them, speaking to this one and to that one, calling
each by name, jesting quietly with one, encouraging another,
praising a third, endeavoring to inspire in all a hope which
they dare not feel themselves.

But hark! The signal to move. Quickly they form in the road,
and with a shout advance at a run, their dusky faces glistening
in that summer sun and their manly hearts beating bravely in
the very jaws of death. Now the bridge trembles beneath their
steady tread: the foremost are at the hill, yet no sign of life
in the battery. Only the smooth green bank, the wretched flag
in the distance, and those guns charged with death looking
grimly down upon them and waiting. On they come, nearer and
nearer, and now some are on the hill and begin to climb the
steep that forms the defence, slowly and with difficulty, using
at times their rifles as aids like alpenstocks. Not a word is
spoken. It is hard to understand how so many men can move with
so little noise. The silence is that which precedes all
dreadful noises. It is ominous, terrible. Scarcely twenty feet
more, and the foremost will reach the rampart. Haste! haste!
The day is won!

Suddenly a figure in gray leaps upon the breastwork: he
waves his sword, utters a short quick word of command, and
disappears. It is enough. The sleeping battery awakes. The
silence becomes hideous uproar. The smooth green line of the
sod against the sky is lined with marksmen, and in an instant
fringed with fire. Then the cannon bellow and the breezeless
air is dense with smoke. The attacking column hesitates,
trembles, makes a useless effort to advance, and then falls
back beyond the bridge. The officers endeavor to rally their
men and renew the attack at once, but in vain: flesh and blood
cannot stand in such a storm. Nevertheless, the brave
fellows—God bless their memory!—halt at length, and
form and charge once more. And so again and again and again;
every time in vain and with new losses, until at last they
cannot rally, but retreat, broken and bleeding, to the main
body of the expedition, carrying with them such of the wounded
and dead as they can snatch from under the fire of the rebel
riflemen. Such was the battle of Bloody Bridge, and well was it
named. Five times that gallant regiment charged the battery,
and when the smoke of battle cleared away the sun shone down
upon a piteous sight—blood dyeing the green of that
sodded escarp—blood in great clots upon the rocks and
stumps of the rugged hill below—blood poured plenteously
upon the dusty road, making it horrible with purple
mire—blood staining the bridge and gathering in little
pools upon the planks, and dripping slowly down through the
cracks between them into the sluggish stream, where it floated
with the water in great red clouds, toward which creatures
dwelling in slimy depths below came up lazily, but when they
tasted it became furious and fought among themselves like
demons—blood drying in hideous networks and arabesques
upon the railing of the bridge—blood upon the fences,
blood upon the trembling leaves of the bushes by the
wayside—blood everywhere! And everywhere the upturned
faces and torn bodies of men who had dared to do their duty and
to die: side by side the white, who led and the black who
followed—all set and motionless, but all wearing the same
expression of brave but hopeless determination. That was a
brave charge at Balaklava, but, trust me, there have been
Balaklavas that are yet unsung.

So the expedition went back, and its brigades were
redistributed to the Sea Islands and to Florida; but why it was
ever sent out, and why that regiment was sent forward to take
the battery without artillery and without reinforcements, God,
who knoweth all things, only knows. And God alone knows why
there must be wars and rumors of wars, and why men made in his
image must tear each other like maddened beasts.

In this battle, heavy as the losses were, the Confederates
took but one prisoner. At the third charge a tall,
broad-shouldered captain, who seemed, like another son of
Thetis, almost invulnerable, darted impetuously ahead of his
men and reached the summit of the defence. Useless bravery! In
an instant a volley point blank swept away the charging men
behind him, and a gunner’s sabrethrust bore him to the ground
within the works, where he lay stunned and bleeding beside the
gun he had striven so hard to take. The man who had captured
him, wild with excitement and maddened with the powder that
blackened him and the hot blood which jetted upon him, sprang
down, spat upon him, spurned him with his foot, and would have
dashed out his brains with the heavy hilt of his clubbed sword
had not a strong hand grasped his uplifted wrist.

It was Fournier, who had watched the battle with an interest
as intense as that of the most ardent Southerner in the
battery, though widely different in character. His interest was
that of the naturalist who stands by eager and curious to see a
rustic entrap some rara avis that he desires to study,
to use for his experiment. Better for the bird: it can suffer
and die. Afterward what matter whether it stand neatly stuffed
and mounted, a voiceless worshiper, in some glass mausoleum, or
slowly moulder in a fence corner until its feathers are wafted
far and wide, and only a little tuft of greener grass remains
to its memory? As our naturalist’s game was nobler and destined
for more important study, so it was capable of lifelong
suffering more subtle and intense. Perhaps Fournier had not
fully considered, in his eagerness to prove his hypothesis, the
dangers to the subjects of his experiment. Perhaps his mind was
so intent upon the physical aspect of the questions that he had
overlooked some of the intellectual and moral elements involved
in the problem, and did not realize the enormities that would
result should he succeed. On the other hand, perhaps he saw
them, realized them fully, and was the more deeply fascinated
with the research because of its leading into such gloomy and
mysterious regions of speculation. Let us do him justice.
Science was his god, and this idolater was willing to endure
any labor and privation and to assume any responsibility in her
service. Would that more who worship a greater God were as
devoted!

He was a physiologist, and was simply engaged in an
experimental investigation, yet in its progress he had already
uncivilized a man whose eyes were beginning dimly to see the
truth, had poisoned his mind with lies, and had hurled him into
depths of Plutonian ignorance inconceivably more profound than
his original estate; and now he was about to debase another
fellow-creature of his own race, to tamper with his manhood, to
confuse his identity, to render him among his own kindred and
people perhaps tabooed, ostracised, despised—perhaps an
object of pity. If he should succeed? Surely he had not come
thus near success to suffer his splendid Yankee captain to be
brained there before his eyes. Like a hawk he had watched every
incident of the fight, and was on the alert to act the part of
surgeon toward any who might be either wounded in the battery
or taken prisoner. He had even resolved, in case of the capture
of the place, to represent his peculiar position to the United
States officer in command, and to beg of him permission to make
his experiment upon a wounded rebel.

The gunner turned fiercely upon him, but dropped his arm and
sheathed his sabre at his question, and then walked back to his
gun abashed, for he was, after all, a brave and chivalrous
man.

Fournier simply asked: “Do Confederate soldiers
murder prisoners of war?” And added, “He is a wounded
man—leave him to me.”

Then he knelt down beside him and examined his wound, and
though he strove to be calm he trembled with excitement as he
tore open the blue blouse and felt the warm blood welling over
his fingers. It was a simple wound through the fleshy part of
the shoulder: a strand of saddler’s silk and a few strips of
sticking-plaster would have sufficed to dress it, but the
Frenchman smiled when he wiped away the clots and saw the blood
spurting from two or three small divided arteries.

Then he called his African, and they carried the wounded man
back to a tent, and laid him on a bed of moss and cypress
boughs, and left him there to bleed, while he went out into the
air, and walked about, and tossed his hat and shouted with
excitement like a madman. But the battle raged, and the gunners
charged their guns and fired, and charged and fired again, and
the men along the breastwork grew furious with the slaughter
and the fiery draughts they took from their canteens through
lips blackened with powder and defiled with grease and shreds
of cartridge-paper; and no one noticed the doctor’s mad conduct
nor the savage standing guard before the tent; nor did any
other save those two in the whole battery—no, not even
the gunner who had captured him—give a thought to the
prisoner who lay bleeding there, until the battle was over.

And this prisoner, what of him? Any one, looking upon him as
he lay upon the cypress boughs, would have known him to be
thoroughbred. Everything about him proclaimed it. His face,
manly but gentle, his figure, great in stature and strength,
yet graceful in outline like a Grecian god, the very dress and
accoutrements he wore, which were neat, strong, expensive, but
without ornament, showed him to be a gentleman. And Robert
Shirley was a gentleman. Probably no man in all the States
could have been found who would have presented a greater
contrast to the man standing guard outside the tent than this
man who lay within it; and for that reason none who would have
been so welcome to Fournier. As the one was a pure savage, the
other was the realization of the most illustrious
enlightenment; the one fierce, cunning, undisciplined, the
other gentle, frank, considerate; as the one was hideous,
ill-formed and black as night, so the other was radiant with
manly beauty and fair as the morning. Each among his own people
sprang from noble stock; the one a prince, the other the
descendant of the purest Puritan race, which knew among its own
divines and judges brave captains, and farther back a governor
of the colony. But the guard and his people were at the foot of
the scale, the guarded at the top. The blood flowing out upon
the cypress bed was the best blood of America. It was blue
blood and brave blood. Generation after generation it had
flowed in the veins of fair women and noble men, and had never
known dishonor. Yet Fournier let it flow. More, he was
delighted that it continued to flow.

Presently, however, he sobered down, and began to prepare
for his work. He placed a large caldron of water over a fire;
he brought basins, towels and his case of surgical instruments,
and placed them in the, tent, and with them the case which he
had taught the African to believe contained his god. While thus
busied he did not neglect the subject of his experiment. His
watchful eye noted everything—the mass, of clots growing
like a great crimson fungus under the wounded shoulder, the
deadly pallor, the dark circles forming around the sunken eyes,
the blanched lips, the transparent nostrils, the slow, deep
respiration. From time to time he felt the wounded man’s pulse
and counted it carefully. Ninety—he went out again
into the open air; one hundred—”The loss of blood
tells,” he muttered, and began to rearrange his appliances and
busy himself uneasily with them; one hundred and thirty
beats to the minute —”He is failing too fast: I must
stop this bleeding” said the experimenter. Then he cleansed the
wound, and tied the arteries, and bound it up. But the loss of
blood had been so great that the heart fluttered wildly and
feebly in its efforts to contract upon its diminished contents,
and Fournier, anxious, and pale himself almost as his victim,
trembled when his finger felt in vain for the bleeding artery
and caught only a faint tremulous thrill, so feeble that he
scarcely knew whether the heart was beating at all or not. In
terror he threw the ends of the little tent and fanned him, and
moistened his lips, and gave him brandy, and hastened to begin
the experiment for which he had waited so long and for which
both subjects were at last ready.

He told his savage that the Yankee was dying, but that he
had communed with his god, who would let him live if blood was
given in return. Then he reminded him of the time when he lost
blood, and that it had done him no harm. The African, trained
for this duty with so much care, did not fail him, but bared
his arm and gave the blood. The god was brought forth and
caught it, and the sacrifice began. As the silver, bowl floated
in a basin of water so warm that the thermometer in its side
marked ninety-eight degrees of Fahrenheit, Fournier stirred the
blood flowing into it quickly with the bundle of wires, to
collect the fibrine and prevent the formation of clots; he then
drew it into the syringe through the strainer, and forced it
through the perforated needle, which he had previously thrust
into a large vein in Shirley’s arm, carefully avoiding the
introduction of the slightest bubble of air. Time after time he
filled his syringe and emptied it into the veins of the wounded
man, until at length he saw signs of reaction. The color came,
the breathing became more natural, the pulse became slower,
fuller, regular. By and by he moved, sighed, opened his eyes
and spoke.

He asked a question: “What has happened?”

While he had been lying there much had happened. Life and
death had battled over him, and life had triumphed. When he
recovered from the effects of his fall and found himself
bleeding, he tried to rise and stanch the flow, but, already
exhausted, he fell back almost fainting from the effort. He
called repeatedly for help, but his only reply was the hideous
face of his guard, silently leering at him for a moment, then
disappearing without a word, At last it occurred to him that he
had been left there to die, and he roused all his energies to
his aid. How we strive for our lives! But Shirley accomplished
nothing, he could not even raise his hand to the bleeding
shoulder, with every effort the blood flowed more copiously.
His mind was rapidly becoming benumbed like his body, which
shivered as though it were mid winter. Darkness came over his
eyes, and as he listened to the din of the battle he fell into
a dreamy state that soon passed into seeming unconsciousness
again. Nevertheless, while the doctor came and went and did his
work, and the savage scowled at him, yet gave his life’s blood
to save him, though he lay like a dead man and saw them not,
nor heard them, nor even felt the needle in his flesh, his mind
was not idle. Strange doubts and fears, wild longings and
regrets, sweet thoughts of long-forgotten happiness, and fair
visions of the future, busied his brain. Memory unrolled her
scroll and breathed upon the letters of his story that lapse of
time and press of circumstance had made dim, till they grew
clear, and with himself he lived his life again, and nothing
was lost out of it or forgotten. There was his mother’s face
again, with the old, old loving smile upon her lips and the
tender mother-love in the depths of her beautiful blue
eyes—lips that had so oven kissed away his childish
tears, and had taught him to say at evening, “Our Father” and
“Now I lay me down to sleep,” eyes that had never looked upon
him without something of the heavenly light of which they were
now so full. There before him, bright and clear as ever, were
the scenes of his boyhood—the school-forms defaced with
many a rude cutting of names and dates, the master knitting his
shaggy brows and tapping meaningly with his ruler upon the
awful desk while some white haired urchin floundered through an
ill-learned task and his classmates tittered at his blunders.
Dear old classmates! How their faces shone and gladdened as
they chased the bounding football! How merrily they flushed and
glowed when the clear frosty air of the Northern winter
quivered with the ring of their skates upon the hard ice! How
soberly side by side they solved problems and looked up
sesquipedalia verba in big lexicons! And how happily the
late evening hours wore away as they read Ivanhoe and
the Leather Stocking Tales by the fireside with
shellbarks and pippins!

Then the college days flew by with all their romance and
delight. Again there were bells ringing to morning prayers,
recitations and lectures, examinations and prizes, speeches and
medals, and the glorious friendships, pure, earnest, almost
holy. Would there were more such friendships in the outer,
wider world! Commencement with its “pomp and circumstance,” its
tedious ceremony and scholarly display, its friends from
home—mothers, sisters, sweethearts, all bright eyes and
fond hearts, its music and flowers, its caps, gowns,
dress-coats and “spreads,” and, last and worst of all, its
sorrowful “good-byes,” some of them, alas! for ever! Once more
he trembled as he rose to make his commencement speech, but
slowly, as he went on, his voice grew steady and his manner
calmer, for, lad as he was, and tyro at “orations,” he was in
earnest. “May my light hand forget its cunning, O my brother!
may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, O ye oppressed!
if ever there comes to me an opportunity to help you win your
way to freedom and I fail you!” He, the aristocrat of his
class, had chosen to speak “Against Caste,” and though he spoke
with the enthusiasm of an untried man, it was with devoted
honesty of purpose, of which his earnestness was witness, and
of which his future was to give ample proof. Again in vision he
stood before that assembly and spoke for the lowly and
oppressed. “Let every man have place and honor as he proves
himself worthy. Make the way clear for all.”

Through the bewilderment of applause that greeted him as he
finished he saw only the glad, smiling face of Alice Wentworth
nodding approval of the rest, hundreds though they were, he saw
nothing. Her congratulation was enough.

Then came tenderer scenes, and Alice Wentworth was to be his
wife. Another change, and he is in the midst of ruder scenes.
There is war, civil war, and he is a soldier, once more he
seems to be in Virginia, and there are marches and
counter-marches, camps and barracks, battles and retreats, and
all the great and little miseries of long campaigns. The silver
leaflets of a major are exchanged for the golden eagles of a
colonel, and all the time, amid sterner duties, he finds time
to write to Alice Wentworth, and never a mail comes into camp
but he is sure of letters dated ‘Home’ and full of words that
make him hopeful and brave, “‘Home!’ Yes hers and mine too, if
home’s where the heart is!'” he thinks, and he loves her more
dearly every day.

Negro troops are raised, and, true to his principles and to
himself, he resigns his commission to take a lower rank in a
colored regiment. Now the scenes grow dim, confused sounds far
off disturb him, low music, familiar yet strange, now distant,
now at his very ear, attracts him, a weird, shadowy mist
encloses him, concealing even the things which were visible to
the mind’s eye, and memory and thought have almost ceased. Yet
while all else fades away, clear and beautiful before him are
two faces that cannot be forgotten—his mother’s face, and
that other, which he loves, if that can be, even more. Thus,
with the ‘Our Father’ not on his lips, but fixed in his mind,
he feels himself drifting away—drifting away like a boat
that has broken its moorings and drifts out with the ebbing
tide—whither?

But the rich, warm, lusty blood of the African quickly does
its work. The heart, which had almost ceased to beat, because
there was not blood enough for it to contract upon, reacted to
the stimulus, and as it revived and sent the new life pulsating
through all the body the whole man revived, and again:

The fever called living burned in his brain.

Fournier, under one pretext or another, but really by the
force of his relentless will, kept his victim by him for years
after their escape from the South. He noted from time to time
certain curious changes that took place in his physical nature,
and recorded his observations with scientific precision in a
book kept for the purpose, for the renewal of life had entailed
results of an extraordinary character, as the reader may have
already anticipated. At length he wrote ‘My hypothesis is
verified, it has become a theory. My theory is proved, it is a
physiological law. Climatic influences, acting upon man,
bring about physical changes exceedingly slowly, because they
are resisted by an inveterate habit of assimilation which
pertains to the blood.‘

That day Shirley was free. His rescuer had finished his
experiment.

Alice Wentworth had never believed that her lover was dead.
She had heard all with a troubled heart, but while his distant
kinsmen, who were heirs-at-law, put on the deepest mourning and
grew impatient of the law’s delay, she simply said, “I will
wait until there is some proof before I give him up! Proof!
proof! Shall I be quicker than the law to give up every hope?”
And in her heart she said, “He is not dead.” Even when years
had passed and the war was over, and her agent had searched
everywhere and found no trace of him, she did not cease to hope
that he would yet appear. So, when at length a letter came, it
was welcome and expected. Not surprise but joy made her start
and tremble as the old familiar superscription met her
eyes.

Such a letter!—filled with the spirit of his love,
breathing in every word the tender, passionate devotion of an
earlier day, and yet so sad. Tears dropped down through her
smiles of joy and blurred the lines she read at first, but
smiles and tears alike ceased as she read on. He had written
many, many times, but he knew she had not got his letters. He
had been a prisoner—not only prisoner of war, but
afterward prisoner to a man whose will was iron. It could
hardly be explained. This man had not only saved his life, but
he had also rescued him from the horrors of a Southern
prison—would God he had let him die!—and they had
been living together in a ranch in a far off Mexican
valley.

Then the letter went on:

“In my heart I am unchanged; my love for you is ever the
same; yet I am no longer the Robert Shirley whom you knew. That
has come upon me which will separate me from you for ever: I
cannot ask you now to be my wife. You are free. It is through
no fault of mine. It is my burden, the price of life, and I
must bear it. God bless you and give you all happiness!

“ROBERT SHIRLEY:”

When she had read it all she bowed her head and wept again,
and the face that had grown more and more beautiful with the
years of waiting was radiant. Who can fathom the depths of a
woman’s love? Who can follow the subtle workings of a woman’s
thought? Who can comprehend a woman’s boundless faith? Her
course was clear. If misfortune had befallen him, if he were
maimed, disfigured, crazed, even if he were loathsome to her
eyes, she loved him, and she must see him: she would see him
and speak to him, and love him still, even if she could not be
his wife. What would she have done if she could have guessed
the truth? As it was, she wrote upon her card, “If you love me,
come to me,” and sent it to him. And in answer to the summons
he stood before her—not disfigured, not maimed, not
crazed, not loathsome in any way, yet irrevocably separated
from her for Dr. Fournier’s experiment had succeeded, and
Robert Shirley was a mulatto!

CORNELIUS DEWEES.

A VISIT TO THE KING
OF AURORA.

(FROM THE GERMAN OF THEODORE KIRSCHOFF.)

On the Oregon and California Railroad, twenty-eight miles
south of the city of Portland in Oregon, lies the German colony
of Aurora, a communist settlement under the direction of Doctor
William Keil. In September, 1871, I made a second journey from
San Francisco to Oregon, on which occasion I found both time
and opportunity to carry out a long-cherished desire to visit
this colony, already famous throughout all Oregon, and to make
the acquaintance of the still more famous doctor, the so-called
“king of Aurora.” During the years in which I had formerly
resided in Oregon, and especially on this last journey thither,
I had frequently heard this settlement and its autocrat spoken
of, and had been told the strangest stories as to the
government of its self-made potentate. All reports agreed in
stating that “Dutchtown,” the generic appellation of German
colonies among Americans, was an example to all settlements,
and was distinguished above any other place in Oregon for order
and prosperity. The hotel of “Dutchtown,” which stands on the
old Overland stage-route, and is now a station on the Oregon
and California Railroad, has attained an enviable reputation,
and is regarded by all travelers as the best in the State; and
as to the colony itself, I heard nothing but praise. On the
other hand, with regard to Doctor Keil the strangest reports
were in circulation. He had been described to me in Portland as
a most inaccessible person, showing himself extremely reserved
toward strangers, and declining to give them the slightest
satisfaction as to the interior management of the prosperous
community over which he reigned a sovereign prince. The
initiated maintained that this important personage had formerly
been a tailor in Germany. He was at once the spiritual and
secular head of the community: he solemnized marriages (much
against his will, for, according to the rules of the society,
he was obliged to provide a house for every newly-married
couple); he was physician and preacher, judge, law-giver,
secretary of state, administrator, and unlimited and
irresponsible minister of finance to the colony; and held all
the very valuable landed property of the settlement, with the
consent of the colonists, in his own name; and while he
certainly provided for his voluntarily obedient subjects an
excellent maintenance for life, he reserved to himself the
entire profits of the labor of all and the value of the joint
property, notwithstanding that the colony was established on
the broadest principles as a communist association.

I had a great desire to see this original man—a
kindred spirit of the renowned Mormon leader, Brigham
Young—with my own eyes, and, so to speak, to visit the
lion in his den. From Portland, where I was staying, the colony
was easily accessible by rail, and before leaving I made the
acquaintance of a. German life-insurance agent of a Chicago
company—Körner by name—who, like myself,
wished to visit Aurora, and in whom I found a very agreeable
traveling companion. He had procured in Portland letters of
introduction to Doctor Keil, and had conceived the bold plan of
doing a stroke of business in life insurance with him; indeed,
his main object in going to Aurora was to induce the doctor to
insure the lives of the entire colony—that is to say, of
all his voluntary subjects—in the Chicago company, pay,
as irresponsible treasurer of the association, the legal
premiums, and upon the occurrence of a death pocket the amount
of the policy.

My fellow-traveler had great hopes of making the doctor see
this project in the light of an advantageous speculation, and
accordingly provided himself amply with the necessary tables of
mortality and other statistics. It had been carefully impressed
upon us in Portland always to address the ci-devant
tailor, now “king of Aurora,” as “Doctor,” of which title he
was extremely vain, and to treat him with all the reverence
which as sovereign republicans we could muster; otherwise he
would probably turn his back on us without ceremony.

