LIPPINCOTT’S MAGAZINE

OF

POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

SEPTEMBER, 1873.
Vol XII, No. 30.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE NEW HYPERION.

FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.

III.—THE FEAST OF SAINT
ATHANASIUS.

THE PAULISTS.

As I parted from my stout old friend Joliet, I saw him turn to
empty the last half of our bottle into the glasses of a couple of
tired soldiers who were sucking their pipes on a bench. And again the
old proverb of Aretino came into my head: “Truly all courtesy
and good manners come from taverns.” I grasped my botany-box and
pursued my promenade toward Noisy.

The village of Noisy has made (without a pun) some noise in
history. One of its ancient lords, Enguerrand de Marigny, was the
inventor of the famous gibbet of Montfauçon, and in the poetic
justice which should ever govern such cases he came to be hung on his
own gallows. He was convicted of manifold extortions, and launched by
the common executioner into that eternity whither he could carry none
of his ill-gotten gains with him. Here, at least, we succeed in
meeting a guillotine which catches its maker. By a singular
coincidence another lord of Noisy, Cardinal Balue, underwent a long
detention in an iron-barred cage—one of those famous cages, so
much favored by Louis XI., of which the cardinal, as we learn from
the records of the time, had the patent-right for invention, or at
least improvement. Once firmly engaged in his own torture—while
his friend Haraucourt, bishop of Verdun, experienced alike penalty in
[pg 250] a similar box, and the foxy old
king paced his narrow oratory in the Bastile tower overhead—we
may be sure that Balue gave his inventive mind no more to the task of
fortifying his cages, but rather to that of opening them.

THE REWARD OF AN INVENTOR.

These ugly reminiscences were not so much the cause of a prejudice
I took against Noisy, as caused by it. At Noisy I was in the full
domain of my ancient foe the railway, where two lines of the Eastern
road separate—the Ligne de Meaux and the Ligne de Mulhouse. The
sight of the unhappy second-class passengers powdered with dust, and
of the frantic nurses who had mistaken their line, and who madly
endeavored to leap across to the other train, stirred all my bile. It
was on this current of thought that the nobleman who had been hung
and the cardinal who had pined in a cage were borne upon my memory.
“Small choice,” said I, “whether the bars are
perpendicular or horizontal. You lose your independence about equally
by either monopoly.”

CARDINAL BALUE.

I crossed the Canal de l’Ourcq, and watched it stretching like
a steel tape to meet the Canal Saint—Denis and the Canal
Saint-Martin in the great basin at La Villette—a construction
which, finished in 1809, was the making of La Villette as a
commercial and industrial entrepôt. I meant to walk to Bondy, and
after a botanic stroll in its beautiful forest to retrace my steps,
gaining Marly next day by Baubigny, Aubervilliers and Nanterre.
“The Aladdins of our time,” I said as I leaned over the
soft gray water, “are the engineers. They rub their theodolites,
and there springs up, not a palace, but a town.”

AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER.

“Who speaks of engineers?” said a strong baritone voice
as a weighty hand fell on my shoulder. “Are you here to take the
train at Noisy?”

“Let the train go to Jericho! I am trying, on the contrary,
to get away from it.”

“Do you mean, then, to go on foot to Épernay?”

“What do you mean, Épernay?”

“Why, have you forgotten the feast of Saint
Athanasius?”

“What do you mean, Athanasius?”

The baritone belonged to one of my [pg
251] friends, an engineer from Boston. He had an American
commission to inspect the canals of Europe on the part of a company
formed to buy out the Sound line of steamers and dig a ship-canal
from Boston to Providence. The engineer had made his inspection the
excuse for a few years of not disagreeable travel, during which time
the company had exploded, its chief financier having cut his throat
when his peculations came out to the public.

LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION.

“Are you trying, then, to escape from one of your greatest
possible duties and one of your greatest possible pleasures? You have
the remarkable fortune to possess a friend named Athanasius; you have
in addition, the strange fate to be his godfather by secondary
baptism; and you would, after these unparalleled chances, be the sole
renegade from the vow which you have extracted from the
others.”

The words were uncivil and rude, the hand was on my shoulder like
a vise; but there floated into my head a recollection of one of the
pleasantest evenings I have ever enjoyed.

We were dining with James Grandstone, one of my young friends. I
have some friends of whom I might be the father, and doubt not I
could find a support for my practice in Sir Thomas Browne or Jeremy
Taylor if I had time to look up the quotation. We dined in the little
restaurant Ober, near the Odéon, with a small party of medical
students, to which order Grandstone’s friends mostly belonged. We
were all young that night; and truly I hold that the affectionate
confusion of two or three different generations adds a charm to
friendship.

LE RAINCY: THE CHATEAU.

At dessert the conversation happened to strike upon Christian
names. I attacked the cognomens in ordinary use, maintaining that
their historic significance was lost, their religious sentiment
forgotten, their euphony mostly questionable. Alfred, Henry and
William no longer carried the thoughts back to the English
kings—Joseph and Reuben were powerless to remind us of the
mighty family of Israel.

“I have no complaint to make of my own name,” I
protested, “which has been praised by Dannecker the sculptor.
That was at Würtemberg, gentlemen. ‘You are from America,’
the old man said to me, ‘but you have a German name: Paul
Flemming was one of our old poets.’ The thought has been a
pleasant one to me, though I have not the faintest idea what my
ancient godparent wrote. But in the matter of originality my
Christian name of Paul certainly leaves much to
desire.”

CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX.

I was gay enough that evening, and in the vein for a paradox. I
set up the various Pauls of our acquaintance, and maintained that in
any company of fifty persons, if a feminine voice were to call out
“Paul!” through the doorway, six husbands at least would
start and say, “Coming, dear!” I computed the Pauls
belonging to one of the grand nations, and proved that an army
recruited from them would be large enough to carry on a war against a
power of the second order.

“If the Jameses were to reinforce the Pauls,” I
declared, looking toward my young host, “Russia itself would
tremble.—Are you to make your start in life with no better
name?” I asked him maliciously. “Must you be for ever kept
in mediocrity by an address that is not the designation of an
individual, but of a whole nation? Could you not have been called by
something rather less oecumenical?”

“You may style me by what title you please, Mr.
Flemming,” said Grandstone nonchalantly. “I am to enter a
great New York wine-house after a little examination of the
grape-country here. Doubtless a Grandstone will have, by any other
name, a bouquet as sweet.”

The idea took. An almanac of saints’ days, which is often
printed in combination with the menu of a restaurant, was
lying on the table. Beginning at the letter A, the name of Ambrose
was within an ace of being chosen, but Grandstone protested against
it as too short, and Athanasius was the first of five syllables that
presented. Our engineering friend, who was present, had in his pocket
a vial of water from the Dardanelles, which fouls ships’ bottoms;
and with that classic liquid the baptism was effected by myself, the
bottle being broken on poor Grandstone’s crown as on the prow of
a ship.

“You are no longer James to us, but Athanasius,” I said.
“If you remain moderately virtuous, we will canonize you.
Meantime, let us vow to meet on the next canonical day of Saint
Athanasius and hold a love-feast.”

We drank his health, and glorified him, and laughed, and the next
day I forgot whether Grandstone was called Athanasius or Epaminondas.
And my confusion on the subject had not clarified in the least up to
the rude reminder given by my engineer.

“I had quite forgotten my engagement,” I confessed.
“Besides, Grandstone [pg 253] is
living now, as you remind me, at Épernay—that is to say, at
seventy or eighty miles’ distance.”

“Say three hours,” he retorted: “on a railway line
we don’t count by miles. But are you really not here at Noisy to
satisfy your promise and report yourself for the feast of Saint
Athanasius? If you are not bound for Épernay, where are you
bound?”

“I am off for Marly.”

“You are going in just the contrary direction, old fellow.
You can be at Épernay sooner.”

“And Hohenfels joins me at Marly to-morrow,” I
continued, rather helplessly; “and Josephine my cook is there
this afternoon boiling the mutton-hams.”

“Fine arguments, truly! You shall sleep to-night in Paris, or
even at Marly, if you see fit. I have often heard you argue against
railroads—a fine argument for a geographer to uphold against an
engineer! Now is the instant to bury your prejudice. Do you see that
soft ringlet of smoke off yonder? It is the message of the
locomotive, offering to reconcile your engagements with Grandstone
and Hohenfels. Come, get your ticket!”

BOURSAULT, THE RESIDENCE OF CLIQUOT.

And his hand ceased squeezing my shoulder like a pincer to beat it
like a mallet. A rapid sketch of the situation was mapped out in my
head. I could reach Épernay by five o’clock, returning at eight,
and, notwithstanding this little lasso flung over the
champagne-country, I could resume my promenade and modify in no
respect my original plan; and I could say to Hohenfels, “My boy,
I have popped a few corks with the widow Cliquot.”

Such was my vision. The gnomes of the railway, having once got me
in their grasp, disposed of me as they liked, and quite
unexpectedly.

From the car-window, as in a panorama of Banvard’s, the
landscape spun out before my eyes. Le Raincy, which I had intended to
visit at all events on the same day, but afoot, offered me the roofs
of its ancient château, a pile built in the most pompous spirit of
the Renaissance, and whose alternately round and square pavilions,
tipped with steep mansards, I was fain to people with throngs of gay
visitors in the costume of the grand siècle. Then came the
cathedral of Meaux, before which I reverently took off my cap to
salute the great Bossuet—”Eagle of Meaux,” as they
justly called him, and on the whole a noble [pg
254] bird, notwithstanding that he sang his Te Deum over some
exceedingly questionable battle-grounds. Then there presented itself
a monument at which my engineering friend clapped his hands. It was a
crown of buildings with extinguisher roofs encircling the brow of a
hill, and presenting the antique appearance of some chastel of the
Middle Ages.

CHURCH-DOOR, ÉPERNAY.

“Do you see those round, pot-bellied towers, like tuns of
wine stood upon end?” he said—”those donjons at the
corners, tapering at the top, and presenting the very image of noble
bottles? There needs nothing but that palace to convince you that you
have arrived in the champagne region.”

“I do not know the building,” I confessed.

“Can you not guess? Ah, but you should see it in a summer
storm, when the rain foams and spirts down those huge bottles of
mason-work, and the thunder pops among the roofs like the corks of a
whole basket of champagne! That fine castle, Flemming, is the château
of Boursault, apparently built in the era of the Crusades, but really
a marvel of yesterday. It rose into being, not to the sound of a
lyre, like the towers of Troy, but at the bursting of innumerable
bottles, causing to resound all over the world the name of the widow
Cliquot.”

At length we entered the station of Épernay. There I received my
first shock in learning that the only return-train stopping at Noisy
was one which left at midnight, and would land me in the extreme
suburbs of Paris at three o’clock in the morning.

Our friend Grandstone, whom we found amazing the streets of
Épernay with a light American buggy drawn by a colossal Morman horse,
received us with still more surprise than delight. He had relapsed
into plain James, and had never dreamed that his second baptism would
bear fruit. Besides, he proved to us that we were in error as to the
date. The feast of Saint Athanasius, as he showed from a calendar
shoved beneath a quantity of vintners’ cards on his study-table,
fell on the second of May, and could not be celebrated before the
evening of the first. It was now the thirtieth of April. He invited
us, then, for the next day at dinner, warning us at the same time
that the evening of that same morrow would see him on his way to the
Falls of Schaffhausen. This idea of dining with an absentee puzzled
me.

THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK CHAMPAGNE.

We both laughed heartily at the engineer’s mistake of
twenty-four hours, and he for his part made me his excuses.

Athanasius—whose name I obstinately keep, because it gives
him, as I maintain, [pg 255] a more
distinct individuality,—Athanasius happened to be driving out
for the purpose of collecting some friends whom he was about to
accompany to Schaffhausen, and whom he had invited to dinner. He
contrived to stow away two in his buggy, and the rest assembled in
his chambers. We dined gayly and voraciously, and I hardly regretted
even that old hotel-dinner at Interlaken, when the landlord waited on
us in his green coat, and when Mary Ashburton was by my side, and
when I praised hotel-dinners because one can say so much there
without being overheard.

Dinner over, we went out for a stroll through the town. The city
of Épernay offers little remarkable except its Rue du Commerce,
flanked with enormous buildings, and its church, conspicuous only for
a flourishing portal in the style of Louis XIV., in perfect
contradiction to the general architecture of the old sanctuary. The
environs were little note worthy at the season, for a vineyard-land
has this peculiarity—its veritable spring, its pride of May,
arrives in the autumn.

ADMIRATION.

One very vinous trait we found, however, in the person of a
beggar. He was sitting on Grandstone’s steps as we emerged. Aged
hardly fourteen, he had turned his young nose toward the rich fumes
coming up from the kitchen with a look of sensuality and indulgence
that amused me. The maid, on a hint of mine, gave him a biscuit and
the remainders of our bottles emptied into a bowl. A smile of extreme
breadth and intelligence spread over his face. Opening his bag, he
laid by the biscuit, and extracted a morsel of iced cake: at the same
time he produced an old-fashioned, long-waisted champagne-glass,
nicked at the rim and quite without a stand. Filling this from his
bowl, he drank to the health of the waitress with the easiest
politeness it was ever my lot to see. Ragged as a beggar of
Murillo’s, courteous as a hidalgo by Velasquez, he added a grace
and an epicurism completely French. I thought him the best possible
figure-head for that opulent spot, cradle of the hilarity of the
world. I gave him five francs.

MAC MEURTRIER.

We proceeded to admire the town. The great curiosities of Épernay,
its glory and pomp, are not permitted to see the daylight. They are
subterranean and introverted. They are the cellars. Those rich
colonnades of Commerce street, all those porticoes surmounted with
Greek or Roman triangles in the nature of pediments, of what antique
[pg 256] religion are they the
representations? They are cellar-doors.

THE BLACK DOMINO.

It was impossible to quit the city without visiting its cellars,
said Grandstone, and we betook ourselves under his guidance to one of
the most renowned.

I only thought of seeing a battle-field of bottles, but I found
the Eleusinian mysteries.

TAM O’SHANTER’S RIDE.

In the temple-porch of Eleusis was fixed a large pale face, in the
middle parts of which a red nose was glowing like a fuse. Several
other personages, in company with this visage, received us on our
approach with a world of solemn and terrifying signals.

Directly a man in a cloak and slouched hat, and holding in his
hands a wire fencing-mask, extinguished with it the red nose. The
latter met his fate with stolid fortitude. All were perfectly still,
but the twitching cheeks of most of the spectators betrayed a laugh
retained with difficulty. The cloak then advanced, like a less
beautiful Norma, to a bell in the portico, and struck three tragical
strokes. A strong, pealing bass voice came from the interior:
“Who dares knock at this door?”

“A night-bird,” said the man in the cloak, who took the
part of spokesman. “What has the night-bird to do with the
eagle?” replied the strong voice. “What can there be in
common between the heathen in his blindness and the Ancient of the
Mountain throned in power and splendor?”

