The history of Chester is that of a
key. It was the last city that gave
up Harold’s unlucky cause and surrendered
to William the Conqueror, and the
last that fell in the no less unlucky cause
of the Stuart king against the Parliamentarians.
In much earlier times it was
held by the famous Twentieth Legion,
the Valens Victrix, as the key of thePage 394
Roman dominion in the north-west of
Britain, and at present it has peculiarities
of position, as well as of architecture,
which make it unique in England and a
lodestone to Americans. Curiously planted
on the border of the newest and most
bustling manufacturing district in England,
close to the coalfields of North
Wales, the mines of Lancashire, the
quays of its sea-rival Liverpool and the
mills of grimy, wealthy Manchester, it
still exercises, besides its artistic and historic
supremacy, a bonâ fide ecclesiastical
sway over most of these new places.
It is the first ancient city accessible to
American travellers, many of whom have
given practical tokens of their affectionate
remembrance of it by largely subscribing
to the fund for the restoration of the cathedral,
a work that has already cost
some eighty thousand pounds.

Caer-gai.

The neighborhood of Chester is as suggestive
of antiquity and foreigners as the
city itself. Volumes might be written
about the quaint, Dutch-like scenery of
the low rich land reclaimed from the
sea; the broad, sandy estuary of the
Dee, with the square-headed peninsula,
the Wirrall, which divides this quiet
river from the noisy Mersey; the Hoylake,
Parkgate and Neston fisher-folk on
the sandy shores, with their queer lives,
monotonous scratching-up of mussels
and cockles, a never-failing trade, their
terms of praise—”the biggest scrat,” for
instance, “in all the island,” being the
form of commendation for the woman
who can with her rake at the end of
a long pole scratch up most shellfish
in a given time; the low, fertile green
pastures, the creamy cheese and the
eight yearly cheese-fairs. The city itself
is the most foreign-looking in all
England, and the inhabitants have the
good taste to be proud of this. The
river Dee—Milton’s “wizard stream”—celebrated
both by English and Welsh
bards, is not seen to as much advantage
under the walls of the Roman “camp”
(castra=Chester) as elsewhere, but its
bridges serve to supply the want of
fine scenery, especially the Old Bridge,
which crosses the river just at its bend,
and whose massive pointed arches
took the place, when they were first
built, of a ferry by which the city was
entered at the “Ship Gate,” whence
now you look over “the Cop” or
high bank on the right side of the
stream, and view, as from a dike in
Holland, the reclaimed land stretching
eight miles beyond Chester, though
the resemblance ceases at Saltney, where
behind the iron-works tower the Welsh
hills—Moel-Famman conspicuous above
the rest—that bound the Vale of Clwyd.

The Dee is more a Welsh than an
English river. It rises in the bleak
mountain-region of Merionethshire, the
most intensely Welsh of all counties,
above Bala Lake, which is commonly
but incorrectly called its source. Thence
it flows through the Vale of Llangollen,
famous in poetry, and waters the meadows
of Wynnestay, the splendid home of
one of Wales’s most national representatives,
Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, and
only beyond that does it become English
by flowing round and into Cheshire.
On a very tiny scale the Dee follows
something of the course of the Rhine:
three streamlets combine to form it; these
unite at the village of Llanwchllyn, and
Page 395the river flows on, a mere mountain-torrent,
past an old farmhouse, Caer-gai,
lying on a desolate moor at the head of
Bala Lake, and through the lake itself,
after which its scenery alternates, like
the Rhine’s below Constance, between
rocky gorges and flat moist meadows
dotted with hamlets, churches and towns.
Bala—otherwise Lin-Jegid and Pimblemere
(“Lake of the Five Parishes”)—has
some traditional connection with the
great British epic, or rather with its accessories—the
Morte d’Arthur—of which
Tennyson has availed himself in Enid,
mentioning that Enid’s gentle ministrations
soothed the wounded Geraint

As the south-west that blowing Bala Lake,

Fills all the sacred Dee.

Arthur’s own home, according to Spenser,
was at the source of the Dee: Vortigern’s
castle was near by on the head-waters
of the Conway; and “under the foot of
Rauran’s mossy base” was the dwelling
of old Timon, where Merlin came and
gave to his care the wonderful infant
who was to become the Christian Hercules
of Britain. “Rauran” is the mountain
which in Welsh is Arran-Pon-Llin,
and which with its rocky shelves overlooks
the yews of Bala’s churches and
the unaccustomed shade trees which the
little town boasts in its principal streets.
The lake, quiet and hardly visited as it
is now, has great resources which are
likely to be called upon in the future, and
a survey was made ten years ago with a
view of supplying Liverpool, Manchester,
Blackburn, Birkenhead, etc. with water
whenever a fresh demand for it should
arise. This would imply the building of
a breakwater at the narrow outlet of the
lake, the damming up of a few mountain
passes, and the “impounding” of a
tributary of the Dee below the lake—the
Tryweryn, which has an extensive
drainage-area; but these works are still
only projected.

Bala.

There is scarcely an English brook that
has not some historical associations, some
poetical reminiscences, some attractions
beyond those of scenery. Wherever
water, forest and meadow were combined,
Page 396an abbey was generally planted.
Bala Lake, with its fishing-rights,
once belonged to the Cistercian abbey
of Basingwerk, while the Dee just above
Llangollen was the property of the abbey
of Valle Crucis, whose beautiful ruins
still stand on its banks. Before we reach
them we pass by the country of the Welsh
hero, Owen Glendower, from whom are
descended many of the families of this
neighborhood and others—the Vaughans,
for instance; by Glendower’s
prison at Corwen, and the Parliament
House at Dolgelly, where he signed a
treaty with France, and where the beautiful
oak carving of the roof would alone
repay a visitor for his trouble in getting
there. The Dee is for the most part wanting
in striking natural features, but here and
there steep rocks enclose its foaming waters;
deep banks covered with trees break
the rugged shore-line; a village, such as
Llanderfel with a tumbledown bridge,
lies nestled in the valley; and coracles
shoot here and there over the stream.
These primitive boats, basketwork covered
with hides, or, as used now, canvas
coated with tar, are propelled by a paddle,
and are much used for netting salmon.
Near Bangor the fishermen are so
skilful that they generally win in the coracle-races
got up periodically by enthusiastic
revivalists of old national sports.

Remains Of Valle Crucis Abbey.

Llangollen Vale has a beauty of its own,
the family likeness of which to that of
all valleys in the hearts of mountains
makes it none the less welcome. The
picturesqueness of thatched houses and
a dilapidation of masonry which only
age makes beautiful marks the difference
between this valley and the Alpine ones
with their trim, clean toy houses, or the
Transatlantic ones with their square,
solid, black log huts and huge well-sweeps;
otherwise the fresh greenery,
the purple mountain-shadows, the subdued
sounds, no one knows whence, the
sense of peace and solitude, are akin to
every other beautiful valley-scene of mingled
wildness and cultivation. A traveller
can hardly help making comparisons,
yet much escapes him of the peculiar
Page 397charm that hangs round every place,
and is too subtle to disclose itself to the
eye of a mere passer. You must live at
least six months in one place before its
true character unfolds: the broad beauties
you see at once, but it needs the
microscope of habit to find out the rarest
charms. Therefore it is much easier to
descant on the tangible, striking beauty
of Valle Crucis Abbey than on the aggregate
loveliness of Llangollen Vale;
and perhaps it is this lack of familiarity
that leads novelists, poets and others to
dwell so much more and with such
detail on buildings than on natural
scenery. It may not be given them
to understand upon how much higher
a plane of beauty stands a bed of ferns
on a rocky ledge, a clump of trees even
on a flat meadow, and especially a
tangled forest-scene or a view of distant
mountains in a sunset glow, or
the surface of water undotted by a sail,
than the highest effect of man-made
beauty, be it even York Minster or
the Parthenon. What man does has
value by reason of the meaning in it,
and of course man cannot but fall short
of the perfection of his own meaning;
whereas Nature is of herself perfection,
and perfection in which there is no effort.
Valle Crucis is hardly a rival of
Fountains or Rivaulx. The Cistercians
in the beginning of their foundation
were reformers, ascetic, and essentially
agriculturists. Their great leader, Bernard
of Clairvaux, the advocate of silence
and work, once said, “Believe me,
I have learnt more from trees than ever I
learnt from men.” But decay came even
into this community of farmer-monks, and
the praise and panegyric of the abbey,
as handed down to us by a Welsh poet,
betray unconsciously things hardly to the
credit of a monastic house, for the abbot,
“the pope of the glen,” he tells us, gave
entertainments “like the leaves in summer,”
with “vocal and instrumental music,”
wine, ale and curious dishes of fish
and fowl, “like a carnival feast,” and “a
thousand apples for dessert.”

Owen Glendower’s Prison.

The Parliament House, Dolgelly.

The river-scenery changes below
Llangollen, and gives us first a glimpse
of a wooded, narrow valley, then of
the unsightly accessories of the great
North Wales coalfield, after which it enters
upon a typically English phase—low
undulating hills and moist, rich meadows
divided by luxuriant hedges and dotted
with single spreading trees. The hedgerow
timber of Cheshire is beautiful, and
to a great extent makes up for the want
of tracts of wooded land. This country
is not, like the Midland counties and the
great Fen district, violently or exclusively
agricultural, and these hedges and
trees, which are gratefully kept up for
the sake of the shade they afford to
the cattle, show a very different temper
among the farmers from that utilitarianism
which marks the men of Leicester shire,
Lincoln, Nottingham, Norfolk, or
Rutland. There even great land-owners
are often obliged to humor their tenants,
and keep the unwelcome hedges
trimmed so as not to interpose two feet
of shade between them and the wheat-crop;
and as often as possible hedges
are replaced by ugly stone walls or wooden
fences. It is only in their own grounds
that landlords can afford to court picturesqueness,
and in this part of the country
the American who is said to have objected
Page 398to hedges because they were unfit
for seats whence to admire the landscape,
might safely sit down anywhere; only,
as matters are seldom perfectly arranged,
there is very little to admire but a flat
expanse of wheat, barley and grass.
This part of Cheshire has hardly more
diversity in its river-scenery, but the
mere presence of trees and green arbors
makes it a pleasant picture, while here
and there, as at Overton (this is Welsh,
however, and belongs to Flintshire), a
church-tower comes in to complete the
scene. Here the Dee winds about a
good deal, and receives its beautiful,
dashing tributary, the Alyn, which runs
through the Vale of Gresford and waters
the park of Trevallyn Old Hall, one of
the loveliest of old English homes. Its
pointed gables and great clustering stacks
of chimneys, its mullioned and diamond-paned
windows, its finely-wooded park,
all realize the stranger’s ideal of the antique
manor-house. This neighborhood
is studded with country-houses in all
styles of architecture, from the characteristic
national to the uncomfortable
and cold foreign type. Houses that
were meant to stand in ilex-groves under
a purple sky and a sun of bronze look
forlorn and uninviting under the gray
sky of England and amid its trees leafless
for so many months in the year:
home associations seem impossible in
a porticoed house suggestive of outdoor
living and the relegation of chambers to
the use of a mere refuge from the weather.
For many of these places are no
more than villas enlarged, and might be
set down with advantage to themselves
in the Regent’s Park in London, the very
acme of the commonplace. On the other
hand, all the traditional associations
that go with an English hall presuppose
a national style of architecture. Even
florid Tudor, even sturdy “Queen Anne,”
can stand juxtaposition with groups of
horses, dogs and huntsmen; Christmas
cheer and Christmas weather set them
off all the better; leafless trees are no
drawback; the house looks warmer,
coseyer, more home-like, the worse the
Page 399blast and rush without. A roaring fire is
natural to the huge hall fireplace, while
in a mosaic-paved “ante-room” or a
frescoed “saloon” it looks foreign and
out of place. Many an odd Welsh and
English house has unfortunately disappeared
to make room for a cold, unsuccessful
monstrosity that reminds one of
a mammoth railway-station or a new
hotel; and when Welsh names are tacked
on to these absurd dwellings the contrast
is as painful as it is forcible. Such,
for instance, is Bryn-y-Pys, on the Dee—a
house you might guess to belong to
a Liverpool merchant who had trusted
to a common builder for a comfortable
home. Overton Cottage, on the other
side, fills in with its walks and plantations
an abrupt bend of the river, and
the view from the up-going road at its
back is very lovely, though the scene is
purely pastoral. Overton Churchyard is
one of the “seven wonders” of North
Wales: it has a very trim and stately
appearance, not that ragged, free if melancholy,
outspreadedness which distinguishes
many country cemeteries, that
unpremeditated luxuriance of creepers
and flowers, blossoming bushes and
grasses, that make up at least half of
one’s pleasant reminiscences of such
places. How much more interesting to
find an old tomb or quaint “brass” under
the temple of a wild rosebush or in
the firm clasp of an ivy-root than to
walk up to it and read the inscription
newly scraped and cleaned by the voluble
attendant who volunteers to show
you the place! The great elms by Overton
Church and the half-timbered and
thatched houses crowding up to its gates
somewhat make up for the splendor of
the coped wall and new monuments in
the churchyard. A scene wholly old is
the Erbistock Ferry, which one might
mistake for a rope-ferry on the Mosel.
The cottage looks like the dilapidated
lodge of an old monastery, and here, at
least, is no trimness. Two walls with a
flight of steps in each enclose a grass
terrace between them, and trees and
bushes straggle to the edge of the river,
hardly keeping clear of the swinging
rope. Coracles are sometimes used for
ferrying—also punts. Bangor is a familiar
name to students of church history,
and to those who are not, the startling
tale of the massacre of twelve hundred
Page 400British monks by the Saxon and
heathen king of Northumbria, who conquered
Chester and invaded Wales in
the seventh century, is repeated by the
local guides. At present, Bangor is interesting
to anglers and to lovers of curiosities—to
the former as a good salmon-ground,
and to the latter for the quaint
verses, which, though trivial in themselves,
borrow a value from the date of
their inscription and the “laws” to which
they refer. They are on the wall of the
lower story of the bell-tower:

In The Vale Of Llangollen.

If that to ring you would come here,

You must ring well with hand and ear;

But if you ring in spur or hat,

Fourpence always is due for that;

But if a bell you overthrow,

Sixpence is due before you go;

But if you either swear or curse,

Twelvepence is due; pull out your purse.

Our laws are old, they are not new;

Therefore the clerk must have his due.

If to our laws you do consent,

Then take a bell: we are content.

Llangollen.

Farndon Bridge and Wrexham Church
(the latter looks like a small cathedral
to the unpractised eye) are the last Welsh
points of attraction before the Dee becomes
quite an English river. Malpas
(mauvais pas = “bad step”), on the
English bank, is significantly so-called
from its situation as a border town: the
rector, too, might consider it not ill
named, as regards the odd partition
of the church tithes, which has been
in force from time immemorial, and
has given rise to an explanatory legend
concerning a travelling king
whom the resident curate wisely entertained
in the absence of the rector,
receiving for his guerdon a promise of
an equal share in the income, not only
for himself, but for all future curates.
In the upper rectory (the lower is the
curate’s house) was born Bishop Heber
in 1783, and in the early years of
this century, before missionary meetings
were as common as they are now,
the young clergyman wrote on the spur
of the moment, with only one word
corrected, the well-known hymn,
“From Greenland’s Icy Mountains.”
A missionary sermon was announced
for Sunday at Wrexham, the vicarage
of Heber’s father-in-law, Shirley, and
the want of a suitable hymn was felt.
He was asked on Saturday to write
one, and did so, seated at a window
of the old vicarage-house. It was
printed that evening, and sung the
next day in Wrexham Church. The
original manuscript is in a collection
at Liverpool, and the printer who set
up the type when a boy was still living
at Wrexham within the last twenty years.

Page 401

Chester, From The Aldford Road.

The river now makes a turn, sweeping
along into English ground and making
almost a natural moat round Chester,
the great Roman camp whose form and
intersecting streets still bear the stamp
of Roman regularity, and whose history
long bore traces of the influence of Roman
inflexibility mingled with British
dash. The view of the city is fine from
the Aldford road (or Old Ford, where a
Roman pavement is sometimes visible
in the bed of the stream), with the cathedral
and St. John’s towering over
Page 402the peaks and gables that shoot up above
the walls. The mention of the ford brings
to mind a famous crossing of the river
during the civil wars. It was just before
the battle of Rowton Moor, which
Charles I. watched from the tower that
now bears his name; and Sir Marmaduke
Langdale, one of his leal soldiers,
wishing to send the king notice of his
having crossed the Dee at Farndon
Bridge and pressing on the Parliamentarians,
bade Colonel Shakerley convey
the message as speedily as possible.
The latter, to avoid the long circuit by
the bridge, galloped to the Dee, took a
wooden tub used for slaughtering swine,
employed “a batting-staff, used for batting
of coarse linen,” as an oar, put his
servant in the tub, his horse swimming
by him, and once across left the tub in
charge of the man while he rode to the
king, delivered his message and returned
to cross over the same way.

Page 403

Coracles.

Chester Cathedral And City Wall.

Eaton and Wynnestay are the grandest
of the Dee country-seats, though not
the most interesting as to architecture.
The former, like many Italian houses,
has its park open to the public, and is
an exception to the jealously-guarded
places in most parts of England, but its
avenues, rather formal though very magnificent,
are approached by lodges. The
Wrexham avenue leads to a farmhouse
called Belgrave, and here is the christening-point
of the new, fashionable
London of society, of novelists and of
contractors. Another like avenue leads
to Pulford, where there is another lodge:
a third leads from Grosvenor Bridge to
the deer-park, and a fourth to the village
of Aldford. The hall is an immense pile,
strikingly like, at first glance, the Houses
of Parliament, with the Victoria Tower
(this in the hall is one hundred and
seventy feet high, and built above the
chapel), and the style is sixteenth-century
French, florid and costly.
The plan is perhaps unique in
England, and comfort has been
attained, though one would hardly
believe it, such size seeming to
swamp everything except show.
The description of the house, as
given by a visitor there, reads
like that of a palace: “The hall
is an octagonal room in the centre
of the house about seventy-five
feet in length and from thirty to
forty broad: on each side, at the
end farthest from the entrance, are
two doors leading into anterooms—one
the ante-drawing-room, and
the other the ante-dining-room;
each is lighted by three large windows,
and is thirty-three feet in
length: they are fine rooms in
themselves, and well-proportioned.
From these lead the drawing-room
and the dining-room respectively,
both exceedingly grand rooms, ingenious
in design and shape, each with two
oriel windows and lighted by three others
and a large bay window: this suite completes
the east side. The south is occupied
by the end of the drawing-room and
a vast library—all en suite. The library
is lighted by four bay windows, three flat
ones and a fine alcove, and the rest of
the main building to the west is made up
of billiard- and smoking-rooms, waiting-hall,
groom-of-chambers’ sitting- and
bed-rooms, and a carpet-room, besides
the necessary staircases. This completes
the main building, and a corridor leads
to the kitchen and cook’s offices: this
Page 404corridor, which passes over the upper
part of the kitchen, branches off into two
parts—one leading to an excellently-planned
mansion for the family and the
private secretary, and another leading
to the stables, which are arranged with
great skill. The pony stable, the carriage-horse
stable, the riding horses, occupy
different sides, and through these
are arranged, just in the right places,
the rooms for livery and saddle grooms
and coachmen. The laundry, wash-house,
gun-room and game-larder occupy
another building, which, however,
is easily approached, and the whole
building, though it extends seven hundred
feet in length, is a perfect model of
compactness. Great facilities are given
to any one who desires to see it.” The
mention of a “mansion for the family”
shows how the associations of a home are
lost in this wilderness of magnificence:
indeed, I remember a remark of a person
whose husband had three or four
country-houses in England and Scotland
and a house in London, that “she never
felt at home anywhere.”

The farms in this neighborhood are
mostly small, the average being seventy
acres, and some are still smaller, though
when one gets down to ten, one is tempted
to call them gardens. Grazing and
dairy-work are the chief industries.
Farther inland, beyond the manufacturing
town of Stockport, is a house of the
Leghs, an immense building, more imposing
than lovely in its exterior, but
one of the most individual and pleasant
houses in its interior as well as in its
human associations. It has been altered
at various times, and bears traces, like a
corrected map, of each new phase of
architecture for several hundred years.
The four sides form a huge quadrangle,
entered by foreign-looking gateways, and
the rooms all open into a wide passage
that runs round three sides of the building,
and is a museum in itself. Old and
new are just enough blended to produce
comfort, and the stately, old-English look
of the drawing-room, with its dark panelling
and tapestry, is a reproach to the
pink-and-white, plaster-of-Paris style of
too many remodelled houses. Outside
there is a garden distinguished by a heavy
old wall overrun with creepers, dividing
two levels and making a striking object
in the landscape; and beyond that, where
the country grows bleak and begins to
remind one of moors, there are the last
survivors of a unique breed of wild
cattle, which, like the mastiffs at the
house, bear the name of the place. The
name of another Cheshire house, formerly
belonging to the Stanleys, and now
to Mr. Gladstone, is probably familiar to
American readers—Hawarden Castle.
The present house must trust entirely to
associations for its interest, having been
built in 1809, before much taste was applied
to restore old places, but the old
castle in the park dates from the middle
of the thirteenth century. The park is
not unlike that of Arundel, but the views
from the ruin are finer and more varied.
The counties of Caernarvon, Denbigh,
Flint, Cheshire and Lancashire are spread
out around it, and the ruin itself is beautiful
and extensive.

Overton Church.

The road from Hawarden to Boughton
is exceedingly grand: we come upon one
of the widest panoramas of the Dee and
one of the most typical of English country
scenes. A vast sweep of country unsurpassed
in richness spreads along the
river on the Cheshire side: sixty square
miles of fields and pastures are in sight,
with elms, sycamores and formal rows
of Lombardy poplars. Wherever the
trees cluster in a grove they usually mark
the site of a country-house or a cherished
ruin, like this one of old Hawarden,
where one enormous oak tree sweeps its
branches on the ground on every side,
and forms a canopy whence you can
peer out, as through the delicate tracery
of a Gothic window, at the landscape
beyond. The mouth of the Dee is visible
from this road, whence at low water
it seems reduced to a huge sandbank,
through which the tired river trickles
like a brook. The dun sky and yellow
sands and gray sea, with the island of
Hilbree, a counterpart of Lindisfarne
both in its legend of a recluse and its
continual alternation twice a day between
the state of an island and a peninsula,
make a picture pleasant to look
Page 405back upon. Hence too come the shoals
of cockles and mussels that go to delight
Londoners. Then the open-sea fishing,
the lithe boats that seem all sail, the wide
waste of waters, with the point of Air
and the Great Orme’s Head walling it in
on the receding Welsh coasts, the remembrance
of the shipwreck a little beyond
the mouth of the Dee which led to Milton’s
poem of Lycidas (containing the
phrase “wizard stream” which has become
peculiar to the Dee),—all claim our
notice, and it seems impossible that we
are so few miles from Manchester and
so far from the historic, romantic times
of old.

Lady Blanche Murphy.

For Another.

Sweet—sweet? My child, some sweeter word than sweet,

Some lovelier word than love, I want for you.

Who says the world is bitter, while your feet

Are left among the lilies and the dew?

Ah? So some other has, this night, to fold

Such hands as his, and drop some precious head

From off her breast as full of baby-gold?

I, for her grief, will not be comforted.

S.M.B. Piatt.

Page 406

Among The Kabyles.

Concluding Paper.

Roman Sepulchre At Taksebt.

Few countries twenty-five leagues
long by ten wide have such an assortment
of climates as Grand Kabylia.
From the Mediterranean on the north to
the Djurjura range on the south, a distance
of two hours’ ride by rail if there
were a railway, the ascent is equal to
that from New York Bay to the summit
of Mount Washington. The palm is at
home on the shore, while snow is preserved
through the summer in the hollows
of the peaks. This epitome of the
zones is more condensed than that so
often remarked upon on the eastern
slope of Mexico, although it does not
embrace such extremes of temperature
as those presented by Vera Cruz and the
uppermost third of Orizaba. The country
being more broken, the lower and
higher levels are brought at many points
more closely together than on the Mexican
ascent. It happens thus that semi-tropical
and semi-arctic plants come not
simply into one and the same landscape,
but into actual contact. Each hill is a
miniature Orizaba, so far as it rises, and
hundreds of abrupt hills collected in a
space comparatively so limited so dovetail
the floras of different levels as in a
degree to cause them to coalesce and effect
a certain mutual adaptation of habits.
Good neighborhood has established
itself rather more completely among the
vegetable than with the human part of
the inhabitants.

What more amiable example of give-and-take
than the intertwining of birch
and orange, the thin ghostly sprays of
the hyperborean caressing the fragrant
leaf and golden globes of the sub-tropical?
This, and other conjunctions less
eloquent of contrast, may be seen on the
headland of Zeffoun or Cape Corbelin.
They stand out from a prevailing background
of the familiar forest trees of temperate
Europe and America—the ash,
elm, beech, oak, fir and walnut. The
orchards, above those of oranges and
lemons, are of figs and olives. The cork-oak
covers considerable tracts, but is less
attended to than in Spain. A non-European
aspect is imparted by the tufts of
cactus and aloes which abound in the
most arid localities.

The Djurjura Range.

Wherever intelligent farming is met
with in Northern Africa it is a safe assertion
Page 407that the Kabyles are
either on the spot or not
far off. Like other farmers,
they are conservative
and adhere to old rules
or fancies, which in some
cases verge upon superstition.
The practice of fertilizing
fig trees by hanging
them with fruits of the
wild fig is one of those
which it is difficult to class—whether
with the visionary
or the practical. Be
that as it may, people who
know nothing about figs
except to eat them have
no right to a say in the
matter. Tradition and experience
are in favor of
the Kabyle. He does what
has been done since Aristotle,
Theophrastus and
Pliny, all of whom insist
on “caprification” as essential
to a large crop
of figs adapted to drying.
He will go or send many
miles to procure the wild
fruit if it does not grow in
his neighborhood, and the
traffic in it reaches a value
of some thousands of dollars
annually, trains of
thirty, fifty and sixty mule-loads
passing from one
tribe to another. As with
other valuable things, this
inedible fruit is food for
quarrelling. The tribe
which is rich in the dokhar,
or wild fig, is fortunate, and
especially so if its neighbors
have none or if their
crop of it fails. It is then
able to “bull the market,”
and proceeds to do so with
a promptness and vim
that would turn a Wall
street operator blue with
envy. But it is compelled
to take account of troubles
in its path unknown at the
Board. The party who is
Page 408“short” on dokhar may be “long” on
matchlocks. If so, the speculation is apt
to come to an unhappy end. A sudden
raid will capture the stock and at once
equalize the market. To many communities
figs are at once meat and pocket-money.
To lose the harvest is not to be
thought of. The aspect
of the means of
preventing such a disaster
is altogether a
secondary consideration.
Dokhar at all
hazards is the cry of
men, women and children.
The comparative
cessation of fig-wars
is one of the
blessings due to
French rule.

Road Across The Djurjura At Mount Tirourda.

What we deem the
fruit of the fig is, it
will be remembered,
only the husk, the apparent
seeds being the
true fruit and—before
ripening—the blossom.
A small fly establishes
itself in the
interior of the wild fig,
escaping in great
numbers when the
fruit is ripe. This
happens before the
ripening of the improved
fig, and the
fly is supposed to carry
the wild pollen to
the flowers of the latter.
A single insect,
say the Kabyles, will
perfect ninety-nine
figs, the hundredth
becoming its tomb.
Some varieties of figs
do not need caprification,
but they are said
to be unsuitable for
drying or shipment.

The Italian practice
of touching the eye of
each fig, while yet on
the tree, with a drop
of olive oil seems opposed
to the African
plan; since the oil
would certainly exclude the insect. And
there are no better figs in the world than
those of the Southern States of the Union,
Page 409which are not treated in either way, and
receive the least possible cultivation of
any kind. Those States, if it be true
that the difference in
the yield of a “caprified”
and non-caprified
tree is that between
two hundred
and eighty and twenty-five
pounds, cannot
do better than
borrow a leaf from
the Kabyle book,
should it only be a
fig-leaf to aid in clothing
the nakedness of
bare sands and galled
hillsides. The United
States Department of
Agriculture should by
all means introduce
the dokhar. Some of
our agricultural machinery
would be an
exchange in the highest
degree beneficial
to the other side.

The Peak Of Tirourda.

Long before the
French occupation the
Kabyles had maintained
a regulation
which is, we believe,
peculiar in Europe to
France—the ban, or
legally-established
day for the beginning
of the vintage and the
harvest of other fruits.
The cultivator may
repose under his own
vine and fig tree, but
he shall not until the
word is given by the
proper authority put
forth his hand to pluck
its luscious boon,
though perfectly mature
or past maturity.
Exceptions are made
in case of invalids and
distinguished guests,
and doubtless the
hale schoolboy decrees an occasional
dispensation in his own favor. The
birds share his defiance of the law, and
both are abetted by a third group of
transgressors, the monkeys.

Africans of this last-named race are
in some localities extremely numerous,
Page 410and they do not restrict their foraging
parties to succulent food. Grain is very
acceptable to them, and has the advantage
of keeping better than fruit, the art of
drying which they have not yet mastered
any more than the Bushmen or the Pi-Utes.
They establish granaries in the
crevices of the rocks; and these reserves
of provision are sometimes of such magnitude
as to make exploring expeditions
on the part of the plundered Kabyles
quite remunerative.

Djema-sahridj.

These most ancient of all the devastators
which have successively descended
upon Barbary are baboons of small
size. They have no tails, that ancestral
organ having dwindled to a wart
the size of a pea. This approach to the
form of man is aided by another point
of personal resemblance—long whiskers.
That the tail should have been worn off
against the rocks, or in climbing the
fences to get at orchards and melon-patches,
is easily conceivable. How the
evolutionists account for the retention of
the beard does not yet appear. The females
carry their young as adroitly and
carefully as do the Kabyle women, and
ascend the rocks with them with much
greater activity. A young monkey has
a less neglected look than a young Kabyle.
His ablutions cannot be less frequent.
Tourists complain that all Kabylia
does not boast a single bath-house—a
privation the more striking to one
who has to pick his way often for miles
among the ruins of Roman aqueducts,
tanks and baths, the great basin in cut
stone at Djema-Sahridj, which gives
name to the place, being a noted example
of these works.

A Dish-factory.

As the vultures, dogs, negroes, Jews
and jackals keep exact memoranda of
the market-days, so the baboons are always
on hand at harvest. Ranged in
long ranks on an amphitheatre of cliffs,
stroking gravely their long white beards
like so many reverend episcopi or “on-lookers”
confident of their tithes, they
calmly contemplate the toilers in the
vale below. Swift was not more certain
of his “tithe-pig and mortuary guinea.”
Sunset comes sooner below than above.
The reapers are early home, and the
peaks are still purple when the marauders
pour down upon the fields, and their
Page 411share of the work is done with a neatness
unsurpassable by reiver, ritter or
kateran. The monkey-tax thus collected
is quite a calculable percentage of the
crop, and few taxes are more regularly
paid. As it goes to non-producers, its
reduction is an object constantly kept in
view. The wretched guns of the natives
are, however, but a feeble instrument of
reform. The chassepot may succeed
Page 412after having finished the rest of its task,
and dispose of the baboons after the settlement
of the men. The former, though
not incomparably smaller than the French
conscript after a protracted war, will never
be made to bear arms. He is therefore
useless to modern statesmen, and
needs to be got rid of.

While the barn is defrauded by these
little vegetarians, the barnyard is laid
under tribute by a family of equally unauthorized
flesh-eaters—the panthers. If
this large spotted cat, known in other
parts of the world as ounce, jaguar, leopard
and chetah, has any choice of diet,
it is for veal. But his appreciation of
kid is none the less lively. Lamb, in
season, comes well to him also. As
there are many panthers, each of them
of “unbounded stomach,” and they can
find little to eat in the way of wild quadrupeds,
the destruction they must cause
among domestic animals is seen to be
serious. In the Mokuéa neighborhood
each village has its panther-killer, an enterprising
man set apart for a profession
which sometimes becomes hereditary.
One of these boasts of having killed
thirty-six panthers. His father before
him had bagged seventy-five, and he
hoped before pulling his final trigger to
have done as well. This expectation
was a just one, as at twenty-eight he had
already nearly halved the paternal count.
The method of hunting is very simple.
The sportsman fixes a bleating little victim
from the herd at the foot of a tree,
and climbs with his flint gun into the
branches. Had the North African beast
the arboreal habits of the South African
tree-leopard or the American jaguar, this
proceeding would be less effectual with
him. But he can neither climb nor reflect
like his countryman the monkey,
and is picked off like a beef. One finds
it difficult to get up sympathy for an animal
so little able to take care of himself,
or to suppose that panthers could have
furnished a particularly high-spiced ingredient
to the enjoyments of the Roman
arena. An English bull-dog, if less
picturesque, would have been far more
fruitful of fighting.

Products edible neither to the wild
beast nor the tooth of time are the Kabyle
vases in clay. The amphoræ in
common use by the women for carrying
water are generally of graceful forms,
comparing well in design with many of
the archaic vases of Greece and the Levant.
The patterns vary somewhat with
the locality, but there is a resemblance
which speaks of a common origin and
taste. Those of the Beni-Raten all come
to a blunt point at the bottom, and will
not stand unsupported. The jar is made
to rest upon the girdle of the bearer,
while she supports it upon her back by
one or both of the handles. Among the
tribes nearer the Djurjura the jar has a
broader and hollowed bottom, fitted to
rest upon the head of the woman. It
must therefore be less elongated and
more rotund to admit of her reaching
the handles for the purpose of balancing
it. These jars weigh, filled with water,
sixty pounds. In carrying one of them
a Kabyle woman, it may easily be supposed,
is not in a condition to study lightness
of step or grace of carriage. Yet
this heavy task, to which she begins to
accustom herself at the age of twelve,
does not appear to injure her figure or
health. Such a result is more often due
to violent and exceptional strains than
to habitual exertion even greater in extent.
The muscles are not less susceptible
of education than the mind. Whatever
brings out the full power of either
without suddenly overtasking is healthy
and beneficial.

It has been remarked that the most
usual size of the Kabyle water-jar is as
nearly as possible identical with the amphora
kept for a standard measure in the
Capitol at Rome. This coincidence may
well be due rather to a correspondence
in the average strength of the carriers
than to a common system of authorized
measures. In decoration the Kabyle
vases approach the Arabic more than
the Roman style. But the feeling, both
in form and coloring, is decidedly more
artistic than in the similar ware of Northern
Europe.

Very ancient influences are manifest,
too, in the work of the Kabyle silversmiths.
Their diadems, ear-drops, bracelets
Page 413and anklets remind one of the forms
unearthed at Hissarlik and in Cyprus.
In outline and chasing the rectangular,
mathematical and monumental rules at
the expense of the flowing and floriated.
A certain pre-Phidian stiffness of handling
seems to hamper the workman, as
though twenty-three hundred years had
been lost for him.

The Boudoir And Kitchen.

That there should be so much of hopeful
Page 414force left in the Kabyle, artisan, agriculturist
or adventurer, is creditable
to him, and suggests “an original glory
not yet lost.” He obstinately refuses to
accept the sheer professional vagabondism
of the Arab, confident, as it were,
that the world has in reserve better use
for him than that. “Day-dawn in Africa”
will probably gild his hills sooner
than the tufted swamps of Guinea or the
slimy huts of the Nile. A class of missionaries
quite different from the Livingstones
and the Moffatts have devoted
themselves to his improvement. They
approach him in a different way, and begin
on his commercial and industrial side,
not on the spiritual. The latter does not
appear to be by any means so accessible.
Unlike the Ashantees, the Kafirs and the
M’pongwe, he was a Christian once, and
may become one again. But he is not
going to be evangelized on the hurrah
system; and that fact his new rulers,
with all their alleged defects as reformers
and colonizers, have sense enough to
recognize. The new faith must push its
way in the rear of works. Peace, good
government, good roads, better implements
and methods of labor will promote
the enlightenment necessary to its
success.

Bougie, the port of Eastern Kabylia,
lying under Cape Carbon, has one Catholic
church, standing in the midst of new
streets, squares and public constructions
indicative of prosperity wrought by the
French régime. It is still in need of
easy communication with the interior,
having but one road—one more than in
the time of the Turks. Wax is the chief
commodity traversing that line of traffic.
That circumstance has, however, nothing
to do with the name of the town. The
name was there when the French came,
as was the wax, and very little else but
ruins. If the present state of improvement
has been effected with so little aid
from good roads, what would not a number
of them accomplish? A railway running
to the other end of the province longitudinally
through its centre would have but
one ridge to overcome, and would find a
very fair business ready for it. The railway
and vandalism, in the proverbial
sense of the word, could not coexist.
When the Vandals buy railway-tickets
and ship fat oxen on fast stock-trains
the African world will move. Nobody
ever heard of chronic war between two
adjacent railroad-stations, or of a gang
of raiders dressed only in shirts and
armed with spears and matchlocks going
out on the morning mail for a day’s shooting
among their fellow-countrymen in the
next county.

Let us quote a sketch of the region
lying a few leagues west and north-west
of Bougie:

“Near Tarourt we found thermal
springs. An open park-like country,
beautiful with trees and turf, is defaced
only by charred spots where the cork-woods
have been burned by the natives
to effect clearings much less in extent than
the space thus denuded. Ten acres of
cork trees will be thoughtlessly burned
to make one of fig-orchard. And this
evil rather increases than lessens, prevention
being difficult by reason of the
want of good roads for reaching the
delinquents…. In six hours’ march
we reached Toudja, at the foot of Mount
Arbalon, in the most delicious oasis imaginable.
The soil, threaded by clear
and cool rivulets which spring in abundance
from the rocks forming the
base of the mountain, is wonderfully
fertile. We are surrounded by more
than a square league of tufted verdure,
composed in great part of orange and
lemon groves, mingled with some palms
and immense carob trees. The houses
are well built, and even show fancy in
their designs. Vines bending with enormous
clusters of grapes festoon themselves
from tree to tree, tasselling the
topmost branches with fruit and tendrils.
It is not uncommon to see four or five
large trees taken possession of by a single
vine, its trunk as large as the body of a
man. The grapes are mostly of a light-red
color, large and sweet.”

Repose.

All this indicates that France did not
deceive herself as to the capabilities of
Algeria, and that her conquest of it was
inspired by considerations more solid
than the glory she has been accused of
recognizing as an all-sufficient motive.
Page 415She has made the country much more
valuable to the commerce of the world
than any other part of Barbary. Had
she done nothing more with it than hold
it prostrate and put an end to its existence
as a den of pirates, she would by
that alone have earned the gratitude of
the nations. She has done a great deal
more. European civilization has discovered
a penetrable spot in the dense armor
Page 416of African barbarism. It has effected a
lodgment in the darkest and most hopeless
of the continents. Should the movement
fail, like so many before it, to extend
itself, and become localized after
a period of promise, the cause must be
sought mainly in natural obstacles almost
impossible to be overcome.

To have lifted the dead, brutal weight
of Ottoman tyranny from any corner of
the broad territory it blasts is to deserve
well of humanity. Still stronger is the
case when the rescued territory is fertile,
beautiful, and inhabited by a race worthy
of a better fate than the bondage against
which it had never ceased to struggle.

France has not been guiltless of acts
of severity, always attendant, in a greater
or less degree, on violent political
changes. It is not doubtful, nevertheless,
that by repressing the endless turbulence
of the tribes and driving out a
foreign rule that knew no law but force,
she has saved many more lives than she
has taken. A genius for organization
was never denied her. Organization was
the first thing wanted in Algeria.

Edward C. Bruce.

“For Percival.”

Chapter I.

Thorns And Roses.

It was a long, narrow and rather low
room, with four windows looking out
on a terrace. Jasmine and roses clustered
round them, and flowers lifted their
heads to the broad sills. Within, the
lighted candles showed furniture that
was perhaps a little faded and dim,
though it had a slender, old-fashioned
grace which more than made amends
for any beauty it had lost. There was
much old china, and on the walls were
a few family portraits, of which their
owner was justly proud; and in the air
there lingered a faint fragrance of dried
rose-leaves, delicate yet unconquerable.
Even the full tide of midsummer sweetness
which flowed through the open windows
could not altogether overcome that
subtle memory of summers long gone
by.

The master of the house, with a face
like a wrinkled waxen mask, sat in his
easy-chair reading the Saturday Review,
and a lady very like him, only with a little
more color and fulness, was knitting
close by. The light shone on the old
man’s pale face and white hair, on the
old lady’s silver-gray dress and flashing
rings: the knitting-pins clicked, working
up the crimson wool, and the pages of
the paper rustled with a pleasant crispness
as they were turned. By the window,
where the candlelight faded into
the soft shadows, stood a young man apparently
lost in thought. His face, which
was turned a little toward the garden,
was a noteworthy one with its straight
forehead and clearly marked, level brows.
His features were good, and his clear
olive complexion gave him something
of a foreign air. He had no beard, and
his moustache was only a dark shadow
on his upper lip, so that his mouth stood
revealed as one which indicated reserve,
though it was neither stern nor thin-lipped.
Altogether, it was a pleasant face.

A light step sauntering along the terrace,
a low voice softly singing “Drink
to Me only with Thine Eyes,” roused him
from his reverie. He did not move, but
his mouth and eyes relaxed into a smile
as a white figure came out of the dusk
exactly opposite his window, and singer
and song stopped together. “Oh, Percival!
I didn’t know you had come out of
the dining-room.”

“Twenty minutes ago. What have
you been doing?”

“Wandering about the garden. What
could I do on such a perfect night but
Page 417what I have been doing all this perfect
day?”

She stood looking up at him as she
spoke. She had an arch, beautiful face—the
sort of face which would look well
with patches and powder. Only it would
have been a sin to powder the hair, which,
though deep brown, had rich touches of
gold, as if a happy sunbeam were imprisoned
in its waves. Her eyes were
dark, her lips were softly red: everything
about Sissy Langton’s face was
delicate and fine. She lifted her hand
to reach a spray of jasmine just above
her head, and the lace sleeve above fell
back from her pretty, slender wrist:
“Give it to me. Percival! do you hear?
Oh, what a tease you are!” For he
drew it back when she would have gathered
it. Mrs. Middleton was heard
making a remark inside.

“You don’t deserve it,” said Percival.
“Here is my aunt saying that the
hot weather makes you scandalously
idle.”

“Scandalously idle! Aunt Harriet!”
Sissy repeated it in incredulous amusement,
and the old lady’s indignant disclaimer
was heard: “Percival! Most
unusually idle, I said.”

“Oh! most unusually idle? I beg your
pardon. But doesn’t that imply a considerable
amount of idleness to be got
through by one person?”

“Yes, but you helped me,” said Sissy.—”Aunt
Harriet, listen. He stood on
my thimble ever so long while he was
talking this afternoon. How can I work
without a thimble?”

“Impossible!” said Percival. “And I
don’t think I can get you another to-morrow:
I am going out. On Thursday
I shall come back and bring you one that
won’t fit. Friday you must go with me
to change it. Yes, we shall manage three
days’ holiday very nicely.”

“Nonsense! But it is your fault if I
am idle.”

“Why, yes. Having no thimble, you
are naturally unable to finish your book,
for instance.”

“Oh, I sha’n’t finish that: I don’t like
it. The heroine is so dreadfully strong-minded
I don’t believe in her. She never
does anything wrong; and though she
suffers tortures—absolute agony, you
know—she always rises to the occasion—nasty
thing!”

“A wonderful woman,” said Percival,
idly picking sprays of jasmine as he
spoke.

Sissy’s voice sank lower: “Do you
think there are really any women like
that?”

“Oh yes, I suppose so.”

She took the flowers which he held
out, and looked doubtfully into his face:
“But—do you like them, Percival?”

“Make the question a little clearer,”
he said. “I don’t like your ranting,
pushing, unwomanly women who can
talk of nothing but their rights. They
are very terrible. But heroic women—”
He stopped short. The pause was more
eloquent than speech.

“Ah!” said Sissy, “Well—a woman
like Jael? or Judith?”

He repeated the name “Judith.” “Or
Charlotte Corday?” he suggested after a
moment.

It was Sissy’s turn to hesitate, and she
compressed her pretty lips doubtfully.
Being in the Old Testament, Jael must
of course come out all right, even if one
finds it difficult to like her. Judith’s position,
is less clear. Still, it is a great
thing to be in the Apocrypha, and then
living so long ago and so far away makes
a difference. But Charlotte Corday—a
young Frenchwoman, not a century dead,
who murdered a man, and was guillotined
in those horrible revolutionary times,—would
Percival say that was the type of
woman he liked?

“Well—Charlotte Corday, then?”

“Yes, I admire her,” he said slowly.
“Though I would rather the heroism did
not show itself in bloodshed. Still, she
was noble: I honor her. I dare say the
others were too, but I don’t know so much
about them.”

“What a poor little thing you must
think me!” said Sissy. “I could never
do anything heroic.”

“Why not?”

“I should be frightened. I can’t bear
people to be angry with me. I should run
away, or do something silly.”

Page 418

“Then I hope you won’t be tried,” said
Percival.

She shook her pretty head: “People
always talk about casting gold into the
furnace, and it’s coming out only the
brighter and better. Things are not
good for much if you would rather they
were not tried.”

Her hand was on the window-frame
as she spoke, and the young man touched
a ring she wore: “Gold is tried in the
furnace—yes, but not your pearls. Besides,
I’m not so sure that you would fail
if you were put to the test.”

She smiled, well pleased, yet unconvinced.

“You think,” he went on, “that people
who did great deeds did them without
an effort—were always ready, like a
bow always strung? No, no, Sissy: they
felt very weak sometimes. Isn’t there
anything in the world you think you
could die for? Even if you say ‘No’
now, there may be something one of
these days.”

The twilight hid the soft glow which
overspread her face. “Anything in the
world you could die for?” Anything?
Anybody? Her blood flowed in a strong,
courageous current as her heart made
answer, “Yes—for one.”

But she did not speak, and after a moment
her companion changed the subject.
“That’s a pretty ring,” he said.

Sissy started from her reverie: “Horace
gave it me. Adieu, Mr. Percival
Thorne: I’m going to look at my roses.”

“Thank you. Yes, I shall be delighted
to come.” And Percival jumped out.
“Don’t look at me as if I’d said something
foolish. Isn’t that the right way to answer
your kind invitation?”

“Invitation! What next?” demanded
Sissy with pretty scorn. And the pair
went off together along the terrace and
into the fragrant dusk.

A minute later it occurred to Mrs. Middleton
to fear that Sissy might take cold,
and she went to the window to look after
her. But, as no one was to be seen, she
turned away and encountered her brother,
who had been watching them too.
“Do they care for each other?” he asked
abruptly.

“How can I tell?” Mrs. Middleton replied.
“Of course she is fond of him in
a way, but I can’t help fancying sometimes
that Horace—”

“Horace!” Mr. Thorne’s smile was
singularly bland. “Oh, indeed! Horace—a
charming arrangement! Pray
how many more times is Mr. Horace to
supplant that poor boy?” His soft voice
changed suddenly, as one might draw a
sword from its sheath. “Horace had
better not cross Percival’s path, or he
will have to deal with me. Is he not
content? What next must he have?”

Mrs. Middleton paused. She could
have answered him. There was an obvious
reply, but it was too crushing to be
used, and Mr. Thorne braved it accordingly.

“Better leave your grandsons alone,
Godfrey,” she said at last, “if you’ll take
my advice; which I don’t think you ever
did yet. You’ll only make mischief. And
there is Sissy to be considered. Let the
child choose for herself.”

“And you think she can choose—Horace?“

“Why not?”

“Choose Horace rather than Percival?”

“I should,” said the old lady with
smiling audacity. “And I would rather
she did. Horace’s position is better.”

Mr. Thorne uttered something akin
to a grunt, which might by courtesy be
taken for a groan: “Oh, how mercenary
you women are! Well, if you marry a
man for his money, Horace has the best
of it—if he behaves himself. Yes, I admit
that—if he behaves himself“‘

“And Horace is handsomer,” said
Mrs. Middleton with a smile.

“Pink-and-white prettiness!” scoffed
Mr. Thorne.

“Nonsense!” The color mounted to
the old lady’s forehead, and she spoke
sharply: “We didn’t hear anything about
that when he was a lad, and we were
afraid of something amiss with his lungs:
it would have been high treason to say a
syllable against him then. And now,
though I suppose he will always be a
little delicate (you’d be sorry if you lost
him, Godfrey), it’s a shame to talk as if
Page 419the boys were not to be compared. They
are just of a height, not half an inch difference,
and the one as brave and manly
as the other. Horace is fair, and Percival
is dark; and you know, as well as I
do, that Horace is the handsomer.”

Mr. Thorne shifted his ground: “If I
were Sissy I would choose my husband
for qualities that are rather more than
skin-deep.”

“By all means. And still I would
choose Horace.”

“What is amiss with Percival?”

“He is not so frank and open. I don’t
want to say anything against him—I like
Percival—but I wish he were not quite so
reserved.”

“What next?” said Mr. Thorne with a
short laugh. “Why, only this morning
you said he talked more than Horace.”

“Talked? Oh yes, Percival can talk,
and about himself too,” said Mrs. Middleton
with a smile. “But he can keep
his secrets all the time. I don’t want to
say anything against him: I like him
very much—”

“No doubt,” said Mr. Thorne.

“But I don’t feel quite sure that I know
him. He isn’t like Horace. You know
Horace’s friends—”

“Trust me for that.”

“But what do you know of Percival’s?
I heard him tell Sissy he would be out to-morrow.
Will you ever know where he
went?”

“I sha’n’t ask him.”

“No,” she retorted, “you dare not!
Isn’t it a rule that no one is ever to question
Percival?”

“And while I’m master here it shall be
obeyed. It’s the least I can do. The
boy shall come and go, speak or hold his
tongue, as he pleases. No one shall cross
him—Horace least of all—while I’m master
here, Harriet; but that won’t be very
long.”

“I don’t want you to think any harm
of Percival’s silence,” she answered gently.
“I don’t for one moment suppose
he has any secrets to be ashamed of. I
myself like people to be open, that is
all.”