On a pleasant September morning the steam ferry-boat
conveyed us from Portland across the Willamette River to the
dépôt of the Oregon and California Railroad, and
soon afterward we were rushing southward in the train along the
right shore of that stream—here as broad as the
Rhine—the rival of the mighty Columbia. After a pleasant
and interesting journey through giant forests and over fertile
prairies, some large, some small, embellished here and there
with farms, villages and orchards, we reached Oregon City,
which lies in a romantic region close to the Willamette: then
leaving the river, we thundered on some miles farther through
the majestic primitive forest, and soon entered upon a broad,
wood-skirted prairie, over which here and there pretty
farm-houses and groves are scattered; and presently beheld,
peeping out from swelling hills and standing in the middle of a
prosperous settlement embowered in verdure, the slender white
church-tower of Aurora, and were at the end of our journey.

Our first course after we left the cars was to the tavern,
standing close to the railroad on a little hill, whither the
passengers hurried for lunch. This so-called “hotel,” the best
known and most famous, as has already been said, in all Oregon,
I might compare to an old-fashioned inn. The long table with
its spotless table-cloth was lavishly spread with genuine
German dishes, excellently cooked, and we were waited on by
comely and neatly-dressed German girls; and though the dinner
would not perhaps compare with the same meal at the club-house
of the “San Francisco” I must confess that it was incomparably
the best I ever tasted in Oregon, in which region neither the
cooks nor the bills of fare are usually of the highest
order.

Dinner being over, we made inquiry for Doctor Keil, to whom
we were now ready to pay our respects. Our host pointed out to
us the doctor’s dwelling-house, which looked, in the distance,
like the premises of a well-to-do Low-Dutch farmer; and after
passing over a long stretch of plank-road, we turned in the
direction of the royal residence. On the way we met several
laborers just coming from the field, who looked as if life went
well with them—girls in short frocks with rake in hand,
and boys comfortably smoking their clay pipes—and
received from all an honest German greeting. Everything here
had a German aspect—the houses pleasantly shaded by
foliage, the barns, stables and well-cultivated fields, the
flower and kitchen-gardens, the white church-steeple rising
from a green hill: nothing but the fences which enclose the
fields reminded us that we were in America.

The doctor’s residence was surrounded by a high white
picket-fence: stately, widespreading live-oaks shaded it, and
the spacious courtyard had a neat and carefully-kept aspect.
Crowing cocks, and hens each with her brood, were scratching
and picking about, the geese cackled, and several well-trained
dogs gave us a noisy welcome. Upon our asking for the doctor, a
friendly German matron directed us to the orchard, whither we
immediately turned our steps. A really magnificent sight met
our eyes—thousands of trees, whose branches, covered with
the finest fruit, were so loaded that it had been necessary to
place props under many of them, lest they should break beneath
the weight of their luscious burden.

Here we soon discovered the renowned doctor, in a toilette
the very opposite of regal, zealously engaged in gathering his
apples. He was standing on a high ladder, in his shirt sleeves,
a cotton apron, a straw hat, picking the rosy-cheeked fruit in
a hand-basket. Several laborers were busy under the trees
assorting the gathered apples, and carefully packing in boxes
the choicest of them—really splendid specimens of this
fruit, which attains its utmost perfection in Oregon. As soon
as the doctor perceived us he came down from the ladder, and
asked somewhat sharply what our business there might be. My
companion handed him the letters of introduction he had brought
with him, which the doctor read attentively through: he then
introduced my humble self as a literary man and assistant
editor of a well-known magazine, who had come to Oregon for the
special purpose of visiting Dr. Keil, and of inspecting his
colony, of which such favorable reports had reached us. Without
waiting for the doctor’s reply, I asked him whether he were not
a relative of K——, the principal editor of the
magazine to which I was attached. I could scarcely, as it
appeared, have hit upon a more opportune question, for the
doctor was evidently flattered, and became at once extremely
affable toward us. The relationship to which I had alluded he
was obliged unwillingly to disclaim. I learned from him that
his name was William Keil, and that he was born at Bleicherode
in Prussian Saxony. He now left the apple-gathering to his men,
and offered to show us whatever was interesting about the
colony: as to the life-insurance project, he said he would take
some more convenient opportunity to speak with Mr. Körner
about it.

The doctor, who after this showed himself somewhat
loquacious, was a man of agreeable appearance, perhaps of about
sixty years of age, with white hair, a broad high forehead and
an intelligent countenance. Sound as a nut, powerfully built,
of vigorous constitution and with an air of authority, he gave
the idea of a man born to rule. He seemed to wish to make a
good impression on us, and I remarked several times in him a
searching side-glance, as though he were trying to read our
thoughts. He sustained the entire conversation himself, and it
was somewhat difficult to follow his meaning: he spoke in an
unctuous, oratorical tone, with extreme suavity, in very
general terms, and evaded all direct questions. When I had
listened to him for ten minutes I was not one whit wiser than
before. His language was not remarkably choice, and he used
liberally a mixture of words half English, half German, as
uneducated German-Americans are apt to do.

While we wandered through the orchard, the beauty and
practical utility of which astonished me, the doctor, gave us a
lecture on colonization, agriculture, gardening, horticulture,
etc., which he flavored here and there with pious reflections.
He pointed out with pride that all this was his own work, and
described how he had transformed the wilderness into a garden.
In the year 1856 he came with forty followers to Oregon, as a
delegate from the parent association of Bethel in Missouri, in
order to found in the far West, then so little known, a branch
colony. At present the doctor is president both of Aurora and
of the original settlement at Bethel: the latter consists of
about four hundred members, the former of four hundred and
ten.

When he first came into this region he found the whole
district now owned by his flourishing colony covered with marsh
and forest. Instead, however, of establishing himself on the
prairies lying farther south, in the midst of foreign settlers,
he preferred a home shared only with his German brethren in the
primitive woods; and here, having at that time very small
means, he obtained from the government, gratis, land enough to
provide homes for his colonists, and found in the timber a
source of capital, which he at once made productive. He next
proceeded to build a block-house as a defence against the
Indians, who at that time were hostile in Oregon: then he
erected a saw-mill and cleared off the timber, part of which he
used to build houses for his colonists, and with part opened an
advantageous trade with his American neighbors, who, living on
the prairie, were soon entirely dependent on him for all their
timber. The land, once cleared, was soon cultivated and
planted, with orchards: the finer varieties of fruit he shipped
for sale to Portland and San Francisco, and from the sour
apples he either made vinegar or sold them to the older
settlers, who very soon made themselves sick on them. He then
attended them in the character of physician, and cured them of
their ailments at a good round charge. This joke the good
doctor related with especial satisfaction.

By degrees, the doctor continued to say, the number of
colonists increased; and his means and strength being thus
enlarged, he established a tannery, a factory, looms,
flouring-mills, built more houses for his colonists, cleared
more land and drained the marshes, increased his orchards, laid
out new farms, gave some attention to adornment, erected a
church and school-houses, and purchased from the American
settlers in the neighborhood their best lands for a song. He
did everything systematically. He always assigned his colonists
the sort of labor that they appeared to him best fitted for,
and each one found the place best suited to his capabilities.
If any one objected to doing his will and obeying his orders,
he was driven out of the colony, for he would endure no
opposition. He made the best leather, the best hams and
gathered the best crops in all Oregon. The possessions of the
colony, which he added to as he was able, extended already over
twenty sections (a section contains six hundred and forty
acres, or an English square mile), and the most perfect order
and industry existed everywhere.

Thus the doctor; and amid this and the like conversation we
walked over an orchard covering forty acres. The eight thousand
trees it contained yielded annually five thousand bushels of
choice apples and eight thousand of the finest pears, and the
crop increased yearly. The doctor pointed out repeatedly the
excellence of his culture in contrast with the American mode,
which leaves the weeds to grow undisturbed among the trees, and
disregards entirely all regularity and beauty. He, on the
contrary, insisted no less on embellishment than on neatness
and order; and this was no vain boast. Carefully-kept walks led
through the grounds; verdant turf, flowerbeds and charming
shady arbors met us at every turn; there were long beds planted
with flourishing currant, raspberry and blackberry bushes, and
large tracts set with rows of bearing vines, on which luscious
grapes hung invitingly. Order also reigned among the fruit
trees: here were several acres of nothing but apples, again a
plantation of pears or apricots, beneath which not a weed was
to be seen: the hoe and the rake had done their work
thoroughly. Everything was in the most perfect order: the
courtgardener of a German prince might have been proud of
it.

We seated ourselves in a shady arbor, where the doctor
entertained us further with an account of his religious belief.
He had, he said, no fixed creed and no established religion:
there were in the colony Protestants, Catholics, Methodists,
Baptists, indeed Christians of every name, and even Jews. Every
one was at liberty to hold what faith he pleased: he preached
only natural religion, and whoever shaped his life according to
that would be happy. After this he enlarged on the prosperity
of the colony, which was founded on the principles of natural
religion, and prosed about humility, love to our neighbor,
kindness and carrying religion into everything; and then back
he came to Nature and himself, until my head was perfectly
bewildered. I had given up long before this, in despair, any
questions as to the interior organization of the colony, for
the doctor either gave me evasive answers or none at all. His
colonists, he asserted, loved him as a father, and he cared for
them accordingly: both these assertions were undoubtedly true.
The deep respect with which those whom we occasionally met
lifted their hats to “the doctor”—a form of greeting by
no means universal in America—bore witness to their
unbounded esteem for him. Toward us also they demeaned
themselves with great respect, as to noble strangers whom the
doctor deigned to honor with his society. As to his care for
them, no one who witnessed it could deny the exceedingly
flourishing condition of the settlement. Whether, however, in
all this the doctor had not a keen eye to his own interest was
an afterthought which involuntarily presented itself.

As we left the orchard, the doctor pointed out to us several
wheat-fields in the neighborhood, cultivated with true German
love for neatness, which formed, with the pleasant dwellings
adjoining, separate farms. The average yield per acre, he
observed, was from twenty-five to forty bushels of wheat, and
from forty to fifty of oats. He then took us into a neighboring
grove, to a place where the pic-nics and holiday feasts of the
colony are held: here we paused near a grassy knoll shaded by a
sort of awning and surrounded by a moat. This, which bears the
name of “The Temple Hill,” forms the centre of a number of
straight roads, which branch out from it into the woods in the
shape of a fan. Not far from it I noticed a dancing ground
covered by a circular open roof, and a pavilion for the
music.

“At our public feasts,” said the doctor, “I have all these
branching roads lighted with colored lanterns, and illuminate
the temple, which, with its brilliant lamps, makes quite an
imposing spectacle. When we celebrate our May-day festival it
looks, after dark, like a scene out of the Arabian
Nights; and when, added to this, we have beautiful music
and fine singing, and the young folks are enjoying the dance,
it is really very pleasant. But none are permitted to set foot
on the Temple Hill, nor can they do it very easily if they
would. Do you know the reason, gentlemen?” Körner opined
that it might be on account of the ditch, which would be
difficult to pass, in which view I agreed. “Exactly so,”
remarked the doctor. “This Temple Hill has an especial
significance: it represents the sovereign ruler of the people,
on whose head no one may tread: on that account the ditch is
there.”

After a walk of several hours we returned to the doctor’s
house, where he invited us to take a glass of homemade wine. As
we had been informed that the sale and use of wine and spirits
were strictly forbidden in the colony, this invitation was
certainly an unprecedented exception. The wine, of which two
kinds were placed before us—one made of wild grapes, and
the other of currants—was very good, and was partaken of
in the doctor’s office. Here Mr. Körner again brought
forward his life-insurance project: the doctor gave him hopes
that he would go into it, but he wished to give the matter due
consideration, and to subject the advantages and disadvantages
of the speculation to a strict investigation, before giving a
definite answer; and with this ended our visit to the “king of
Aurora.”

Before leaving the colony we obtained considerable
information from the members as to their interior organization
and government, the results of which, as well as what I further
learned respecting Doctor Keil, I will state briefly.

Should any one wish to become a member of the colony, he
must, in the first place, put all his ready money into the
hands of Doctor Keil: he will then be taken on trial. If the
candidate satisfies the doctor, he can remain and become one of
the community: should this, however, not be the case, he
receives again the capital he paid in, but without interest.
How long he must remain “on probation” in the colony, and work
there, depends entirely on the doctor’s pleasure. If a member
leaves the community voluntarily—a thing almost unheard
of—he receives back his capital without interest,
together with a pro rata share of the earnings of the
community during his membership, as appraised by the
doctor.

All the ordinary necessaries of life are supplied
gratuitously to the members of the community. The doctor holds
the common purse, out of which all purchases are paid for, and
into which go the profits from the agricultural and industrial
products of the colony. If any member needs a coat or other
article of clothing, flour, sugar or tobacco, he can get
whatever he wants, without paying for it, at the “store:” in
the same way he procures meat from the butcher and bread from
the baker: spirits are forbidden except in case of sickness.
The doctor also appoints the occupation of each member, so as
to contribute to the best welfare of the colony—whether
he shall be a farmer, a mechanic, a common laborer, or whatever
he can be most usefully employed in; and the time and talents
of each are regarded as belonging to the whole community,
subject only to the doctor’s judgment. If a member marries, a
separate dwelling-house and a certain amount of land are
assigned him, so that the families of the settlement are
scattered about on farms. The elders of the colony support the
doctor in the duties of his office by counsel and
assistance.

The lands of the colony are collectively recorded in Doctor
Keil’s name, in order, as he says, to avoid intricate and
complicated law-papers. It would, however, be for the interest
of the colonists to make, a speedy change in this respect, so
that the members of the community, in case of the doctor’s
death, might obtain each his share of the lands without
litigation. Should the doctor’s decease occur soon, before this
alteration is made, his natural heirs could claim the whole
property of the colony, and the members would be left in the
lurch. He does not appear, however, to be in great haste to
effect this change, though it ought to have been done long ago.
It is always said among the colonists, naturally enough, that
all the ground is the common property of the community. Whether
the doctor fully subscribes to this opinion in his secret heart
might be a question.

Doctor Keil is at the same time the religious head and the
unlimited secular ruler of the colony of Aurora, and can
ordain, with the consent of the elders (who very naturally
uphold his authority), what he pleases. A life free from care
and responsibility, such as the members of the community (who,
for the most part, belong to the lower and uncultivated class)
lead—a life in regard to which no one but the doctor has
the trouble of thinking—is the main ground of the
undisturbed continuance of the colony. The pre-eminent talent
for organization, combined with the unlimited powers of
command, which the doctor—justly named “king of
Aurora”—possesses, together with the inborn industry
peculiar to Germans, is the cause of the prosperity of the
settlement, which calls itself communistic, but is certainly
nothing more than a vast farm belonging to its talented
founder. It has its schools, its churches, newspapers and
books—the selection and tendency of which the doctor sees
to—and no lack of social pleasures, music and singing.
Taken together with an easily-procured livelihood, all this
satisfies the desires of the colonists entirely, and the good
doctor takes care of everything else.

ELIZABETH SILL.

GRAY EYES.

I have always counted it among the larger blessings of
Providence that a woman can bear up year after year under a
weight of dullness which would drive a man of the same mental
calibre to desperation in a month.

I had no idea what a heavy burden mine had been until one
day my brother asked me to go to sea with him on his next
voyage. He and his wife were at the farm on their wedding-tour,
and only the happiness of a bridegroom could have led him to
hold out to me this way of escape. Christian’s heart when he
dropped his pack was not lighter than mine. Butter and cheese
are good things in their way—the world would miss them if
all the farmers’ daughters went suddenly down to the sea in
ships—but it is possible to have too much of a good
thing, and such had been my feeling for some years.

So suddenly and completely did my threadbare endurance give
way that if Frank had revoked his words the next minute, I must
have gone away at once to some crowded place and drawn a few
deep breaths of excitement before I could have joined again the
broken ends of my patience.

No bride-elect poor in this world’s goods ever went about
the preparations for her wedding with more delicious awe than I
felt in turning one old gown upside down, and another inside
out, for seafaring use. There was excitement enough in the
departure, the inevitable sea-changes, and finally the memory
of it all, to keep my mind busy for a few weeks, but when we
settled into the grooves of a tropical voyage, wafted along as
easily by the trade winds as if some gigantic hand, unseen and
steady, had us in its grasp, my life was wholly changed, and
yet it bore an odd family resemblance to the days at the farm.
It was a pleasant dullness, because, in the nature of things,
it must soon have an end.

I went on deck to look at a passing ship about as often as I
used to run to the window at the sound of carriagewheels. One
can’t take a very intimate interest in whales and the other
seamonsters unless one is scientific. Time died with me a slow
but by no means a painful death. I used to fold my hands and
look at them by the hour, internally rollicking over the idea
that there was no milk to skim or dishes to wash, or any
earthly wheel in motion that required my shoulder to turn it. I
spent much time in a half-awake state in the long warm days,
out of sheer delight in wasting time after saving it all my
life.

So it came about that I slept lightly o’ nights. Every
morning the steward came into the cabin with the first dawn of
day to scour his floors before the captain should appear. He
had a habit of talking to himself over this early labor, and
one morning, more awake than usual, I found that he was
praying. “O Lord, be good to me! I wasn’t to blame. I would
have helped her if I could. O Lord, be good to me!” and other
homely entreaties were repeated again and again.

He was a meek, bowed old negro, with snowy hair, and so many
wrinkles that all expression was shrunk out of his face. He was
an excellent cook, but he waited on table with a manner so
utterly despairing that it took away one’s appetite to look at
him.

For many mornings after this I listened to his prayers,
which grew more and more earnest and importunate. I could not
think he had done any harm with his own will. He must have been
more sinned against than sinning.

He brought me a shawl one cool evening as if it were my
death-warrant, and I said, in the sepulchral tone that wins
confidence, “Pedro, do you always say your prayers when you are
alone?”

“Yes, miss, ‘board this ship.”

“What’s the matter with, this ship?”

“I s’pose you don’t have no faith in ghosts?”

“Not much.”

“White folks mostly don’t,” said Pedro with aggravating
meekness, and turned into his pantry.

I followed him to the door, and stood in it so that he had
no escape: “What has that to do with your prayers?”

“This cabin has got a ghost in it.”

I looked over my shoulder into the dusk, and shivered a
little, which was not lost on Pedro. He grew more solemn if
possible than before: “I see her ‘most every morning, and if my
back is to the door, I see her all the same. She don’t never
touch me, but I keep at the prayers for fear she will.”

“Do you never see her except in the morning?”

“Once or twice she has just put her head out of the door of
the middle state-room when I was waitin’ on table.”

“In broad daylight?”

“Sartin. Them as sees ghosts sees ’em any time. Every
morning, just at peep o’ day, she comes out of that door and
makes a dive for the stairs. She just gives me one look, and
holds up her hand, and I don’t see no more of her till next
time.”

“How does she look?” I almost hoped he would not tell, but
he did.

“She’s got hair as black as a coal, kind o’ pushed back, as
if she’d been runnin’ her hands through it; she has big shiny
eyes, swelled up as she’d been cryin’ a great while; and she’s
always got on a gray dress, silvery-like, with a tear in one
sleeve. There ain’t nothin’ more, only a handkerchief tied
round her wrist, as if it had been hurt.”

“Is she handsome?”

“Mebbe white folks’d think so.”

“Why does she show herself to you and no one else, do you
suppose?”

“Didn’t I tell you the reason before?”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“Well, you see, she looked just so the last time I seen her
alive. I must go and put in the biscuit now, miss.”

I submitted, knowing that white folks may be hurried, but
black ones never; and I could not but admire the natural talent
which Pedro shared with the authors of continued stories, of
always dropping the thread at the most thrilling moment.

“Who was she?” said I, lying in wait for him on his
return.

“She was cap’n’s wife, miss—a young woman, and the
cap’n was old, with a blazing kind of temper. He was dreffle
sweet on her for about a month, and mebbe she was happy, mebbe
she wa’n’t: how should I know about white folks’ feelin’s? All
of a suddent he said she was sick and couldn’t go out of the
middle state-room. The old man took in plenty of stuff to eat,
but he never let me go near her. We was on just such a v’y’ge
as this, only hotter. The cap’n would come out of that room
lookin’ black as thunder, and everybody scudded out of his
sight when he put his head out of the gangway.

“He was always bad enough, but he got wuss and wuss, and
nothin’ couldn’t please him. Sometimes I’d hear the poor thing
a-moaning to herself like a baby that’s beat out with loud
cryin’ and hain’t got no noise left. She was always cryin’ in
them days. Once the supercargo (he was a cool hand, any way)
give me a bit of paper very private to give to her, and I
slipped it under the door, but the old man had nailed somethin’
down inside, an’ he found it afore she did. Then there was a
regular knockdown fight, and the supercargo was put in irons.
The old man was in the middle room a long time that day,
talkin’ in a hissin’ kind of a way, and the missus got a blow.
Just after that a sort of a white squall struck the ship, and
the old man give just the wrong orders. You see, he was clean
out of his head. He got so worked up at last that he fell down
in a fit, and they bundled him into his state-room and left
him, ’cause nobody cared whether he was dead or alive. The mate
took the irons off the supercargo first thing, and broke open
the middle room. The supercargo went in there and stayed a long
time, whispering to the missus, and she cried more’n ever, only
it sounded different.

“Toward night the old man come to, and begun to ask
questions—as ugly as ever, only as weak as a baby. ‘Bout
midnight I was comin’ out of his room, and I seen the missus in
a gray dress, with her eyes shinin’ like coals of fire, dive
out of her room and up the stairs, and nobody never seen her
afterward. The next morning the supercargo was gone too, and I
think they just drownded themselves, ’cause they couldn’t bear
to live any more without each other. Mebbe the mate knew
somethin’ about it, but he never let on, and I dunno no more
about it; only the old man had another fit when he heard it,
and died without no mourners.”

“It might be she was saved, after all,” I said, with true
Yankee skepticism.

“Then why should I see her ghost, if she ain’t
dead-drownded?”

“Did you never find anything in the state-room that would
explain?”

“Well, I did find some bits of paper, but I couldn’t read
writin’.”

“Oh, what did you do with them?” I insisted, quivering with
excitement.

“You won’t tell the cap’n?”

“No, never.”

“You’ll give ’em back to me?”

“Yes, yes—of course.”

“Here they be,” he said, opening his shirt, and showing a
little bag hung round his neck like an amulet. He took out a
little wad of brown paper, and gave it jealously into my
hand.

“I will give it back to you to-night,” I said with the
solemnity of an oath, and carried it to my room.

It proved to be a short and fragmentary account of the
sufferings which the “missus” had endured in the middle room,
written in pencil on coarse wrapping-paper, and bearing marks
of trembling hands and frequent tears. I thought I might copy
the papers without breaking faith with Pedro. The outside paper
bore these words:

“Whoever finds this is besought for pity’s sake, by its most
unhappy writer, to send it as soon as possible to Mrs. Jane
Atwood of Davidsville, Connecticut, United States of
America.”