“Grand Master, it is in that splendor the new-comer wishes to
plunge.” After this imitation of some Masonic mystery the
red-nosed man was quickly taken by the shoulders and hurtled in at
the door, where a flare of red theatrical fire illuminated his sudden
plunge.

“What nonsense is this?” I said to Athanasius.

“The man in the iron mask,” he explained, “is in
that respect what we shall all be in a minute. Without such a
protector, in passing amongst the first year’s bottles we might
receive a few hits in the face.”

“And do you know the new apprentice?”

“No: some stranger, evidently.”

THE CROOKED MAN.

“It is not hard to guess his extraction,” [pg 257] said one of our dinner-party. “In the
East there are sorcerers with two pupils in each eye. For his part,
he seems to be braced with two pans in each knee. He is long in the
stilts like a heron, square—headed and square-shouldered: I
give you my word he is a Scotchman. For certain,” he added,
“I have seen his likeness somewhere—Ah yes, in an
engraving of Hogarth’s!”

The author of this charitable criticism was a little crooked
gentleman, at whose side I had dined—a man of sharpness and
wit, for which his hunch gave him the authority. As we penetrated
finally into the immense crypt, long like a street, provided with
iron railways for handling the stores, and threaded now and then by
heavy wagons and Normandy horses, my interest in the surrounding
wonders was distracted by apprehensions of the fate awaiting the
unfortunate red nose.

THE GRAVITY ROAD.

The gallop of a steed was heard at length, then a dreadful
exploding noise. I should have thought that a hundred drummers were
marching through the catacombs.

Relieved of his mask, fixed like a dry forked stick, wrong side
foremost, on a frightened steed which galloped down the avenue, and
pursued by the racket of empty bottles beaten against the
wine-frames, came the Scotchman, like an unwilling Tam O’Shanter.
At a new outburst of resonant noises, which we could not help
offering to the general confusion, the horse stopped, and assumed
twice or thrice the attitude of a gymnast who walks on his hands. The
figure of the man, still rigid, flew up into the air like a stick
that pops out of the water. The Terrible Brothers received him in
their arms.

Hardly restored to equilibrium, the patient was quickly replaced
in the saddle, but the saddle was this time girded upon a barrel, and
the barrel placed upon a truck, and the truck upon an inclined
tramway. His impassive countenance might be seen to kindle with
indignation and horror, as the hat which had been jammed over his
eyes flew off, and he found himself gliding over an iron road at a
rate of speed continually increasing.

He was fated to other tests, but at this point a little discussion
arose among ourselves. Grandstone, his fluffy young whiskers quite
disheveled with laughter, said, “Fellows, we had better stop
somewhere. There will be more of this, and it will be tedious to see
in the rôle of uninvited spectators, and it is not certain
[pg 258] we are wanted. I always knew
there was a Society of Pure Illumination at Épernay. It is not a
Masonic order, but it has its signs, its passes, its grips, and in a
word its secret. I have recognized among these gentlemen some active
members of the order—among others, notwithstanding his
disguise, a jolly good fellow we have here, Fortnoye.”

“You cannot have seen Fortnoye,” said one of the party:
“he is at Paris.”

“And who is your Fortnoye, pray?” I asked.

“The best tenor voice in Épernay; but his presence here does
not give me an invitation, you see. The Society of Pure
Illumination has its rites and mysteries more important than
everybody supposes, and probably complicated with board-of-trade
secrets among the wine-merchants. We have hit upon a bad time. Let us
go and visit another cellar.”

There was opposition to this measure: different opinions were
expressed, and I was chosen for moderator.

“My dear boys,” I said, “as the grayest among you I
may be presumed to be the wisest. But I do not feel myself to be
myself. I have received to-day a succession of unaccustomed
influences. I have been dragged about by an impertinent locomotive; I
have been induced to dine heavily; I have absorbed champagne, perhaps
to the limit of my measure. These are not my ordinary ways: I am
naturally thoughtful, studious and pensive. The Past, gentlemen, is
for me an unfaded morning-glory, whose closed cup I can coax open at
pleasure, and read within its tube legends written in dusted gold.
But the Present to the true philosopher is also—In fact, I
never was so much amused in my life. I am dying to see what they will
do with that Scotchman.”

THE ANIMATED CELLS.

Athanasius submitted. At the end of one of the cross galleries we
could already see a flickering glimmer of torches. There, evidently,
was held the council. We stole on tiptoe in that direction, and
ensconced ourselves behind a long file of empty bottle-shelves, worn
out after long service and leaning against a wall.

Through the holes which had fixed the bottles in position we could
see everything without being discovered. The grand dignitaries,
sitting in a semicircle, were about to proceed from physical to moral
tests. Before them, his red nose hanging like a cameo from the white
bandage which covered his eyes, and relieved upon his face, still
perfectly white and calm, stood the Scot. The Grand Master
arose—I should have said the Reverend—his head nodding
with senility, his beard white as a waterfall: he appeared to be
eighty years of age at least. He was truly venerable to look at, and
reminded me of Thor. He wore a sort of dalmatica embroidered with
gold. Calmness and goodness were so plainly marked on the aspect of
this worthy that I felt ashamed of playing the spy, and felt inclined
to return humbly to the good counsel of Athanasius, when the latter,
pushing my elbow behind the shelves, said, referring to the Ancient
of the Mountain, “That’s Fortnoye: I knew I couldn’t be
mistaken.”

I was greatly mystified at discovering the first tenor voice of
Épernay in an aged man; but the catechism now commencing, I thought
only of listening.

“The barleycorns of your native North having been partially
cleaned out of your hair by contact with the two enchanted
steeds—the steed you bridled without a head, and the steed that
ran away with you without legs,” said the Ancient—”we
have brought you hither for examination. We might have gone much
farther with the physical tests: we might have forced you, at the
present session, to relieve yourself of those envelopes considered
indispensable by all Europeans beneath your own latitude, and in our
presence perform the sword-dance.”

“So be it,” said the disciple, executing a galvanic
figure with his legs, his countenance still like marble.

“If we demanded the head of your best friend, would you bring
it in?”

“I am the countryman of Lady Macbeth,” replied the red
nose. “Give me the daggers.”

“We would fain dispense with that proof, necessarily painful
to a man of such evident sensibility as yours.” The red nose
bowed. “What is your name?”

He pronounced it—apparently MacMurtagh.

“In future, among us, you are named Meurtrier.”

“MacMeurtrier,” muttered the Scotchman in a tone of
abstraction.

“No! Meurtrier unadulterated. Your business?”

“I am a homoeopathic doctor.”

“Are you a believer in homoeopathy? Be careful: remember that
the [pg 259] Ancient of the Mountain
hears what you say.”

The Scot held up his hand: “I believe in the learned
Hahnemann, and in Mrs. Hahnemann, no less learned than himself;
but,” he added, “homoeopathy is a science still in its
baby-clothes. I have invented a system perfectly novel. In mingling
homoeopathy with vegetable magnetism the most encouraging results are
obtained, as may be observed daily in the villa of Dr. Van Murtagh,
near Edinburgh—”

“Enough!” cried the Ancient: “circulars are not
allowed here. Forget nothing, Meurtrier! And how were you inspired
with the pious ambition of becoming our brother?”

“At the hotel table: it was the young clerks from the
wine-houses. I mentioned that I wished to be a Free Mason, and the
lodge of Épernay—”

“Silence! The words you use, lodge and Free
Mason, are most improper in this temple, which is that of the
Pure Illumination, and nothing less. Will you remember,
Meurtrier?”

“MacMeurtrier,” muttered the novice again. The last
proofs were now tried upon him, called the “five senses.”
For that of hearing he was made to listen to a jewsharp, which he
calmly proclaimed to be the bagpipe; for that of touch, he was made
to feel by turns a live fish, a hot iron and a little stuffed
hedgehog. The last he took for a pack of toothpicks, and announced
gravely, “It sticks me.” The laughs broke out from all
sides, even from behind the bottle-shelves.

Alas! on this occasion the laugh was not altogether on my side of
that fatal honeycomb!

THE TRAVELER’S REST.

They had made him swallow, in a glass, some fearful mixture or
other, and he had imperturbably declared that it was in his opinion
the wine of Moët: after this evidence of taste the proof of sight was
to follow, and the semicircle [pg 260]
of purple faces was quite blackening with bottled laughter, when
Grandstone touched me on the shoulder. My hour for departure was
come, and I had not a minute to spare.

PALACE AT STRASBURG.

Apparently, the last test of the red nose resulted in a triumph:
as we were effecting our covert and hasty retreat we heard all the
voices exclaim in concert, “It is the Pure
Illumination!”

Gay as we were on entering the great wine-cellar, we were
perfectly Olympian when we came out. The crypts of these vast
establishments, where a soft inspiration perpetually floats upward
from the wine in store, often receive a visitor as a Diogenes and
dismiss him as an Anacreon.

Our consumption of wine at dinner had been, like Mr. Poe’s
conversation with his soul, “serious and sober.” In the
cellar no drop had passed our mouths. I was alert as a lark when I
entered: I came out in a species of voluptuous dream.

All the band conducted me to the railway-station, and I was very
much touched with the attention. It was who should carry my
botany-box, who should set my cap straight, who should give me the
most precise and statistical information about the train which
returned to Paris, with a stop at Noisy; the while, Ophelia-like, I
chanted snatches of old songs, and mingled together in a tender
reverie my recollections of Mary Ashburton, my coming Book and my
theories of Progressive Geography.

“Take this shawl: the night will be chilly before you get to
the city.”

“Don’t let them carry you beyond Noisy.”

“Come back to Épernay every May-day: never forget the feast
of Saint Athanasius.”

“Be sure you get into the right train: here is the car. Come,
man, bundle up! they are closing the barrier.”

I was perfectly melted by so much sympathy. “Adieu,” I
said, “my dear champanions—”

I turned into an excellent car, first class, and fell asleep
directly.

Next day I awoke—at Strasburg! The convivials of the evening
before, making for the Falls of Schaffhausen on the Rhine, had
traveled beside me in the adjoining car.

My friends, uncertain how their practical joke would be received,
clustered around me.

“Ah, boys,” I said, “I have too many griefs
imprisoned in this aching bosom to be much put out by the ordinary
‘Horrid Hoax.’ But you have compromised my reputation. I
promised to meet Hohenfels at Marly: children, bankruptcy stares me
in the face.”

Grandstone had the grace to be a little embarrassed: “You
wished to dine with me at the Feast of Saint Athanasius, but you
mistook the day. Your engineer is the true culprit, for he
voluntarily deceived you. The fact is, my dear Flemming, we have
concocted a little conspiracy. You are a good fellow, a joyful spirit
in fact, when you are not in your lubies about the Past and
the Future. We wanted you, we conspired; and, Catiline having stolen
you at Noisy, Cethigus tucked you into a car with the intention of
making use of you at Schaffhausen.”

“Never! I have the strongest vows that ever man uttered not
to revisit the Rhine. It is an affair of early youth, a solemn
promise, a consecration. You have got me at Strasburg, but you will
not carry me to Schaffhausen.”

He was so contrite that I had to console him. Letting him know
that no great harm was done, I saw him depart with his friends for
Bâle. For my part, I remained with the engineer, whose professional
duties, such as they were, kept him for a short time in the capital
of Alsace. In his turn, however, the latter took leave of me: we were
to meet each other shortly.

It was seven in the morning. This time, to be sure of my enemy the
railroad, I procured a printed Guide. But the Guide was a sorry
counselor for my impatience. The first train, an express, had left:
the next, an accommodation, would start at a quarter to one. I had
five hours and three-quarters to spare.

One of the greatest pleasures in life, according to my poor
opinion, is to have a recreation forced on one. Some cherub, perhaps,
cleared the cobwebs away from my brain that morning; but, however it
might be, I was glad of everything. I was glad the
“champanions” were departed, glad I had a stolen morning in
Strasburg, glad that Hohenfels and my domestics would be uneasy for
me at Marly.

In such a mood I applied myself to extract the profit out of my
detention in the city.

EDWARD STRAHAN.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

TWO MOODS.

THE RIDE OF PRINCE GERAINT.

MARTIN I. GRIFFIN.

SKETCHES OF EASTERN TRAVEL.

I.—THE
COUNT DE BEAUVOIR IN CHINA.

Within the last twenty years the East has opened wide its gates,
and China, Japan and India are as anxious to become acquainted with
the later but more fully developed civilizations of Europe and this
country as we are to examine their social, political and industrial
systems. We have had accounts from English, American, German and
French travelers in the East, each tinged, [pg
264] in a measure, with the national spirit of their
respective countries. In the case of the traveler, as of the
astronomer, a certain allowance, known as the personal equation, has
to be made in receiving the accounts of his observations.

THE MANDARIN CHING’S CART.

The journey round the world made by the count de Beauvoir in
company with the duke de Penthièvre, son of the prince de Joinville,
is entitled to especial notice, as the attentions shown to the
travelers by the Chinese and Japanese authorities enabled them to
obtain the best conditions for investigating various matters of
interest.

On landing at Shanghai their hearts were gladdened by seeing
“on the quay a French custom-house official, with his kepi over
his ear, his rattan in his hand, dressed in a dark-green tunic, and
full of the inquisitiveness of the customs inspector—as martial
and as authoritative as in his native land.” The appearance of
the population here struck our travelers as different from that of
the native Chinese farther south. Those were yellow, copper-colored,
lean, and slightly clad in garments of cotton cloth; these were rosy
as children and fat as pigs: they were besides wrapped up in four or
five pelisses, worn one over the other, lined with sheepskins, so
that a single man smelt like a whole flock of sheep. Their style of
dress was this: half a dozen waistcoats without sleeves, covered with
a single overcoat with extremely long sleeves, falling down to their
knees. These garments made them resemble balls of wool rather than
men.

By accident, the party passed first through the quarter of the
town devoted to the restaurants. Here they were for every grade of
fortune, from the millionaire to the ragged poor. The street filled
with these latter was terrible: it swarmed with thousands of beggars,
hardly human in form and almost naked, though there was frozen snow
upon the ground. A group, seeming even joyous, attracted attention.
The cause of their happiness was a dead dog which they had found in
one of the gutters. Even, however, in this degradation the politeness
of these people struck our Frenchmen forcibly. The guests gathered
about this fortuitous repast treated each other with a ceremonious
deference strange enough in such surroundings. In a still lower
stratum, however, among even a more degraded class, whose feasts were
obtained from the live preserves carried upon their own persons, this
politeness, the last quality a Chinaman loses from the degradation of
poverty, was wanting.

A few miles from Shanghai lies Zi-Ka-Wai, a colony founded by the
Jesuits, of which our traveler gives a most interesting account. The
road to Zi-Ka-Wai lay over a sandy plain intersected with canals. On
both sides of the road were hundreds of coffins resting upon the
surface of the ground. In the northern part of China there are no
grave-yards, and the coffins were arranged sometimes in piles in the
fields. It is said that they thus remain until a change takes place
in the reigning dynasty, when they are all destroyed. As the present
dynasty has reigned about three hundred years, the accumulation may
be imagined. This traditional respect for the inviolability of the
dead is one of the chief obstacles in the way of the introduction of
the telegraph and railroad in China. A commercial house in Shanghai
had built a telegraph to Wo-Soung to announce the arrival of the
mail, but in a few days the wire was cut in more than five hundred
places—at all the points where its shadow from the rising sun
fell upon the coffins lying on the ground.