“If I wanted to know anything Percival
would tell me,” said Mr. Thorne.

Mrs. Middleton’s charity was great.
She hid the smile she could not repress.
“Well,” she said, “perhaps I am not fair
to Percival, but, Godfrey, you are not
quite just to Horace.”

He turned upon her: “Unjust to Horace?
I?“

She knew what he meant. He had
shown Horace signal favor, far above
his cousin, yet what she had said was
true. Perhaps some of the injustice had
been in this very favor. “Here are our
truants!” she exclaimed. She and her
brother had not talked so confidentially
for years, but the moment her eyes fell
on Sissy her thoughts went back to the
point at which Mr. Thorne had disturbed
them: “My dearest Sissy, I am so
afraid you will catch cold.”

“It can’t be done to-night,” said Percival.
“Won’t you come and try?” But
the old lady shook her head.

“All right, auntie! we won’t stop out,”
said Sissy; and a moment later she made
her appearance in the drawing-room with
her hands full of roses, which she tossed
carelessly on the table. Mr. Thorne had
picked up his paper, and stood turning
the pages and pretending to read, but
she pushed it aside to put a rosebud in
his coat.

“Roses are more fit for you young
people than for an old fellow like me,”
he said, “Why don’t you give one to
Percival?”

She looked over her shoulder at young
Thorne. “Do you want one?” she said.

He smiled, with a slight movement of
his head and his dark eyes fixed on hers.

“Then, why didn’t you pick one when
we were out? Now, weren’t you foolish?
Well, never mind. What color?”

“Choose for him,” said Mr. Thorne.

Sissy hesitated, looking from Percival’s
face to a bud of deepest crimson. Then,
throwing it down, “No, you shall have
yellow,” she exclaimed: “Laura Falconer’s
complexion is something like yours,
and she always wears yellow. As soon
as one yellow dress is worn out she gets
another.”

“She is a most remarkable young woman
if she waits till the first one is worn
out,” said Percival.

Page 420

“Am I to put your rose in or not?”
Sissy demanded.

He stepped forward with a smile, and
looked darkly handsome as he stood
there with Sissy putting the yellow rose
in his coat and glancing archly up at
him.

Mr. Thorne from behind his Saturday
Review watched the girl who might, perhaps,
hold his favorite’s future in her
hands. “Does he care for her?” he
wondered. If he did, the old man felt
that he would gladly have knelt to entreat
her, “Be good to my poor Percival.”
But did Percival want her to
be good to him? Godfrey Thorne was
altogether in the dark about his grandson’s
wishes in the matter. He tried
hard not to think that he was in the
dark about every wish or hope of Percival’s,
and he looked up eagerly when
the latter said something about going
out the next day. He remembered which
horse Percival liked, he assented to everything,
but he watched him all the
time with a wistful curiosity. He did
not really care where Percival went, but
he would have given much for such a
word about his plans as would have
proved to Harriet, and to himself too,
that his boy did confide in him sometimes.
It was not to be, however. Young
Thorne had taken up the local paper and
the subject dropped. Mr. Thorne may
have guessed later, but he never knew
where his roan horse went the next day.

Chapter II.

“Those Eyes Of Yours.”

Not five miles away that same evening
a conversation was going on which
would have interested Mrs. Middleton.

The scene was an up-stairs room in a
pleasant house near the county town.
Mrs. Blake, a woman of seven or eight
and forty, handsome and well preserved,
but of a high-colored type, leant back in
an easy-chair lazily unfastening her bracelets,
by way of signifying that she had
begun to prepare for the night. Her two
daughters were with her. Addie, the
elder, was at the looking-glass brushing
her hair and half enveloped in its silky
blackness. She was a tall, graceful girl,
a refined likeness of her mother. On
the rug lay Lottie, three years younger,
hardly more than a growing girl, long-limbed,
slight, a little abrupt and angular
by her sister’s side, her features not quite
so regular, her face paler in its cloud of
dark hair. Yet there was a look of determination
and power which was wanting
in Addie; and at times, when Lottie
was roused, her eyes had a dark splendor
which made her sister’s beauty seem
comparatively commonplace and tame.

Stretched at full length, she propped
her chin on her hands and looked up at
her mother. “I don’t suppose you care,”
she said, in a clear, almost boyish voice.

“Not much,” Mrs. Blake replied with,
a smile. “Especially as I rather doubt
it.”

Addie paused, brush in hand: “I really
think you’ve made a mistake, Lottie.”

“Do you really? I haven’t, though,”
said that young lady decidedly.

“It can’t be—surely,” Addie hesitated,
with a little shadow on her face.

“Of course no. Is it likely?” said
Mrs. Blake, as if the discussion were
closed.

“I tell you,” said Lottie stubbornly,
“Godfrey Hammond told me that Percival’s
father was the eldest son.”

“But it is Horace who has always lived
at Brackenhill. Percival only goes on a
visit now and then. Every one knows,”
said Addie, in almost an injured tone,
“that Horace is the heir.”

Lottie raised her head a little and eyed
her sister intently, with amusement, wonder,
and a little scorn in her glance.
Addie, blissfully unconscious, went on
brushing her hair, still with that look of
anxious perplexity.

“This is how it was,” Lottie exclaimed
suddenly. “Percival was just gone, and
you were talking to Horace. Up comes
Godfrey Hammond, sits down by me,
and says some rubbish about consoling
me. I think I laughed. Then he looked
at me out of his little, light eyes, and
said that you and I seemed to get on
well with his young friends. So I said,
‘Oh yes—middling.'”

Page 421

“Upon my word,” smiled Mrs. Blake,
“you appear to have distinguished yourself
in the conversation.”

“Didn’t I?” said Lottie, untroubled
and unabashed: “I know it struck me
so at the time. Then he said something—I
forget how he put it—about our being
just the right number and pairing off
charmingly. So I said, ‘Oh, of course
the elder ones went together: that was
only right.'”

“And what did he say?”

“Oh, he pinched his lips together and
smiled, and said, ‘Don’t you know that
Percival is the elder?'”

“But, Lottie, that proves nothing as to
his father.”

“Who supposed it did? I said ‘Fiddlededee!
I didn’t mean that: I supposed
they were much about the same
age, or if Percy were a month or two
older it made no difference. I meant
that Horace was the eldest son’s son, so
of course he was A 1.'”

“Well?” said Addie.

“Well, then he looked twice as pleased
with himself as he did before, and said,
‘I don’t think Horace told you that. It
so happens that Percival is not only the
elder by a month or two, as you say, but
he is the son of the eldest son.’ Then I
said ‘Oh!’ and mamma called me for
something, and I went.”

Mrs. Blake and Addie exchanged
glances.

“Now, could I have made a mistake?”
demanded Lottie.

“It seems plain enough, certainly,”
her mother allowed.

“Then, could Godfrey Hammond have
made a mistake? Hasn’t he known the
Thornes all their lives? and didn’t he say
once that he was named Godfrey after
their old grandfather?”

Mrs. Blake assented.

“Then,” said the girl, relapsing into
her recumbent position, “perhaps you’ll
believe me another time.”

“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Blake: “we’ll
see when the other time comes. If it is
as you say, it is curious.” She rose as
she spoke and went to the farther end
of the room. As she stood by an open
drawer putting away the ornaments which
she had taken off, the candlelight revealed
a shadow of perplexity on her face
which increased the likeness between
herself and Addie. Apparently, Lottie
was right as to her facts. The estate
was not entailed, then, and despotic
power seemed to be rather capriciously
exercised by the head of the house. If
Horace should displease his grandfather—if,
for instance, he chose a wife of whom
old Mr. Thorne did not approve—would
his position be very secure? Mrs. Blake
was uneasy, and felt that it was very
wrong of people to play tricks with the
succession to an estate like Brackenhill.

Meanwhile, Lottie watched her sister,
who was thoughtfully drawing her fingers
through her long hair. “Addie,” she
said, after a pause, “what will you do if
Horace isn’t the heir after all?”

“What a silly question! I shan’t do
anything: there’s nothing for me to do.”

“But shall you mind very much? You
are very fond of Horace, aren’t you?”

“Fond of him!” Addie repeated. “He
is very pleasant to talk to, if you mean
that.”

“Oh, you can’t deceive me so! I believe
that you are in love with him,” said
Lottie solemnly.

The color rushed to Addie’s face when
her vaguely tender sentiments, indefinite
as Horace’s attentions, were described
in this startling fashion. “Indeed,
I’m nothing of the kind,” she said
hurriedly. “Pray don’t talk such utter
nonsense, Lottie. If you have nothing
more sensible to say, you had better
hold your tongue.”

“But why are you ashamed of it?”
Lottie persisted: “I wouldn’t be.” She
had an unsuspected secret herself, but
she would have owned it proudly enough
had she been challenged.

“I’m not ashamed,” said Addie; “and
you know nothing about being in love, so
you had better not talk about it.”

“Oh yes, I do!” was the reply, uttered
with Lottie’s calm simplicity of manner:
“I know how to tell whether you
are in love or not, Addie. What would
you do if a girl were to win Horace
Thorne away from you?”

Pride and a sense of propriety dictated
Page 422Addie’s answer and gave sharpness to
her voice: “I should say she was perfectly
welcome to him.”

Lottie considered for a moment: “Yes,
I suppose one might say so to her, but
what would you do? Wouldn’t you want
to kill her? And wouldn’t you die of a
broken heart?”

Addie was horrified: “I don’t want to
kill anybody, and I’m not going to die
for Mr. Horace Thorne. Please don’t
say such things, Lottie: people never do.
You forget he is only an acquaintance.”

“No; I don’t think you are in love
with him, certainly.” Lottie pronounced
this decision with the air of one who has
solved a difficult problem.

“What are you talking about?” Mrs.
Blake inquired, coming back, and glancing
from Addie’s flushed and troubled
face to Lottie’s thoughtful eyes.

“I was asking Addie if she didn’t want
Horace to be the heir. I know you do,
mamma—oh, just for his own sake, because
you think he’s the nicest, don’t
you? I heard you tell him one day “—here
Lottie looked up with a candid gaze
and audaciously imitated Mrs. Blake’s
manner—”that though we knew his cousin
first, he—Horace, you know—seemed
to drop so naturally into all our ways
that it was quite delightful to feel that
we needn’t stand on any ceremony with
him.”

“Good gracious, Lottie! what do you
mean by listening to every word I say?”

“I didn’t listen—I heard,” said Lottie.
“I always do hear when you say your
words as if they had little dashes under
them.”

“Well, Horace Thorne is easier to
get on with than his cousin,” said Mrs.
Blake, taking no notice of Lottie’s mimicry.

“There, I said so: mamma would like
it to be Horace. Nobody asks what I
should like—nobody thinks about me and
Percival.”

“Oh, indeed! I wasn’t aware,” said
Mrs. Blake. “When is that to come
off? I dare say you will look very well
in orange-blossoms and a pinafore!”

“Oh, you think I’m too young, do
you? But a little while ago you were
always saying that I was grown up, and
oughtn’t to want any more childish games.
What was I to do?”

“Upon my word!” exclaimed Mrs.
Blake. “I’ll buy you a doll for a birthday
present, to keep you out of mischief.”

“Too late,” said Lottie from the rug.
She burst into sudden laughter, loud but
not unmelodious. “What rubbish we are
talking! Seventeen to-morrow, and Addie
is nearly twenty; and sometimes I
think I must be a hundred!”

“Well, you are talking nonsense now,”
Mrs. Blake exclaimed. “Why, you baby!
only last November you would go into
that wet meadow by the rectory to play
trap-and-ball with Robin and Jack. And
such a fuss as there was if one wanted
to make you the least tidy and respectable!”

“Was that last November?” Lottie
stared thoughtfully into space. “Queer
that last November should be so many
years ago, isn’t it? Poor little Cock
Robin! I met him in the lane the day
before he went away. They will keep
him in jackets, and he hates them so!
I laughed at him, and told him to be a
good little boy and mind his book. He
didn’t seem to like it, somehow.”

“I dare say he didn’t,” said Addie,
who had been silently recovering herself:
“there’s no mistake about it when
you laugh at any one.”

“There shall be no mistake about anything
I do,” Lottie asserted. “I’m going
to bed now.” She sprang to her feet and
stood looking at her sister: “What jolly
hair you’ve got, Addie!”

“Yours is just as thick, or thicker,” said
Addie.

“Each individual hair is a good deal
thicker, if you mean that. ‘Blue-black,
lustrous, thick like horse-hairs!’ That’s
what Percy quoted to me one day when
I was grumbling, and I said I wasn’t sure
he wasn’t rude. Addie, are Horace and
Percival fond of each other?”

“How can I tell? I suppose so.”

“I have my doubts,” said Lottie sagely.
“Why should they be? There must
be something queer, you know, or why
doesn’t that stupid old man at Brackenhill
Page 423treat Percival as the eldest? Well,
good-night.” And Lottie went off, half
saying, half singing, “Who killed Cock
Robin? I, said the Sparrow—with my
bow and arrow.” And with a triumphant
outburst of “I killed Cock Robin!” she
banged the door after her.

There was a pause. Then Addie said,
“Seventeen to-morrow! Mamma, Lottie
really is grown-up now.”

“Is she?” Mrs. Blake replied doubtfully.
“Time she should be, I’m sure.”

Lottie had been a sore trial to her
mother. Addie was pretty as a child,
tolerably presentable even at her most
awkward age, glided gradually into girlhood
and beauty, and finally “came
out” completely to Mrs. Blake’s satisfaction.
But Lottie at fifteen or sixteen
was her despair—”Exactly like a great
unruly boy,” she lamented. She dashed
through her lessons fairly well, but
the moment she was released she was
unendurable. She whistled, she sang at
the top of her voice, and plunged about
the house in her thick boots, till she
could be off to join the two boys at the
rectory, her dear friends and comrades.
Robin Wingfield, the elder, was her junior
by rather more than a year; and
this advantage, especially as she was tall
and strong for her age, enabled her fully
to hold her own with them. Nor could
Mrs. Blake hinder this friendship, as she
would gladly have done, for her husband
was on Lottie’s side.

“Let the girl alone,” he said. “Too
big for this sort of thing? Rubbish!
The milliner’s bills will come in quite
soon enough. And what’s amiss with
Robin and Jack? Good boys as boys
go, and she’s another; and if they like
to scramble over hedges and ditches together,
let them. For Heaven’s sake,
Caroline, don’t attempt to keep her at
home: she’ll certainly drive me crazy
if you do. No one ever banged doors
as Lottie does: she ought to patent the
process. Slams them with a crash which
jars the whole house, and yet manages
not to latch them, and the moment she
is gone they are swinging backward and
forward till I’m almost out of my senses.
Here she comes down stairs, like a thunderbolt.—Lottie,
my dear girl, I’m sure
it’s going to be fine: better run out and
look up those Wingfield boys, I think.”

So the trio spent long half-holidays
rambling in the fields; and on these occasions
Lottie might be met, an immense
distance from home, in the shabbiest
clothes and wearing a red cap of Robin’s
tossed carelessly on her dark hair.
Percival once encountered them on one
of these expeditions. Lottie’s beauty
was still pale and unripe, like those
sheathed buds which will come suddenly
to their glory of blossom, not like
rosebuds which have a loveliness of
their own; but the young man was
struck by the boyish mixture of shyness
and bluntness with which she greeted
him, and attracted by the great eyes
which gazed at him from under Robin’s
shabby cap. When he and Horace went
to the Blakes’ he amused himself idly
enough with the school-girl, while his
cousin flirted with Addie. He laughed
one day when Mrs. Blake was unusually
troubled about Lottie’s apparel, and
said something about “a sweet neglect.”
But the soul of Lottie’s mamma was not
to be comforted with scraps of poetry.
How could it be, when she had just arraigned
her daughter on the charge of
having her pockets bulging hideously,
and had discovered that those receptacles
overflowed with a miscellaneous assortment
of odds and ends, the accumulations
of weeks, tending to show that
Lottie and Cock Robin, as she called
him, had all things in common? How
could it be, when Lottie was always outgrowing
her garments in the most ungainly
manner, so that her sleeves seemed
to retreat in horror from her wrists
and from her long hands, tanned by sun
and wind, seamed with bramble-scratches
and smeared with school-room ink? Once
Lottie came home with an unmistakable
black eye, for which Robin’s cricket-ball
was accountable. Then, indeed, Mrs.
Blake felt that her cup of bitterness was
full to overflowing, though Lottie did assure
her, “You should have seen Jack’s
eye last April: his was much more swollen,
and all sorts of colors, than mine.”
It was impossible to avoid the conclusion
Page 424that Jack must have been, to say the least
of it, unpleasant to look at. Percival
happened to come to the house just then,
and was tranquilly amused at the good
lady’s despair. It was before the Blakes
knew much of Horace, and she had not
yet discovered that Percival’s cousin was
so much more friendly than Percival himself;
so she made the latter her confidant.
He recommended a raw beefsteak with
a gravity worthy of a Spanish grandee.
He was not allowed to see Lottie, who
was kept in seclusion as being half culprit,
half invalid, and wholly unpresentable;
but as he was going away the
servant gave him a little note in Lottie’s
boyish scrawl:

“Dear Percival: Mamma was cross
with Robin and sent him away do tell
him I’m all right, and he is not to mind
he will be sure to be about somewhere It
is very stupid being shut up here Addie
says she can’t go running about giving
messages to boys and Papa said if he
saw him he should certainly punch his
head so please tell him he is not to bother
himself about me I shall soon be all
right.”

Percival went away, smiling a little at
his letter and at Lottie herself. Just as
he reached the first of the fields which
were the short cut from the house, he
spied Robin lurking on the other side
of the hedge, with Jack at his heels. He
halted, and called “Robin! Robin Wingfield!
I want to speak to you.”

The boy hesitated: “There’s a gate
farther on.”

Coming to the gate, Percival rested his
arms on it and looked at Robin. The
boy was not big for his age, but there
was a good deal of cleverness in his upturned
freckled face. “I’ve a message
for you,” said the young man.

“From her?” Robin indicated the
Blakes’ house with a jerk of his head.

“Yes. She asked me to tell you that
she is all right, though, of course, she
can’t come out at present. She made
sure I should find you somewhere about.”

Robin nodded: “I did try to hear how
she was, but that old dragon—”

“Meaning my friend Mrs. Blake?” said
young Thorne. “Ah! Hardly civil perhaps,
but forcible.”

“Well—Mrs. Blake, then—caught me
in the shrubbery and pitched into me.
Said I ought to be ashamed of myself.
Supposed I should be satisfied when I’d
broken Lottie’s neck. Told me I’d better
not show my face there again.”

“Well,” said Percival, “you couldn’t
expect Mrs. Blake to be particularly delighted
with your afternoon’s work. And,
Wingfield, though I was especially to tell
you that you were not to vex yourself
about it, you really ought to be more
careful. Knocking a young lady’s eye
half out—”

“Young lady!” in a tone of intense
scorn. “Lottie isn’t a young lady.“

“Oh! isn’t she?” said Percival.

“I should think not, indeed!” And
Robin eyed the big young man who was
laughing at him as if he meditated wiping
out the insult to Lottie then and there.
But even with Jack, his sturdy satellite,
to help, it was not to be thought of.
“She’s a brick!” said Cock Robin, half
to himself.

“No doubt,” said Percival. “But, as
I was saying, it isn’t exactly the way to
treat her.—At least—I don’t know: upon
my word, I don’t know,” he soliloquized.
“Judging by most women’s novels, from
Jane Eyre downward, the taste for muscular
bullies prevails. Robin may be the
coming hero—who knows?—and courtship
commencing with a black eye the
future fashion.—Well, Robin, any answer?”

“Tell her I hope she’ll soon be all
right. Shall you see her?”

“I can see that she gets any message
you want to send.”

Robin groped among his treasures:
“Look here: I brought away her knife
that afternoon. She lent it me. She’d
better have it—it’s got four blades—she
may want it, perhaps.”

Percival dropped the formidable instrument
carelessly into his pocket:
“She shall have it. And, Robin, you’d
better not be hanging about here: Lottie
says so. You’ll only vex Mrs. Blake.”

“All right!” said the boy, and went off,
with Jack after him.

Page 425

Percival, who was staying in the neighborhood,
went straight home, tied up a
parcel of books he thought might amuse
Lottie in her imprisonment, and wrote a
note to go with them. He was whistling
softly to himself as he wrote, and, if the
truth be told, had a fair vision floating
before his eyes—a girl of whom Lottie
had reminded him by sheer force of contrast.
Still, he liked Lottie in her way.
He was young enough to enjoy the easy
sense of patronage and superiority which
made the words flow so pleasantly from
his pen. Never had Lottie seemed to
him so utterly a child as immediately
after his talk with her boy-friend.

“Here are some books,” said the hurrying
pen, “which I think you will like
if your eye is not so bad as to prevent
your reading. Robin was keeping his
disconsolate watch close by, as you foretold,
and asked anxiously after you, so I
gave him your message and dismissed
him. He especially charged me to send
you the enclosed—knife I believe he called
it: it looks to me like a whole armory
of deadly weapons—which he seemed to
think would be a comfort to you in your
affliction. I sincerely hope it may prove
so. I was very civil to him, remembering
that I was your ambassador; but if
he isn’t a little less rough with you in
future, I shall be tempted to adopt Mr.
Blake’s plan if I happen to meet your
friend again. You really mustn’t let him
damage those eyes of yours in this reckless
fashion. Mrs. Blake was nearly
heartbroken this morning.”

He sent his parcel off, and speedily
ceased to think of it. And Lottie herself
might have done the same, not caring
much for his books, but for four little
words—”those eyes of yours.” Had Percival
written “your eyes,” it would have
meant nothing, but “those eyes of yours”
implied notice—nay, admiration. Again
and again she looked at the thick paper,
with the crest at the top and the vigorous
lines of writing below; and again and
again the four words, “those eyes of
yours,” seemed to spring into ever-clearer
prominence. She hid the letter away
with a sudden comprehension of the
roughness of her pencil scrawl which it
answered, and began to take pride in
her looks when they least deserved it.
Only a day or two before she had envied
Robin the possession of sight a little keener
than her own, but now she smiled to
think that Percival Thorne would never
have regretted injury to “those eyes of
yours” had she owned Robin’s light-gray
orbs.

Her transformation had begun. The
knife was still a treasure, but she was
ashamed of her delight in it. She
breathed on the shining blades and rubbed
them to brightness again, but she
did it stealthily, with a glance over her
shoulder first. She went rambling with
Robin and Jack, but not when she knew
that Percival Thorne was in the neighborhood.
She was very sure of his absence
on the November day to which
her mother had alluded, when she had
insisted on playing trap-and-ball in the
rectory meadows. Mrs. Blake did not
realize it, but it was almost the last day
of Lottie’s old life. At Christmas-time
they were asked to stay for a few days
at a friend’s house. There was to be a
dance, and the hostess, being Lottie’s
godmother, pointedly included her in
the invitation; so Mrs. Blake and Addie
did what they could to improve their
black sheep’s appearance.

Lottie, dressed for the eventful evening,
was left alone for a moment before
the three went down. She felt shy, dispirited
and sullen. Her ball-dress encumbered
and constrained her. “I hate
it all,” she said to herself, beating impatiently
with her foot upon the ground.
Something moving caught her eye: it
was her reflection in a mirror. She
paused and gazed in wonder. Was this
slender girl, arrayed in a cloud of semi-transparent
white, really herself—the Lottie
who only a few days before had raced
Robin Wingfield home across the fields,
had been the first over the gap and
through the ditch into the rectory meadow,
and had rushed away with the November
rain-drops driving in her face?
She gazed on: the transformation had its
charms, after all. But the shadow came
back: “It’s no use. Addie’s prettier than
I ever shall be: I must be second all my
Page 426life. Second! If I can’t be A 1, I’d as
soon be Z 1000! I won’t go about to be
a foil to her. I’d ten times rather race
with Robin; and I will too! They sha’n’t
coop me up and make a young lady of
me!”

She caught the flash of her indignant
glance in the glass and paused.

“Those eyes of yours!“

Must she be second all her life? Had
she not a power and witchery of her own?
Might she not even distance Addie in the
race? “I’ve more brains than she has,”
mused Lottie.

Her heart was beating fast as they came
down stairs. They had only arrived by
a late train, which gave them just time
to dress; and Mrs. Blake had rather exceeded
the allowance, so that most of
the guests had arrived and the first
quadrille was nearly ended as they came
in. Lottie followed her mother and Addie
as they glided through the crowd,
and when they paused she stood shy and
fierce, casting lowering glances around.

She heard their hostess say to some
one, “Do let me find you a partner.”

A well-known voice replied, “Not this
time, thank you: I’m going to try to find
one for myself;” and Percival stood before
her, looking, to her girlish fancy,
more of a hero than ever in the evening-dress
which became him well. The perfectly-fitting
gloves, the flower in his coat,
a dozen little things which she could not
define, made her feel uncouth and anxious,
fascinated and frightened, all at once.
Had he greeted her in the patronizing way
in which he had talked to her of old, she
would have been deeply wounded, but he
asked her for the next dance more ceremoniously,
she knew, than Horace would
have asked Addie. Still, she trembled
as they moved off. They had scarcely
met since her note to him. Suppose he
alluded to it, asked after her black eye,
and inquired whether she had derived
any benefit from the beefsteak? Nothing
more natural, and yet if he did Lottie
felt that she should hate him. “I know
I should do something dreadful,” she
thought—”scratch his face, and then
burst out crying, most likely. Oh, what
would become of me? I should be
ruined for life! I should have to shut
myself up, never see any one again, and
emigrate with Robin directly he was old
enough.”

Percival did not know his danger, but
he escaped it. The fatal thoughts were
in his mind while Lottie was planning
her disgrace and exile, but he merely
remarked that he liked the first waltz,
and should they start at once or wait a
moment till a couple or two dropped
out?

“I don’t know whether I can waltz,”
said Lottie doubtfully.

“Weren’t you over tortured with dancing-lessons?”

“Oh yes. But I’ve never tried at a
party. Suppose we go bumping up against
everybody, like that fat man and the little
lady in pink—the two who are just
stopping?”

“I assure you,” said Percival gravely,
“that I do not dance at all like that fat
man. And if you dance like the lady in
pink, I shall be more surprised than I
have words to say. Now?”

They were off. Percival knew that he
waltzed well, and had an idea that Lottie
would prove a good partner. Nor
was he mistaken. She had been fairly
taught, much against her will, had a good
ear for time, and, thanks to many a race
with Robin Wingfield, her energy was
almost terrible. They spun swiftly and
silently round, unwearied while other
couples dropped out of the ranks to rest
and talk. Percival was well pleased. It
is true that he had memories of waltzes
with Sissy Langton of more utter harmony,
of sweeter grace, of delight more
perfect, though far more fleeting. But
Lottie, with her steady swiftness and her
strong young life, had a charm of her
own which he was not slow to recognize.
She would hardly have thanked him for
accurately classifying it, for as she danced
she felt that she had discovered a new
joy. Her old life slipped from her like
a husk. Friendship with Cock Robin
was an evident absurdity. It is true she
was angry with herself that, after fighting
so passionately for freedom, she should
voluntarily bend her proud neck beneath
the yoke. She foresaw that her mother
Page 427and Addie would triumph; she felt that
her bondage to Mrs. Grundy would often
be irksome; but here was the first instalment
of her wages in this long waltz with
Percival. She fancied that the secret of
her pleasure lay in the two words—”with
Percival.” In her ignorance she thought
that she was tasting the honeyed fire of
love, when in truth it was the sweetness
of conscious success. Before the last
notes of that enchanted music died away
she had cast her girlish devotion, “half
in a rapture and half in a rage,” at her
partner’s feet, while he stood beside her
calm and self-possessed. He would
have been astounded, and perhaps almost
disgusted, had he known what was
passing through her mind.

Love at sixteen is generally only a desire
to be in love, and seeks not so much
a fit as a possible object. Probably Lottie’s
passion offered as many assurances
of domestic bliss as could be desired at
her age.

Percival was dark, foreign-looking and
handsome: he had an interesting air of
reserve, and no apparent need to practise
small economies. His clothes fitted
him extremely well, and at times he had
a way of standing proudly aloof which
was worthy of any hero of romance. No
settled occupation would interfere with
picnics and balls; and, to crown all, had
he not said to her, “Those eyes of yours”?
Were not these ample foundations for
the happiness of thirty or forty years of
marriage?

Percival, meanwhile, wanted to be
kind to the childish, half-tamed Lottie,
who had attracted his notice in the fields
and trusted him with her generous message
to Robin Wingfield. The girl fancied
herself immensely improved by her
white dress, but had Thorne been a
painter he would have sketched her as
a pale vision of Liberty, with loosely-knotted
hair and dark eyes glowing under
Robin’s red cap. He was able coolly
to determine the precise nature of his
pleasure in her society, but he knew that
it was a pleasure. And Lottie, when she
fell asleep that night, clasped a card which
was rendered priceless by the frequent
recurrence of his initials.

Her passion transformed her. Her
vehement spirit remained, but everything
else was changed. Her old dreams
and longings were cast out by the new.
She laughed with Mrs. Blake and Addie,
but under the laughter she hid her love,
and cherished it in fierce and solitary
silence. Yet even to herself the transformation
seemed so wonderful that she
could hardly believe in it, and acted the
rough girl now and then with the idea
that otherwise they must think her a
consummate actress morning, noon and
night. For some months no great event
marked the record of her unsuspected
passion. It might, perhaps, have run its
course, and died out harmlessly in due
time, but for an unlucky afternoon, about
a week before her birthday, when Percival
uttered some thoughtless words which
woke a tempest of doubt and fear in Lottie’s
heart. She did not question his love,
but she caught a glimpse of his pride, and
felt as if a gulf had opened between her
and her dream of happiness.

Percival was calling at the house on
the eventful day which was destined to
influence Lottie’s fate and his own. He
was in a happy mood, well pleased with
things in general, and, after his own fashion,
inclined to be talkative. When visitors
arrived and Addie exclaimed, “Mrs.
Pickering and that boy of hers—oh bother!”
she spoke the feelings of the whole
party; and Percival from his place by
the window looked across at Lottie and
shrugged his shoulders expressively.
Had there been time he would have
tried to escape into the garden with his
girl friend; but as that was impossible,
he resigned himself to his fate and listened
while Mrs. Pickering poured forth
her rapture concerning her son’s prospects
to Mrs. Blake. An uncle who was
the head of a great London firm had offered
the young man a situation, with an
implied promise of a share in the business
later. “Such a subject for congratulation!”
the good lady exclaimed, beaming
on her son, who sat silently turning
his hat in his hands and looking very
pink. “Such an opening for William!
Better than having a fortune left him, I
call it, for it is such a thing to have an occupation.
Page 428Every young man should be
brought up to something, in my opinion.”

Mrs. Blake, with a half glance at Addie
and a thought of Horace, suggested
that heirs to landed estates—

“Well, yes.” Mrs. Pickering agreed
with her. Country gentlemen often found
so much to do in looking after their tenants
and making improvements that she
would not say anything about them. But
young men with small incomes and no
profession—she should be sorry if a son
of hers—

“Like me, for instance,” said Percival,
looking up. “I’ve a small income and
no profession.”

Mrs. Pickering, somewhat confused,
hastened to explain that she meant nothing
personal.

“Of course not,” he said: “I know
that. I only mentioned it because I
think an illustration stamps a thing on
people’s memories.”

“But, Percival,” Mrs. Blake interposed,
“I must say that in this I agree with Mrs.
Pickering. I do think it would be better
if you had something to do—I do indeed.”
She looked at him with an air of affectionate
severity. “I speak as your friend,
you know.” (Percival bowed his gratitude.)
“I really think young people
are happier when they have a settled
occupation.”

“I dare say that is true, as a rule,” he
said.

“But you don’t think you would be?”
questioned Lottie.

He turned to her with a smile: “Well,
I doubt it. Of course I don’t know how
happy I might be if I had been brought
up to a profession.” He glanced through
the open window at the warm loveliness
of June. “At this moment, for instance,
I might have been writing a sermon or
cutting off a man’s leg. But, somehow,
I am very well satisfied as I am.”

“Oh, if you mean to make fun of it—”
Mrs. Blake began.

“But I don’t,” Percival said quickly.
“I may laugh, but I’m in earnest too. I
have plenty to eat and drink; I can pay
my tailor and still have a little money in
my pocket; I am my own master. Sometimes
I ride—another man’s horse: if
not I walk, and am just as well content.
I don’t smoke—I don’t bet—I have no
expensive tastes. What could money do
for me that I should spend the best years
of my life in slaving for it?”

“That may be all very well for the
present,” said Mrs. Blake.

“Why not for the future too? Oh, I
have my dream for the future too.”

“And, pray, may one ask what it is?”
said Mrs. Pickering, looking down on
him from the height of William’s prosperity.

“Certainly,” he said. “Some day I
shall leave England and travel leisurely
about the Continent. I shall have a sky
over my head compared with which this
blue is misty and pale. I shall gain new
ideas. I shall get grapes and figs and
melons very cheap. There will be a
little too much garlic in my daily life—even
such a destiny as mine must have
its drawbacks—but think of the wonderful
scenery I shall see and the queer,
beautiful out-of-the-way holes and corners
I shall discover! And in years to
come I shall rejoice, without envy, to
hear that Mr. Blake has bought a large
estate and gains prizes for fat cattle,
while my friend here has been knighted
on the occasion of some city demonstration.”

Young Pickering, who had been listening
open-mouthed to the other’s fluent
and tranquil speech, reddened at the
allusion to himself and dropped his hat.

“At that rate you must never marry,”
said Mrs. Blake.

Percival thoughtfully stroked his lip:
“You think I should not find a wife to
share my enjoyment of a small income?”

“Marry a girl with lots of money, Mr.
Thorne,” said the future Sir William,
feeling it incumbent on him to take part
in the conversation.

“Not I.” Percival’s glance made the
lad’s hot face yet hotter. “That’s the
last thing I will do. If a man means to
work, he may marry whom he will. But
if he has made up his mind to be idle, he
is a contemptible cur if he will let his
wife keep him in his idleness.” He spoke
very quietly in his soft voice, and leaned
back in his chair.

Page 429

“Well, then, you must never fall in
love with an heiress,” said Mrs. Blake.

“Or you must work and win her,” Lottie
suggested almost in a whisper.

He smiled, but slightly shook his head
with a look which she fancied meant
“Too late.” Mrs. Pickering began to
tell the latest Fordborough scandal, and
the talk drifted into another channel.

Lottie had listened as she always listened
when Percival spoke, but she had
not attached any peculiar meaning to
his words. But an hour or so later, when
he was gone and she was loitering in the
garden just outside the window, Addie,
who was within, made some remark in
a laughing tone. Lottie did not catch
the words, but Mrs. Blake’s reply was distinct
and not to be mistaken: “William
Pickering, indeed! No: with your looks
and your expectations you girls ought to
marry really well.” Lottie stood aghast.
They would have money, then? She
had never thought about money. She
would be an heiress? And Percival
would never marry an heiress—he
could not: had he not said so? How
gladly would she have given him every
farthing she possessed! And was her
fortune to be a barrier between them for
ever? Every syllable that he had spoken
was made clear by this revelation,
and rose up before her eyes as a terrible
word of doom. But she was not one to
be easily dismayed, and her first cry was,
“What shall I do?” Lottie’s thoughts
turned always to action, not to endurance,
and she was resolved to break
down the barrier, let the cost be what
it might. Her talk with Godfrey Hammond
gave a new interest to her romance
and new strength to her determination.
Since her hero was disinherited and poor,
and she, though rich, would be poor in
all she cared to have if she were parted
from him, might she not tell him so
when she saw him on her birthday? She
thought it would be easier to speak on
the one day when in girlish fashion she
would be queen. She would not think
of her own pride, because his pride was
dear to her. She could not tell what she
would say or do: she only knew that her
birthday should decide her fate. And
her heart was beating fast in hope and
fear the night before when she banged
the door after her and went off to bed,
sublimely ready to renounce the world
for Percival.

Chapter III.

Dead Men Tell No Tales—Alfred
Thorne’s Is Told By The Writer.

Mr. Thorne of Brackenhill was a
miserable man, who went through the
world with a morbidly sensitive spot in
his nature. A touch on it was torture,
and unfortunately the circumstances of
his daily life continually chafed it.

It was only a common form of selfishness
carried to excess. “I don’t want
much,” he would have said—truly
enough, for Godfrey Thorne had never
been grasping—”but let it be my own.”
He could not enjoy anything unless he
knew that he might waste it if he liked.
The highest good, fettered by any condition,
was in his eyes no good at all.
Brackenhill was dear to him because he
could leave it to whom he would. He
was seventy-six, and had spent his life
in improving his estate, but he prized
nothing about it so much as his right to
give the result of his life’s work to the
first beggar he might chance to meet.
It would have made him still happier if
he could have had the power of destroying
Brackenhill utterly, of wiping it off
the face of the earth, in case he could
not find an heir who pleased him, for it
troubled him to think that some man
must have the land after him, whether
he wished it or not.

Godfrey Hammond had declared that
no one could conceive the exquisite torments
Mr. Thorne would endure if he
owned an estate with a magnificent ruin
on it, some unique and priceless relic of
bygone days. “He should be able to
see it from his window,” said Hammond,
“and it should be his, as far as law could
make it, while he should be continually
conscious that in the eyes of all cultivated
men he was merely its guardian. People
should write to the newspapers asserting
boldly that the public had a right
Page 430of free access to it, and old gentlemen
with antiquarian tastes should find a little
gap in a fence, and pen indignant
appeals to the editor demanding to be
immediately informed whether a monument
of national, nay, of world-wide
interest, ought not, for the sake of the
public, to be more carefully protected
from injury. Local archæological societies
should come and read papers in it.
Clergymen, wishing to combine a little
instruction with the pleasures of a school-feast,
should arrive with van-loads of
cheering boys and girls, a troop of ardent
teachers, many calico flags and a brass
band. Artists, keen-eyed and picturesque,
each with his good-humored air
of possessing the place so much more
truly than any mere country gentleman
ever could, should come to gaze and
sketch. Meanwhile, Thorne should remark
about twice a week that of course
he could pull the whole thing down if he
liked; to which every one should smile
assent, recognizing an evident but utterly
unimportant fact. And then,” said
Hammond solemnly, “when all the archæologists
were eating and drinking,
enjoying their own theories and picking
holes in their neighbors’ discoveries, the
bolt should fall in the shape of an announcement
that Mr. Thorne had sold
the stones as building materials, and that
the workmen had already removed the
most ancient and interesting part. After
which he would go slowly to his grave,
dying of his triumph and a broken heart.”

It was all quite true, though Godfrey
Hammond might have added that all
the execrations of the antiquarians would
hardly have added to the burden of shame
and remorse of which Mr. Thorne would
have felt the weight before the last cart
carried away its load from the trampled
sward; that he would have regretted his
decision every hour of his life; and if by
a miracle he could have found himself
once more with the fatal deed undone,
he would have rejoiced for a moment,
suffered his old torment for a little while,
and then proceeded to do it again.

For a great part of Mr. Thorne’s life
the boast of his power over Brackenhill
had been on his lips more frequently
than the twice a week of which Hammond
talked. Of late years it had not
been so. He had used his power to assure
himself that he possessed it, and
gradually awoke to the consciousness
that he had lost it by thus using it.

He had had three sons—Maurice, a
fine, high-spirited young fellow; Alfred,
good-looking and good-tempered, but
indolent; James, a slim, sickly lad, who
inherited from his mother a fatal tendency
to decline. She died while he
was a baby, and he was petted from that
time forward. Godfrey Thorne was well
satisfied with Maurice, but was always at
war with his second son, who would not
take orders and hold the family living.
They argued the matter till it was too
late for Alfred to go into the army, the
only career for which he had expressed
any desire; and then Mr. Thorne found
himself face to face with a gentle and
lazy resistance which threatened to be a
match for his own hard obstinacy. Alfred
didn’t mind being a farmer. But his father
was troubled about the necessary
capital, and doubted his son’s success:
“You will go on after a fashion for a few
years, and then all the money will have
slipped through your fingers. You know
nothing of farming.”—”That’s true,”
said Alfred.—”And you are much too
lazy to learn.”—”That’s very likely,”
said the young man. So Mr. Thorne
looked about him for some more eligible
opening for his troublesome son; and
Alfred meanwhile, with his handsome
face and honest smile, was busy making
love to Sarah Percival, the rector’s
daughter.

The little idyl was the talk of the villagers
before it came to the squire’s ears.
When he questioned Alfred the young
man confessed it readily enough. He
loved Miss Percival, and she didn’t mind
waiting. Mr. Thorne was not altogether
displeased, for, though his intercourse
with the rector was rather stormy and
uncertain, they happened to be on tolerable
terms just then. Sarah was an only
child, and would have a little money at
Mr. Percival’s death, and Alfred was
much more submissive and anxious to
please his father under these altered circumstances.
Page 431The young people were
not to consider themselves engaged, Miss
Percival being only eighteen and Alfred
one-and-twenty. But if they were of the
same mind later, when the latter should
be in a position to marry, it was understood
that neither his father nor Mr. Percival
would oppose it.

Unluckily, a parochial question arose
near Christmas-time, and the squire and
the clergyman took different views of it.
Mr. Thorne went about the house with
brows like a thunder-cloud, and never
opened his lips to Alfred except to abuse
the rector. “You’ll have to choose between
old Percival and me one of these
days,” he said more than once. “You’d
better be making up your mind: it will
save time.” Alfred was silent. When
the strife was at its height Maurice was
drowned while skating.

The poor fellow was hardly in his
grave before the storm burst on Alfred’s
head. If Mr. Thorne had barely tolerated
the idea of his son’s marriage before,
he found it utterly intolerable now;
and the decree went forth that this boyish
folly about Miss Percival must be forgotten.
“I can do as I like with Brackenhill,”
said Mr. Thorne: “remember
that.” Alfred did remember it. He had
heard it often enough, and his father’s
angry eyes gave it an added emphasis.
“I can make an eldest son of James if I
like, and I will if you defy me.” But
nothing could shake Alfred. He had
given his word to Miss Percival, and they
loved each other, and he meant to keep
to it. “You don’t believe me,” his father
thundered: “you think I may talk,
but that I sha’n’t do it. Take care!”
There was no trace of any conflict on
Alfred’s face: he looked a little dull and
heavy under the bitter storm, but that
was all. “I can’t help it, sir,” he said,
tracing the pattern of the carpet with
the toe of his boot as he stood: “you
will do as you please, I suppose.”—”I
suppose I shall,” said Mr. Thorne.

So Alfred was disinherited. “As well
for this as anything else,” he said: “we
couldn’t have got on long.” He had an
allowance from his father, who declined
to take any further interest in his plans.
He went abroad for a couple of years—a
test which Mr. Percival imposed upon
him that nothing might be done in haste—and
came back, faithful as he went,
to ask for the consent which could no
longer be denied. Mr. Percival had
been presented to a living at some distance
from Brackenhill, and, as there
was a good deal of glebe-land attached
to it, Alfred was able to try his hand at
farming. He did so, with a little loss if
no gain, and they made one household
at the rectory.

He never seemed to regret Brackenhill.
Sarah—dark, ardent, intense, a
strange contrast to his own fair, handsome
face and placid indolence—absorbed
all his love. Her eager nature could
not rouse him to battle with the world,
but it woke a passionate devotion in his
heart: they were everything to each other,
and were content. When their boy
was born the rector would have named
him Godfrey: at any rate, he urged them
to call him by one of the old family
names which had been borne by bygone
generations of Thornes. But the young
husband was resolved that the child
should be Percival, and Percival only.
“Why prejudice his grandfather against
him for a mere name?” the rector persisted.
But Alfred shook his head. “Percival
means all the happiness of my life,”
he said. So the child received his name,
and the fact was announced to Mr. Thorne
in a letter brief and to the point like a
challenge.

Communications with Brackenhill were
few and far between. From the local
papers Alfred heard of the rejoicings
when James came of age, quickly followed
by the announcement that he had
gone abroad for the winter. Then he
was at home again, and going to marry
Miss Harriet Benham; whereat Alfred
smiled a little. “The governor must
have put his pride in his pocket: old
Benham made his money out of composite
candles, then retired, and has gas
all over the house for fear they should
be mentioned. Harry, as we used to
call her, is the youngest of them—she
must be eight or nine and twenty; fine
girl, hunts—tried it on with poor Maurice
Page 432ages ago. I should think she was about
half as big again as Jim. Well, yes,
perhaps I am exaggerating a little. How
charmed my father must be!—only, of
course, anything to please Jim, and it’s
a fine thing to have him married and
settled.”

Alfred read his father’s feelings correctly
enough, but Mr. Thorne was almost
repaid for all he had endured when,
in his turn, he was able to write and announce
the birth of a boy for whom the
bells had been set ringing as the heir
of Brackenhill. Jim, with his sick fancies
and querulous conceit, Mrs. James
Thorne, with her coarsely-colored splendor
and imperious ways, faded into the
background now that Horace’s little star
had risen.

The rest may be briefly told. Horace
had a little sister who died, and he himself
could hardly remember his father.
His time was divided between his mother’s
house at Brighton and Brackenhill.
He grew slim and tall and handsome—a
Thorne, and not a Benham, as his
grandfather did not fail to note. He was
delicate. “But he will outgrow that,”
said Mrs. Middleton, and loved him the
better for the care she had to take of
him. It was principally for his sake that
she was there. She was a widow and
had no children of her own, but when,
at her brother’s request, she came to
Brackenhill to make more of a home for
the school-boy, she brought with her a
tiny girl, little Sissy Langton, a great-niece
of her husband’s.

Meanwhile, the other boy grew up in
his quiet home, but death came there as
well as to Brackenhill, and seemed to
take the mainspring of the household in
taking Sarah Thorne. Her father pined
for her, and had no pleasure in life except
in her child. Even when the old
man was growing feeble, and it was manifest
to all but the boy that he would not
long be parted from his daughter, it was
a sombre but not an unhappy home for
the child. Something in the shadow
which overhung it, in his grandfather’s
weakness and his father’s silence, made
him grave and reserved, but he always
felt that he was loved. No playful home-name
was ever bestowed on the little lad,
but it did not matter, for when spoken by
Alfred Thorne no name could be so tender
as Percival.

The rector’s death when the boy was
fifteen broke up the only real home he
was destined to know, for Alfred was
unable to settle down in any place for
any length of time. While his wife and
her father were alive their influence over
him was supreme: he was like the needle
drawn aside by a powerful attraction.
But now that they were gone his thoughts
oscillated a while, and then reverted to
Brackenhill. For himself he was content—he
had made his choice long ago—but
little by little the idea grew up in
his mind that Percival was wronged, for
he, at least, was guiltless. He secretly
regretted the defiant fashion in which
his boy had been christened, and made
a feeble attempt to prove that, after all,
Percy was an old family name. He
succeeded in establishing that a “P.
Thorne” had once existed, who of
course might have been Percy, as he
might have been Peter or Paul; and he
tried to call his son Percy in memory of
this doubtful namesake. But the three
syllables were as dear to the boy as the
white flag to a Bourbon. They identified
him with the mother he dimly remembered,
and proclaimed to all the
world (that is, to his grandfather) that
for her sake he counted Brackenhill well
lost. He triumphed, and his father was
proud to be defeated. To this day
he invariably writes himself “Percival
Thorne.”

Alfred, however, had his way on a
more important point, and educated his
son for no profession, because the head
of the house needed none. Percival acquiesced
willingly enough, without a
thought of the implied protest. He was
indolent, and had little or no ambition.
Since daily bread—and, luckily, rather
more than daily bread, for he was no
ascetic—was secured to him, since books
were many and the world was wide, he
asked nothing better than to study them.
He grew up grave, dreamy and somewhat
solitary in his ways. He seemed
to have inherited something of the rector’s
Page 433self-possessed and rather formal
courtesy, and at twenty he looked older
than his age, though his face was as
smooth as a girl’s.

He was not twenty-one, when his father
died suddenly of fever. When the
news reached Brackenhill the old squire
was singularly affected by it. He had
been accustomed to contrast Alfred’s
vigorous prime with his own advanced
age, Percival’s unbroken health with
Horace’s ailing boyhood, and to think
mournfully of the probability that the
old manor-house must go to a stranger
unless he could humble himself to the
son who had defied him. But, old as he
was, he had outlived his son, and he was
dismayed at his isolation. A whole generation
was dead and gone, and the two
lads, who were all that remained of the
Thornes of Brackenhill, stood far away, as
though he stretched his trembling hands
to them across their fathers’ graves. He
expressly requested that Percival should
come and see him, and the young man
presented himself in his deep mourning.
Sissy, just sixteen, looked upon him as a
sombre hero of romance, and within two
days of his coming Mrs. Middleton announced
that her brother was “perfectly
infatuated about that boy.”

The evening of his arrival he stood
with his grandfather on the terrace looking
at the wide prospect which lay at
their feet—ample fields and meadows,
and the silvery flash of water through
the willows. Then he turned, folded
his arms and coolly surveyed Brackenhill
itself from end to end. Mr. Thorne
watched him, expecting some word, but
when none came, and Percival’s eyes
wandered upward to the soft evening
sky, where a glimmering star hung like
a lamp above the old gray manor-house,
he said, with some amusement, “Well,
and what is your opinion?”

Percival came down to earth with the
greatest promptitude: “It’s a beautiful
place. I’m glad to see it. I like looking
over old houses.”

“Like looking over old houses? As if
it were merely a show! Isn’t Brackenhill
more to you than any other old
house?” demanded Mr. Thorne.

“Oh, well, perhaps,” Percival allowed:
“I have heard my father talk of it
of course.”

“Come, come! You are not such an
outsider as all that,” said his grandfather.

The young man smiled a little, but did
not speak.

“You don’t forget you are a Thorne,
I hope?” the other went on. “There are
none too many of us.”

“No,” said Percival. “I like the old
house, and I can assure you, sir, that I
am proud of both my names.”

“Well, well! very good names. But
shouldn’t you call a man a lucky fellow
if he owned a place like this?”

“My opinion wouldn’t be half as well
worth having as yours,” was the reply.
“What do you call yourself, sir?”