Then followed a letter to her mother:

DEAREST MOTHER: If I never see your blessed face again, I
know you will not believe me guilty of what my husband accuses
me of. I married Captain Eliot for your sake, believing, since
Herbert had proved faithless, that no comfort was left to me
except in pleasing others. I meant to be a good wife to Captain
Eliot, and I believe I should have kept my vow all my days if
the most unfortunate thing had not wakened his jealousy. Since
then he has been almost or quite crazed.

I knew we had a supercargo of whom Captain Eliot spoke
highly. He kept his room for a month from sea-sickness, and
when he came out it was Herbert. Of course I knew him, every
line of his face had been so long written on my heart. I strove
to treat him as if I had never seen him before, but the old
familiar looks and tones were very hard to bear. If Herbert
could only have submitted patiently to our fate! But it was not
in him to be patient under anything, and one evening, when I
was sitting alone on deck, he must needs pour out his soul in
one great burst, trying to prove that he had never deserted me,
but only circumstances had been cruel. I longed to believe him,
but I could only keep repeating that it was too late.

When I went down, Captain Eliot dragged me into the middle
state-room, and gave vent to his jealous feelings. He must have
listened to all that Herbert had said. His last words were that
I should never leave that room alive. I had a wretched night,
and the first time I fell into an uneasy sleep I started
suddenly up to find my husband flashing the light of a lantern
across my eyes. “Handsome and wicked,” he muttered—”they
always go together.”

I begged him to listen to the story of my engagement to
Herbert, and he did listen, but it did not soften his heart. If
he ever loved me, his jealousy has swallowed it up.

I have been in this room just a week. My husband does not
starve or beat me, but his taunts and threats are fearful, and
his eyes when he looks at me grow wild, as if he had the
longing of a beast to tear me in pieces.

May 10. I placed a copy of the paper that is pinned
to this letter in a little bottle that had escaped my husband’s
search, and threw it out of my window.

I am Waitstill Atwood Eliot, wife of Captain Eliot of the
ship Sapphire. I have been kept in solitary confinement and
threatened with death for four weeks, for no just cause. I
believe him to be insane, as he constantly threatens to burn or
sink the ship. I pray that this paper may be picked up by some
one who will board this ship and bring me help.

Of course it is a most forlorn hope, but it keeps me from
utter despair.

20. Herbert tried to communicate with me by slipping a paper
under the door, but I did not get it, and he has been put in
irons. Captain Eliot boasts of it. I wish he would bind us
together and let us drown in one another’s arms, as they did in
the Huguenot persecution.

28. A little paper tied to a string hung in front of my
bull’s-eye window to-day: I took it in. The first officer had
lowered it down: “Captain Eliot says you are ill, but I don’t
believe it. If he tries violence, scream, and I will break open
the door. I am always on the watch. Keep your heart up.”

This is a drop of comfort in my black cup, but my little
window was screwed down within an hour after I had read the
paper.

June 10. My spirit is worn out: I can endure no more.
I have begged my husband to kill me and end my misery. I don’t
know why he hesitated. He means to do it some time, but perhaps
he cannot think of torture exquisite enough for his
purpose.

11. My husband came in about four in the afternoon, looking
so vindictive that my heart stood still. He gradually worked
himself into a frenzy, and aimed a blow at my head: instinct,
rather than the love of life, made me parry it, and I got the
stroke on my wrist.

I screamed, and at the same moment there was a tumult on
deck, and the ship quivered as if she too had been violently
struck. Captain Eliot rushed on deck, and began to give hurried
orders. I could hear the first officer contradict them, and
then there was a heavy fall, and two or three men stumbled down
the cabin stairs, carrying some weight between them.

Later. My husband is helpless, and Herbert has been
with me, urging me passionately to trust myself to him in a
little boat at midnight. He says there are several ships in
sight, and one of them will be almost sure to pick us up. He
swears that he will leave me, and never see me again (if I say
so), so soon as he has placed me in safety, but he will save
me, by force if need be, from the brute into whose hands I fell
so innocently. If the ship does not see us, it is but dying,
after all.

Good-bye, mother! I pray that this paper will reach you
before Captain Eliot can send you his own account, but if it
does not, you will believe me innocent all the same.

This was the last, and I folded up the papers as they had
come to me. That night I read them all to Pedro.

“They was drownded—I knew it,” said Pedro; and nothing
could remove that opinion. A ghost is more convincing than
logic.

Our voyage wore on, with one day just like another: my
brother looked at the sun every day, and put down a few
cabalistic figures on a slate, but his steady business was
reading novels to his wife and drinking weak claret and
water.

The sea was always the same, smiling and smooth, and the
“man at the wheel” seemed to be always holding us back by main
strength from the place where we wanted to go. I had a growing
belief that we should sail for ever on this rippling mirror and
never touch the frame of it. It struck me with a sense of
intense surprise when a dark line loomed far ahead, and they
told me quietly that that line meant Bombay.

It seemed a matter of course to my brother that the desired
port should heave in sight just when he expected it, but to me
the efforts that he had made to accomplish this tremendous
result were ridiculously small.

“I have done more work in a week, and had nothing to show
for it at last,” said I, “than you have seemed to do in all
this voyage.”

“Poor sister! don’t you wish you were a man?”

“Certainly, all women do who have any sense. I hold with
that ancient Father of the Church who maintained that all women
are changed into men on the judgment-day. The council said it
was heresy, but that don’t alter my faith.”

“I shouldn’t like you half as well if you had been born a
boy,” said Frank.

“But I should like myself vastly better,” said I, clinging
to the last word.

Bombay is a city by itself: there is none like it on earth,
whatever there may be in the heaven above or in the waters
under it. From Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy’s hospital for sick
animals to the Olympian conceit of the English residents, there
are infinite variations of people and things that I am
persuaded can be matched nowhere else. I felt myself living in
a series of pictures, a sort of supernumerary in a theatre,
where they changed the play every night.

One of the first who boarded our ship was Mr. Rayne, an old
friend of Frank’s. He insisted on our going to his house for a
few days in a warm-hearted way that was irresistible.

“Are you quite sure you want me?” I said dubiously.
“Young married people make a kind of heaven for themselves, and
do not want old maids looking over the wall.”

“But you must go with us,” said Frank, man-like,
never seeing anything but the uppermost surface of a
question.

“Not at all. I’m quite strong-minded enough to stay on board
ship; or, if that would not do in this heathen place, the
missionaries are always ready to entertain strangers. A week in
the missionhouse would make me for ever a shining light in the
sewing circle at home.

“A woman of so many resources would be welcome anywhere. For
my part, an old maid is a perfect Godsend. The genus is unknown
here, and the loss to society immense,” said Mr. Rayne.

“But what shall I do when Mrs. Rayne and my sister-in-law
are comparing notes about the perfections of their
husbands?”

“Walk on the verandah with me and convert me to woman
suffrage.”

Mr. Rayne had his barouche waiting on shore, and drove us
first to the bandstand, where, in the coolness of sunset, all
the Bombay world meet to see and to be seen. When the band
paused, people drove slowly round the circle, seeking
acquaintance. Among them one equipage was perfect—a small
basket-phaeton, and two black ponies groomed within an inch of
their lives. My eyes fell on the ponies first, but I saw them
no more when the lady who drove them turned her face toward
me.

She wore a close-fitting black velvet habit and a little
round hat with long black feather. Her hair might have been
black velvet, too, as it fell low on her forehead, and was
fastened somehow behind in a heavy coil. Black brows and lashes
shaded clear gray eyes—the softest gray, without the
least tint of green in them—such eyes as Quaker maidens
ought to have under their gray bonnets. Little rose colored
flushes kept coming and going in her cheeks as she talked.

All at once I thought of Queen Guinevere,

As she fled fast thro’ sun and shade,

With jingling bridle-reins.

“Mr. Rayne, do you see that lady in black, with the
ponies?”

“Plainly.”

“If I were a man, that woman would be my Fate.”

“I thought women never admired each other’s beauty.”

“You are mistaken. Heretofore I have met beautiful women
only in poetry. Do you remember four lines about Queen
Guinevere?—no, six lines, I mean:

“She looked so lovely as she swayed

The rein with dainty finger-tips,

A man had given all other bliss,

And all his worldly worth for this,

To waste his whole heart in one kiss

Upon her perfect lips.

“I always thought them overstrained till now.”

“I perfectly agree with you,” said Mr. Rayne: “I knew we
were congenial spirits.” Then he said a word or two in a
diabolical language to his groom, who ran to the carriage which
I had been watching and repeated it to the lady: she bowed and
smiled to Mr. Rayne, and soon drew up her ponies beside us.

“My wife,” said Mr. Rayne with laughter in his eyes.

Mrs. Rayne talked much like other people, and her beauty
ceased to dazzle me after a few minutes; not that it grew less
on near view, but, being a woman, I could not fall in love with
her in the nature of things.

When the music stopped we drove to Mr. Rayne’s house, his
wife keeping easily beside us. When she was occupied with the
others Mr. Rayne whispered, “Her praises were so sweet in my
ears that I would not own myself Sir Lancelot at once.”

“If you are Sir Lancelot,” I said, “where is King
Arthur?”

“Forty fathoms deep, I hope,” said Mr. Rayne with a sudden
change in his voice and a darkening face. I had raised a ghost
for him without knowing it, and he spoke no more till we
reached the house.

It was a long, low, spreading structure with a thatched
roof, and a verandah round it. A wilderness of tropical plants
hemmed it in. But all appearance of simplicity vanished on our
entrance. In the matted hall stood a tree to receive the light
coverings we had worn; not a “hat tree,” as we say at home by
poetic license, but the counterfeit presentment of a real tree,
carved in branches and delicate foliage out of black wood. The
drawing-room was eight-sided, and would have held, with some
margin, the gambrel-roofed house, chimneys and all, in which I
had spent my life. Two sides were open into other rooms, with
Corinthian pillars reaching to the roof. Carved screens a
little higher than our heads filled the space between the
pillars, and separated the drawing-room from Mrs. Rayne’s
boudoir on the side and the dining-room on the other.

The furniture of these rooms was like so many verses of a
poem. Every chair and table had been designed by Mrs. Rayne,
and then realized in black wood by the patient hands of
natives.

Another side opened by three glass doors on a verandah, and
only a few rods below the house the sea dashed against a
beach.

After dinner I sat on the verandah drinking coffee and the
sea-breeze by turns. The gentlemen walked up and down smoking
the pipe of peace, while Mrs. Rayne sat within, talking with
Rhoda in the candlelight. Opposite me, as I looked in at the
open door, hung two Madonnas, the Sistine and the Virgin of the
Immaculate Conception. In front of each stood a tall
flower-stand carved to imitate the leaves and blossoms of the
calla lily. These black flowers held great bunches of the
Annunciation lily, sacred to the Virgin through all the ages.
Mrs. Rayne had taken off the close-buttoned jacket, and her
dress was now open at the throat, with some rich old lace
clinging about it and fastened with a pearl daisy.

“Have you forgiven me the minute’s deception I put upon
you?” said Mr. Rayne, pausing beside me. “If I had not read
admiration in your face, I would have told you the truth at
once.”

“How could one help admiring her?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure: I never could.”

“She has the serenest face, like still, shaded water. I
wonder how she would look in trouble?”

“It is not becoming to her.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite.”

“Your way of life here seems so perfect! No hurry nor
worry—nothing to make wrinkles.”

“You like this smooth Indian living, then?”

“Like it! I hope you won’t think me wholly given over
to love of things that perish in the using, but if I could live
this sort of life with the one I liked best, heaven would be a
superfluity.”

“It is heaven indeed when I think of the purgatory from
which we came into it,” said Mr. Rayne, throwing away his cigar
and carrying off my coffee-cup.

“Do you know anything of Mrs. Rayne’s history before her
marriage?” I said to Frank as I joined him in his walk.

“Nothing to speak of—only she was a widow.”

“Oh!” said I, feeling that a spot or two had suddenly
appeared on the face of the sun.

“That’s nothing against her, is it?”

“No, but I have no patience with second marriages.”

“Nor first ones, either,” said Frank wickedly.

“But seriously, Frank—would you like to have a wife so
beautiful as Mrs. Rayne?”

“Yes, if she had Rhoda’s soul inside of her,” said Frank
stoutly.

“I shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because all sorts of eyes gloat on her beauty and drink it
in, and in one way appropriate it to themselves. Mr. Rayne is
as proud of the admiration given to his wife as if it were a
personal tribute to his own taste in selecting her. A beautiful
woman never really and truly belongs to her husband unless he
can keep a veil over her face, as the Turks do.”

“I knew you had ‘views,'” said Mr. Rayne behind me, “but I
had no idea they were so heathenish. What is New England coming
to under the new rule? Are the plain women going to shut up all
the handsome ones?”

“I was only supposing a case.”

“Suppositions are dangerous. You first endure, then dally
with them, and finally embrace them as established facts.”

“I was only saying that if I am a man when I come into the
world next time (as the Hindoos say), I shall marry a plain
woman with a charming disposition, and so, as it were, have my
diamond all to myself by reason of its dull cover.”

“Jealousy, thy name is woman!” said Mr. Rayne. “When the
Woman’s Republic is set up, how I shall pity the handsome
ones!”

“They will all be banished to some desert island,” said
Frank.

“And draw all men after them, as the ‘Pied Piper of Hamelin’
did the rats,” said Mr. Rayne.

“What are you talking about?” said Mrs. Rayne, joining us at
this point.

“The pity of it,” said her husband, “that beauty is only
skin deep.”

“That is deep enough,” said Mrs. Rayne.

“Yes, if age and sickness and trouble did not make one shed
it so soon,” said I ungratefully.

“Don’t mention it,” said Mrs. Rayne—”’tis bad enough
when it comes. Do you remember that Greek woman in
Lothair, whose father was so fearfully rich that she
seemed to be all crusted with precious stones?”

“Perfectly.”

“To dance and sing was all she lived for, and Lothair must
needs bring in the skeleton, as you did, by reminding her of
the dolorous time when she would neither dance nor sing. You
think she is crushed, to be sure, only Disraeli’s characters
never are crushed, any more than himself. ‘Oh then,’ she says,
‘we will be part of the audience, and other people will dance
and sing for us.’ So beauty is always with us, though one
person loses it.”

She gave a little shrug of her shoulders, which made her
pearls and velvet shimmer in the moonlight. She looked so white
and cool and perfect, so apart from common clay, that all at
once Queen Guinevere ceased to be my type of her, and I thought
of “Lilith, first wife of Adam,” as we see her in Rossetti’s
fanciful poem:

Not a drop of her blood was human,

But she was made like a soft, sweet woman.

We all went to our rooms after this, and in each of ours
hung a full-length swinging mirror; I had never seen one
before, except in a picture-shop or in a hotel.

“Truly this is ‘richness’!” I said, walking up and down and
sideways from one to the other.

“I had no idea you had so much vanity,” said Frank, laughing
at me, as he has done ever since he was born.

“Vanity! not a spark. I am only seeing myself as others see
me, for the first time.”

“I always had a glass like that in my room at home,” said my
sister-in-law, with the least morsel of disdain in her
tone.

“Had you? Then you have lost a great deal by growing up to
such things. A first sensation at my age is delightful.”

Next day Rhoda and I were sitting with Mrs. Rayne in her
dressing-room, with a great fan swinging overhead. We all had
books in our hands, but I found more charming reading in my
hostess, whose fascinations hourly grew upon me.

She wore a long loose wrapper, clear blue in color, with
little silver stars on it. I don’t know how much of my
admiration sprang from her perfect taste in dress. Raiment has
an extraordinary effect on the whole machinery of life. Most
people think too lightly of it. Somebody says if Cleopatra’s
nose had been a quarter of an inch shorter, the history of the
world would have been utterly changed; but Antony might equally
have been proof against a robe with high neck and tight
sleeves. Mrs. Rayne’s face always seemed to crown her costume
like a rose out of green leaves, yet I cannot but think that if
I had seen her first in a calico gown and sitting on a
three-legged stool milking a cow, I should still have thought
her a queen among women.

While I sat like a lotos-eater, forgetful of home and
butter-making, a servant brought in a parcel and a note. Mrs.
Rayne tossed the note to me while she unfolded a roll of gray
silk.

DEAR GUINEVERE: I send with this a bit of silk that old
Fut’ali insisted on giving to me this morning. It is that
horrid gray color which we both detest. I know you will never
wear it, and you had better give it to Miss Blake to make a
toga for her first appearance in the women’s Senate.

LANCELOT.

“With all my heart!” said Mrs. Rayne as I gave back the
note. “You will please us both far more than you can please
yourself by wearing the dress with a thought of us. I wonder
why Mr. Rayne calls me ‘Guinevere’? But he has a new name for
me every day, because he does not like my own.”

“What is it?”

“Waitstill. Did you ever hear it?”

“Never but once,” I said with a sudden tightness in my
throat. I could scarcely speak my thanks for the dress.

“I should never wear it,” said Mrs. Rayne: “the color is
associated with a very painful part of my life.”

“Do you suppose water would spot it?” asked Rhoda, who is of
a practical turn of mind.

“Take a bit and try it.”

“Water spots some grays” said Mrs. Rayne with a strange sort
of smile as Rhoda went out, “especially salt water. I spent one
night at sea in an open boat, with a gray dress clinging wet
and salt to my limbs. When I tore it off in rags I seemed to
shed all the misery I had ever known. All my life since then
has been bright as you see it now. It would be a bad omen to
put on a gray gown again.”

“Then you have made a sea-voyage, Mrs. Rayne?”

“Yes, such a long voyage!—worse than the ‘Ancient
Mariner’s.’ No words can tell how I hate the sea.” She sighed
deeply, with a sudden darkening of her gray eyes till they were
almost black, and grasped one wrist hard with the other
hand.

A sudden trembling seized me. I was almost as much agitated
as Mrs. Rayne. I felt that I must clinch the matter somehow,
but I took refuge in a platitude to gain time: “There is such a
difference in ships, almost as much as in houses, and the
comfort of the voyage depends greatly on that.”

“It may be so,” she said wearily.

“My brother’s ship is old, but it has been refitted lately
to something like comfort. It’s old name was the Sapphire.”

This was my shot, and it hit hard.

“The Sapphire! the Sapphire!” she whispered with dilated
eyes. “Did you ever hear—did you ever find—But what
nonsense! You must think me the absurdest of women.”

The color came back to her face, and she laughed quite
naturally.

“The fact is, Miss Blake, I was very ill and miserable when
I was on shipboard, and to this day any sudden reminder of it
gives me a shock.—Did water spot it?” she said to Rhoda,
who came in at this point.

I thought over all the threads of the circumstance that had
come into my hand, and like Mr. Browning’s lover I found “a
thing to do.”

The next morning I made an excuse to go down to the ship
with my brother, and there, by dint of pressure, I got those
stained and dingy papers into my possession again. I had only
that day before me, for we were going to a hotel the same
evening, and the Raynes were to set out next day for their
summer place among the hills, a long way back of Bombay. Our
stay had already delayed their departure.

This was my plot: Mrs. Rayne had been reading a book that I
had bought for the home-voyage, and was to finish it before
evening. I selected the duplicate of the paper which “Waitstill
Atwood Eliot” had put in a bottle and cast adrift when her case
had been desperate, and laid it in the book a page or two
beyond Mrs. Rayne’s mark. It seemed impossible that she could
miss it: I watched her as a chemist watches his first
experiment.

Twice she took up the book, and was interrupted before she
could open it: the third time she sat down so close to me that
the folds of her dress touched mine. One page, two pages: in
another instant she would have turned the leaf, and I held my
breath, when a servant brought in a note. Her most intimate
friend had been thrown from her carriage, and had sent for her.
It was a matter of life and death, and brooked no delay. In ten
minutes she had bidden us a cordial good-bye, and dropped out
of my life for all time.

She never finished my book, nor I hers. I had
had it in my heart, in return for her warm hospitality, to cast
a great stone out of her past life into the still waters of her
present, and her good angel had turned it aside just before it
reached her. I might have asked Mr. Rayne in so many words if
his wife’s name had been Waitstill Atwood Eliot when he married
her, but that would have savored of treachery to her, and I
refrained.

Often in the long calm days of the home-voyage, and oftener
still in the night-watches, I pondered in my heart the items of
Mrs. Rayne’s history, and pieced them together like bits of
mosaic—the gray eyes and the gray dress, the identity of
name, the indefinite terrors of her sea-voyage, the little
touch concerning Lancelot and Guinevere, her emotion when I
mentioned the Sapphire. If circumstantial evidence can be
trusted, I feel certain that Pedro’s ghost appeared to me in
the flesh.

ELLA WILLIAMS THOMPSON.

REMINISCENCES OF
FLORENCE.

I had six months more to stay on the Continent, and I began
for the first time to be discontented in Paris. There was no
soul in that great city whom I had ever seen before, but this
alone would hot have been sufficient to make me long for a
change, except for an accident which unluckily surrounded me
with my own countrymen. These I did not go abroad to see; and
having lived almost entirely in the society of the French for
over two years, it was with dismay that I saw my sanctum
invaded daily by twos and threes of the aimless American
nonentities who presume that their presence must be agreeable
to any of their countrymen, and especially to any countrywoman,
after a chance introduction on the boulevard or an hour spent
together in a café.

“Seeing these things,” I determined to leave Paris, and the
third day after found me traveling through picturesque Savoy
toward Mont Cenis. All the afternoon the rugged hills had been
growing higher and whiter with snow, and now, just before
sunset, we reached the railway terminus, St. Michel, and were
under the shadow of the Alps themselves.

The previous night in the cars I had found myself the only
woman among some half dozen French military officers, who paid
me the most polite attention. They were charmed that I made no
objection to their cigarettes, talked with me on various
topics, criticised McClellan as a general, and were
enthusiastic on the subject of our country generally. About
midnight they prepared a grand repast from their
traveling-bags, to which they gave me a cordial invitation. I
begged to contribute my mesquin supply of grapes and
brioches, and the supper was a considerable event. Their
canteens were filled with red wines, and one cup served the
whole company. They drank my health and that of the President
of the United States. Afterward we had vocal music, two of the
officers being good singers. They sang Beranger’s songs and the
charming serenade from Lalla Rookh. I finally expressed
a desire to hear the Marseillaise. This seemed to take them by
surprise, but one of the singers, declaring that he had
“rien à refuser à madame” boldly struck
up,

Allons, enfants de la patrie,

Le jour de gloire est arrivé;

but his companions checked him before he had finished the
first stanza. The law forbade, they said, the production of the
Marseillaise in society. We were a society: the guard would
hear us and might report it.