At Zi-Ka-Wai the Jesuits have an educational institution, and,
dressed in the Chinese costume, smoking the long native pipes,
received their visitors with great cordiality. Their pupils are
divided into three classes. The first consists of the children of the
neighboring towns who have been deserted by their parents and left to
die of hunger. The majority of them are lepers, and have been more or
less perfectly cured by the Fathers. When brought to the institution
they are thoroughly cleaned, being rubbed with pumice stone. They
receive an industrial as well as a literary education. In one
building they are taught to read and [pg
265] write, and in another are the schools for shoemaking,
carpentering, printing and other manual arts; so that, being received
at the age of five or six, at twenty to twenty-one they are launched
upon the world with an education and a trade.

There are about four hundred children in this class, and the
activity, the order and organization of the workshops, and the
exquisite cleanliness of the surroundings, are delightful to see.
Near at hand is a school of a higher grade, to which the most
promising pupils are transferred for the study of Chinese literature.
The system of teaching here is peculiar: all the pupils are required
to study aloud, and the din is in consequence deafening and
incessant. Then there is the highest class, consisting of about two
hundred and fifty youths, the sons of rich mandarins, who pay heavily
for their instruction. These are destined to become rhetoricians,
and, step by step, bachelors, licentiates, doctors, then mandarins
[pg 266] and members of the governing
class of the Middle Kingdom. The studies are Chinese, and the Fathers
have with wonderful patience learned not only the Chinese language,
as well as its written characters, but also the nice critical points
of its idioms, so as to be able to teach with authority the poetry
and legends and the commentaries upon the writings of Confucius. This
they have done for the purpose of having an opportunity to convert
the orphans they have adopted, and thus by degrees introduce into the
government an element which will be essentially Christian. Thus far,
the profession of Christianity is not essentially incompatible with
the office of mandarin, though it is impossible to hold this position
without performing some idolatrous rites.

HALT OF THE CARAVAN AT HO-CHI-WOU.

On the 13th of March the ice was sufficiently broken to open the
navigation of the Pei-Ho, and the party started upon the steamer
Sze-Chuen for Tien-Tsin and Pekin. They were joined by an English
commissioner of the Chinese custom-house, whose position as a high
functionary of the Celestial government, together with his knowledge
of Chinese, proved of great service. The trip to Pekin was brought to
a sudden temporary close by the Sze-Chuen running aground on the bar
of the Pei-Ho, where she remained nearly two days, but was finally
got off after the removal of a part of her cargo.

The navigation of the Pei-Ho is difficult on account of the
narrowness of the stream and its exceedingly sinuous course.
Frequently the steamer had to be towed by a line passed on shore and
fastened round a tree. At Tien-Tsin the travelers landed, and
witnessed a review of some imperial cavalry regiments mounted upon
Tartar ponies, with high saddles and short stirrups. The warriors
wore queues and were dressed in long robes. Their moustaches gave
them, however, a fierce martial air, and they were armed with English
sabres and American revolvers.

Tien-Tsin (“Heaven’s Ford”) is a city of about four
hundred thousand inhabitants, and lies at the junction of the
Imperial Canal with the Pei-Ho. The country from here to Pekin, about
three days’ journey by land, is sandy, and the trip is made a
very disagreeable one by the clouds of dust, which blind the traveler
and effectually prevent any examination of the country passed
through.

The cavalcade comprised seven of the native carts, each drawn by
two mules. Their construction may be thus described: A sort of barrow
made of blue cloth hangs like a box upon an axletree about a yard
long, furnished with two clumsy wheels. It is impossible to lie down
in them, because they are too short, nor can a bench to sit on be
placed in them, because they are too low. As a compensation, however,
they are so light that they can go anywhere. The driver sits on the
left shaft, where he is conveniently placed for leaping down to beat
the mules. These are harnessed, one in the shafts and the other in
front, with long traces tied upon the axletree near the left wheel.
As they are guided only by the voice, the course of the cart depends
chiefly upon the fancy they may take for following or neglecting the
road; while from the manner in which they are harnessed their draught
is always sideways, and they therefore trot obliquely.

At Yang-Soun the party was joined by a mandarin with a crystal
button, sent by the governor of the province of Tien-Tsin,
Tchoung-Hao, with a profusion of passports and safe-conducts. During
the rest of the journey this mandarin, Ching, led the way in his cart
drawn by a fine black mule, and on arriving at the villages on the
route displayed his function, as a man of letters, by putting on an
immense pair of spectacles, the glasses of which were about three
inches in diameter. At Ho-Chi-Wou the procession halted during the
middle of the day, and was photographed by one of its members. The
curious crowd of spectators which gathered in every village to
inspect the “foreign devils” scattered when the camera was
posed, and for a few moments our travelers were freed from their
intrusiveness.

AVENUE OF ANIMALS LEADING TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.

Starting next morning at daylight, at [pg
268] three in the afternoon the party entered Pekin. The
relief was great to leave the sandy, dusty road for one of the paved
ways which radiate from the city. The first sight of the city struck
the travelers as the most grandiose spectacle of the Celestial
Empire. In front rose a high tower, with a five-storied roof of green
tiles, pierced with five rows of large portholes, from which grinned
the mouths of cannon; while to the right and left, as far as could be
seen, stretched the gigantic wall surrounding the city, built partly
of granite and partly of large gray bricks, with salients,
battlements and loopholes, wearing a decidedly martial air. This
impression was somewhat modified, however, by the discovery that the
grinning cannons were made of wood. The entrance was under a vaulted
archway, through which streamed a converging crowd of Chinese,
Mongols, Tartars, with their various costumes, together with blue
carts, files of mules and caravans of heavily-loaded camels.

Pekin was built by Kublai-Khan about 1282, near the site of an
important city which dated from the Chow dynasty, or some centuries
before the Christian era. The city covers an enclosed space about
twenty miles in circumference. It is rectangular in form, and divided
into two parts, the Chinese and the Tartar cities. The walls of the
Tartar city are the largest and widest, being forty to fifty feet
high, and, tapering slightly from the base, about forty feet wide at
the top. They are constructed upon a solid foundation of stone
masonry resting upon concrete, while the walls themselves are built
of a solid core of earth, faced with massive brick: the top is paved
with tiles, and defended by a crenelated parapet. Bastions, some of
which are fifty feet square, are built upon the outside at distances
of about one hundred feet. There are sixteen gates, seven of which
are in the Chinese town, six in the Tartar town, and three in the
partition wall between these two. In the centre of the Tartar city is
an enclosure, also walled, called the Imperial City, and within this
another, called the Forbidden City, which contains the imperial
palaces and pleasure-grounds. Broad straight avenues, crossing each
other at right angles, run through the whole city, which in this
respect is very unlike other Chinese towns. A stream entering the
Tartar city near its north-west corner divides into two branches,
which enter the Imperial City and surround the Forbidden City, and
then uniting again pass through the Tartar and Chinese towns, to
empty in the Tung-Chau Canal.

The foreign legations are in the southern part of the Tartar city,
on the banks of this stream. The top of the walls forms the favorite
promenade of the foreign settlers, and from here a fine view of the
whole city is obtained. M. de Beauvoir, however, from his more minute
examination, comes to the following conclusions: “This immense
city, in which nothing is repaired, and in which it is forbidden
under the severest penalties to demolish anything, is slowly
disintegrating, and every day changing itself into dust. The sight of
this slow decomposition is sad, since it promises death more
certainly than the most violent convulsions. In a century Pekin will
exist no longer; it must then be abandoned: in two centuries it will
be discovered, like a second Pompeii, buried under its own
dust.”

The gates of Virtuous Victory and of Great Purity, the temples to
the Heavens, to Agriculture, to the Spirit of the Winds and of the
Thunder, and to the Brilliant Mirror of the Mind, occupied the
attention of the party. They saw the gilded plough and the sacred
harrow with which the emperor yearly traces a furrow to obtain divine
favor for the crops, as well as the yellow straw hat he wears during
this ceremony; and also the vases made of iron wire in which he every
six months burns the sentences of those who have been condemned to
death in the empire. They visited also the magnificent observatory
built by Father Verbiest, a Jesuit, for the emperor You-Ching, in the
seventeenth century. The instruments are of bronze, and mounted upon
fantastic dragons, and [pg 269] are
still in good condition, though they have been exposed to the open
air all this time. One of them was a celestial sphere eight feet in
diameter, containing all the stars known in 1650 and visible in
Pekin.

PORTICO TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.

Visits to the theatres, to the temple of the Moon, that of the
Lamas, that of Confucius, and to others made the days spent in Pekin
pass quickly. Among the wonders shown was the largest suspended bell
in the world—the great bell of Moscow has never been
hung—twenty-five feet high, weighing ninety thousand pounds,
and richly sculptured.

The private life of the Chinese it is almost impossible for a
stranger to take part in. To do so requires a knowledge of Chinese,
which can be gained only by years of assiduous study, and that the
applicant should, as far as possible in dress and general appearance,
make [pg 270] himself a Chinese. Even
then, complete success is gained only by a fortunate combination of
circumstances. The streets devoted to shops of all kinds afford,
however, to the traveler a never-ending succession of changing and
interesting pictures. Yet the general spirit of the Chinese leads
them also to be sparing of all outward decoration, reserving their
forces for interior display. The Forbidden City even, though
marvelous stories are told of its interior splendors, has outside a
mean appearance. “A pagoda of the thirty-sixth rank has more
effect than the sacred dwelling of the Son of Heaven.”

In the military quarters, and in those inhabited by the nobility,
the party in their wanderings were struck with an expression of
disdain on the countenances of those natives whom they met. Elsewhere
the curiosity to see the foreigners was even greater than the Chinese
themselves ever excited in the capitals of Europe; but at home the
higher classes passed the foreigners without even turning to look at
them, or else glanced at them indifferently or disdainfully. Some of
the noble class walked, but generally they rode in carts similar to
that of the mandarin Ching. The higher the rank of the owner, the
farther behind are the wheels placed. With a prince’s cart they
are so far behind that the rider hangs between them and the mule.
Palanquins, carried upon the shoulders of the porters, offer another
and the most convenient means of locomotion used in China: this
method is, however, forbidden except for princes and ministers of
state.

In the busy streets of trade the scene is most animated. Thousands
of scarlet signs with gilded inscriptions hang from oblique poles
raised in front of the shops. Carts, palanquins, mules, camels,
coolies, soldiers and merchants throng the streets, while to add to
the confusion myriads of children play about your legs, and the old
men carrying their kites toward the walls add to the singularity of
the scene. The kites, representing dragons, eagles, etc., are managed
with a dexterity which comes only from a lifelong practice. They are
sometimes furnished with various aeolian attachments which imitate
the songs of birds or the voices of men. The pigeons also in Pekin
are frequently provided with a very light kind of aeolian harp, which
is secured tightly to the two central feathers of their tails, so
that in flying through the air the harps sound harmoniously. This
curious, indistinct note had excited the count’s attention, and
he learned its cause from a pigeon which fell dead at his feet,
having in its flight struck itself against the cord of one of the
kites. Their use was explained by the natives as a protection against
the hawks which are very common in Pekin.

Passing one day the place of execution, the travelers were shocked
to see that the heads of the executed were exposed to the public
gaze, labeled with the crimes for which they had suffered. Such
sights as this, with the terrible filth of all the Chinese cities,
the squalid suffering of the poor and the want of sympathy with
indigence and disease, suggested to the count, as they too frequently
suggest to European visitors, that the degradation of the Chinese is
hopeless. Yet such sights were common a few generations ago in every
European capital, and the same causes which have led to their
cessation there are at work to-day in China, and bid fair to produce
the same results.

THE GREAT WALL: THE NANG-KAO PASS.

The service of the custom-house, which has been put into the hands
of Europeans, and under the management of Mr. Robert Hart has been
thoroughly organized, is having a great influence in civilizing the
government, as well as in diffusing European ideas and methods among
the people. A fixed rate of charges, an honesty of administration
which is beyond question, prompt activity in the transaction of
business, have replaced the depredations and the old methods in use
under mandarin rule. It is the desire of the manager of the
custom-house to inaugurate in China the establishment of a system of
lighthouses, to organize the postal system, to introduce railroads
and telegraphs and to [pg 272] open the
coal-mines of the empire. Success in these reforms means bringing
China into the circle of inter-dependent civilized nations; and so
far all the steps in this direction have been sure and successful
ones.

On leaving Pekin, our party set out to visit the Great Wall of
China, which lies about three days’ journey from that capital, on
the route to Siberia. Mongolian ponies served for the means of
transportation on this trip. These shaggy little animals were as full
of tricks as they were ugly. The cavalcade was followed by two carts
for carrying the money of the expedition. The whole of this capital
amounted to about one hundred and fifty dollars, in the form of
hundreds of thousands of the copper coins of the country, made with
holes in their centres and strung by the thousand upon osier twigs.
This is the only money which circulates in the agricultural portions
of China, and a “barbarian” has to give a pound weight of
them for a couple of eggs. The country soon began to become hilly,
with the mountains of Mongolia visible in the distance. Trains of
camels were passed, or could be seen winding in the plain below.

The next day the party arrived at the Tombs of the Emperors. These
are the tombs of the Ming emperors, one of the most brilliant
dynasties of Chinese history. They lie in a circular valley which
opens out from a great plain, and is surrounded by limestone peaks
and granite domes, forming a barren and waste amphitheatre. The
grandeur of its dimensions and the awful barrenness of its desolation
make it a fit resting-place for the imperial dead of the last native
dynasty. At the foot of the surrounding heights thirteen gigantic
tombs, encircled with green trees, are arranged in a semicircle. Five
majestic portals, about eight hundred yards apart, form the entrance
to the tombs. From the portico giving entrance to the valley to the
tomb of the first emperor is more than a league, and the long avenue
is marked first by winged columns of white marble, and next by two
rows of animals, carved in gigantic proportions. Of these there are,
on either side, two lions standing, two lions sitting; one camel
standing, one kneeling; one elephant standing, one kneeling; one
dragon standing, one sitting; two horses standing; six warriors,
courtiers, etc. The lions are fifteen feet high, and the others
equally colossal, while each of the figures is carved from a single
block of granite.

At the end of the avenue are the tombs, with groups of trees about
them. Each tomb is really a temple in which white and pink marble,
porphyry and carved teak-wood are combined, not indeed with harmony
or taste, but, what is rare in China, with lines of great purity and
severity. One of the halls of these tombs is about a hundred feet
long by about eighty wide. The ceiling is from forty to sixty feet
high, and is supported by rows of pillars, each formed of a single
stick of teak timber eleven feet in circumference. These sticks were
brought for this purpose from the south of China. Though they have
been in position over nine hundred years, they appear as sound as
when first posed, nor has the austere splendor of the structure
suffered in any degree.