“Do you think I own this place?”
Mr. Thorne inquired.

“Why, yes—I always supposed so.
Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t!” The answer was almost
a snarl. “I’m bailiff, overlooker,
anything you like to call it. My master
is at Oxford, at Christ Church. He won’t
read, and he can’t row, so he is devoting
his time to learning how to get rid of the
money I am to save up for him. I own
Brackenhill?” He faced abruptly round.
“All that timber is mine, they say; and
if I cut down a stick your aunt Middleton
is at me: ‘Think of Horace.’ The place
was mortgaged when I came into it. I
pinched and saved—I freed it—for Horace.
Why shouldn’t I mortgage it again
if I please—raise money and live royally
till my time comes, eh? They’d all be
at me, dinning ‘Horace! Horace!’ and
my duty to those who come after me,
into my ears. Look at the drawing-room
furniture!”

“The prettiest old room I ever saw,”
said Percival.

“Ah! you’re right there. But my sister
doesn’t think so. It’s shabby, she
would tell you. But does she ask me to
furnish it for her? No, no, it isn’t worth
while: mine is such a short lease. When
Horace marries and comes into his inheritance,
of course it must be done up.
It would be a pity to waste money about
it now, especially as there’s a bit of land
Page 434lies between two farms of mine, and if I
don’t go spending a lot in follies, I can
buy it. Think of that! I can buy it—for
Horace!“

Percival was guarded in his replies to
this and similar outbursts; and Mrs.
Middleton, seeing that he showed no
disposition to toady his grandfather or
to depreciate Horace, told Godfrey Hammond
that, though her brother was so
absurd about him, she thought he seemed
a good sort of young man, after all.
“Time will show,” was the answer. Now,
this was depressing, for Godfrey had established
a reputation for great sagacity.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

Abbeys And Castles.

It is a frequent reflection with the
stranger in England that the beauty
and interest of the country are private
property, and that to get access to them
a key is always needed. The key may
be large or it may be small, but it must
be something that will turn a lock. Of
the things that charm an American observer
in the land of parks and castles,
I can think of very few that do not come
under this definition of private property.
When I have mentioned the hedgerows
and the churches I have almost exhausted
the list. You can enjoy a hedgerow
from the public road, and I suppose that
even if you are a Dissenter you may enjoy
a Norman abbey from the street. If,
therefore, one talks of anything beautiful
in England, the presumption will be that
it is private; and indeed such is my admiration
of this delightful country that I
feel inclined to say that if one talks of
anything private, the presumption will be
that it is beautiful. Here is something
of a dilemma. If the observer permits
himself to commemorate charming impressions,
he is in danger of giving to
the world the fruits of friendship and
hospitality. If, on the other hand, he
withholds his impression, he lets something
admirable slip away without having
marked its passage, without having
done it proper honor. He ends by mingling
discretion with enthusiasm, and he
says to himself that it is not treating a
country ill to talk of its treasures when
the mention of each connotes, as the
metaphysicians say, an act of private
courtesy.

The impressions I have in mind in
writing these lines were gathered in a
part of England of which I had not before
had even a traveller’s glimpse; but
as to which, after a day or two, I found
myself quite ready to agree with a friend
who lived there, and who knew and loved
it well, when he said very frankly, “I do
believe it is the loveliest corner of the
world!” This was not a dictum to quarrel
about, and while I was in the neighborhood
I was quite of his mind. I felt
that it would not take a great deal to
make me care for it very much as he
cared for it: I had a glimpse of the peculiar
tenderness with which such a
country may be loved. It is a capital
example of the great characteristic of
English scenery—of what I should call
density of feature. There are no waste
details; everything in the landscape is
something particular—has a history, has
played a part, has a value to the imagination.
It is a country of hills and blue
undulations, and, though none of the hills
are high, all of them are interesting—interesting
as such things are interesting in
an old, small country, by a kind of exquisite
modulation, something suggesting
that outline and coloring have been retouched
and refined, as it were, by the
hand of Time. Independently of its castles
and abbeys, the definite relics of the
ages, such a landscape seems historic.
It has human relations, and it is intimately
Page 435conscious of them. That little
speech about the loveliness of his county,
or of his own part of his county,
was made to me by my companion as
we walked up the grassy slope of a hill,
or “edge,” as it is called there, from the
crests of which we seemed in an instant
to look away over half of England. Certainly
I should have grown fond of such
a view as that. The “edge” plunged
down suddenly, as if the corresponding
slope on the other side had been excavated,
and one might follow the long
ridge for the space of an afternoon’s walk
with this vast, charming prospect before
one’s eyes. Looking across an English
county into the next but one is a very
pretty entertainment, the county seeming
by no means so small as might be
supposed. How can a county seem
small in which, from such a vantage-point
as the one I speak of, you see, as
a darker patch across the lighter green,
the twelve thousand acres of Lord So-and-So’s
woods? Beyond these are blue
undulations of varying tone, and then
another bosky-looking spot, which you
learn to be about the same amount of
manorial umbrage belonging to Lord
Some-One-Else. And to right and left
of these, in shaded stretches, lie other
estates of equal consequence. It was
therefore not the smallness but the vastness
of the country that struck me, and
I was not at all in the mood of a certain
American who once, in my hearing, burst
out laughing at an English answer to my
inquiry as to whether my interlocutor
often saw Mr. B——. “Oh no,” the answer
had been, “we never see him: he
lives away off in the West.” It was the
western part of his county our friend
meant, and my American humorist found
matter for infinite jest in his meaning.
“I should as soon think,” he declared,
“of saying my western hand and my
eastern.”

I do not think, even, that my disposition
to form a sentimental attachment
for this delightful region—for its hillside
prospect of old red farmhouses lighting
up the dark-green bottoms, of gables and
chimney-tops of great houses peeping
above miles of woodland, and, in the
vague places of the horizon, of far-away
towns and sites that one had always
heard of—was conditioned upon having
“property” in the neighborhood, so
that the little girls in the town should
suddenly drop courtesies to me in the
street; though that too would certainly
have been pleasant. At the same time,
having a little property would without
doubt have made the sentiment stronger.
People who wander about the world
without money have their dreams—dreams
of what they would buy if their
pockets were lined. These dreams are
very apt to have relation to a good estate
in any neighborhood in which the wanderer
happens to find himself. For myself,
I have never been in a country so
unattractive that it did not seem a peculiar
felicity to be able to purchase the
most considerable house it contained.
In New England and other portions
of the United States I have coveted the
large mansion with Greek columns and
a pediment of white-painted timber: in
Italy I should have made proposals for
the yellow-walled villa with statues on
the roof. In England I have rarely gone
so far as to fancy myself in treaty for the
best house, but, short of this, I have never
failed to feel that ideal comfort for the
time would be to call one’s self owner
of what is denominated here a “good”
place. Is it that English country life
seems to possess such irresistible charms?
I have not always thought so: I have
sometimes suspected that it is dull; I
have remembered that there is a whole
literature devoted to exposing it (that
of the English novel “of manners”),
and that its recorded occupations and
conversations occasionally strike one as
lacking a certain desirable salt. But, for
all that, when, in the region to which I
allude, my companion spoke of this and
that place being likely sooner or later to
come to the hammer, it seemed as if nothing
could be more delightful than to see
the hammer fall upon an offer made by
one’s self. And this in spite of the fact
that the owners of the places in question
would part with them because they could
no longer afford to keep them up. I
found it interesting to learn, in so far as
Page 436was possible, what sort of income was
implied by the possession of country-seats
such as are not in America a concomitant
of even the largest fortunes;
and if in these interrogations I sometimes
heard of a very long rent-roll, on
the other hand I was frequently surprised
at the slenderness of the resources attributed
to people living in the depths of
an oak-studded park. Then, certainly,
English country life seemed to me the
most advantageous thing in the world:
on these terms one would gladly put up
with a little dulness. When I reflected
that there were thousands of people dwelling
in brownstone houses in numbered
streets in New York who were at as great
a cost to make a reputable appearance
in those harsh conditions as some of
the occupants of the grassy estates of
which I had a glimpse, the privileges
of the latter class appeared delightfully
cheap.

There was one place in particular
of which I said to myself that if I had
the money to buy it, I would simply
walk up to the owner and pour the sum
in sovereigns into his hat. I saw this
place, unfortunately, to small advantage:
I saw it in the rain. But I am rather
glad that fine weather did not meddle
with the affair, for I think that in this
case the irritation of envy would have
been really too acute. It was a rainy
Sunday, and the rain was serious. I had
been in the house all day, for the weather
can best be described by my saying
that it had been deemed an exoneration
from church-going. But in the afternoon,
the prospective interval between
lunch and tea assuming formidable proportions,
my host took me out to walk,
and in the course of our walk he led
me into a park which he described as
“the paradise of a small English country
gentleman.” Well it might be: I have
never seen such a collection of oaks.
They were of high antiquity and magnificent
girth and stature: they were strewn
over the grassy levels in extraordinary
profusion, and scattered upon and down
the slopes in a fashion than which I have
seen nothing more charming since I last
looked at the chestnut trees on the banks
of the Lake of Como. It appears that
the place was not very vast, but I was
unable to perceive its limits. Shortly
before we turned into the park the rain
had renewed itself, so that we were awkwardly
wet and muddy; but, being near
the house, my companion proposed to
leave his card in a neighborly way. The
house was most agreeable: it stood on a
kind of terrace in the midst of a lawn
and garden, and the terrace looked down
on one of the handsomest rivers in England,
and across to those blue undulations
of which I have already spoken.
On the terrace also was a piece of ornamental
water, and there was a small iron
paling to divide the lawn from the park.
All this I beheld in the rain. My companion
gave his card to the butler, with
the observation that we were too much
bespattered to come in; and we turned
away to complete our circuit. As we
turned away I became acutely conscious
of what I should have been tempted to
call the cruelty of this proceeding. My
imagination gauged the whole position.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and it was
raining. The house was charming, the
terrace delightful, the oaks magnificent,
the view most interesting. But the whole
thing was—not to repeat the epithet
“dull,” of which just now I made too
gross a use—the whole thing was quiet.
In the house was a drawing-room, and
in the drawing-room was—by which I
meant must be—a lady, a charming English
lady. There was, it seemed to me,
no fatuity in believing that on this rainy
Sunday afternoon it would not please
her to be told that two gentlemen had
walked across the country to her door
only to go through the ceremony of
leaving a card. Therefore, when, before
we had gone many yards, I heard the
butler hurrying after us, I felt how just
my sentiment of the situation had been.
Of course we went back, and I carried
my muddy shoes into the drawing-room—just
the drawing-room I had imagined—where
I found—I will not say just the
lady I had imagined, but—a lady even
more charming. Indeed, there were two
ladies, one of whom was staying in the
house. In whatever company you find
Page 437yourself in England, you may always be
sure that some one present is “staying.”
I seldom hear this participle now-a-days
without remembering an observation
made to me in France by a lady who
had seen much of English manners: “Ah,
that dreadful word staying! I think we
are so happy in France not to be able to
translate it—not to have any word that
answers to it.” The large windows of
the drawing-room I speak of looked away
over the river to the blurred and blotted
hills, where the rain was drizzling and
drifting. It was very quiet: there was
an air of leisure. If one wanted to do
something here, there was evidently
plenty of time—and indeed of every
other appliance—to do it. The two ladies
talked about “town:” that is what
people talk about in the country. If I
were disposed I might represent them
as talking about it with a certain air
of yearning. At all events, I asked myself
how it was possible that one should
live in this charming place and trouble
one’s head about what was going on
in London in July. Then we had excellent
tea.

I have narrated this trifling incident
because there seemed to be some connection
between it and what I was going
to say about the stranger’s sense of country
life being the normal, natural, typical
life of the English. In America, however
comfortably people may live in the
country, there is always, relatively speaking,
an air of picnicking about their
establishments. Their habitations, their
arrangements, their appointments, are
more or less provisional. They dine at
different hours from their city hours;
they wear different clothing; they spend
all their time out of doors. The English,
on the other hand, live according to the
same system in Devonshire and in Mayfair—with
the difference, perhaps, that
in Devonshire, where they have people
“staying” with them, the system is rather
more rigidly applied. The picnicking,
if picnicking there is to be, is done
in town. They keep their best things
in the country—their best books, their
best furniture, their best pictures—and
their footing in London is as provisional
as ours is at our “summer retreats.” The
English smile a good deal—or rather
would smile a good deal if they had more
observation of it—at the fashion in which
we American burghers stow ourselves
away for July and August in white wooden
boarding-houses beside dusty, ill-made
roads. But it is fair to say that
these improvised homes are not immeasurably
more barbaric than the human
entassement that takes place in London
“apartments” during the months of May
and June. Whoever has had unhappy
occasion to look for lodgings at this period,
and to explore the mysteries of the
little black houses in the West End which
have a neatly-printed card suspended in
the door-light, will admit that from the
obligation to rough it our more luxurious
kinsmen are not altogether exempt. We
rough it, certainly, more than they do,
but we rough it in the country, where
Nature herself is rough, and they rough
it in the heart of the largest and most
splendid of cities. In England, in the
country, Nature as well as civilization is
smooth, and it seems perfectly consistent,
even at midsummer, to dress for dinner;
albeit that when so costumed you cannot
conveniently lie on the grass. But
in England you do not particularly expect
to lie on the grass, especially in the
evening. The aspect of the usual English
country-houses sufficiently indicates
the absence of that informal culture of
the open air into which the American villeggiatura
generally resolves itself; and
one reason why I mentioned just now the
excellent dwelling which I visited in the
rain was that, as I approached it, it struck
me as so good an example of all that,
for American rural purposes, a house
should not be. It was indeed built of
stone, or of brick stuccoed over; which,
as they say in England, is a “great pull.”
But except that it was detached and gabled,
it belonged quite to the class of
city houses. Its walls were straight and
bare, and its windows, though wide, were
short. It might have been deposited in
Belgravia without in the least seeming
out of place: it conformed to the rigid
London model. It had no external galleries,
no breezy piazzas, no long windows
Page 438opening upon them, no doors disposed
for propagating draughts. But, indeed,
I have never seen an English house furnished
with what we call a piazza; and
I must add that I have rarely known an
English summer day on which it would
have been convenient to sit in a propagated
draught.

It seems, however, grossly unthankful
to say that English country-houses lack
anything when one has received delightful
impressions of what they possess.
What is a draughty doorway to an old
Norman portal, massively arched and
quaintly sculptured, across whose hollow
threshold the eye of fancy may see the
ghosts of monks and the shadows of abbots
pass noiselessly to and fro? What
is a paltry piazza to a beautiful ambulatory
of the thirteenth century—a long
stone gallery or cloister repeated in two
stories, with the interstices of its carven
lattice now glazed, but with its long, low,
narrow, charming vista still perfect and
picturesque—with its flags worn away by
monkish sandals, and with huge round-arched
doorways opening from its inner
side into great rooms roofed like cathedrals?
What are the longest French
windows, with the most patented latches,
to narrow casements of almost defensive
aspect set in embrasures three feet deep
and ornamented with little grotesque
mediæval faces? To see one of these
small monkish masks grinning at you
while you dress and undress, or while
you look up in the intervals of inspiration
from your letter-writing, is a simple
detail in the entertainment of living in
an ancient priory. This entertainment
is inexhaustible, for every step you take
in such a house confronts you in one
way or another with the remote past.
You feast upon picturesqueness, you inhale
history. Adjoining the house is a
beautiful ruin, part of the walls and windows
and bases of the piers of the magnificent
church administered by your
predecessor the abbot. These relics are
very desultory, but they are still abundant,
and they testify to the great scale
and the stately beauty of the abbey.
You may lie upon the grass at the base
of an ivied fragment, measure the girth
of the great stumps of the central columns,
half smothered in soft creepers,
and think how strange it is that in this
quiet hollow, in the midst of lonely hills,
so exquisite and elaborate a work of art
should have arisen. It is but an hour’s
walk to another great ruin, which has
held together more completely. There
the central tower stands erect to half
its altitude, and the round arches and
massive pillars of the nave make a perfect
vista on the unencumbered turf.
You get an impression that when Catholic
England was in her prime great abbeys
were as thick as milestones. By
native amateurs, even now, the region is
called “wild,” though to American eyes
it seems thoroughly suburban in its
smoothness and finish. There is a noiseless
little railway running through the
valley, and there is an ancient little town
at the abbey gates—a town, indeed, with
no great din of vehicles, but with goodly
brick houses, with a dozen “publics,”
with tidy, whitewashed cottages, and
with little girls, as I have said, bobbing
courtesies in the street. But even now,
if one had wound one’s way into the
valley by the railroad, it would be rather
a surprise to find a small ornamental cathedral
in a spot on the whole so natural
and pastoral. How impressive then must
the beautiful church have been in the
days of its prosperity, when the pilgrim
came down to it from the grassy hillside
and its bells made the stillness sensible!
The abbey was in those days a great
affair: as my companion said, it sprawled
all over the place. As you walk
away from it you think you have got to
the end of its traces, but you encounter
them still in the shape of a rugged outhouse
grand with an Early-English arch,
or an ancient well hidden in a kind of
sculptured cavern. It is noticeable that
even if you are a traveller from a land
where there are no Early-English—and
indeed few Late-English—arches, and
where the well-covers are, at their hoariest,
of fresh-looking shingles, you grow
used with little delay to all this antiquity.
Anything very old seems extremely natural:
there is nothing we accept so implicitly
as the past. It is not too much
Page 439to say that after spending twenty-four
hours in a house that is six hundred years
old, you seem yourself to have lived in
it for six hundred years. You seem yourself
to have hollowed the flags with your
tread and to have polished the oak with
your touch. You walk along the little
stone gallery where the monks used to
pace, looking out of the Gothic window-places
at their beautiful church, and you
pause at the big round, rugged doorway
that admits you to what is now the
drawing-room. The massive step by
which you ascend to the threshold is a
trifle crooked, as it should be: the lintels
are cracked and worn by the myriad-fingered
years. This strikes your casual
glance. You look up and down the
miniature cloister before you pass in: it
seems wonderfully old and queer. Then
you turn into the drawing-room, where
you find modern conversation and late
publications and the prospect of dinner.
The new life and the old have melted
together: there is no dividing-line. In
the drawing-room wall is a queer funnel-shaped
hole, with the broad end inward,
like a small casemate. You ask a lady
what it is, but she doesn’t know. It is
something of the monks: it is a mere
detail. After dinner you are told that
there is of course a ghost—a gray friar
who is seen in the dusky hours at the
end of passages. Sometimes the servants
see him, and afterward go surreptitiously
to sleep in the town. Then,
when you take your chamber-candle
and go wandering bedward by a short
cut through empty rooms, you are conscious
of a peculiar sensation which you
hardly know whether to interpret as a
desire to see the gray friar or as an apprehension
that you will see him.

A friend of mine, an American, who
knew this country, had told me not to
fail, while I was in the neighborhood, to
go to S——. “Edward I. and Elizabeth,”
he said, “are still hanging about there.”
Thus admonished, I made a point of going
to S——, and I saw quite what my
friend meant. Edward I. and Elizabeth,
indeed, are still to be met almost anywhere
in the county: as regards domestic
architecture, few parts of England are still
more vividly Old English. I have rarely
had, for a couple of hours, the sensation
of dropping back personally into the
past in a higher degree than while I lay
on the grass beside the well in the little
sunny court of this small castle, and idly
appreciated the still definite details of
mediæval life. The place is a capital
example of what the French call a small
gentilhommière of the thirteenth century.
It has a good deep moat, now filled with
wild verdure, and a curious gatehouse of
a much later period—the period when
the defensive attitude had been wellnigh
abandoned. This gatehouse, which is
not in the least in the style of the habitation,
but gabled and heavily timbered,
with quaint cross-beams protruding from
surfaces of coarse white stucco, is a very
picturesque anomaly in regard to the little
gray fortress on the other side of the
court. I call this a fortress, but it is a
fortress which might easily have been
taken, and it must have assumed its
present shape at a time when people
had ceased to peer through narrow slits
at possible besiegers. There are slits in
the outer walls for such peering, but they
are noticeably broad and not particularly
oblique, and might easily have been
applied to the uses of a peaceful parley.
This is part of the charm of the place:
human life there must have lost an earlier
grimness: it was lived in by people
who were beginning to feel comfortable.
They must have lived very much together:
that is one of the most obvious reflections
in the court of a mediæval dwelling.
The court was not always grassy
and empty, as it is now, with only a couple
of gentlemen in search of impressions
lying at their length, one of whom has
taken a wine-flask out of his pocket and
has colored the clear water drawn for
them out of the well in a couple of tumblers
by a decent, rosy, smiling, talking
old woman, who has come bustling out of
the gatehouse, and who has a large, dropsical,
innocent husband standing about
on crutches in the sun and making no
sign when you ask after his health. This
poor man has reached that ultimate depth
of human simplicity at which even a
chance to talk about one’s ailments is
Page 440not appreciated. But the civil old woman
talks for every one, even for an
artist who has come out of one of the
rooms, where I see him afterward reproducing
its mouldering quaintness. The
rooms are all unoccupied and in a state
of extreme decay, though the castle is,
as yet, far from being a ruin. From one
of the windows I see a young lady sitting
under a tree across a meadow, with
her knees up, dipping something into her
mouth. It is a camel’s hair paint-brush:
the young lady is sketching. These are
the only besiegers to which the place is
exposed now, and they can do no great
harm, as I doubt whether the young
lady’s aim is very good. We wandered
about the empty interior, thinking it a
pity things should be falling so to pieces.
There is a beautiful great hall—great,
that is, for a small castle (it would be
extremely handsome in a modern house)—with
tall, ecclesiastical-looking windows,
and a long staircase at one end
climbing against the wall into a spacious
bedroom. You may still apprehend very
well the main lines of that simpler life;
and it must be said that, simpler though
it was, it was apparently by no means destitute
of many of our own conveniences.
The chamber at the top of the staircase
ascending from the hall is charming still,
with its irregular shape, its low-browed
ceiling, its cupboards in the walls, and
its deep bay window formed of a series
of small lattices. You can fancy people
stepping out from it upon the platform
of the staircase, whose rugged wooden
logs, by way of steps, and solid, deeply-guttered
hand-rail, still remain. They
looked down into the hall, where, I take
it, there was always a certain congregation
of retainers, much lounging and
waiting and passing to and fro, with a
door open into the court. The court,
as I said just now, was not the grassy,
æsthetic spot which you may find it at
present of a summer’s day: there were
beasts tethered in it, and hustling men-at-arms,
and the earth was trampled into
puddles. But my lord or my lady, looking
down from the chamber-door, could
pick out the man wanted and bawl down
an order, with a threat to fling something
at his head if it were not instantly performed.
The sight of the groups on the
floor beneath, the calling up and down,
the oaken tables spread, and the brazier
in the middle,—all this seemed present
again; and it was not difficult to pursue
the historic vision through the rest of the
building—through the portion which connected
the great hall with the tower (here
the confederate of the sketching young
lady without had set up the peaceful
three-legged engine of his craft); through
the dusky, roughly circular rooms of the
tower itself, and up the corkscrew staircase
of the same to that most charming
part of every old castle, where visions
must leap away off the battlements to
elude you—the sunny, breezy platform
at the tower-top, the place where the
castle-standard hung and the vigilant
inmates surveyed the approaches. Here,
always, you really overtake the impression
of the place—here, in the sunny
stillness, it seems to pause, panting a
little, and give itself up.

It was not only at Stokesay—I have
written the name at last, and I will not
efface it—that I lingered a while on the
quiet platform of the keep to enjoy the
complete impression so overtaken. I
spent such another half hour at Ludlow,
which is a much grander and more famous
monument. Ludlow, however, is
a ruin—the most impressive and magnificent
of ruins. The charming old town
and the admirable castle form a capital
object of pilgrimage. Ludlow is an excellent
example of a small English provincial
town that has not been soiled and
disfigured by industry: I remember there
no tall chimneys and smoke-streamers,
with their attendant purlieus and slums.
The little city is perched upon a hill near
which the goodly Severn wanders, and
it has a noticeable air of civic dignity.
Its streets are wide and clean, empty
and a little grass-grown, and bordered
with spacious, soberly-ornamental brick
houses, which look as if there had been
more going on in them in the first decade
of the century than there is in the
present, but which can still, nevertheless,
hold up their heads and keep their
window-panes clear, their knockers brilliant
Page 441and their doorsteps whitened. The
place looks as if seventy years ago it had
been the centre of a large provincial society,
and as if that society had been very
“good of its kind.” It must have transported
itself to Ludlow for the season—in
rumbling coaches and heavyish curricles—and
there entertained itself in decent
emulation of that metropolis which a
choice of railway-lines had not as yet
placed within its immediate reach. It
had balls at the assembly-rooms; it had
Mrs. Siddons to play; it had Catalani to
sing. Miss Austin’s and Miss Edgeworth’s
heroines might perfectly well have had
their first love-affair there: a journey
to Ludlow would certainly have been a
great event to Fanny Price or Anne
Eliot, to Helen or Belinda. It is a place
on which a provincial “gentry” has left
a sensible stamp. I have seldom seen
so good a collection of houses of the
period between the elder picturesqueness
and the modern baldness. Such places,
such houses, such relics and intimations,
always carry me back to the near antiquity
of that pre-Victorian England
which it is still easy for a stranger to picture
with a certain vividness, thanks to
the partial survival of many of its characteristics.
It is still easy for a stranger
who has stayed a while in England to
form an idea of the tone, the habits, the
aspect of English social life before its
classic insularity had begun to wane,
as all observers agree that it did, about
thirty years ago. It is true that the mental
operation in this matter reduces itself
to fancying some of the things which
form what Mr. Matthew Arnold would
call the peculiar “notes” of England infinitely
exaggerated—the rigidly aristocratic
constitution of society, for instance;
the unæsthetic temper of the people; the
private character of most kinds of comfort
and entertainment. Let an old gentleman
of conservative tastes, who can
remember the century’s youth, talk to
you at a club temporis acti—tell you
wherein it is that from his own point of
view London, as a residence for a gentleman,
has done nothing but fall off for
the last forty years. You will listen, of
course, with an air of decent sympathy,
but privately you will be saying to yourself
how difficult a place of sojourn London
must have been in those days for a
stranger—how little cosmopolitan, how
bound, in a thousand ways, with narrowness
of custom. What is true of the metropolis
at that time is of course doubly
true of the provinces; and a genteel little
city like the one I am speaking of
must have been a kind of focus of insular
propriety. Even then, however,
the irritated alien would have had the
magnificent ruins of the castle to dream
himself back into good-humor in. They
would effectually have transported him
beyond all waning or waxing Philistinisms.

Ludlow Castle is an example of a
great feudal fortress, as the little castellated
manor I spoke of a while since is
an example of a small one. The great
courtyard at Ludlow is as large as the
central square of a city, but now it is
all vacant and grassy, and the day I was
there a lonely old horse was tethered and
browsing in the middle of it. The place
is in extreme dilapidation, but here and
there some of its more striking features
have held well together, and you may
get a very sufficient notion of the immense
scale upon which things were ordered
in the day of its strength. It must
have been garrisoned with a small army,
and the vast enceinte must have enclosed
a stalwart little world. Such an impression
of thickness and duskiness as one
still gets from fragments of partition and
chamber—such a sense of being well behind
something, well out of the daylight
and its dangers—of the comfort of the
time having been security, and security
incarceration! There are prisons within
the prison—horrible unlighted caverns
of dismal depth, with holes in the roof
through which Heaven knows what
odious refreshment was tossed down to
the poor groping détenu. There is nothing,
surely, that paints one side of the
Middle Ages more vividly than this fact
that fine people lived in the same house
with their prisoners, and kept the key in
their pocket. Fancy the young ladies
of the family working tapestry in their
“bower” with the knowledge that at the
Page 442bottom of the corkscrew staircase one
of their papa’s enemies was sitting month
after month in mouldy midnight! But
Ludlow Castle has brighter associations
than these, the chief of which I should
have mentioned at the outset. It was
for a long period the official residence of
the governors—the “lords presidents”
they were called—of the Marches of
Wales, and it was in the days of its
presidential splendor that Milton’s Comus
was acted in the great hall. Wandering
about in shady corners of the ruin,
it is the echo of that enchanting verse
that we should try to catch, and not the
faint groans of some encaverned malefactor.
Other verse was also produced
at Ludlow—verse, however, of a less
sonorous quality. A portion of Samuel
Butler’s Hudibras was composed there.
Let me add that the traveller who spends
a morning at Ludlow will naturally have
come thither from Shrewsbury, of which
place I have left myself no space to
speak, though it is worth, and well worth,
an allusion. Shrewsbury is a museum
of beautiful old gabled, cross-timbered
house-fronts.

H. James, Jr.

Little Lizay.

Alston was a Virginia slave—a tall,
well-built half-breed, in whom the
white blood dominated the black. When
about thirty-seven years of age he was
sold to a Mississippi plantation, in the
north-western part of the State and on
the river. The farm was managed by an
overseer, the master—Horton by name—being
a practising physician in Memphis,
Tenn. Alston had been on the plantation
a few weeks when, toward the last
of September, the cotton-picking season
opened. The year had been, for the
river-plantations, exceptionally favorable
for cotton-growing. On the Horton place
especially “the stand” had been pronounced
perfect, there being scarcely a
gap, scarcely a stalk missing from the
mile-long rows of the broad fields. Then,
the rainfall had not been so profuse as to
develop foliage at the bolls’ expense, as
was too frequently the case on the river.
Yet it had been plenteous enough to keep
off the “rust,” from which the dryer upland
plantations were now suffering. Neither
the “boll-worm” nor the dreaded
“army-worm” had molested the river-fields;
so the tall pyramidal plants were
thickly set with “squares” and green
egg-shaped bolls, smooth and shining
as with varnish. On a single stalk might
be seen all stages of development—from
the ripe, brown boll, parted starlike, with
the long white fleece depending, to the
bean-sized embryo from which the crimson
flower had but just fallen. Indeed,
among the wide-open bolls there was an
occasional flower, cream-hued or crimson
according to its age, for the cotton-bloom
at opening resembles in color the
magnolia-blossom, but this changes quickly
to a deep crimson.

There was, then, the promise, almost
the certainty, of a heavy crop on the
Horton place. It was in view of this
that the owner completed an arrangement,
for months under consideration,
in which he increased his working plantation-force
by thirteen hands, of whom
one was Alston. It was, too, in view of
this promised heavy crop that the overseer,
Mr. Buck, harangued the slaves at
the opening of the picking-season. The
burden of his harangue was, that no
flagging would be tolerated in cotton-gathering
during the season. The figures
of the past year were on record,
showing what each hand did each day.
There was to be no falling behind these
figures: indeed, they must be beaten,
for the heavier bolling made the picking
easier. Any one falling behind was to
Page 443be cowhided. As for the new hands,
they ought to lead the field, for they were
all young, stout fellows.

As has been said, Alston was tall,
strong, well-made. Working in tobacco,
to whose culture he had been used, he
could hold his hand with the best: how
would it be in this new business of cotton-picking?
He had a strong element of
cheerful fidelity in his nature. The first
day he worked steadily and as rapidly
as he was able at the unfamiliar employment.
When night came he reckoned
he had done well. With a complacent
feeling he stood waiting his turn as the
great baskets, one after another, were
swung on the steelyard and the weights
announced. He found himself pitying
some of the pickers as light weights were
called, wondering if they had fallen behind
last year’s figures. When his basket
was brought forward, it was by Big Sam,
who with one hand swung it lightly to the
scales; yet Alston’s thought was, “How
strong Big Sam is!” and never, “How
light the basket!”

The weight was announced: Alston
was almost stunned. He had strained
every nerve, yet here he was behind the
children-pickers, behind the gray old women
stiff with rheumatism and broken
with childbearing and with doing men’s
work.

“Sixty-three pounds!” the overseer
said with a threatening tone. “Min’ yer
git a heap higher’n that ter-morrer, yer
yaller raskel! Ef yer can’t pick cotton,
yer’ll be sol’ down in Louzany to a sugar-plantation,
whar’ niggers don’t git nothin’
ter eat ‘cept cotton-seeds an’ a few dreggy
lasses.”

Next to being sent to “the bad place”
itself, the most terrible fate, to the negro’s
imagination, was to be sold to a sugar-planter.

“Here’s Big Sam,” the overseer continued,
“nigh unto three hunderd; an’ Little
Lizay two hunderd an’ fawty-seven.—That’s
the bigges’ figger yer’s ever struck
yit, Lizay: shows what yer kin do. Min’
yer come up ter it ter-morrer an’ ev’ry
other day.”

“Days gits shawter ’bout Chrismus-time,”
Little Lizay ventured to suggest,
“an’ it gits col’, an’ my fingers ain’t
limber.”

“Don’t give me none yer jaw. Reckon
I knows ’nuff ter make ‘lowances fer
col’ an’ shawt days an’ scatterin’ bolls
an’ sich like.”

The next day, Alston, humiliated by
his failure and by the brutal reprimand
he had received, went to the cotton-field
before any of the other hands—indeed,
before it was fairly light. There he worked
if ever a man did work. When the
other negroes came on the field there
were laughing, talking, singing, nodding
and occasional napping in the shade of
the cotton-stalks. But Alston took no
part in any of these. He had no interest
for anything apart from his work.
At this all his faculties were engaged.
His lithe body was seen swaying from
side to side about the widespreading
branches; he stood on tiptoe to reach
the topmost bolls; he got on his knees to
work the base-limbs, pressing down and
away the long grass with his broad feet,
tearing and holding back even with his
teeth hindering tendrils of the passion-flower
and morning-glory and other
creepers which had escaped the devastating
hoe when the crop was “laid by,”
and had made good their hold on occasional
stalks. Persistently he worked in
this intent way all through the hot day,
every muscle in action. He lingered at
the work till after the last of the other
pickers had with great baskets poised on
head joined the long, weird procession,
showing white in the dusk, that went
winding through field and lane to the
ginhouse. On he worked till the crescent
moon came up and he could hardly
discern fleece from leaf. At last, fearing
that the basket-weighing might be
ended before he could reach the ginhouse,
a half mile distant, he emptied
his pick-sack, belted at his waist, into
the tall barrel-like basket, tramped the
cotton with a few movements of his bare
feet, and then kneeling got the basket to
his shoulder: he was not used to the
balancing on head which seemed natural
as breathing to the old hands. With
long strides he hurried to the ginhouse.
He was not a minute too early. Almost
Page 444the last basket had been weighed, emptied
and stacked when he climbed the
ladder-like steps to the scaffold where
the cotton was sunned preparatory to
its ginning. When he had pushed his
way through the crowd of negroes hanging
about the door of the ginhouse-loft
he heard the overseer call, “Whar’s that
yaller whelp, Als’on?”

“Here, sah,” Alston answered, hurrying
forward to put his basket on the
steelyard.

“Give me any mo’ yer jaw an’ I’ll lay
yer out with the butt-en’ er this whip,”
said Mr. Buck. Alston was wondering
what he had said that was disrespectful,
when the man added, “Won’t have none
yer sahrin’ uv me. I’s yer moster, an’
that’s what yer’s got ter call me, I let
yer know.”

Alston’s blood was up, but the slaves
were used to self-repression. All that
was endurable in their lives depended
on patience and submission.

“Beg poddon, moster,” Alston said
with well-assumed meekness. “In Ol’
Virginny we use ter say moster to jist our
sho’-’nuff owners; but,” he added quickly,
by way of mollifying the overseer,
who could not fail to be stung by the
covert jeer, “it’s a heap better ter say
moster ter all the white folks, white
trash an’ all: then yer’s sho’ ter be
right.”

At this speech there was in Mr. Buck’s
rear much grinning and eye-rolling.

But Mr. Buck was engaged with Alston’s
basket, which was now on the
scales. “Sixty-seven poun’s,” the overseer
called.

The slave’s heart sank: only four
pounds’ gain after all his toil early and
late! He was bitterly disappointed. He
believed the overseer lied. Then his
heart burned. Couldn’t he leave his
basket unemptied, and weigh it himself
when the others were gone? No: the
order of routine was peremptory. The
baskets must be emptied and stacked on
the scaffold outside the cotton-loft, so that
there would be no chance the next morning
for the negroes to take away cotton
in their baskets to the fields. And what
if he could reweigh his cotton, and prove
Mr. Buck a liar? He would not dare
breathe the discovery.

So Alston emptied out the cotton he
had worked so hard to gather, listening
moodily to the overseer’s harsh threats:
“Yer reckon I’s goin’ to stan’ sich figgers?
Sixty-seven poun’s! fou’ poun’s
‘head uv yistiddy. Yer ought ter be
fawty ahead. I won’t look at nothin’
under a hunderd. Ef yer don’t get it
ter-morrer I’ll tie yer up, sho’s yer bawn,
yer great merlatto dog! Yer’s ‘hin’ the
poo’es’ gal in the fiel’.”

“I never pick no cotton ‘fo’ yistiddy,
an’ its tolerbul unhandy. Rickon I kin
do better when I gits my han’ in. I use ter
could wuck fus’-rate in tobaccy.”

“Tobaccy won’t save yer. We hain’t
got no use for niggers ef they can’t come
up ter the scratch on cotton. I’s made
a big crop, an’ I ain’t goin’ ter let it rot
in the fiel’. Yer ought ter pick three
hunderd ev’ry day. I know’d a nigger
onct, a heap littler than Little Lizay, that
picked five hunderd ev’ry lick; an’ I
hearn tell uv a feller that went up ter
seven hunderd. I ain’t goin’ ter take
no mo’ sixties from yer: a good hunderd
or the cowhide. That’s the talk!”

“I’ll pick all I kin,” said Alston: “I
wuckt haud’s I could ter-day.”

“Ef yer don’t hush yer lyin’ mouth
I’ll cut yer heart out.”

Alston went from the gin-loft, his blood
tingling. On the sunning-scaffold he encountered
Little Lizay. She had been
listening—had heard all that had passed
between the two men. She went down
the scaffold-steps, and Alston came soon
after. She waited for him, and they walked
to the “quarter” together. “It’s
mighty haud, ain’t it?” she said.

“I believe he tol’ a lie ’bout my baskit.
Anyhow, I wuckt haud’s I could ter-day.
I can’t pick no hunderd poun’s uv the
flimpsy stuff. He’ll have ter cowhide
me: I don’t kere.”

But Alston did care keenly—not so
much for the pain; he could bear worse
misery than the brutal arm could inflict,
though the rawhide cut like a dull knife;
but it was the shame, the disgrace, of the
thing. He was a stranger on the place—only
a few weeks there—and to be tied
Page 445up and flogged in the midst of strange,
unsympathizing negroes! it was such
degradation to his manhood. Since he
was a child he had not been struck.
He had been rather a favorite with his
master in Virginia, but this master had
died in debt, leaving numerous heirs,
and in the changes incident to a partition
of the estate Alston was sold.

Perceiving that he had Little Lizay’s
sympathy, Alston went on talking, telling
her that he could stand a lashing coming
from his own master, but that an overseer
was only white trash, who never did
“own a nigger,” and never would be
able to. If he had to be flogged, he
wanted it to be by a gentleman.

“Never min’,” said Little Lizay. “Maybe
yer’ll git mo’ ter-morrer. When yer’s
pickin’ yer mus’ quit stoppin’ ter pick
out the leaves an’ trash. I lets ev’rything
go in that happens, green bolls
an’ all: they weighs heavy.”

The following day, Alston, as before,
went to the cotton-field early, but he
found that Little Lizay had the start of
him. She had already emptied her sack
into her pick-basket. “The cotton we
get now’ll weigh heavy,” she said: “it’s
got dew on it.”

“That’s so,” Alston assented, “but yer
mus’n’t talk ter me, Lizay. I’s got ter
put all my min’ ter my wuck: I can’t foad
ter talk.”

“I can’t nuther,” said Lizay. “Wish
I didn’t pick so much cotton the fus’ day:
I’s got ter keep on trottin’ ter two hunderd
an’ fawty-seven.”

She selected two rows beside Alston’s.
She wore a coarse dress of uncolored
homespun cotton, of the plainest and
scantiest make, low in the neck, short in
the sleeves and skirt. Her feet and head
were bare. A sack of like material with
her dress was tied about the waist, apron-like.
This was to receive immediately
the pickings from the hand. When filled
it was emptied in a pick-basket, holding
with a little packing fifty or sixty
pounds. This small basket was kept in
the picker’s vicinity, being moved forward
whenever the sack was taken back
for emptying. Besides this go-between
pick-basket, there was at that end of the
row nearest the ginhouse an immense
basket, nearly as tall as a barrel, and of
greater circumference, with a capacity
for three hundred pounds.

Alston’s pick-basket stood beside Little
Lizay’s, and between his row and hers.
She was carrying two rows to his one, and
he perceived, without looking and with
a vague envy, that Lizay emptied three
sacks at least to his one. Yet she did not
seem to be working half as hard as he
was. With light, graceful movements,
now right, now left, she plucked the white
tufts and the candelabra-like pendants
stretched by the wind and the expanding
lint till the dark seed could be discerned
in clusters.

It was near nine o’clock when Alston
emptied his first sack, some fifteen
pounds, in the pick-basket, which Little
Lizay had brought forward with her own.
Soon after she went back to empty her
sack. The baskets stood hazardously
near Alston for Lizay’s game, but with
her back turned to him and the luxuriant
cotton-stalks between she reckoned she
might venture. One-third of her sack
she threw into Alston’s basket—about
five pounds. And thus the poor soul
did during the day, giving a third of her
gatherings to Alston. She would have
given him more—the half, the whole,
everything she owned—for she regarded
him with a feeling that would have been
called love in a fairer woman.

Alston had been in Virginia something
of a house-servant, doing occasional duty
as coachman when the regular official
was ill or was wanted elsewhere. He
was also a good table-waiter, and had
served in the dining-room when there
were guests. So it came that though
properly a field-hand, yet in manner and
speech he showed to advantage beside the
slaves who were exclusively field-hands.
Little Lizay too occupied a halfway place
between these and the better-spoken,
gentler-mannered house-servants. In
the winters, after Christmas, which usually
terminated the picking-season, Lizay
was called to the place of head assistant
of the plantation seamstress. Indeed,
she did little field-service except in times
of special pressure and during the quarter
Page 446of cotton-picking. She was so nimble-fingered
and swift that she could not be
spared from the field in picking-season,
especially if, as was the case this year,
there was a heavy crop. And occasionally
in the winter, when there was unusual
company at the Hortons’ in the
city, Little Lizay was sent for and had
the advantage of a season in town. She
felt her superiority to the average plantation-negro,
and had not married, though
not unsolicited. When, therefore, Alston
came she at once recognized in him a
companion, and she was not long in
making over her favor to the distinguished-looking
stranger. He was, as she, a
half-breed, and Lizay liked her own color.
Had Alston courted her favor, she might
have yielded it less readily, but he did
not take easily to his new companions.
Some called him proud: others reckoned
he had left a sweetheart, a wife perhaps,
in Virginia. Little Lizay’s evident preference
laid her open to the rude jokes
and sneers of the other negroes—in particular
Big Sam, who was her suitor, and
Edny Ann, who was fond of Alston.
But Edny Ann did not care for Alston
as Little Lizay did—could not, indeed.
She was incapable of the devotion that
Lizay felt. She would not have left her
sleep and gone to the dew-wet field before
daybreak for the sake of helping
Alston: she would not have taken the
risk of falling behind in her picking, and
thus incurring a flogging, by dividing her
gatherings with him. And if she had helped
him at all, it would not have been delicately,
as Lizay’s help had been given.
Edny Ann would have wanted Alston to
know that she had helped him: Little
Lizay wished to hide it from him, both
because she feared he would decline her
help, and because she wanted to spare
him the humiliation.

When night came not only Alston lingered,
picking by moonlight, but Little
Lizay; and this gave rise to much laughing
among the other pickers, and to many
coarse jokes. But to one who knew her
secret it would have seemed piteous—the
girl’s anxious face as the weighing proceeded,
drawing on and on to Alston’s
basket and hers at the very end of the
line. Would he have a hundred? would
she fall behind? Would he be saved
the flogging? would she have to suffer
in his stead? She dreaded a flogging at
the hands of that brutal overseer, and
all her womanliness shrunk from the
degradation of being stripped and flogged
in Alston’s presence, or even of
having him know that she was to be
cowhided. She bethought her of making
an appeal to the overseer. She knew
she had some power with him, for he had
been enamored, in his brutish way, of
her physical charms—her neat figure,
her glossy, waving hair, and the small,
shapely hand and foot.

Just before the weighing had reached
Alston’s basket and hers she stepped beside
the overseer. “Please, Mos’ Buck,”
she said in a low tone, “ef I falls ‘hin’
myse’f, an’ don’t git up to them fus’ figgers,
an’ has to git cowhided—please,
sah, don’t let the black folks an’ Als’on
know ’bout it.”

Mr. Buck took a hint from this request.
He perceived that Lizay was interested in
Alston, as he had already guessed from
the jokes of the negroes, and that she
was specially desirous to conceal her
shame from the man to whom she had
given her favor. Mr. Buck resented it
that Lizay should rebuff him and encourage
Alston; so he hoped that for this
once, at any rate, she would fall behind:
he had thought of a capital plan of revenging
himself on her.

The next moment after her whispered
appeal Lizay saw with intense interest
Alston’s basket brought forward for
weighing. She glanced at him. His
eyes were wide open, staring with eagerness,
his head advanced, his whole attitude
one of absorbed anxiety. By the
position of the weight or pea on the steelyard
she knew that it was put somewhere
near the sixty notch. Up flew
the end of the yard, and up flew Lizay’s
heart with it: out went the pea some ten
teeth, yet up again went the impatient
steel. Click! click! click! rattled the
weight. Out and out another ten notches,
then another and another—one hundred,
one hundred and one, one hundred and
two, one hundred and three—yet the
Page 447yard still protested, still called for more.
Out one tooth farther, and the steel lay
along the horizon. Everybody listened.

“One hunderd an’ fou’,” Mr. Buck
announced. “Thar’ now, yer lazy dog!
I know’d yer wasn’t half wuckin’. Now
see ter it yer come ter taw arter this:
hunderd an’ fou’s yer notch.”

It was a moment of supreme relief to
Alston. He drew a long breath, and
returned some smiles of congratulation
from the negroes. Then he sighed: he
felt hopeless of repeating the weight day
after day. He had hardly stopped to
breathe from day-dawn till moon-rise:
he would not always have the friendly
moonlight to help him. But now Little
Lizay’s basket was swinging. He listened
to hear its weight with interest,
but how unlike this was to the absorbed
anxiety which she had felt for him!

“Two hunderd an’ ‘leven—thutty-six
poun’s behin’!” said Mr. Buck, smacking
his lips as over some good thing.
Now he should have vent for his spite
against the girl. “Thutty-six lashes on
yer bar’ back by yer sweet’art.” Mr.
Buck said this with a dreadful snicker
in Little Lizay’s face.

The word ran like wildfire from mouth
to mouth that Little Lizay, the famous
picker, had fallen behind, and was to
be flogged—by the overseer, some said—by
Big Sam, others declared. But Edny
Ann reckoned the cowhiding was to be
done by Alston.

“An’ her dersarves it, kase her’s a big
fool,” said Edny Ann, “hangin’ roun’
him, an’ patchin’ his cloze like her wus
morred ter ‘im—an’ washin’ his shut an’
britches ev’ry Saddy night.”

All the hands were required to stop
after the weighing and witness the floggings,
as a warning to themselves and
an enhancement of punishment to the
convicts. There was but little shrinking
from the sight. Human nature is
everywhere much the same: cruel spectacles
brutalize, whether in Spain or on
a negro-plantation. But to-night there
was a new sensation: the slaves were on
the qui vive to see Little Lizay flogged,
and to find out whose hand was to wield
the whip.

“Now hurry up yere, yer lazy raskels!
an’ git yer floggin’,” Mr. Buck said when
the weighing was over.

From right and left and front and rear
negroes came forward and stood, a motley
group, before the one white man. It
was a weird spectacle that did not seem
to belong to our earth. Black faces,
heads above heads, crowded at the doorway—some
solemn and sympathetic,
others grinning in anticipation of the
show. Negroes were perched on the
gin and in the corners of the loft where
the cotton was heaped. Others lay at
full length close to the field of action.
In every direction the dusky figures dotted
the cotton lying on every hand about
the little cleared space where the flogging
and weighing were done. In a close
bunch stood the shrinking, cowering convicts,
some with heads white as the cotton
all about them. Mr. Buck, the most
picturesque figure of the whole, was laying
off his coat and baring his arm,
standing under the solitary lamp depending
from the rafters, whose faint
light served to give to all the scene an
indefinite supernatural aspect.

“Now, come out yere,” said Mr. Buck,
moving from under the grease-lamp and
calling for volunteers.

One by one the negroes came forward
and bared themselves to the waist—children,
strong men and old women. And
then there was shrieking and wailing,
begging and praying: it was like a leaf
out of hell.

Little Lizay was among the first of the
condemned to present herself, for she
felt an intolerable suspense as to what
awaited her. The vague terror in her
face was discerned by the dim light.

As she stepped forward Mr. Buck called
out, “Als’on!”

“Yes, moster,” Alston answered.

“What yer sneakin’ in that thar’ corner
fer? Come up yere, you—” but his
vile sentence shall not be finished here.

Alston came forward with a statuesque
face.

“Take this rawhide,” was the order he
received.

He put out his hand, and then, suddenly
realizing the requisition that was
Page 448to be made on him, realizing that he was
to flog Little Lizay, his confidante and
sympathizing friend, his hand dropped
cold and limp.

“Yerdar’ ter dis’bey me?” Mr. Buck
bellowed. “I’ll brain yer: I’ll—”

“I didn’t go ter do it, moster,” Alston
said, reaching for the whip. “I’ll whip
her tell yer tells me ter stop.”

“He didn’t go ter do it, Mos’ Buck,”
pleaded Little Lizay, frightened for Alston.
“He’ll whip me ef yer’ll give ‘im
the whip.—I’s ready, Als’on.”

She crossed her arms over her bare
bosom and shook her long hair forward:
then dropped her face low and stood with
her back partly turned to Alston, who
now had the whip.