“Vous voyez, madame,” said the singer, “n’il n’est pas
défendu d’être voleur, mais c’est défendu
d’être attrapé” (It is not against the law to be a
thief, but to be caught.)

My traveling—companions reached their destination
early in the morning, and, very gallantly expressing regrets
that they were not going over the Alps, so as to bear mer
company, bade me farewell.

From the rear of the St. Michel hotel, called the Lion d’Or,
I watched the preparations for crossing Mont Cenis. Three
diligences were being crazily loaded with our baggage. The men
who loaded them seemed imitating the Alpine structure. They
piled trunk on trunk to the height of thirty feet, I verily
believe; and if some one should nudge my elbow and say “fifty,”
I should write it down so without manifesting the least
surprise.

When the preparations were finished the setting sun was
shining clearly on the white summits above, and we commenced
slowly winding up the noble zigzag road. Rude mountain children
kept up with our diligences, asked for sous and wished us
bon voyage in the name of the Virgin.

The grandeur, but especially the extent and number, of the
Alpine peaks impressed me with a vague, undefinable sense,
which was not, I think, the anticipated sensation; and indeed
if I had been in a poetic mood, it would have been quickly
dissipated by the mock raptures of a young Englishman with a
poodly moustache and an eye-glass. He called our attention to
every chasm, gorge and waterfall, as if we had been wholly
incapable of seeing or appreciating anything without his aid.
As for me, I did not feel like disputing his susceptibility. I
was suffering an uneasy apprehension of an avalanche—not
of snow, but of trunks and boxes from the topheavy diligences
ahead of us. However, we reached the top of Mont Cenis safely
by means of thirteen mules to each coach, attached tandem, and
we stopped at the queer relay-house there some thirty minutes.
Here some women in the garb of nuns served me some soup with
grated cheese, a compound which suggested a dishcloth in
flavor, yet it was very good. I will not attempt to reconcile
the two statements. After the soup I went out to see the Alps.
The ecstatic Briton was still eating and drinking, and I could
enjoy the scene unmolested. I crossed a little bridge near the
inn. The night was cold and bright. Hundreds of snowy peaks
above, below and in every direction, some of their hoary heads
lost in the clouds, were glistening in the light of a clear
September moon, and the stillness was only broken by a wild
stream tumbling down the precipices which I looked up to as I
crossed the bridge. It was indeed an impressive
scene—cold, desolate, awful. I walked so near the
freezing cataract that the icicles touched my face, and
thinking that Dante, when he wrote his description of hell,
might have been inspired by this very scene, I wrapped my cloak
closer about me and went back to the inn.

The diligences were ready, and we commenced a descent which
I cannot even now think of without a shudder. To each of those
heavily-laden stages were attached two horses only, and we
bounded down the mountain-side like a huge loosened boulder.
Imagine the sensation as you looked out of the windows and saw
yourself whirling over yawning chasms and along the brinks of
dizzy precipices, fully convinced that the driver was drunk and
the horses goaded to madness by Alpine demons! I have been on
the ocean in a storm sufficiently severe to make Jew and
Christian pray amicably together; I have been set on fire by a
fluid lamp, and have been dragged under the water by a drowning
friend, but I think I never had such an alarming sense of
coming destruction as in that diligence. I think of those
sure-footed horses even now with gratitude.

We arrived at Susa a long time before daylight. At first, I
decided to stay and see this town, which was founded by a Roman
colony in the time of Augustus. The arch built in his honor
about eight years before Christ seemed a thing worth going to
see; but a remark from my companion with the eye-glass made me
determine to go on. He said he was going to “do” the arch, and
I knew I should not be equal to witnessing any more of his
ecstasies.

My first astonishment in Italy was that hardly any of the
railroad officials spoke French. I had always been told that
with that language at your command you could travel all over
the Continent. This is a grave error: even in Florence,
although “Ici on parle français” is conspicuous in many
shop-windows, I found I had to speak Italian or go unserved. I
had a mortal dread of murdering the beautiful Italian language;
so I wanted to speak it well before I commenced, like the
Irishman who never could get his boots on until he had worn
them a week.

I stopped at Turin, then the capital of Italy, only a short
time, and hurried on to Florence, for that was to be my home
for the winter. It was delightful to come down from the Alpine
snows and find myself face to face with roses and orange trees
bearing fruit and blossom. Here I wandered through the
olive-gardens alone, and gave way to the rapturous sense of
simply being in the land of art and romance, the land of love
and song; for there was no ecstatic person with me armed with
Murray and prepared to admire anything recommended
therein. Besides, I could enjoy Italy for days and months, and
therefore was not obliged to “do” (detestable tourist slang!)
anything in a given time. I was free as a bird. I knew no
Americans in Florence, and determined to studiously avoid
making acquaintances except among Italians, for I wished to
learn the language as I had learned French, by constantly
speaking it and no other.

The day following my arrival in Florence I went out to look
for lodgings, which I had the good fortune to find immediately.
I secured the first I looked at. They were in the Borgo SS.
Apostoli, in close proximity to the Piazza del Granduca, now
Delia Signoria. I was passing this square, thinking of my good
luck in finding my niche for the winter, when, much to my
surprise, some one accosted me in English. Think of my dismay
at seeing one of the irrepressible Paris bores I had fled from!
He was in Florence before me, having come by a different route;
and neither of us had known anything about the other’s
intention to quit Paris. He asked me at once where I was
stopping, and I told him at the Hotel a la Fontana, not deeming
it necessary to add that I was then on my way there to pack up
my traveling-bag and pay my bill. As he was “doing” Florence in
about three days, he never found me out. The next I heard of
him he was “doing” Rome. This American prided himself on his
knowledge of Italian; and one day in a restaurant, wishing for
cauliflower (cavolo fiore), he astonished the waiter by
calling for horse. “Cavallo”! he
roared—”Portéz me cavallo!” “Cavallo!”
repeated the waiter, with the characteristic Italian shrug.
“Non simangia in Italia, signore” (It is not eaten in
Italy, signore). Then followed more execrable Italian, and the
waiter brought him something which elicited “Non volo! non
volo!” (I don’t fly! I don’t fly!) from the American, and
“Lo credo, signore” from the baffled waiter, much to the
amusement of people at the adjacent tables.

I liked my new quarters very much. They consisted of two
goodly-sized rooms, carpeted with thick braided rag carpets,
and decently furnished, olive oil provided for the quaint old
classic-shaped lamp, and the rooms kept in order, for the
astounding price of thirty francs a month. Wood I had to pay
extra for when I needed a fire, and that indeed was expensive;
for a bundle only sufficient to make a fire cost a franc. There
were few days, however, even in that exceptional winter, which
rendered a fire necessary. The scaldino for the feet was
generally sufficient, and this, replenished three times a day,
was included in the rent.

One of my windows looked out on olive-gardens and on the old
church San Miniato, on the hill of the same name. Mr. Hart, the
sculptor, told me that those rooms were very familiar to him.
Buchanan Read, I think he said, had occupied them, and the
walls in many places bore traces of artist vagaries. There were
several nice caricatures penciled among the cheap frescoes of
the walls. All the walls are frescoed in Florence. Think of
having your ceiling and walls painted in a manner that
constantly suggests Michael Angelo!

After some weeks spent in looking at the art-wonders in
Florence, I visited many of the studios of our artists. That of
Mr. Hart, on the Piazza Independenza, was one of the most
interesting. He had two very admirable busts of Henry Clay, and
all his visitors, encouraged by his frank manner, criticised
his works freely. Most people boldly pass judgment on any work
of art, and “understand” Mrs. Browning when she says the Venus
de’ Medici “thunders white silence.” I do not. I am sure I
never can understand what a thundering silence means, whatever
may be its color. These appreciators talked of the
“word-painting” of Mrs. Browning.

They sit on their thrones in a purple sublimity,

And grind down men’s bones to a pale unanimity.

I suppose this is “word-painting.” I can see the
picture also—some kings, and possibly queens, seated on
gorgeous thrones, engaged in the festive occupation of grinding
bones! Oh, I degrade the subject, do I? Nonsense! The term is a
stilted affectation, perhaps never better applied than to Mrs.
Browning’s descriptive spasms. Still, she was undoubtedly a
poet. She wrote many beautiful subjective poems, but she wrote
much that was not poetry, and which suggests only a deranged
nervous system. I have a friend who maintains from her writings
that she never loved, that she did not know what passion meant.
However this may be, the author of the sonnet
commencing—

Go from me! Yet I feel that I shall stand

Henceforward in thy shadow,

deserves immortality.

But to return to Mr. Hart’s studio. One of the most
remarkable things I saw in Florence was this artist’s invention
to reduce certain details of sculpture to a mechanical process.
This machine at first sight struck me as a queer kind of
ancient armor. In brief, the subject is placed in position,
when the front part of this armor, set on some kind, of hinge,
swings round before him, and the sculptor makes measurements by
means of numberless long metal needles, which are so arranged
as to run in and touch the subject: A stationary mark is placed
where the needle touches, and then I think it is pulled back.
So the artist goes on, until some hundreds of measurements are
made, if necessary, when the process is finished and the
subject is released. How these measurements are made to serve
the artist in modeling the statue I cannot very well describe,
but I understood that by their aid Mr. Hart had modeled a bust
from life in the incredible space of two days! I further
understood that Mr. Hart’s portrait-busts are remarkable for
their correct likeness, which of course they must be if they
are mathematically correct in their proportions. Many of the
artists in Florence have the bad taste to make sport of this
machine; but if Mr. Hart’s portrait-busts are what they have
the reputation of being, this sport is only a mask for
jealousy. Mr. Hart was extremely sensitive to the light manner
Mr. Powers and others have of speaking of this invention. One
day he was much annoyed when a visitor, after examining the
machine very attentively for some time, exclaimed, “Mr. Hart,
what if you should have a man shut in there among those points,
and he should happen to sneeze?”

The Pitti Palace was one of my favorite haunts, and I often
spent whole hours there in a single salon. There I almost
always saw Mr. G——, a German-American, copying from
the masters; and he could copy too! What an indefatigable
worker he was! Slight and delicate of frame, he seemed
absolutely incapable of growing weary. He often toiled there
all day long, his hands red and swollen with the cold, for the
winter, as I have before remarked, was unusually severe. For
many days I saw him working on a Descent from the Cross by
Tintoretto—a bold attempt, for Tintoretto’s colors are as
baffling as those of the great Venetian master himself. This
copy had received very general praise, and one day I took a
Lucca friend, a dilettante, to see it. Mr. G——
brought the canvas out in the hall, that we might see it
outside of the ocean of color which surrounded it in the
gallery. When we reached the hall, Mr. G—— turned
the picture full to the light. The effect was astounding. It
was so brilliant that you could hardly look at it. It seemed a
mass of molten gold reflecting the sun. “Good God!” exclaimed
G——, “did I do that?” and an expression of bitter
disappointment passed over his face. I ventured to suggest that
as everybody had found it good while it was in the gallery,
this brilliant effect must be from the cold gray marble of the
hall. G—— could not pardon the picture, and nothing
that the Italian or I could say had the least effect. He would
hear no excuse for it, and, evidently quite mortified at the
début of his Tintoretto, he hurried the canvas back to
the easel. The sister of the czar of Russia was greatly pleased
with this copy, and proposed to buy it, but whether she did or
not I forgot to ascertain.

Alone as I was in Florence, cultivating only the
acquaintance of Italians, yet was I never troubled with
ennui. I read much at Vieussieux’s, and when I grew
tired of that and of music, I made long sables on the Lung Arno
to the Cascine, through the charming Boboli gardens, or out to
Fiesole. Fiesole is some two miles from Florence, and once on
my way there I stopped at the Protestant burying-ground and
pilfered a little wildflower from Theodore Parker’s grave to
send home to one of his romantic admirers. Fiesole must be a
very ancient town, for there is a ruined amphitheatre there,
and the remains of walls so old that they are called Pelasgic
in their origin; which is, I take it, sufficiently vague. The
high hill is composed of the most solid marble; so the
guidebooks say, at least. This is five hundred and seventy-five
feet above the sea, and on its summit stands the cathedral,
very old indeed, and built in the form of a basilica, like that
of San Miniato. From this hill you look down upon the plain
beneath, with the Arno winding through it, and upon Florence
and the Apennine chain, above which rise the high mountains of
Carrara. Here, on the highest available point of the rock, I
used to sit reading, and looking upon the panorama beneath,
until the sinking sun warned me that I had only time to reach
the city before its setting. I used to love to look also at
works of art in this way, for by so doing I fixed them in my
mind for future reference. I never passed the Piazza della
Signoria without standing some minutes before the Loggia dei
Lanzi and the old ducal palace with its marvelous tower. Before
this palace, exposed to the weather for three hundred and fifty
years, stands Michael Angelo’s David; to the left, the fountain
on the spot where Savonarola was burnt alive by the order of
Alexander VI.; and immediately facing this is the post-office.
I never could pass the post-office without thinking of the poet
Shelley, who was there brutally felled to the earth by an
Englishman, who accused him of being an infidel, struck his
blow and escaped.

I made many visits to the Nuova Sacrista to see the tombs of
the two Medici by Michael Angelo. The one at the right on
entering is that of Giuliano, duke of Nemours, brother of Leo
X. The two allegorical figures reclining beneath are Morning
and Night. The tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici, duke of Urfrino,
stands on the other side of the chapel, facing that of the duke
de Nemours. The statue of Lorenzo, for grace of attitude and
beauty of expression, has, in my opinion, never been equaled.
The allegorical figures at the feet of this Medici are more
beautiful and more easily understood than most of Michael
Angelo’s allegorical figures. Nevertheless, I used sometimes,
when looking at these four figures, to think that they had been
created merely as architectural auxiliaries, and that their
expression was an accident or a freak of the artist’s fancy,
rather than the expression of some particular thought: at other
times I saw as much in them as most enthusiasts
do—enough, I have no doubt, to astonish their great
author himself. I believe that very few people really
experience rapturous sensations when they look at works of art.
People are generally much more moved by the sight of the two
canes preserved in Casa Buonarotti, upon which the great master
in his latter days supported his tottering frame, than they are
by the noblest achievements of his genius.

The Carnival in Florence was a meagre affair compared with
the same fête in Rome. During the afternoon, however,
there was goodly procession of masks in carriages on the Lung’
Arno, and in the evening there was a feeble moccoletti
display. The grand masked ball at the Casino about this time
presents an irresistible attraction to the floating population
in Florence. I was foolish enough to go. All were obliged to be
dressed in character or in full ball-costume: no dominoes
allowed. The Casino, I was told, is the largest club-house in
the world; and salon after salon of that immense building was
so crowded that locomotion was nearly impossible. The floral
decorations were magnificent, the music was excellent, and some
of the ten thousand people present tried to dance, but the sets
formed were soon squeezed into a ball. Then they gave up in
despair, while the men swore under their breath, and the women
repaired to the dressing-rooms to sew on flounces or other
skirt-trimmings. Masks wriggled about, and spoke to each other
in the ridiculously squeaky voice generally adopted on such
occasions. Most of their conversation was English, and of this
very exciting order: “You don’t know me?” “Yes I do.” “No you
don’t.” “I know what you did yesterday,” etc., etc., ad
nauseam. How fine masked balls are in sensational novels!
how absolutely flat and unsatisfactory in fact! There was on
this occasion a vast display of dress and jewelry, and among
the babel of languages spoken the most prominent was the
beautiful London dialect sometimes irreverently called Cockney.
I lost my cavalier at one time, and while I waited for him to
find me I retired to a corner and challenged a mask to a game
of chess. He proved to be a Russian who spoke neither French
nor Italian. We got along famously, however. He said something
very polite in Russian, I responded irrelevantly in French, and
then we looked at each other and grinned. He subsequently,
thinking he had made an impression, ventured to press my hand;
I drew it away and told him he was an idiot, at which he was
greatly flattered; and then we grinned at each other again. It
was very exciting indeed. I won the game easily, because he
knew nothing of chess, and then he said something in his
mother-tongue, placing his hand upon his heart. I could have
sworn that it meant, “Of course I would not be so rude as to
win when playing with a lady.” I thought so, principally
because he was a man, for I never knew a man under such
circumstances who did not immediately betray his self-conceit
by making that gallant declaration. Feeling sure that the
Russian had done so, when we placed the pieces on the board
again I offered him my queen. He seemed astounded and hurt; and
then for the first time I thought that if this Russian were an
exception to his sex, and I had not understood his
remark, then it was a rudeness to offer him my queen. I was
fortunately relieved from my perplexing situation by the
approach of my cavalier, and as he led me away I gave my other
hand to my antagonist in the most impressive manner, by way of
atonement in case there had been anything wrong in my
conduct toward him.

One day during the latter part of my stay in Florence I went
the second time to the splendid studio of Mr. Powers. He talked
very eloquently upon art. He said that some of the classic
statues had become famous, and deservedly so, although they
were sometimes false in proportion and disposed in attitudes
quite impossible in nature. He illustrated this by a fine
plaster cast of the Venus of Milo, before which we were
standing. He showed that the spinal cord in the neck could
never, from the position of the head, have joined that of the
body, that there was a radical fault in the termination of the
spinal column, and that the navel was located falsely with
respect to height. As he proceeded he convinced me that he was
correct; and in defence of this, my most cherished idol after
the Apollo Belvedere, I only asked the iconoclast whether these
defects might not have been intentional, in order to make the
statue appear more natural when looked at in its elevated
position from below. I subsequently repeated Mr. Powers’s
criticism of the Venus of Milo in the studio of another of our
distinguished sculptors, and he treated it with great levity,
especially when I told him my authority. There is a spirit of
rivalry among sculptors which does not always manifest itself
in that courteous and well-bred manner which distinguishes the
medical faculty, for instance, in their dealings with each
other. This courtesy is well illustrated by an anecdote I have
recently heard. A gentleman fell down in a fit, and a physician
entering saw a man kneeling over the patient and grasping him
firmly by the throat; whereupon the physician exclaimed, “Why,
sir, you are stopping the circulation in the jugular vein!”
“Sir,” replied the other, “I am a doctor of medicine.” To which
the first M.D. remarked, “Ah! I beg your pardon,” and stood by
very composedly until the patient was comfortably dead.

While Mr. Powers was conversing with me about the Venus of
Milo, there entered two Englishwomen dressed very richly in
brocades and velvets. They seemed very anxious to see
everything in the studio, talked in loud tones of the various
objects of art, passed us, and occupied themselves for some
time before the statue called California. I heard one of them
say, “I wonder if there’s anybody ‘ere that talks Hinglish?”
and in the same breath she called out to Mr. Powers, “Come
‘ere!” He was at work that day, and wore his studio costume. I
was somewhat surprised to see him immediately obey the rude
command, and the following conversation occurred:

“Do you speak Hinglish?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What is this statue?”

“It is called California, madam.”

“What has she got in ‘er ‘and?”

“Thorns, madam, in the hand held behind the back; in the
other she presents the quartz containing the tempting
metal.”

“Oh!”

We next entered a room where there was another work of the
sculptor in process of formation. Mr. Powers and myself were
engaged in an animated and, to me, very agreeable conversation,
which was constantly interrupted by these ill-bred women, who
kept all the time mistaking the plaster for the marble, and
asked the artist the most pestering questions on the modus
operandi of sculpturing. I was astonished at the marvelous
temper of Mr. Powers, who politely and patiently answered all
their queries. By some lucky chance these women got out of the
way during our slow progress back to the outer rooms, and I
enjoyed Mr. Powers’s conversation uninterruptedly. He showed me
the beautiful baby hand in marble, a copy of his daughter’s
hand when an infant, and had just returned it to its shrine
when the two women reappeared, and we all proceeded together.
In the outer room there were several admirable busts, upon
which these women passed comment freely. One of these busts was
that of a lady, and they attacked it spitefully. “What an ugly
face!” “What a mean expression about the mouth!” “Isn’t it
‘orrible?”

“Who is it?” asked one of them, addressing Mr. Powers.

“That is a portrait of my wife,” said the artist
modestly.

“Your wife!” repeated one of the women, and then, nothing
abashed, added, “Who are you?”

“My name is Powers, madam,” he answered very politely. This
discovery evidently disconcerted the impudence even of these
visitors, and they immediately left the studio.

As the day approached for my departure I visited all my old
haunts, and dwelt fondly upon scenes which I might never see
again. My dear old music-master cried when I bade him farewell.
Povero maestro! He used to think me so good that I was always
ashamed of not being a veritable angel. I left Florence
when

All the land in flowery squares,

Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,

Smelt of the coming summer.

My last visit was with the maestro to the Cascine, where he
gathered me a bunch of wild violets—cherished souvenir of
a city I love, and of a friend whose like I “ne’er may look
upon again.”

MARIE HOWLAND.

THE SOUTHERN PLANTER.

While Philadelphia hibernates in the ice and snow of
February, the spring season opens in the Southern woods and
pastures. The fragrant yellow jessamine clusters in golden
bugles over shrubs and trees, and the sward is enameled with
the white, yellow and blue violet. The crocus and cowslip, low
anemone and colts-foot begin to show, and the land brightens
with waxy flowers of the huckleberry, set in delicate gamboge
edging. Yards, greeneries, conservatories breathe a June like
fragrance, and aviaries are vocal with songsters, mocked
outside by the American mocking-bird, who chants all night
under the full moon, as if day was too short for his
medley.

New Orleans burgeons with the season. The broad fair
avenues, the wide boulevards, famed Canal street, are luxuriant
with spring life and drapery. Dashing equipages glance down the
Shell Road with merry driving-and picnic-parties. There is
boating on the lake, and delicious French collations at
pleasant resorts, spread by neat-handed mulatto waiters
speaking a patois of French, English and negro. There spring
meats and sauces and light French wines allure to enjoyments
less sensual than the coarser Northern climate affords.

The unrivaled French opera is in season, the forcing house
of that bright garden of exotics. Other and Northern cities
boast of such entertainments, but I apprehend they resemble the
Simon-Pure much as an Englishman’s French resembles the native
tongue. In New Orleans it is the natural, full-flavored
article, lively with French taste and talent, and for a people
instinct with a truer Gallic spirit, perhaps, than that of
Paris itself. It is antique and colonial, but age and the
sea-voyage have preserved more distinctly the native
bouquet of the wine after all grosser flavors have
wasted away. The spectacle within the theatre on a fine night
is brilliant, recherché and French. From side-scene to
dome, and from gallery after gallery to the gay parquette,
glitters the bright, shining audience. There are loungers,
American and French, blasé and roué, who in the
intervals drink brandy and whisky, or anisette, maraschino,
curçoa or some other fiery French cordial. The French
loungers are gesticulatory, and shoulders, arms, fingers, eyes
and eyebrows help out the tongue’s rapid utterance; but they
are never rude or boisterous. There are belles, pretty French
belles, with just a tint of deceitless rouge for fashion’s
sake, and tinkling, crisp, low French voices modulated to chime
with the music and not disharmonize it; nay, rather add to the
sweetness of its concord.