The sombre obscurity well befits these sepulchral dwellings, and
the dull sound of the deadened gongs struck by the guardians makes
the vaults reverberate in a singular and impressive way. Behind the
memorial temple rises an artificial mound about fifty feet high,
access to the top of which is given by a rising arched passage built
of white marble. On the top of the mound is an imposing marble
structure consisting of a double arch, beneath which is the imperial
tablet, a large slab, upon which is carved a dragon standing on the
back of a gigantic tortoise. The remains of the emperor are buried
somewhere within this mound, though the exact spot is not known: this
precaution, it is said, was taken to preserve the remains from being
desecrated in a search for the treasures which were buried with him,
while the persons who performed this last office were killed upon the
spot, in order further to preserve the secret.

CHAPEL OF THE SUMMER PALACE.

From this gigantic effort to preserve [pg
274] the memory of the dead our party hastened to the Great
Wall, an equally immense work to preserve the living from the
incursions of their neighboring enemies. Perhaps nowhere in the world
are to be found in such close proximity two such striking evidences
of the waste of human labor when undirected by scientific knowledge.
The wall is to-day, and was from the first, as worthless for the
purpose it was intended to serve as the temples are for obtaining
immortality for the bodies they enclose.

Leaving the town of Nang-Kao, the party soon found themselves at
the entrance of the pass of the same name, and during the six leagues
which separated them from the wall the spectacle kept increasing in
grandeur. The gorge at first was savage and sombre, shut in closely
by the steep mountain-sides. Soon the first support of the Great Wall
appeared in a chain of walls, with battlements and towers, built over
the principal mountain-chain, and as far as the eye could reach
following all the peaks. The effect of this wall is most striking.
Like some enormous serpent it stretches away in the distance,
climbing rocks which appear impracticable, and which would be so
without its aid. The count was convinced that it would be as
difficult to climb it for the purpose of defending it as it would be
to do so in order to attack it. This first support of the wall is in
itself a giant work.

As the party advanced in the valley, in the far distance the
crenelated outlines of two other similar and parallel walls appeared,
situated also upon the crests. The Great Wall was built about 200
B.C. as a barrier against the Tartar cavalry. It is said to have been
built in twenty-two years. It was everywhere constructed of the
materials at hand. On the plains it was built of a core of earth,
pounded, and faced with tiles, the top being also covered with tiles
and furnished with a parapet. On the mountains of stratified rock the
facing was made of masonry, and the core of earth and cobble-stones.
Where the rock is such as fractures irregularly, the wall is of solid
masonry, tapering to the top, which is sharp. Throughout its whole
length it is defended by towers occurring every few hundred feet.
Every mountain-pass and weak point was defended by a fortified tower.
At present the wall is in various conditions of preservation,
according to the materials used in its construction. In the valleys,
which were the points to defend, it has gradually crumbled to a mere
heap of rubbish, which the plough year by year still further
scatters.

The Great Wall is, however, a wonderful monument of the labor and
organization of the Chinese nation two thousand years ago. The
illustration is from a photograph taken on the spot by one of the
party. In order to take a view which should be most effective the
camera was placed upon the wall itself.

On their return to Pekin the party visited the ruins of the famous
Summer Palace, Yuen-Ming-Yuen. The avenues were formerly adorned with
porticoes, monuments and kiosques, which are now masses of ruins.
Only two enormous bronze lions, the largest castings ever made in
China, remain, and these simply because the allies could not carry
them away. To have attempted it would have required the building of a
dozen bridges over the streams between here and Tien-Tsin. The chapel
of the Summer Palace escaped destruction only from the fact that it
was situated upon a rock so high that the flames did not reach it.
Looking at the confused ruins which are all that remain of this
wonderful collection of the most admirable products of fifteen ages
of civilization, of art and of industry, the count de Beauvoir says
truly that no honest man can help shuddering involuntarily. Though
his sentiment of national loyalty is very strong, yet he cannot avoid
exclaiming, “Let us leave this place: let us run from this spot,
where the soil burns us, the very view of which humbles us. We came
to China as the armed champions of civilization and of a religion of
mercy, but the Chinese are right, a thousand times right, in calling
us barbarians.”

A PRINCESS OF THULE.

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF “THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A
PHAETON.”

CHAPTER XIV.

DEEPER AND DEEPER.

Next morning Sheila was busy with her preparations for departure
when she heard a hansom drive up. She looked out and saw Mr. Ingram
step out; and before he had time to cross the pavement she had run
round and opened the door, and stood at the top of the steps to
receive him. How often had her husband cautioned her not to forget
herself in this monstrous fashion!

“Did you think I had run away? Have you come to see me?”
she said, with a bright, roseate gladness on her face which reminded
him of many a pleasant morning in Borva.

“I did not think you had run away, for you see I have brought
you some flowers,” he said; but there was a sort of blush in the
sallow face, and perhaps the girl had some quick fancy or suspicion
that he had brought this bouquet to prove that he knew everything was
right, and that he expected to see her. It was only a part of his
universal kindness and thoughtfulness, she considered.

“Frank is up stairs,” she said, “getting ready some
things to go to Brighton. Will you come into the breakfast-room? Have
you had breakfast?”

“Oh, you were going to Brighton?”

“Yes,” she said; and somehow something moved her to add
quickly, “but not for long, you know. Only a few days. It is
many a time you will have told me of Brighton long ago in the Lewis,
but I cannot understand a large town being beside the sea, and it
will be a great surprise to me, I am sure of that.”

“Ay, Sheila,” he said, falling into the old habit quite
naturally, “you will find it different from Borvabost. You will
have no scampering about the rocks with your head bare and your hair
flying about. You will have to dress more correctly there than here
even; and, by the way, you must be busy getting ready, so I will
go.”

“Oh no,” she said with a quick look of disappointment,
“you will not go yet. If I had known you were coming—But
it was very late when we will get home this morning: two o’clock
it was.”

“Another ball?”

“Yes,” said the girl, but not very joyfully.

“Why, Sheila,” he said with a grave smile on his face,
“you are becoming quite a woman of fashion now. And you know I
can’t keep up an acquaintance with a fine lady who goes to all
these grand places and knows all sorts of swell people; so you’ll
have to cut me, Sheila.”

“I hope I shall be dead before that time ever comes,”
said the girl with a sudden flash of indignation in her eyes. Then
she softened: “But it is not kind of you to laugh at
me.”

“Of course I did not laugh at you,” he said taking both
her hands in his, “although I used to sometimes when you were a
little girl and talked very wild English. Don’t you remember how
vexed you used to be, and how pleased you were when your papa turned
the laugh against me by getting me to say that awful Gaelic sentence
about ‘A young calf ate a raw egg’?”

“Can you say it now?” said Sheila, with her face getting
bright and pleased again. “Try it after me. Now
listen.”

She uttered some half dozen of the most extraordinary sounds that
any language ever contained, but Ingram would not attempt to follow
her. She reproached him with having forgotten all that he had learnt
in Lewis, and said she should no longer look on him as a possible
Highlander.

“But what are you now?” he asked. “You are
no longer that wild girl who used to run out to sea in the
Maighdean-mhara [pg 276] whenever there
was the excitement of a storm coming on.”

“Many times,” she said slowly and wistfully, “I
will wish that I could be that again for a little while.”

“Don’t you enjoy, then, all those fine gatherings you go
to?”

“I try to like them.”

“And you don’t succeed?”

He was looking at her gravely and earnestly, and she turned away
her head and did not answer. At this moment Lavender came down stairs
and entered the room.

“Hillo, Ingram, my boy! glad to see you! What pretty flowers!
It’s a pity we can’t take them to Brighton with us.”

“But I intend to take them,” said Sheila firmly.

“Oh, very well, if you don’t mind the bother,” said
her husband. “I should have thought your hands would have been
full: you know you’ll have to take everything with you you would
want in London. You will find that Brighton isn’t a dirty little
fishing-village in which you’ve only to tuck up your dress and
run about anyhow.”

“I never saw a dirty little fishing-village,” said
Sheila quietly.

Her husband laughed: “I meant no offence. I was not thinking
of Borvabost at all. Well, Ingram, can’t you run down and see us
while we are at Brighton?”

“Oh do, Mr. Ingram!” said Sheila with quite a new
interest in her face; and she came forward as though she would have
gone down on her knees and begged this great favor of him. “Do,
Mr. Ingram! We should try to amuse you some way, and the weather is
sure to be fine. Shall we keep a room for you? Can you come on Friday
and stay till the Monday? It is a great difference there will be in
the place if you come down.”

Ingram looked at Sheila, and was on the point of promising, when
Lavender added, “And we shall introduce you to that young
American lady whom you are so anxious to meet.”

“Oh, is she to be there?” he said, looking rather
curiously at Lavender.

“Yes, she and her mother. We are going down
together.”

“Then I’ll see whether I can in a day or two,” he
said, but in a tone which pretty nearly convinced Sheila that she
should not have her stay at Brighton made pleasant by the company of
her old friend and associate.

However, the mere anticipation of seeing the sea was much; and
when they had got into a cab and were going down to Victoria Station,
Sheila’s eyes were filled with a joyful anticipation. She had
discarded altogether the descriptions of Brighton that had been given
her. It is one thing to receive information, and another to reproduce
it in an imaginative picture; and in fact her imagination was busy
with its own work while she sat and listened to this person or the
other speaking of the seaside town she was going to. When they spoke
of promenades and drives and miles of hotels and lodging-houses, she
was thinking of the sea-beach and of the boats and of the sky-line
with its distant ships. When they told her of private theatricals and
concerts and fancy-dress balls, she was thinking of being out on the
open sea, with a light breeze filling the sails, and a curl of white
foam rising at the bow and sweeping and hissing down the sides of the
boat. She would go down among the fishermen when her husband and his
friends were not by, and talk to them, and get to know what they sold
their fish for down here in the South. She would find out what their
nets cost, and if there was anybody in authority to whom they could
apply for an advance of a few pounds in case of hard times. Had they
their cuttings of peat free from the nearest moss-land? and did they
dress their fields with the thatch that had got saturated with the
smoke? Perhaps some of them could tell her where the crews hailed
from that had repeatedly shot the sheep of the Flannen Isles. All
these and a hundred other things she would get to know; and she might
procure and send to her father some rare bird or curiosity of the
sea, that might be added to the little museum in which she used to
sing in [pg 277] days gone by, when he
was busy with his pipe and his whisky.

“You are not much tired, then, by your dissipation of last
night?” said Mrs. Kavanagh to her at the station, as the
slender, fair-haired, grave lady looked admiringly at the girl’s
fresh color and bright gray-blue eyes. “It makes one envy you to
see you looking so strong and in such good spirits.”

“How happy you must be always!” said Mrs. Lorraine; and
the younger lady had the same sweet, low and kindly voice as her
mother.

“I am very well, thank you,” said Sheila, blushing
somewhat and not lifting her eyes, while Lavender was impatient that
she had not answered with a laugh and some light retort, such as
would have occurred to almost any woman in the circumstances.

On the journey down, Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine, seated opposite
each other in two corner seats, kept up a continual cross-fire of
small pleasantries, in which the young American lady had distinctly
the best of it, chiefly by reason of her perfect manner. The keenest
thing she said was said with a look of great innocence and candor in
the large gray eyes; and then directly afterward she would say
something very nice and pleasant in precisely the same voice, as if
she could not understand that there was any effort on the part of
either to assume an advantage. The mother sometimes turned and
listened to this aimless talk with an amused gravity, as of a cat
watching the gambols of a kitten, but generally she devoted herself
to Sheila, who sat opposite her. She did not talk much, and Sheila
was glad of that, but the girl felt that she was being observed with
some little curiosity. She wished that Mrs. Kavanagh would turn those
observant gray eyes of hers away in some other direction. Now and
again Sheila would point out what she considered strange or striking
in the country outside, and for a moment the elderly lady would look
out. But directly afterward the gray eyes would come back to Sheila,
and the girl knew they were upon her. At last she so persistently
stared out of the window that she fell to dreaming, and all the trees
and the meadows and the farm-houses and the distant heights and
hollows went past her as though they were in a sort of mist, while
she replied to Mrs. Kavanagh’s chance remarks in a mechanical
fashion, and could only hear as a monotonous murmur the talk of the
two people at the other side of the carriage. How much of the journey
did she remember? She was greatly struck by the amount of open land
in the neighborhood of London—the commons between Wandsworth
and Streatham, and so forth—and she was pleased with the
appearance of the country about Red Hill. For the rest, a succession
of fair green pictures passed by her, all bathed in a calm,
half-misty summer sunlight: then they pierced the chalk-hills (which
Sheila, at first sight, fancied were of granite) and rumbled through
the tunnels. Finally, with just a glimpse of a great mass of gray
houses filling a vast hollow and stretching up the bare green downs
beyond, they found themselves in Brighton.

“Well, Sheila, what do you think of the place?” her
husband said to her with a laugh as they were driving down the
Queen’s road.

She did not answer.

“It is not like Borvabost, is it?”

She was too bewildered to speak. She could only look about her
with a vague wonder and disappointment. But surely this great gray
city was not the place they had come to live in? Would it not
disappear somehow, and they would get away to the sea and the rocks
and the boats?

They passed into the upper part of West street, and here was
another thoroughfare, down which Sheila glanced with no great
interest. But the next moment there was a quick catching of her
breath, which almost resembled a sob, and a strange glad light sprang
into her eyes. Here at last was the sea! Away beyond the narrow
thoroughfare she could catch a glimpse of a great green
plain—yellow-green it was in the sunlight—that the wind
was whitening [pg 278] here and there
with tumbling waves. She had not noticed that there was any wind
in-land—there everything seemed asleep—but here there was
a fresh breeze from the south, and the sea had been rough the day
before, and now it was of this strange olive color, streaked with the
white curls of foam that shone in the sunlight. Was there not a cold
scent of sea-weed, too, blown up this narrow passage between the
houses? And now the carriage cut round the corner and whirled out
into the glare of the Parade, and before her the great sea stretched
out its leagues of tumbling and shining waves, and she heard the
water roaring along the beach, and far away at the horizon she saw a
phantom ship. She did not even look at the row of splendid hotels and
houses, at the gayly-dressed folks on the pavement, at the brilliant
flags that were flapping and fluttering on the New Pier and about the
beach. It was the great world of shining water beyond that fascinated
her, and awoke in her a strange yearning and longing, so that she did
not know whether it was grief or joy that burned in her heart and
blinded her eyes with tears. Mrs. Kavanagh took her arm as they were
going up the steps of the hotel, and said in a friendly way, “I
suppose you have some sad memories of the sea?”

“No,” said Sheila bravely, “it is always pleasant
to me to think of the sea; but it is a long time
since—since—”

“Sheila,” said her husband abruptly, “do tell me if
all your things are here;” and then the girl turned, calm and
self-collected, to look after rugs and boxes.