“Fire away!” said the overseer.

Alston was not a refined gentleman,
whose youth had been hedged from the
coarse and degrading, whose good instincts
had been cherished, whose faculties
had been harmoniously trained.
He was not a hero: he was not prepared
to espouse to the death Little Lizay’s
cause—to risk everything for the shrinking,
helpless woman and for his own
manhood—to die rather than strike her.
He was only a slave, used from his cradle
to the low and cruel and brutalizing.
But he had the making of a man in him:
his nature was one that could never become
utterly base. But there was no
help, no hope, for either of them in anything
he could do. He might knock
Mr. Buck senseless, sure of the sympathy
of every slave on the plantation.
There would be a brief triumph, but he
and Little Lizay would have to pay for it:
bloodhounds, scourgings, chains, cruelty
that never slept and could never be placated,
were sure as fate. Resistance was
inevitable disaster.

Alston did not need to stand there
undetermined while he went over this:
it was familiar ground. Over and over
again he had settled it: it was madness
for the slave to oppose himself to the
dominant white man.

So, after his first unreasoning recoil,
his mind was decided to adminster the
flogging. Would it not be a mercy to
Little Lizay for him to do this rather
than that other hand, energized by hate,
revenge and cruelty?

He raised his arm, with his heart beating
hot and his manhood shrinking: he
struck Little Lizay’s bare shoulders. She
had nerved herself, but the blow, after
all, surprised her and made her start;
and she had not quite recovered herself
when the second blow fell, so that she
winced again; but after that she stood
like a statue.

“Harder!” cried Mr. Buck after the
first few lashes. “None yer tomfool’ry
’bout me. She ain’t no baby. Harder!
I tell yer. Yer ain’t draw’d no blood
nary time. Ef yer don’t min’ me I’ll
knock yer down. Yer whips like yer
wus ‘feard yer’d hurt ‘er. Yer ac’ like
yer never whipped no nigger sence yer
wus bawn. Yer’s got ter tiptoe ter it,
an’ fling yer arm back at a better lick
‘an that. Look yere: ef yer don’t lick
her harder I’ll make Big Sam lick yer
till yer see sights.”

At length the wretched work was ended,
and the negroes made their way
along the moonlighted lanes to their
cabins. These were single rooms, built
of unhewn logs, chinked and daubed
with yellow mud. They had puncheon
floors and chimneys built of sticks and
clay. Of clay also were the all-important
jambs, which served as depositories
of perhaps every household article pertaining
to the cabin except the bedding
and the stools. There might have been
found the household knife and spoon,
the two or three family tin cups, the
skillet, the pothooks, sundry gourd vessels,
the wooden tray in which the “cawn”
bread was mixed—pipe, tobacco and
banjo.

On the Horton place the negroes cooked
their own suppers after the day’s work
was over. So for an hour every evening
“the quarter” had an animated aspect,
for the cabins, standing five yards apart,
faced each other in two long lines. In
each was a glowing fire, on which logs
and pine-knots and cypress-splints were
laid with unsparing hand, for there was
no limit to the fuel. These fires furnished
the lights: candles and lamps were
unknown at “the quarter.”

Page 449

Of course the windowless cabins, with
these roaring fires, were stifling in September;
so the negroes sat in the doorways
chatting and singing while the bacon was
frying and the corn dough roasting in
the ashes or the hoecake baking on the
griddle. An occasional woman patched
or washed some garment by the firelight,
while others brought water in piggins
from the spring at the foot of the hill on
whose brow “the quarter” was located.

As Alston sat outside his door on a
block, eating his supper by the light of
the high-mounting flames of his cabin-fire,
Little Lizay came out and sat on her
doorsill. Her cabin stood opposite his.
He recognized her, and when he had
finished his supper he went over to her.

“I didn’t want ter strike yer, Lizay,”
he said. “Do you feel haud agin me
fer it?”

“No,” Lizay answered: “he made yer
do it. Yer couldn’t he’p it. I reckon
yer’ll have ter whip me agin ter-morrer
night. I mos’ knows my baskit won’t
weigh no two hunderd an’ fawty-seven
poun’s. ‘Tain’t fa’r ter ‘spec’ that much
from me: it’s a heap more’n tother gals
gits, an’ mos’ all uv um is heap bigger’n
me. I’s small pertatoes.” She laughed
a little at her jest.

“Yer’s some punkins,” said Alston,
returning the joke. “I’d give a heap ef
I could pick cotton like yer.”

“Yer’s improved a heap,” said Little
Lizay. “Ef yer keeps on improvin’,
mayby yer’ll git so yer kin he’p me
arter ‘while.”

“Mayby so,” Alston answered.

“But yer wouldn’t he’p me, I reckon.
Reckon yer’d he’p Edny Ann: yer likes
her better’n me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Reckon yer likes somebody in Virginny
more’n yer likes anybody on this
plantation.”

“I’s better ‘quainted back thar’,” said
Alston apologetically.

“But thar’ ain’t no use hankerin’ arter
them yer’s lef ‘hin’ yer: reckon yer
won’t never see um no mo’. Heap better
git sati’fied yere. It’s a long way
back thar’, ain’t it?”

“A mighty long way,” said Alston;
and then he was silent, his thoughts going
back and back over the long way.

Lizay recalled him: “Was yer sorry
yer had ter whip me?”

“I was mighty sorry, Little Lizay,”
he replied with a strong tone of tenderness
that made her heart beat faster. “I
would er knocked that white nigger down,
but it wouldn’t er he’ped nothin’. Things
would er jus’ been wusser.”

“Yes,” Lizay assented, “nothin’ won’t
he’p us: ain’t no use in nothin’.”

“Reckon I’ll go in an’ go ter sleep,”
said Alston: “got ter git up early in the
mawnin’.”

He was up early the next morning, he
and Little Lizay being again in the cotton-field
before dawn. All through the
day there was, as before, persistent devotion
to the picking; then the holding
on after dusk for one more pound; the
same result at night—the man up to the
required figure, the woman behind, this
time forty-one pounds behind. Again she
received a cowhiding at Alston’s hands.

“What yer mean by this yere foolin’?”
Mr. Buck demanded in a rage of Little
Lizay. “Yer reckon I’s gwine ter stan’
this yere? Two hunderd an’ fawty-seven
‘gin two hunderd an’ six! It’s all laziness
an’ mulishness. I’ll git yer outen
that thar’ notch, else I’ll kill yer. Look
yere: ter-morrer, ef yer don’t come ter
taw, I’ll give yer twict es many licks es
the poun’s yer falls behin’.”

Did this threat frighten Little Lizay out
of her devotion?

“Two hunderd is ’nuff fer a little gal
like yer,” Alston said the next morning.
“Save my life, I can’t pick no more’n a
hunderd an’ a few poun’s mo’. I wouldn’t
stan’ ter be flogged ef I’d done my shar’.”

“Got ter stan’ it—can’t he’p myse’f.”

“I’d go ter town an’ tell Mos’ Hawton.
I’s tolerbul sho’ he wouldn’t ‘low yer ter
git twict es many licks, nohow. Mos’
Hawton’s tolerbul good ter his black
folks, ain’t he?”

“Yes, tolerbul—to the house-sarvants
he’s got in town; but he jist goes ‘long
mindin’ his business thar’, an’ don’t pay
no ‘tention sca’cely ter his plantation.
He don’t want us ter come ‘plainin’ ter
him. He’s mighty busy—gits a heap er
Page 450practice, makes a heap er money. He
went down the river onct, more’n a hunderd
miles, ter cut somethin’ off a man—I
fawgits what ’twas—an’ the man paid
him hunderds an’ hunderds an’ hunderds—I
fawgits how much ’twas.”

Here Little Lizay found that Alston
was no longer listening, but was absorbed
with the cotton-picking.

That day, to save the pickers’ time,
their bacon and corn pones were brought
out to the field by wagon in wooden trays
and buckets. There were three cotton-baskets
filled with corn dodgers. Alston
and Little Lizay sat not far apart while
eating their dinners.

“I reckon I’s gittin’ ‘long tolerbul well
ter-day,” he said. “Dun know for sar-tin,
but looks like the pickin’ wus heap
handier than at fus’. Look yere, Lizay:
ef I know’d I’d git more’n a hunderd I’d
he’p yer ‘long: I’d give yer the balance.
Couldn’t stave off all the floggin’, but I
might save yer some licks.”

“Take kere yer ownse’f, Als’on. I
don’t min’ the las’ few licks: they don’t
never hut bad es the fus’ ones.” This
was Little Lizay’s answer, given with
glowing cheek and eyes looking down.
To her own heart she said, “I likes him
better’n he likes me. Reckon he can’t
git over mou’nin’ fer somebody in Virginny.”
She wondered if he had left a
wife back there: she would test him.
“Reckon yer’ll hear from yer wife any
mo’, Als’on?” she said.

“Yes, reckon I will. She said she’d
write me a letter. She didn’t b’long ter
my ol’ moster: she b’longed ter Squire
Minor. I tuck a wife off’en our plantation.
She’s goin’ ter ax her moster ter
sell her an’ the childun to Mos’ Hawton,
and I’s waitin’ ter fin’ out ef he’ll
sell ‘um. I ain’t goin’ ter cou’t no other
gal tell I fin’s out.”

“Yer hopes he’ll sell her, don’t yer?”
Little Lizay asked with an anxious heart.

“She wus a mighty good wife,” said
Alston, without committing himself by
a categorical answer. “Would seem like
Ol’ Virginny ter have her an’ the childun,
but they’s better off thar’. They
couldn’t pick cotton, I reckon. Her moster
an’ mistiss thinks a heap uv her:
she’s one the cooks. I don’t reckon
they kin spaw her.”

“Don’t yer, sho’ ’nuff?”

“No, I don’t reckon they kin, ’cause
one Mis’ Minor’s cooks is gittin’ ol’ an’
can’t see good—Aunt Juno. She wucks
up flies an’ sich into the cawn bread.
They wants ter put my wife into her
place, but they can’t git shet with Aunt
Juno: she’s jis’ boun’ she’ll do the white
folks’ cookin’. She says thar’ ain’t no
use in bein’ free ef she can’t do what
she pleases: they set her free Chrismus
‘fo’ las’. But law, Lizay! we mus’ hurry
up an’ get ter pickin’.”

That night Lizay had gained on her
basket of the preceding day by five and
a half pounds, and Alston had fallen behind
his by four. But as he was still
over a hundred he escaped a flogging.
Mr. Buck, being unable to reckon exactly
the number of lashes to which Little
Lizay was entitled, gave the rawhide
the benefit of any doubt and ordered Alston
to administer seventy-five lashes.

The next day nothing noticeable occurred
in the lives of these two slaves,
except that Alston’s basket fell yet behind:
Mr. Buck acknowledged it was a
“hunderd, but a mighty tight squeeze,”
while Little Lizay’s had gained three
pounds on the last weight.

“Yer saved six lashes ter-day, Little
Lizay,” Alston said. He was evidently
glad for her, and her hungry heart was
glad that he cared.

“An’ yer didn’t haudly git clear,” she
replied, adding to herself that to-morrow
she must be more generous with her help
to Alston.

But on the morrow something occurred
which dismayed the girl. She had
shaken her sack over Alston’s basket,
designing to empty a third of its contents
there, and then the remainder in
her “pick.” But the cotton was closely
packed in the sack, and almost the whole
of it tumbled in a compact mass into
Alston’s basket. He would not need so
much help as this to ensure him, so she
proceeded to transfer a portion of the
heap to her basket. Suddenly she started
as though shot. Some one was calling
to her and making a terrible accusation.
Page 451The some one was Edny Ann:
“Yer’s stealin’ thar’: I see’d yer do it—see’d
yer takin’ cotton outen Als’on’s baskit.
Ain’t yer shame, yer yaller good-fer-nuffin’?
I’s gwine ter tell.” This was
the terrible accusation.

“Yer dun know nothin’ ‘tall ’bout it,”
said Little Lizay. “It’s my cotton. I emptied
it in Als’on’s baskit when I didn’t
go ter do it. I ain’t tuck a sol’tary lock
er Als’on’s cotton; an’ I wouldn’t, nuther,
ter save my life.”

“Reckon yer kin fool me?” demanded
the triumphant Edny Ann. Then she
called Alston with the O which Southerners
inevitably prefix: “O Als’on! O
Als’on! come yere! quick!”

“Don’t, please don’t, tell him,” Little
Lizay pleaded. “I’ll give yer my new
cal’ker dress ef yer won’t tell nobody.”

But Edny Ann went on calling: “O
Als’on! O Als’on! come yere!”

Little Lizay pleaded in a frantic way
for silence as she saw Alston coming
with long strides up between the cotton-rows
toward them.

“I wants yer ter ten’ ter Lizay,” said
Edny Ann. “Her’s been stealin’ yer
cotton: see’d ‘er do it—see’d ‘er take
a heap er cotton outen yer baskit an’
ram it into hern. Did so!”

Then you should have seen the man’s
face. Had it been white you could not
have discerned any plainer the surprise,
the disappointment, the grief. Lizay saw
with an indefinable thrill the sadness in
his eyes, heard the grief in his voice.

“I didn’t reckon yer’d do sich a thing,
Lizay,” he said. “I know it’s mighty
haud on yer, gittin’ cowhided ev’ry night,
but stealin’ ain’t goin’ ter he’p it, Lizay.”

“I never stole yer cotton, Als’on,” Little
Lizay said with a certain dignity, but
with an unsteady voice.

“I see’d yer do it,” Edny Ann interrupted.

“I emptied my sack in yer baskit when
I didn’t go ter do it,” Little Lizay continued.
“It wus my own cotton I wus
takin’ out yer baskit.”

“Ef yer deny it, Lizay, yer’ll make it
wusser.” Then Alston went up close to
her, so that Edny Ann might not hear,
and said something in a low tone.

Lizay gave him a swift look of surprise:
then her lip began to quiver; the
quick tears came to her eyes; she put
both hands to her face and cried hard,
so that she could not have found voice
if she had wished to tell Alston her story.
He went back to his row, and left her
there crying beside the pick-baskets. He
returned almost immediately, shouldered
his basket, and went away from her to
another part of the field, leaving his row
unfinished. He wondered how much
cotton Lizay had taken from his basket—if
its weight would be brought down
below a hundred; and meditated what
he should do in case he was called up to
be flogged by the brutal overseer. Should
he stand and take the lashing, trusting
to Heaven to make it up to him some
day? or should he knock the overseer
senseless and make a strike for freedom?
Where was freedom? Which was the
way to the free North? In Virginia he
would have known in what direction to
set his face for Ohio, but here everything
was new and strange.

However, he had no occasion for a
desperate movement that night. His
basket weighed one hundred and seven,
while Little Lizay’s had fallen lower than
ever before. Alston thought it was because
she had missed her chance of
transferring the usual quantity of cotton
from his basket.

The striking of Lizay had never seemed
so abhorrent to him as on this night,
now that there was estrangement between
them. She was already humiliated in
his sight, and to raise his hand against
her was like striking a fallen foe. She
would think that he was no longer sorry—that
he was glad to repay the wrong
she had done him.

In the mean time, Edny Ann had told
the story of the theft to one and another,
and Lizay found at night the “quarter”
humming with it. Taunts and jeers met
her on every hand. Stealing from white
folks the negroes regarded as a very
trifling matter, since they, the slaves, had
earned everything there was: but to steal
from “a po’ nigger” was the meanest
thing in their decalogue.

“Stealin’ from her beau!” sneered one
Page 452negro, commenting on Little Lizay’s offence.

“An’ her sweet’art!” said another.

“An’ her ‘tendin’ like her lubbed ‘im!”

“An’ Als’on can’t pick cotton fas’, nohow,
kase he ain’t use ter cotton—neber
see’d none till he come yere—an’ her
know’d he’d git a cowhidin’. It’s meaner’n
boneset tea,” said Edny Ann.

“A heap meaner,” assented Cat. “Sich
puffawmance’s wusser’n stealin’ acawns
frum a blin’ hog.”

Over and over Little Lizay said, “I
never stole Als’on’s cotton;” and then
she would make her explanation, as she
had made it to Edny Ann and Alston.
Often she was tempted to tell the whole
story of how she had been all along
helping Alston at her own cost, but many
motives restrained her. She dreaded the
jeers and jests to which the story would
subject her, and everything was to be feared
from Mr. Buck’s retaliation should he
learn that he had been tricked. Besides,
she wished, if possible, to go on helping
Alston. She doubted, too, if he would receive
it well that she had been helping
him. Might he not gravely resent it that
through her action such a pitiable part
in the drama had been forced on him?
Then there was something sweet to Little
Lizay in suffering all alone for Alston—in
having this secret unshared: she
respected herself more that she did not
risk everything to vindicate herself, for
this she could do: the steelyard to-morrow
would demonstrate the truth of her
story.

But the morrow came, and she went
out to the field, her story untold, a marked
woman. Yet she was not comfortless.
The something that Alston had told her the
previous day was making her heart sing.
This is what he told her: “While yer
wus stealin’ from me, Lizay, I wus he’pin’
yer. I put a ha’f er sack in yer baskit
ter-day, an’ a ha’f er sack yistiddy—kase
I liked yer, Lizay.”

She took her rows beside Alston’s as
usual, determined to watch for a chance
to help him. But when he moved away
from her and took another row, Lizay
knew that the time had come. She
couldn’t stand it to have him strain and
tug and bend to his work as no other
hand in the field did, only to be disappointed
at night. She could never bear it that
he should be flogged after all she had
done to save him from the shame. She
could never live through it—the cowhiding
of her hero by the detested overseer.
Yes, the time had come: she must
tell Alston.

She went over to where he had begun a
new row. “Yer don’t b’lieve the tale I tole
yistiddy, Als’on: yer’s feared I’ll steal yer
cotton ter-day,” she said.

“I don’t wish no talk ’bout it, Lizay,”
Alston said. His tone was half sad, half
peremptory.

“Yer mustn’t feel haud agin me ef I
tells you somethin’, Als’on. Yer’s been
puttin’ cotton in my baskit unbeknownst
ter save me some lashes, an’ yer throw’d
it up ter me yistiddy. Now, look yere,
Als’on: I’s been he’pin’ yer all this week,
ever since Mr. Buck said yer got ter git
a hunderd. Ev’ry day I’s he’ped yer git
up ter a hunderd.”

Alston had stopped picking, both his
hands full of cotton, and stood staring in
a bewildered way at the girl. “Lizay, is
this a fac’?” he said at length.

“‘Tis so, Als’on; an’ ef yer don’t lemme
he’p yer now yer’ll fall ‘hin’ an’ have ter
git flogged.”

“An’ ef yer he’p me, yer’ll fall shawt
an’ have ter git flogged. Oh, Lizay, thar’
never was nobody afo’ would er done
this yer fer me,” Alston said, feeling that
he would like to kiss the poor shoulders
that had been scourged for him. Great
tears gathered in his eyes, and he thought
without speaking the thought, “My wife
in Virginny wouldn’t er done it.”

“So yer mus’ lemme he’p yer ter-day,”
said Little Lizay.

“I’ll die fus’,” he said in a savage tone.

“Oh, yer’ll git a whippin’, Als’on, sho’s
yer bawn.”

“No: I won’t take a floggin’ from that
brute.”

“Oh, Als’on, yer jis’ got ter: yer can’t
he’p the miserbulness. No use runnin’
‘way: they’d ketch yer an’ bring yer
back. Thar’s nigger-hunters an’ blood-houn’s
all roun’ this yer naberhood. Yer
couldn’t git ‘way ter save yer life.”

Page 453

“Look yere, Lizay,” Alston said with
sudden inspiration: “le’s go tell Mos’
Hawton all ’bout it. Ef he’s a genulman
he’ll ‘ten’ ter us. They won’t miss
us till night, an’ ‘fo’ that time we’ll be
in Memphis. Yer knows the way, don’t
yer?”

“Yes,” Lizay said; “an’ I reckon that’s
the bes’ thing we kin do—go tell moster
an’ mistis. But, law! I ought er go
pull off this yere ole homespun dress an’
put on my new cal’ker.”

“I reckon we ain’t got no time ter
dress up,” said Alston. “We mus’ start
quick: come ‘long. Le’s hide our baskits
fus’ whar’ the cotton-stalks is thick.”

This they did, and then started off at
a brisk pace, their flight concealed by
the tall cotton-plants. They reached
Memphis about eleven o’clock, and
found Dr. Horton at home, having just
finished his lunch. They were admitted
at once to the dining-room, where the
doctor sat picking his teeth. He had
never seen Alston, as the new negroes
had been bought by an agent.

“Sarvant, moster!” Alston said humbly,
but with dignity.

“Howdy, moster?” was Little Lizay’s
more familiar salutation.

“I’s Als’on, one yer new boys from
Ol’ Virginny.”

“You’re a likely-lookin’ fellow,” said
the doctor, who was given to dropping final
consonants in his speech. “I reckon I’ll
hear a good report of you from Mr. Buck.
You look like you could stan’ up to work
like a soldier. But what’s brought you
and Little Lizay to the city? Anything
gone wrong?”

“Yes, moster,” said Alston—”mighty
wrong. Look yere, Mos’ Hawton: when
I come on yer plantation I made up
my min’ ter sarve yer faithful—ter wuck
fer yer haud’s I could—ter strike ev’ry
lick I could fer yer. When I hoed cawn
an’ pulled fodder I went ‘head er all the
han’s on yer plantation. But when I
went ter pick cotton I wusn’t use ter it.
I wuckt haud’s I could, ‘fo’ day an’ arter
dark. Mos’ Hawton, I couldn’t pick a
poun’ more’n I pick ter save my life.
But I wus ‘hin’ all t’other han’s. Then
Mos’ Buck wus goin’ ter flog me ef I
didn’t git a hunderd: then Little Lizay,
her he’ped me unbeknownst: ev’ry day
she puts cotton in my baskit ter fetch
it ter a hunderd, an’ that made her fall
‘hin’ las’ year’s pickin’; then ev’ry night
she was stripped an’ cowhided; but she
kep’ on he’pin’ me, an’ kep’ on gettin’
whipped. I dun know what she dun it
fer: ‘min’s me uv the Laud on the cross.”

Dr. Horton knew what she did it for.
His knightliness was touched to the quick.
The story made him wish as never before
to be a better master than he had
ever been to his poor people. He asked
many questions, and drew forth all the
facts, Lizay telling how Alston was helping
her while she was helping him. Dr.
Horton saw that here was a romance in
slave-life—that the man and woman were
in love with each other.

“Well, if you can’t pick cotton,” he
said to Alston, “what can you do?”

“Mos’ anything else, moster. I kin do
ev’rything ’bout cawn; I kin split rails;
I kin plough; I kin drive carriage.”

“Could you run a cotton-gin?”

“Reckon so, moster: the black folks
says it’s tolerbul easy.”

“Well, now, look here: you and Lizay
get some dinner, an’ then do you take a
back-trot for the plantation. I’ll sen’
Buck a note: no, he can’t more’n half
read writin’. Well, do you tell him, Alston,
to put you to ginnin’ cotton: Little
Sam mus’ work with you a few days till
you get the hang of the thing; an’ then
I want you to show that plantation what
’tis to serve master faithfully. You see,
I believe in you, my man.”

“Thanky, moster. I’ll wuck fer yer
haud’s I kin. Please God, I’ll sarve yer
faithful.”

“Of cou’se, Lizay, you’ll go back to
pickin’ cotton, an’ don’t let me hear any
mo’ of you’ nonsense—helpin’ a strappin’
fellow twice you’ size. An’ tell Buck
I won’t have him whippin’ any my negroes
ev’ry night in the week. Confound
it! a mule couldn’t stan’ it. If I’ve got
a negro that needs floggin’ ev’ry night,
I’ll sell him or give ‘im away, or turn ‘im
out to grass to shif’ for himself. I’ll be
out there soon, an’ ‘ten’ to things. If
anybody needs a floggin’, tell Buck to
Page 454send ‘im to me. Tell the folks to work
like clever Christians, an’ they shall have
a fus’-rate Christmas—a heap of Christmas-gifts.”

“Yes, moster.”

“Do you an’ Lizay want to get married
right away, or wait till Christmas?”

Alston and Little Lizay looked at each
other, smiling in an embarrassed way.

“But, moster,” said Alston, “I’s got
a wife an’ fou’ childun in Ol’ Virginny,
an’ I promused I’d wait an’ wouldn’t git
morred ag’in tell she’d write ter me ef
her moster’d sell her; an’ I was goin’ ter
ax yer ter buy ‘er.”

“You needn’t pester yourself about
that. I got a letter for you the other
day from her,” the doctor said, fumbling
in his pockets.

“Yer did, sah?” Alston said with interest.

“Yes: here it is. Can you read? or
shall I read it to you?”

“Ef yer please, moster.”

Then Dr. Horton read:

“My Dear B’loved Husbun’: Miss
Marthy Jane takes my pen in han’ ter
let yer know I’s well, an’ our childun’s
well, an’ all the black folks is tolerbul
well ‘cept Juno: her’s got the polsy tolerbul
bad. All the white folks ’bout yere
is will ‘cept mistis: her’s got the dumps.
All the childun say, Howdy? the black
folks all says, Howdy? an’ Pete says,
Howdy? an’ Andy says, Howdy? an’
Viny says, Howdy? an’ Cinthy says,
Howdy? an’ Tony Tucker says, Howdy?
and Brudder Thomas Jeff’son Hollan’
says, Howdy? Last time I see’d
Benj’man Franklins Bedfud, he says,
”Member, an’ don’t fawgit, the fus’ time
yer writes, ter tell Als’on, Howdy?’

“Yer ‘fectionate wife, Chloe.”

“P.S. Mistis says her can’t spaw me,
so ’tain’t no use waitin’ no longer fer me.
‘Sides, I got ‘gaged ter git morred: I wus
morred Sundy ‘fo’ las’ at quat’ly meetin’.
Brudder Mad’son Mason puffawmed the
solemn cer’mony, an’ preached a beautiful
discou’se. Me an’ my secon’ husbun’
gits ‘long fus’-rate. I fawgot ter tell yer
who I got morred to. I got morred to
Thomas Jeff’son Hollan’.”

“So you’re a free man,” said Dr. Horton,
folding the letter and handing it to
Alston. “You an’ Little Lizay can get
married to-day, right now, if you wish
to. Uncle Moses can marry you: he’s
a member of the Church in good an’
regular standin’: I don’t know but he’s
an exhorter, or class-leader, or somethin’.
What do you say? Shall I call
him in an’ have him tie you together?”

“Thanky, moster, ef Little Lizay’s
willin’.—Is yer, Lizay?”

“I reckon so,” said Lizay, her heart
beating in gladness. But she nevertheless
glanced down at her coarse field-dress
and thought with longing of the
new calico in her cabin.

So Uncle Moses was called in, and
Mrs. Horton and all the children and
servants.

“Uncle Moses,” said Dr. Horton, “did
you ever marry anybody?”

“To be sho’, Mos’ Hawton. I’s morred—Lemme
see how many wives has
I morred sence I fus’ commenced?”

“Oh, I don’t mean that;” and Dr.
Horton proceeded to explain what he
did mean.

“No,” said Moses. “I never done
any that business, but reckon I could:
I’s done things a heap hauder.”

“Well, let me see you try your han’
on this couple.”

“Well,” said Uncle Moses, “git me a
book: got ter have a Bible, or hymn-book,
or cat’chism, or somethin’.”

The doctor gravely handed over a
pocket edition of Don Quixote, which
happened to lie in his reach.

Uncle Moses took it for a copy of the
Methodist Discipline, and made pretence
of seeking for the marriage ceremony.
At length he appeared satisfied that he
had the right page, and stood up facing
the couple.

“Jine boff yer right han’s,” he solemnly
commanded. Then, with his eyes on
the book, he repeated the marriage service,
with some remarkable emendations.
“An’ ef yer solemnly promus,” he said in
conclusion, “ter lub an’ ‘bey one ‘nuther
tell death pawts yer, please de Laud yer
lib so long, I pernounces boff yer all man
an’ wife.”

Page 455

Then the mistress looked about and
got together a basket of household articles
for the new couple. Bearing this
between them, Alston and Little Lizay
went back to the plantation and to their
unfinished rows of cotton, happy, poor
souls! pathetic as it seems.

Sarah Winter Kellogg.

The Bass Of The Potomac.

Some twenty-five years ago Mr. William
Shriver, a primitive pisciculturist,
took from the Youghiogheny River
eleven black bass, and conveyed them
in the tank of the tender of a locomotive
to Cumberland, in the coal-region of Western
Maryland. There he deposited them
in the Potomac, with the injunction which
forms the heraldic motto of the State of
Maryland—Crescite et multiplicamini.
The first part of this excellent precept
they obeyed by proceeding to devour all
the aboriginal fish in the river, and waxing
extremely hearty upon the liberal
diet. The second they performed with
a diligence so commendable that the
name of them in the river became as
legion, and the original possessors of the
waters were steadily extirpated or took
despairingly to small rivulets, and led
ever after a life of undeserved ignominy
and obscurity. There were bass in the
river from the Falls of the Potomac, near
Georgetown, to a point as near its source
as any self-respecting fish could approach
without detriment to the buttons on his
vest by reason of the shallowness of the
water. They were in all its tributaries,
and in fact monopolized its waters completely.
Had the supply of small fish
for food held out, it is impossible to say
to what extent they would have increased.
They might in their numerical enormity
have rivalled the condition of that famous
river, the Wabash, which in a certain
season of excessive dryness became so
low that a local journal of established
veracity described the fish as having to
stand upon their heads to breathe, and
while in that constrained attitude being
pulled by the inhabitants like radishes in
a garden.

It has been contended by some ichthyologists
that the black bass does not eat
its own kind, but the spectacle which I
recently beheld of a four-pounder, defunct
and floating on the water, with the
tail and half the body of a ten-ounce
bass sticking out of his distended mouth,
affords but inadequate confirmation of
their views. I sat upon the bass in question,
and rendered a verdict of “choked
to death, and served him right.” He
had swallowed the younger fish, who, for
aught he knew to the contrary, or cared,
might have been his own son; and his
confidence in his capacity being ably
supported by his appetite, he undertook
a contract to which he was unequal in
the matter of expansion. He couldn’t
disgorge, being in the predicament of
the boa-constrictor who swallows a hen
head first, and finds her go against the
grain when he would fain reconsider the
subject. The head of the inside fish
was partially digested, but that process
had imparted no gratification to either
party, and both were defunct, mutually
immolated upon the altar of gluttony.
It is not an uncommon thing to find them
dead in that condition, for their appetites
are ravenous, and lead them into indiscretions
more or less serious in their consequences.

There can be no doubt of their having
regarded as a delicate attention the action
some few years since of the Maryland
Fish Commissioner in placing several
thousand young California salmon in the
river. Those salmon have never been
seen or heard of since; but, although
the bass for some time had a guilty look
about them, it is hardly fair to let them
remain under so grievous an imputation
Page 456as is implied in the whole responsibility
for the fate of the California emigrants.
The fact is, that at Georgetown the Potomac
River makes a very abrupt change
in its grade, and the Great Falls, as they
are called, are both picturesque and arduous
of passage. The salmon, being of
luxurious habit, betakes him each year
to the seaside, and at the end of the season
returns in a connubial frame of mind
to the spot endeared to him by his early
associations. It is quite possible that
these particular salmon when on their
way to the purlieus of marine fashion
were somewhat discouraged at the jar
and shock incident to their transit over
the Falls. They may have concluded
that the locality was unpropitious for the
return trip, and then, consulting with
salmon whose lines had been cast in
more pleasant places, they may have
ascended rivers of more conspicuous
natural attractions and more agreeable
to fish of cultivated habits.

The habits of the black bass may be
described as generally bad. It is a fish
devoid of any of the cardinal virtues. It
is ever engaged in internecine war, and
will any day forego a square meal for
the sake of a fight. It gorges itself like
a python, and when hooked is as game
as a salmon, and quite as vigorous in
proportion to size. In the Potomac it
has been known to weigh as much as
six pounds, but bass of that weight are
very rare, from three to four pounds being
the average of what are known as good
fish. These afford excellent sport, and
are taken with a variety of bait. The
habitués of the river commonly employ
live minnow, chub, catfish, suckers, sunfish—in
fact, any fish under six inches
in length. The bass has also a well-marked
predilection for small frogs, or
indeed for frogs of any dimensions. It
sometimes rises well at a gaudy, substantial
fly or a deft simulation of a
healthy Kansas grasshopper; but fishermen
have noticed that the largest fish
despise flies, much as a person of a full
roast-beef habit may be supposed to turn
up his nose at a small mutton-chop. In
other rivers they take the fly quite freely,
but in the Potomac they have had that
branch of their education greatly neglected.
In the matter of vitality they
are simply extraordinary: they cling to
life with a tenacity that very few fish exhibit.
In the spring or fall, when the
water and the air are at a comparatively
low temperature, a bass will live for eight
or ten hours without water. The writer
has brought fifty fish, weighing on an
average two and three-quarter pounds,
from Point of Rocks to Baltimore, a distance
of seventy-two miles, and after
they had been in the air six hours has
placed them in a tub of water and found
two-thirds of the number immediately
“kick” and plunge with an amount of
energy and ability that threw the water
in all directions. These fish had been
caught at various times during the day,
and as each was taken from the hook
a stout leather strap was forced through
the floor of its mouth beneath its tongue,
and the bunch of fish so secured allowed
to trail overboard in the stream. They
were thus dragged all day against a powerful
current, but never showed any
symptoms of “drowning.” In the evening
they were strung upon a stout piece
of clothes-line, and after lying for some
time on the railway platform were transferred
to the floor of the baggage-car,
and so transported to the city. It is
quite evident that we do not live in the
fear of Mr. Bergh. But what is one to do?
The fish is not to be discouraged except
by the exhibition of great and brutal
violence. In fact, bass will not be induced
to decently decease by any civilized
process short of a powerful shock
from a voltaic pile administered in the
region of their medulla oblongata. Of
course, one cannot be expected to carry
about a voltaic pile and go hunting for
the medullary recesses of a savage and
turbulent fish. On the other hand, one
may batter the protoplasm out of a refractory
subject by the aid of a small
rock, but it won’t improve the fish’s looks
or cooking qualities. It may seem like
high treason to mention, moreover, at a
safe distance from Mr. Bergh, that euthanasia
in animals designed for the
table does not always improve their
quality, and in fact that the linked misery
Page 457long drawn out of a protracted dissolution
imparts a certain tenderness and
flavor to the flesh that it would not otherwise
possess. Should that excellent and
most estimable gentleman regard this
statement with a sceptical eye, let it be
here stated that the bass should be recently
killed, split, crimped and broiled
to a delicate brown, with a little good
butter and a sprinkling of pepper, salt
and chopped parsley. Should he pursue
the subject upon this basis, he will not
be the first gentleman who has surrendered
his convictions and compounded a
culinary felony upon favorable terms.

Below Harper’s Ferry there is one of
the most picturesque reaches of the Potomac
River. From the rugged heights
that frown upon that historic and lovely
spot, where the Shenandoah strikes away
through the pass that leads to the broad
and beautiful Valley of Virginia, and
where John Brown’s memory struggles
through battered ruins and the invading
smoke of the unhallowed locomotive, the
river chafes from side to side of the stern
defile that hems it in and curbs its restless
waters. Great walls of dark rocks,
crested by serried ranks of solemn pines,
stand guard above its fitful, surging flood,
and against the dark blue calm and misty
depth of its gorge the pale smoke rises
in a quiet column above the mills and
houses that nestle by the river’s bed.
Huge boulders stem the current, and the
rocks stand out in shelves and rugged
ridges, around which the stream whirls
swiftly and sweeps off into broad dark
pools in whose green, mysterious depths
there should be noble fish. Below, the
river widens and has long placid reaches,
but for the most part its banks are precipitous,
and the deep water runs along
the trunks and bares the roots of great
trees whose branches stretch far out over
its surface. Occasionally, the mountains
recede and form a vast amphitheatre, clad
in primeval forest, and there are islands
on which vegetation runs riot in its unbridled
luxury, and weaves festoons of
gay creepers to conceal the gaunt skeletons
of the endless piles of dead drift-wood.
All is in the most glorious green—a
very extravagance of fresh and brilliant
color—relieved with the bright purples
and tender leafing of the flowering
shrubs and vines that intertwine among
its heavy jungle. Upon the broad, flat
rocks one may see dozens of stolid “sliders,”
or mud-turtles, some of great size,
basking in the sun like so many boarders
at a country hotel. They crowd upon
the rocks as thickly as they can, and
blink there all day long unless disturbed
by the approach of a boat, when they dive
clumsily but quickly. Occasionally, one
sees an otter, with seal-like head above
the surface of the water, swimming swiftly
from haunt to haunt in pursuit of the
bass; and small coteries of summer ducks
fly swiftly from sedge to sedge.

The acoustic properties of the river
would make an architect die with envy.
The light breeze bears one’s conversation
audibly for half a mile; one hears
the splash of a fish that jumps a thousand
yards away; and the grim cliffs at
the foot of which the canal winds in and
out take up the profanity of the towpath
and hurl it back and forth across the
river as if it was great fun and all propriety.
The stalwart exhortations and
clean-cut phraseology of the mule-drivers
and the notes of the bugles go ringing
over to Virginia’s shore, and fill the air
with cadences so sweet and musical that
they sound like the pleasant laughter of
good-humored Nature, instead of the
well-punctuated and diligent ribaldry of
the most profane class of humanity in
existence. It is perfectly startling and
frightful to hear an objurgation of the
most utterly purposeless and ingeniously
vile description transmitted half a mile
with painful distinctness, and then seized
by a virtuous and reproachful echo and
indignantly repelled in disjointed fragments.

“Y’ill take care, sorr, an’ sit fair in the
middle of the shkiff,” said Mr. McGrath
as I got into his frail craft at five o’clock
in the morning on the bank of the Chesapeake
and Ohio Canal near Point of
Rocks. “It’s onconvanient to be outside
of the boat whin we’re going through
them locks. There were a gintleman
done that last year, an’ he come near
lavin’ a lot of orphans behind him.”

Page 458

“How was that, McGrath?” said I.

“Begorra! the divil a child had he,”
he replied.

“But do you mean that he was drowned?”
I asked.

“Faith, an’ he was that, sorr—complately.”

I promised Mr. McGrath that I would
observe his instructions carefully, and
that gentleman, after placing the rods,
live-bait bucket, luncheon-basket and
other articles on board, took his seat in
the bow, and we proceeded. We had
two boats for my companion and myself,
and an experienced man in each. Mr.
McGrath had fallen to my lot, and my
companion had a darkey named Pete.
We were to go up the canal some four
miles, and then, launching the boats
into the river, were to fish slowly down
with the current. We had a horse and
tow-rope, and a small boy, mounted on
the animal, started off at a smart trot.
It was quite exhilarating, and the boats
dashed along merrily at a capital rate.
A gray mist hung low on the river, and
thin wraiths of it rose off the water of the
canal and crept up the mountain-side,
shrouding the black pines and hiding
the summit from view. Beyond, the
tops of the hills on the Virginia shore
were beginning to blush as they caught
the first rays of sunrise, and the fish-hawk’s
puny scream echoed from the
islands in the stream. It was a lovely
morning, and promised a day, as Mr.
McGrath observed, on which some elegant
fish should die. After a few delays
at locks, in which canal-boats took precedence
of us, we reached our point of
transshipment, hauled the boats out on
the bank, and our horse drew them
sleigh-fashion across field and down to
and out into the water.

I had a light split bamboo rod, a good
silk line and a fair assortment of flies.
Mr. McGrath had a common bamboo
cane, a battered old reel, and the value
of his outfit might be generously estimated
at half a dollar. In his live-bait
bucket were about a hundred fish, varying
in length from two to six inches. He
did not prepare to fish himself, but was
watching me with the deepest attention.
He held the boat across the stream toward
the opposite shore, and by the time
we dropped down on a large flat rock I
was ready. I got out, and there being
a pleasant air stirring, I made my casts
with a great deal of ease and comfort.
There was a deep hole below the rocks,
bordered on both sides by a swift ripple—as
pretty a spot as ever a fly was thrown
over. I sped them over it in all directions,
casting fifty and sixty feet of line,
and admiring the soft flutter with which
they dropped on the edge of the ripple
or the open water. Mr. McGrath was
surveying the operation critically, nodding
his head in approval from side to
side, and uttering short ejaculations of
the most flattering nature. I kept whipping
the stream assiduously, so satisfied
with my work and the style of it as to
feel confident that no well-regulated fish
could resist it. But there was no appearance
of a rise: not a sign appeared on
the water to show even the approach
of a speculative fish. I was about to
note the fact to Mr. McGrath when that
gentleman remarked, “Begorra! but it’s
illigant sport it’d be if the bass ‘ud only
bite at them things!”

“Bite at them?” said I, turning round:
“of course they’ll bite at them.”

“Sorra bit will they, sorr. It’s just
wondherin’ they are if them things up
above is good to ate, but they’re too lazy
to step up an’ inquire. Augh, be me
sowl! but it’s the thruth I tell you. Now,
if it was a dacent throut that were there,
he’d be afther acceptin’ yer invite in a
minit; but them bass—begorra! they’re
not amaynable to the fly at all.”

Now, if there is anything that I have
been brought up to despise, it is fishing
with “bait.” Fly-fishing I have learned
to regard as the only legitimate method
of taking any fish that any sportsman
ought to fish for, and fishing with a worm
and a cork I always looked upon as equal
to shooting a partridge on the ground in
May. I did not believe Mr. McGrath,
and I told him, as I resumed my graceful
occupation, that I didn’t think there
were any fish there to catch. The idea
of their rejecting flies served up as mine
were was too preposterous.

Page 459

“Well,” said he, “ye may be right,
sorr: there may be none there at all;
but I’ll thry them wid a bait, anyhow.”

In another minute Mr. McGrath was
slashing about right and left a bait which
to my disordered vision looked as big as
a Yarmouth bloater. He threw it in every
direction with great vigor and precision,
and, as I could not help noticing,
with very little splashing. I turned away
with emotion, and continued my fly-fishing.
Presently I heard an exclamation
from Mr. McGrath, quickly succeeded
by an ominous whirring of his reel.

“Luk at the vagabone, sorr! luk at
him now! Run, ye divil ye! run!” he
cried as he facilitated the departure of
the line, which was going out at a famous
rate. “Bedad! he’s a fine mikroptheros!
Whisht! he’s stopped.—Take that, ye
spalpeen ye!”

As he said this he gave his rod a strong
jerk, that brought the line up with a “zip”
out of the water in a long ridge, and the
old bamboo cane bent until it cracked.
At the same moment, about a hundred
and fifty feet away, a splendid fish leaped
high and clear out of the water with
the line dangling from his mouth. Mr.
McGrath had struck him fairly, and away
he went across stream as hard as he could
tear.

“Take the rod, sorr, while I get the
landing-net. Kape a tight line on him,
sorr: niver let him deludher ye. It’s an
illigant mikroptheros he is, sure!”

He returned from the boat in a moment
with the landing-net, but absolutely
refused to take back his rod: “Sorra
bit, sorr: bring him in. It’s great fun
ye’ll have wid the vagabone in that current!
No, sorr: bring him in yerself,
sorr: ye’ll niver lay it at my door that
the first fish hooked wasn’t brought in.”

I didn’t need any instructions, and as
the fish ran for a rock some distance off,
I brought him up sharply, and he jumped
again as wickedly as he could full three
feet out of the water, and came straight
toward us with a rush. It was no use
trying, I couldn’t reel up quick enough,
and he was under the eddy at our feet
before I had one-third of the line in.
Fortunately, he was securely hooked,
and there was no drop out from the slacking
of the line. He was in about twelve
feet of water, and as I brought the line
taut on him again he went off down
stream as fast as ever. I had the current
full against him this time, and I
brought him steadily up through it, and
held him well in hand. I swept him
around in front of Mr. McGrath’s landing-net,
but he shied off so quickly that
I thought he would break the line. Away
down he went as stiffly and stubbornly
as possible, and there he lodged, rubbing
his nose against a rock and trying to get
rid of the hook. Half a dozen times I
dislodged him and brought him up, but
he was so wild and strong I did not dare
to force him in. At last he made a dash
for the ripple, and I gave him a quick
turn, and as he struck out of it Mr. McGrath
had his landing-net under him in
a twinkling, and he was out kicking on
the rock. He weighed four pounds six
ounces, and furnished conclusive evidence
that a bass of that weight can give
a great deal of very agreeable trouble
before he will consent to leave his element.

“What was it,” said I, “that you called
him when you struck him just now?”

“What did I call him, sorr? A mikroptheros,
sorr.”

“And for Goodness’ sake, McGrath,
what is a mikroptheros?”

“Begorra! that’s what it is,” said Mr.
McGrath, throwing the bass overboard
to swim at the end of its leathern thong.

“Well!” said I in amazement. “I never
heard such a name as that for a fish
in all my life!—a mikroptheros!”

“Divil a more or less!” said Mr. McGrath
decidedly. “The Fish Commissioner
wor up here last week, an’ sez he
to me, sez he, ‘It’s a mikroptheros, so it
is.’—’What’s that?’ sez I.—’That!’ sez
he; and he slaps him into an illigant glass
bottle of sperrits, as I thought he was
goin’ to say to me, ‘McGrath, have ye a
mouth on ye?’ an’ I as dhry as if I’d et
red herrin’s for a week. ‘Yis,’ sez he to
me, ‘that’s the right name of him;’ and
wid that he writes it on a tag, and he
sends it off, this side up wid care, to the
musayum. Sure I copied it: be me
Page 460sowl, an’ if ye doubt me word, here it
is.”

Mr. McGrath handed me a piece of
paper torn off the margin of a newspaper,
on which he had written legibly
enough, “Micropteros Floridanus” I
read it as gravely as I could, smiled
feebly at my own ignorance, and returned
it to him, saying, “Upon my word,
McGrath, you are perfectly right. What
a blessing it is to have had a classical
education!”

“Sorra lie in it,” said he proudly as he
replaced the slip in the crown of his hat;
“an’ it’s meself that’s glad of it.”

I can but throw myself upon the mercy
of every respectable disciple of the art
before whom this confession may come
when I say that during this conversation
I was employed in taking off my flies and
in substituting therefor a strong bass-hook
and a cork, after the effective fashion
of Mr. McGrath. When this never-to-be-sufficiently-despised
device was ready I took from the bucket a small
and unhappy sunfish, immolated him
upon my hook by passing it through his
upper and lower lips, and cast him out
upon the stream. The red top of the
cork spun merrily down the current and
out among the oily ripples of the deep
water below, but Mr. McGrath could
beat me completely in handling his. I
noticed that I threw my fish so that it
struck hard upon the water, “knocking
the sowl out of it,” as he said, while he
threw his hither and thither with the
greatest ease, always taking care to do
it with the least possible amount of violence,
and keeping it alive as long as
possible. However, it was not long before
my cork disappeared with a peculiar
style of departure abundantly indicative
of the cause, to which I replied by a
vigorous “strike.” My cork came up
promptly, and with it my hook, bare.
The sunfish had found a grave within
the natural enemy of his species, and I
had missed my fish.

“Divvle a wondher!” said Mr. McGrath
in reply to a remark to that effect—”being,
sorr, that ye’re not familiar wid their
ways. Ye see, sorr, he comes up an’ he
nips that fish be the tail, an’ away wid
him to a convanient spot for to turn him
an’ swallow him head first, by rason of
his sthickles an’ fins all p’intin’ the other
way. Whin he takes it, sorr, jist let him
run away wid it as far as he likes, but
the minit he turns to swallow it, an’ says
to himself, ‘What an illigant breakfast
this is, to be sure!’ that minit slap the
hook into his jaw, an’ hould on to him
for dear life.”

These excellent instructions I obeyed
with no little difficulty. My cork came
up in the back water under the rock on
which I stood, and there, almost at my
very feet, it disappeared. I could not
believe that a bass had taken it, but all
doubt on the subject was dispelled by the
shrill whir of my reel as the fine silk line
spun out at a tremendous rate. The fish
had darted across the current, and only
stopped after he had taken out over two
hundred feet of line.

“Now, sorr, jist make a remark to him,”
whispered Mr. McGrath; and I struck as
hard as I could. “Illigant, begorra!” said
he as the fish, maddened and frightened,
leaped out of the water. “Look at him
looking for a dentist, bedad!”

It was peculiarly delightful to feel that
fish pull—to get a firm hand on him, and
have him charge off with an impetuosity
that involved more line or broken tackle—to
feel that vigorous, oscillating pull of
his, and to note the ease and strength
with which he swam against the powerful
current or dashed across the boiling
eddy below.

It did not last long, however: he soon
spent himself, and Mr. McGrath received
him with a graceful swoop of his landing-net
and secured him. Four more
soon followed, all large fish—two to the
credit of Mr. McGrath and two to myself.
When caught they are of a dark
olive-green on the back and sides, the
fins quite black at the ends, and the
under side white. They change color
rapidly, and as their vitality decreases
become paler and paler, turning when
dead to a very light olive-green. The
mouth in general form resembles that
of the salmon family, but the size is
much larger in proportion to the weight
of the fish, and the arrangement of the
Page 461teeth is different. With its great strength
and its “game” qualities it is not surprising
that it should afford a good deal
of what is known as “sport.”