And there is the Creole dandy, the small master of the
revels. There is nothing perfumed in the latest box of bonbons
from Paris so exquisite, sparkling, racy, French and happy in
its own sweet conceit as he is. He has hands and feet a
Kentucky girl might envy for their shapely delicacy and dainty
size, cased in the neatest kid and prunella. His hair is
negligent in the elegantest grace of the perruquier’s art, his
dress fashioned to the very line of fastidious elegance and
simplicity, yet a simplicity his Creole taste makes unique and
attractive. He has the true French persiflage, founded on happy
content, not the blank indifference of the Englishman’s
disregard. It becomes graceful self-forgetfulness, and yet his
vanity is French and victorious. In the atmosphere of breathing
music and faint perfume he looks around the glancing boxes, and
knows he has but to throw his sultanic handkerchief to have the
handsomest Circassian in the glowing circle of female beauty.
But he does not throw it, for all that. His manner plainly
says: “Beautiful dames, it would do me much of pleasure if I
could elope with you all on the road of iron, but the
bête noir, the Moral, will not permit. Behold for
which, as an opened box of Louvin’s perfumeries, I dispense my
fragrant affection to you all: breathe it and be happy!” Such
homage he receives with graceful acquiescence, believing his
recognition of it a sweet fruition to the fair adorers. He
accepts it as he does the ices, wines and delicate French
dishes familiar to his palate. Life is a fountain of eau
sucrée, where everything is sweet to him, and he tries
to make it so to you, for he is a kindly-natured, true-hearted,
valiant little French gentleman. His loves, his innocent
dissipations, his grand passions, his rapier duels, would fill
the volumes of a Le Sage or a Cervantes. In the gay circles of
New Orleans he floats with lambent wings and irresistible fine
eyes, its serenest butterfly, admired and spoiled alike by the
French and American element.

At this early spring season a new atom of the latter enters
the charmed circle, breaking its merry round into other
sparkles of foam. A well-formed, stately, rather florid
gentleman alights at the St. Charles, and is ushered into the
hospitalities of that elegant caravansary. There is something
impressive about him, or there would be farther North. He is
American, from the strong, careless Anglo-Saxon face, through
all the stalwart bones and full figure, to the strong, firm,
light step. He will crush through the lepidoptera of this
half-French society like a silver knife through Tourtereaux
soufflés à la crême. He brings letters
to this and that citizen, or he is well known already, and
“coloneled” familiarly by stamp-expectant waiters and the
courteous master of ceremonies at the clerk’s desk. He calls,
on his bankers, and is received with gracious familiarity in
the pleasant bank-parlor. Correspondence has made them
acquainted with Colonel Beverage in the way of business: they
are glad to see him in person, and will be happy to wait on
him. He makes them happy in that way, for they do wait upon him
satisfactorily. There is a little pleasant interchange of news
and city gossip, and of something else. There is a crinkling of
a certain crispy, green foliage, and the colonel withdraws in
the midst of civilities.

He next appears on Canal street, by and beyond the Clay
Monument, with occasional pauses at clothiers’, and buys his
shirts at Moody’s, as he has probably often sworn not to do,
because of its annoyingly frequent posters everywhere. He
enters jewelers’ shops and examines trinkets—serpents
with ruby eyes curled in gold on beds of golden leaves with
emerald dews upon them; pearls, pear-shaped and tearlike,
brought up by swart, glittering divers, seven fathom deep, at
Tuticorin or in the Persian Gulf; rubies and sapphires mined in
Burmese Ava, and diamonds from Borneo and Brazil. Is he
choosing a bridal present? It looks so; but no, he selects a
splendid, brilliant solitaire, for which he pays eight hundred
dollars out of a plethoric purse, and also a finger-ring,
diamond too, for two hundred and fifty dollars. The jewelers
are polite, as the bankers were. He must be a large
cotton-planter, one of a class with whom a fondness for jewels
serves as a means of dozing away life in a kind of
crystallization. He otherwise adorns his stately person, till
he has a Sublime Porte indeed, the very vizier of a fairy tale
glittering in barbaric gems and gold. His taste, to speak it
mildly, is expressed rather than subdued—not to be
compared with the quiet elegance of your husband or lover,
madam or miss, but not unsuited to his showy style, for all
that. As the crimson-purple, plume-like prince’s feather has
its own royal charm in Southern gardens beside the pale and
placidlily, so these luxuriant adornments, do not misbecome his
full and not too fleshy person. There is a certain harmony in
the Oriental sumptuousness of his attire, like radiant sunsets,
appropriate to certain styles of man and woman. Let us humble
creatures be content to have our portraits done in crayon, but
the colonel calls for the color-box.

So adorned and radiant, this variety of the American aloe
floats into the charmed circle of New Orleans
society—that lively, sparkling epitome and relic of the
old régime. He has good letters and a fair name, and
mingles in the Mystick Krewe, that curious club, possible
nowhere else, that has raised mummery into the sphere of
aesthetics. Perhaps he has worn the gray, perhaps the blue. It
is only in the very arcana of exclusive passion it makes much
difference. But gray or blue, or North or South in birth, he is
in every essential a Southerner, as many, like S.S. Prentiss,
curiously independent of nativity, are. He is well received and
courteously entreated. He has his little suppers at Moreau’s,
and knows the ways of the place and names of the waiters. He
has his promenades, his drives, his club visits, is seen
everywhere—a brilliant convolvulus now, twining the
espaliers of that Saracenic fabric of society; to speak
architecturally, its very summer-house. He visits the opera and
gives it his frank approval, but confesses a preference for the
old plantation-melodies. He crushes through the meshes of the
Creole dandies, not offensively, but as the law of his volume
and momentum dictates, and they yield the pas to his
superior weight and metal. They are civil, and he is civil, but
they do not like one another, for all that. That Zodiac passed,
they continue their own summery orbit of charm and conquest. He
tends toward the aureal spheres and the green and pleasant
banks of issue. The colonel is not here for pleasure, though he
takes a little pleasure, as is his way, seasonably; but he
means business, and that several thirsty, eager cotton-houses
of repute know.

Of course they know. It came in his letters and distills in
the aroma of his talk. It may even have slipped into the
personals of the Pic and Times that Colonel
Beverage has taken Millefleur and Rottenbottom plantations on
Red River, and is going extensively into the cultivation of the
staple. The colonel is modest over this: “not extensively, no,
but to the extent of his limited means.” In the mean while he
looks out for some sound, well-recommended cotton-house.

This means business. In the North the farmer raises his crop
on his own capital, and turns it over unencumbered to the
merchant for the public. The credit system prevails in the
agriculture of the South, and brings another precarious element
into the already hazardous occupation of cotton-growing. A new
party appears in the cotton-merchant. He is not merely the
broker, yielding the proceeds, less a commission, to the
planter. Either, by hypothecation on advances made during the
year, he secures a legal pre-emption in the crop, or, by
initiatory contract, he becomes an actual partner of limited
liability in the crop itself. He agrees to furnish so much cash
capital at periods for the cultivation and securing of the
crop, which is husbanded by the planter. The money for these
advances he obtains from the banks; and hence it is that in
every cotton-crop raised South there are three or more
principals actually interested—the banker, the merchant
and the planter. This condition of planting is almost
invariable. Even the small farmer, whose crop is a few bags, is
ground into it. In his case the country-side grocer and dealer
is banker and merchant, and his advances the bare necessaries.
In this blending of interests the curious partnership rises,
thrives, labors and sometimes falls—the planter, as a
rule, undermost in that accident.

The Millefleur and Rottenbottom plantations are famous, and
a hand well over the crops raised under such shrewd,
experienced management as that of Colonel Beverage is a stroke
of policy. Therefore, as the bankers and jewelers have been
polite, so now the cotton-merchants are civil; but the colonel
is shy—an old bird and a game bird.

Shy, but not suspicious. He chooses his own time, and at an
early day walks into the business-house of Negocier &
Duthem. They are pleased to see the colonel in the way of
business, as they have been in society, and the pleasure is
mutual. As he expounds his plans they are more and more
convinced that he is a plumy bird of much waste feather.

He has taken Rottenbottom and Millefleur, and is going
pretty well into cotton. He thinks he understands it: he ought
to. Then he has his own capital—an advantage, certainly.
Some of his friends, So-and-so—running over commercial
and bankable names easily—have suggested the usual
co-operation with some reputable house, and an extension, but
he believes He will stay within limits. He has five thousand
dollars in cash he wishes to deposit with some good firm for
the year’s supplies. He believes that will be sufficient, and
he has called to hear their terms. All this comes not at once,
but here and there in the business-conversation.

The reader will perceive one strong bait carelessly thrown
out by the auriferous or folliferous colonel—the five
thousand dollars cash in hand. The immediate use of that is a
strong incentive to the house. They covet the colonel’s
business: they think well of the proposed extension. Cotton is
sure to be up, and under practical, experienced cultivation
must yield a handsome fortune. The result is foreseen. The
cotton-house and the colonel enter into the usual agreement of
such transactions. The colonel leaves his five thousand
dollars, and draws on that, and for as much more as may be
necessary in securing the crop.

The commercial reader North who has had no dealings South
will smile at the credulous merchant who entrusts his credit to
such a full-blown, thirsty tropical pitcher-plant as the
colonel, who carries childish extravagances in his very dress;
but he will judge hastily. We have seen this gaudy
efflorescence pass over the curiously-wrought enameled
gold-work, opals, pearls and rubies, and adorn himself with
solid diamonds. The careful economist North puts his
superfluous thousands in government bonds, or gambles them away
in Erie stocks, because he likes the increase of Jacob’s
speckled sheep. The Southerner invests his in diamonds because
he likes show, and diamonds have a pretty steady market value.
There is method, too, in the colonel’s associations, and all
his acquaintance is gilt-edged and bankable.

His business is now done, and he does not tarry, but wings
his way to Millefleur and Rottenbottom, where he moults all his
fine feathers. He goes into fertilizers, beginning with crushed
cotton-seed and barnyard manure, if possible, before February
is over. He follows the shovel-plough with a slick-jack, and
plants, and then the labor begins to fail him. He talks about
importing Chinese, and writes about it in the local paper. He
is sure it will do, as he is positive in all his opinions. He
is true pluck, and tries to make new machinery make up for
deficient labor. He buys “bull-tongues,” “cotton-shovels,”
“fifteen-inch sweeps,” “twenty-inch sweeps,” “team-ploughs with
seven-inch twisters,” and a “finishing sweep of twenty-six
inches.” He hears of other inventions, and orders them. The
South is flooded with a thousand quack contrivances now, about
as applicable to cotton-raising as a pair of nut-crackers; but
the colonel buys them. He is going to dispense with the hoe.
That is the plan; and by that plan of furnishing a large
plantation with new tools before Lent is over the five thousand
dollars are gone. But he writes cheerfully. It is his nature to
be sanguine, and to hope loudly, vaingloriously; and he writes
it honestly enough to his merchant—and draws. The labor
gets worse and worse. In the indolent summer days the negro,
careless, thriftless, ignorant, works only at intervals.
Perhaps the June rise catches him, and there is a heavy expense
in ditching and damming to save the Rottenbottom crop. Maybe
the merchant hears of the army-worm and is alarmed, but the
colonel writes back assuring letters that it is only the
grasshopper, and the grasshopper has helped more than
hurt—and draws. Then possibly the army-worm comes sure
enough, and cripples him. But he keeps up his courage—and
draws. The five thousand dollars appear to have been employed
in digging or building a sluice through which a constant
current of currency flows from the city to Rottenbottom and
Millefleur. The merchant has gone into bank, and the tide flows
on. At last the planter writes: “The most magnificent crop ever
raised on Red River, just waiting for the necessary hands to
gather it in!” Of course the necessary sums are supplied, and
at last the crop gets to market. It finds the market low, and
declining steadily week by week. The banks begin to press:
money is tight, as it is now while I write. The crop is
sacrificed, for the merchant cannot wait, and some fine morning
the house of Negocier & Duthem is closed, and Colonel
Beverage is bankrupt.

And both are ruined? No. We will suppose the business-house
is old and reputable: the banks are obliging and creditors
prudently liberal, and by and by the firm resumes its old
career. As for the colonel, the reader sees that to ruin him
would be an absolute contradiction of nature. His friends or
relations give him assistance, or he sells his diamonds, and
soon you meet him at the St. Charles, as blooming, sanguine and
splendiferous as ever. No, he cannot be ruined, but his is not
an infrequent episode in the life of a Southern Planter.

WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

BABES IN THE WOOD.

I had two little babes, a boy and girl—

Two little babes that are not with me
now:

On one bright brow full golden fell the
curl—

The curl fell chestnut-brown on one
bright brow.

I like to dream of them that some soft day,

Whilst wandering from home, their fitful
feet

Went heedlessly through some still woodland way

Where light and shade harmoniously
meet;

And that they wandered deeper and more deep

Into the forest’s fragrant heart and
fair,

Till just at evenfall they dropped asleep,

And ever since they have been resting
there.

After their willful wandering that day

Each is so tired it does not wake at
all,

Whilst over them the boughs that sigh and sway

Conspire to make perpetual evenfall.

And I, that must not join them, still am blest,

Passionately, though this poor heart
grieves;

For memories, like birds, at my behest,

Have covered them with tender thoughts,
like leaves.

EDGAR FAWCETT.

MY CHARGE ON THE
LIFE-GUARDS.

Now that our little international troubles about
consequential damages and the like are happily settled, and
there is no danger that my revelations will augment them in any
degree, I think I may venture to give the particulars of an
affair of honor which I once had with a gigantic member of Her
Britannic Majesty’s household troops.

My guardian had a special veneration for England in general
and for Oxford in particular, and I was brought up and sent to
Yale with the full understanding that St. Bridget’s, Oxon., was
the place where I was to be “finished.” I left Yale at the end
of Junior year and crossed the ocean in the crack steamer of
the then famous Collins line. I do not believe any young
American ever had a more favorable introduction to England than
I had, and the wonder is that, considering the philo-Anglican
atmosphere in which I was educated, I did not become a
thorough-paced renegade. I was, however, blessed with a
tolerably independent spirit, and kept my nationality intact
throughout my university course.

Like Tom Brown, I felt myself drawn to the sporting set,
and, as I was always an adept at athletics, soon won repute as
an oarsman, and was well satisfied to be looked upon as the
Yankee champion sundry amateur rowing-and boxing-matches, as
well as in the lecture-room. Of course, I was the mark for no
end of good-natured chaff about my nationality, but was nearly
always able, I believe, to sustain the honor of the American
name, and so at length graduated in the “firsts” as to
scholarship, and enjoyed the distinguished honor of pulling
number four in the “‘Varsity eight” in our annual match with
Cambridge on the Thames. Moreover, I stood six feet in my
stockings, had the muscle of a gladiator, and was physically
the equal of any man at Oxford.

After the race was over my special cronies hung about London
for a few days, usually making that classical “cave” of Evans’s
a rendezvous in the evening. Two or three young officers of the
Guards were often with us, and one night, when the talk had
turned, as it often did, on personal prowess, the superb
average physique of their regiment was duly lauded by our
soldier companions. At length one of them remarked, in that
aggravatingly superior tone which some Englishmen assume, that
any man in his troop could handle any two of the then present
company. This provoked a general laugh of incredulity, and two
or three of our college set turned to me with—”What do
you say to that, Jonathan?”

“Nonsense!” said I. “I’ll put on the gloves with the biggest
fellow among them, any day.”

This somewhat democratic readiness to spar with a private
soldier led to remarks which I chose to consider insular, if
not insolent, and I replied, supporting the principle of Yankee
equality, until, losing my temper at something which one of the
ensigns said, I delivered myself in some such fashion as this:
“Well, gentlemen, I’m only one Yankee among many Englishmen,
but I will bet a hundred guineas, and put up the money, that I
will tumble one of those mighty warriors out of his saddle in
front of the Horse Guards, and ride off on his horse before the
guard can turn out and stop me.”

Of course my bet was instantly taken by the officers, but my
friends were so astounded at my rashness that I found no
backers. However, my blood was up, and, possibly because
Evans’s bitter beer was buzzing slightly in my head, I booked
several more bets at large odds in my own favor. As the hour
was late, we separated with an agreement to meet and arrange
details on the following day, keeping the whole affair strictly
secret meanwhile.

I confess that my feelings were not of the pleasantest as I
sat at my late London breakfast somewhere about noon the next
day, and I was fain to admit to my special friend that I had
put myself in an awkward, if not an unenviable, position.
However, I was in for it, and being naturally of an elastic
temperament, began to cast about for a cheerful view of my
undertaking. In the course of the day preliminaries were
arranged and reduced to writing with all the care which
Englishmen practice in such affairs of “honor.” I only
stipulated that I should be allowed to use a stout
walking-stick in my encounter; that I should be kept informed
as to the detail for guard; that I should be freely allowed to
see the regiment at drill and in quarters; and that I should
select my time of attack within a fortnight, giving a few
hours’ notice to all parties concerned, so as to ensure their
presence as witnesses.

Every one who has ever visited London has seen and admired
the gigantic horsemen who sit on mighty black steeds, one on
either side of the archway facing Whitehall, and who are
presumed at once to guard the commander-in-chief’s
head-quarters and to serve as “specimen bricks” of the finest
cavalry corps in the world. Splendid fellows they are! None of
them are under six feet high, and many of them are considerably
above that mark. They wear polished steel corselets and
helmets, white buck-skin trowsers, high jack-boots, and at the
time of which I write their arms consisted of a brace of heavy,
single-barreled pistols in holsters, a carbine and a sabre. The
firearms were, under ordinary circumstances, not loaded, and
the sabre was held at a “carry” in the right hand. This last
was the weapon against which I must guard, and I accordingly
placed a traveling cap and a coat in the hands of a discreet
tailor, who sewed steel bands into the crown of one and into
the shoulders of the other, in such a way as afforded very
efficient protection against a possible downward cut.

Besides attending to these defensive preparations, I at once
looked about for a competent horseman with military experience
who could give me some practical hints as to encounters between
infantry and cavalry, and, singularly enough, was thrown in
with that gallant young officer who rode into immortality in
front of the Light Brigade at Balaklava a few years afterward.
I learned that he was a superb horseman, was down upon the
English system of cavalry training, and was using pen and
tongue to bring about a change. A sudden inspiration led me to
take him into my confidence, as the terms of our agreement
permitted me to do. He caught the idea with enthusiasm. What an
argument it would be in favor of his new system if a mere
civilian unhorsed a Guardsman trained after the old fashion!
For a week he drilled me more or less every day in getting him
off his horse in various ways, and I speedily became a
proficient in the art, he meanwhile gaining some new ideas on
the subject, which were duly printed in his well-known
book.

Well, to make my story short, I gave notice to interested
parties on the tenth day, put on my steel-ribbed cap and my
armor-plated coat, and with stick in hand walked over to a
hairdresser’s with whom I had previously communicated, had my
complexion darkened to a Spanish olive, put on a false beard,
and was ready for service. I had arranged with this tonsorial
artist, whose shop was in the Strand near Northumberland House,
that he should be prepared to remove these traces of disguise
as speedily as he had put them on, and that I should leave a
stylish coat and hat in his charge, to be donned in haste
should occasion require. I next engaged two boys to stand
opposite Northumberland House, and be ready to hold a horse.
These boys I partially paid beforehand, and promised more
liberal largess if they did their duty. Preliminaries having
been thus arranged, I strolled down Whitehall, feeling very
much as I did years afterward when I found myself going into
action for the first time in Dixie.

It was early afternoon on a lovely spring day. The Strand
was a roaring stream of omnibuses and drays, carriages were
beginning to roll along the drives leading to Rotten Row, and
all London was in the streets. I was assured that at this hour
I should find a big but father clumsy giant on post; and there
he was, sure enough, sitting like a colossal statue on his
coal-black charger, the crest of his helmet almost touching the
keystone of the arch under which he sat, his accoutrements
shining like jewels, and he looking every inch a British
cavalryman. I walked past on the opposite side of Whitehall,
meeting, without being recognized, all my aiders and abettors
in this most heinous attack on Her Majesty’s Guards. I then
crossed the street and took a good look at my man. He and his
companion-sentry under the other arch were aware of officers in
“mufti” on the opposite sidewalk, and kept their eyes immovably
to the front. Evidently nothing much short of an earthquake
could cause either to relax a muscle. The little circle of
admiring beholders which is always on hand inspecting these
splendid horsemen was present, of course, with varying
elements, and I had to wait a few minutes until a small number
of innocuous spectators coincided with the aphelion of the
periodical policeman.

It was not a pleasant thing to contemplate that tower of
polished leather, brass and steel, with a man inside of it some
forty pounds heavier than I, and think that in a minute or so
we two should be engaged in a close grapple, whose termination
involved considerable risk for me physically as well as
pecuniarily. However, there was, in addition to the feeling of
apprehension, a touch of elation at the thought that I, a lone
Yankee, was about to beard the British lion in his most
formidable shape, almost under the walls of Buckingham
Palace.

I looked my antagonist carefully over, deciding several
minor points in my mind, and then at a favorable moment stepped
quietly within striking distance, and delivered a sharp blow
with my stick on his left instep, as far forward as I could
without hitting the stirrup. The man seemed to be in a sort of
military trance, for he never winced. Quick as thought, I
repeated the blow, and this time the fellow fairly yelled with
rage, astonishment and pain. I have since made up my mind that
his nerve-fibre must have been of that inert sort which
transmits waves of sensation but slowly, so that the perception
of the first blow reached the interior of his helmet just about
as the second descended. At all events, he jerked back his
foot, and somehow, between the involuntary contraction of his
flexor muscles from pain and the glancing of my stick, his foot
slipped from the stirrup. This, as I had learned from my
instructor, was a great point gained, and in an instant I had
him by the ankle and by the top of his jack-boot, doubling his
leg, at the same time heaving mightily upward.

As I gave my whole strength to the effort I was dimly aware
of screams and panic among the nursery—maids and children
who were but a moment before my fellow-spectators. At the same
time I caught the flash of the Guardsman’s sabre as he cut down
at me after the fashion prescribed in the broadsword exercise.
Fortune, however, did not desert me. My antagonist had not
enough elbow-room, and his sword-point was shivered against the
stone arch overhead, the blade descending flatways and
harmlessly upon my well-protected shoulder just as, with a
final effort, I tumbled him out his saddle.

The recollection of the ludicrous figure which that
Guardsman cut haunts me still. His pipeclayed gloves clutched
wildly at holster and cantle as he went over. Down came the
gleaming helmet crashing upon the pavement, and with a
calamitous rattle and bang the whole complicated structure of
corselet, scabbard, carbine, cross-belts, spurs and boots went
into the inside corner of the archway, a helpless heap.