When they were finally established in the hotel Lavender went off
to negotiate for the hire of a carriage for Mrs. Kavanagh during her
stay, and Sheila was left with the two ladies. They had tea in their
sitting-room, and they had it at one of the windows, so that they
could look out on the stream of people and carriages now beginning to
flow by in the clear yellow light of the afternoon. But neither the
people nor the carriages had much interest for Sheila, who, indeed,
sat for the most part silent, intently watching the various boats
that were putting out or coming in, and busy with conjectures which
she knew there was no use placing before her two companions.

“Brighton seems to surprise you very much,” said Mrs.
Lorraine.

“Yes,” said Sheila, “I have been told all about it,
but you will forget all that; and this is very different from the sea
at home—at my home.”

“Your home is in London now,” said the elder lady with a
smile.

“Oh no!” said Sheila, most anxiously and earnestly.
“London, that is not our home at all. We live there for a
time—that will be quite necessary—but we shall go back to
the Lewis some day soon—not to stay altogether, but enough to
make it as much our home as London.”

“How do you think Mr. Lavender will enjoy living in the
Hebrides?” said Mrs. Lorraine with a look of innocent and
friendly inquiry in her eyes.

“It was many a time that he has said he never liked any place
so much,” said Sheila with something of a blush; and then she
added with growing courage, “for you must not think he is always
like what he is here. Oh no! When he is in the Highlands there is no
day that is nearly long enough for what has to be done in it; and he
is up very early, and away to the hills or the loch with a gun or a
salmon-rod. He can catch the salmon very well—oh, very well for
one that is not accustomed—and he will shoot as well as any one
that is in the island, except my papa. It is a great deal to do there
will be in the island, and plenty of amusement; and there is not much
chance—not any whatever—of his being lonely or tired when
we go to live in the Lewis.”

Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter were both amused and pleased by the
earnest and rapid fashion in which Sheila talked. They had generally
considered her to be a trifle shy and silent, not knowing how afraid
she was of using wrong idioms or pronunciations; but here was one
subject on which her heart was set, and she had no more thought as to
whether she said like-a-ness or likeness, or whether
she said gyarden or garden. Indeed, [pg 279] she forgot more than that. She was somewhat
excited by the presence of the sea and the well-remembered sound of
the waves; and she was pleased to talk about her life in the North,
and about her husband’s stay there, and how they should pass the
time when she returned to Borva. She neglected altogether
Lavender’s injunctions that she should not talk about fishing or
cooking or farming to his friends. She incidentally revealed to Mrs.
Kavanagh and her daughter a great deal more about the household at
Borva than he would have wished to be known. For how could they
understand about his wife having her own cousin to serve at table?
and what would they think of a young lady who was proud of making her
father’s shirts? Whatever these two ladies may have thought, they
were very obviously interested, and if they were amused, it was in a
far from unfriendly fashion. Mrs. Lorraine professed herself quite
charmed with Sheila’s descriptions of her island-life, and wished
she could go up to Lewis to see all these strange things. But when
she spoke of visiting the island when Sheila and her husband were
staying there, Sheila was not nearly so ready to offer her a welcome
as the daughter of a hospitable old Highlandman ought to have
been.

“And will you go out in a boat now?” said Sheila,
looking down to the beach.

“In a boat! What sort of boat?” said Mrs. Kavanagh.

“Any one of those little sailing boats: it is very good boats
they are, as far as I can see.”

“No, thank you,” said the elder lady with a smile.
“I am not fond of small boats, and the company of the men who go
with you might be a little objectionable, I should fancy.”

“But you need not take any men,” said Sheila: “the
sailing of one of those little boats, it is very simple.”

“Do you mean to say you could manage the boat by
yourself?”

“Oh yes! It is very simple. And my husband, he will help
me.”

“And what would you do if you went out?”

“We might try the fishing. I do not see where the rocks are,
but we would go off the rocks and put down the anchor and try the
lines. You would have some ferry good fish for breakfast in the
morning.”

“My dear child,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, “you don’t
know what you propose to us. To go and roll about in an open boat in
these waves—we should be ill in five minutes. But I suppose you
don’t know what sea-sickness is?”

“No,” said Sheila, “but I will hear my husband
speak of it often. And it is only in crossing the Channel that people
will get sick.”

“Why, this is the Channel.”

Sheila stared. Then she endeavored to recall her geography. Of
course this must be a part of the Channel, but if the people in the
South became ill in this weather, they must be rather feeble
creatures. Her speculations on this point were cut short by the
entrance of her husband, who came to announce that he had not only
secured a carriage for a month, but that it would be round at the
hotel door in half an hour; whereupon the two American ladies said
they would be ready, and left the room.

“Now go off and get dressed, Sheila,” said Lavender.

She stood for a moment irresolute.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” she said after a
moment’s hesitation—”if you would allow me to go by
myself—if you would go to the driving, and let me go down to
the shore!”

“Oh, nonsense!” he said. “You will have people
fancying you are only a school-girl. How can you go down to the beach
by yourself among all those loafing vagabonds, who would pick your
pocket or throw stones at you? You must behave like an ordinary
Christian: now do, like a good girl, get dressed and submit to the
restraints of civilized life. It won’t hurt you much.”

So she left, to lay aside with some regret her rough blue dress,
and he went down stairs to see about ordering dinner.

Had she come down to the sea, then, only to live the life that had
nearly broken her heart in London? It seemed [pg 280] so. They drove up and down the Parade for
about an hour and a half, and the roar of carriages drowned the rush
of the waves. Then they dined in the quiet of this still summer
evening, and she could only see the sea as a distant and silent
picture through the windows, while the talk of her companions was
either about the people whom they had seen while driving, or about
matters of which she knew nothing. Then the blinds were drawn and
candles lit, and still their conversation murmured around her
unheeding ears. After dinner her husband went down to the
smoking-room of the hotel to have a cigar, and she was left with Mrs.
Kavanagh and her daughter. She went to the window and looked through
a chink in the Venetian blinds. There was a beautiful clear twilight
abroad, the darkness was still of a soft gray, and up in the pale
yellow-green of the sky a large planet burned and throbbed. Soon the
sea and the sky would darken, the stars would come forth in thousands
and tens of thousands, and the moving water would be struck with a
million trembling spots of silver as the waves came onward to the
beach.

“Mayn’t we go out for a walk till Frank has finished his
cigar?” said Sheila.

“You couldn’t go out walking at this time of night,”
said Mrs. Kavanagh in a kindly way: “you would meet the most
unpleasant persons. Besides, going out into the night air would be
most dangerous.”

“It is a beautiful night,” said Sheila with a sigh. She
was still standing at the window.

“Come,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, going over to her and
putting her hand in her arm, “we cannot have any moping, you
know. You must be content to be dull with us for one night; and after
to-night we shall see what we can do to amuse you.”

“Oh, but I don’t want to be amused!” cried Sheila
almost in terror, for some vision flashed on her mind of a series of
parties. “I would much rather be left alone and allowed to go
about by myself. But it is very kind of you,” she hastily added,
fancying that her speech had been somewhat ungracious—”it
is very kind of you indeed.”

“Come, I promised to teach you cribbage, didn’t
I?”

“Yes,” said Sheila with much resignation; and she walked
to the table and sat down.

Perhaps, after all, she could have spent the rest of the evening
with some little equanimity in patiently trying to learn this game,
in which she had no interest whatever, but her thoughts and fancies
were soon drawn away from cribbage. Her husband returned. Mrs.
Lorraine had been for some little time at the big piano at the other
side of the room, amusing herself by playing snatches of anything she
happened to remember, but when Mr. Lavender returned she seemed to
wake up. He went over to her and sat down by the piano.

“Here,” she said, “I have all the duets and songs
you spoke of, and I am quite delighted with those I have tried. I
wish mamma would sing a second to me: how can one learn without
practicing? And there are some of those duets I really should like to
learn after what you said of them.”

“Shall I become a substitute for your mamma?” he
said.

“And sing the second, so that I may practice? Your cigar must
have left you in a very amiable mood.”

“Well, suppose we try,” he said; and he proceeded to
open out the roll of music which she had brought down.

“Which shall we take first?” he asked.

“It does not much matter,” she answered indifferently,
and indeed she took up one of the duets by haphazard.

What was it made Mrs. Kavanagh’s companion suddenly lift her
eyes from the cribbage-board and look with surprise to the other end
of the room? She had recognized the little prelude to one of her own
duets, and it was being played by Mrs. Lorraine. And it was Mrs.
Lorraine who began to sing in a sweet, expressive and well-trained
voice of no great power—

and it was she to whom the answer was given—

and then, Sheila, sitting stupefied and pained and confused, heard
them sing together—

She had not heard the short conversation which had introduced this
music; and she could not tell but that her husband had been
practicing these duets—her duets—with some one else. For
presently they sang “When the rosy morn appearing,” and
“I would that my love could silently,” and others, all of
them in Sheila’s eyes, sacred to the time when she and Lavender
used to sit in the little room at Borva. It was no consolation to her
that Mrs. Lorraine had but an imperfect acquaintance with them; that
oftentimes she stumbled and went back over a bit of the
accompaniment; that her voice was far from being striking. Lavender,
at all events, seemed to heed none of these things. It was not as a
music-master that he sang with her. He put as much expression of love
into his voice as ever he had done in the old days when he sang with
his future bride. And it seemed so cruel that this woman should have
taken Sheila’s own duets from her to sing before her with her own
husband.

Sheila learnt little more cribbage that evening. Mrs. Kavanagh
could not understand how her pupil had become embarrassed,
inattentive, and even sad, and asked her if she was tired. Sheila
said she was very tired and would go. And when she got her candle,
Mrs. Lorraine and Lavender had just discovered another duet which
they felt bound to try together as the last.

This was not the first time she had been more or less vaguely
pained by her husband’s attentions to this young American lady;
and yet she would not admit to herself that he was any way in the
wrong. She would entertain no suspicion of him. She would have no
jealousy in her heart, for how could jealousy exist with a perfect
faith? And so she had repeatedly reasoned herself out of these
tentative feelings, and resolved that she would do neither her
husband nor Mrs. Lorraine the injustice of being vexed with them. So
it was now. What more natural than that Frank should recommend to any
friend the duets of which he was particularly fond? What more natural
than that this young lady should wish to show her appreciation of
those songs by singing them? and who was to sing with her but he?
Sheila would have no suspicion of either; and so she came down next
morning determined to be very friendly with Mrs. Lorraine.

But that forenoon another thing occurred which nearly broke down
all her resolves.

“Sheila,” said her husband, I don’t think I ever
asked you whether you rode.”

“I used to ride many times at home,” she said.

“But I suppose you’d rather not ride here,” he said.
“Mrs. Lorraine and I propose to go out presently: you’ll be
able to amuse yourself somehow till we come back.”

Mrs. Lorraine had, indeed, gone to put on her habit, and her
mother was with her.

“I suppose I may go out,” said Sheila. “It is so
very dull in-doors, and Mrs. Kavanagh is afraid of the east wind, and
she is not going out.”

“Well, there’s no harm in your going out,” answered
Lavender, “but I should have thought you’d have liked the
comfort of watching the people pass, from the window.”

She said nothing, but went off to her own room and dressed to go
out. Why she knew not, but she felt she would rather not see her
husband and Mrs. Lorraine start from the hotel door. She stole down
stairs without going into the sitting-room, and then, going through
the great hall and down the steps, found herself free and alone in
Brighton.

It was a beautiful, bright, clear day, though the wind was a
trifle chilly, and all around her there was a sense of space and
light and motion in the shining skies, the far clouds and the heaving
[pg 282] and noisy sea. Yet she had none
of the gladness of heart with which she used to rush out of the house
at Borva to drink in the fresh, salt air and feel the sunlight on her
cheeks. She walked away, with her face wistful and pensive, along the
King’s road, scarcely seeing any of the people who passed her;
and the noise of the crowd and of the waves hummed in her ears in a
distant fashion, even as she walked along the wooden railing over the
beach. She stopped and watched some men putting off a heavy
fishing-boat, and she still stood and looked long after the boat was
launched. She would not confess to herself that she felt lonely and
miserable: it was the sight of the sea that was melancholy. It seemed
so different from the sea off Borva, that had always to her a
familiar and friendly look, even when it was raging and rushing
before a south-west wind. Here this sea looked vast and calm and sad,
and the sound of it was not pleasant to her ears, as was the sound of
the waves on the rocks at Borva. She walked on, in a blind and
unthinking fashion, until she had got far up the Parade, and could
see the long line of monotonous white cliff meeting the dull blue
plain of the waves until both disappeared in the horizon.

She returned to the King’s road a trifle tired, and sat down
on one of the benches there. The passing of the people would amuse
her; and now the pavement was thronged with a crowd of gayly-dressed
folks, and the centre of the thoroughfare brisk with the constant
going and coming of riders. She saw strange old women, painted,
powdered and bewigged in hideous imitation of youth, pounding up and
down the level street, and she wondered what wild hallucinations
possessed the brains of these poor creatures. She saw troops of
beautiful young girls, with flowing hair, clear eyes and bright
complexions, riding by, a goodly company, under charge of a
riding-mistress, and the world seemed to grow sweeter when they came
into view. But while she was vaguely gazing and wondering and
speculating her eyes were suddenly caught by two riders whose
appearance sent a throb to her heart. Frank Lavender rode well, so
did Mrs. Lorraine; and, though they were paying no particular
attention to the crowd of passers-by, they doubtless knew that they
could challenge criticism with an easy confidence. They were laughing
and talking to each other as they went rapidly by: neither of them
saw Sheila. The girl did not look after them. She rose and walked in
the other direction, with a greater pain at her heart than had been
there for many a day.

What was this crowd? Some dozen or so of people were standing
round a small girl, who, accompanied by a man, was playing a violin,
and playing it very well, too. But it was not the music that
attracted Sheila to the child, but partly that there was a look about
the timid, pretty face and the modest and honest eyes that reminded
her of little Ailasa, and partly because, just at this moment, her
heart seemed to be strangely sensitive and sympathetic. She took no
thought of the people looking on. She went forward to the edge of the
pavement, and found that the small girl and her companion were about
to go away. Sheila stopped the man.

“Will you let your little girl come with me into this
shop?”

It was a confectioner’s shop.

“We were going home to dinner,” said the man, while the
small girl looked up with wondering eyes.

“Will you let her have dinner with me, and you will come back
in half an hour?”

The man looked at the little girl: he seemed to be really fond of
her, and saw that she was very willing to go. Sheila took her hand
and led her into the confectioner’s shop, putting her violin on
one of the small marble tables while they sat down at another. She
was probably not aware that two or three idlers had followed them,
and were staring with might and main in at the door of the shop.

What could this child have thought of the beautiful and yet
sad-eyed lady who was so kind to her, who got her all sorts of things
with her own hands, and [pg 283] asked
her all manner of questions in a low, gentle and sweet voice? There
was not much in Sheila’s appearance to provoke fear or awe. The
little girl, shy at first, got to be a little more frank, and told
her hostess when she rose in the morning, how she practiced, the
number of hours they were out during the day, and many of the small
incidents of her daily life. She had been photographed too, and her
photograph was sold in one of the shops. She was very well content:
she liked playing, the people were kind to her, and she did not often
get tired.