An attribute of man which is equivalent
to a strong natural instinct is his
disposition to “do murder.” This may
account for his love of “sport,” or it may
only be an hereditary trait derived from
the period when he had not yet concerned
himself with agriculture, but slew wild
beasts and used his implements of stone
to crack their bones and get the marrow
out. The instinct to slay birds, beasts
and fishes is certainly strong within us,
whatever be its remote origin, and it
is very little affected by what we are
pleased to call our civilization. Indeed,
it is hardly to be believed that one of the
primitive lords of creation, stalking about
in the condition of gorgeous irresponsibility
incident to the Stone Period, would
have lowered himself to the level of the
kid-gloved example of the present stage
of evolution who fishes in Maine. It
cannot be supposed that the pre-historic
gentleman would have disgraced himself
by catching fish he could not use.
He never caught ten times as many of
the Salmo fontinalis as he and all his
friends could eat, and then threw the
rest away to rot. This kind of thing has
prevailed to a great extent, but natural
causes have nearly brought it to an end.
The wholesale slaughter of the fish has
reduced their numbers, and a surfeit of
indecent sport can no longer be indulged
in. Such fishermen should be confined
by law to a large aquarium, in which the
fish they most affected could be taught to
undergo catching and re-catching until
the gentlemen had had enough. The
fish might grow to like it eventually, and
submit as a purely business matter to being
caught regularly for a daily consideration
in chopped liver and real flies.
But how our ancestor, just alluded to,
would despise the sport of this progressive
age! With his primitive but natural
acceptation of Nature’s law of supply and
demand, what would he think of the gentlemen
who killed fish to rot in the sun
or drove a few thousand buffaloes over a
precipice—all for sport? It is probably
the propensity to “do murder” which accounts
for these things, for “sport,” within
decent and proper limits, is a good
thing, and has been favored by the best
of men in all ages—fishing particularly,
because it predisposes to pleasant contemplation,
to equity of criticism in the
consideration of most matters of life, and
to no little self-benignancy. No one
knew this better (although Shakespeare
himself was a poacher) than Christopher
North, and where more fitly could the
brightest pages of the Noctes Ambrosianæ
have been conceived or inspired
than when their author was, rod in hand,
on the banks of a brawling Highland
trout-stream?

The fish had ceased to bite where we
were, and at Mr. McGrath’s suggestion
we dropped down the stream to where
my friend and his darkey were. His experience
with the flies had been similar
to mine, but he had too much regard for
his fine fly-rod, he said, to use it for
“slinging round a bait as big as a herring.”
He had taken it to pieces and
put it away. He was sitting with his
elbows on his knees and a brier-root
pipe in his mouth, content in every feature,
a perfect picture of Placidity on a
Boulder.

“Given up fishing?” I asked.

“Not much,” he replied: “I’ve caught
nine beauties. Pete does all the work,
and I catch the fish.”

Sure enough, he had Pete, who was
one of the best fishermen on the river,
fishing away as hard as he could. Whenever
Pete hooked a fish my friend would
lay down his pipe and play the fish into
the landing-net. “It’s beastly sport,” he
said: “if I wasn’t so confoundedly lazy
I couldn’t stand it at all.—Hello, Pete!
got him?”

“Yes, sah—got him shuah;” and Pete
handed him the rod as the line spun out.
We watched the short struggle, and started
down stream, leaving him to his laziness
just as he was settling back in the
boat for a nap and telling Pete not to
wake him up unless the next was a big
one.

By noon we had thirty-two fish—a
very fair and satisfactory experience. We
Page 462were about to change our position when
we were detained by a tremendous shouting
from the other boat, about half a
mile above us.

“What’s the matter with them, McGrath?”
said I.

“Bedad, sorr! I think it must be that
bucket there in the bow,” he replied,
pointing to the article, which contained
our luncheon.

I was quite satisfied that it was, and
there being a cool spring about forty feet
above us on the bank on the Virginia
side, we disembarked. In the excitement
of fishing I had not thought of
luncheon, but now I found I had a startling
appetite. So had my friend and his
assiduous darkey when they came in and
reported twenty fish.

“Yes,” he said, “I know we ought to
have a good many more, but Pete is so
lazy. It was all I could possibly do to
catch those myself.”

With a flat rock for a table, the grass
to sit upon, and the bubbling music of
the little stream that flowed from the
spring as an accompaniment, the ham
and bread and butter, the pickles and
the hard-boiled eggs, and even the pie
with its mysterious leather crust and its
doubtful inside of dried peaches, tasted
wonderfully well. We did not venture
out upon the river again until three
o’clock, our worthy guides agreeing that
the fish do not bite well between noon and
that hour, and both of us being disposed
to rest a little. My friend stretched himself
on the thick grass, and when his
pipe was exhausted went fast asleep, and
snored with great precision and power
to a mild sternutatory accompaniment
by Mr. McGrath and Pete. I employed
myself in bringing up my largest bass
from the boat to sit for his picture in a
little basin in the rock under the spring.
After he had floundered himself into a
comparatively rational and quiet condition,
much after the fashion of a gentleman
reluctant to have his portrait taken under
the auspices of the police, I succeeded
in committing him to paper. He was a
handsome fish, and eminently deserving
of the distinction thus conferred upon
him.

Sleeping in the grass on a summer
afternoon is a bucolic luxury I never
fully appreciated. When I stirred up
my friend he was red, perspirational and
full of lively entomological suspicions.
He slapped the legs of his pantaloons
vigorously in spots, moved his arms uneasily,
took off his shirt-collar and implored
me to look down his back.

“There’s nothing there,” I reported.
“I know how it is myself: a fellow always
feels that way when he goes to
sleep in the grass.”

“Any woodticks here?” he asked.

“Begorra! plenty,” said Mr. McGrath,
sitting up. “They et a child,” he added
with perfect seriousness of manner, “down
here below last summer.” McGrath’s eyes
twinkled when my friend began to talk
of peeling off and jumping into the river
after a general search. He was finally
reassured, and we started out. We had
even better sport than in the morning,
and accumulated a splendid string of fish
each. On the way down we passed two
boats in which were some gentlemen,
evidently foreigners, engaged in throwing
flies with apparently the same results
that we had attained in the morning.

“Do you know who those people are?”
I asked McGrath.

“I dunno, sorr,” said he, “but I think
they are from one of the legations at
Washington. They come up for a day’s
fishin’ all along of the illigant fishin’ a
party from the same place had one day
last week I suppose;” and he smiled.

“How was that, McGrath?”

“It wor last week, sorr; and I wor up
the river be meself, an’ I had thirty illigant
fish thrailin’ undher the boat comin’
down. It wor just where they are I
seen two boats full of gintlemen, an’ I
dhropped alongside. They wor swells,
sure. They had patint rods, an’ patint
reels, an’ patint flies, an’ patint boots,
an’ patint coats, an’ patint hats, an’ the
divil knows what. Bedad! they wor so
fine that sez I to meself, sez I, ‘Bedad!
if I wor a bass I’d say, “Gintlemen, don’t
go to no throuble on my account: I’ll
git into the boat this minit.”‘—’Been fishin’,
me man?’ sez one of them to me.
‘Sorra much, yer honor,’ sez I.—’It’s
Page 463very strange, you know,’ sez he, ‘that
they don’t bite at all to-day. You haven’t
caught any, have you?’—’Well, sorr,’ sez
I, ‘I did dhrop on a few little ones as I
come down.’—’Oh, did you, really?’ sez
another one, puttin’ a glass in his eye
and standin’ up excited like. ‘Why, my
good man,’ sez he, ‘be good enough to
‘old them up, you know. We’d like so
much to see them!’—Wid that, sorr, I
up wid the sthring as high as I could
lift it, an’ it weighin’ nigh onto a hundred
pound. Well, they were that wild
they didn’t know what to make of it.
One of them sez, sez he, ‘The beggar’s
been a hauling of a net, he has.’—’Divvle
a bit more than yerself,’ sez I. ‘There’s
me impliments, an’, what’s more, if ye
wor to stay here till next week the sorra
fish can ye ketch, because, bedad! ye
dunno how.’ Wid that they put their
heads together, and swore it ud disgrace
them to go home to Washington without
a fish, you know; an’ how much would
I take for the lot? Sez I, ‘I have twenty-five
more down here in a creel in the
river: that’s fifty-five,’ sez I. ‘Ye can
have the lot for twinty dollars.’—’It’s a
go,’ sez he; an’ ever since that there’s
letters comin’ up from Washington askin’
if the wather is in good ordher, and
what is the accommodations? Bedad!
I’m wondherin’ if them as we passed
wouldn’t be likin’ a dozen or two on
the same terms?”

Nothing finishes up a day’s bass-fishing
better than a good hot supper of broiled
bass, country sausage, fried ham and
eggs, and coffee. The cooking can generally
be managed, and the appetite is
guaranteed. Experto crede.

W. Mackay Laffan.

The Chrysalis Of A Bookworm.

I read, O friend, no pages of old lore,

Which I loved well, and yet the wingèd days,

That softly passed as wind through green spring ways

And left a perfume, swift fly as of yore,

Though in clear Plato’s stream I look no more,

Neither with Moschus sing Sicilian lays.

Nor with bold Dante wander in amaze,

Nor see our Will the Golden Age restore.

I read a book to which old books are new,

And new books old. A living book is mine—

In age, two years: in it I read no lies—

In it to myriad truths I find the clew—

A tender, little child; but I divine

Thoughts high as Dante’s in its clear blue eyes.

Maurice F. Egan.

Page 464

A Law Unto Herself.

Chapter X.

Miss Fleming arrived that evening
while Jane was on the water.
She was in the habit of coming out to the
Hemlock Farm for a day’s holiday, and
went directly to her own room as though
she were at home. When she stepped
presently out on the porch, where the
gentlemen had gone to smoke, a soft
black silk showing every line of her supple
figure, glimpses of the rounded arms
revealed with every movement of the
loose sleeves, one or two thick green
leaves in her light hair—ugly, quiet,
friendly—they all felt more at home than
they had done before. There was a
pitcher of punch by the captain’s elbow:
she tasted it, threw in a dash of liquor,
poured him out a glass and sat down
beside him, and he felt that a gap was
comfortably filled.

“You have turned your back on Philadelphia,
they tell me, Miss Fleming,”
complained Judge Rhodes. “New York
sucks in all the young blood of the country—the
talent and energy.”

“Oh, I came simply to sell my wares.
New York is my market, but Philadelphia
will always be home to me,” in her
peculiar pathetic voice. “I left good
friends there,” with one of her bewildering
glances straight into the judge’s
beady eyes, at which his flabby face was
suffused with heat.

“You do not forget your friends, that’s
certain,” he said, lowering his voice.
“That was a delicate compliment, sending
my portrait back to the Exhibition.
I felt it very much, I assure you.”

Cornelia bowed silently. Neither she
nor the judge said anything about the
round-numbered cheque which he had
sent her for it. In the moonlight they
preferred to let the affair stand on a
sentimental basis.

Mr. Van Ness meanwhile eyed Miss
Fleming’s pose and rounded figure with
a watery gleam of complacency.

“An exceptional woman,” was his verdict.
He turned the conversation to art,
and asked innumerable questions with
a profound humility. Cornelia replied
eagerly, until the fact crept out from the
judge that there was not an æsthetic
dogma nor a gallery in the world with
which he was not familiar. Then to
pottery, in which field his modesty was
as profound, until the judge pushed him,
as it were, to a corner, when he acknowledged
himself the possessor of a few
“nice bits.”

“I have some old Etruscan pieces
which I should like you to see, Miss
Fleming,” with his mild, deprecating
cough, “and a bit of Capo di Monte,
and the only real specimen of Henri
Deux in the country.”

“I must see them,” emphatically.
“Where are your cabinets?”

“Oh, nowhere,” with a shrug. “My
poor little specimens have never been
unpacked since I returned to this country.
They are boxed up in a friend’s cellar.”

“God bless me, Cornelia!” cried the
captain in a muffled tone, “how could
Mr. Van Ness spend his time koo-tooing
to cracked pots? He has, as I may say,
the future of Pennsylvania in his hand.
When I think what he is doing for the
friendless children—thousands of’em—”
The punch had heated the captain’s zeal
to the point where words failed him.

After that the friendless children swept
lighter subjects out of sight. Mr. Van
Ness, whose humility in this light rose to
saintly heights, had all the statistics of
the Bureaux of Charity at his tongue’s
end. He had studied the Dangerous
Classes in every obscure corner of the
world. He could give you the status
quo of any given tribe in India just as
easily as the time-table on the new railway
in Egypt. No wonder that he could
tell you in a breath the percentage of
orphans, deserted minors, children of
vicious parents, in his own State, and
the amount per capita required to civilize
and Christianize them. As he talked
Page 465of this matter his eyes became suffused
with tears. The great Home for these
helpless wards of the State he described
at length, from its situation on a high
table-land of the Alleghanies and the
dimensions of the immense buildings
down to the employments of the children
and the capacity of the laundry—a perfect
Arcadia with all the modern
improvements, where Crime was to be
transformed wholesale into Virtue.

“Where is this institution?” asked
Miss Fleming. “It is strange I never
heard of it.”

“Oh, it is not built as yet: we have
not raised the funds,” Mr. Van Ness replied
with a smothered sigh.

The judge patted one foot and looked
at him compassionately. It was a devilishly
queer ambition to be the savior
of those dirty little wretches in the back
alleys. But if a man had given himself
up, body and soul, to such a pursuit, it
was hard measure that he must be
thwarted in it.

Miss Fleming also bent soft sympathetic
eyes on her new friend. The
Home was not built, eh? Not a brick
laid? She wondered whether that box
with the priceless treasures existed in his
friend’s cellar or in his brain: she wondered
whether he had not seen those pictures
of the old masters in photographs,
or whether he had travelled in Japan and
the obscure corners of the earth in the flesh
or in books. There was more than the
wonted necessity upon her to establish
sympathetic relations with this new man:
she had never seen a finer presence: the
beard and brow quite lifted his masculinity
into æsthetic regions; she caught
glimpses, too, of an unfamiliar mongrel
species of intellect with which she would
relish Platonic relations. Yet with this
glow upon her she regarded the reformer’s
noble face and benignant blond beard
doubtfully, thinking how she used to stick
pins in brilliant bubbles when she was
a child, and nothing would be left but a
patch of dirty water.

“Jane is out on the river, as usual?”
she asked presently.

“Yes,” said her father: “Mr. Neckart
is with her. Neither of them will ever
stay under a roof if they can help it.
They ought to have a dash of Indian
blood in their veins to account for such
vagabondizing.”

“Is Bruce Neckart here?” with a
change in her tone which made the captain
look up at her involuntarily.

“Yes.”

“I thought he was in Washington: I
did not expect to meet him.”

The judge puffed uneasily at his cigar.
He was a family man, with a stout wife
and married son. He did not meet Miss
Fleming once a year, but he felt a vague
jealousy of Neckart.

“By the way, you must be old acquaintances?”
he said abruptly. “Both
from Delaware? Kent county?”

“Oh yes,” with a shrill womanish laugh,
very different from her usual sweet boyish
ha! ha! “Many’s the day we rowed
on the bay or dredged for oysters together,
dirty and ragged and happy.
There is not very much difference in
our ages,” seeing his look of surprise.
“I look younger than I am, and Bruce
has grown old fast. At least, so I hear.
I have not seen him for years.”

She was silent after that, and preoccupied
as her admirers had never seen her,
and presently, hearing Jane’s and Neckart’s
steps on the path, she rose hastily
and bade them good-night. They each
shook hands with her, that being one of
the sacred rites in the Platonic friendships
so much in vogue now-a-days among clever
men and women. Mr. Van Ness offered
his hand last, and Cornelia smiled cordially
as she took it. But it was clammy
and soft. She rubbed her fingers with
a shudder of disgust as she hurried up
to her own room. There she walked
straight to her glass and turned up the
lamp beside it, looking long and fixedly
at her face. She knew with exactness
the extent of its ugliness and its power.

“It is too late now even if it ever could
have been,” she said quietly, and put out
the light. Then she went to the window.
Mr. Neckart had left Jane inside, and,
not joining the other men, turned back
to the garden. She saw the bulky dark
figure as it passed under her window.

She stretched out her hands as if for
Page 466a caress, with the palms pressed close.
“Oh, Bruce!” she said under her breath.
“Bruce!”

After he had passed out of sight she
stood thinking over all the men who had
made a comrade of her since she saw
him last—how they had handled her
fingers and looked into her eyes; how
her every thought and fancy had grown
common and unclean through much
usage; how she had dragged out whatever
maidenly feeling she had in the old
times, and made capital of it to bring
these companions to her who were neither
lovers nor friends.

“When I could not have the food
which I wanted. I took the husks which
the swine did eat,” she said, leaving the
window, with a short laugh. “Well, I
could not die of starvation.”

Chapter XI.

When Jane woke the next morning a
bluebird was singing outside of the window:
she tried to mimic him before she
was out of bed, and sang scraps of songs
to herself as she dressed. The captain
heard her in his room below, but pretended
to be asleep when she came down as
usual to lay out his clothes, for, although
she insisted that her father should have
Dave as a valet, she left him but little to
do.

Watching her from under the covers,
the captain saw that she had left off the
black snood and tied her hair with a
band of rose-colored ribbon. Her lips
were ruddy and her eyes alight: once or
twice she laughed to herself.

“What high day or holiday is it, Jane?”

“Oh, every day is a high day now!”
running to kiss him. “I was just thinking
how comfortable money is, and how
glad I am that we have it,” glancing
about delighted at his luxurious toilet
appointments before the low wood-fire.
Then she spread out his dressing-gown
and velvet smoking-cap, and eyed with
her head on one side the fine shirt and
its costly studs.

“Do you remember the rag-carpet in
your room which we thought such a triumph?
and the old tin shaving-cup?
Now, my lord, look out upon your estate!”
opening the window. “Your musicians
have come to waken you, and your servitors
stand without,” as Buff tapped at
the door with hot water.

“He is as comfortable as a baby wrapped
in lamb’s wool,” she thought as she
ran down the stairs. “And this air is so
pure and the sun so bright! Oh, he
must grow strong here! Anybody would
be cured here—anybody!”

The captain followed her to the barnyard.
It was one of her inexorable prescriptions
for him that he should drink a
glass of warm milk-punch before breakfast,
and smell the cow’s breath during
the operation. She was milking the white
cow herself, while the pseudo sempstress,
Nichols, waited with the goblet, and the
bandy-legged shoemaker, Twiss, stood
on guard, eyeing Brindle’s horns suspiciously.

“Now the glass! These are the strippings.
Oh you’ll soon learn, Betty!
You’ll make butter as well as you used
to make dresses badly.”

The little widow and Twiss laughed,
as they always did at Jane’s weak jokes,
and took the punch to the captain. She
was the finest wit of her day in their
eyes. The hostler’s boy ran down from
the stable to speak to her. She thought
he had as innocent a face as she had ever
seen. No doubt he would have gone to
perdition if Neckart had not rescued him.
She stopped to talk to him with beaming
eyes, and meeting Betty’s toddling baby
took it up and tossed it in the air, and
then walked on, carrying the soft little
thing in her arms. The farm was like
the Happy Valley this morning! God
was so good to her! She could warm
and comfort all these people. Then she
turned into the woods and sat down on
a fallen log. It was the place where they
had stopped to rest yesterday, Neckart
lying at her feet. There was the imprint
still in the dead moss where his arm had
lain. She looked guiltily about, and then
laid her hand in the broken moss with a
quick passionate touch. The baby caught
her chin in its fingers. She hugged it to
her breast, and kissed it again and again.
Page 467From the hemlock overhead a tanager
suddenly flashed up into the air with a
shrill peal of song. Jane looked up, her
face and throat dyed crimson. Did he
know? She glanced down at the grass,
at the friendly trees all alive with rustling
and chirping. The sky overhead was so
deep and warm a blue to-day. It seemed
as if they all knew that he loved her.

The captain found Mr. Neckart standing
on the stoop listening to some sound
that came up from the woods.

“It is Jane singing,” he said. “You
would not hear her once in a year. Hereditary
gift! In the old Swedish annals
we read of the remarkable voices of the
Svens.”

“I never heard her sing before.” Yet
he had known at once that it was she.
It was the most joyous of songs, but
there was a foreboding pathos in the
voice which moved him as no other
sound had ever done.

“You are not going before breakfast?”
cried the captain.

“Yes, and I shall not be able to come
again for a long time. Say to Miss Swendon—But
no. I will go and bid her
good-bye.”

He met her as she was crossing the
plank thrown across the brook, and they
stopped by the little hand-rail, not looking
directly at each other: “I came to
bid you good-morning.”

“Do you take the early train, then?”

“Yes.” He did not mean to tell her
that he would not come again. The
more ordinary their parting the sooner
she would forget it and him. He had
thought the matter out during the night,
and being a man who was apt to under-rate
himself, was convinced that the feeling
which she had betrayed was but that
transient flush of preference which any
very young and innocent girl is apt to
give to the first man of whom she makes
a companion.

“There is nothing in me likely to win
enduring love from her. A more intellectual
woman, indeed—” He had gone
over the argument again and again.
When he was out of sight her fancy
would soon turn to this new lover, so
much better suited to her in every respect.
For himself—But he had no
right, to think of himself. He struck that
thought down fiercely again as they stood
together on the bridge. No more right
than he would have, were he dead, to
drag down this young creature into his
grave.

He patted the child on the head as it
clung to her dress, and talked of the
chance of more rain with perfect correctness
and civility; and when Jane managed
to raise her eyes to his face she
found it grave and preoccupied, as it
usually was over the morning papers.
He saw Van Ness coming smiling to
meet her.

“It is time for me to go,” he said, his
eyes passing slowly over her: then with
a hasty bow, not touching her hand,
he struck through the woods to the station,
thinking as he went how she was
standing then on the bridge in the sunshine,
with the man whom she would
marry beside her. She looked after him,
her eyes full of still, deep content. He
loved her. She had forgotten everything
else.

“A perfect morning, Miss Swendon,”
said Mr. Van Ness, stroking his magnificent
golden beard. “You see just this
deep azure sky above the Sandwich Islands.
Now, I remember watching such a
dawn on Mauna Loa. Ah-h, you would
have appreciated that. Our friend has
gone, eh? Most active, energetic man!
I heard him tell your father he should
not return soon again.”

“Not return?” stopping in her slow
walk.

“No. It really must be impossible for
an editor to spare time often for visits to
even such an Arcadia as this. No stock market
or political news in Arcadia,
eh?” with a benevolent gurgle of a
laugh. “Business! business! Miss Swendon.
Ah, how it engrosses the majority
of men!” shaking his head ponderously.

She said nothing. It was as if she
had been suddenly wakened out of a
dream in the crowd of a dusty market-place.
He had gone back to the world,
to his real business and his real trouble.
She, with her love and her intended cure
Page 468for him, was a silly fool wandering in a
fantastic Arcadia.

Miss Fleming was walking up and
down on the porch as they came up,
more carefully dressed than usual. The
captain had just told her that Neckart
had gone.

“Ah? I’m very sorry,” carelessly.
“I should have been glad to see him
again. Though no doubt he has forgotten
me.”

She went forward to meet Jane with a
smile, but a withered gray look under
her eyes. “I have been making a tour
of your principality,” she said as they
went in to breakfast. “I see you have
brought out a colony of Philadelphia
paupers. Twiss, and Betty, and the
rest.”

“They were not paupers,” said Jane,
taking her place behind the urn. “Did
you see into what a great boy Top has
grown? And Peter?” It gave her a
warm glow at heart to remember these
people just now. At least, there her
care had not been fantastic or thrown
away.

“I hardly expected you to take up the
rôle of guardian angel. It requires study,
after all, to play it successfully,” pursued
Cornelia with an amiable smile, cutting
her butter viciously.—”Very young girls
are apt to be impetuous in their charities,
and damage more than they help,” turning
to the judge. “These poor people,
for instance. Betty had her kinsfolk
about her in Philadelphia, her church
and her gossips. She complained bitterly
to me this morning that she ‘had no
company here but the cows: Miss Swendon
might as well have whisked her off
into a haythen desart.'”

“She complained to you!” cried the
captain. “Why, the trouble and money
which Jane has given to that woman and
her family! They were starving, I assure
you!”

Jane listened at first with her usual
quiet good-humor. Miss Fleming’s waspish
temper generally amused her, as it
would have done a man (if he was not
her husband). But she began to grow
anxious.

“You really think Betty is not contented
here?” her hand a little unsteady
as she poured the cream into the cups.

“Contented? She seems miserable
enough. Home is home, you know, if
it is only a cellar and starvation. But
perhaps”—with a shrug—”that class
of Irish are never happy without a grievance.
Now, Twiss, it appears to me,
has just ground for complaint.—A shoemaker,”
turning to the judge a face
beaming with fun, “whom this young
lady has transported and set down in
charge of gardens and hot-houses. He
does not know a hoe from a mower, and
he is too old to learn. He had a good
trade: now he has nothing.”

“But he could not live by his trade,”
cried Jane.

“Well, cobbling is looking up now.
In any case, you have pauperized him.”

“That’s bad—bad! Now, in Virginia
we used to feed everybody who came
along!” said the judge, shaking his
head. “But I’ve learned wisdom in the
cities. Every bit of bread given to a
beggar degrades human nature and rots
society to the core.”

“But suppose he is starving?” urged
the captain. “The Good Samaritan
wasn’t afraid of pauperizing that poor
devil on the road.”

“Let him starve. He will have preserved
his self-respect. The Good Samaritan
knew nothing of political economy,
sir.”

Jane left her breakfast untasted. She
understood nothing about political economy,
but she saw that she had done irreparable
injury to these people whom she
had tried to serve—God knew with what
anxiety and tenderness of heart. In one
case, at least, there had been no mistake.

“Did you see Phil?” she said, turning
with brightening countenance to Miss
Fleming. “We intend to have Phil educated.
He is such a keen-witted little
fellow.”

Miss Fleming laughed outright now:
“Mr. Neckart’s protégé? Yes, I saw
him. He has been stealing tobacco and
money from Dave, it appears, ever since
he came, and was found out this morning.
There was a horrible row in the
stable as I passed.”

Page 469

“Of course he stole!” said the judge
triumphantly. “I tell you, the more efforts
you make to reform the dangerous
classes the more hardened you will grow.
It’s hopeless—hopeless!”

Her other listeners each promptly presented
their theory. Like all intelligent
Americans, they were provided with theories
on every social problem, and were
ready to hang it on an individual stable-boy
or any other nail of a fact which
might offer. Jane alone sat silent. She
did not hear when her father spoke to
her once or twice.

“You are disappointed,” Mr. Van
Ness’s soft soothing voice murmured in
her ear. “I know how these baffled efforts
chill the heart. I will explain to
you the machinery which I propose to
bring to bear on these classes.”

“I don’t know anything about machinery
or classes. Twiss and Betty
were friends of mine, and I tried to help
them, and have failed.”

Miss Fleming, who was watching her
furtively, saw her dull eyes raised presently
and rest on the captain, who with
a red face and bursts of laughter was
telling one of his interminable stories.

“This girl,” Cornelia said to herself,
“has everything which I have not—beauty,
wealth, Bruce Neckart’s love. Yet
she looks at that weak old man as if he
were all that was left her in the world.”
She had put Jane before on the general
basis of antipathy which she had to everything
in the world that was not masculine,
but the feeling had kindled since
last night into active dislike.

When breakfast was over and their
guests had gone to their rooms to make
ready to meet the train, Jane decoyed the
captain away to Bruno’s kennel, where
he was tied during Mr. Van Ness’s stay.
Once out of sight she retied his cravat,
arranged his white hair to her liking,
stroked his sunken cheeks. Here was
something actual and real. She knew
now that she had never had anything
that was truly her own but the kind foolish
face looking down on her. She never
would have anything more. Only an
hour ago life had opened for her wide
and fair as the dawn: now it had narrowed
to this old hand in hers, to his
breath, that came and went—O God,
how feebly!

“You are looking stronger to-day, father.
You are gaining every day. Oh
that is quite certain! Very soon we shall
have you as well and strong as you were
at forty.”

What if she had not had money this
last year? He never could have lived
through it. God had been kind to her—kind!
She pressed his hand to her
breast with a quick glance out to the
bright sky. The Captain saw her chin
quivering. His own thoughts ran partly
in the same line as hers.

“Oh, I’m gaining, no doubt of it.
Though I never could have pulled
through this year if we had had to live
in the old way. God bless Will Laidley
for leaving the money as he did!”

“It was not his to leave otherwise!”
she cried indignantly.

“Tut, tut, Jane! Of course it was his.
By every law. He could have flung it
away where he chose; and he had a perfect
right to do it.”

It was not God who had been kind to
her, then: it was only that she had stolen
the money?

“Come, Jenny: we must go back to
the house.”

“In a moment, father. Go on: I will
follow you.”

She walked up and down the tan-bark
path for a while. She was sure of nothing.
Wherever she had done what seemed
to her right and natural, she was barred
and checked by the world’s laws
and experience. She had brought these
starving wretches out of a hell upon
earth into this paradise, and even they
laughed at her want of wisdom: the very
money which was her own in the sight
of God, and which had lengthened her
father’s life, ought to be given back to-day
to the poor, its rightful owners. If
there was any other cause for her to fight
blindly against the narrow matter-of-fact
routine which ruled her life, she did not
name it even to herself.

Looking toward the house, she saw her
father escorting their guests to the gate,
where the carriage waited, David resplendent
Page 470on the box. The captain
walked with a feeble kind of swagger:
his voice came back to her in weak gusts
of laughter. She laid her hand on a tree,
glancing about her with a firm sense of
possession. “The property is mine,” she
said, “and I’ll keep it as long as he lives,
if all the paupers in the United States
were starving at the gates!”

Chapter XII.

Mr. Van Ness returned to the Hemlock
Farm at stated periods during the
summer. He had, to be plain, sat down
before Jane’s heart to besiege it with the
same ponderous benign calm with which
he ate an egg or talked of death. There
was a bronze image of Buddha in the
hall at the Farm, the gaze of the god fixed
with ineffable content, as it had been
for ages, on his own stomach.

Jane went up to it one day after an
hour’s talk with Mr. Van Ness. “This
creature maddens me,” she said. “I always
want to break it into pieces to see
it alter.”

Little Mr. Waring, who had come with
Van Ness, hurried up as a connoisseur in
bronzes, adjusting his eye-glasses. “Why,
it is faultless, Miss Swendon!” he cried.

“That is precisely what makes it intolerable.”

Much of Jane’s large, easy good-humor
was gone by this time. She had grown
thin, was eager, restless, uncertain of
what she ought or ought not to do, even
in trifles.

Mr. Waring and Judge Rhodes were
both at the Farm now. They ran over
to New York every week or two. Phil
Waring was not a marrying man, but it
was part of his duty as a leader in society
to be intimate with every important heiress
or beauty in the two cities. Out of
sincere compassion to Jane’s stupendous
ignorance he would sit for hours stroking
his moustache, his elbows on his knees,
his feet on a rung of the chair, dribbling
information as to the nice effects in the
Water-Color Exhibition, or miraculous
“finds” of Spode or Wedgwood in old
junk-shops, or the most authentic information
as to why the Palfreys had no
cards to Mrs. Livingstone’s kettledrums,
while Jane listened with a quizzical gleam
in her eyes, as she did to the little bantam
hen outside cackling and strutting
over its new egg.

“We must have you in society this
winter,” he urged. “It is a duty you
owe in your position. You have no
choice about it.”

“You are right, Mr. Waring,” called
the captain from the corner where he sat
with Judge Rhodes. “The child must
have friends in her own class.” He
dropped his voice again: “The truth is,
Rhodes, she has no ties like other girls.
Her dog and two or three old women
and some children—that is all she knows
of life. It’s enough while she has me.
But I shall not be here long, now. Not
many months.”

The eyes of the two men met.

“Does she know?” asked the judge
after a while.

“No.” The captain’s gaunt features
worked: he trotted his foot to some tune,
looking down from the window and whistling
under his breath. “It was for this
I sent for you,” he added presently. “If
I could only see her settled, married, before
I go! She is no more fit to be left
alone in the world than Bruno.”

The judge shook his head in gloomy
assent. His own opinion was that Jane
would follow her own instincts in a dog-like
fashion if her father was out of the
way, and God only knew where they
would lead her! He had brought his
own girls, Rose and Netty, with him to
visit her, in order that she might have a
domestic feminine influence upon her.
They found, accidentally, that she did
not know a word of any catechism, and,
terrified, loaned her religious novels to
convert her: she took them graciously,
but never cut the leaves. There were to
them even more heathenish indications
in her hoopless straight skirts: the good
little creatures zealously cut and trimmed
a dress for her from the very last patterns.
She put it on, and straightway
went through bog and brake with Bruno
for mushrooms, coming back with it in
tatters. They chattered in their thin falsetto
Page 471voices the last Culpepper gossip into
her patient ear—the story of Rosey’s
balls at Old Point, and Netty’s lovers,
all of whom were “splendid matches
until impohverished by the war.” She
listened to their chirping with amused
eyes, tapping them, when they were
through, approvingly on the head as
though they were clever canaries. The
girls told their father that they “feared
her principles leaned toward infidelity,
and that it was never safe to be intimate
with these original women,” and had
gone home the next day, not waiting for
the judge. They washed their hands of
her, and gloved them again, but he still
felt responsible for her. After he left
the captain he went to her, fatherly interest
radiant in every feature: “Mr.
Waring is right, Jane. It is high time
that you were taking your part in society.
Your father wishes it.”

“I will do whatever he wishes,” quietly.—”You
did not know us when we
lived in the old house in Southwark, Mr.
Waring. We invented our patents then.
Sometimes we could afford to go to the
gallery at the theatre when the play was
good. Father and the newsboys would
lead the clapping. And we went once a
year in our patched shoes a-fishing for a
holiday. Those were good times.”

“Perfect child of Nature!” telegraphed
Mr. Waring uneasily to the judge.
“How Mrs. Wilde will rejoice in you,
Miss Swendon! Nature is her specialty.
She is coming to call this morning.—Miss
Swendon,” turning anxiously to
the judge, “can have no better sponsor
in society than Mrs. Wilde. She only
can give the accolade to all aspirants.
No amount of money will force an entrance
at her doors. There must be
blood—blood. ‘Swendon?’ she said
when I spoke to her about this call.
‘The Swedish Svens? I remember.
Queen Christina’s gallant lieutenant
was her great-grandfather. Good stock.
None better. The girl must belong to
our circle.’ So, now it is all settled!”
rubbing his hands and smiling.

“Jane is careless,” said the captain
eagerly. “People of the best fashion
have called, and she has not even left
cards. Her dress too—Now a Paris
gown, fringes and—”

The three men looked at her at that
with a sudden imbecile despair, at which
she laughed and went out.

The captain found her presently down
by the boat in which she had heard
Neckart’s story. She bailed it out and
cleaned it carefully every day, but she
had never gone on the river in it since
that night.

“Father,” stepping ashore, “what have
I done that I must be turned into another
woman?”

“Now, Jenny, making models and
crabbing were well enough for you as
a child. But, as Waring justly observes,
the society to which you belong is inexorable
in its rules for a woman.”

She flung out her arms impatiently,
and then clasped them above her head.
It seemed as if a thousand fine clammy
webs were being spun about her.

“If you had any especial talent, as
Waring says—if you were artistic or
musical, or concerned in some asylum-work—you
could take your own path,
independent of society. But—” looking
down at her anxiously.

“I understand. I don’t know what I
was made for.”

It was the first time in her life that she
had been driven in to consider herself.
She stood grave and intent, saying nothing
for some time. Every other woman
had some definite aim. The whole world
was marching by, keeping step to a neat,
orderly little tune. They made calls,
they gave alms, they dressed, all of the
same fashion.

“Why not be like other people?” her
father was saying, making a burden to
her thought.

“I don’t know why,” drearily.

“What would you have, Jenny?” taking
her hand in his.

“Father, I never loved but one or two
people in the world. You and Bruno
and—not many others. I can do nothing
outside of them.”

“Nonsense! You cannot be a law to
yourself, child. God knows I want to
see you happy!” his voice breaking.
“But,” straightening his eye-glasses,
Page 472“Waring says, very justly, you are out
of the groove which all other girls are
in.” He stopped inquiringly, but she
did not answer. She was a strongly-built
woman in mind and body, and just
then she felt her strength. The blood
rushed in a swift current through her
veins. Why should she be hampered
with these thousand meaningless, sham
duties? She was fit for but one purpose—to
serve two men whom she loved.
Her father was ill, and he pushed her
from him into Society; and Bruce Neckart
was alone, and with a worse fate than
death creeping on him, and he—

“Why does not Mr. Neckart come to
us?” she asked abruptly. “It is months
since I have seen him.”

“His health is failing. There is some
trouble of the brain threatened. I hear
that he is going to give up the paper,
and is settling up his business to go to
Europe.” Her question startled him: he
watched her with a new keen suspicion.

“If this must come on him, why should
he not come here to bear it? I can nurse
you both. Surely, that is as good work
as returning calls or learning to dress in
Parisian style,” with a short laugh.

The captain’s face gathered intelligence
as he listened. He knew her secret now.
For a moment he felt a wrench of pity
for her. But love, with the captain, had
been a sentimental fever ending in a cold
ague: he had experienced light heats and
chills of it many a time since. This wild
fancy of the girl’s would speedily burn itself
out if judiciously damped. He would
at once take the matter in hand.

“Neckart,” he said deliberately, eying
her to gauge the effect of his words, “is a
man of sense and knowledge of the world.
He knows his condition, and in the little
time left to him he attends to his business
and important political affairs, instead of
nursing a romantic friendship which cannot
serve him, and would only compromise
you.”

“Compromise me? I don’t understand
you, father.”

“A woman could not render such service
as you offer except to her betrothed
lover or husband.”

“Why, he would understand.”

“But Society, child—”

“Oh, Society!” with a laugh. “But
you do not remember!” clasping her
hands on his shoulder. “If this thing
comes upon him—he has looked forward
to it all his life—he has nobody. He is
quite alone.”

“At least,” impatiently, “you will not
be involved. I did not understand before
why Bruce had deserted us lately.
I see now that he has acted very properly.
It was not his fault nor yours—this
flirtation—preference—or whatever you
may choose to call it. But Bruce knows
the world, and knows just how long-lived
such fancies are, and he intends that it
shall be no hinderance to your marriage—making
an excellent match.”

“I marry? Make an excellent match?”

“Yes. Certainly. What else should you
do? Don’t look in that way, my darling.
It frightens me. I’m not strong. It is not
death that is coming to you, but a good
husband. You need not turn so white.”

“And Mr. Neckart planned this for
me?“

“N-no. I can’t say ‘planned,’ to be accurate.
But he agreed in our plan. Why,
Bruce has common sense. He knows it
is the way of the world that a woman
should marry, and he will be much happier
to know that you are the wife of a
good man—good and good-looking too.
Much more presentable than Bruce, poor
fellow!”

The captain watched her closely as he
gave this home-thrust. How a woman
could turn from that magnificent, devout
reformer to any lean, irascible politician!
Her foot was on the edge of the little
skiff. She pushed it into the water.
While he sat in the boat there that night,
with the moonlight white about them,
while he told her that he loved her, he had
been planning this good match for her!
There was no such thing as love, then,
in the world? Or truth? But there was
Society and common sense and the inexorable
rules of propriety. Bruce Neckart
represented to her Strength itself, and
he submitted to these rules cheerfully.
He was happy to think of her as the
wife of a good, presentable man!

When she had thought of him as going
Page 473alone with his terrible burden away from
her into the wilderness, true to her until
the last breath of reason was gone, there
had been a thrill of delight in the intolerable
pain. But planning, like finical
little Waring, that she should fall snugly
into a fashionable set, Parisian gowns, a
suitable marriage!

Jane had not the womanish faculty of
thinning every fact or thought that came
to her into tears or talk. Neckart had
gone out of her life. She accepted the
fact at once, without argument. What
the loss imported to her would assuredly
be known only to her own narrow,
one-sided mind, and the God who had
given it to her.

“Shall we go to the house, father?
Can’t you laugh again, and look like yourself?
Why, I will give myself up, body
and soul, to Society or Philanthropy—anything
you choose—rather than see you
so shaken.” She hung on his arm as
they went up the path, talking incessantly,
and laughing more, as even the captain
felt, than the jokes would warrant.
The moment was favorable for introducing
the subject he had at heart.

“The last train brought out a dozen
men to consult Mr. Van Ness,” he began—”deputations
from church and
charitable organizations. ‘Pon my soul,
I don’t know what Christianity in this
country would do without that man!”

“It would wear a very different face,”
absently.

“I went with Rhodes to a great revival-meeting
in town one night lately, and
Van Ness, of course, was called up on
the platform. Rhodes thought he looked
like one of the apostles in modern
dress; and all the ladies near me said
that his face beamed with heavenly light.
It would have made anybody devout to
look at him. Are you listening?” glancing
at her abstracted face. “You certainly
think him remarkably handsome?
As to his nose, now?”

“I don’t suppose anybody could find
fault with his nose,” smiling.

“Nor with his manner?”

“Nor with his manner.”

“And yet you are not friends, eh?”
holding his breath for her answer.

“No,” carelessly. “Mr. Van Ness
and I could not be friends.”

“Why? why?”

“How could I tell?” with a shrug,
and looking at Bruno, who was fighting
a cat just then without cause.

The captain looked and sighed. It
was of no use, he thought, to try to account
for the prejudices or likings of
any of the lower animals.

Mr. Waring met them at the moment
in an anxious flutter: “Mrs. Wilde is
here. She is coming down the path.”

Mrs. Wilde was a small, plump old
lady with a sober, tranquil face framed
in soft puffs of white hair; her dress
never rustled or brought itself into any
notice; her language never fell uneasily
out of its quiet gait; when she spoke to
you, you felt that something genuine and
happy dominated you for the moment.

“I followed Mr. Waring here,” holding
out her hand. “One makes acquaintance
so much more quickly out of doors.
I must begin ours by asking for your
arm, Miss Swendon. I am fat and scant
o’ breath, and apt to forget it.”

Jane drew the puffy hand eagerly
through her arm. She would have liked
to say outright how welcome the motherly
presence and the honest voice were
to her just then.

Mrs. Wilde dismissed the captain and
Mr. Waring, and the two women sat
down in the arbor, and at once were at
ease and at home with each other. Bruno
came up, eyed and smelled the new-comer,
and snuggled down on her skirts
to go to sleep.

“He vouches for me,” she said nodding.
“You must take me at his valuation.”

“He makes no mistakes.”

“Nor do you, I suspect. That reminds
me, Miss Swendon. I brought a friend
with me, and now that I have seen you
I mean to bespeak your good-will for
her. She needs just such healthy influence
as yours would be.”

“Is she ill?”

“Only in mind. One of those morbid
women who must make a drama out of
their lives, and prefer to make it a tragedy.
A Madame Trebizoff, an English-woman
Page 474who married a Russian prince.
She is a widow now, with large means—came
to New York a few months ago,
and has had much court paid to her.
But her nature makes her always a very
lonely woman.” She spoke hastily as
the trailing of heavy skirts approached
on the grass. “Here she is, poor thing!
Be good to her,” she whispered before
presenting her in form. Madame Trebizoff
was draped in black, with a good
deal of lace about her head and an artificial
yellow rose at her throat. Jane
went up to her with outstretched hand,
but when the sallow face turned full on
her she stopped short, looked at it a moment,
and then bowed without a word.

“It is the materialized spirit!” But
she did not speak, for in a moment she
remembered that she had once taken the
bread from the wretched woman’s mouth.
She would not do it again.

Chapter XIII.

Mr. Van Ness came beaming down
through the lilacs to the arbor, and was
received with much reverence by Mrs.
Wilde. She was a devout woman, and
Pliny Van Ness’s name was in all the
churches. They all sauntered back to
luncheon presently, Mrs. Wilde and Jane
going before, while Mr. Van Ness and the
Russian princess walked more slowly
through the woods, the foreigner talking
with animation and many gestures of
American trees, while the reformer listened
benignly, ineffable calm in his
smiling eyes.

“You followed me here purposely,
Charlotte?” he said gently as she dilated
eloquently on our autumnal foliage.

“No. I did not know that you were
in New York. But I meant to call upon
you soon. I have had no money from
you since last August.”

“Somebody, apparently, has filled my
place as your banker,” his placid eye
sweeping over the costly dress and be-diamonded
fingers.

“What is that to you?” with a sudden
shrill passion. “Once you would have
cared, Pliny. But that was years ago.”

“Yes. Many years ago,” buttoning
his glove carefully. “A Russian princess,
eh?” after a short pause. “You are playing
higher than ordinary, Charlotte. You’ll
find it dangerous. I should advise you to
keep to begging letters or the rôle of medium
or literary tramp.”

“One class is as ready to be humbugged
as the other. Who knows that better
than you?”

“In the religious and charitable work
to which I have given up my life,” deliberately
measuring his words, “there
are few impostors to be met. We usually
detect fraud, with God’s help, and do
not suffer from it, therefore.”

She stopped short, looking at him with
blank amazement. Then walked on with
a shrug: “Absolutely! He expects me to
believe in him! He believes in himself!
Can imposture go further than that?”

Mrs. Wilde, in the distance, caught
sight of the two figures as they passed
through a belt of sunlight, and smiled
contentedly.

“I am so glad to bring poor madame
under direct religious influence! Mr.
Van Ness is speaking to her with great
earnestness, I perceive.”

The Princess Trebizoff scanned the
great reformer as they walked, appraising
him, from the measured solemn step
to his calm humility of eye. She would
have relished a passionate scene with
him. After terrapin and champagne,
there was nothing she relished so much
as emotion and tears. But they had played
up to each other so often! The tragedy
in their relation had grown terribly
stale! You could not, she felt, make
Hamlet’s inky cloak out of dyed cotton.
But he would serve as audience.

“I’m growing very tired of good society,”
talking rapidly as usual. “Now,
you always enjoyed a dead level, Pliny.”

“Yes. There’s no Bohemian blood in
my veins. I was designed for respectability.”

“So? I mean Ted shall be respectable,”
with sudden earnestness. “He is
in a Presbyterian college. I should be
glad if he’d go into the ministry. Yes,
I should. Provided he had a call from
God. I’ll have no sham professions
Page 475from Ted,” her black eyes sparkling.
“You did not ask for the boy. In your
weighty affairs doubtless you forgot there
was such a human being.”

“No, indeed. In what institution have
you placed Thaddeus?”

“No matter. He’s out of your influence,
thank God! He never heard your
name. But as for me, I think I’ll drop
this princess business soon,” meditatively.
“I began down town,” with a fresh
burst of vivacity. “On the boarding-house
keepers. Last December.”

“You are Madame Varens! Is it possible?”
turning to look at her. “The
papers were filled with your exploits last
winter.”

“Precisely!” She had a joyous girlish
laugh, infectious enough to draw a smile
from Van Ness.

“You are really very clever, Charlotte,”
admiringly.

“I made a tour in the West just before
that,” excitedly, patting her hands together.
“Agent for Orphans’ Homes in the
Gulf States. I wrote a letter of introduction
from one or two bishops to the
clergymen in their dioceses: that started
me, and the clergy and press passed me
through. What a mill of tea-drinkings
and church-gossip I went through! But
it was better fun than this.”

Looking up, she happened to catch the
cold, furtive glance with which he had
listened, and kept her eye fixed on him
curiously.

“Do you hate me so much as that?”
she said with a long breath. “Well,”
frankly, “it must be intolerable to carry
such a millstone about your neck as I
am to you. You know I could pull you
down any minute I chose,” tossing her
head and laughing maliciously. “No
matter how high you had climbed. I
often wonder, Pliny, why you do not rid
yourself of me. It could be easily done.”

The usually suave tone was harsh and
hoarse as he began to speak. He coughed,
and carefully modulated his voice before
he said politely, “Yes. But it would
involve exposure unless carefully managed.
That is certain damnation. There
is a chance of safety for the present in
trusting to you. You were always good-natured,
Charlotte. And,” turning his
watery eye full on her, “you loved me
once.”

“Possibly,” coolly. “But last year’s
loves are as tedious reading as last year’s
newspapers. Better trust my good-nature.
You show your shrewdness in that. I
don’t interfere with people. The world
uses me very well. It’s a hogshead that
gives the best of wine—if you know how
to tap it.”

“You’ve tapped it with a will. You
go through life perpetually drunk,” he
thought as she ran lightly before him up
the steps. He habitually made such
complacent moral reflections upon his
companions to himself, and took spiritual
comfort in them.

The hall was wide and sunny, made
homelike by low seats and growing
plants: it was occupied by half a dozen
committee-men, who were waiting impatiently
to see Mr. Van Ness. The
princess seated herself, attentive, her
head on one side like some bright-eyed
tropical bird.

Van Ness, without even a glance toward
her, took up his business of Christian
financier. “Do not go, I beg,” as
the captain opened the inner door for
Rhodes and the ladies to retire. “Our
affairs are conducted in the eyes of the
public. Sound integrity has no secrets
to keep. That is our pride.—Ah, gentlemen?”

The captain was glad to stay. Surely,
Jane would be impressed with the vast
influence of this good man. Van Ness did
not look at her once. But he saw nobody
but her, and spoke directly to her ear.

Asylums, workingmen’s homes, hospitals,
in all of which he was a director,
were brought up and dismissed with a
few hopeful, earnest words. The vast
system of organized charities through
which the kindly wealthy class touch the
poor beneath them was opened. Mrs.
Wilde, a manager in many of them, joined
in the discussion.

“What a useless creature I am!”
thought Jane. “But the money,” doggedly,
“is mine, and I choose to give it
to father if the whole world go hungry.”
She turned, however, from one representative
Page 476of these asylums to the other
with a baited look. Was it this one or
that whom she had robbed?

“Now, as to Temperance City—our
city?” demanded a puffy little man importantly.
“You are the fountain-head
of information there. We look to you,
Mr. Van Ness.”

“You shall have the annual report
next week.—Temperance City,” turning
to Rhodes, his balmy gaze aimed straight
over her head, “is a scheme to protect
people of small means in the churches,
especially women, from wrecking their
little all in unwise investments. It is a
town on the line of the Pacific Railroad.
Lots are only sold to colonists who are tee-totallers
and members of some church.
The stock is owned largely by the same
class.”

“Oh, almost altogether!” cried the
little man enthusiastically. “Mr. Van
Ness’s name, as you will understand,
gives it authority among all religious
people. We distribute prospectuses at
camp-meetings and at all sectarian seaside
resorts. Shares go off this summer
like hot cakes. There’s nothing like religion,
sir, to back up business enterprise.
There’s Stokes, for instance. His
shoes are sold from New Jersey to Oregon
on the strength of the hymns he has
written.”

“Yes,” said the judge solemnly. “We
used to keep religion too much in the
chimney-corner—spoke of it with bated
breath. But it’s in trade now, sir. We
hear every day of our Christian shoe-makers
and railway kings and statesmen.
The world moves!”