That started the horse. The noble animal had stood my
assault as steadily as if he had been cast in bronze, but
precisely such an emergency as this had never been contemplated
in his training, as it had not in that of his master, and he
now started forward rather wildly. I had my hand on the bridle
before he had moved a foot, and swung myself half over his back
as he dashed across the sidewalk and up Whitehall. The Guards’
saddles are very easy when once you are in them, and I had
reason, temporarily at least, to approve the English style of
riding with short stirrups, for I readily found my seat, and
ascertained that I could touch bottom with my toes. As I left
the scene of my victory behind me I heard the guards turning
out, and caught a glimpse as of all London running in my
direction, but by the time that I had secured the control of my
horse I had distanced the crowd, and as we entered the Strand
we attracted comparatively little notice. In driving, the
English turn out to the left instead of to the right, as is the
custom here, and I was obliged to cross the westward-bound line
of vehicles before I could fall in with that which would bring
me to my boys. I decided to make a “carom” of it, and nearly
took the heads off a pair of horses, and the pole off the
omnibus to which they were attached, as I dashed through.
Turning to the right, I soon lost the torrent of invective
hurled after me by the driver and conductor of the discomfited
‘bus, and in less than two minutes—which seemed to me an
age, for the pursuit was drawing near—I reached my boys,
dropped them a half sov. apiece, which I had ready in my hand,
and bolted for my hairdresser’s, the boys leading the horse in
the opposite direction, as previously ordered.

It was none too soon, for as I ran up stairs I saw three or
four policemen running toward the horse, and there was a gleam
of dancing plumes and shining helmets toward Whitehall. My
false beard and complexion were changed with marvelous
rapidity, and, assuming my promenade costume, I sauntered down
stairs and out upon the sidewalk in time to see the whole
street jammed with a crowd of excited Britons, while the
recaptured horse was turned over to the Guardsmen, and the two
boys were marched off to Bow street for examination before a
magistrate.

A private room and an elaborate dinner at the United Service
Club closed the day; and I must admit that my military friends
swallowed their evident chagrin with a very good grace. Of
course I was told that I could not do it again, which I readily
admitted; and that there was not another man in the troop whom
I could have unhorsed—an assertion which I as
persistently combated. The affair was officially hushed up, and
probably not more than a few thousand people ever heard of it
outside military circles.

How I escaped arrest and punishment to the extent of the law
I did not know for many years, for the duke of Wellington, who
was then commander-in-chief, had only to order the officers
concerned under arrest, and I should have been in honor bound
to come forward with a voluntary confession.

My giant was sent for to the old duke’s private room the day
after his overthrow, and questioned sharply by the adjutant,
who, with pardonable incredulity, suspected that bribery alone
could have brought about so direful a catastrophe. The duke was
from the first convinced of the soldier’s, honesty and bravery,
and presently broke in upon the adjutant’s examination
with—”Well, well! speak to me now. What have you to say
for yourself?”

“May it please yer ludship,” said the undismayed soldier,
“I’ve never fought a civilian sence I ‘listed, an’ yer ludship
will bear me witness that there’s nothing in the cavalry drill
about resisting a charge of foot when a mon’s on post at the
Horse Guards.”

This speech was delivered with the most perfect sincerity
and sobriety, and although it reflected upon the efficiency of
the army under the hero of Waterloo, the Iron Duke was so much
impressed by the affair that he sent word to Lieutenant-Colonel
Varian, commanding the regiment, not to order the man any
punishment whatever, but to see that his command was thereafter
trained in view of possible attacks, even when posted in front
of army head-quarters.

CHARLES L. NORTON.

PAINTING AND A PAINTER.

Charles V. once said, “Titian should be served by Caesar;”
and Michael Angelo, we read, was treated by Lorenzo de’ Medici
“as a son;” Raphael, his contemporary, was great enough to
revere him, and thank God he had lived at the same time. In
England, in France, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain at this day,
the poet and the painter stand hedged about by the divinity of
their gifts, and the people are proud to recognize their
kingship.

Has “Reverence, that angel of the world,” as Shakespeare
beautifully says, forgot to visit America? Or must we consider
ourselves less capable yet of delicate appreciation, such as
older nations possess? Or are we over-occupied in gaining
possession of material comforts and luxuries, and so forget to
revere our poets and painters till it is too late, and the
curtain has fallen upon their unobtrusive and often struggling
earthly career? What a millennium will have arrived when we
learn to be as faithful to our love as we are
sincere!

Questions like these have been asked also in times preceding
ours. Alfred de Musset wrote upon this subject in 1833, in
Paris: “There are people who tell you our age is preoccupied,
that men no longer read anything or care for anything. Napoleon
was occupied, I think, at Beresina: he, however, had his
Ossian with him. When did Thought lose the power of
being able to leap into the saddle behind Action? When did man
forget to rush like Tyrtaeus to the combat, a sword in one
hand, the lyre in the other? Since the world still has a body,
it has a soul.”

Monsieur Charles Blanc writes: “In order to have an idea of
the importance of the arts, it is enough to fancy what the
great nations of the world would be if the monuments they have
erected to their faiths, and the works whereon they have left
the mark of their genius, were suppressed from history. It is
with people as with men—after death only the emanations
of their mind remain; that is to say, literature and art,
written poems, and poems inscribed on stone, in marble or in
color.”

The same writer, in his admirable book, Grammaire des
arts du dessin, from which we are tempted to quote again
and again, says: “The artist who limits himself simply to the
imitation of Nature reaches only individuality: he is a
slave. He who interprets Nature sees in her happy qualities; he
evolves character from her; he is master. The artist who
idealizes her discovers in her or imprints upon her the image
of beauty: this last is a great master…. Placed
between Nature and the ideal, between what is and what must be,
the artist has a vast career before him in order to pass from
the reality he sees to the beauty he divines. If we follow him
in this career, we see his model transform itself successively
before his eyes…. But the artist must give to these creations
of his soul the imprint of life, and he can only find this
imprint in the individuals Nature has created. The two are
inseparable—the type, which is a product of thought, and
the individual, which is a child of life.”

With this excellent analysis before us, we will recall one
by one some of the best-known and most interesting works of
W.M. Hunt, a painter who now holds a prominent place among the
artists of America. We will try to discover by careful
observation if the high gifts of Verity and Imagination, the
sign and seal of the true artist, really belong to him: if so,
where these qualities are expressed, and what value we should
set upon them.

First, perhaps, for those readers remote from New England
who may never have seen any pictures by this artist, a few
words should be said by way of describing some characteristics
of his work and the limitations of it; which limitations are
rather loudly dwelt upon by connoisseurs and lovers of the
popular modern French school. Artists discern these limitations
of course more keenly even than others, but their tribute to
verity and ideal beauty as represented by this painter is too
sincere to allow caviling to find expression. This limitation
to which we refer causes Mr. Hunt to allow ideal
suggestions, rather than pictures, to pass from his studio,
and makes him cowardly before his own work. It recalls in a
contrary sense that saying of the sculptor Puget: “The marble
trembles before me.” Mr. Hunt trembles before his new-born
idea. His swift nature has allowed him in the first hour of
work to put into his picture the tenderness or rapture, the
unconscious grace or tempestuous force, which he despaired at
first of ever being able to express. In the flush of success he
stops: he has it, the idea; the chief interest of the subject
is portrayed before him; the delicate presence (and what can be
more delicate than the thoughts he has delineated?) is there,
and may vanish if touched in a less fortunate moment. But is
this lack of fulfillment in the artist entirely without
precedent or parallel? Had not Sir Joshua Reynolds a studio
full of young artists who “finished off” his pictures? Were not
the very faces themselves painted with such rapidity and want
of proper method as to drop off, on occasion, entirely from the
canvas, as in case of the boy’s head, in being carried through
the street? Hunt is of our own age, and would scorn the
suggestion of having a hand or a foot painted for him, as if it
were a matter of small importance what individual expression a
hand or a foot should wear; but who can tell for what future
age he has painted the wise, abrupt, kind, persistent, simple,
strong old Judge in his Yankee coat; or the genial, resolute,
hopeful, self-sacrificing governor of Massachusetts; and the
Master of the boys, with his keen, loving, uncompromising face?
These are pictures that, when children say, “Tell us about the
Governor who helped Massachusetts bring her men first into the
field during our war,” we may lead them up before and reply,
“He was this man!” So also with the portraits of the Judge, of
the Master of the boys, of the old man with clear eyes and firm
mouth, and that sweet American girl standing, unconscious of
observation, plucking at the daisy in her hat and guessing at
her fate.

Hurry, impatience and a worship of crude thought are
characteristics of our present American life. Hunt is one of
us. If these faults mark and mar his work, they show him also
to be a child of the time. His quick sympathies are caught by
the wayside and somewhat frayed out among his fellows; but
nevertheless one essential of a great painter, that of
Verity, will be accorded to him after an examination of
the pictures we have mentioned.

But truth, character, skill, the many gifts and great labor
which must unite to lead an artist to the foot of his shadowy,
sun-crowned mountain, can then carry him no step farther unless
ideal Beauty join him, and he comprehend her nature and follow
to her height. Again we quote from Charles Blanc—for why
should we rewrite what he says so ably?—”All the germs of
beauty are in Nature, but it belongs to the spirit of man alone
to disengage them. When Nature is beautiful, the painter
knows that she is beautiful, but Nature knows nothing of
it. Thus beauty exists only on the condition of being
understood—that is to say, of receiving a second life in
the human thought. Art has something else to do than to copy
Nature exactly: it must penetrate into the spirit of things, it
must evoke the soul of its hero. It can then not only rival
Nature, but surpass her. What is indeed the superiority of
Nature? It is the life which animates all her forms. But man
possesses a treasure which Nature does not
possess—thought. Now thought is more than life, for it is
life at its highest power, life in its glory. Man can then
contest with Nature by manifesting thought in the forms of art,
as Nature manifests life in her forms. In this sense the
philosopher Hegel was able to say that the creations of art
were truer than the phenomena of the physical world and the
realities of history.”

Now, thought in the soul of the true artist for ever labors
to evolve the beautiful. This is what the thought of a picture
means to him—how to express beauty, which he finds
underlying even the imperfect individual of Nature’s decaying
birth. To the high insight this is always discernible. None are
so fallen that some ray of God’s light may not touch them, and
this possibility, the faith in light for ever, radiates from
the spirit of the artist, and renders him a messenger of joy.
No immortal works have bloomed in despondency: they may have
taken root in the slime of the earth, but they have blossomed
into lilies.

We call this divine power to discern beauty in every
manifestation of the Deity, imagination. As it expresses itself
in painting, it is so closely allied with what is highest and
holiest in our natures that painting has come to be esteemed a
Christian art, as contrasted in its development subsequent to
the Christian era with the less human works of sculpture.
“Christianity came, and instead of physical beauty substituted
moral beauty, infinitely preferring the expression of the soul
to the perfection of the body. Every man was great in its eyes,
not by his perishable members, but by his immortal soul. With
this religion begins the reign of painting, which is a more
subtle art, more immaterial, than the others—more
expressive, and also more individual. We will give some proofs
of it. Instead of acting, like architecture and sculpture, upon
the three dimensions of heavy matter, painting acts only upon
one surface, and produces its effects with an imponderable
thing, which is color—that is to say, light. Hegel has
said with admirable wisdom: ‘In sculpture and architecture
forms are rendered visible by exterior light. In painting, on
the contrary, matter, obscure in itself, has within itself its
internal element, its ideal—light: it draws from itself
both clearness and obscurity. Now, unity, the combination of
light and dark, is color.’ The painter, then, proposes to
himself to represent, not bodies with their real thickness, but
simply their appearance, their image; but by this means it is
the mind which he addresses. Visible but impalpable, and in
some sense immaterial, his work does not meet the touch, which
is the sight of the body: it only meets the eye, which is the
touch of the soul. Painting is then, from this point of view,
the essential art of Christianity…. If the painter, like
Phidias or Lysippus, had only to portray the types of humanity,
the majesty of Jupiter, the strength of Hercules, he might do
without the riches of color, and paint in one tone, modified
only by light and shade; but the most heroic man among
Christians is not a demigod: he is a being profoundly
individual, tormented, combating, suffering, and who throughout
his real life shares with environing Nature, and receives from
every side the reflection of her colors. Sculpture,
generalizing, raises itself to the dignity of
allegory—painting, individualizing, descends to the
familiarity of portraiture.”

Let us now return to consider William Hunt’s pictures from
this second point of view. The gift of Verity having been
already assumed, can we also discern that higher power of
Imagination whose crown and seal is the Beautiful. To decide
this question we have, unhappily, to consider his work as
lyrical, rather than dramatic, and for this reason we must
study his power under disadvantage. That he possesses dramatic
power will hardly be denied by those who know his “Hamlet,”
“The Drummer-Boy,” and “The Boy and the Butterfly;” but the
exigencies of life appear to prevent him from occupying himself
with compositions such as filled years in the existence of the
old painters.

Portraiture being the highest and most difficult labor to
which an artist can aspire, to this branch of art Hunt has
chiefly confined himself, and from this point of view he must
be studied. We do not forget, in saying this, his angel with
the flaming torch, strong and beautiful and of unearthly
presence, nor the shadowy, half-portrayed figures which dart
and flit across his easel; but as we may understand the
power of Titian from his portraits, yet never revel in it fully
until we look upon “The Presentation” or “The
Assumption”—never comprehend the painter’s joy or his
divine rest in endeavor until the achievement lies before
us—we must speak of Hunt only from the work to which he
has devoted himself, and not do him the injustice to predict
dramas he has never yet composed.

First, pre-eminently appears that worship for moral beauty
which suffers him to fear no ugliness. This power allies him
with keen sympathy to every living thing. He sees kinship and
the immortal spark in each breathing being. The soul of love
goes out and paints the dark or the suffering or the repellant
faithfully, bringing it in to the light where God’s sunshine
may fall upon it, and men and women, seeing for the first time,
may help to wipe away the stain. This tendency he shares with
the great French painter Millet, whom he loves to call Master,
and with Dore, whose terrible picture of “The Mountebanks”
should call men and women from their homes to penetrate the
fastnesses of vice and strive to heal the sorrows of their
kind.

This love of moral beauty, which forces painters to paint
such pictures, was never in any age more evident. Hunt in his
beggar-man, in his forlorn children, and other pictures of the
same class, unfolds a beauty that men should be thankful
for.

On the other hand, his love of beauty and his power of
expressing it should be studied in its direct influence.
The beauty of flesh and blood, even the loveliness of children,
seems to have slight hold upon him, compared with the
significance of character and the lustre with which his
imagination endows everything. This lustre is a distinguishing
power with him. The depth to which he sees and feels causes him
to give higher lights and deeper shadows than other men. White
flowers are not only white to him—they shine like stars.
His pictures give a sense of splendor.

In his sketch of the poor mother cuddling her child, it is
the feeling of rest, the mother’s sleeping joy, the relaxed
limbs, the folding embrace, which he has given us to enjoy.
These are the beauty of the picture—not rounded flesh,
nor graceful curves, nor fair complexion; and so with the
singing-girls: they are not beautiful girls, but they are
simple—they love to sing, they are full of tenderness and
music. We might go over all his pictures to weariness in this
way. The young girl plucking at the daisy as she stands in an
open field must, however, not be omitted. The natural elegance
of this portrait renders it peculiarly, we should say, such a
one as any woman would be proud to see of herself. Doubtless
this young girl, like others, may have worn ear-rings and
chains and pins and rings, but the artist knew her better than
she knew herself, and has portrayed that exquisite crown of
simplicity with which, it should seem, Nature only endows
beggars and her royal favorites.

In all the ages since Hamlet was created there appears never
to have been an era in which his character has excited such
strong and universal interest as in America at this time.
William Hunt has thrown upon the canvas a figure of Hamlet
beautiful and living. There is no suggestion of any actor in
it. Hamlet walks new-born from the painter’s brain. His “cursed
spite” bends the youthful shoulders, and the figure marches
past unmindful of terrestrial presences.

One other picture will illustrate more clearly, perhaps,
than everything which has gone before, this gift of
imagination. In “The Boy and the Butterfly,” now on the walls
of the Century Club-house, the loveliness of the child, the
power of action, the subtle management of color and light, are
all subordinated to the ideas of defeat and endeavor. Energy,
the irrepressible strength of the spirit upheld by a divine
light of indestructible youth, shines out from the canvas. The
boy who cannot catch the butterfly is transmuted as we stand
into the Soul of Beauty reaching out in vain for satisfaction,
and ready to follow its aspiration to another sphere.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

WILHELMINE VON HILLERN.

German literature, despite its extraordinary productiveness
and its possession of a few great masterpieces, is far from
being rich in the department of belles-lettres, especially in
works of fiction. It has no list of novelists like those which
include such names as Fielding, Scott and Thackeray, Balzac,
Hugo and Sand. In fact, there is scarcely an instance of a male
writer in Germany who has devoted himself exclusively to this
branch of literature, and has won high distinction in it. It
has been cultivated with success chiefly by a few writers of
the other sex, whose delineations have gained a popularity in
America only less than that which they enjoy at home—in
part because the life which they depict has closer internal
analogies to our own than to that of England or of France,
still more perhaps because the pictures themselves, whatever
their intrinsic fidelity, are suffused with a romantic glow
which has long since faded from those of the thoroughly
realistic art now dominant in the two latter countries.

In none of them is this characteristic more apparent than in
the works of Wilhelmine von Hillern, which bear also in a
marked degree the stamp of a mind at once vigorous and
sympathetic, and are thus calculated to awaken the interest of
readers in regard to the author’s personal history.

Her father, Doctor Christian Birch, a Dane by birth and
originally a diplomatist by profession, held for many years the
post of secretary of legation at London and Paris. He withdrew
from this career on the occasion of his marriage with a German
lady connected with the stage in the triple capacity of author,
manager and actress. Madame Birch-Pfeiffer, as she is commonly
called, was one of the celebrities of her time, and her
dramatic productions still keep possession of the stage. Soon
after the birth of her daughter, which took place at Munich,
she was invited to assume the direction of the theatre of
Zurich. Here Wilhelmine passed several years of her childhood,
separated from her father, whose engagements as a political
writer retained him in Germany, and scarcely less divided from
her mother, whose duties at this period did not permit her to
give much attention to domestic cares. Without companions of
her own age, and left almost wholly to the charge of an invalid
aunt, she led a monotonous existence, which left an impression
on her mind all the more deep from its contrast with the life
which opened upon her in her eighth year, when Madame
Birch-Pfeiffer was summoned to Berlin to hold an appointment at
the court theatre.

In the Prussian capital the family was again united, and
became the centre of a social circle embracing many persons
connected with dramatic art and literature. Devrient, Dawison
and Jenny Lind were among the visitors whose conversation was
greedily listened to by the little girl while supposed to be
immersed in her lessons or her plays. Under such influences it
would have been strange if even a less active brain had not
been fired with aspirations, which took the form of an
irresistible impulse when, at thirteen, Wilhelmine was allowed
for the first time to visit the theatre and witness the acting
of Dawison in Hamlet and other parts. Henceforth all opposition
had to give way, and in her seventeenth year she made her
début as Juliet at the ducal theatre of Coburg.
Two qualities, we are told, distinguished her acting: a strong
conception worked out in the minutest details, and an intensity
of passion which knew no restraint, and at its culminating
point overpowered even hostile criticism. Subsequently careful
training under Edward Devrient and Madame Glossbrenner enabled
her to bring her emotions under better control, repressing all
tendency to extravagance; and, greeted with the assurance that
she was destined to become the German Rachel, she entered upon
her career with a round of performances at the principal
theatres of Germany, including those of Frankfort, Hamburg and
Berlin.

These triumphs were followed by the acceptance of a
permanent engagement at Mannheim, which, however, had hardly
been concluded when it gave place to one of a different kind,
followed by her marriage and sudden relinquishment of the
vocation embraced with such ardor and pursued for a short
period with such brilliant promise. Dawison is said to have
remarked that by her retirement the German stage had lost its
last genuine tragic actress.

Since her marriage Madame von Hillern has resided at
Freiburg, in the grand duchy of Baden, where her husband holds
a legal position analogous to that of the judge of a superior
court. Her social life is one of great activity, though much of
her time is given to superintending the education of her two
daughters. But the abounding energy of her nature made it
inevitable that her artistic instincts, repressed in one
direction, should seek their full development in another.
Literature was naturally her choice. Her first work,
Doppelleben, appeared in 1865, and though defective in
construction, owing to a change of plan in the process of
composition, served to give assurance of her powers and to
inspire her with the requisite confidence. Three years later
Ein Arzt der Seele, of which a translation under the
title of Only a Girl has been widely circulated in
America, established her claim to a high place among the
writers of her class. Her third work, Aus eigener Kraft (By
his own Might), met with equal success, securing for its
author a large circle of readers on both sides of the Atlantic
ready to welcome the future productions of her pen. The
qualities which distinguish her writings are vigor of
conception, sharpness of characterization, a moral earnestness
pervading the judgments and reflections, and an ardor,
sometimes too exuberant, which gives intensity to the
delineation even while exciting doubts of its fidelity. Similar
qualities had characterized her acting, and they spring from a
nature which a close observer has described as clear in
perception yet swayed by fantasy; strong of will yet impulsive
as quicksilver; finding enjoyment now in animated discussion,
now in impetuous riding, now in absolute repose; full of
maternal tenderness, yet fond of splendor and the excitements
of society; a nature, in short, abounding in contrasts, but
substantially that of a true, noble and lovable woman.

HIS NAME?

(An incident of the Boston fire.)

I.

—Oh the billows of fire!

With maëlstrom-like swirl,

Their surges they hurl

Over roof—over spire,

Mad—masterless—higher,—

Till with
rumble—crack—crash,

Down boom with a flash,

Whole columns of granite and marble;—see!
see!

Sucked in as a weed on the ocean might be,

Or engulfed as a sail

In the hurricane riot and wreak of the gale!

II.

Ha! yonder they rush where the death-dealing
stream,

Over-pent, waits their gleam,

To shiver the city with earthquake!—Who,
who

Will adventure, mid-flame, and unfasten the
screw,—

Set the fiend loose, and save us so?—Fireman,
you,

You willing?—Would God you might hazard
it!—

Nay,

The red tongues are licking the faucets now:
Stay!

—Too late,—’tis too
late!

If ruin comes, wait

Its coming: To go, is to perish:—Hold!
Hold!

You are young,—I am
old,—

You’ve a wife, too—and children?—O God!
he is gone

Straight into destruction! The pipes, men! On,
on,

Play the water-stream on
him,—full—faster—the whole!

And now—Christ save his soul!

III.

—I stifle—I choke;

And he,—Heaven grant that he smother in
smoke

Ere the fearful explosion comes. Hark! What’s the
shout?