“Then I shall see you often if I stay in Brighton?” said
Sheila.

“We go out every day when it does not rain very
hard.”

Perhaps some wet day you will come and see me, and you will have
some tea with me: would you like that?”

“Yes, very much,” said the small musician, looking up
frankly.

Just at this moment, the half hour having fully expired, the man
appeared at the door.

“Don’t hurry,” said Sheila to the little girl:
“sit still and drink out the lemonade; then I will give you some
little parcels which you must put in your pocket.”

She was about to rise to go to the counter when she suddenly met
the eyes of her husband, who was calmly staring at her. He had come
out, after their ride, with Mrs. Lorraine to have a stroll up and
down the pavements, and had, in looking in at the various shops,
caught sight of Sheila quietly having luncheon with this girl whom
she had picked up in the streets.

“Did you ever see the like of that?” he said to Mrs.
Lorraine. “In open day, with people staring in, and she has not
even taken the trouble to put the violin out of sight!”

“The poor child means no harm,” said his companion.

“Well, we must get her out of this somehow,” he said;
and so they entered the shop.

Sheila knew she was guilty the moment she met her husband’s
look, though she had never dreamed of it before. She had, indeed,
acted quite thoughtlessly—perhaps chiefly moved by a desire to
speak to some one and to befriend some one in her own loneliness.

“Hadn’t you better let this little girl go?” said
Lavender to Sheila somewhat coldly as soon as he had ordered an ice
for his companion.

“When she has finished her lemonade she will go,” said
Sheila meekly. “But I have to buy some things for her
first.”

“You have got a whole lot of people round the door,” he
said.

“It is very kind of the people to wait for her,”
answered Sheila with the same composure. “We have been here half
an hour. I suppose they will like her music very much.”

The little violinist was now taken to the counter, and her pockets
stuffed with packages of sugared fruits and other deadly delicacies:
then she was permitted to go with half a crown in her hand. Mrs.
Lorraine patted her shoulder in passing, and said she was a pretty
little thing.

They went home to luncheon. Nothing was said about the incident of
the forenoon, except that Lavender complained to Mrs. Kavanagh, in a
humorous way, that his wife had a most extraordinary fondness for
beggars, and that he never went home of an evening without expecting
to find her dining with the nearest scavenger and his family.
Lavender, indeed, was in an amiable frame of mind at this meal
(during the progress of which Sheila sat by the window, of course,
for she had already lunched in company with the tiny violinist), and
was bent on making himself as agreeable as possible to his two
companions. Their talk had drifted toward the wanderings of the two
ladies on the Continent; from that to the Niebelungen frescoes in
Munich; from that to the Niebelungen itself, and then, by easy
transition, to the ballads of Uhland and Heine. Lavender was in one
of his most impulsive and brilliant moods—gay and jocular,
tender and sympathetic by turns, and so obviously sincere in all
[pg 284] that his listeners were
delighted with his speeches and assertions and stories, and believed
them as implicitly as he did himself. Sheila, sitting at a distance,
saw and heard, and could not help recalling many an evening in the
far North when Lavender used to fascinate every one around him by the
infection of his warm and poetic enthusiasm. How he talked,
too—telling the stones of these quaint and pathetic ballads in
his own rough—and—ready translations—while there
was no self-consciousness in his face, but a thorough warmth of
earnestness; and sometimes, too, she would notice a quiver of the
under lip that she knew of old, when some pathetic point or phrase
had to be indicated rather than described. He was drawing pictures
for them as well as telling stories—of the three students
entering the room in which the landlady’s daughter lay
dead—of Barbarossa in his cave—of the child who used to
look up at Heine as he passed her in the street, awestricken by his
pale and strange face—of the last of the band of companions who
sat in the solitary room in which they had sat, and drank to their
memory—of the king of Thule, and the deserter from Strasburg,
and a thousand others.

“But is there any of them—is there anything in the
world—more pitiable than that pilgrimage to Kevlaar?” he
said. “You know it, of course. No? Oh, you must, surely.
Don’t you remember the mother who stood by the bedside of her
sick son, and asked him whether he would not rise to see the great
procession go by the window; and he tells her that he cannot, he is
so ill: his heart is breaking for thinking of his dead Gretchen?
You know the story, Sheila. The mother begs him to rise and
come with her, and they will join the band of pilgrims going to
Kevlaar, to be healed there of their wounds by the Mother of God.
Then you find them at Kevlaar, and all the maimed and the lame people
have come to the shrine; and whichever limb is diseased, they make a
waxen image of that and lay it on the altar, and then they are
healed. Well, the mother of this poor lad takes wax and forms a heart
out of it, and says to her son, ‘Take that to the Mother of God,
and she will heal your pain.’ Sighing, he takes the wax heart in
his hand, and, sighing, he goes to the shrine; and there, with tears
running down his face, he says, ‘O beautiful Queen of Heaven, I
am come to tell you my grief. I lived with my mother in Cologne: near
us lived Gretchen, who is dead now. Blessed Mary, I bring you this
wax heart: heal the wound in my heart.’ And then—and
then—”

Sheila saw his lip tremble. But he frowned, and said impatiently,
“What a shame it is to destroy such a beautiful story! You can
have no idea of it—of its simplicity and
tenderness—”

“But pray let us hear the rest of it,” said Mrs.
Lorraine gently.

“Well, the last scene, you know, is a small chamber, and the
mother and her sick son are asleep. The Blessed Mary glides into the
chamber and bends over the young man, and puts her hand lightly on
his heart. Then she smiles and disappears. The unhappy mother has
seen all this in a dream, and now she awakes, for the dogs are
barking loudly. The mother goes over to the bed of her son, and he is
dead, and the morning light touches his pale face. And then the
mother folds her hands, and says—”

He rose hastily with a gesture of fretfulness, and walked over to
the window at which Sheila sat and looked out. She put her hand up to
his: he took it.

“The next time I try to translate Heine,” he said,
making it appear that he had broken off through vexation,
“something strange will happen.”

“It is a beautiful story,” said Mrs. Lorraine, who had
herself been crying a little bit in a covert way: “I wonder I
have not seen a translation of it. Come, mamma, Lady Leveret said we
were not to be after four.”

So they rose and left, and Sheila was alone with her husband, and
still holding his hand. She looked up at him timidly, wondering,
perhaps, in her simple [pg 285] way, as
to whether she should not now pour out her heart to him, and tell him
all her griefs and fears and yearnings. He had obviously been deeply
moved by the story he had told so roughly: surely now was a good
opportunity of appealing to him, and begging for sympathy and
compassion.

“Frank,” she said, and she rose and came close, and bent
down her head to hide the color in her face.

“Well?” he answered a trifle coldly.

“You won’t be vexed with me,” she said in a low
voice, and with her heart beginning to beat rapidly.

“Vexed with you about what?” he said abruptly.

Alas! all her hopes had fled. She shrank from the cold stare with
which she knew he was regarding her. She felt it to be impossible
that she should place before him those confidences with which she had
approached him; and so, with a great effort, she merely said,
“Are we to go to Lady Leveret’s?”

“Of course we are,” he said, “unless you would
rather go and see some blind fiddler or beggar. It is really too bad
of you, Sheila, to be so forgetful: what if Lady Leveret, for
example, had come into that shop? It seems to me you are never
satisfied with meeting the people you ought to meet, but that you
must go and associate with all the wretched cripples and beggars you
can find. You should remember you are a woman, and not a
child—that people will talk about what you do if you go on in
this mad way. Do you ever see Mrs. Kavanagh or her daughter do any of
these things?”

Sheila had let go his hand: her eyes were still turned toward the
ground. She had fancied that a little of that emotion that had been
awakened in him by the story of the German mother and her son might
warm his heart toward herself, and render it possible for her to talk
to him frankly about all that she had been dimly thinking, and more
definitely suffering. She was mistaken: that was all.

“I will try to do better, and please you,” she said; and
then she went away.

CHAPTER XV.

A FRIEND IN NEED.

Was it a delusion that had grown up in the girl’s mind, and
now held full possession of it—that she was in a world with
which she had no sympathy, that she should never be able to find a
home there, that the influences of it were gradually and surely
stealing from her her husband’s love and confidence? Or was this
longing to get away from the people and the circumstances that
surrounded her but the unconscious promptings of an incipient
jealousy? She did not question her own mind closely on these points.
She only vaguely knew that she was miserable, and that she could not
tell her husband of the weight that pressed on her heart.

Here, too, as they drove along to have tea with a certain Lady
Leveret, who was one of Lavender’s especial patrons, and to whom
he had introduced Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, Sheila felt that
she was a stranger, an interloper, a “third wheel to the
cart.” She scarcely spoke a word. She looked at the sea, but she
had almost grown to regard that great plain of smooth water as a
melancholy and monotonous thing—not the bright and boisterous
sea of her youth, with its winding channels, its secret bays and
rocks, its salt winds and rushing waves. She was disappointed with
the perpetual wall of white cliff, where she had expected to see
something of the black and rugged shore of the North. She had as yet
made no acquaintance with the sea-life of the place: she did not know
where the curers lived; whether they gave the fishermen credit and
cheated them; whether the people about here made any use of the back
of the dog-fish, or could, in hard seasons, cook any of the
wild-fowl; what the ling and the cod and the skate fetched; where the
wives and daughters sat and spun and carded their wool; whether they
knew how to make a good dish of cockles boiled in milk. She smiled to
herself when she thought of asking Mrs. Lorraine about any such
things; but she still cherished some vague hope that before she left
Brighton she would have [pg 286] some
little chance of getting near to the sea and learning a little of the
sea-life down in the South.

And as they drove along the King’s road on this afternoon she
suddenly called out, “Look, Frank!”

On the steps of the Old Ship Hotel stood a small man with a brown
face, a brown beard and a beaver hat, who was calmly smoking a wooden
pipe, and looking at an old woman selling oranges in front of
him.

“It is Mr. Ingram,” said Sheila.

“Which is Mr. Ingram?” asked Mrs. Lorraine with
considerable interest, for she had often heard Lavender speak of his
friend. “Not that little man?”

“Yes,” said Lavender coldly: he could have wished that
Ingram had had some little more regard for appearances in so public a
place as the main thoroughfare of Brighton.

“Won’t you stop and speak to him?” said Sheila with
great surprise.

“We are late already,” said her husband. “But if
you would rather go back and speak to him than go on with us, you
may.”

Sheila said nothing more; and so they drove on to the end of the
Parade, where Lady Leveret held possession of a big white house with
pillars overlooking the broad street and the sea.

But next morning she said to him, “I suppose you will be
riding with Mrs. Lorraine this morning?”

“I suppose so.”

“I should like to go and see Mr. Ingram, if he is still
there,” she said.

“Ladies don’t generally call at hotels and ask to see
gentlemen; but of course you don’t care for that.”

“I shall not go if you do not wish me.”

“Oh, nonsense! You may as well go. What is the use of
professing to keep observances that you don’t understand? And it
will be some amusement for you, for I dare say both of you will
immediately go and ask some old cab-driver to have luncheon with you,
or buy a nosegay of flowers for his horse.”

The permission was not very gracious, but Sheila accepted it, and
very shortly after breakfast she changed her dress and went out. How
pleasant it was to know that she was going to see her old friend to
whom she could talk freely! The morning seemed to know of her
gladness, and to share in it, for there was a brisk southerly breeze
blowing fresh in from the sea, and the waves were leaping white in
the sunlight. There was no more sluggishness in the air or the gray
sky or the leaden plain of the sea. Sheila knew that the blood was
mantling in her cheeks; that her heart was full of joy; that her
whole frame so tingled with life and spirit that, had she been in
Borva, she would have challenged her deer-hound to a race, and fled
down the side of the hill with him to the small bay of white sand
below the house. She did not pause for a minute when she reached the
hotel. She went up the steps, opened the door and entered the square
hall. There was an odor of tobacco in the place, and several
gentlemen standing about rather confused her, for she had to glance
at them in looking for a waiter. Another minute would probably have
found her a trifle embarrassed, but that, just at this crisis, she
saw Ingram himself come out of a room with a cigarette in his hand.
He threw away the cigarette, and came forward to her with amazement
in his eyes.

“Where is Mr. Lavender? Has he gone into the smoking-room for
me?” he asked.

“He is not here,” said Sheila. “I have come for you
by myself.”

For a moment, too, Ingram felt the eyes of the men on him, but
directly he said with a fine air of carelessness, “Well, that is
very good of you. Shall we go out for a stroll until your husband
comes?”

So he opened the door and followed her outside into the fresh air
and the roar of the waves.

“Well, Sheila,” he said, “this is very good of you,
really: where is Mr. Lavender?”

“He generally rides with Mrs. Lorraine in the
morning.”

“And what do you do?”

“I sit at the window.”

“Don’t you go boating?”

“No, I have not been in a boat. They do not care for it. And
yesterday it was a letter to papa I was writing, and I could tell him
nothing about the people here or the fishing.”

“But you could not in any case, Sheila. I suppose you would
like to know what they pay for their lines, and how they dye their
wool, and so on; but you would find the fishermen here don’t live
in that way at all. They are all civilized, you know. They buy their
clothing in the shops. They never eat any sort of sea-weed, or dye
with it, either. However, I will tell you all about it by and by. At
present I suppose you are returning to your hotel.”

A quick look of pain and disappointment passed over her face as
she turned to him for a moment with something of entreaty in her
eyes.

“I came to see you,” she said. “But perhaps you
have an engagement. I do not wish to take up any of your time: if you
please I will go back alone to—”

“Now, Sheila,” he said with a smile, and with the old
friendly look she knew so well, “you must not talk like that to
me. I won’t have it. You know I came down to Brighton because you
asked me to come; and my time is altogether at your
service.”

“And you have no engagement just now?” said Sheila with
her face brightening.

“No.”

“And you will take me down to the shore to see the boats and
the nets? Or could we go out and run along the coast for a few miles?
It is a very good wind.”

“Oh, I should be very glad,” said Ingram slowly. “I
should be delighted. But, you see, wouldn’t your husband think
it—wouldn’t he, you know—wouldn’t it seem just a
little odd to him if you were to go away like that?”

“He is to go riding with Mrs. Lorraine,” said Sheila
quite simply. “He does not want me.”

“Of course you told him you were coming to see—you were
going to call at the Old Ship?”

“Yes. And I am sure he would not be surprised if I did not
return for a long time.”

“Are you quite sure, Sheila?”

“Yes, I am quite sure.”

“Very well. Now I shall tell you what I am going to do with
you. I shall first go and bribe some mercenary boatman to let us have
one of those small sailing boats committed to our own exclusive
charge. I shall constitute you skipper and pilot of the craft, and
hold you responsible for my safety. I shall smoke a pipe to prepare
me for whatever may befall.”

“Oh no,” said Sheila. “You must work very hard, and
I will see if you remember all that I taught you in the Lewis. And if
we can have some long lines, we might get some fish. Will they pay
more than thirty shillings for their long lines in this
country?”