“Moves? Oh there’s no lever like
religion!” gasped the little man. “No
advertisement to equal it. And a good
man ought to succeed! Are the swindlers
to take all the fat of the land?
Does not the good Book say, ‘To the laborers
belong the spoils’?”

“But this is so charming to me!” cried
the princess. “We foreigners have so
few opportunities of looking into the
workings of your politics and trade!”

Van Ness bowed respectfully.

“And the State Home for destitute children?”
asked a raw-boned Scotch-Irishman.
“We’re interested in that here in
New York. We’ve subscribed largely,
as you’re aware, Mr. Van Ness. May I
ask when you wull begin the buildin’?”

“In the spring, I trust. If enough
funds are collected.”

“And hoo air the funds invested in the
mean while?”

“Oh, in corner-lots in Temperance
City.”

The committee-men had hurried away
to catch the next train: lunch was over,
and Mr. Van Ness stood apart on the
lawn under the drooping branches of a
willow, when the princess tripped lightly
out to him.

“You have an object in coming here?
You had an object in bringing those
men to-day and opening out your affairs.
What is it?”

He regarded her composedly for a moment
without answering: “You always
erred, Charlotte, in ascribing your own
skill in intrigue to me. It was a flattering
mistake. What I am to others I am to
myself.”

She laughed, a merry, hearty laugh:
“Yes, Pliny, because you are not satisfied
with cheating the world and the God that
made you into the belief that you are a
Christian, but you parade in your godliness
before yourself. There is not a spot
within you sound enough for your real
soul to lodge in. It is all like that,” setting
her foot viciously on a fallen apple.
“Rotten to the core!”

A shadow of disgust passed over his
handsome face. Van Ness had a fastidious
taste. Her melodramatic poses
had been familiar to him for years: they
always had annoyed and bored him.

“What is it that brings you here? A
woman?”

He hesitated a moment: “Yes.”

“This yellow-haired girl? You mean
to marry her?”

“I may marry her,” cautiously.

Their eyes met. “I did not think you
would push me so far,” she said thoughtfully.

“It is to your interest not to interfere.
You are mad, Charlotte. But you never
lose sight of the dirty dollar in your madness.”

Page 477

“That is for Ted’s sake,” quietly. “I
dislike that girl. She’s so damnably
clean! She’s of the sort that would
walk straight on and trample me under
foot like a slug if she knew what I was.
I owe her an old grudge, too. But that’s
nothing,” laughing good-humoredly.
“It was the most ridiculous scene! But
it lost me a year’s income. She nearly
recognized me to-day. On the whole, I’ll
not interfere. Marry her. She deserves
just such a punishment. By the way,
there is my card. You can send the back
payments that are due, to-morrow.”

Van Ness received the card and command
with a smile and bow, meant for
the bystanders: “Of course, Charlotte,
you understand that these payments
must soon stop. I shall rid myself of
any legal claims you have upon me
before marrying another woman.”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt you’ll walk strictly
according to law! You will not run
the risk of a lawsuit, much less prosecution,
even for Miss Swendon. You will
have no trouble in gaining your freedom
from me,” shrilly.

“None whatever,” stripping the leaves
from a willow wand. She left him without
a word, going to the house.

Mrs. Wilde had just summoned her
carriage. “Where is the princess?”
looking lazily around.

“Is Madame Trebizoff a guest in your
house?” asked Jane suddenly.

“Yes.”

“I will call her. I have something to
say to her.”

She went to meet her with the grave
motherly firmness with which she would
have gone to give a scolding to black
Buff or a lazy chambermaid. The princess,
crossing the grass, slender, dark,
sparkling, had no doubt of her own
smouldering passionate hate against her.
It was the proper thing for Hagar to hate
Sarah. Life was thin and insipid without
great remorses, revenges, loves. The
poor little creature was always aiming at
them, and falling short. She was wondering
now why Jane wore no jewelry.
“Not an earring! Not a hoop on her
finger! If I had her money!” glancing
down at the blaze of rubies on her breast.

They met under a clump of lilacs.

“Stop one moment,” said Jane, looking
down at her not unkindly. “You
must not let this go too far, you know.”

“What do you mean?” The princess
fixed her eye upon her, with a somewhat
snaky light in it. Indeed, when she assumed
that attitude toward Van Ness or
any other man she could frighten and
hold him at bay as if she had been a
cobra about to strike. But the lithe dark
body, the vivid color, the beady eye only
reminded Jane oddly of a darting little
lizard, and tempted her to laugh.

“No. You really must keep within
bounds. Because I have my eye upon
you. I can’t let you cheat that good
soul, who brought you here, to her damage.”

The princess gasped and whitened as
though a cold calm hand was laid on her
miserable sham of a body.

“Do you know who I am?” stiffening
herself into her idea of regal bearing.

“Not exactly. It does not matter in
the least, either. I took your means of
earning a living from you once, you told
me, and I don’t wish to do it again. I
will not interfere as long as you hurt
nobody.”

The princess stared at her and burst
into an hysteric laugh: “I believe, in my
soul, you mean just what you say! You
are the shrewdest or stupidest woman I
ever saw! Do you sympathize with me?
Do you feel for me?” tragically, “or
are you trying to worm my secret from
me?”

“Neither one nor the other,” coolly.
“I know your secret. You are no spirit
and no princess. I shall pity you perhaps
when you go to some honest work.
Why,” with sudden interest, “I can find
steady work for you at once. A staymaker
in the village told me the other
day—”

“I make stays!”

They both laughed. Jane’s chief
thought probably was how bony and
sickly this poor woman was: her own
solid white limbs seemed selfish to her
for the instant. She took the twitching,
ringed fingers in her hand.

“Play out your own play,” she said
Page 478good-humoredly. “You will not hurt
anybody very seriously, I fancy.”

They walked in silence to the house.

The princess bent forward in the carriage-window
as they drove away to look
back at her. “I wish my son knew such
women as that!” she cried.

“Son?” said the startled Mrs. Wilde.
“You have not spoken before to me of
your son, madame.”

“I have always kept him under tutors—at
Leipsic.”

She leaned back as they drove through
the sunshine, her filmy handkerchief to
her painted eyes, seeing nothing but an
ugly, honest-faced boy hard at work in
a bare Presbyterian chapel. He would
never know nor guess the life of shame
which his mother led! Her tears were
real now.

She even had wild, visionary thoughts
of a confession, of staymaking, of so
many dollars a week regularly. But
she remembered the time when some
fussy, good women had put her in
charge of a fashionable Kindergarten.
There was a fat salary! The house was
luxurious: the teachers did the work.
But one night she had broken the finical
apparatus to pieces, left a heap of
bonbons for the children, scrawled a
verse of good-bye with chalk on the
blackboard, and taken to the road again
without a penny.

Rebecca Harding Davis.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

Alfred De Musset.

It is twenty years since the death of
Alfred de Musset, a poet whose popularity
and influence, both in his own country
and out of it, can be compared only
to Byron’s. Not that the Frenchman is
known in England as the Englishman is
known in France, but the latter country
may be called the open side of the Channel,
and in establishing a comparison between
the relative fame and familiarity
of foreign names and ideas there and on
the isolated side, it is proportion rather
than quantity which must be kept in view.
While Byron is out of fashion in his own
country, the rage for Musset, which for a
long time made him appear not so much
the favorite modern poet of France as the
only one, has subsided into a steady admiration
and affection, a permanent preference.
New editions of his works, both
cheaper and more costly, are being constantly
issued, portraits of him are multiplied,
his pieces are regularly performed
at the Théâtre Français, his verses are
on every one’s lips, his tomb is heaped
with flowers on All Souls’ Day. Until
after his death it would have been easy
to count those who knew even his name
in this country and England: as usual
in such matters, we preceded the English
in our acquaintance with him. The freedom
with which Owen Meredith and Mr.
Swinburne helped themselves from his
poems proves how unfamiliar the general
public was with him ten years ago, but
his distinction is now so well recognized
in that island, so remote from external impressions,
that some knowledge of his life
and writings formed part of the French
course last year in the higher local examinations
of Cambridge University.

Alfred de Musset belongs to the class
of poets whose inner history excites most
curiosity, because his readers feel that
there lies the spring of his power, the secret
of his charm, as well as the key to
the riddles and inconsistencies which his
writings present: they are so imbued with
the essence of a common humanity that
the heart that beats, the tears which start,
the blood which courses through them,
keep time with our own. The desire to
penetrate still further into the intimacy
to which they admit us is quite distinct
Page 479from the vulgar inquisitiveness which
pursues celebrity, or merely notoriety,
into privacy. His biography has lately
been published by one who recognizes
the true nature of this curiosity: Paul de
Musset has reserved the right of telling his
brother’s story, regarding it, he says, “not
only as a duty I owe to the man I loved
best, and whose most intimate and confidential
friend I was, but as a necessary
complement to the perfect understanding
of his works, for his work was himself.”

The way in which this task has been
performed is not entirely satisfactory, and
many passionate admirers of the poet,
the order of readers to whom it is dedicated,
will feel disappointment and a regretful
sense of its failing to fulfil what it
undertook, increased by the conviction
that, having been undertaken by the
hand best fitted for it by natural propriety,
it cannot be done again. The book
bears the relation to what one desired
and expected that a bare diary does to
the journal, or memoranda to the lecture.
It is a collection of notes on the life of
Alfred de Musset, rather than a full memoir.
This inadequacy arises principally
from the biographer himself. Paul de
Musset, the poet’s elder and only brother,
is a man of taste and cultivation, a
judge of art, literature, music and the
drama, a person of charming manners
and conversation, dignified, kindly, courteous,
easy: he was until middle age a
busy, working man, whose leisure moments
were occupied with writings that
have found little favor, except the Femmes
de la Règence and the pretty child’s story
of M. le Vent et Mme. la Pluie, which latter
has been translated. He was the devoted,
unselfish friend and mentor of Alfred,
to whose juniority and genius he extended
an indulgence of which he needed
no share for himself: in fact, he was
the elder brother of the Prodigal in everything
but want of generosity. A more
amiable portrait cannot be imagined than
the one to be drawn of him from the history
of his intercourse with his brother
and from Alfred’s own letters and verses
to him. This, however, was not the person
to give us such an account and analysis
of the life and character of Alfred
de Musset as the subject called for: he
has neither the necessary impartiality
nor ability. He is now seventy years
old, and although, like his brother, he
has the gift of appearing a decade less
than his age, he is forced to remember
that the time must come when he will
no longer be here to defend his brother’s
memory, which has suffered more than
one cruel attack. Having once had to
silence calumny under cover of fiction,
he naturally wished to put his name beyond
the reach of being further traduced.
Whatever the shortcomings of the performance,
it could not fail to be interesting.
It is written in an easy, well-bred
style, like the author’s way of talking—not
without a sense of humor, with touching
pride in his brother’s endowments,
and tenderness toward faults which he
does not deny. In place of comprehensive
views and sound judgment of Alfred
de Musset’s genius and career, we have
the knowledge of absolute intimacy and
sympathy, candor, a hoard of reminiscences
and details which could be gained
from no other source, and, more than
all, that certainty as to events and motives
which can exist only where there
has been a lifelong daily association without
disguise or distrust.

The family of Musset is old and gentle,
and was adorned in early centuries by
soldiers of mark and statesmen of good
counsel—the sort of lineage which should
bequeath high and honorable ideas, an
inheritance of which neither Paul nor Alfred
de Musset nor their immediate forbears
were unworthy. A disposition to
letters and poetry appears among their
ancestry on both sides, beginning in the
twelfth century with Colin de Musset, a
sort of troubadour, a friend of Thibaut,
count of Champagne, while the poet’s
paternal grandmother bore the name of
Du Bellay, so illustrious in the annals of
French literature. Alfred de Musset’s
parents were remarkable for goodness of
heart and high principle: both possessed
an ideality which showed itself with them
in elevation of moral sentiments, and
which passed into the imaginative qualities
of their sons. From remoter relatives
on both sides came a legacy of wit,
Page 480promptness and point in retort, gayety
and good spirits. Alfred de Musset was
born on the 11th of December, 1810, in
the old quarter of Paris, on the left bank
of the Seine. The stories of his childhood—which
are pretty, like all true
stories about children—show a sensitive,
affectionate, vivacious, impetuous, perverse
nature, precocious observation and
intelligence. He was one of those beautiful,
captivating children whom nobody
can forbear to spoil, and who, with the
innocent cunning of their age, reckon on
the effect of their own charms. He was
not four years old when he first fell in
love, as such mere babies, both girls and
boys, occasionally do: these infantine
passions exhibit most of the phenomena
of maturer ones, and show how intense
and absorbing a passion may be which
belongs exclusively to the region of sentiment
and imagination. Alfred de Musset’s
first love was his cousin, a young
girl nearly grown up when he first saw
her: he left his playthings to listen to
her account of a journey she had made
from Belgium, then the seat of war, and
from that day, whenever she came to the
house, insisted on her telling him stories,
which she did with the patience and invention
of Scheherazade. At last he asked
her to marry him, and, as she did not
refuse, considered her his betrothed wife.
After some time she returned to her home
in Liége: there were tears on both sides—on
his genuine and excessive grief.
“Do not forget me,” said Clélia.—”Forget
you! Don’t you know that your
name is cut upon my heart with a pen-knife?”
He set himself to learn to read
and write with incredible application, that
he might be able to correspond with his
beloved. His attachment did not abate
with absence, so that when Clélia really
married, the whole family thought it necessary
to keep it a secret from her little
lover, and he remained in ignorance of
it for years, although he betrayed extraordinary
suspicion and misgiving on the
subject. He was a schoolboy of eight
or nine before he learned the truth, and
was at first extremely agitated: he asked
tremblingly if Clélia had been making
fun of him, and being assured that
she had not, but that they had not allowed
her to wait for him, and that she loved
him like an elder sister, he grew calm
and said, “I will be satisfied with that.”
The cousins seldom met in after-life, but
preserved a tender affection for each
other, which served to avert a lawsuit
and rupture that threatened to grow out
of a business disagreement between the
two branches of the family. In 1852,
Clélia came to Paris to be present at Alfred’s
reception by the French Academy.
He had great confidence in her taste and
judgment, and the last time they met he
said to her, “If there should ever be a
handsome edition of my works, I will
have a copy bound for you in white vellum
with a gold band, as an emblem of
our friendship.”

His first literary passion was the Arabian
Nights, which filled the imagination
of both brothers with magical lamps,
wishing-carpets and secret caverns for
nearly a twelvemonth, during which they
were incessantly trying to carry out their
fancies by constructing enchanted towers
and palaces with the furniture of their
apartment. The Eastern stories were
superseded by tales of chivalry: Paul lit
upon the Four Sons of Aymon in his
grandfather’s library, and a new world
opened before him in which he hastened
to lose himself, taking his younger brother
by the hand. The children devoured
Jerusalem Delivered, Orlando Furioso,
Amadis de Gaule, and all the poems,
tales and traditions of knighthood on
which they could lay hands. Their
games now were of nothing but tilts and
jousts, single combats, adventures and
deeds of arms: the paladins were their
imaginary playfellows. A little comrade,
who charged with an extraordinary rush
in the excitement of the tournament,
generally represented Roland: Alfred,
being the youngest and smallest of the
three, was allowed to bear the enchanted
lance, the first touch of which unseated
the boldest rider and bravest
champion—a pretty device of the elder
brother’s, in which one hardly knows
whether to be most charmed with the
poetic fancy or the protecting affection
which it displayed. The delightful infatuation
Page 481lasted for several years, undergoing
some gradual modifications. Until
he was nine, Alfred had been chiefly
taught at home by a tutor, but at that
age he was sent to school, where the first
term dispelled his belief in the marvellous.
His brother was by this time at
boarding-school, and they met only on
Sunday, when they renewed their knightly
sports, but with diminished ardor. One
day Alfred asked Paul seriously what he
thought of magic, and Paul confessed
his scepticism. The loss of this dear
delusion was a painful shock to Alfred,
as it is to many children. Who cannot
remember the change which came over
the world when he first learned that
Krisskinkle alias Santa Claus did not
fill the Christmas stocking—that the
fairies had not made the greener ring
in the grass, where he had firmly believed
he might have seen them dancing
in the moonlight if he could only have
sat up late enough? The Musset children
fell back upon the mysterious machinery
of old romance—trap-doors,
secret staircases, etc.—and began tapping
and sounding the walls for private
passages and hidden doorways; but in
vain. It was at this stage of the fever that
Don Quixote was given to them; and it
is a singular illustration both of the genius
of the book and the intelligence of the
little readers that it put their giants,
dwarfs and knights to flight. During
the following summer they passed a few
weeks at the manor-house of Cogners
with an uncle, the marquis de Musset,
the head of the family: to their great
joy, the room assigned them had underneath
the great canopied bedstead a trap
leading into a small chamber built in the
thickness of the floor between the two
stories of the old feudal building. Alfred
could not sleep for excitement, and wakened
his brother at daybreak to help him
explore: they found the secret chamber
full of dust and cobwebs, and returned to
their own room with the sense that their
dreams had been realized a little too late.
On looking about them they saw that the
tapestry on their walls represented scenes
from Don Quixote: they burst out laughing,
and the days of chivalry were over.

Alfred de Musset was nine years old,
as we have said, when he began to attend
the Collége Henri IV. (now Corneille),
on entering which he took his
place in the sixth form, among boys for
the most part of twelve or upward. He
was sent to school on the first day with
a deep scalloped collar and his long
light curls falling upon his shoulders,
and being greeted with jeers and yells
by his schoolmates, went home in tears,
and the curls were cut off forthwith.
He was an ambitious rather than an
assiduous scholar, and kept his place
on the bench of honor by his facility in
learning more than by his industry; but
it was a source of keen mortification to
him if he fell behindhand. His talents
soon attracted the attention of the masters
and the envy of the pupils, the latter
of whom were irritated and humiliated
by seeing the little curly-pate, the
youngest of them all, always at the head
of the class. The laziest and dullest
formed a league against him: every day,
when school broke up, he was assaulted
with a brutality equal to that of an English
public school, but which certainly
would not have been roused against him
there by the same cause. He had to
run amuck through the courtyard to the
gate, where a servant was waiting for
him, often reaching it with torn clothes
and a bloody face. This persecution was
stopped by his old playfellow, Orlando
Furioso, who was two years his senior:
he threw himself into the crowd one day
and dealt his redoubtable blows with so
much energy that he scattered the bullies
once for all. Among their schoolmates
was the promising duke of Orleans, who
was then duc de Chartres, his father,
afterward King Louis Philippe, bearing
at that time the former title. He took a
strong fancy to Alfred de Musset, which
he showed by writing him a profusion of
notes during recitation, most of them
invitations to dinner at Neuilly, where
he occasionally went with other school-fellows
of the young prince. For a time
after leaving school De Chartres—as he
was called by his young friends—kept up
a lively correspondence with Alfred, and
when their boyish intimacy naturally expired
Page 482the recollection of it remained fresh
and lively in the prince’s mind, as was
afterward proved.

De Musset left college at the age of sixteen,
having taken a prize in philosophy
for a Latin metaphysical essay. His
disposition to inquire and speculate had
already manifested itself by uneasy questions
in the classes of logic and moral
philosophy; and although few will agree
with his brother that his writings show
unusual aptitude and profound knowledge
in these sciences, or that, as he
says, “the thinker was always on a level
with the poet,” nobody can deny the
constant questioning of the Sphinx, the
eager, restless pursuit of truth, which pervades
his pages. He pushed his search
through a long course of reading,—Descartes,
Spinoza, Cabanis, Maine de Biran—only
to fall back upon an innate
faith in God which never forsook him,
although it was strangely disconnected
with his mode of life.

I have lingered over the early years of
Alfred de Musset because the childhood
of a poet is the mirror wherein the image
of his future is seen, and because there
is something peculiarly touching in this
season of innocence and unconsciousness
of self in the history of men whose after
lives have been torn to pieces by the
storms of vicissitude and passion. So
far, he had not begun to rhyme—an unusual
case, as boys who can make two
lines jingle, whether they be poets or
not, generally scribble plentifully before
leaving school. At the age of fourteen
he wrote some verses to his mother on
her birthday, but it is fair to suppose that
they gave no hint of talent, as they have
not been preserved: it was only from his
temperament that his destiny might be
guessed. The impressions of his infancy
were singularly vivid and deep,
and acted directly upon his imagination:
they are reflected in his works in
pictures and descriptions full of grace or
power. The ardent Bonapartism of his
family, particularly of his mother, whom
he loved and revered, took form from
his recollections in the magnificent opening
of the Confession d’un Enfant du
Siècle, which has the double character
of a prose poem and a kindling oration,
while by the volume and sonorous beauty
of the phrase it reminds one of a grand
musical composition. When he was between
seven and eight years old his family
passed the summer at an old country-place
to which belonged a farm, and
he and his brother found inexhaustible
amusement among the tenants and their
occupations. He never saw it again, but
it is reproduced with perfect fidelity in
the tale of Margot. The chivalric mania
left, as Paul de Musset observes,
a love of the romantic and fantastic, a
tendency to look upon life as a novel, an
enjoyment of what was unexpected and
unlikely, a disposition to trust to chance
and the course of events. The motto of
the Mussets was a condensed expression
of the gallant love-making, Launcelot
side of knightly existence—Courtoisie,
Bonne Aventure aux Preux (“Courtesy,
Good Luck to the Paladin;” or, to
translate the latter clause more freely,
yet more faithfully to the spirit of the
original, “None but the Brave Deserve
the Fair”). It came from two estates—Courtoisie,
which passed out of the family
in the last century, and Bonne Aventure,
a property on the Loire, which was
not part of Alfred’s patrimony. The fairies
who endowed him at his christening
with so many gifts and graces must
have meant to complete his outfit when
they presented him with such a device,
which might have been invented for him
at nineteen. On leaving college he continued
his education by studying languages,
drawing, and music to please
himself, and attempting several professions
to satisfy the reasonable expectations
of his father. He found law dry,
medicine disgusting, and, discouraged by
these failures, he fell into low spirits,
to which he was always prone even at
the height of his youthful joyousness—declared
to his brother that he was and
ever should be good for nothing, that he
never should be able to practise a profession,
and never could resign himself
to being any particular kind of man.
His talent for drawing led him to work
in a painter’s studio and in the galleries
of the Louvre with some success, and for
Page 483a time he was in high spirits at the idea
of having found his calling, and pursued
it while attending lectures and classes on
other subjects. This uncertainty lasted
a couple of years, during which he began
to venture a little into society, of
which, like most lively, versatile young
people, he was extravagantly fond. His
Muse was still dormant, but his love for
poetry was strongly developed; a volume
of André Chenier was always in his
pocket, and he delighted to read it under
the trees in the avenues of the Bois
on his daily walk out of Paris to the suburb
of Auteuil, where his family lived at
that time. Under this influence he wrote
a poem, which he afterward destroyed,
excepting a few good descriptive lines
which he introduced into one of later
date. Meanwhile, he had been presented
to the once famous Cénacle, the
nucleus of the romantic school, then in
the pride and flush of youth and rapidly
increasing popularity; its head-quarters
were at the house of Victor Hugo facile
princeps ordinis even among its chiefs.
There he met Alfred de Vigny, Mérimée,
Sainte-Beuve and others, whose talents
differed essentially in kind and degree,
but who were temporarily drawn together
by similarity of literary principles and
tastes. Their meetings were entirely taken
up with intellectual discussions, or the
reading of a new production, or in walks
which have been commemorated by Mérimée
and Sainte-Beuve, when they carried
their romanticism to the towers of
Notre Dame to see the sun set or the
moon rise over Paris.

Stimulated by this companionship, Alfred
de Musset began to compose. His
first attempt at publication was anonymous,
a ballad called “A Dream,”
which, through the good offices of a
friend, was accepted by Le Provincial,
a tri-weekly newspaper of Dijon: it did
not pass unnoticed, but excited a controversy
in print between the two editors,
to the extreme delight of the young
poet, who always fondly cherished the
number of the paper in which it appeared.
At length, one morning he
woke up Sainte-Beuve with the laughing
declaration that he too was a poet, and
in support of his assertion recited some
of his verses to that keenly attentive and
appreciative ear. Sainte-Beuve at once
announced that there was “a boy full
of genius among them,” and as long
as he lived, whatever Paul de Musset’s
fraternal sensitiveness may find to complain
of, he never retracted or qualified
that first judgment. The Contes d’Italie
et d’Espagne followed fast, and were
recited to an enthusiastic audience, who
were the more lenient to the exaggerations
and affectations of which, as in
most youthful poetry, there were plenty,
since these bore the stamp of their own
mint.

Alfred de Musset’s first steps in life
were made at the same time with his first
essays in poetry. He was so handsome,
high-spirited and gay that women did not
wait to hear that he was a genius to smile
upon him. His brother, who is tall, calls
him of medium height, five feet four
inches (about five feet nine, English
measure), slender, well-made and of
good carriage: his eyes were blue and
full of fire; his nose was aquiline, like
the portraits of Vandyke; his profile was
slightly equine in type: the chief beauty
of his face was his forehead, round which
clustered the many-shaded masses of his
fair hair, which never turned gray: the
countenance was mobile, animated and
sensitive; the predominating expression
was pride. Paul relates without reserve
how one married woman encouraged his
brother and trifled with him, using his
devotion to screen a real intrigue which
she was carrying on, and that another,
who was lying in wait for him, undertook
his consolation. One morning Alfred
made his appearance in spurs, with his
hat very much on one side and a huge
bunch of hair on the other, by which signs
his brother understood that his vanity was
satisfied. He was just eighteen. That
a man of respectable life and notions
like Paul de Musset should take these
adventures as a matter of course makes
it difficult for an American to find the
point of view whence to judge a society
so abominably corrupt. Thus at the age
of a college-boy in this country he was
started on the career which was destined
Page 484to lead to so much unhappiness, and
in the end to his destruction. Dissipation
of every sort followed, debts, from
which he was never free, and the habit
of drinking, which proved fatal at last.
To the advice and warnings of his brother
he only replied that he wished to know
everything by experience, not by hearsay—that
he felt within him two men, one
an actor, the other a spectator, and if
the former did a foolish thing the latter
profited by it. On this pernicious reasoning
he pursued for three years a dissolute
mode of life, which, thanks to the
remarkable strength and elasticity of his
constitution, did not prevent his carrying
on his studies and going with great zest
into society, where he became more and
more welcome, besides writing occasionally.
He translated De Quincey’s Confessions
of an English Opium-Eater, introducing
some reveries of his own, but
the work attracted no attention. During
this period his father, naturally anxious
about his son’s unprofitable courses, one
morning informed him that he had obtained
a clerkship for him in an office
connected with the military commissariat.
Alfred did not venture to demur, but the
confinement and routine of an office were
intolerable, and he resolved to conquer
his liberty by every effort of which he
was capable. He offered his manuscripts
for publication to M. Canel, the devoted
editor of the romantic party: they fell
short by five hundred lines of the number
of pages requisite for a volume of
the usual octavo bulk. He obtained a
holiday, which he spent with a favorite
uncle who lived in the provinces, and
came back in three weeks with the poem
of “Mardoche.” He persuaded his father
to give a literary party, to which his
friends of the Cénacle were invited, and
repeated his latest compositions to them,
including “Mardoche.” Here we have
another example of manners startling to
our notions: the keynote of these verses
was rank libertinism, yet in his mother’s
drawing-room and apparently in the
presence of his father, a dignified, reputable
man, venerated by his children,
this young rake declaimed stanzas more
licentious than any in Byron’s Don Juan.
But it caused no scandal: the friends
were rapturous, and predicted the infallible
success of the poems, in which they
were justified by the event. “Rarely,”
says Paul de Musset, “has so small a
quantity of paper made so much noise.”
There was an uproar among the newspapers,
some applauding with all their
might, others denouncing the exaggeration
of the romantic tendency: the romanticists
themselves were disconcerted
to find the “Ballade à la Lune,” which
they had taken as a good joke, turned
into a joke against themselves. At all
events, the young man was launched,
and his vocation was thenceforth decided.
In reading these first productions of Alfred
de Musset’s without the prejudice or
partiality of faction, it cannot be denied
that if not sufficient in themselves to ensure
his immortality, they contain lines
of finished beauty as perfect as the author
ever produced—ample guarantee of
what might be expected from the development
of his genius.

He now began to be tired of sowing
wild oats, and became less irregular in his
mode of life. A lively, pretty little comedy
called Une Nuit Vénitienne, which
he wrote at the request of the director of
the Odéon, for some inexplicable cause
fell flat, which, besides turning him aside
from writing for the stage during a number
of years, discouraged him altogether
for some time. Before he entirely recovered
from the check he lost his father,
who died suddenly of cholera in 1832.
The shock left him sobered and calm,
anxious to fulfil his duties toward his
mother and young sister, whose means,
it was feared, would be greatly diminished
by the loss of M. de Musset’s salary.
Alfred resolved to publish another volume
of poetry, and, if this did not succeed
to a degree to warrant his considering
literature a means of support, to get
a commission in the army. He set himself
industriously to work, and inspiration
soon rewarded the effort: in six months
his second volume appeared, comprising
“Le Saule,” “Vœux Stériles,” “La Coupe
et les Lèvres,” “A quoi rèvent les jeunes
filles,” “Namouna,” and several shorter
pieces. Among those enumerated there
Page 485are splendid passages, second in beauty
and force to but a few of his later poems,
the sublime “Nuits,” “Souvenir,” and
the incomparable opening of “Rolla.”
Again he convoked the friends who three
years before had greeted the Contes d’Espagne
with acclamation, but, to the unutterable
surprise and disappointment of
both brothers, there was not a word of
sympathy or applause: Mérimée alone
expressed his approbation, and assured
the young poet that he had made immense
progress. Perhaps the others took
in bad part their former disciple’s recantation
of romanticism, which he makes
in the dedication of “La Coupe et les
Lèvres” after the following formula:

For my part, I hate those snivellers in boats,

Those lovers of waterfalls, moonshine and lakes,

That breed without name, which with journals and notes,

Tears and verses, floods every step that it takes:

Nature no doubt but gives back what you lend her;

After all, it may be that they do comprehend her,

But them I do certainly not comprehend.

The chill of this introduction was not
carried off by the public reception of the
Spectacle dans un Fauteuil (as the new
collection was entitled), which remained
almost unnoticed for some weeks, until
Sainte-Beuve in the Revue des Deux
Mondes of January 15, 1833, published
a review of this and the earlier poems,
indicating their beauty and originality,
the promise of the one and progress
of the other, with his infallible discernment
and discrimination. A few critics
followed his lead, others differed, and
discussions began again which could not
but spread the young man’s fame. The
Revue des Deux Mondes was now open
to him, and henceforth, with a few exceptions,
whatever he wrote appeared in
that periodical. He made his entry with
the drama of Andrea del Sarto, which is
rife with tense and tragic situations and
deeply-moving scenes. The affairs of
the family turned out much better than
had been expected, but Alfred de Musset
continued to work with application and
ardor. His fine critical faculty kept his
vagaries within bounds: he knew better
than anybody “how much good sense it
requires to do without common sense”—a
dictum of his own. Like every true
artist, he took his subjects wherever he
found them: the dripping raindrops and
tolling of the convent-bell suggested one
of Chopin’s most enchanting Preludes;
the accidental attitudes of women and
children in the street have given painters
and sculptors their finest groups; so a
bunch of fresh roses which De Musset’s
mother put upon his table one morning
during his days of extravagant dissipation,
saying, “All this for fourpence,”
gave him a happy idea for unravelling
the perplexity of Valentin in Les Deux
Maîtresses; and his unconscious exclamation,
“Si je vous le disais pourtant
que je vous aime,” which caused a passer-by
in the street to laugh at him, furnished
the opening of the Stances à Ninon,
like Dante’s

Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore.

These fortunate dispositions were interrupted
by a meeting which affected
his character and genius more than any
other event in his life. It is curious that
Madame Sand and De Musset originally
avoided making each other’s acquaintance.
She fancied that she should not
like him, and he, although greatly struck
by the genius of her first novel, Indiana,
disliked her overloaded style of writing,
and struck out in pencil a quantity of
superfluous adjectives and other parts of
speech in a copy which unluckily fell
into her hands. Their first encounter
was followed by a sudden, almost instantaneous,
mutual passion—on his part
the first and strongest if not the only
one, of his life. The first season of this
intimacy was like a long summer holiday.
“It seemed,” writes the biographer,
“as if a partnership in which existence
was so gay, to which each brought such
contributions of talent, wit, grace, youth,
and good-humor, could never be dissolved.
It seemed as if such happy
people should find nothing better to do
than remain in a home which they had
made so attractive for themselves and
their friends…. I never saw such a
happy company, nor one which cared so
little about the rest of the world. Conversation
never flagged: they passed
their time in talking, drawing, and making
Page 486music. A childish glee reigned
supreme. They invented all sorts of
amusements, not because they were
bored, but because they were overflowing
with spirits.” But Paris became too
narrow for them, and they fled—first to
Fontainebleau, then to Italy. Musset’s
mother was deeply opposed to the latter
project, foreseeing misfortune with the
prescience of affection, and he promised
not to go without her consent, although
his heart was set upon it. The most incredible
story in the biography is that Madame
Sand actually surprised Madame
de Musset into an interview, and, by appeals,
eloquence, persuasion and vows,
obtained her sorrowful acquiescence.

The lamentable story of that Italian
journey has been told too often and by
too many people to need repetition here.
No doubt Paul de Musset has told it as
fairly as could be expected from his brother’s
side: probably the circumstances
occurred much as he sets them down.
But he could not make due allowance for
the effect which Alfred’s dissolute habits
had produced upon his character: he
was but twenty-three, and had run the
round of vice; he had already depicted
the moral result of such courses in his
terrible allegory of “La Coupe et les
Lèvres:” the idea recurs throughout his
works, conspicuously in the Confession
d’un Enfant du Siècle, which is Madame
Sand’s best apology. But if his excesses
had destroyed his ingenuousness,
she destroyed his faith in human nature,
and on her will ever rest the brand he
set in the burning words of the “Nuit
d’Octobre.”

He returned to Paris shattered in mind
and body, and shut himself up in his
room for months, unable to endure contact
with the outer world, or even that of
the loving home circle which environed
him with anxious tenderness. He could
not read or write: a favorite piece of
music from his young sister’s piano, a
game of chess with his mother in the
evening, were his only recreations—his
only excitement the letters which still
came from Venice, for which he looked
with a sick longing, at which one cannot
wonder on reading them and remembering
what a companionship it was that he
had lost. Urged by his brother and his
friend M. Buloz, the director of the
Revue des Deux Mondes, to try the
efficacy of work, he completed his play
of On ne badine pas avec l’Amour, already
sketched, in which, of all his dramatic
writings, the cry of the heart is
most thrilling. Aided by this effort, he
made a journey to Baden in September,
five months after his miserable return
to Paris. The change of air and scene
restored him, and his votive offering
for the success of his pilgrimage was the
charming poem called “Une Bonne Fortune.”
Although he had determined not
to see Madame Sand again, their connection
was renewed, in spite of himself,
when she came back from Italy: it lasted
for a short period, full of angry and melancholy
scenes, quarrels and reconciliations.
Then he broke loose for ever, and
went back to the world and his work.

This episode, of which I have briefly
given the outline, was the principal event
of Alfred de Musset’s life, the one which
marked and colored it most deeply, which
brought his genius to perfection by a
cruel and fiery torture, and left a lasting
imprint upon his writings. Although he
never produced anything finer than certain
passages of “Rolla,” which was published
in 1833, yet previous to that—or
more accurately to 1835, when he began
to write again—he had composed no long
poem of equal merit throughout, none in
which the flight was sustained from first
to last. The magnificent series of the
“Nights” of May, December, August
and October, the “Letter to Lamartine,”
“Stanzas on the Death of Malibran,”
“Hope in God,” and a number of others
of not less melody and vigor, but less
exalted and serious in tone; several
plays, among them Lorenzaccio, which
missed only by a very little being a fine
tragedy; the greater part of his prose
tales and criticisms, including Le Fils
de Titien, the most charming of his stories,
and the Confession d’un Enfant
du Siècle, which shows as much genius as
any of his poems,—belong to the period
from 1835 to 1840, his apogee. Of the
last work, notwithstanding its unmistakable
Page 487personal revelations—which, if they do
not tell the author’s story, at least reflect
his state of mind—Paul de Musset says,
what everybody who has read his brother’s
writings carefully will feel to be true,
that neither in the hero nor any other single
personage must we look for Alfred’s
entire individuality. In the complexity
of his character and emotions, and the
contradictions which they united, are to
be found the eidolon of every young man
in his collection, even “the two heroes
of Les Caprices de Marianne, Octave and
Cœlio,” says Paul, “although they are the
antipodes of one another.” Neither is it
as easy as it would seem on the surface
to trace the thread of any one incident
of his life through his writings. Although
containing some irreconcilable passages,
the four “Nights” appeared to have been
born of the same impulse and to exact
the same dedication: it is undeniably a
shock to have their inconsistencies explained
by hearing that while the “Nuits
de Mai,” “d’Août” and “d’Octobre” refer
to his passion for Madame Sand, the
“Nuit de Décembre” and “Lettre à Lamartine,”
which naturally belong to this
series, were dictated by another attachment
and another disappointment. I will
not stop to moralize upon this: the story
of De Musset’s life is really only the
story of his loves. His brother says that
he was always in love with somebody: it
was a necessity of his nature and his
genius. Before he was twenty-seven,
six different love-affairs are enumerated,
without taking into account numerous
affairs of gallantry; nor was the sixth
the last. The “Nuit d’Octobre” was
written two years and a half after his
return from Italy, and its terrible malediction
is the outbreak of the rankling
memory of his wrong and suffering. It
was psychologically in order that while
his love (which does not die in an hour,
like trust and respect) survived, it should
surround its object with lingering tenderness,
but that as it slowly expired indignation,
scorn and the sense of injury should
increase: this is their final utterance, followed
by pardon, a vow of forgetfulness
and farewell, but not a final farewell.
That was spoken years afterward, in 1841,
when, once again seeing by chance the
forest of Fontainebleau, and about the
same time casually encountering Madame
Sand, he poured forth his “Souvenir,”
a poem of matchless sweetness
and beauty, vibrating with feeling and
most musical in expression—an exquisite
combination of lyric and elegy. In this
he calls her

Ma seule amie à jamais la plus chère.

Ten years after this, in one of the last
strains of his unstrung harp, a fragment
called “Souvenir des Alpes,” the sad
chord is touched once more: up to the
end it answered faintly to certain notes.
Long after their rupture and separation
he said that he would have given ten
years of his life to marry her had she
been free; and it is deplorable that the
most fervent and lasting affection of
which he was capable should have been
thrown back upon him in such sort.

Of marriage there were several schemes
at different times: they fell through because
he was averse to them himself,
except one to which he much inclined,
the young lady being pretty, intelligent,
charming and the daughter of an old
friend; but on the first advances it turned
out that she was engaged to another
man. His biographer regrets this deeply,
convinced that such an alliance would
have been his brother’s salvation; but
even if he could have been more constant
to his wife than to his mistresses,
the habit of intemperance was too confirmed
to admit much hope of domestic
happiness. The same may be opined in
regard to the vague hopes which were
destroyed by the death of the young duke
of Orleans. When Louis Philippe came
to the throne, De Musset made no attempt
to approach the royal family on
the pretext of the old school-friendship:
it was the duke himself who renewed it in
1836 on accidentally seeing some unpublished
verses of the poet’s on the king’s
escape from an attempt at assassination.
Louis Philippe himself did not like the
sonnet, considering the use of the poetic
thou too familiar a form of address: he
did not know who was the author; and
when Alfred was presented to him at a
Page 488court-ball took him for a cousin who was
inspector of the royal forests at Joinville,
and continued to greet him, under this
mistake, with a few gracious words two
or three times a year during the rest of
his reign, while the poet’s name was on the
lips and in the heart of every one else.
The duke’s favor and friendliness ended
only with his sad and sudden death.

Paul de Musset tells us that the years
1837 and 1838 were the happiest in his
brother’s life. The love-trouble which
had wrung from him the “Nuit de Décembre”
was a disappointment, but not
a deception, and the parting had caused
equal sorrow on both sides, but no bitterness.
After no long interval appeared
“a very young and very pretty person
whom he met frequently in society,
of an enthusiastic, passionate nature,
independent in her position, and who
bought the poet’s books.” An acquaintance,
a friendship, a correspondence, a
serious passion followed, and became a
relation which lasted two years “without
quarrel, storm, coolness or subject of
umbrage or jealousy—two years of love
without a cloud, of true happiness.” Why
did it not last for ever? The biographer
does not give the answer. It is hinted in
a letter to Alfred’s friend, the duchesse
de Castries, dated September, 1840, in
his Œuvres posthumes: “I have told
you how about a year ago an absurd passion,
totally useless and somewhat ridiculous,
made me break with all my habits.
I forsook all my surroundings, my friends
of both sexes, the current in which I was
living, and one of the prettiest women in
Paris. I did not succeed in my foolish
dream, you must understand; and now
I find myself cured, it is true, but high
and dry like a fish in a grain-field.” This
is probably the clue, and the foolish dream
was for a woman to whom his brother
refers as having repelled Alfred’s homage
with harshness, and having called
forth from him some short and extremely
bitter verses beginning “Oui, femme,”
and another called “Adieu!” in which
there prevails a tone of quiet but deep
feeling. This is a sad story: he apparently
united the volatility and vagrancy
of fancy, the inconstancy of light shallow
natures, with the ardor and intensity
of passion and the capacity for suffering
which belong to strong and steadfast
ones. There was a childlike quality in
his disposition, which showed itself in a
sort of simplicity and spontaneousness
in the midst of a corrupt existence, and
still more in the uncontrollable, absorbing
violence of his emotions: they swept
over him, momentarily devastating his
present and blotting out the horizon, but
unlike the tempests of childhood their
ravages did not disappear when the
clouds dispersed and the torrents subsided.
The life of debauchery which
had preceded his journey to Italy was replaced,
for some years, by a less excessive
degree of dissipation, during which
he lived with a fast set, who, however,
were men of talent and accomplishments,
the foremost among them being Prince
Belgiojoso. The influence of the two fortunate
years, 1837-38, not only the happiest
but the most fertile of his short career,
seems to have weakened these associations
and led him into calmer paths.
He had formed several friendships with
women of a sort which both parties may
regard with pride, in particular with
the Princess Belgiojoso, one of the most
striking and original figures of our monotonous
time, and Madame Maxime
Jaubert, a clever, attractive young woman
with a delightful house, whom he
called his Marraine because she had
given him a nickname. These women,
and others—but these two above the rest—were
sincerely and loyally attached to
him with a disinterested regard which did
not spare advice, nor even rebuke, or relax
under his loss of health and brilliancy
or neglect of their kindness, which nevertheless
he felt and valued. His purest
source of pleasure was in the talent of
others, which gave him a generous and
sympathetic enjoyment. The appearance
of Pauline Garcia—now Madame
Viardot—and Rachel, who came out almost
simultaneously at the age of seventeen,
added delight to the two happy
years. He has left notices of the
first performances of these artistes, the
former in opera, the latter on the stage
(for he was musical himself and a connoisseur)
Page 489which are excellent criticisms,
and have even more interest than when
they appeared, now that the career of
one has long been closed and that of the
other long completed. His relations with
Rachel lasted for many years, interrupted
by the gusts and blasts which the
contact of two such natures inevitably
begets. She constantly urged him to
write a play for her, and in the year
after her début he wrote a fragment of a
drama on the story of Frédegonde, which
she learned by heart and occasionally
recited in private; but there were endless
delays and difficulties on both sides,
and the rest was not written. After various
episodes and passages between
them, De Musset was dining with her one
evening when she had become a great
lady and queen of the theatre, and her
other guests were all rich men of fashion.
One of them admired an extremely beautiful
and costly ring which she wore. It
was first passed round the table from
hand to hand, and then she said they
might bid for it. One immediately offered
five hundred francs, another fifteen,
and the ring went up at once to
three thousand: “And you, my poet,
why do not you bid? What will you
give?” “I will give you my heart,” he
replied. “The ring is yours,” cried
Rachel, taking it off and throwing it
into his plate. After dinner De Musset
tried to restore it to her, but she refused
to take it back: he urged and insisted,
when she, suddenly falling on her knee
with that sovereign charm of seduction
for which she was as renowned as for
her tragic power, entreated him to keep
it as a pledge for the piece he was to
write for her. The poet took the ring,
and went home excited and wrought up
to the resolve that nothing should interfere
with the completion of his task.
But it was the old story again—whims
and postponements on Rachel’s part,
possibly temper and pique on his—until
six months afterward, at the end of an
angry conversation, he silently replaced
the ring on her hand, and she did not
resist. Four years later the compact was
renewed, and although by this time De
Musset had to all intents and purposes
ceased to write, he struck off the first act
of a play called Faustina, the scene of
which was laid in Venice in the fourteenth
century; but he put off finishing
it, and finally let it drop altogether.

In December, 1840, Alfred de Musset
was thirty years old, and on his birthday
he had one of those reckonings with
himself, which the most deliberately
careless and volatile men cannot escape.
At twenty-one he had held a
similar settlement: he was then uncertain
of his genius, dissatisfied with his
way of life and with the use he made of
his time: the result was his adoption of
a more serious line of study and conduct,
which had led him, in spite of interruptions
and aberrations, to the brilliant display
of his beautiful and splendid talents,
the full exercise of his wonderful powers.
Now another review of his past and survey
of his future left him in a mood of
discontent and depression. He felt that
he could not always go on being a boy.
The year behind him had been almost
sterile, and marked by the loss of many
of what he called his illusions. He had
been implored and urged to write by his
friends and editors, had made and broken
promises without number to the latter,
and had become involved in money difficulties
to a degree which kept him in
constant anxiety and torment. Yet he
steadily rejected all his brother’s affectionate
advice and importunities to shake
off the deepening lethargy. He would
not write poetry because the Muse did
not come of her free will, and he would
never do her violence. He had forsworn
prose, because he said everybody
wrote that, and many so ill that he would
not swell the number of magazine story-writers,
who, he foresaw, were to lower
the standard of fiction and style. In
short, he always had an excuse for doing
nothing, and although he hated above
all things to leave Paris, and seldom accepted
the invitations of his friends in
the country, he now repeatedly rushed
out of town to escape the visits of editors,
who had become no better than duns in
his eyes. When at home he shut himself
in his room for days together in so
gloomy a frame of mind that even his
Page 490brother did not venture to break in upon
him: he even made a furtive attempt at
suicide one night when his despondency
reached its lowest depth; it was foiled
by the accident of Paul’s having unloaded
the pistols and locked up the powder
and balls some time before. He grew
morbidly irritable, and resented Paul’s remonstrances,
which, we may be sure, were
made with all the tact and consideration
of natural delicacy and unselfish affection,
generally by laughing at the poor
poet, which was the most effectual way
of restoring his courage and good-humor.
One morning he emerged from his seclusion,
and with vindictive desperation
threw before his brother a quantity of
manuscripts, saying, “You would have
prose: there it is for you.” It was the
introduction to a sort of romance called
Le Poète déchu, a wretched story of a
young man of many gifts who finds himself
under the necessity of writing for
the support of his orphan sisters, and it
described with harrowing eloquence the
vain efforts of his exhausted brain. The
extracts in the biography are painfully
affecting and powerful, but the work was
never finished or published. Such a state
of things could not go on indefinitely,
and De Musset fell dangerously ill of congestion
of the lungs, brought on by reckless
imprudence when already far from
well: the attack was accompanied by so
much fever and delirium that it was at
first mistaken for brain fever. This illness
redoubled the tenderness and devotion
of his family and friends: his Marraine
and Princess Belgiojoso took turns
by his bedside, magnetizing the unruly
patient into quiescence; but the person
who exercised the greatest influence over
him was a poor Sister of Charity, Sœur
Marcelline, who was engaged to assist
in nursing him. The untiring care, self-abnegation,
angelic sweetness and serenity
of this humble woman gained the attachment
of the whole family, and established
an ascendency over Alfred’s impressionable
imagination. She did not
confine her office to her patient’s physical
welfare, but strove earnestly to minister
to him spiritually. His long convalescence
“was like a second birth. He
did not seem more than seventeen: he
had the joyousness of a child, the fancies
of a page, like Cherubino in the Marriage
of Figaro. All the difficulties and subjects
of despair which preceded his malady
had vanished in a rose-colored distance.
He passed his days in reading
interminable books—Clarissa Harlowe,
which he already knew, the Memorial of
St. Helena, and all the memoirs relating
to the Empire. In the evening we all
gathered about his writing-table to draw
and chat, while Sœur Marcelline sat by
knitting in bright worsteds. Auguste
Barre, our neighbor, came to work at an
album of caricatures in the style of Töppfer’s,
and we all amused ourselves with
the comic illustrations: Alfred and Barre
had the pencil, the rest of us composed
a text as absurd as the drawings. Who
will give us back those delicious evenings
of laughter, jest and chat, when without
stirring from home or depending on anything
from without our whole household
was so happy?” Alas! they were not
of long duration. By and by Sister Marcelline
went away, leaving her patient a
pen on which she had embroidered, “Remember
your promises.” He was afflicted
by her departure, and wrote some
lines to her, who, as he said, did not
know what poetry meant, but he could
never be induced to show them, although
he repeated them to Paul and their friend
Alfred Tattet, who between them contrived
to note down the four following
verses:

Poor girl! thou art no longer fair.

By watching Death with patient care

Thou pale as he art grown:

By tending upon human pain

Thy hand is worn as coarse in grain

As horny Labor’s own.

But weariness and courage meek

Illuminate thy pallid cheek

Beside the dying bed:

To the poor suffering mortal’s clutch

Thy hard hand hath a gentle touch,

With tears and warm blood fed.

Tread to the end thy lonely road,

All for thy task and toward thy God,

Thy footsteps day by day.

That evil must exist, we prate,

And wisely leave it to its fate,

And pass another way;

But thy pure conscience owns it not,

Though ceaseless warfare is thy lot

Page 491
Against disease and woe;

No ills for thee have power to sting,

Nor to thy lip a murmur bring,

Save those that others know.