—Is he saved?—Is
he out?

—Did he compass his purpose,—the
Hero?—(One name

To-night we shall write on the records of
fame,—

The perilous deed was so noble!) Why here

On my cheek is a tear,

Which not a whole city in ashes could claim!

—His name, now: Can nobody tell me his
name?

M. J. P.

UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM LORD NELSON TO LADY HAMILTON.

[It has been a matter of congratulation that the destruction
by the Boston fire was confined to buildings and other property
representing simply the wealth of the city, and did not extend
to its monuments or its artistic and literary treasures. The
exceptions are, in fact, comparatively small in amount, yet
they are such as must excite a general regret. The contents of
the studios in Summer street, and the collection of armor,
unique in this country, bequeathed by the late Colonel Bigelow
Lawrence to the Boston Athenaeum, and temporarily deposited at
82 Milk street, could not perish without awaking other feelings
besides that of sympathy with their past or prospective
possessors. A similar loss was that of many of the books and
manuscripts amassed by the historian Prescott, and comprising
the collections pertaining to the Histories of the Conquest of
Mexico and Peru and of Philip II. The manuscripts were
comprised in some thirty or forty folio volumes, and consisted
of copies or abstracts of documents in the public archives and
libraries of Europe, in the family archives of several Spanish
noblemen, and in private collections like that at Middle Hill.
The printed books, of which there were perhaps a thousand,
included many of great value and not a few of extreme rarity. A
large mass of private correspondence was also consumed. We are
not yet informed whether the same fate has befallen a small but
very choice collection of autographs, embracing letters written
or signed by Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles V., Pope Clement
VII., Prospero Colonna, the Great Captain, and other sovereigns
and eminent personages of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. Very few modern autographs were included in this
collection, the only examples, we believe, being notes written
by Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and the duke of Wellington,
and a longer letter addressed by Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton.
This last, which we are permitted to print from a copy made
some time ago, is not exactly a model of composition, but it is
very characteristic, and shows the strength of that
enthrallment which led him, despite his natural kindness of
heart, to risk the lives of his men in order to communicate
with the object of his passion.]

SUNDAY NIGHT, Feb. 15, 9 o’clock [1801].

MY DEAR AMIABLE FRIEND: Could you have seen the boat leave
the ship, I am sure your heart would have sunk within you. I
would not have given sixpence for the lives of the men: a
tremendous wave broke and missed upsetting the boat by a
miracle. O God, how my heart thumped to see them safe! Then
they got safe on shore, and I had given a two-pound note to
cheer up the poor fellows when they landed; but I was so
anxious to send a letter for you. I knew it was impossible
for any boat to come off to us since Friday noon, when the boat
carried your letters enclosed for Napean, and she still remains
on shore. Only rest assured I always write, and never doubt
your old and dear friend, who never yet deserved it. The gale
abates very little, if anything, and it is truly fortunate that
our fleet is not in port, or some accident would most probably
happen; but both St. George and this ship have new cables,
which is all we have to trust to; but if my friend is true I
have no fear. I can take all the care which human foresight
can, and then we must trust to Providence, who keeps a lookout
for poor Jack. I cannot, my dear friend, afford to buy the
three pictures of the “Battle of the Nile,” or I should like
very much to have them, and Mr. Boyden cannot afford to trust
me one year. If he could, perhaps I could manage it. I have
desired my brother to examine the four numbers of the tickets I
bought with Gibbs. I hope he has told you. I dare say in the
office here is the numbers of the tickets my agents have bought
for the ensuing lottery. I hope we shall be successful. I hope
you always kiss my godchild for me: pray do, and I will
repay you ten times when we meet, which I hope will be very
soon. Monday morning. It is a little more moderate, and we are
going to send a boat, but at present none can get to us, and,
therefore, I send this letter No. (1) to say we are in being. I
hope in the afternoon to be able to get letters, and, if
possible, to answer them. Kiss my godchild for me, bless it,
and Believe me ever yours,

NELSON AND BRONTE.

“WHITE-HAT” DAY.

On one of the last days in September we were the astonished
recipients of a singular and mysterious invitation from a
member of the New York Board of Brokers. The note contained
words like these: “Come to the Exchange on Monday, September
30th: white hats are declared confiscated on that day.”

It would have puzzled Oedipus or a Philadelphia lawyer to
trace the connection between white hats and stocks, to tell
what Hecuba was to them or they to Hecuba, and why they should
be more interfered with by the New York Stock Exchange on the
30th of September than upon any other day. It is true that
during the last summer some slight political bias was supposed
to be hidden beneath that popular headpiece irreverently styled
“a Greeley plug,” but then stocks are not politics, nor would
any but a punster trace an intimate connection between hats and
polls. A story has gone through the papers, to be sure, about
an unfortunate deacon who found it impossible to collect the
coppers of the congregation in a Greeley hat, but then slight
excuses have been made available on charitable occasions before
the present election, and we decline to accept the sentiment of
that congregation as unmixed devotion to the Republican
candidates. They did not wish to Grant their money, that was
all.

And then, again, unlike the miller of the old conundrum, men
generally wear white hats to keep their heads cool; with
which laudable endeavor why should the Stock Exchange wish to
interfere? One never hears of a “corner” in hats. And then,
too, was it the bulls or the bears who objected to them? Bulls,
we all know, have an aversion to scarlet drapery, but Darwin,
in his studies of the feeling for color among animals, has
omitted any references to a horror of white hats even among the
most accomplished of the anthropoid apes.

Pondering all these problems, and many more, our puzzled
trio went to the Stock Exchange on the last day of September.
We were conducted into the safe seclusion of the Visitors’
Gallery, from which coign of vantage we could look down
unharmed upon the frantic multitude below. The room is large
and very lofty, its prevailing tint a warm brown, relieved by
bright decorations of the Byzantine order. Across one end runs
a small gallery for visitors, without seats, and some twenty
feet above the floor, and opposite the gallery is a raised
platform, with a long table and majestic arm-chairs for the
president and other officers of the Board. High on the wall
above these elevated dignitaries glitters in large gold letters
the mystic legend, “New York Stock Exchange.” On the left of
the platform stands a large blackboard, whereon the
fluctuations in stocks are recorded, and around the sides of
the room are displayed various signs bearing the names of
different stocks (like the banners of the knights in royal
chapels), beneath which eager groups collect. At the lower end
of the room, under the Visitors’ Gallery, are seats whereon
weary brokers may repose after the brunt of battle. In the
centre of the upper end of the vast apartment is a long oval
cock-pit—if it may be so called—of two or three
degrees, with a table in the lowest circle. It is so arranged
as to give the brokers, standing upon the graded steps, full
opportunity to see and to be seen. On the table, in singular
contrast with the spirit of the place, was a large and
beautiful basket of flowers. Anything more painfully
incongruous it would be difficult to imagine. The poor flowers
seemed to wear an air of patient suffering as they wasted their
sweetness on that (literally) howling wilderness.

It was just after ten, and the doors had been open but a few
moments when we entered the gallery, already quite full of
ladies and gentlemen—generally very young gentlemen,
anxious to learn from the glorious example of their elders. The
floor below us was fast being strewn with torn bits of paper,
which have to be swept up several times a day. Eager groups
were gathered under the various signs upon the walls and
pillars, apparently playing the Italian game of morra,
to judge by the quick gestures of their restless fingers. Some
were scribbling cabalistic signs on little bits of paper, and
almost all were howling like maniacs or wild beasts half
starved. The only place I was ever in at all to be compared
with it in volume and variety of noise is the parrot-room in
the London Zoological Gardens. Bedlam and Pandemonium I have
not visited—as yet—and consequently cannot speak
from personal experience. But the parrots in that awful house
in Regent’s Park are capable of making more hideous noises in a
given moment than any other wild beasts in the world, except
brokers. Here the human animal comes out triumphantly
supreme.

To add to the refreshing variety of the din, long, lanky
youths in gray sauntered about like the keepers of the
carnivora, and bawled incessantly till they were red in the
face. These, we were told, were the pages, who reported the
state of the market and delivered orders and commissions. To
the uninitiated they were a fraud and a delusion, but so was
the whole thing. A crowd of men, walking about or standing in
groups, note-book in hand, talking eagerly or yelling
unintelligible nonsense at the top of their voices, and
gesticulating with the fury of madmen, while in and around the
crowd strolled those extraordinary pages, calmly shouting full
in the brokers’ faces,—this, we were told, was
“business!” This is the mysterious occupation to which our
friends, countrymen and lovers devote so large a portion of
their time and thoughts. At this strange diversion millions of
dollars change hands in a few hours, and bulls and bears in
this little nest agree to make things generally uncomfortable
and uncertain for the outside world.

But where were the white hats, and what of their daring
wearers? As the crowd thickened, they began to shine out upon
the general blackness in obvious distinction. At first, the
howling multitude, eager for filthy lucre, took no particular
notice of them beyond an occasional hurried poke or pat, but
this delusive mildness did not long continue. After the first
fifteen or twenty minutes, during which the favorite stocks had
been danced up and down a few times, like so many crying
babies, the appetite of the hundred-headed hydra abated a
little, and the general attention to business relaxed.
Suddenly—no one knew whence or wherefore—up rose a
white hat in the air, high above the heads of the people, and a
bareheaded individual was seen struggling wildly in the arms of
the mob, who set up ironical cheers at his unavailing efforts
to regain his flying headpiece. It rose and fell faster and
farther than any fancy stock of them all, now soaring to the
vaulted roof, now being kicked along the dusty floor.

Press where ye see my white hat shine amidst the
ranks of war,

seemed to be the sentiment of the occasion, as the unruly
mob swayed and struggled about the dilapidated victim of their
sport. In one corner stood a quiet, dignified gentleman,
talking sedately to a little knot of friends. He wore a tall
white “stove-pipe” of the most obnoxious kind. In a twinkling
it was seized and sent flying toward the roof with its softer
predecessor. Its owner gave one glance over his shoulder, and
“smiled a sickly smile,” while it was very evident that

The subsequent proceedings interested him no
more.

The fun grew fast and furious, the air was literally
darkened with flying hats of every shape and size, but all
white. The stout tall beavers were converted into footballs
till their crowns were kicked out and their brims torn off,
when they were seized upon as instruments for further torture.
Some innocent member of the large fraternity, now, to use a
nautical phrase, scudding under bare polls, was pounced
upon, and over his unfortunate head the crownless hat was drawn
till the ragged remnant of its brim rested upon his shoulders.
One poor creature was thus bonneted with at least three tiers
of hats, and was last seen on the edge of the cockpit
struggling with imminent suffocation.

At the height of the howling, scuffling, kicking and
fighting a short diversion was effected. A tall and portly
broker appeared upon the scene in an entire suit of new
broadcloth. It was unmistakably new, its brilliancy quite
undimmed. Instantly a rush was made for him by the fickle
crowd. They swept him, as by some mighty wave, into the centre
of the room: they turned him round and round like a pivoted
statue, and examined him and patted him approvingly on every
side. Then they made a large ring round him and gave him three
cheers. Not content with this, with one sudden impulse they
rushed at him again, and tried to lift him upon the table, that
they might see him better. But this the portly broker resisted:
he fought like a good fellow, and the crowd, tired of
struggling with a man of so much weight, gave one final cheer
and went back to the chase of the white hats.

We stayed about half an hour to watch these elegant and
refined diversions: at the end of that time our patience and
the white hats were giving out together. The din was deafening
and the dust was rapidly rising. The floor was strewn with
scraps of papers and the mangled remains of felt and beaver.
Brimless hats and hatless brims, linings, bands, rent and
tattered crowns, and ragged fragments of the fray, were all
over the place. A writhing victim in gray, masked by a
crownless hat, was struggling upon the table to the evident
danger of those unhappy flowers; the president was calling
across the tumult in stentorian tones; but the tumult refused
to fall, and the imperturbable pages were bawling upon the
skirts of the crowd with stolid pertinacity. The noise was
terrific, the confusion indescribable.

We are often told that women are unfitted for business
pursuits. If this was business, I should say decidedly they
were. My acquaintance with women has been large and varied, but
I have yet to see the woman whom I consider qualified to be a
member of the New York Board of Brokers. I have been present at
many gatherings composed entirely of women, from the “Woman’s
Parliament” to country sewing-societies, but never, even in
that much-abused body, the New York Sorosis, have I seen a
crowd of women, however excited, however frolicsome, however
full of fun, capable of playing football with each other’s
bonnets even upon April Fools’ Day. I am convinced that not
even Miss Anthony or Mrs. Stanton would have hesitated to
admit, had she been present on the auspicious occasion above
recorded, that there are limits even to woman’s sphere. Let her
preach and practice, and sail ships, and make horse-shoes, and
command armies, if she will, let her vote for all sorts of
disreputable characters to be set over her, if she choose, but
let her recognize the fact that between her and the gentle
amenities of the New York Stock Exchange there is a great gulf
fixed, which only the superior being man, with his lordly
intellect, his keen morality and his exquisite and unvarying
courtesy, can bridge over.

K. H.

MR. SOTHERN AS GARRICK.

One hundred and thirty-five years ago two young men came up
to London to try their fortune: half riding, half walking, the
young fellows made their journey. One was thick-set, heavy and
uncouth, and years afterward became known to men and fame as
Samuel Johnson: the other was bright, slender, active, and was
called David Garrick. Some ten years later, just before the
battle of Culloden, a Dutch vessel, having crossed the Channel,
landed at Harwich. There was on board an apparent page, in
reality a young Viennese girl disguised in male attire, who
journeyed up to London too, where she soon made her appearance
as a dancer at the Hay-market Theatre: there she achieved great
success, and became talked about as “La Violette.” She was
under the patronage of the earl and countess of Burlington, and
finally became Mrs. Garrick. It is said that she was the
daughter of a respectable citizen of Vienna—that she had
been engaged to dance at the palace with the children of the
empress Maria Teresa, but that, her charms proving too
attractive to the emperor, the empress had packed her off to
London with letters of recommendation to persons of quality
there. It seems more probable, however, that she was am actress
at Vienna, and simply crossed the sea to try her fortune in
England. Becoming fascinated with Garrick’s acting, she married
him after refusing several more brilliant offers, and in spite
of the opposition of her kind patroness, Lady Burlington, who
wished her to marry so as to secure higher social position.
This match gave rise to much romantic gossip. It was said that
a wealthy young lady had fallen in love with the great actor
one night in Romeo—that he had been induced by her
father to come to the house and break the charm by feigning
intoxication: some versions had it that he came disguised as a
physician. A popular German comedy was written upon it, and
still later Mr. Robertson dramatized it for the English stage,
and produced a play in which we have lately had an opportunity
of witnessing the fine acting of Mr. Sothern. Garrick was
certainly fortunate among actors: he not only achieved high
professional fame, but he accumulated a large private fortune
and lived a happy domestic life in a splendid home filled with
choice works of art. The traveler abroad who is favored with an
invitation to the Garrick Club, may there see the picture of
the great actor “in his habit as he lived,” looking down
nightly on a collection of the most renowned wits and authors
of the metropolis; and to crown all, when Mr. Sothern
acts—were it not for his moustache—we might suppose
we saw the man himself alive before us.

Concerning Mr. Sothern’s acting, it affords a fine example
of that quality—so very difficult of attainment, it would
seem—perfect repose; and by repose we do not mean
torpidity or sluggishness or inattention, as opposed to
clamorous ranting, but we mean the complete subordination of
subordinate parts; so that, if we may use the illustration, the
gaudiness of the frame is not allowed to over-power and destroy
the effect of the picture. Everything is clear, distinct and
well marked: the forcible passages come with double effect in
contrast with preceding serenity. The actor’s manner is not
confined behind the footlights: it diffuses itself, as it were,
among his audience until it seems as if they too were acting
with him. This arises from the perfection of the picture he
presents, and that perfection is the result of careful
avoidance of everything that is unnatural. There is no
unnecessary exertion put forth, no palpable straining
after effect: he strives to hold the mirror up to Nature, not
Art, and in Nature there is much repose between the tempests.
Old players say that the most difficult thing to teach a tyro
is to stand still, and some actors never learn it.

Careful attention to costume is another trait exhibited by
Mr. Sothern. He might easily make his first appearance as David
Garrick in the wealthy merchant’s house in ordinary
walking-dress, which could be readily retained when he returns
to the dinner-party to which he causes himself to be invited.
Instead of that, he appears in the full riding-dress of the
period—boots, spurs, whip, overcoat and all. This is
rapidly changed in time for the dinner-scene for a full-dress
suit, complete in every point—powdered hair, white silk
stockings, and a little brette, or walking rapier,
peeping out from under the coat skirt, not slung in a belt as
heavier swords, but supported by light steel chains fastened to
a chatelaine, which slips behind the waistband and can
be taken off in a moment. In the last scene, where he goes out
to fight the duel, his dress is changed again, and dark silk
stockings are donned as more appropriate.

The last point we shall mention here about Mr. Sothern is
his scrupulous attention to the minor business of the stage:
when he is not speaking himself, his looks act. It is said of
Macready that he began to be Cardinal Richelieu at three
o’clock in the afternoon, and that it was dangerous to speak to
him after that time. When Mr. Sothern plays Lord Dundreary, if
he is addressed on any subject during the progress of the play,
he answers in his Dundreary drawl, so as not to lose his
personality for a minute. The letter from his brother “Tham” he
has written out and reads; not that he does not know every word
by heart, for he must have read it a hundred times, but because
he wants to turn over at the proper place. We all know
what he has made of that part. A play in which there is
absolutely nothing of a plot, which would fall dead from the
hands of an inferior actor, becomes with Mr. Sothern as popular
as Rip van Winkle is with Jefferson to play the sleepy
hero. It is to be observed that the three essentials for good
acting just mentioned—repose of manner, strict attention
to dress, and strict attention to minor details of
stage-business—may be acquired by any actor of average
intellect who will devote proper time and study to the task:
they are not, like a fine figure, a handsome face or a sonorous
voice, adventitious gifts of Fortune which may be bestowed on
one mortal and denied to another. Mr. Sothern owes his success,
evidently, to long and careful preparation of his parts. In
David Garrick he leaves but two points at which criticism can
carp: his pathos somehow lacks sufficient tenderness, his
love-making seems too devoid of passion. When young Garrick won
the heart of La Violette, he put more fire into his speech and
manner than Mr. Sothern exhibits at the close of the last act.
He is represented as always loving Ida Ingot, but at first
conceals and suppresses his love: when the avowal comes at
last, it should be like the bursting forth of a volcano, hot,
fiery and irresistible.

M. M.

NOTES.

Sir Richard Wallace evidently aims to make himself, in a
small way, the Peabody of Paris. A cynic might maintain that
his gifts were a trifle sensational, and shaped with a view to
procure the greatest amount of notoriety at the price; but that
they are frequent, and that they show a hearty love for Paris
on the Englishman’s part, none can deny. It was Sir Richard who
not long ago gave about five thousand dollars to the use of the
Paris poor; it was he who, in the late hunting-season, is said
to have proposed to supply the city hospitals with fresh
game—whether of his own shooting or of that of his
compatriots does not appear; it is he, in fine, who has
furnished to Paris eighty street-fountains, costing in the
factory six hundred and seventy-five francs each, or a total of
fifty-four thousand francs (say ten thousand eight hundred
dollars), the expense of setting them up being undertaken by
the city. These drinking-jets are in the main like those so
familiar in American cities, and are provided, of course, with
tin cups attached by iron chains—”à la mode
Anglaise” add the French papers in an explanatory way. Now,
the extraordinary fact concerning these fountains is, that no
sooner had the first installment of nine been put up than all
the tin cups, or “goblets,” as the Parisians call them, were
stolen. They were renewed, and again disappeared in a trice. In
short, within fifteen days no less than forty-seven of these
goblets were made way with, despite their strong
fastenings—that is, an average of over five cups to each
fountain. What the sum-total of plunder has been since the
first fortnight, or whether the fountains are still as useless
as spiked cannon or tongueless bells, we have yet to learn.

Now comes a contrast. The countrymen of Sir Richard claim
that in London from time immemorial not a single cup was ever
stolen from the public fountains. So tempting a theme for
generalization could not be resisted by the Paris newspaper
philosophers, who have deduced from this theft of the cups a
broad distinction between the British loafer and the French
loafer, declaring that the former “respects any collective
property which he partly shares,” while the latter does not
even draw this distinction, but grabs whatever he can lay his
hands on. “The luck of the Wallace fountains,” cries one
moralizer, “shows how hard it is to reform the Paris
gamin so long as the law contents itself with its
present measures. If the state does not speedily educate
children found straying in the street, it is all up with the
present generation.” Thereupon follows a disquisition on the
part which Paris children played in the Commune. “Now, the
child,” adds our newspaper Wordsworth, “is the man viewed
through the big end of the opera-glass;” and he points his
moral, therefore, with the need of compulsory education. “One
of the first duties incumbent on the Chamber at the next
session will be the solution of this question. Let it take as a
perpetual goad the fate of the Wallace goblets. You begin by
stealing a cup of tin—you end by firing the Tuileries or
plundering the Hôtel Thiers.” There is a droll mingling
of Isaac Watts and Victor Hugo in this
dénoûment, and despite its practical good
sense one is amused at the evolution of a grave discourse from
so trivial a text as the Wallace drinking-cups.

To people of a statistical rather than a sentimental turn,
the mathematics of marriage in different countries may prove an
attractive theme of meditation. It is found that young men from
fifteen to twenty years of age marry young women averaging two
or three years older than themselves, but if they delay
marriage until they are twenty to twenty-five years old, their
spouses average a year younger than themselves; and
thenceforward this difference steadily increases, till in
extreme old age on the bridegroom’s part it is apt to be
enormous. The inclination of octogenarians to wed misses in
their teens is an every-day occurrence, but it is amusing to
find in the love-matches of boys that the statistics bear out
the satires of Thackeray and Balzac. Again, the husbands of
young women aged twenty and under average a little above
twenty-five years, and the inequality of age diminishes
thenceforward, till for women who have reached thirty the
respective ages are equal: after thirty-five years, women, like
men, marry those younger than themselves, the disproportion
increasing with age, till at fifty-five it averages nine
years.

The greatest number of marriages for men take place between
the ages of twenty and twenty-five in England, between twenty
five and thirty in France, and between twenty-five and
thirty-five in Italy and Belgium. Finally, in Hungary the
number of individuals who marry is seventy-two in a thousand
each year; in England it is 64; in Denmark, 59; in France, 57,
the city of Paris showing 53; in the Netherlands, 52; in
Belgium, 43; in Norway, 36. Widowers indulge in second
marriages three or four times as often as widows. For example,
in England (land of Mrs. Bardell) there are 66 marriages of
widowers against 21 of widows; in Belgium there are 48 to 16;
in France, 40 to 12. Old Mr. Weller’s paternal advice, to
“beware of the widows,” ought surely to be supplemented by a
maxim to beware of widowers.