“I don’t know,” said Ingram. “I believe most of
the fishermen here live upon the shillings they get from passers-by
after a little conversation about the weather and their hard lot in
life; so that one doesn’t talk to them more than one can
help.”

“But why do they need the money? Are there no fish?”

“I don’t know that, either. I suppose there is some good
fishing in the winter, and sometimes in the summer they get some big
shoals of mackerel.”

“It was a letter I had last week from the sister of one of
the men of the Nighean-dubh, and she will tell me that they have been
very lucky all through the last season, and it was near six thousand
ling they got.”

“But I suppose they are hopelessly in debt to some curer or
other up about Habost?”

“Oh no, not at all. It is their own boat: it is not hired to
them. And it is a very good boat whatever.”

That unlucky “whatever” had slipped out inadvertently:
the moment she had uttered it she blushed and looked timidly toward
her companion, fearing that he had noticed it. He had not. How could
she have made such a blunder? she asked herself. She had been most
particular about the avoidance of [pg
288] this word, even in the Lewis. The girl did not know that
from the moment she had left the steps of the Old Ship in company
with that good friend of hers she had unconsciously fallen into much
of her old pronunciation and her old habit of speech; while Ingram,
much more familiar with the Sheila of Borvabost and Loch Roag than
with the Sheila of Netting Hill and Kensington Gardens, did not
perceive the difference, but was mightily pleased to hear her talk in
any fashion whatsoever.

By fair means or foul, Ingram managed to secure a pretty little
sailing vessel which lay at anchor out near the New Pier, and when
the pecuniary negotiations were over Sheila was invited to walk down
over the loose stones of the beach and take command of the craft. The
boatman was still very doubtful. When he had pulled them out to the
boat, however, and put them on board, he speedily perceived that this
handsome young lady not only knew everything that had to be done in
the way of getting the small vessel ready, but had a very smart and
business-like way of doing it. It was very obvious that her companion
did not know half as much about the matter as she did; but he was
obedient and watchful, and presently they were ready to start. The
man put off in his boat to shore again much relieved in mind, but not
a little puzzled to understand where the young lady had picked up not
merely her knowledge of boats, but the ready way in which she put her
delicate hands to hard work, and the prompt and effectual fashion in
which she accomplished it.

“Shall I belay away the jib or reef the upper
hatchways?” Ingram called out to Sheila when they had fairly got
under way.

She did not answer for a moment: she was still watching with a
critical eye the manner in which the boat answered to her wishes; and
then, when everything promised well and she was quite satisfied, she
said, “If you will take my place for a moment and keep a good
lookout, I will put on my gloves.”

She surrendered the tiller and the mainsail sheets into his care,
and, with another glance ahead, pulled out her gloves.

“You did not use to fear the salt water or the sun on your
hands, Sheila,” said her companion.

“I do not now,” she said, “but Frank would be
displeased to see my hands brown. He has himself such pretty
hands.”

What Ingram thought about Frank Lavender’s delicate hands he
was not going to say to his wife; and indeed he was called upon at
this moment to let Sheila resume her post, which she did with an air
of great satisfaction and content.

And so they ran lightly through the curling and dashing water on
this brilliant day, caring little indeed for the great town that lay
away to leeward, with its shining terraces surmounted by a faint
cloud of smoke. Here all the roar of carriages and people was
unheard: the only sound that accompanied their talk was the splashing
of the waves at the prow and the hissing and gurgling of the water
along the boat. The south wind blew fresh and sweet around them,
filling the broad white sails and fluttering the small pennon up
there in the blue. It seemed strange to Sheila that she should be so
much alone with so great a town close by—that under the boom
she could catch a glimpse of the noisy Parade without hearing any of
its noise. And there, away to windward, there was no more trace of
city life—only the great blue sea, with its waves flowing on
toward them from out of the far horizon, and with here and there a
pale ship just appearing on the line where the sky and ocean met.

“Well, Sheila, how do you like being on the sea again?”
said Ingram, getting out his pipe.

“Oh, very well. But you must not smoke, Mr. Ingram: you must
attend to the boat.”

“Don’t you feel at home in her yet?” he asked.

“I am not afraid of her,” said Sheila, regarding the
lines of the small craft with the eye of a shipbuilder, “but she
[pg 289] is very narrow in the beam, and
she carries too much sail for so small a thing I suppose they have
not any squalls on this coast, where you have no hills and no narrows
to go through.”

“It doesn’t remind you of Lewis, does it?” he said,
filling his pipe all the same.

“A little—out there it does,” she said, turning to
the broad plain of the sea, “but it is not much that is in this
country that is like the Lewis: sometimes I think I shall be a
stranger when I go back to the Lewis, and the people will scarcely
know me, and everything will be changed.”

He looked at her for a second or two. Then he laid down his pipe,
which had not been lit, and said to her gravely, “I want you to
tell me, Sheila, why you have got into a habit lately of talking
about many things, and especially about your home in the North, in
that sad way. You did not do that when you came to London first; and
yet it was then that you might have been struck and shocked by the
difference. You had no home-sickness for a long time—But is it
home-sickness, Sheila?”

How was she to tell him? For an instant she was on the point of
giving him all her confidence; and then, somehow or other, it
occurred to her that she would be wronging her husband in seeking
such sympathy from a friend as she had been expecting, and expecting
in vain, from him.

“Perhaps it is home-sickness,” she said in a low voice,
while she pretended to be busy tightening up the mainsail sheet.
“I should like to see Borva again.”

“But you don’t want to live there all your life?” he
said. “You know that would be unreasonable, Sheila, even if your
husband could manage it; and I don’t suppose he can. Surely your
papa does not expect you to go and live in Lewis always?”

“Oh, no,” she said eagerly. “You must not think my
papa wishes anything like that. It will be much less than that he was
thinking of when he used to speak to Mr. Lavender about it. And I do
not wish to live in the Lewis always: I have no dislike to
London—none at all—only that—that—” And
here she paused.

“Come, Sheila,” he said in the old paternal way to which
she had been accustomed to yield up all her own wishes in the old
days of their friendship, “I want you to be frank with me, and
tell me what is the matter. I know there is something wrong: I have
seen it for some time back. Now, you know I took the responsibility
of your marriage on my shoulders, and I am responsible to you, and to
your papa and to myself, for your comfort and happiness. Do you
understand?”

She still hesitated, grateful in her in-most heart, but still
doubtful as to what she should do.

“You look on me as an intermeddler,” he said with a
smile.

“No, no,” she said: “you have always been our best
friend.”

“But I have intermeddled none the less. Don’t you
remember when I told you I was prepared to accept the
consequences?”

It seemed so long a time since then!

“And once having begun to intermeddle, I can’t stop,
don’t you see? Now, Sheila, you’ll be a good little girl and
do what I tell you. You’ll take the boat a long way out:
we’ll put her head round, take down the sails, and let her tumble
about and drift for a time, till you tell me all about your troubles,
and then we’ll see what can be done.”

She obeyed in silence, with her face grown grave enough in
anticipation of the coming disclosures. She knew that the first
plunge into them would be keenly painful to her, but there was a
feeling at her heart that, this penance over, a great relief would be
at hand. She trusted this man as she would have trusted her own
father. She knew that there was nothing on earth he would not attempt
if he fancied it would help her. And she knew, too, that having
experienced so much of his great unselfishness and kindness and
thoughtfulness, she was ready to obey him implicitly in anything that
he could assure her was right for her to do.

How far away seemed the white cliffs now, and the faint green
downs above them! Brighton, lying farther to the west, had become dim
and yellow, and over it a cloud of smoke lay thick and brown in the
sunlight. A mere streak showed the line of the King’s road and
all its carriages and people; the beach beneath could just be made
out by the white dots of the bathing-machines; the brown
fishing-boats seemed to be close in shore; the two piers were
fore-shortened into small dusky masses marking the beginning of the
sea. And then from these distant and faintly-defined objects out here
to the side of the small white-and-pink boat, that lay lightly in the
lapping water, stretched that great and moving network of waves, with
here and there a sharp gleam of white foam curling over amid the dark
blue-green.

Ingram took his seat by Sheila’s side, so that he should not
have to look in her downcast face; and then, with some little
preliminary nervousness and hesitation, the girl told her story. She
told it to sympathetic ears, and yet Ingram, having partly guessed
how matters stood, and anxious, perhaps, to know whether much of her
trouble might not be merely the result of fancies which could be
reasoned and explained away, was careful to avoid anything like
corroboration. He let her talk in her own simple and artless way; and
the girl spoke to him, after a little while, with an earnestness
which showed how deeply she felt her position. At the very outset she
told him that her love for her husband had never altered for a
moment—that all the prayer and desire of her heart was that
they two might be to each other as she had at one time hoped they
would be, when he got to know her better. She went over all the story
of her coming to London, of her first experiences there, of the
conviction that grew upon her that her husband was somehow
disappointed with her, and only anxious now that she should conform
to the ways and habits of the people with whom he associated. She
spoke of her efforts to obey his wishes, and how heartsick she was
with her failures, and of the dissatisfaction which he showed. She
spoke of the people to whom he devoted his life, of the way in which
he passed his time, and of the impossibility of her showing him, so
long as he thus remained apart from her, the love she had in her
heart for him, and the longing for sympathy which that love involved.
And then she came to the question of Mrs. Lorraine; and here it
seemed to Ingram she was trying at once to put her husband’s
conduct in the most favorable light, and to blame herself for her
unreasonableness. Mrs. Lorraine was a pleasant companion to him, she
could talk cleverly and brightly, she was pretty, and she knew a
large number of his friends. Sheila was anxious to show that it was
the most natural thing in the world that her husband, finding her so
out of communion with his ordinary surroundings, should make an
especial friend of this graceful and fascinating woman. And if at
times it hurt her to be left alone—But here the girl broke down
somewhat, and Ingram pretended not to know that she was crying.

These were strange things to be told to a man, and they were
difficult to answer. But out of these revelations—which rather
took the form of a cry than of any distinct statement—he formed
a notion of Sheila’s position sufficiently exact; and the more he
looked at it the more alarmed and pained he grew, for he knew more of
her than her husband did. He knew the latent force of character that
underlay all her submissive gentleness. He knew the keen sense of
pride her Highland birth had given her; and he feared what might
happen if this sensitive and proud heart of hers were driven into
rebellion by some—possibly unintentional—wrong. And this
high-spirited, fearless, honor-loving girl—who was gentle and
obedient, not through any timidity or limpness of character, but
because she considered it her duty to be gentle and
obedient—was to be cast aside and have her tenderest feelings
outraged and wounded for the sake of an unscrupulous, shallow-brained
woman of fashion, who was not fit to be Sheila’s waiting-maid.
Ingram [pg 291] had never seen Mrs.
Lorraine, but he had formed his own opinion of her. The opinion,
based upon nothing, was wholly wrong, but it served to increase, if
that were possible, his sympathy with Sheila, and his resolve to
interfere on her behalf at whatever cost.

“Sheila,” he said, gravely putting his hand on her
shoulder as if she were still the little girl who used to run wild
with him about the Borva rocks, “you are a good woman.”

He added to himself that Lavender knew little of the value of the
wife he had got, but he dared not say that to Sheila, who would
suffer no imputation against her husband to be uttered in her
presence, however true it might be, or however much she had cause to
know it to be true.

“And, after all,” he said in a lighter voice, “I
think I can do something to mend all this. I will say for Frank
Lavender that he is a thoroughly good fellow at heart, and that when
you appeal to him, and put things fairly before him, and show him
what he ought to do, there is not a more honorable and
straightforward man in the world. He has been forgetful, Sheila. He
has been led away by these people, you know, and has not been aware
of what you were suffering. When I put the matter before him, you
will see it will be all right; and I hope to persuade him to give up
this constant idling and take to his work, and have something to live
for. I wish you and I together could get him to go away from London
altogether—get him to take to serious landscape painting on
some wild coast—the Galway coast, for example.”

“Why not the Lewis?” said Sheila, her heart turning to
the North as naturally as the needle.

“Or the Lewis. And I should like you and him to live away
from hotels and luxuries, and all such things; and he would work all
day, and you would do the cooking in some small cottage you could
rent, you know.”

“You make me so happy in thinking of that,” she said,
with her eyes growing wet again.

“And why should he not do so? There is nothing romantic or
idyllic about it, but a good, wholesome, plain sort of life, that is
likely to make an honest painter of him, and bring both of you some
well-earned money. And you might have a boat like this.”

“We are drifting too far in,” said Sheila, suddenly
rising. “Shall we go back now?”

“By all means,” he said; and so the small boat was put
under canvas again, and was soon making way through the breezy
water.

“Well, all this seems simple enough, doesn’t it?”
said Ingram.

“Yes,” said the girl, with her face full of hope.

“And then, of course, when you are quite comfortable
together, and making heaps of money, you can turn round and abuse me,
and say I made all the mischief to begin with.”

“Did we do so before when you were very kind to us?” she
said in a low voice.

“Oh, but that was different. To interfere on behalf of two
young folks who are in love with each other is dangerous, but to
interfere between two people who are married—that is a certain
quarrel. I wonder what you will say when you are scolding me, Sheila,
and bidding me get out of the house? I have never heard you scold. Is
it Gaelic or English you prefer?”

“I prefer whichever can say the nicest things to my very good
friends, and tell them how grateful I am for their kindness to
me.”

“Ah, well, we’ll see.”

When they got back to shore it was half-past one.

“You will come and have some luncheon with us?” said
Sheila when they had gone up the steps and into the King’s
road.

“Will that lady be there?”

“Mrs. Lorraine? Yes.”

“Then I’ll come some other time.”

“But why not now?” said Sheila. “It is not
necessary that you will see us only to speak about those things we
have been talking over?”

“Oh no, not at all. If you and Mr. [pg
292] Lavender were by yourselves, I should come at
once.”

“And are you afraid of Mrs. Lorraine?” said Sheila with
a smile. “She is a very nice lady, indeed: you have no cause to
dislike her.”

“But I don’t want to meet her, Sheila, that is all,”
he said; and she knew well, by the precision of his manner, that
there was no use trying to persuade him further.

He walked along to the hotel with her, meeting a considerable
stream of fashionably-dressed folks on the way; and neither he nor
she seemed to remember that his costume—a blue pilot-jacket,
not a little worn and soiled with the salt water, and a beaver hat
that had seen a good deal of rough weather in the Highlands—was
a good deal more comfortable than elegant. He said to her, as he left
her at the hotel, “Would you mind telling Lavender I shall drop
in at half-past three, and that I expect to see him in the
coffee-room? I sha’n’t keep him five minutes.”

She looked at him for a moment, and he saw that she knew what this
appointment meant, for her eyes were full of gladness and gratitude.
He went away pleased at heart that she put so much trust in him. And
in this case he should be able to reward that confidence, for
Lavender was really a good sort of fellow, and would at once be sorry
for the wrong he had unintentionally done, and be only too anxious to
set it right. He ought to leave Brighton at once, and London too. He
ought to go away into the country or by the seaside, and begin
working hard, to earn money and self-respect at the same time; and
then, in this friendly solitude, he would get to know something about
Sheila’s character, and begin to perceive how much more valuable
were these genuine qualities of heart and mind than any social graces
such as might lighten up a dull drawing-room. Had Lavender yet learnt
to know the worth of an honest woman’s perfect love and
unquestioning devotion? Let these things be put before him, and he
would go and do the right thing, as he had many a time done before,
in obedience to the lecturing of his friend.