De Musset held in peculiar sacredness
and reverence whatever was connected
with this good woman and his feeling for
her: seventeen years after this illness the
embroidered pen and a piece of her knitting
were buried with him by almost his
last request.

Seventeen years! a large bit of any
one’s life—more than a third of Alfred
de Musset’s own term—yet there is hardly
anything to say about it. The “Souvenir,”
which was written about six months
after his recovery, is the last poem in
which all his strength, beauty and pathos
find expression: he never wrote again in
this vein: it was the last echo of his youth.
He composed less and less frequently,
and though what he wrote was redolent
of sentiment, wit, grace and elegance,
and some of the short occasional verses
have a consummate charm of finish, the
soul seems gone out of his poetry. His
brother mentions a number of compositions
begun, but thrown aside; there
were projects of travel never carried out;
he gradually gave up the society of even
his oldest friends: everything indicated
a rapid decline of the active faculties.
Unhappily, that of suffering seemed only
to increase—no longer the sharp anguish
of unspent force which had wrung from
him the passionate cries and plaintive
murmurs of former years, but the dull
numbness of hopelessness. His existence
was monotonous, and the few occurrences
which varied it were of a sad
or unpleasant nature. His sister married
and left Paris, and his mother subsequently
went to live with her in the
country, thus breaking up their family
circle; Paul de Musset was absent from
France for considerable spaces of time,
so that for the first time Alfred de Musset
was compelled to live alone. Friends
scattered, some died: the Orleans family,
for whom he had a real affection,
was driven from France; he fancied that
his genius was unappreciated—a notion
which, strangely enough, his brother
shared—and although he was the last
man to rage or mope over misapprehension,
the idea certainly added to his
gloom. Through the good graces of the
duke of Orleans he had been appointed
librarian of the Home Office, a post of
which he was instantly deprived on the
change of government; but a few years
later he was unexpectedly given a similar
one in the Department of Public Education.
In 1852 he was elected to the
French Academy, that honor so limited
by the small number of members, so
ridiculed by unsuccessful aspirants, yet
without which no French author feels his
career to be complete. His plays were
being performed with great favor, his
poems and tales were becoming more
and more popular, his verses were set to
music, his stories were illustrated: but
all this brought no cheer or consolation
to the sick spirit. He lived more and
more alone: the Théâtre Français, a silent
game of chess at his café, the deadly
absinthe, were his only sources of excitement.
It is a comfort to learn that
the last ray of pleasure which penetrated
his moral dungeon, reviving for an instant
the generous glow of enthusiasm,
was the appearance of Ristori: inspired
by her, he began a poetical address which
he never finished, nor even wrote down,
but a fragment of it was preserved orally
by one or two who heard it:

For Pauline and Rachel I sang of hope,

And over Malibran a tear I shed;

But, thanks to thee, I see the mighty scope

Of strength and genius wed.

Ah keep them long! The heart which breathes the prayer

When genius calls has ever made reply,

Bear smiling home to Italy the fair,

A flower from our sky.

They tell me that in spite of grief and wrong,

And pride bent earthward by a tyrant’s heel,

A noble race, though crushed and conquered long,

Has not yet learned to kneel.

Rome’s godlike dwellers of a bygone age,

The marble, porphyry, alabaster forms,

Still live: at night, to speech upon the stage,

An ancient statue warms.

What was the cause of De Musset’s unhappiness
and impotence? His brother
tries to account for them by an enumeration
of the distresses and annoyances
mentioned above, and others of
Page 492the same order; but when one remembers
how the poet’s great sorrows, his
father’s death and the betrayal of his
affection by the first woman he really
loved, had given him his finest conceptions
in verse and prose, it is impossible
to accept so insufficient an explanation.
Nor can we allow that De Musset sank
into a condition of puerile impatience and
senile querulousness. Judged by our
standard, all the Latin races lack manhood,
as we may possibly do by theirs:
De Musset was only as much more sensitive
than the rest of his countrymen as
those of the poetic temperament are usually
found to be in all countries. Nor had
he seen his talent slowly expire: the
spring did not run dry by degrees: it
suddenly sank into the ground. He had
made a fearful mistake at the outset,
which he discovered too late if at all.
Considering what life is sure to bring to
every one in the way of trial and sorrow,
it is not worth while to go in search of
emotions and experience which are certain
to find us out; nor is it in the slums
of life that its meaning is to be sought.
He had foretold his own end in the
prophetic warning of his Muse:

Quand les dieux irrités m’ôteront ton génie,

Si je tombe des cieux que me répondras-tu?

His light was not lost in a storm-cloud
nor eclipse, but in the awful Radnorok,
the Götterdämmerung, when sun and
stars fall from a blank heaven. His
health and habits constantly grew worse—he
had organic disease of the heart—but
his existence dragged on until May
1st, 1857, when an acute attack carried
him off after a few days’ illness. He
died in his brother’s arms, and his last
words were, “Sleep! at last I shall sleep.”
He had killed himself physically and intellectually
as surely as the wages of sin
are death.

But let not this be the last word on
one so beloved as a poet and a man.
Mental qualities alone never endear their
possessor to every being that comes into
contact with him, and Alfred de Musset
was idolized by people who could not
even read. There was not a generous or
amiable quality in which he was wanting:
he had an inextinguishable ardor
for genius and greatness in every form;
he was tender-hearted to excess, could
not endure the sight of suffering, and delighted
in giving pleasure; his sympathy
was ready and entire, his loyalty of the
truest metal. “He never abused anybody,”
says his brother, “nor sacrificed
an absent person for the sake of a good
story.” He loved animals and children,
and they loved him in return.

He can never cease to be the poet of
the many, for he has melody, sentiment,
passion, all that charms the popular ear
and heart—a personality which is the
expression of human nature in a language
which, as he himself says, few
speak, but all understand. He can
never cease to be the poet of the few,
because, while his poems are a very concentration
and elixir of the most intense
and profound feelings of which we are all
capable, they give words to the more exquisite
and intimate emotions peculiar to
those of a keener and more refined susceptibility,
of a more exalted and aërial
range. Sainte-Beuve says somewhere,
though not in his final verdict on De
Musset, that his chief merit is having restored
to French literature the wit which
had been driven out of it by the sentimentalists.
His wit is indeed delightful
and irresistible, but it is not his magic
key to souls. In other countries every
generation has its own poet: younger
ears are deaf to the music which so long
charmed ours; but De Musset will be the
poet of each new generation for a certain
season—the sweetest of all, because, as
has been well said, he is the poet of
youth. And if doubt breathes through
some of his grandest strophes, Faith
finds her first and last profession in
the lines—

Une immense espérance a traversé la terre;

Malgré nous vers le ciel il faut lever les yeux.

Sarah B. Wister.

Page 493

The Bee.

What time I paced, at pleasant morn,

A deep and dewy wood,

I heard a mellow hunting-horn

Make dim report of Dian’s lustihood

Far down a heavenly hollow.

Mine ear, though fain, had pain to follow:

Tara! it twang’d, tara-tara! it blew,

Yet wavered oft, and flew

Most ficklewise about, or here, or there,

A music now from earth and now from air.

But on a sudden, lo!

I marked a blossom shiver to and fro

With dainty inward storm; and there within

A down-drawn trump of yellow jessamine

A bee

Thrust up its sad-gold body lustily,

All in a honey madness hotly bound

On blissful burglary.

A cunning sound

In that wing-music held me: down I lay

In amber shades of many a golden spray,

Where looping low with languid arms the Vine

In wreaths of ravishment did overtwine

Her kneeling Live-Oak, thousand-fold to plight

Herself unto her own true stalwart knight.

As some dim blur of distant music nears

The long-desiring sense, and slowly clears

To forms of time and apprehensive tune,

So, as I lay, full soon

Interpretation throve: the bee’s fanfare,

Through sequent films of discourse vague as air,

Passed to plain words, while, fanning faint perfume,

The bee o’erhung a rich unrifled bloom:

“O Earth, fair lordly Blossom, soft a-shine

Upon the star-pranked universal vine,

Hast naught for me?

To thee

Come I, a poet, hereward haply blown,

From out another worldflower lately flown.

Wilt ask, What profit e’er a poet brings?

He beareth starry stuff about his wings

To pollen thee and sting thee fertile: nay,

If still thou narrow thy contracted way,

—Worldflower, if thou refuse me—

—Worldflower, if thou abuse me,

And hoist thy stamen’s spear-point high

To wound my wing and mar mine eye—

Page 494
Natheless I’ll drive me to thy deepest sweet,

Yea, richlier shall that pain the pollen beat

From me to thee, for oft these pollens be

Fine dust from wars that poets wage for thee.

But, O beloved Earthbloom soft a-shine

Upon the universal jessamine,

Prithee abuse me not,

Prithee refuse me not;

Yield, yield the heartsome honey love to me

Hid in thy nectary!”

And as I sank into a suaver dream

The pleading bee-song’s burthen sole did seem,

“Hast ne’er a honey-drop of love for me

In thy huge nectary?”

Sidney Lanier.

“Our Jook.”

“Königin,” said I, as I poked the
fire, “what do you think of the
people in the house?”

On second thoughts it was not “Königin”
that I said, for it was only that night
that she received the title. It is of no
consequence what I did call her, however,
for from that time she was never
anything but Königin to me.

We began to “talk things over,” as
we had a way of doing; and very good
fun it was and quite harmless, provided
the ventilator was not open. That had
happened once or twice, and got us into
quite serious scrapes. People have such
an utterly irrational objection to your
amusing yourself in the most innocent
way at what they consider their expense.

Königin and I had come to the boarding-house
that very day. We were by
ourselves, for our male protectors were
off “a-hunting the wild deer and following
the roe”—or its Florida equivalent,
whatever that may be—and we did not
fancy staying at a hotel under the circumstances.
Now, we had taken our
observations, and were prepared to pronounce
our opinions on our fellow-boarders.
One after another was canvassed
and dismissed. Mr. A. had eccentric
table-manners; Miss B. wriggled and
squirmed when she talked; Mrs. C. was
much too lavish of inappropriate epithets;
Mr. X.’s conversation, on the contrary,
was quite bald and bare from the utter
lack of those parts of speech; Miss Y.
had a nice face, and Mrs. Z. a pretty
hand.

Just here Königin suddenly burst out
laughing. “Really,” she said, “we go
about the world criticising people as if
we were King Solomon and the queen
of Sheba.”

“‘Die Königin von Seba,'” said I.
“That, I suppose, is you and our motto
should be, ‘Wir sind das Volk und die
Weisheit stirbt mit uns.'”

I was not at all sure of the accuracy
of my translation, but its appropriateness
was unquestionable.

“What do you think of the Englishman,
Königin?” I asked, giving the fire
another poke, not from shamefacedness,
but because it really needed it, for the
evening was damp and chilly.

“I like him,” said Königin decidedly.

Königin and I were always prepared
with decided opinions, whether we knew
anything about the subject in hand or
not.

“He has a fine head,” Königin went
on, “quite a ducal contour, according to
Page 495our republican ideas of what a duke
ought to be. I like the steady intense
light of his eyes under those straight
dark brows, and that little frown only
increases the effect. Then his laugh is
so frank and boyish. Yes, I like him
very much.”

“He has a nice gentlemanly voice,” I
suggested—”rather on the ‘gobble-gobble’
order, but that is the fault of his
English birth.”

This is enough of that conversation,
for, after all, neither of us is the heroine
of this tale. It is well that this should
be distinctly understood at the start.
Somehow, “the Jook” (as we generally
called him, in memory of Jeames Yellowplush)
and I became very intimate
after that, but it was never anything more
than a sort of camaraderie. Königin
knew all about it, and she pronounced
it the most remarkable instance of a
purely intellectual flirtation which she
had ever seen; which was all quite correct,
except for the term “flirtation,” of
which it never had a spice.

One of the Jook’s most striking peculiarities,
though by no means an uncommon
one among his countrymen, was a
profound distrust of new acquaintances
and an utter incapacity of falling into
the free and easy ways which prevail
more strongly perhaps in Florida than
in any other part of America. There
really was some excuse for him, though,
for, not to put it too strongly, society
is a little mixed in Florida, and it is
hard for a foreigner to discriminate closely
enough to avoid being drawn into unpleasant
complications if he relaxes in
the slightest degree his rules of reserve.
Besides which, the Jook was a man of
the most morbid and ultra refinement.
“Refinement” was the word he preferred,
but I should have called it an absurd
squeamishness. He could make no allowance
for personal or local peculiarities,
and eccentricities in our neighbors
which delighted Königin and me and
sent us into fits of laughter excited in
his mind only the most profound disgust.
Therefore, partly in the fear of having
his sensibilities unpleasantly jarred upon,
partly from the fear of making objectionable
acquaintances whom he might afterward
be unable to shake off, and partly
from an inherent and ineradicable shyness,
he went about clad in a mantle of
gloomy reserve, speaking to no one, looking
at no one—”grand, gloomy and peculiar.”
It was currently reported that
previous to our arrival he had never
spoken to a creature in the boarding-house,
though he had been an inmate
of it for six weeks. For the rest, he was
clever and intelligent, with frank, honest,
boyish ways, which I liked, even though
they were sometimes rather exasperating.

It was not quite pleasant, for instance,
to hear him speak of Americans in the
frank and unconstrained manner which
he adopted when talking to us. We
could hardly wonder at it when we looked
at the promiscuous crowd which formed
his idea of American society. Refined
and well-bred people there certainly were,
but these were precisely the ones who
never forced themselves upon his notice,
leaving him to be struck and stunned by
fast and hoydenish young ladies, ungrammatical
and ill-bred old ones, and
men of all shades of boorishness and
swagger, such as make themselves conspicuous
in every crowd. Unluckily,
both Königin and I have English blood
in our veins, and the Jook could not be
convinced that we did not eagerly snatch
at the chance thus presented of claiming
the title of British subjects. It is quite
hopeless to attempt to convince Englishmen
that any American would not be
British if he could. Pride in American
citizenship is an idea utterly monstrous
and inconceivable to them, and they can
look on the profession of it in no other
light than that of a laudable attempt at
making the best of a bad case. Therefore,
the Jook persisted in ignoring our
protestations of patriotic ardor, and in
paying us the delicate compliment of
considering us English and expressing
his views on America with a beautiful
frankness which kept us in a frame of
mind verging on delirium.

What was to be done with such a man?
Clearly, but one thing, and I sighed for
one of our American belles who should
come and see and conquer this impracticable
Page 496Englishman. At present, things
seemed quite hopeless. There was no one
within reach who would have the slightest
chance of success in such an undertaking.
Though outsiders gave me the
credit of his subjugation, I knew quite
well that there not only was not, but
never could be, the necessary tinge of
sentimentality in our intercourse. We
were much too free and easy for that,
and we laughed and talked, rambled and
boated together, “like two babes in the
woods,” as Königin was fond of remarking.

It was in Florida that all this took place—in
shabby, fascinating Jacksonville,
where one meets everybody and does
nothing in particular except lounge about
and be happy. So the Jook and I lounged
and were happy with a placid, unexciting
sort of happiness, until the day when
Kitty Grey descended upon us with the
suddenness of a meteor, and very like
one in her bewildering brightness.

Kitty was by no means pretty, but,
though women recognized this fact, the
man who could be convinced of it remains
yet to be discovered. You might
force them to confess that Kitty’s nose
was flat, her eyes not well shaped, her
teeth crooked, her mouth slightly awry,
but it always came back to the same
point: “Curious that with all these defects
she should still be so exquisitely
pretty!”

Really, I did not so much wonder at it
myself sometimes when I saw Kitty’s
pale cheeks flush with that delicious
pink, her wide hazel eyes deepen and
glow, her little face light up with elfish
mirth, and her round, childish figure
poise itself in some coquettish attitude.
Then she had such absurd little hands,
with short fingers and babyish dimples,
such tiny feet, and such a wealth of
crinkled dark-brown hair—such bewitching
little helpless ways, too, a fashion of
throwing herself appealingly on your compassion
which no man on earth could resist!
At bottom she was a self-reliant,
independent little soul, but no mortal
man ever found that out: Kitty was far
too wise.

Of course, as soon as I saw Kitty I
thought of the Jook. Would he or wouldn’t
he? On the whole, I was rather afraid
he wouldn’t, for Kitty’s laugh sometimes
rang out a little too loud, and Kitty’s
spirits sometimes got the better of her
and set her frisking like a kitten, and I
was afraid the modest sense of propriety
which was one of the Jook’s strong points
would not survive it. However, I concluded
to risk it, but just here a sudden
and unforeseen obstacle checked my triumphant
course.

“Mr. Warriner,” I said sweetly (I was
always horribly afraid I should call him
Mr. Jook, but I never did), “I want to
introduce you to my friend, Miss Grey.”

The Jook looked at me with his most
placid smile, and replied blandly, “Thank
you very much, but I’d rather not.”

Did any one ever hear of such a man?
I understood his reasons well enough,
though he did not take the trouble to
explain them: it was only exclusiveness
gone mad. And he prided himself upon
his race and breeding, and considered
our American men boors!

After that I nearly gave up his case as
hopeless, and devoted myself to Kitty,
whom I really believe the Jook did not
know by sight after having been for
nearly a week in the same house with
her.

Kitty once or twice mildly insinuated
her desire to know him. “He has such
a nice face,” she said plaintively, “and
such lovely little curly brown whiskers!
He is the only man in the house worth
looking at, but if I happen to come up
when he is talking to you, he instantly
disappears. He must think me very
ugly.”

It was really very embarrassing to me,
for of course I could not tell her that the
Jook had declined the honor of an introduction.
I knew, as well as if she had
told me so, that Kitty in her secret heart
accused me of a mean and selfish desire
to keep him all to myself, but I was
obliged meekly to endure the obloquy,
undeserved as it was. Königin used to
go into fits of laughter at my dilemma,
and just at this period my admiration of
the Jook went down to the lowest ebb.
“He is a selfish, conceited creature!” I
Page 497exclaimed in my wrath. “I really believe
he thinks that bewitching little Kitty
would fall in love with him forthwith
if he submitted to an introduction. Oh,
I do wish he knew what we thought of
him! Why doesn’t he listen outside of
ventilators?”

“My dear,” said Königin, still laughing,
though sympathetic, “it strikes me
that we began by making rather a demi-god
of the man, and are ending by stripping
him of even the good qualities which
he probably does possess.”

Well! things went on in this exasperating
way for a week or so longer. Of
course I washed my hands of the Jook,
for I was too much exasperated to be
even civil to him. Kitty was as bright
and good-natured as ever, ready to enjoy
all the little pleasures that came in her
way, though now and then I fancied that
I detected a stealthy, wistful look at the
Jook’s impassive face.

It was lovely that day, but fearfully
hot. The sun showered down its burning
rays upon the white Florida sands,
the sky was one arch of cloudless blue,
and the water-oaks swung their moss-wreaths
languidly over the deserted
streets. We had been dreaming and
drowsing away the morning, Königin,
Kitty and I, in the jelly-fish-like state
into which one naturally falls in Florida.

Suddenly Kitty sprang to her feet. “I
can’t stand this any longer,” she said:
“I shall turn into an oyster if I vegetate
here. Please, do you see any shells
sprouting on my back yet?”

“What do you want to do?” I asked
drowsily. “You can’t walk in this heat,
and if you go on the river the sun will
take the skin off your face, and where
are you then, Miss Kitty?”

“I can’t help that,” retorted Kitty in
a tone of desperation. “I don’t exactly
know where I shall go, but I think in
pursuit of some yellow jessamine.”

I sat straight up and gazed at her:
“Are you mad, Kitty? Has the heat
addled your brain already? You would
have to walk at least a mile before you
could find any; and what’s the good of
it, after all? It would all be withered
before you could get home.”

“Can’t help that,” repeated Kitty: “I
shall have had it, at all events. Any
way, I’m going, and you two can finish
your dreams in peace.”

It was useless to argue with Kitty when
she was in that mood, so I contented myself
with giving her directions for reaching
the nearest copse where she would
be likely to find the fragrant beauty.

Two hours later Königin sat at the
window gazing down the long sandy
street. Suddenly her face changed, an
expression of interest and surprise came
into her dreamy eyes: she put up her
glass, and then broke into a laugh.
“Come and look at this,” she exclaimed;
and I came.

What I saw was only Kitty and the
Jook, but Kitty and the Jook walking
side by side in the most amicable manner—Kitty
sparkling, bewitching, helpless,
appealing by turns or altogether as
only she could be; the Jook watching
her with an expression of amusement
and delight on his handsome face. And
both were laden with great wreaths and
trails of yellow jessamine, golden chalices
of fragrance, drooping sprays of
green glistening leaves, until they looked
like walking bowers.

“How on earth—” I exclaimed, and
could get no further: my feelings choked
me.

Kitty came in radiant and smiling as
the morning, bearing her treasures. Of
course we both pounced upon her: “Kitty,
where did you meet the Jook? How
did it happen? What did you do?”

“Cows!” said Kitty solemnly, with
grave lips and twinkling eyes.

“Cows? Cows in Florida? Kitty,
what do you mean?”

“A cow ran at me, and I was frightened
and ran at Mr. Warriner. He drove
the cow off. That’s all. Then he walked
home with me. Any harm in that?”

“Now, Kitty, the idea! A Florida
cow run at you? If you had said a pig,
there might be some sense in it, for the
pigs here do have some life about them;
but a cow! Why, the creatures have not
strength enough to stand up: they are
all starving by inches.”

“Can’t help that,” said Kitty. “Must
Page 498have thought I was good to eat, then, I
suppose. I thought she was going to
toss me, but I don’t think it would be
much more agreeable to be eaten. Mr.
Warriner is my preserver, anyhow, and
I shall treat him ‘as sich.'”

Kitty looked so mischievous and so
mutinous that there was evidently no use
in trying to get anything more out of her,
and after standing there a few minutes
fingering her blossoms and smiling to
herself, she danced off to dress for tea.

“Selfish little thing, not to offer us one
of those lovely sprays!” I exclaimed,
but Königin laughed: “My dear, they
are hallowed. Our touch would profane
them.”

Königin always saw further than I
did, and I gasped: “Königin! you don’t
think—”

“Oh no, dear, not yet. Kitty is piqued,
and wants to fascinate the Jook a little—just
a little as yet, but she may burn her
fingers before she gets through. Looks
are contagious, and—did you see her
face?”

Such a brilliant little figure as slipped
softly into the dining-room that evening,
all wreathed and twisted and garlanded
about with the shining green vines, gemmed
with their golden stars. Head and
throat and waist and round white arms
were all twined with them, and blossoming
sprays and knots of the delicately
carved blossoms drooped or clung here
and there amid her floating hair and
gauzy black drapery. How did the child
ever make them stick? How had she
managed to decorate herself so elaborately
in the short time that had elapsed
since her return? But Kitty had ways
of doing things unknown to duller mortals.

Not a word had Kitty for me that
evening, but for her father such clinging,
coaxing, wheedling ways, and for
the Jook such coy, sparkling, artfully-accidental
glances, such shy turns of
the little head, such dainty capricious
airs, that it was delicious to watch her.
Königin and I sat in a dark corner for
the express purpose of admiring her delicate
little manœuvres. As for her father,
good stolid man! he was well used to
Kitty’s freaks, and went on reading his
newspaper in such a matter-of-fact way
that she might as well have wheedled
the Pyramid of Cheops. The Jook, however,
was all that could be desired. The
shyest of men—shy and proud as only
an Englishman can be—he could not
make up his mind to walk directly up
to Kitty, as an American would do, as
all the young Americans in the room
would have done if Kitty had let them.
But Kitty, flighty little butterfly as she
seemed, had stores of tact and finesse
in that little brain of hers, and the power
of developing a fine reserve which had
already wilted more than one of the
young men of the house. For Kitty was
none of your arrant and promiscuous
flirts who count “all fish that come to
their net.” She was choice and dainty
in her flirtations, but, possibly, none the
less dangerous for that.

The Jook hovered about the room from
chair to sofa, from sofa to window-seat,
finding himself at each remove one degree
nearer to Kitty.

“He is like a tame canary-bird,”
whispered Königin. “Let it alone and
it will come up to you after a while, but
speak to it and you frighten it off at
once.”

And when at length he reached Kitty’s
side, how beautiful was the look of
slight surprise, not too strongly marked,
and the half-shy pleasure in the eyes
which she raised to him; and then the
coy little gesture with which she swept
aside her draperies and made room for
him. Half the power of Kitty’s witcheries
lay in her frank, childish manner,
just dashed with womanly reserve.

Well! the Jook was thoroughly in the
vortex now: there was no doubt about
that. Kitty might laugh as loud as she
pleased, and he only looked charmed.
Kitty might frisk like a will-o’-the wisp,
and he only admired her innocent vivacity.
Even the bits of slang and the
Americanisms which occasionally slipped
from her only struck him as original
and piquant. How would it all end?
That neither Königin nor I could divine,
for Kitty was not one to wear her heart
upon her sleeve. It was very little that
Page 499we saw of Kitty in these days, for she
was always wandering off somewhere,
boating on the broad placid river or
lounging about “Greenleaf’s” or driving—always
with the Jook for cavalier,
and, if the excursions were long, with
her father to play propriety. When she
did come into our room, she was not our
own Kitty, with her childish airs and
merry laughter. This was a brilliant and
volatile little woman of the world, who
rattled on in the most amusing manner
about everything—except the Jook.
About him her lips never opened, and
the most distant allusion to him on our
part was sufficient to send her fluttering
off on some pressing and suddenly remembered
errand. Yet this reserve
hardly seemed like the shyness of conscious
but unacknowledged love. On
the contrary, we both fancied—Königin
and I—that Kitty began to look worried,
and somehow, in watching her and the
Jook, we began to be conscious that a
sort of constraint had crept into her manner
toward him. It could be no doubt
of his feelings that caused it, for no woman
could desire a bolder or more ardent
lover than he had developed into, infected,
no doubt, by the American atmosphere.
Sometimes, too, we caught
shy, wistful glances at the Jook from Kitty’s
eyes, hastily averted with an almost
guilty look if he turned toward her.

“What can it mean, Königin?” I said.
“She looks as if she wanted to confess
some sin, and was afraid to.”

“Some childish peccadillo,” said Königin.
“In spite of all her woman-of-the-world-ishness
the child has a morbidly
sensitive conscience, and is troubled
about some nonsense that nobody else
would think of twice.”

“Can it be that she has only been flirting,
and is frightened to find how desperately
in earnest he is?”

“Possibly,” replied Königin. “But I
fancy that she is too well used to that
phase of affairs to let it worry her. Wait
a while and we shall see.”

We couldn’t make anything of it, but
even the Jook became worried at last by
Kitty’s queer behavior, and I suppose he
thought he had better settle the matter.
For one evening, when I was keeping
my room with a headache, I was awakened
from a light sleep by a sound of voices
on the piazza outside of my window. It
was some time before I was sufficiently
wide awake to realize that the speakers
were Kitty and the Jook, and when I did
I was in a dilemma. To let them know
that I was there would be to overwhelm
them both with confusion and interrupt
their conversation at a most interesting
point, for the Jook had evidently just
made his declaration. It was impossible
for me to leave the room, for I was by
no means in a costume to make my appearance
in the public halls. On the
whole, I concluded that the best thing I
could do would be to keep still and never,
by word or look, to let either of them
know of my most involuntary eavesdropping.

Kitty was speaking when I heard them
first, talking in a broken, hesitating voice,
which was very queer from our bright,
fluent little Kitty: “Mr. Warriner, you
don’t know what a humbug you make
me feel when you talk of ‘my innocence’
and ‘unconsciousness’ and ‘lack of vanity,’
and all the rest of it. I have been
feeling more and more what a vain, deceitful,
hypocritical little wretch I am
ever since I knew you. I have been expecting
you to find me out every day,
and I almost hoped you would.”

“What do you mean, Miss Grey?”
asked the Jook in tones of utter amazement,
as well he might.

“Oh dear! how shall I tell you?”
sighed poor Kitty; and I could feel her
blushes burning through her words.
Then, with a sudden rush: “Can’t you
see? I feel as if I had stolen your love,
for it was all gained under false pretences.
You never would have cared
for me if you had known what a miserable
hypocrite I really was. Why, that
very first day I wasn’t afraid of the cow—she
didn’t even look at me—but I saw
you coming, and—and—Helen wouldn’t
introduce you to me—and it just struck
me it would be a good chance, and so I
rushed up to you and—Oh! what will
you think of me?”

“Think?” said the Jook: “why, I think
Page 500that while ninety-nine women out of a
hundred are hypocrites, not one in a
thousand has the courage to atone for
it by an avowal like yours. Not that it
was exactly hypocrisy, either.”

The poor blundering Jook! Always
saying the most maddening things under
the firm conviction that it was the
most delicate compliment.

Kitty was too much in earnest to mind
it now, though. “Do you know,” she
went on, “that from the very first day
I came into the house I was determined
to captivate you?—that every word and
every look was directed to that end? I
have been nothing but an actress all
through. I have done it before, hundreds
and hundreds of times, but I never
felt the shame of it until now—because—because—”

“Because you never loved any one before?
Is that it, Kitty?” said the Jook
tenderly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Kitty desperately.
“How can I tell? But it’s all
Helen’s fault. If she had introduced
you to me in a rational way, I should
never have gone on so. But she wouldn’t,
and I was piqued—”

“I must exonerate Miss Helen,” interrupted
the Jook. “She wanted to introduce
me, and I declined. I am sure
I don’t know why—English reserve, I
suppose. I had not seen you then, you
know, and some of the people here are
such a queer lot that I rather dreaded
new acquaintances.”

“Not Helen’s fault?” wailed Kitty.
“Oh, this is stolen—oh, poor Helen!”

Naturally, the Jook was utterly bewildered,
but as for me I sprang up into a
sitting posture, for the meaning of Kitty’s
behavior had just flashed upon me.
Absolutely, the poor little goose thought
that in accepting the Jook, as she was
evidently dying to do, she would be robbing
me of my lover. And she never
guessed at my own little romance, tucked
away safely in the most secret corner
of my heart, which put any man save
one quite out of the question for me. If
I had stopped to think, I suppose I should
not have done what I did, but in my surprise
the words came out before I thought:
“Good gracious, Kitty my dear! do take
the Jook if you want him! I don’t.”

I could not help laughing when I realized
what I had done. A little shriek from
Kitty and a very British exclamation from
the Jook, a slight scuffle of chairs and a
sense, rather than sound, of confusion,
announced the effect of my words.

I waited for their reply, but dead silence
prevailed, so I was obliged to
speak again. “You needn’t be alarmed,”
I said, peering cautiously through
the chinks in the blinds, for I had approached
the window by this time. “I
didn’t mean to listen, but I couldn’t get
out of the way, and I never intended to
let you or any one else know that I had
heard your conversation. I’m awfully
sorry that I have disturbed you, but, as
I am in for it now, I might as well go
on.”

There I stopped, for I didn’t exactly
know what to say, and I hoped that one
of them would “give me a lead.” I could
just catch a glimpse of their faces in the
moonlight. The Jook was staring straight
at the window-shutter behind which I
lurked, and the wrath and disgust expressed
in his handsome features set me
off into a silent chuckle. I was sorry for
Kitty, though. Her face drooped as if it
were weighed down by its own blushes,
and the long lashes quivered upon the
hot cheeks.

“Ah, really, Miss Helen,” spoke the
Jook at last, “this is a most unexpected
pleasure. Ah, really, you know, I
mean—”

It was not very lucid, but it was all I
needed, and I replied suavely, “Oh yes,
I understand. You never asked me, and
never had the faintest idea of doing so.
Otherwise, we should not have been such
good friends. All I want is to enforce
the fact on Kitty’s mind.—And now,
Kitty, my dear, if you are quite satisfied
on this point, I will dress and go down
stairs.—Don’t disturb yourselves, pray!”
for both of them showed signs of moving.
“You can finish your conversation to
much better advantage where you are,
and this little excitement has quite cured
my headache.”

I wonder how in the world they ever
Page 501took up the dropped stitches in that conversation?
They did it somehow, though,
for when they reappeared Kitty was the
prettiest possible picture of shy, blushing,
shamefaced happiness, while the Jook
was fairly beaming with pride and delight.
It was a case of true love at last:
there was no doubt about that—such
love as few would have believed that a
flighty little creature like Kitty was capable
of feeling. It was wonderful to
see how quickly all her little wiles and
coquetries fell off under its influence,
just as the rosy, fluttering leaves of the
spring fall off when the fruit pushes its
way. I don’t believe it had ever struck
her before that there was anything degrading
in this playing fast and loose
with men’s hearts which had been her
favorite pastime, or in beguiling them by
feigning a passion of which she had never
felt one thrill. It was not until Love
the magician had touched her heart that
the honest and loyal little Kitty that
lay at the bottom of all her whims and
follies was developed. The very sense
of unworthiness which she felt in view
of the Jook’s straightforward and manly
ardor was the surest guarantee for the
perfection of her cure.

A truce to moralizing. Kitty does not
need it, nor the Jook either. If he is not
proud of the bright little American bride
he is to take back with him to the “tight
little isle” of our forefathers, why, appearances
are “deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked.”

Henrietta H. Holdich.

Communism In The United States.

Nowhere in the history of the
world have we any example of
successful communism. The ancient Cretan
and Lacedemonian experiments, the
efforts of the Essenes and early Christians,
the modified communities of St.
Anthony and several orders of monks,
the schemes of the Anabaptists of the
sixteenth century, together with all the
experiments of modern times, have proved
essential failures. Setting out with ideas
of perfection in the social state, and undertaking
nothing less than the entire
abolition of the miseries of the world, the
communists of all times have lived in a
condition the least ideal that can be imagined.
The usual course of socialistic
communities has been to start out with a
great flourish, to quarrel and divide after
a few months, and then to decrease and
degenerate until a final dispersion by general
consent ended the attempt. During
the short existence of nearly all such
communities the members have lived in
want of the ordinary comforts of life, in
dispute about their respective rights and
duties, at law with retiring members, and
battling with the wilds and malarias
of the countries in which alone anything
like practical communism has been
usually possible. The most successful
(so far as any of these attempts can be
called successful) have been those communities
which have been founded on a
religion and which have consisted entirely
of members of one faith. But all political
communism has utterly failed, and
the name is little more than a synonym
for the most egregious blunders, excesses
and crimes of which visionary and unpractical
people can be guilty.

The United States seem ill suited for
the spread of communistic ideas, notwithstanding
they contain almost the
only socialistic communities to be found
anywhere. Though the people are free
to live in common if they desire, and although
land and every facility are offered
on easy terms for the realization of communism—which
is not the case in Europe
(and which is, therefore, the reason why
the New World is chosen for communistic
Page 502experiments)—yet there is felt no need of
communism here. There are neither the
political nor the social inducements for it
which exist in Europe, and all efforts to
excite an enthusiasm on the subject have
invariably failed. Almost the only agitators
are foreigners, and nearly all the
existing communities are composed of
foreigners. Of these, two only are political,
the Icarian and the Cedar Vale,
while the rest are religious.

The Icarian Community in Adams
county, Iowa, about two miles from
Corning, a station on the Burlington
and Missouri River Railroad, is the result
of an effort to realize the communistic
theory of M. Cabet, a French writer
and politician of some note. It is perhaps
the most just and practical of all
communistic systems; for the reader will
remember that social systems are as numerous
in France as religious systems
are in this country, and take much the
same place in the passions and bigotries
of the people of France, where there is
but one religion, as our various sects do
here, where there are so many. The
system of M. Cabet differs from the
others in much the same manner as
our religious sects differ from one another;
which is not of much importance
to the outside world, as they all contain
the one principle of a community of
goods. M. Cabet first promulgated his
system in the shape of a romance entitled
A Voyage to Icaria, in which he
represented the community at work under
the most favorable circumstances
and in a high degree of prosperity. According
to his system, all goods are to be
held in common, and all the people are
to have an equal voice in the disposal of
them. Each is to contribute of labor and
capital all that he can for the common
good, and to get all that he needs from the
common fund. “From each according
to his ability—to each according to his
wants,” is the formula of principles. The
practical working of the community will
further illustrate the system.

In 1848, M. Cabet, with some three
thousand of his followers, sailed from
France for New Orleans, intending to
take up land in Texas or Arkansas on
which to establish a community, having
the promise that he would soon be followed
by ten thousand more of his disciples.
After spending several months
in reconnoitring, during which half of
his followers got discontented and left
him, he settled with about fifteen hundred
at Nauvoo, Illinois, where they
bought out the property of the Mormons,
who had recently been driven
from that place. There they commenced
operations, establishing a saw- and grist-mill,
and carrying on farming and several
branches of domestic manufacturing.
In a little while they sent out a branch
colony to Icaria, in Adams county, Iowa,
where they purchased, or entered under
the Homestead Act, four thousand acres
of land. In this place likewise they built
a mill and went to farming and carrying
on the more simple trades. In a little
while, however, a quarrel arose in the
principal community at Nauvoo in regard
to the use and abuse of power,
when, after a rage of passion not unlike
that which they had exhibited in the
Revolution of 1848 in France, M. Cabet,
with a large minority, seceded and went
to St. Louis, where they expected to form
another and more perfect community.
They never formed this community,
however, and were soon dispersed. The
community at Nauvoo, being now harassed
with debts and with lawsuits growing
out of the withdrawal of M. Cabet
and his party, repaired to their branch
colony at Icaria, where they have been
ever since. Here they had likewise frequent
disputes and withdrawals, often
giving rise to lawsuits and a loss of property,
until in 1866, when the writer first
visited them, they were reduced to thirty-five
members. Since that time they
have picked up a few members, mostly
old companions who had left them for
individual life, until now they have about
sixty in all. They own at present about
two thousand acres of land, of which
three hundred and fifty are under cultivation.
They have good stock, consisting
of about one hundred and twenty
head of cattle, five hundred sheep, two
hundred and fifty hogs and thirty horses.
They still have their saw- and grist-mill,
Page 503now run by steam, but give most of their
time to farming. They preserve the family
relation, and observe the strictest
rules of chastity. Each family lives in a
separate house, but they all eat at a common
table. By an economic division of
labor one man cooks for all these persons,
another bakes, another attends to
the dairy, another makes the shoes, another
the clothes; and in general one
man manages some special work for the
whole. No one has any money or need
of any. All purchases are made from
the common purse, and each gets what
he needs. The government is a pure
democracy. The officers are chosen once
a year by universal (male) suffrage, and
consist of a president, secretary (and
treasurer), director of agriculture and
director of industry. They have no religion,
but, like most of the European
communists, are free-thinkers. They
are highly moral, however, and much
esteemed by their neighbors. Some of
them are quite learned, and all of them
may be pronounced decidedly heroic for
the terrible privations they have undergone
in order to realize their political
principles, to which they are as strongly
and sincerely devoted as any Christian
to his religion.

Such is a sketch of the most perfect
system and most successful experiment
of political communism in the United
States—not very encouraging, it will be
confessed. The other example of political
communism is the Cedar Vale Community
in Howard county, Kansas, which
needs only to be mentioned here, as it
has as yet no history. It was commenced
in 1871, and is composed of Russian
materialists and American spiritualists.
They have a community of goods like
the Icarians, and in general their principles
are the same. They had only
about a dozen members at last accounts.
Another and similar community was established
in 1874 in Chesterfield county,
Virginia, called the “Social Freedom
Community,” its principles being enunciated
as a “unity of interest and political,
religious and social freedom;” but
we cannot discover whether it is yet in
existence, as at last accounts it had only
two full members and eight probationers.
It will be seen from these examples
that the prospects of political communism
are far from promising. Its principal
power has always been as a sentiment,
and it can be dreaded only as an
appeal to the destitute and lawless to rise
in acts of violence. It has been powerful
in France in revolutions, riots and mobs,
and in this country in aiding the late strikers
in their work of destruction.

The other existing communities are
founded on some religious basis, being
efforts on the part of their founders to
secure their religious rights or to live
with those of the same faith in closer
relations. And although their measures
have been similar in many respects to
those of the political communists, they
have resorted to them not on account
of any political principles, but because
they believed them to be commanded
by Scripture or to grow out of some
peculiarity of religious faith or duty.
Most of them have been formed after
the model of the society of the apostles,
who had their goods in common,
and because of their example. None,
so far as we know, have ever proposed
to establish communities by force or to
have the whole people embraced in
them. Held together by their peculiar
religious principles, they have been far
more successful (especially when under
some shrewd leader whom they believed
to have a spiritual authority) than when
actuated purely by reason.

Perhaps the most successful of these
religious communities is that of the
“True Inspirationists,” known as the
Amana Community, in Iowa, seventy-eight
miles west of Iowa City, on the
Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad.
These are all Germans, who came
to this country in 1842, and settled at
first near Buffalo, New York, on a tract
of land called Ebenezer, from which they
are sometimes known as “Ebenezers.”
This tract comprised five thousand acres
of land, including what is now a part of
the city of Buffalo. In 1855 they moved
to their present locality in Iowa. They
pretend to be under direct inspiration,
receiving from God the model and general
Page 504orders for the direction of their community.
The present head, both spiritual
and temporal, is a woman, a sort
of sibyl who negotiates the inspirations.
Their business affairs are managed by
thirteen trustees, chosen annually by the
male members, who also choose the president.
They are very religious, though
having but little outward form. There
are fourteen hundred and fifty members,
who live in seven different towns or villages,
which are all known by the name
of Amana—East Amana, West Amana,
etc. They have their property for the
most part in common. Each family has
a house, to which food is daily distributed.
The work is done by a prudent division
of labor, as in the Icarian community.
But instead of providing clothing
and incidentals, the community makes to
each person an allowance for this purpose—to
the men of from forty to one
hundred dollars a year, to the women
from twenty-five to thirty dollars, and
to the children from five to ten dollars.
There are public stores in the community
at which the members can get all
they need besides food, and at which
also strangers can deal. They dress very
plainly, use simple food, and are quite industrious.
They aim to keep the men and
women apart as much as possible. They
sit apart at the tables and in church, and
when divine service is dismissed the men
remain in their ranks until the women
get out of church and nearly home. In
their games and amusements they keep
apart, as well as in all combinations
whether for business or pleasure. The
boys play with boys and the girls with
girls. They marry at twenty-four. They
own at present twenty-five thousand
acres of land, a considerable part of
which is under cultivation. They have,
in round numbers, three thousand sheep,
fifteen hundred head of cattle, two hundred
horses and twenty-five hundred
hogs. Besides farming, they carry on
two woollen-mills, four saw-mills, two
grist-mills and a tannery. They are almost
entirely self-supporting in the arts,
working up their own products and living
off the result. In medicine they are
homœopathists.

The “Rappists” or Harmony Society
at Economy, Pennsylvania, is composed
of about one hundred members, being
all that remain of a colony of six hundred
who came from Germany in 1803.
They were called Separatists or “Come-outers”
in their own country, and much
persecuted on account of their nonconformity
with the established Church.
They landed in Baltimore, and some of
them who never found their way into
the community, or who subsequently
withdrew, settled in Maryland and Pennsylvania,
where they are still known as
a religious sect. Those who remained
together purchased five thousand acres
of land north of Pittsburg, in the valley
of the Conoquenessing. In 1814 they
moved to Posey county, Indiana, in the
Wabash Valley, where they purchased
thirty thousand acres of land, and in
1824 they moved back again to their
present locality in Pennsylvania. In 1831
a dissension arose among them, and a division
was effected by one Bernard Mueller—or
“Count Maximilian” as he called
himself—who went off with one-third of
the members and a large share of the
property, and founded a new community
at Phillips, ten miles off, on eight hundred
acres of land, which, however, soon
disbanded on account of internal quarrels.

The peculiarity of this community is
that there is no intercourse between the
sexes of any kind. In 1807 they gave up
marriage. The husbands parted from
their wives, and have henceforth lived
with them only as sisters. They claim
to have authority for this in the words
of the apostle: “This I say, brethren, the
time is short; it remaineth that both they
that have wives be as though they had
none,” etc. They teach that Adam in
his perfect state was bi-sexual and had
no need of a female, being in this respect
like God; that subsequently, when he
fell, the female part (rib, etc.) was separated
from him and made into another
person, and that when they become perfect
through their religion the bi-sexual
nature of the soul is restored. Christ,
they claim, was also of this dual nature,
and therefore never married. They believe
that the world will soon come to an
Page 505end, and that it is their duty to help it
along by having no children, and so
putting an end to the race as well as the planet.

Their property is all held in common
and managed by a council of seven, from
whom the trustees are chosen. From
four to eight live in each house, men
and women together, who regard each
other as of the same sex, and are never
watched. Each household cooks for itself,
although there is a general bakery,
from which bread is taken around to the
houses as they have need. The members
are fond of music and flowers, but
they discard dancing. Though Germans,
they have ceased to use tobacco; which
loss, it is said, the men feel more heavily
than that of the wives. They make considerable
wine and beer, which they drink
in moderation. They are said to be worth
from two millions to three millions of dollars,
and speculate in mines, oil-wells,
saw-mills, etc., doing very little hard
work, and hiring laborers from without
to take their places in all drudgery.
They are engaged principally in farming
and the common trades, and supply
nearly everything for themselves. They
are nearly all aged, none of them being
under forty except some adopted children.
All are Germans and use the
German language.

The Shakers are the oldest society of
communists in the United States. The
parent society at Mount Lebanon, New
York, was established in 1792, being the
outgrowth of a religious revival in which
there were violent hysterical manifestations
or “shakes,” from which they took
their name. In this revival one Ann Lee,
known among them as “Mother Ann,”
was prominent. This woman, of English
birth, emigrated to Niskayuna, New
York, about seven miles north-west of
Albany, where she pretended to speak
from inspiration and work miracles, so
that the people soon came to regard her
as being another revelation of Christ and
as having his authority. Being persecuted
by the outside world, her followers,
after her death, formed a community in
which to live and enjoy their religion
alone and: undisturbed. Their principles
may be summed up as special
revelation, spiritualism, celibacy, oral
confession, community, non-resistance,
peace, the gift of healing, miracles, physical
health and separation from the world.
Like the Rappists, they neither marry
nor have any substitute for marriage, receiving
all their children by adoption.
They live in large families or communes,
consisting of eighty or ninety members,
in one big house, men and women together.
Each brother is assigned to a
sister, who mends his clothes, looks after
his washing, tells him when he needs a
new garment, reproves him when not
orderly, and has a spiritual oversight
over him generally. Though living in
the same house, the sexes eat, labor and
work apart. They keep apart and in
separate ranks in their worship. They
do not shake hands with the opposite
sex, and there is rarely any scandal or
gossip among them, so far as the outside
world can learn. There are two orders,
known as the Novitiate and the Church
order, the latter having intercourse only
with their own members in a sort of
monkish seclusion, while the others treat
with the outside world. The head of a
Shaker society is a “ministry,” consisting
of from three to four persons, male
and female. The society is divided into
families, as stated above, each family
having two elders, one male and one
female. In their worship they are drawn
up in ranks and go through various gyrations,
consisting of processions and
dances, during which they continually
hold out their hands as if to receive
something. The Shakers are industrious,
hard-working, economical and cleanly.
They dress uniformly. Their houses are
all alike. They say “yea” and “nay,”
although not “thee” and “thou,” and
call persons by their first names. They
confine themselves chiefly to the useful,
and use no ornaments. There are at
present eighteen societies of Shakers in
the United States, scattered throughout
seven States. They number in all two
thousand four hundred and fifteen persons,
and own one hundred thousand
acres of land. Their industries are similar
to those of the Rappists and True
Page 506Inspirationists, and are somewhat famed
for the excellence of their products. The
Shakers are nearly all Americans, like
the Oneidans, next mentioned, and unlike
all other communistic societies in
the United States.

The Perfectionists of Oneida and Wallingford
are perhaps the most singular
of all communists. They were founded
by John Humphrey Noyes, who organized
a community at Putney, Vermont,
in 1846. In 1848 this was consolidated
with others at Oneida in Madison county,
New York. In 1849 a branch community
was started at Brooklyn, New
York, and in 1850 one at Wallingford,
Connecticut, all of which have since
broken up or been merged in the two
communities of Oneida and Wallingford.
Their principles are perfectionism,
communism and free love. By
“perfection” they mean freedom from
sin, which they all claim to have, or to
seek as practically attainable. They
claim, in explaining their sense of this
term, that as a man who does not drink
is free from intemperance, and one who
does not swear is free from profanity, so
one who does not sin at all is free from
sin, or morally perfect. Their communism
is like that of the Icarians, so far as
property is concerned, this being owned
equally by all for the benefit of all as
they severally have need; which state
they claim is the state of man after the
resurrection. But they have a community
not only of goods, but also of wives;
or, rather, they have no wives at all, but
all women belong to all men, and all
men to all women; which they assert to
be the state of Nature, and therefore the
most perfect state. They call it complex
marriage instead of simple, and it is both
polygamy and polyandry at the same
time. They are enemies of all exclusiveness
or selfishness, and hold that
there should be no exclusiveness in
money or in women or children. Their
idea is to be in the most literal sense no
respecters of persons. All women and
children are the same to all men, and
vice versâ. A man never knows his
own children, and the mothers, instead
of raising their children themselves, give
them over to a common nursery, somewhat
after the suggestion of Plato in his
Republic. If any two persons are suspected
of forming special attachments,
and so of violating the principle of equal
and universal love, or of using their sexual
freedom too liberally, they are put
under discipline. They are very religious,
their religion, however, consisting
only in keeping free from sin. They
have no sermons, ceremonies, sacraments
or religious manifestations whatever.
There are no public prayers, and
no loud prayers at all. Their method
of discipline is called “criticism,” and
consists in bringing the offender into the
presence of a committee of men and
women, who each pass their criticisms
on him and allow him to confess or
criticise himself. The least sign of
worldliness or evidence of impropriety
is enough to subject one to this ordeal.
They are very careful about whom they
admit to their community, as there are
numerous rakes and idlers who make
application on the supposition that it is
a harem or Turkish paradise. None are
admitted who are not imbued with their
doctrine of perfection, and who do not
show evidences of it in their lives. In a
business point of view, they are comparatively
successful, the original members
having contributed over one hundred
thousand dollars’ worth of property,
which has not depreciated. They engage
in farming, wine-raising and various
industries, and are known in the
general markets for their products.