SHAKESPEARE, in one of his most famous madrigals, draws a
vivid contrast between youth and age, which, he declares,
“cannot live together:”

Youth like summer morn,

Age like winter weather,

Youth like summer brave,

Age like winter bare:

Youth is hot and bold,

Age is weak and cold.

Science, which ruthlessly destroys so much poetry by its
mattock and spade, its scales, foot-rules and gauges, must now,
we should judge, take grave exception to the preceding bit of
poesy and to the thousand repetitions of its sentiment by the
bards of all ages. By means of a thermometer lately constructed
to register with exactitude the degree of heat in the human
body, it is found, after numerous experiments under varying
circumstances, that the instrument marks 37.08° of heat on
an average for persons between twenty-one and thirty years of
age, while it marks 37.46° for people aged eighty. In face
of this fact what becomes of the “fervors of youth” and the
“chills of age”? The highest average temperatures in the human
body, as indicated by this gauge, are those which exist from
birth to puberty—that is to say, 37.55° and
37.63°. From the latter epoch the heat gradually lowers, to
rise again with the first approach of old age. Thus childhood
shows the highest temperature, old age the next, and middle
life the lowest. We may add that the greatest variations in the
temperature of the body between health and sickness are only a
few tenths of a degree, according to this measurement; for, the
normal condition being 37.2° or 37.3°, an increase to
38° would mark a burning fever, and a decrease to 36°
would note the icy approach of death. Hereafter, though we may
graciously excuse to poetic license the assertion that

Crabbed Age and Youth

Cannot live together,

we must yet sternly protest that the reason
assigned—namely, that “youth is hot and age is
cold”—is contradicted by the facts of science.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Life of Charles Dickens. By
John Forster. Vol. II. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott &
Co.

Beginning with Dickens’s return from America in 1842, this
volume covers a period of less than ten years, the most
productive, and apparently the happiest, of his life. It brings
out in even stronger relief than the preceding volume his
strong individuality, a trait which, whether it attracts or
repels—and on most persons we think it produces
alternately each of these effects—is full of interest,
worthy of study and fruitful of suggestions. Its superabundant
energy seemed to create demands in order that it might expend
itself in satisfying them. Its persistence was toughened by
failure as much as by success. Its vivacity, verging upon
boisterousness, was incapable of being chilled. Its
strenuousness knew no lassitude, and needed no repose. In play
as in work, in physical exercise as in mental labor, in all his
projects, purposes and performances, Dickens seems to have been
in a perpetual state of tension that allowed of no reaction.
His was a mind not morbidly self-conscious, but ever aglow with
the consciousness of power and the ardor of its achievement,
in-sensible of waste and undisturbed by critical
introspection.

The excitement into which he was thrown by the composition
of his books exceeds anything of the kind recorded in literary
history, and stands in strong contrast with the self-contained
tranquillity with which Scott performed an equal or greater
amount of labor. Yet it does not, like similar ebullitions in
other men, suggest any notion of weakness or of a talent
strained beyond its capacity. It was coupled with an enormous
facility of execution and the ability to pass with undiminished
freshness from one field of action to another. It sprang from
the intensity with which every idea was conceived, and which
belonged equally to his smallest with his greatest
undertakings. “The book,” he writes of the Chimes, “has
made my face white in a foreign land. My cheeks, which were
beginning to fill out, have sunk again; my eyes have grown
immensely large; my hair is very lank, and the head inside the
hair is hot and giddy. Read the scene at the end of the third
part twice. I wouldn’t write it twice for something…. Since I
conceived, at the beginning of the second part, what must
happen in the third, I have undergone as much sorrow and
agitation as if the thing were real, and have wakened up with
it at night. I was obliged to lock myself in when I finished it
yesterday, for my face was swollen for the time to twice its
proper size, and was hugely ridiculous.” The little book was
written at Genoa; and having finished it, he must make a winter
journey to London, “because,” as he writes to Forster, “of that
unspeakable restless something which would render it almost as
impossible for me to remain here, and not see the thing
complete, as it would be for a full balloon, left to itself,
not to go up.” A further reason was to try the effect of the
story upon a circle of listeners, to be assembled for the
purpose: “Carlyle, indispensable, and I should like his wife of
all things; her judgment would be invaluable. You will
ask Mac, and why not his sister? Stanny and Jerrold I should
particularly wish. Edwin Landseer, Blanchard perhaps Harness;
and what say you to Fonblanque and Fox?” After this it is
amusing to read that the book “was not one of his greatest
successes, and it raised him up some objectors;” but the
reading was the germ of those which afterward brought him into
such close relations with his public.

Of another Christmas story he writes, “I dreamed all last
week that the Battle of Life was a series of
chambers, impossible to be got to rights or got out of, through
which I wandered drearily all night. On Saturday night I don’t
think I slept an hour. I was perpetually roaming through the
story, and endeavoring to dovetail the revolution here into the
plot. The mental distress quite horrible.” Here we have,
perhaps, a clear case of the effects of overwork. But in
general the details of his plots, the names of the characters,
above all, the titles of the stories, were evolved with an
amount of thought and discussion that might have sufficed for
the plan and the preparations for a battle. “Martin Chuzzlewit”
is not a name suggestive of long and serious deliberation: one
might rather suppose that it had turned up accidentally and
been accepted simply as being as good as another. Yet it was
not adopted till after many others had been discussed and
rejected. “Martin was the prefix to all, but the surname varied
from its first form of Sweezleden, Sweezleback and Sweeztewag,
to those of Chuzzletoe, Chuzzleboy, Chubblewig and Chuzzlewig.”
David Copperfield was preceded by a still longer list of
abortions, and Household Words, as a mere title, was the
result of a parturition far exceeding in length and severity
any throes of travail known to natural history.

All this was unaccompanied by any of the doubts and
misgivings, the fits of depression and intervals of lassitude,
which are the ordinary tortures of authorship. Nor had it any
connection with the weaknesses of the craft, its small vanities
and jealousies. “It was,” as Mr. Forster well remarks, “part of
the intense individuality by which he effected so much to set
the high value which in general he did upon what he was
striving to accomplish.” Hence, too, no half-formed and then
abandoned projects were among the stepping-stones of his
career. A plan or an idea, once conceived, was certain to be
shaped, developed and matured; and whatever the result, it left
up disheartening effect, no feeling of distrust, to cripple a
subsequent undertaking.

Nor was Dickens so absorbed in his work as to leave it
reluctantly, or to find no fullness of satisfaction in
occupations or enjoyments of a different kind. On the contrary,
no man ever threw himself so heartily and entirely into the
business of the hour, or more eagerly sought diversion and
change. Dinners, private and public, excursions in chosen
companionship, amateur theatricals, schemes of charity or
benevolence, occupied a large portion of his time, and were
entered into with an ardor which never flagged or needed to be
stimulated. His correspondence—an unfailing barometer to
indicate the state of the mental atmosphere—is always
full of life, overflowing, for the most part, with animal
spirits, often vivid in description both of places and people,
turning discomforts and embarrassments into subjects of lively
narrative or indignant protest. The letters from Genoa and
Lausanne are especially copious and entertaining, and form, we
think, the most interesting portion of the book. The later
chapters, giving the final year of his residence in Devonshire
Terrace, are less satisfactory. We would fain have had a
picture of that circle of which Dickens was one of the most
prominent figures; but though his own personality is revealed
in the fullest light, the group in the background is left
indistinct, most of its members being barely visible, and none
of them adequately portrayed.

Émaux et Camées. Par
Théophile Gautier. Nombre définitif. Paris:
Charpentier; New York: F.W. Christern.

Gautier was polishing and adding to his literary jewelry
almost to the day of his death, and the final edition which he
published among the last of his works about doubles the number
of poems first issued. These verses are like nothing we have in
English. Their imagery is strongly sophisticated, tortured,
brought from vast distances, and then chilled into form. Yet
they are the most sincere utterances of a soul fed perpetually
among cabinets and picture-galleries, to whom their compact
method of utterance is, so to speak, secondarily natural. That
they are precious and beauteous no one can deny. How sparkling
are the successive descriptions of women—blonde, brune,
Spanish, contralto-voiced, coquettish, etc.—whom the
poet, like some capricious artist, invites into his atelier,
drapes hastily with old Moorish or Venetian or diaphanous
costumes, and then reflects in a diminishing mirror, changing
the model into a fine statuette of ivory and enamel! More
virile and thoughtful images are intermixed: such are the
figures of the old Invalides seen at the Column Vendôme
in a December fog, and for whom he pleads: “Mock not those men
whom the street urchin follows, laughing: they were the Day of
which we are the twilight—maybe the night!” Not less
fresh are the two “Homesick Obelisks”—that in the Place
de la Concorde, wearying its stony heart out for Egypt, and
that at Luxor, equally tired, and longing to be planted at
Paris, among a living crowd. But Gautier is a colorist, an
artist with words, and he is at his best when he works without
much outline, celebrating draperies, bouquets and laces, to all
of which he can give a meaning quite other than the milliner’s,
as where he asserts that the plaits of a rose-colored dress are
“the lips of my unappeased desires,” or describes March as a
barber, powdering the wigs of the blossoming almond trees, and
a valet, lacing up the rosebuds in their corsets of green
velvet. Whatever he touches he leaves artificial, “enameled,”
yet charming. The verses added in the present edition are more
pensive, even sombre. A life given to art wholly, without
patriotism or religion or philosophy, does not prepare the
greenest old age. There is a long and beautiful poem, “Le
Château du Souvenir,” which he fills, not exactly with
Charles Lamb’s “old familiar faces,” but with portraits of his
mistresses and of his old self. There is the “Last
Vow”—to a woman he has pursued “for eighteen years,” and
whom he still accosts, though “the white graveyard lilacs have
blossomed about my temples, and I shall soon have them tufting
and shading all my forehead.” There is also the accent of his
irresponsible courtiership, the facile and unashamed flattery
he paid to such a woman as Princess Mathilde. This personage
was, or is, an artist; and we may not be mistaken in believing
that we have seen, cast aside in the vast storerooms of
Haseltine’s galleries in this city—an example and gnomon
of disenchanted glory—her water-color sketch called the
“Fellah Woman,” and the very one of which Gautier sang:
“Caprice of a fantastic brush and of an imperial leisure!…
Those eyes, a whole poem of languor and pleasure, resolve the
riddle and say, ‘Be thou Love—I am Beauty.'”

The late poems, however, as well as the old, are filled with
felicities. They contain many a lesson of the word-master, who,
though he did not attain the Academy, left the French language
gold, which he found marble. The ornaments, exquisite licenses,
foreign graces and wide researches which Gautier conferred upon
his mother-tongue have enriched it for future time, and they
are best seen in this volume.

Concord Days. By A. Bronson Alcott. Boston:
Roberts Brothers.

In these loose leaves we have the St. Martin’s summer of a
life. Mr. Alcott, from his quiet home in Concord, and from the
edifice of his seventy-three years, picks out those mental
growths and moral treasures which have kept their color through
all the changes of the seasons. They bear the mark of
selection, of choice, from out a vast abundance of material: to
us readers the scissors have probably been a kinder implement
than the pen. Be that as it may, the selections given are all
worth saving, and the fragmentary resurrection is just about as
much as our age has time to attend to of the growths that were
formed when New England thought was young. That was the day
when Mrs. Hominy fastened the cameo to her frontal bone and
went to the sermon of Dr. Channing, when young Hawthorne
chopped straw for the odious oxen at Brook Farm, and when a
budding Booddha, called by his neighbors Thoreau, left mankind
and proceeded to introvert himself by the borders of Walden
Pond. Mr. Alcott’s little diary gives us some of the best
skimmings of that time of yeast. There is Emerson-worship,
Channing-worship, Margaret Fuller-worship and the pale cast of
The Dial. There is, besides, in another stratum that
runs through the collection, a vein of very welcome
investigation amongst old authors—Plutarch’s charming
letter of consolation to his wife on the death of their child;
Crashaw’s “Verses on a Prayer-Book;” Evelyn’s letter on the
origin of his Sylva; and many a jewel five-words-long
filched from the authors whom modern taste votes slow and
insupportable. We mention these to give some idea of the spirit
in which this work of marquetry is executed—a work too
fragmentary and incoherent to be easily describable except by
its specimens. And while culling fragments, we cannot forbear
mentioning the curious records of Mr. Alcott’s “Conversations,”
held now with Frederika Bremer, now with a band of large-browed
Concord children, held forty years ago, and turning perpetually
upon the deeper questions of metaphysics and religion; we will
even indulge ourselves with a short extract from one of the
“Conversations with Children,” reported verbatim by an
apparently concealed auditress, and eliciting many a cunning
bit of infantine wisdom, besides the following finer rhapsody,
which Mr. Alcott succeeded in charming out of the lips of a boy
six years of age:

“Mr. Alcott! you know Mrs. Barbauld says in her hymns,
everything is prayer; every action is prayer; all nature prays;
the bird prays in singing; the tree prays in growing; men
pray—men can pray more; we feel; we have more,
more than Nature; we can know, and do right: Conscience
prays; all our powers pray; action prays. Once we said,
here, that there was a Christ in the bottom of our spirits,
when we try to be good. Then we pray in Christ; and that is the
whole!”

To think that the lips of this ingenuous and golden-mouthed
lad may be now pouring out patriotism in Congress is rather
sad; but the author’s own career tells us that there are some
of the Chrysostoms of 1830 who have had the courage to keep
quiet, and sweeten their own lives for family use. Mr. Alcott
betrays in every line the kindest, sanest and humanest spirit;
and we wish he could feel how grateful some of us are for his
example of a thinker who can keep quiet, and a writer who can
show the power of reticence.

Thirty Years in the Harem; or, The
Autobiography of Melek-Hanum, wife of H.H.
Kibrizli-Mehemet-Pasha. New York: Harper &
Brothers.

We have had many revelations from the interior, but nothing
quite like this. Most histories are valuable in proportion to
the truthfulness of the narrator, but Mrs. Melek’s story owes a
large show of its interest to her obvious tension of the
long-bow. It is, in fact, a self-revelation—the vain and
audacious betrayal by an Oriental woman of the narrowness, the
shallowness, the dishonesty which ages of false education have
fastened upon her race. The lady in question is—and
evidently knows herself to be—an exception among her
countrywomen for ability and acumen: an extreme
self-satisfaction and vanity are revealed in the recital of her
most disreputable tricks. She passes for a white blackbird, a
woman of intellect caught in the harem; and it needs but little
ingenuity to guess the torment she must have been to her
protectors—first to the excellent Dr. Millingen, with
whom she formed a love-match, and whom she abuses—and
then to her second husband, Kibrizli, ambassador in 1848 to the
court of England, upon whom she attempted to palm off an heir
by the ruse practiced by our own revered Mrs. Cunningham.
Whatever the clever Melek does, or whatever treatment she
receives, it is always she who is in the right, and her eternal
“enemies” who are unjust, barbarous and stingy. The ferocious
blackmailing of natives in the Holy Land which she practiced
when her husband represented the sultan there, is represented
as cleverness; but her divorce after the infamous false
accouchement is a piece of persecution. The marriage and
adventures of her daughter form a tangled romance through which
we hear of a great deal more oppression and cruelty; and the
escape into Europe, where the old enchantress appears to be now
prowling in poverty and degradation, concludes the curious
story. The narrative bears marks of having passed through a
French translation and then a British version. To disentangle
the thread of actuality that probably runs through it would be
too troublesome and futile; but the truths that the wily Melek
cannot help telling—the facts of the harem and of Eastern
life that involuntarily sprinkle it all like a flavoring of
strange spices—these are what give it the odd dash of
interest which keeps it in our hands long after we had meant to
toss it aside. Here is a “screaming sister” of the
East—an odalisque who was not going to be oppressed and
degraded like the other women, but who meant to be capable and
cultivated and smart, just like the Christian ladies; and this
bundle of lies and crimes and hates is what she arrives at.

Hints on Dress; or, What to Wear, When to Wear
it, and How to Buy it. By Ethel C. Gale, (Putnam’s
Handy-Book Series.) New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

This little book will certainly elicit commendation from all
who consider the subject of dress within the pale of aesthetic
treatment; and, what is still more fortunate, it will probably
serve to elevate, in some degree, the standard of taste among
that large class of persons for whom handy volumes are chiefly
compiled. Its statements and deductions are accurate, sensible,
comprehensive and practical, and the style in which they are
presented is simple and attractive. The color, form and
suitability of dress, as well as the best methods of economy in
its purchase and manufacture, are intelligently treated. We
have only to regret the want of a chapter devoted to the
hygiene of dress, which is a subject deserving the earnest
attention of every friend of physical development. Ten or a
dozen pages given to this topic might have done a service to
hundreds who are willing enough to gather knowledge in passing,
but who are repelled from the separate consideration of any
subject which seems to call for the exercise of serious
thought.

A Sketch Map of the Nile Sources and Lake
Region of Central Africa, showing Dr. Livingstone’s
Discoveries and Mr. Stanley’s Route. Folio, folded.
Philadelphia: T. Elwood Zell.

A clear, well-executed polychrome map, evidently copied from
the one recently published in England, if not actually printed
there. It exhibits not only the route of Dr. Livingstone during
the period included between the years 1866 and 1872, and that
taken by Mr. Stanley in his recent search, but also the course
which the former proposes to follow in the prosecution of his
discoveries. The boundaries of lakes and the courses of rivers,
where definitely known, are indicated by unbroken
lines—where still supposititious, by dotted ones. The
map, which is printed on heavy paper, is thirteen inches wide
by eighteen inches long, and being folded within a stiff
duodecimo cover, can be easily preserved and readily
consulted.

Books Received.

Papers relating to the Transit of Venus in 1874. Prepared
under the Direction of the Commissioners authorized by
Congress. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing-office.

Reports on Observations of Encke’s Comet during its Return
in 1871. By Asaph Hall and Wm. Harkness. Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing-Office.

Harry Delaware; or, An American in Germany. By Mathilde
Estvan. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

California for Health, Pleasure and Residence. By Charles
Nordhoff. New York: Harper & Brothers.

The Lives of General U.S. Grant and Henry Wilson.
Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

The Romance of American History. By M. Schele de Vere. New
York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

Book of Ballads, Tales and Stories. By Benjamin G. Herre.
Lancaster, Pa.: Wylie & Griest.

The Poet at the Breakfast Table. By Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

The Lawrence Speaker. By Philip Lawrence. Philadelphia: T.B.
Peterson & Brothers.

Memoir of a Huguenot Family. By Ann Maury. New York: G.P.
Putnam & Sons.

Within the Maze. By Mrs. Henry Wood. Philadelphia: T.B.
Peterson & Brothers.

Sermons. By Rev. C.D.N. Campbell, D.D. New York: Hurd &
Houghton.

Outlines of History. By Ed. A. Freeman, D.C.L. New York:
Holt & Williams.

The End of the World. By Edward Eggleston. New York: Orange
Judd & Co.

Sermons. By Rev. H.R. Haweis, M.A. New York: Holt &
Williams.

Kaloolah. By W.S. Mayo, M.D. New York: G.P. Putnam &
Sons.

Nast’s Illustrated Almanac for 1873. New York: Harper &
Brothers.

A Summer Romance. By Mary Healy. Boston: Roberts
Brothers.

Song Life. By Philip Phillips. New York: Harper &
Brothers.

Gavroche. By M.C. Pyle. Philadelphia: Porter &
Coates.

LIPPINCOTT’S MAGAZINE

OF

POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

VOLUME XI. No. 22. January, 1873

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS

IRON BRIDGES, AND THEIR CONSTRUCTION.

SEARCHING FOR THE QUININE-PLANT IN PERU.

SECOND PAPER.

PROBATIONER LEONHARD; OR, THREE NIGHTS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.

CHAPTER I.

OUR HERO.

CHAPTER II.

IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.

CHAPTER III.

HIGH ART.

THE IRISH CAPITAL.

FOOTNOTES:

THE MAESTRO’S CONFESSION.

(ANDREA DAL CASTAGNO—1460.)

I.

II.

III.

MONSIEUR FOURNIER’S EXPERIMENT.

A VISIT TO THE KING OF AURORA.

(FROM THE GERMAN OF THEODORE KIRSCHOFF.)

GRAY EYES.

REMINISCENCES OF FLORENCE.

THE SOUTHERN PLANTER.

BABES IN THE WOOD.

MY CHARGE ON THE LIFE-GUARDS.

PAINTING AND A PAINTER.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

WILHELMINE VON HILLERN.

HIS NAME?

I.

II.

III.

UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM LORD NELSON TO LADY HAMILTON.

“WHITE-HAT” DAY.

MR. SOTHERN AS GARRICK.

NOTES.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Life of Charles Dickens. By John Forster. Vol. II. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

Émaux et Camées. Par Théophile Gautier. Nombre définitif. Paris: Charpentier; New York: F.W. Christern.

Concord Days. By A. Bronson Alcott. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Thirty Years in the Harem; or, The Autobiography of Melek-Hanum, wife of H.H. Kibrizli-Mehemet-Pasha. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Hints on Dress; or, What to Wear, When to Wear it, and How to Buy it. By Ethel C. Gale, (Putnam’s Handy-Book Series.) New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

A Sketch Map of the Nile Sources and Lake Region of Central Africa, showing Dr. Livingstone’s Discoveries and Mr. Stanley’s Route. Folio, folded. Philadelphia: T. Elwood Zell.

Books Received.

VOLUME XI. No. 22.
January, 1873

IRON BRIDGES, AND THEIR
CONSTRUCTION.

SEARCHING
FOR THE QUININE-PLANT IN PERU.

PROBATIONER LEONHARD;
OR, THREE NIGHTS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.

THE MAESTRO’S
CONFESSION.

MONSIEUR FOURNIER’S
EXPERIMENT.

A VISIT TO THE KING
OF AURORA.

REMINISCENCES OF
FLORENCE.

MY CHARGE ON THE
LIFE-GUARDS.

The Life of Charles Dickens. By
John Forster. Vol. II. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott &
Co.

Émaux et Camées. Par
Théophile Gautier. Nombre définitif. Paris:
Charpentier; New York: F.W. Christern.

Concord Days. By A. Bronson Alcott. Boston:
Roberts Brothers.

Thirty Years in the Harem; or, The
Autobiography of Melek-Hanum, wife of H.H.
Kibrizli-Mehemet-Pasha. New York: Harper &
Brothers.

Hints on Dress; or, What to Wear, When to Wear
it, and How to Buy it. By Ethel C. Gale, (Putnam’s
Handy-Book Series.) New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

A Sketch Map of the Nile Sources and Lake
Region of Central Africa, showing Dr. Livingstone’s
Discoveries and Mr. Stanley’s Route. Folio, folded.
Philadelphia: T. Elwood Zell.