The Separatists at Zoar, Ohio, about
halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburg,
are a body of Germans who fled
from Würtemberg in 1817 to escape religious
persecution. They are mystics,
followers of Jacob Böhm, Gerhard, Terstegen,
Jung Stilling and others of that
class, and considerably above the average
of communists in intellect and culture.
They were aided to emigrate to this country
by some English Quakers, with whom
there is a resemblance in some of their
tenets. They purchased fifty-six hundred
acres of land in Ohio, but did not at first
intend to form a community, having
been driven to that resort subsequently
Page 507in order to the better realization of their
religious principles. They now own over
seven thousand acres of land in Ohio,
besides some in Iowa. They have a
woollen-factory, two flour-mills, a saw-mill,
a planing-mill, a machine-shop, a
tannery and a dye-house; also a hotel
and store for the accommodation of their
neighbors. They are industrious, simple
in their dress and food, and very economical.
They use neither tobacco nor pork,
and are homœopathists in medicine. In
religion they are orthodox, with the usual
latitude of mystics. They have no ceremonies,
say “thou” and “thee,” take off
their hats and bow to nobody except God,
refuse to fight or go to law, and settle
their disputes by arbitration. At first
they prohibited marriage and had their
women in common, like the Perfectionists.
In 1828, however, they commenced
to break their rules and take wives.
Now they observe the marriage state.
Their officers are elected by the whole
society, the women voting as well as the men.

The Bethel and Aurora communities—the
former in Shelby county, Missouri,
forty-eight miles from Hannibal, and the
latter in Oregon, twenty-nine miles south
of Portland, on the Oregon and California
Railroad—were founded in 1848 by
Dr. Kiel, a Prussian mystic, who practised
medicine a while in New York and
Pittsburg, and subsequently formed a religious
sect of which these communists
are members. He was subsequently
joined by some of “Count Maximilian’s”
people, who had left Rapp’s colony
at Economy, which this closely resembles
except as to celibacy. He
first founded the colony in Missouri,
where he took up two thousand five
hundred and sixty acres of land, and
established the usual trades needed by
farmers. In 1847 there were the inevitable
quarrel and division. In 1855 he set
out to establish a similar community on
the Pacific coast. The first settlement
was made at Shoalwater Bay, Washington
Territory, which was, however, subsequently
abandoned for the present one
at Aurora. There are now about four
hundred members at Aurora, who own
eighteen thousand acres of land, and
have the usual shops and occupations of
communists mentioned above, carrying
on a considerable trade with their neighbors.
The members of both communities
are all either Germans or Pennsylvania
Dutch, and thrive by the industry
and economy peculiar to those people.
Their government is parental, intended
to be like God’s. Kiel is the temporal
and spiritual head. Their religion consists
in practical benevolence, the forms
of worship being Lutheran. They are
thought to be exceedingly wealthy, but
if their property were divided among
them there would be less than three
thousand dollars to each family, which,
though more than the property of most
other communities would average, is but
small savings for twenty years. They
preserve the usual family relations.

The Bishop Hill Community, in Henry
county, Illinois, was formed by a party
of Swedes who came to this country in
1846 under Eric Janson, who had been
their religious leader in the Old World,
where they were greatly persecuted on
account of their peculiar religious views.
They suffered great hardships in effecting
a first settlement, some of them going
off, in the interest of the community,
to dig gold in California, and others taking
to stock-raising and speculating. In
this they were quite successful, so that
jobs and speculations became the peculiar
work of this community. They took
various public and private contracts;
among others, one to grade a large portion
of the Chicago, Burlington and
Quincy Railroad and to build some of its
bridges. In 1859 they owned ten thousand
acres of good land, and had the
finest cattle in the State. In 1859, however,
the young people became discontented
and wished to dissolve the community.
They divided the property in
1860, when one faction continued the
community with its share. In 1861 this
party also broke up, separating into three
divisions. In 1862 these again divided
the property after numerous lawsuits.
A small fraction, I believe, still continues
a community on the ruins. In this community
the families lived separately, but
Page 508ate all together. They had no president
or single head, the business being transacted
by a board of trustees. Their religion
was their principal concern.

Such are the strictly communistic societies
in the United States. It will be
seen that they are each of such very
peculiar views that they are specially fitted
by their very oddity for a life in common,
and specially disqualified from the
same cause to extend or embrace others;
for while their community of oddity
makes them, by a necessarily strong
sympathy, fit associates to be together,
it separates them by an impassable gulf
from the appreciation and sympathy of
the rest of mankind, who are interested
only in the ordinary common-sense concerns
of life.

Besides these, there are several other
colonies which, though not communistic,
have grown out of an attempt to solve
some of the questions raised by socialism.
They are for the most part co-operative.
The following are the principal:
The Anaheim colony in California, thirty-six
miles from Los Angelos, which was
formed by a large number of Germans
in 1857, who banded together and purchased
a large tract of land, on which
they successfully cultivate the vine in
large quantities. The property is held
and worked all together, but the interests
are separate, and will be divided in
due time. Vineland, New Jersey, on the
railroad between Philadelphia and Cape
May, is another. It was purchased and
laid out by Charles K. Landis in 1861 as
a private speculation, and to draw the
overcrowded population of Philadelphia
into the country, where the people could
all have comfortable homes and support
themselves by their own labor. Some
fifty thousand acres of land were purchased,
and sold at a low rate and on long
time to actual settlers and improvers. As
a result, some twelve thousand people
have been drawn thither, who cultivate
all this tract and work numerous industries
besides. No liquors are allowed to
be sold in the place, so that the population
is exceptionally moral as well as industrious,
and offers a model example of
low rates and good government. A successful
colony exists also at Prairie Home
in Franklin county, Kansas, which was
founded by a Frenchman, Monsieur E.V.
Boissière. It is designed to be an
association and co-operation based on
attractive industry; a large number of
persons contributing their capital and
labor under stringent laws, the proceeds
to be divided among them whenever a
majority shall so desire. I might mention
other associations of this kind, which
are, in fact, however, only a variety of
partnership or corporation.

It strikes me, however, that this is the
only practical remedy for the evils which
are aimed at by the communists, as far
as they are remedial by social means.
If a number of working people, with the
capital which their small savings will
amount to (which is always large enough
for any ordinary business if there be any
considerable number of them), can be induced
to organize themselves under competent
leaders, and work for a few years
together as faithfully as they ordinarily do
for employers, they might realize considerable
results, and get the advantage of
their own work instead of enriching capitalists.
But the difficulty is, that this
class have not, as a rule, learned either
to manage great enterprises or to submit
to those who are wisest among them,
but break up in disorder and divisions
when their individual preferences are
crossed. The first lesson that a man
must learn who proposes to do anything
in common with others (and the more so
if there be many of them) is to submit
and forbear. With a little schooling our
people ought, to a greater extent than at
present, to be able to co-operate in large
numbers in firms and corporations where
the members and stockholders shall
themselves do all the work and receive
all the profits, and so avoid the two extremes
of making profits for capitalists
and paying their earnings to officers and
directors.

Austin Bierbower.

Page 509

Our Monthly Gossip.

Notes From Moscow.

June 1 (May 20, Russian style), 1877.

This diversity in the matter of dates
is unpleasantly perplexing at times.
With every sensation of interest and pleasure
I set myself about the task of describing,
I must at once begin to reckon.
Twelve days’ difference! Yes, I
have already grasped that fact, but then
in which direction must the deduction
begin?—backward or forward? Such
is the question that instantly arises, and
if we are at the fag end of one month and
the beginning of another, the amount of
reckoning involved seems somewhat inadequate
to the occasion. The Russian
clergy, it is said—those, at any rate, of
the lowest class, designated as “white
priests,” many of them peasants by birth
and marvellously illiterate—have ever
been averse to any change being made
in the calendar, in order that their seasons
of fasting and feasting may not be
disturbed.

Apropos of priests and priesthood.
Whilst quietly at work yesterday morning
my attention was suddenly called
off, first by a hurried exclamation, and
then the inharmonious—ah, how utterly
discordant!—ding-donging of church-bells.
“Listen!” fell upon my ear: “one
of the secular priests belonging to St.
Gregory’s church died two days ago, and
is to be buried this morning. They are
still saying masses over his body, the
church is packed, and it is a sight such
as you may possibly not have an opportunity
of again witnessing.” In half an
hour we were within the church-walls.
The place was already thronged, and the
air close almost to suffocation. Never
can one forget that peculiar heat, the sort
of indescribable vapor, that arose, and
the perspiration that streamed down the
faces of all present, each of whom, from
the oldest to the youngest, carried a lighted
candle. After many vigorous efforts,
and occasional collisions with the flaring
tapers, the wax or tallow dropping at intervals
upon our cloaks, we found ourselves
at last in the centre of the edifice,
immediately behind a dozen or more officiating
priests clad in magnificent robes,
before whom lay their late confrère reposing
in his coffin, and dressed, according to
custom, in his ecclesiastical robes. Tall
lighted candles draped with crape surrounded
him, and the solemn chant had
been going on around him ever since life
had become extinct. The dead in Russia
are never left alone or in the dark. Relays
of singing priests take the places of
those who are weary, and friends keep
watch in an adjoining room. The Russian
temperament inclines to the strongest
manifestation of the inmost feelings,
and the method here of mourning for the
dead is exceptionally demonstrative. The
corpse of the old priest lay surrounded by
what was of bright colors or purest white,
the coffin being of the last-mentioned hue.
Black was utterly proscribed. The face
and hands were half buried in a lacy
texture, whilst on the brow was placed a
label, “fillet-fashion,” on which was written
“The Thrice Holy,” or Trisagion—”O
Holy God! O Holy Mighty! O Holy
Immortal! have mercy upon us!”

Chant after chant ascended for the
repose of his soul. The deacon’s deep
bass voice rose ever and anon in leading
fashion, the other voices following suit.
There was of course no instrumental
music. This Russian singing is curiously
unique—of a character wholly different
from any heard elsewhere. It is
weird in the extreme, and, if the expression
be permissible, gypsy-like. The
deacons’ voices are of wonderful capability,
the popular belief being that they
are specially chosen on account of this
peculiar power. At last there came a
pause. Not only the priests’ and deacons’
voices, but those of the chanting
men and boys—alike unsurpliced and
uncassocked, lacking, therefore, much
of the attraction offered by a service in
the Western Catholic Church—had all
Page 510at once ceased to be heard. All were
now pressing forward to kiss the dead
priest—his fellow-priests first, and then,
duly in order, all his relations and friends.
“The last kiss” it is termed—a practice,
it would seem, derived from the heathen
custom, of which we find such frequent
mention. None, if possible, omit the
performance of this duty, all seeking to
obtain the blessing or benefit, supposed
to be thereby conferred. Some, however,
are obliged to content themselves
with merely kissing the corners of the
coffin.

Many of the numerous stichera, as
they are termed—poetically-worded
prose effusions—made use of in the
course of the service are curiously
quaint. I quote two or three, of which
I have since procured a translation:
“Come, my brethren, let us give our
last kiss, our last farewell, to our deceased
brother. He hath now forsaken
his kindred and approacheth the grave,
no longer mindful of vanity or the cares
of the world. Where are now his kindred
and friends? Behold, we are now
separated! Approach! embrace him
who lately was one of yourselves.”—”Where
now is the graceful form?
Where is youth? Where is the brightness
of the eye? where the beauty of the
complexion? Closed are the eyes, the
feet bound, the hands at rest: extinct is
the sense of hearing, and the tongue locked
up in silence.”

The words succeeding these are supposed
to emanate from the lips of the
dead, lying mute before the eyes of all
present: “Brethren, friends, kinsmen and
acquaintance, view me here lying speechless,
breathless, and lament. But yesterday
we conversed together. Come near,
all who are bound to me by affection, and
with a last embrace pronounce the last
farewell. No longer shall I sojourn
among you, no longer bear part in your
discourse. Pray earnestly that I be received
into the Light of life.”

The absolution having been pronounced
by the priest, a paper is placed
in the dead man’s hand—”The Prayer,
Hope and Confession of a faithful Christian
soul.” This is accompanied by another
prayer containing the written words
of absolution. This custom has given
rise to the belief in the minds of many
foreigners that such missives are presented
in the light of passports to a better
world; but the idea seems to be as
erroneous as it is absurd. Moreover, I
believe that, strictly speaking, the custom
is one of national origin, and that
the Church has had nothing to do with
its adoption.

All the lighted tapers having been
taken away by one of the attendants,
the coffin with its gilded ornaments was
removed slowly from its resting-place,
and placed upon an enormous open bier
or hearse, extensively mounted and heavily
ornamented with white watered silk,
purple and gilt draperies, a gilt crown surmounting
all. The base of the ponderous
vehicle was alone permitted to boast
a fringe of deep black cloth—as if, however,
for the sole purpose of hiding the
wheels. The six horses, three abreast,
were also enveloped in black cloth drapery
touching the ground on either side.
Right and left of the coffin itself, and
mounted therefore considerably aloft,
stood two yellow stoicharioned (or robed)
deacons, wearing the epimanikia and
orarion—the former being a portion of
the priestly dress used for covering the
arms, and signifying the thongs with
which the hands of Christ were bound;
the latter a stole worn over the left
shoulder. The head of each deacon
was adorned with long waving hair, and
each carried a censer in his hand. They
faced each other, keeping watch together
over the dead. A procession of priests,
duly robed, began to move, preceded
by censer-bearers and singing men and
boys.

The point whence the procession started—Mala
Greuzin, situated at the extreme
east end of Moscow—lay several
miles away from the cemetery for which
they were all en route; and this veritably
ancient Asiatic city had to be traversed
at an angle in this solemn fashion,
seventy or eighty carriages following.
From the beginning to the end of the
prescribed route Muscovites lined the
road on either side, and it is fair to add
Page 511that I never beheld more respect shown
even to royalty itself. All was quietness,
the general expression of sympathy and
respect being permitted to find vent only
in excessive gesticulation and genuflection.
Not a head remained covered, not
a single person by whom the procession
passed permitted it to do so without crossing
himself several times from forehead
to chest and from shoulder to shoulder.

At the first church which the procession
reached, the bells of which had begun
to toll—clash rather—long before it
came in sight, the entire party halted. A
bell was rung by one of those in advance,
and then all waited. The priests and their
various acolytes clustered reverently by
the hearse, the followers and spectators
standing at a respectful distance, but
nevertheless taking part in the service.
After first incensing the hearse, themselves
and all around, further prayers
were said and chanted: then a signal
was given and all moved on again, only,
however, to again pause on the route,
for at every church we passed—and we
must have encountered at least thirty or
forty, if not more, seeing that such sacred
edifices rise upon one’s view in Moscow
at wellnigh every three or four minutes’
space—the ceremony was repeated. No
sooner had one set of bells ceased to
sound in our ears than another took its
place, and again all halted, and then
again all marched onward. Every window
as the cortége passed along was
thrown open, and figures bent forward
ever and anon, enacting their wonted
part in the pageant. And the pageant,
be it remembered, was, after all, only
one of frequent occurrence.

Only the week before I had had the privilege
of watching this identical old priest
baptize the child of one of the most ancient
nobles here, the ceremony being
performed not in a church, but at the
nobleman’s house. One godfather and
one godmother are all that are required,
the latter of whom holds the infant. On
the godmother also a large share of duty
devolves, there being certain gifts which
she is bound by national custom to offer
for acceptance on the occasion. Often,
therefore, the duty of selecting a female
sponsor becomes a somewhat invidious
one. A handsome dress to the mother,
no matter in what rank of life; a delicate
lace cap to the main object of the occasion;
a lace chemise for the same highly-honored
small individual; and an elaborate
silk pocket handkerchief to the
officiating priest,—these, when of the
best quality, and they are invariably
so, mount up somewhat as regards
price, seeing that everything is marvellously
dear here in the matter of dress.
The godfather, standing immediately in
front of the large font brought specially
for the purpose from the adjacent church,
and at the right hand of his fellow-sponsor,
simply presents a small golden cross,
to be worn, it is supposed, ever afterward.
Immediately behind the font,
and facing the entire audience—for a
large circle of friends had been invited
to witness the ceremony—was placed the
“holy picture” of the household, without
which in Russia no homestead, whether
belonging to rich or poor, is considered
complete, and before which a lighted oil
lamp ever stands burning—a “picture of
God,” as the Russian children are taught
from their earliest years to call it. Before
this the priests bowed on entering.

The mode of baptism was immersion,
after several exorcisms had been read
and the priest had thrice blown in the
infant’s face, signing him, also thrice,
on the forehead and breast. Three tall
lighted candles were affixed to the font,
and others were held by the god-parents,
except when they marched round the
font in procession three times during
“the chrism,” when the candles were laid
down. The chrism consists in anointing
the infant’s forehead, breast, shoulders
and middle of the back with holy
oil, after which comes the service, when
the forehead, eyes, nostrils, mouth, ears,
breast, hands and feet are again anointed,
but this time with the holy unction prepared
once a year, on Monday in Holy
Week, within the walls of the Kremlin,
and consecrated by the metropolitan in
the cathedral of the Annunciation on Holy
Thursday. Then comes the concluding
act, when the priest cuts off a small portion
of the child’s hair in four different places
Page 512on the crown of the head, encloses it in a
morsel of wax and throws it into the font,
as a sort of first-fruits of that which has
been consecrated.

S.E.

A Day At The Paris Conservatoire.

It was ten o’clock in the morning when
we drove up to the door of the world-famous
institution, but, early as it was,
an animated throng already filled the
wide marble-paved entrance-hall—former
pupils in elegant attire; girl aspirants
for future honors, accompanied by
the inevitable mamma with the invariable
little hand-bag; young men and old;
celebrated dramatists and well-known
actors, visitors, critics, etc.—all passing
to and fro or engaged in conversation
while awaiting the hour for taking their
seats. Passing through these, we ascend
a narrow staircase that gives one good
hopes of a martyr’s death should the
theatre chance to catch fire, and we instal
ourselves in a narrow and by no
means comfortable box in the dress-circle.
The theatre of the Conservatoire,
though not very large, is very elegantly
and artistically decorated in the Pompeian
style, the stage being set with a
single “box scene,” as it is technically
called, which is never changed, as plays
are never acted there. Here take place
the far-famed concerts du Conservatoire,
for which tickets are as hard to obtain
as are invitations to the entertainments
of a duchess, all the seats being owned
by private individuals. But what we are
now here to witness is the competition in
dramatic declamation, tragic and comic.
The jury occupy a box in the centre
of the dress-circle and opposite to the
stage. This terrifying tribunal is enough
to try the nerves of the stoutest aspirant
for dramatic honors, comprising as it
does among its members such powers
in the land as Legouvé, Camilla-Doucet,
Alexandre Dumas, the directors of
the Comédie Française and the Odéon,
and the great actors Got and Delaunay.
An elderly gentleman comes forward
on the stage and reads from a printed
paper the name of each competitor and
those of his or her assistants, and that
of the play from which the scene that
is to be represented is chosen. Each
pupil selects a scene, and the persons
who in French technical parlance are
to “give the reply” (i.e. to take the
other characters in the scene) are chosen
from among the ranks of the pupil’s
fellow-competitors. Lots are drawn to
decide the place that each one is to occupy
on the programme, the first place
and the last being considered the least
desirable. Printed bills are distributed
among the audience giving a list of
the competitors, with the names of the
plays from which they have chosen
scenes, and (horrible innovation for the
lady pupils!) the age of each one as
well.

The competition is opened by M. Levanz,
a young man of thirty, who took a
second prize last year, and who has chosen
the closet-scene from Hamlet (the
translation of the elder Dumas) as his
cheval de bataille. He has a marked
Germanic countenance, decidedly the
reverse of handsome, yet mobile and
expressive: his voice is good, his figure
tall and manly. He has evidently seen
Rossi in Hamlet, and models his conception
of the character on that grand
impersonation. Next comes M. Bregaint
in a scene from Andromaque: he is so
bad, so very bad, that the audience are
moved to sudden outbursts of hilarity by
his grand tragic points. He is succeeded
by a boy of sixteen, tall and graceful,
with a fine tragic face of the heroic Kemble
mould, and great blue-gray eyes that
dilate or contract beneath the impulses
of the moment—a born actor from head
to foot. He fairly thrills the audience in
the great scene of the duke de Nemours
from Louis XI. This youth, M. Guitry,
is undoubtedly, if his life be spared, the
coming tragedian of the French stage.
Then we have the first one of the lady
competitors, Mademoiselle Edet, a tall,
awkward girl of eighteen, with a flat face
and Chinese-like features, dressed up in
a gown of cream-yellow foulard trimmed
with wide fringe and made with a loose
jacket, whereon the fringes wave wildly
in the air as she flings her arms around
in the tragic love-making of Phèdre.
Two or three others of moderate merit
Page 513succeed, and then comes Mademoiselle
Jullien, who gives the great scene of
Roxane in Bajazet with so much intelligence
of intonation and grace of gesture
that the audience are moved to sudden
applause. She is rather too short
and of too delicate a physique for tragedy,
but her face is expressive, her eyes
fine, and there are intellect and talent in
every tone and movement. She is nearly
twenty-nine years of age, so has not
much time to waste if she is to make
her mark in her profession. Last on the
list of tragic aspirants comes a gentleman
of thirty-one, M. Aubert, who goes
through a scene from Hamlet in a very
tolerable manner. He was in the army,
was doing well and was rising in grade
when, seized by the theatrical mania, he
relinquished his profession and turned
his attention to the stage. Thus far, he
has proved, practically speaking, a failure:
he has won no prizes, and no manager
will engage him. This is his last
chance, as his age will prevent him, by
the rules of the Conservatoire, from taking
part in any future competition.

The tragedy concours ended, a recess
of an hour is proclaimed, and there is a
rush to the refreshment-tables and a
great consumption of sandwiches and
cakes, of coffee and water (known as
“mazagran”) and of vin ordinaire. Under
that vestibule pass and repass the
literary luminaries of modern France.
Here is Henri de Bornier, the author
of La Fille de Roland, a quiet, earnest-looking
gentleman, with clear luminous
eyes and the smallest hands imaginable.
Here comes Francisque Sarcey, the
greatest dramatic critic of France and
one of the most noted of her Republican
journalists, broad-shouldered, black-eyed
and stalwart-looking. Yonder
stand a group of Academicians—Legouvé,
Doucet, Dumas—in earnest conversation
with Édouard Thierry, the
librarian of the Arsénal. The handsome,
delicate, aristocratic-looking gentleman
who joins the group is M. Perrin,
the director of the Comédie Française,
the most accomplished and intelligent
theatrical manager in France.
There is an elderly, reserved-looking
gentleman beside him who looks like
a solemn savant out on a holiday. It
takes more than one glance for us to
recognize in him the most accomplished
light comedian of our day, that embodiment
of grace, vivacity, sparkling wit
and unfading youth, who is known to
the boards of the Comédie Française by
the name of Delaunay. There are other
minor luminaries, too numerous to mention.

We go up stairs and resume our seats,
and the competition of comedy is begun.
Scene succeeds to scene and competitor
to competitor: the day wears on, and
flitting clouds from time to time obscure
the dome, bringing out the glare of the
footlights that have been burning all day
in a singularly effective manner. Of the
nineteen competitors, the deepest impression
is made by M. Barral, who
plays a scene from L’Avare magnificently;
by Mademoiselle Carrière, who
reveals herself as a sparkling and intelligent
soubrette; and by Mademoiselle
Sisos, a genuine comédienne, only sixteen
years of age and as pretty as a
peach. It is six o’clock when the last
competitor has said his say, and then
the jury retire to deliberate respecting
the awards. What a flutter there must
be among the young things whose future
destiny is now swaying in the balance,
for success means fortune, and failure a
disheartening postponement, and to the
elder ones downright and disastrous ruin
of all their hopes! Half an hour passes,
and then, after what seems a weary period
of suspense, the box-door is thrown
open and the jury resume their seats.
Ambroise Thomas, the president of the
Conservatoire, strikes his bell and a dead
silence ensues. In a full sonorous voice
he begins: “Concours of tragedy, men’s
class. No prizes.—Usher, summon M.
Guitry.” The gifted boy comes forward
to the footlights. “M. Guitry, the jury
have awarded to you a premier accessit.”
He bows and retires amid the hearty
applause of the audience. “Women’s
class.—Usher, call Mademoiselle Jullien.”
She comes out pale and agitated,
the slight form quivering like a wind-swept
flower in her robes of creamy cashmere.
Page 514Is it the Odéon that awaits her—the
second prize? for in her modesty she
had only hoped for a premier accessit.
“Mademoiselle Jullien, the jury have
awarded to you the first prize.” The
first prize! Those words mean to her
an assured career, a brilliant future, the
doors of the Comédie Française flung
wide open to receive her. She falters,
trembles, bows profoundly, and goes off
in a very passion of hysterical weeping.
Then come the comedy awards. M.
Barral gets a first prize, as is his just
due, as does also Mademoiselle Carrière.
“Usher, call Mademoiselle Sisos.” She
comes forward, her great brown eyes dilated
with excitement, her cheeks burning
like two red roses, a mass of faded
white roses clinging amid the rumpled
gold of her hair—a very bewitching
picture of childish grace and beauty.
“Mademoiselle Sisos, the jury have
awarded to you a second prize.” She
laughs and blushes, and brings her
hands together with a childlike gesture
of delight. “Oh, merci!” she cries, and
drops a courtesy, and then away she goes—happy
little creature, thus consecrated
artiste at sixteen! The other awards are
given, the jury leave their box, and the
audience disperse. The friends of the
competitors crowd around the stage-door,
and each of the successful ones is seized
by the hand and congratulated and embraced,
the youthful Guitry being especially
surrounded. Two or three more
years of study will land this gifted boy
on the boards of the Comédie Française.
The queen of the day, Mademoiselle
Jullien, has stolen away overcome by
excess of emotion, which, though joyful,
is still exhausting to her delicate frame.
Finally, everybody retires, the doors are
closed, and the long, exciting séance has
come to an end at last.

L.H.H.

Brigham Young And Mormonism.

Brigham Young’s career is a valuable
commentary on that of Mohammed,
and will hereafter be a standard citation
with explorers of the natural history of
religions. It might be more proper to
go back of Young, and adhere to Joe
Smith as the figure-head of the Mormon
dispensation. How Smith would have
turned out had he lived, and whether he
would have made as much of Utah as
the man upon whose shoulders his mantle
fell, is not easy to say; but his was a
less robust character, the enthusiast in
him too far obscuring the organizer and
commander. The Church is the thing
to look at, rather than its leaders, when
we consider duration—the soil rather
than the plough. Why has Mohammed’s
creation lasted longer and spread wider
than that of Charlemagne or Tamerlane?
And is Smith’s to have the like fortune,
or to die out like those of Münster and
Joanna Southcote?

The Mormon “revelation” has been
before the world more than forty years.
In twenty-two years from his first vision
Mohammed had reduced all Arabia
under his religious and political sway.
Young’s dominions have not expanded
territorially. His faith cannot be said to
exist outside of Utah. His converts are
compelled to go thither for the exercise
of their religion. Salt Lake City is not a
Mecca, the goal of a passing pilgrimage,
but the one and only possible abiding-place
of those who profess its creed. A
system thus localized is in danger of being
stifled. Especially is this the case when its
seat is exposed to invasion by a swelling
current of non-sympathizers or open enemies.
These may be repelled or prevented
from improving their foothold by
the firmness, unity and numerical predominance
of the invaded. So it has
happened at Salt Lake. The Mormons
hold all the serviceable soil, and it is difficult
for the “Gentiles” to effect a lodgment.
Until they do, they must occupy,
even in their own eyes, somewhat the
position of adventurers. They cannot
hope to secure the respect of the industrious
sectaries who own and till the soil,
and who are taught to count them aliens
and persecutors. Irrigation is here the
only means of successful agriculture. It
involves great outlay of capital and labor,
and creates great fixedness of tenure.
Newcomers are thus additionally
discouraged.

Thus entrenched in a well-provisioned
citadel, welcoming all the new levies it
Page 515can win, and amply able to provide for
them, Mormonism bids fair to make a
prolonged stand. To emerge from a defensive
position and strike for unlimited
sway is what it cannot, to judge by all
precedents, expect. It will be compelled,
in fact, to lighten itself of some dead
weights in order to maintain its actual
situation. Polygamy must go, and the
absolute power of the priesthood be modified.
With some such adaptations it may
continue a reality for generations to come.
And time is a great sanctifier. A creed
that lives for one or two centuries is by
so much the more likely to live longer.
Youth is the critical period with religions,
as with animals and plants and nations.
Through that period Mormonism is passing
with flattering success. That such a
lusty juvenile will, by favor of the mellowing
effect imposed on all creeds by
early years of toil, trouble and experience,
reach a middle age of presentable
decency, is not a more unlikely supposition
than the worthy Vermont clergyman
would have pronounced, half a
century ago, the idea that his jeu d’esprit
would become the Bible of sixty thousand
industrious, well-ordered English-speaking
people in the heart of the American
continent.

E.C.B.

The Education Of Women In India.

According to a report sent to our
Commissioner of Education at Washington
four years ago, there were then
in India one thousand girls’ schools supported
by the government and some five
hundred missionary schools devoted to
female education. Besides these, there
has sprung up during the last few years
a new field for the women-educators in
that country. This is the teaching of women
in their homes. It is called zenana-work.
The zenana is the women’s apartment
in the house—the harem of the
Turks. Women have been sent from
England and from America for this special
object, and their labors are meeting
with encouraging success. They are
constantly gaining admission to new families,
which from caste or other causes
are opposed to sending their young women
to the regular schools. Some of the
zenana-teachers are regularly-educated
physicians.

For the government schools each province
has a director of public instruction,
with inspectors of divisions and subdivisions.
These directors are “gentlemen of
high qualification and well paid.” It is
a notable fact that in one of the provinces
the office of director is filled by a
Christian woman—a foreigner no doubt,
though the report does not say.

At Dehra, at the foot of the Himalaya
Mountains, there is a high school for girls
organized on the plan of the Mount Holyoke
Seminary. Here English is spoken,
and the pupils are carried through
a course of training that may justly be
termed high. One of the pupils of this
school has lately been appointed by the
government to go to England and qualify
herself as a physician, under a contract
to return and serve the government
by taking charge of a hospital and college
for training young women as midwives
and nurses.

Of course, in a country containing a
population of over one hundred and fifty-one
millions, one thousand public schools
for girls, supplemented as these are by
missionary schools of many denominations,
are inadequate to meet the needs
of the people. There is an increasing
demand in all the provinces for schools
and colleges; and the native young men
especially are eagerly seeking the educational
advantages of the colleges and
universities, because they know that these
are a sure road to preferment. “The government
takes care to give employment
to those who wish it.”

The difficulties in the way of female
education in India are well expressed in
a late letter from one of the most distinguished
native reformers, Baboo Keshub
Chunder Sen of Calcutta. “No words
of mine,” he says, “would convey to you
an adequate idea of the great obstacles
which the social and religious condition
of the Hindoo community presents in the
way of female education and advancement.
In a country where superstition
and caste prejudices prevail to an alarming
extent, where widows are cruelly persecuted
and prevented from remarrying,
Page 516where high-caste Hindoos are allowed to
marry as many wives as they like without
undertaking the responsibility of protecting
them, and where little girls marry at
a most tender age and sacrifice all prospects
of healthy physical and mental
development, it will take centuries before
any solid and extensive reform is
achieved.”

Until recently, scarcely one woman in
ten thousand learned to read or acquired
any of the accomplishments common to
women of Christian countries. Occasionally,
women of vicious lives in cities, having
leisure, became quite learned, and this
made learning a shame for women of irreproachable
reputation. Moreover, Hindoo
husbands declared, and believed, that
if you taught a woman to read she would
be sure in time to have illicit relations
with some one. Ignorance was innocence,
the safeguard of both rank and
chastity.

The missionaries, who were the first
to attempt the amelioration of the people,
had to commence with the lowest
castes or classes, those having nothing
to lose; and even then the teachers had
to pay the girls a small copper coin daily
for attending school. Even the government
schools in some places pay the girls
for attending, but they are much more
popular than the missionary schools, because,
according to the Rev. Joseph Warren
in the report mentioned, the parents
are not afraid that their girls will become
Christians by attending them; and
he adds that the government teachers
and books are “all positively heathen or
quite destitute of all religion.” In some
parts of the country the government
schools secure the attendance of high-caste
girls by allowing them to be placed
behind a curtain, and thus screened from
the eyes of the male teacher or inspector,
as all the women of such classes are
screened from male visitors. Even the
physician sees only a hand protruded
from under a curtain, and by the touch
of this, with a few unsatisfactory answers
to his questions, he is supposed to be able
to know what the malady is, and how to
prescribe for it.

M.H.

Literature Of The Day.

Birds and Poets: with other Papers. By
John Burroughs. New York: Hurd &
Houghton.

A duodecimo that discourses on equal terms
of Emerson and the chickadee, and unites
Carlyle and the author’s cow with a cement
or filling-in indescribable in variety and in
the comminution of materials, need not be
held to strict account in the matter of neatness
or accuracy of title. The closing article,
headed “The Flight of the Eagle,” is the
most remarkable of the collection. Who
would suspect, under such a heading, an
elaborate eulogy of Walt Whitman? The
writer is obviously more at home among the
song-birds than among the Raptores, unless he
be the discoverer of some new species of eagle
characterized by traits very unlike those of
other members of the genus. It were to be
wished that he had left out the disquisition
on Whitman, for it is a jarring chord in his
little orchestra of lyric and ornithologic song.
He might have kept it by him till the longer
growing of his critical beard, and then, if still
a devotee at that singular shrine, have expanded
it into a volume or two explanatory
of the imagination, animus and metre of his
favorite bard.

The feathered warblers have always been
popular with the featherless, who are indebted
to them for no end of similes and suggestions.
What would poetry be without the skylark,
the nightingale, the dove and the eagle? It
is far yet from having exhausted them. It
cannot be said to have approached them in
the right way—on the most eloquent and
interesting side. It forgets that each species
of bird stands by itself, and has its special life
Page 517and history as truly as man. We counted
thirty-nine kinds in a grove the centre whereof
was our delightful abode for two-thirds of
the past summer, each endowed with its separate
outfit of language, ways and means of
living, tastes and political and social notions.
In each, moreover, individualism showed itself—if
not to our apprehension as articulately,
yet as indubitably, as among the race
which considers them to have been all created
for its amusement and advantage. It
does not take long, superficial as is our acquaintance
with their vernacular and the
workings of their little brains, to single out
particular specimens, and perceive that no
two “birds of a feather” are exactly alike.
A particular robin will rule the roost, and
assert successfully for his mate the choice of
resting-places above competing redbreasts. It
is a particular catbird, identified, it may be,
by a missing feather in his tail, that heads the
foray on our strawberries and cherries. We
recognize afar off either of the pair of “flickers,”
or yellow-shafted woodpeckers, which
have set up their penates in the heart of
the left-hand garden gatepost. The wren
whose modest tabernacle occupies the top of
the porch pilaster we have little difficulty in
“spotting” when we meet her in a joint stroll
along the lawn-fence. Her ways are not as
the ways of other wrens. She has a somewhat
different style of diving into the ivy and
exploring the syringa. A new generation of
doves has grown up since the lilacs were in
bloom, and nothing is easier than to distinguish
the old and young of the two or
three separate families till all leave the grass
and the gravel together and hie to the stubble-fields
beyond our ken. Of the one mocking bird
who made night hideous by his masterly
imitations of the screaking of a wheel-barrow
(regreased at an early period in self-defence)
and the wheezy bark of Beppo, the
superannuated St. Bernard, there could of
course be no doubt. There was none of
his kind to compare him with—not even a
mate, for “sexual selection” could not possibly
operate in face of so inharmonious a
love-song. His isolation had its parallel in
the one white guinea-fowl that haunted the
shrubbery like a ghost, much more silent and
placid than it would have been in society, and
its antitype in the hennery, where individuality
of course ran riot among the Brahmas,
Dominicas and Hamburgs—hens that would
and would not lay, that would and would
not set, that would and would not scratch up
seeds, and presented generally as great a variety
of vagaries as of feathers. So, when we
turned our back at last on lovely Boscobel,
itself shut out, as the common phrase goes,
“from the world” by serried ramparts of
maple, elm, acacia and catalpa, we knew
well that that enceinte of leafage enclosed
many little worlds of its own—winged microcosms,
epicycles of the grand cycle of dateless
life which man in his humility assumes
to be merely a subsidiary appendage of his
own orbit.

Birds should be studied seriously. The
naturalists will tell us more about them, and
interest us more, than the poets. Mr. Bryant
makes fun of the bobolink, and turns into
an aimless whistle the solemn oration on domestic
matters uttered by that small but energetic
American to his mate. The waterfowl
he treats more gravely and respectfully, but
he still makes it only a part of the landscape
and the theme, without ascribing any
intelligent purpose to its flight. The bird,
proceeding steadily and calmly to its business,
may well have confounded its versifier
with his fellow the fowler, and looked upon
him, too, as regretting only that it was out
of gunshot. Audubon or Wilson would have
noted more sensibly the floating figure, far
above “falling dew,” and the earth-bound
mortal who was evidently afraid of rheumatics
and calculating whether he could walk home
before dark. The bird, they would have been
perfectly aware, was neither “wandering”
nor “lost,” and no more in need of the special
interposition of a protecting Providence
than they or Mr. Bryant. They would infer
its motives, its point of departure and its destination,
the character of the friends it left behind
or sought— whether it was carrying out
a plan of the day or bound on an expedition
covering half the year. Its species would
have been plain to them at half a glance, and
its scientific name would have replaced the
vague designation of “waterfowl.” Its life,
habits and habitat winter and summer, would
have unrolled before them, and the dogs-eared
and rain-stained note-book sprung open
for a new entry. The poet, on the other hand,
got happily home without injury to his health
(for he is still hale half a century after the
fact), lit the gas, nibbed the quill pen of the
day, and sent down to us what must be confessed
a pleasanter memorandum than we
should have had from the forest-students.
Page 518These, brave and ardent fellows! have long
been asleep beneath the birds.

Mr. Burroughs is half poet, half naturalist
in his way of looking at Nature, and steers
clear of the poetic vagueness in regard to
species. A passing description of the brown
thrush as “skulking” among the bushes hits
that bird to the life. Some remarks on page
119 would seem to be applied by a slip of the
pen to the crow blackbird, instead of the cowbird,
which has always enjoyed the distinction
of being the only American species that disposes
of its offspring after the fashion of the
cuckoo and Jean Jacques Rousseau. The
chapter on Emerson contains some acute
remarks, but the warmest tribute to Emerson
is the book itself, in which that writer’s influence
is everywhere patent both in style and
thought. Mr. Burroughs has a happy facility
of expression, and could well afford by this
time to discard the Emersonian props and
stand on his own merits.

The Life of Edgar Allan Poe. By W.F.
Gill. Illustrated. New York: Dillingham.

Griswold’s memoir of Poe has been actually
beneficial to the reputation of its subject, contrary
to its obvious design. It has caused a
thorough sifting of all accessible records of
the poet’s short and dreary life, and elicited
many reminiscences from men of mark who
were in one way or another personally associated
with him. We know now, more certainly
than we might have done but for Griswold’s
effort to prove the opposite, that Poe
was not expelled in disgrace from the University
of Virginia, but bore himself well
there as a student and a man; that he deliberately
went to work and procured his being
dropped from the rolls of West Point by building
up with venial faults the requisite sum of
“demerits,” after having repeatedly and in
vain sought permission to withdraw from the
control of a system of discipline so unsuited
to his temperament; that, so far from being
intemperate, a single glass of wine sufficed
to bring on something like insanity; that,
instead of neglecting his family, he devoted
himself to them with a very rare exclusiveness,
and wore down his health by watching
at the bedside of his sick wife; that he was
as faithful to his business as to his domestic
obligations; and that, wholly disqualified for
battling with the world, he managed to keep
his necessarily troubled life at least unstained.
We know, moreover, that he did not appoint
Griswold his literary executor, and that the
document used by the latter as a means of deriving
from that assumed office an opportunity
of vindictive defamation was drawn up after
the poet’s death by Griswold himself. To
the controversy thus excited we are indebted
for the illumination of one or two poems relinquished
by the critics as hopelessly, if not
intentionally, obscure. Ulalume, for example,
held by some to be a mere experiment on the
jingling capacity of words and the taste of
readers for grappling with insoluble puzzles,
is pronounced by one familiar with his most
intimate feelings at the time of its composition
a sublimated but distinct reflex of them
and of the circumstances which gave them
color.

Could Poe’s pen have cleared itself from
the morbid influences which fixed it in a
peculiar path, we might have missed some
of his finest and most subtle poems and some
prose efforts which we could better spare.
But his wonderful powers of analysis would
have been serviceable upon a broader and
more practical field. He had an insight into
the laws of language and of rhythm equalled
by no one else in our day. What is most mysterious
in the forms and relations of matter
had a special charm for him. None could
trace it more acutely; and his powers, matured
by more and healthier years and applied
in their favorite direction, were quite equal to
results like those attained by his predecessor
Goethe, the savant of poets. He died a few
years older than Burns and Byron, but more
of a boy than either. The man Poe we never
saw. The best of him was to come, and it
never came. Poe had, however, what he is
not always credited with—the sincerity and
earnestness of maturity. He was anything
but a mere propounder of riddles. Had he
lived to our day, his office would have been
to aid science, so wonderfully advanced in
the intervening third of a century, in solving
some of its own. And in addition to that
possible work we should have been none the
poorer in the treasures of poetry he actually
gave us.

Olivia Raleigh. By W.W. Follett Synge.
Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

In the few choice words of introduction to
the American reprint Mrs. Annis Lee Wister
admirably characterizes this charming novel.
It is indeed like a “clear, pure breath of
English air:” from the first page to the last
Page 519it is redolent of the health of an “incense-breathing
morn.” There are no dark scenes
here, leaving on the reader a feeling of degradation
that such things can be—no impossible
villain weaving a web of intricate or purposeless
villainy—but all is fresh and genuine,
and we close the volume with a sense of
gratitude that such a story is possible.

Even if this be not in itself a recommendation
sufficient to enlist the interest of novel-readers,
Olivia Raleigh is something more:
it is a work of art: there is in it nothing crude
or hasty or ill-digested. Around the four or
five prominent characters all the interest centres,
and the attention is not distracted by any
wearisome episodes that have nothing to do
with the main story. The characters are admirably
thought out, and reveal themselves
more by their actions than by any microscopical
analysis of motives. They pass before us
like veritable human beings, and what they
are we learn from what they do. The transformation
of one of the characters from a gay,
debonnair bachelor past middle age into a
penurious miser of the Blueberry-Jones type
is bold, and in less skilful hands would be a
blemish, but Mr. Synge has amply justified it,
and admirably uses it to cement the structure
of his plot. There is no weakness in any
chapter, and as we read so secure do we feel
in the author’s strength that, had he chosen
to end the story in sorrow and not in joy, we
should submit as though to an inflexible decree
of Fate.

Les Koumiassine. Par Henry Gréville. Paris:
Plon.

It is always interesting to watch the course
of French fiction, because while the novel is
in all countries at the present time the favorite
form of expression of those writers who
eschew scientific work on the one side and
stand aloof from poetry on the other, in France,
which is noticeably the country where theories
are put into practice as well as invented, all
sorts of literary methods have their clever defenders,
who furnish examples of what they
preach. Since Balzac and George Sand died,
the post of leading novelist has been vacant,
although there has been no lack of writers
of the second or third, and especially of still
lower, rank. Octave Feuillet still produces
occasionally a clever piece of workmanship;
Cherbuliez at intervals writes a novel which
proves how lamentable a thing is the possession
of brilliancy alone apart from the seriousness
of character, or of some sides of character,
which must exist alongside of even
high intellectual qualities in order that the
man may make a lasting impression on his
time. Great gifts frittered away on meaningless
trifles are as disappointing as possible,
and are the more disappointing in proportion
to the greatness of the gifts; so that the decadence
of Cherbuliez—or, if this is too severe,
his lack of improvement after his brilliant
beginning—is a very melancholy thing. Zola
is among the younger men, the head of a
number of enthusiasts who revel in the exact
study of social ordure, and who threaten to
destroy fiction by ridding it of what makes
its life—imagination, that is—and substituting
for it scientific fact. Theuriet is an amiable
but by no means a powerful writer, who so
far has contented himself with following different
models without striking out any special
path of his own.

Henry Gréville is a new author, who has
reached by no means the highest, yet a very
respectable, place—such as would be a source
of gratification to most people. The name
signed to her novels is the nom-de-plume of a
lady who, as is also apparent from her work,
has lived long enough in Russia to become
familiar with the people and their ways. Les
Koumiassine is a story of Russian life,
treating of a rich family whose name gives
the title to the novel. The family is one
of great wealth, and consists of the Count
Koumiassine and his wife, their two children—one
a boy of nine or ten, the other
a girl half a dozen years older—and a niece
of about seventeen. The plot concerns itself
with the efforts of the countess to give her
niece, whom she values much less than her
daughter, a suitable husband. The poor girl
is bullied and badgered after the most approved
methods of domestic tyranny, and
her high-spirited struggle against adverse
circumstances makes the book as readable
as one could wish. After all, the family is
a microcosm, and furnishes frequent opportunity
for the practice of good or bad qualities;
and the cleverest novel-writers have
chosen just this subject which seems so bald
to the romantic writer. The contest in this
case is a long one, and is hotly contested,
and the imperiousness of the countess and
the graceful courage of the girl are excellently
well described. The other characters
too are clearly put before the reader, so that
those who exercise care in their choice of
Page 520French novels may take up this one with the
certainty that they will be entertained, and,
what is rarer, innocently entertained. For
in a large pile of French novels it would be
hard to find so pretty a story so well told as
is the intimacy between the two young girls,
the cousins, who in their different ways circumvent
Fate in the person of the countess.
Their amiability and jollity and loyalty to
each other give the book an air of attractive
truthfulness and refinement which well replaces
the priggishness generally to be found
in innocuous French fiction. More than this,
the plot is intelligently handled, and no person
is introduced who is not carefully studied.
In this respect of careful execution the author
resembles Tourgueneff, whose friend and disciple
she is. Like him, and like those who
have been affected by his influence, she gives
attention to the minor characters and comparatively
insignificant incidents, so that the
book makes a really lifelike impression. This
is not a story of great passion, but it deals
very cleverly with the less open waters of
domestic strife. While what it shows of
human nature in general is the most important
thing, what is shown of Russian life is
of great interest. The position of the countess,
and the habit of her mind with its over-bearing
self-will and ingenious self-approval,
are studies possible, of course, anywhere, but
pretty sure to be found especially in a land
like Russia, where the habit of command was
until recently so strongly fostered by the existence
of serfdom. The condition of those
who are exposed to this aggressive imperiousness
is clearly illustrated in the numerous dependants
who make their appearance in this
story. But it is the countess who is the best
drawn and most impressive personage. She
is really lifelike, and yet not a commonplace
figure.

Books Received.

Disease of the Mind: Notes on the Early
Management, European and American
Progress, Modern Methods, etc., in the
Treatment of Insanity, with especial reference
to the needs of Massachusetts and
the United States. By Charles F. Folsom,
M.D. Boston: A. Williams & Co.

Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations; also Treatises
on The Nature of the Gods, and on
The Commonwealth. Literally translated
by C.D. Yonge. New York: Harper &
Brothers.

Shakespeare: The Man and the Book. Being
a collection of Occasional Papers on the
Bard and his Writings. Part I. By C.M.
Ingleby, M.A. London: Trübner & Co.

Shakespeare’s Comedy of a Midsummer
Night’s Dream. Edited with Notes by
William J. Rolfe, A.M. New York:
Harper & Brothers.

Four Irrepressibles; or, The Tribe of Benjamin:
Their Summer with Aunt Agnes,
what they Did, and what they Undid.
Boston: Loring.

The Magnetism of Iron Vessels, with a Short
Treatise on Terrestrial Magnetism. By
Fairman Rogers. New York: D. Van
Nostrand.

Virgin Soil. By Ivan Tourgueneff. From
the French by T.S. Perry. (Leisure-Hour
Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Personal Appearance and the Culture of
Beauty. By T.S. Sozinsky, M.D., Ph.D.
Philadelphia: Allen, Lane & Scott.

An English Commentary on the Tragedies
of Euripides. By Charles Anthon, LL.D.
New York: Harper & Brothers.

Strength of Men and Stability of Nations. By
P.A. Chadbourne, D.D., LL.D. New
York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Eighth Annual Report of the State Board of
Health of Massachusetts. Boston: Albert
J. Wright. State Printer.

The Antelope and Deer of America. By
John Dean Caton, LL.D. New York:
Hurd & Houghton.

G.T.T.; or, The Wonderful Adventures of a
Pullman. By Edward E. Hale. Boston:
Roberts Brothers.

Until the Day Break. By Mrs. J.M.D.
Bartlett (“Birch Arnold”). Philadelphia:
Porter & Coates.

Other People’s Children. By the author of
“Helen’s Babies.” New York: G.P.
Putnam’s Sons.

Poet and Merchant. By B. Auerbach. (Leisure-Hour
Series.) New York: Henry
Holt & Co.

Mental Education. By J. Edward Cranage,
M.A., Ph.D. London: Bemrose &
Sons.

Beautiful Edith, the Child-Woman. (Loring’s
Tales of the Day.) Boston: Loring.

Aliunde; or, Love Ventures of Tom, Dick and
Harry. New York: Charles P. Somerby.

Ideals made Real: A Romance. By George L.
Raymond. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

Lola. By A. Griffiths. (Leisure-Hour Series.)
New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Kilmeny: A Novel. By William Black.
New York: Harper & Brothers.

Winstowe: A Novel. By Mrs. Leith-Adams.
New York: Harper & Brothers.

Lippincott’s Magazine

Of

Popular Literature And Science.

October, 1877.

Vol XX—No. 118

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Chester And The Dee.

Two Papers.—I.