Ingram called at half-past three, and went into the coffee-room.
There was no one in the long, large room, and he sat down at one of
the small tables by the windows, from which a bit of lawn, the
King’s road and the sea beyond were visible. He had scarcely
taken his seat when Lavender came in.

“Hallo, Ingram! how are you?” he said in his freest and
friendliest way. “Won’t you come up stairs? Have you had
lunch? Why did you go to the Ship?”

“I always go to the Ship,” he said. “No, thank you,
I won’t go up stairs.”

“You are a most unsociable sort of brute?” said Lavender
frankly. “Will you take a glass of sherry?”

“No, thank you.”

“Will you have a game of billiards?”

“No, thank you. You don’t mean to say you would play
billiards on such a day as this?”

“It is a fine day, isn’t it?” said Lavender,
turning carelessly to look at the sunlit road and the blue sea.
“By the way, Sheila tells me you and she were out sailing this
morning. It must have been very pleasant, especially for her, for she
is mad about such things. What a curious girl she is, to be sure!
Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t know what you mean by curious,” said Ingram
coldly.

“Well, you know, strange—odd—unlike other people
in her ways and her fancies. Did I tell you about my aunt taking her
to see some friends of hers at Norwood? No? Well, Sheila had got out
of the house somehow (I suppose their talking did not interest her),
and when they went in search of her they found her in the cemetery
crying like a child.”

“What about?”

“Why,” said Lavender with a smile, “merely because
so many people had died. She had never seen anything like that
before: you know the small church-yards up in Lewis, with their
inscriptions in Norwegian and Danish and German. I suppose the first
sight of all the white stones at Norwood was too much for
her.”

“Well, I don’t see much of a joke in that,” said
Ingram.

“Who said there was any joke in it?” cried Lavender
impatiently. “I never knew such a cantankerous fellow as you
are. You are always fancying I am finding fault with Sheila; and I
never do anything of the kind. She is a very good girl indeed. I have
every reason to be satisfied with the way our marriage has turned
out.”

“Has she?”

The words were not important, but there was something in the tone
in which they were spoken that suddenly checked Frank Lavender’s
careless flow of speech. He looked at Ingram for a moment with some
surprise, and then he said, “What do you mean?”

“Well, I will tell you what I mean,” said Ingram slowly.
“It is an awkward thing for a man to interfere between husband
and wife, I am aware—he gets something else than thanks for his
pains ordinarily—but sometimes it has to be done, thanks or
kicks. Now, you know, Lavender, I had a good deal to do with helping
forward your marriage in the North; and I don’t remind you of
that to claim anything in the way of consideration, but to explain
why I think I am called on to speak to you now.”

Lavender was at once a little frightened and a little irritated.
He half guessed what might be coming from the slow and precise manner
in which Ingram talked. That form of speech had vexed him many a time
before, for he would rather have had any amount of wild contention
and bandying about of reproaches than the calm, unimpassioned and
sententious setting forth of his shortcomings to which this sallow
little man was perhaps too much addicted.

“I suppose Sheila has been complaining to you, then?”
said Lavender hotly.

“You may suppose what absurdities you like,” said Ingram
quietly; “but it would be a good deal better if you would listen
to me patiently, and deal in a common-sense fashion with what I have
got to say. It is nothing very desperate. Nothing has happened that
is not of easy remedy, while the remedy would leave you and her in a
much better position, both as regards your own estimation of
yourselves and the opinion of your friends.”

“You are a little roundabout, Ingram,” said Lavender,
“and ornate. But I suppose all lectures begin so. Go
on.”

Ingram laughed: “If I am too formal, it is because I
don’t want to make mischief by any exaggeration. Look here! A
long time before you were married I warned you that Sheila had very
keen and sensitive notions about the duties that people ought to
perform, about the dignity of labor, about the proper occupations of
a man, and so forth. These notions you may regard as romantic and
absurd, if you like, but you might as well try to change the color of
her eyes as attempt to alter any of her beliefs in that
direction.”

“And she thinks that I am idle and indolent because I
don’t care what a washerwoman pays for her candles?” said
Lavender with impetuous contempt. “Well, be it so. She is
welcome to her opinion. But if she is grieved at heart because I
can’t make hobnailed boots, it seems to me that she might as well
come and complain to myself, instead of going and detailing her
wrongs to a third person, and calling for his sympathy in the
character of an injured wife.”

For an instant the dark eyes of the man opposite him blazed with a
quick fire, for a sneer at Sheila was worse than an insult to
himself; but he kept quite calm, and said, “That, unfortunately,
is not what is troubling her.”

Lavender rose abruptly, took a turn up and down the empty room,
and said, “If there is anything the matter, I prefer to hear it
from herself. It is not respectful to me that she should call in a
third person to humor her whims and fancies.”

“Whims and fancies!” said Ingram, with that dark light
returning to his eyes. “Do you know what you are talking about?
Do you know that, while you are living on the charity of a woman you
despise, and dawdling about the skirts of a woman who laughs at you,
you are breaking the heart of a girl who has not her equal in
England? Whims [pg 294] and fancies!
Good God, I wonder how she ever could have—”

He stopped, but the mischief was done. These were not prudent
words to come from a man who wished to step in as a mediator between
husband and wife; but Ingram’s blaze of wrath, kindled by what he
considered the insufferable insolence of Lavender in thus speaking of
Sheila, had swept all notions of prudence before it. Lavender,
indeed, was much cooler than he was, and said, with an affectation of
carelessness, “I am sorry you should vex yourself so much about
Sheila. One would think you had had the ambition yourself, at some
time or other, to play the part of husband to her; and doubtless then
you would have made sure that all her idle fancies were gratified. As
it is, I was about to relieve you from the trouble of further
explanation by saying that I am quite competent to manage my own
affairs, and that if Sheila has any complaint to make she must make
it to me.”

Ingram rose, and was silent for a moment.

“Lavender,” he said, “it does not matter much
whether you and I quarrel—I was prepared for that, in any
case—but I ask you to give Sheila a chance of telling you what
I had intended to tell you.”

“Indeed, I shall do nothing of the sort. I never invite
confidences. When she wishes to tell me anything she knows I am ready
to listen. But I am quite satisfied with the position of affairs as
they are at present.”

“God help you, then!” said his friend, and went away,
scarcely daring to confess to himself how dark the future looked.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

ENGLISH COURT FESTIVITIES

Americans have an impression that the English think it a
considerable distinction to be presented at court. But the ceremony
of presentation has entirely ceased to have any social significance
in England. Any young gentleman who imagines that the door of English
society will be thrown open to him on the publication of his
appearance at a drawing-room had better save the expense of a dress
and carriage and stay at home. If a lady be ambitious of a social
success, the money which a robe will cost might be expended to equal
advantage anywhere else in London. However, a lady’s dress may be
worn again, and men may hire a court-suit for the day at a very small
cost. Your tailor, if you get a good deal of him, will patch you up
something tolerable for very little; so that sartorial expenses are
comparatively light. One can get for the afternoon a two-horse
brougham, with a coachman and footman, for a sum less than ten
dollars. Still, going to court costs something, and its only possible
advantage is that the spectacle is a fine and an interesting one. One
has therefore to consider whether the sight is worth the fee.

A presentation at court is of quite as little advantage to an
Englishman as to a foreigner coming to England. Almost anybody can be
presented, and of those who are precluded from presentation, a great
many occupy higher positions than many of those who have the
privilege of going to court. Any graduate of a university, any
clergyman, any officer in the army, is entitled to go. A merchant, an
attorney, even a barrister, cannot; and yet in England a barrister,
or, for that matter, a successful merchant, is apt to be a person of
more consequence than a curate or a poor [pg
295] soldier. The court has scarcely any social significance
in England. I once asked a young barrister if presentation would help
him in the least in making his way in society. He said, “Not a
bit.”

In England the position of everybody is so well fixed that people
cannot well change it by wishing it to be changed. Thus, for a poor
East London curate to go to court would simply make him ridiculous.
The parsons in the West End do present themselves, but there is no
part of the British empire where clergymen are of such slight
consequence as in the West End of London. The clergymen, as they file
in along with the gayly-accoutred young guards-men, have a meek and
gentle air which makes one feel that they had better have stayed
away. They do not look half defiant enough. No person who is not
already in such a position as to need no pushing could becomingly
make his appearance at court. I remember in Shropshire to have heard
a family who went down to London to be presented made the target for
the ridicule of the whole neighborhood.

On a visit to London some years ago the writer was presented in
the diplomatic circle, went to several of the drawing-rooms and
levees at Buckingham and St. James’s Palaces, and was invited to
the court balls and concerts. Invitations to the court festivities
are given only to those persons presented in the diplomatic circle.
It must be understood that there is at every court in Europe a select
and elegant and exclusive entrance, by which the diplomatists come
in. Along with them enter also the ministers of state and the
household officers of the Crown. The general circle, as it is called,
includes everybody else. Another entrance and staircase are provided
for it, and in that way all of British society, from a duke to a
half-pay captain, gains admittance to the sovereign. When one is in
the inside of Buckingham or St. James’s Palace the same
distinction exists. The room in which the members of the royal family
receive the public is occupied during the entire ceremony by the
diplomatic circle. Other persons, after bowing to the queen, pass
into an antechamber.

Though I say it is of but small social advantage to an Englishman
to be presented, yet undoubtedly the greatest people in the empire
attend court, and are to be seen at the ceremonials and festivities
at Buckingham and St. James’s Palaces. At present the queen holds
drawing-rooms and levees at Buckingham Palace, and the prince of
Wales at St. James’s Palace. The latter are attended only by
gentlemen, and, though not so grand as the queen’s, are
pleasanter. Trousers are allowed, instead of the knee-breeches and
stockings which must be worn at all court ceremonials where there are
ladies. At two o’clock—for the prince is very
punctual—the doors of the reception-room are thrown open, and
the diplomatists begin to file in. First come the ambassadors. It
must be remembered that there is a wide difference between an
ambassador and an envoy or minister plenipotentiary. The original
difference was that the ambassador was supposed, by a sort of
transubstantiation, to represent the person of his sovereign. He had
a right at any time to demand an audience with the king. An envoy
must see the foreign secretary. This, of course, has ceased to have
any practical significance in countries which have constitutions; and
no doubt a minister can at any time demand an interview of the
sovereign. It is still true, however, that an ambassador is
accredited to the king, while an envoy is accredited to the foreign
secretary. Practically, the difference is that an ambassador
represents a bigger country, has better pay, lives in a finer house,
and gives more parties and grander dinners. An ambassador has
precedence of everybody in the country in which he resides, except
the royal family.

There are five countries which send ambassadors to
England—Russia, France, Germany, Austria and Turkey. These
ambassadors enter the reception-room at the prince’s levee in the
order of seniority of residence. The Turkish [pg 296] ambassador, Musurus, who had been twenty
years in London, came first on the occasions I speak of, the others
following, I forget in what order. They were all persons of
distinguished appearance. One, in particular, was singularly wise and
dignified-looking, with an aspect which was either bland or severe,
one could scarcely say which. Another resembled strikingly the
typical diplomatist of romance, having a manner suave and infinitely
deferential, but oh! so under-handed and insidious and diabolical!
The duc de Broglie was the French ambassador in London at the time of
my visit, and of all the corps his person and countenance possessed
much the most distinction. His was a distinction of spirit and
intellect: the distinction of the other continental
“swells” was usually one of stomach and whiskers.

Behind each ambassador march the secretaries of the embassy. After
the ambassadors come the ministers. The whole diplomatic corps moves
from an anteroom into an apartment in which the prince of Wales
awaits them. The prince and several of his brothers, his cousins, the
duke of Cambridge and the prince of Teck, stand up in a row like an
old-fashioned spelling class. Next to the prince, on his right,
stands Viscount Sidney, the lord chamberlain, who calls off each
detachment as it approaches—”Austrian ambassador,”
“the Spanish minister,” “the United States
minister,” etc. The prince shakes hands with the head of the
embassy or mission, and bows to the secretaries. When the
diplomatists, cabinet ministers and household officers have all made
their bow, it is the turn of British society. The diplomatic circle,
and such as have the entree to it, remain in the room: the
Englishmen pass out. The lord chamberlain in a loud voice calls off
the name of each person as he appears, so that each comer is, as it
were, labeled and ticketed. The observer learns quite as much as if
the lord chamberlain was the verger and was showing off his
collection.

One may often guess the rank or importance of the courtier by the
manner of his reception. If he shakes hands with the prince, you may
know he is somebody—if he shakes hands with all five or six of
the princes, you may know he is a very great person. But if he gives
the princes a wide berth, bows hastily and glances furtively at them,
and runs by skittishly, then you may know that he is some half-pay
colonel or insignificant civil servant. Something, too, may be
inferred from the length of time the lord chamberlain takes to
decipher the name of the comer on the slip of paper which is handed
him. If he scans it long and hard, and holds it a good way from him
and says “Major Te—e—e—bosh—bow,”
then in a loud voice, “Major Tebow,” you will be safe in
thinking that Major Tebow is not one of the greatest of warriors or
largest of landed proprietors.

The ceremony lasts an hour and a half or two hours, and during the
whole of it the talk and hand-shaking among the diplomatists go on
very pleasantly. There is a great deal of esprit de corps
among them, and perfect equality. Attachés, secretaries and ministers
walk about through the room and exchange greetings. The ambassadors
are rather statelier: these do not mix themselves with the crowd of
diplomatists, but stand up apart, all five in a row, leaning against
the wall, chatting easily, looking quite like another row of princes,
a sort of after-glow of the royalties.

At all other court entertainments ladies are present. Of course
there are a great many very pretty ones, and their brilliant toilets
increase the magnificence of the spectacle. The queen’s levees
are very much longer than those of the prince of Wales. Then, at all
ceremonials where there are ladies, men are compelled to wear, as I
have said, silk stockings and knee-breeches, slippers and
shoe-buckles. One can support this costume in tolerable comfort in a
warm room, but in getting from the carriage to the door it is often
like walking knee-deep in a tub of cold water. A cold hall or a
draught from an open door will give very unpleasant sensations. In
many of the large rooms of the palaces [pg
297] huge fireplaces, with great logs of wood, roar behind
tall brass fenders. Once in front of one of these, the courtier who
isn’t a Scotchman feels as if he would never care to go away.
Fortunately, most of these ceremonials are in summer, but the first
of them come in February, and London is often cool well up into
June.

The ceremony of a presentation to the queen is quite the same as
that at a prince of Wales’s levee. The spelling-class of royal
ladies stand up in a rigid row. On the queen’s right is the lord
chamberlain, who reads off the names. Next to the queen, on her left,
is Alexandra, then the queen’s daughters and the Princess Mary of
Cambridge. Next to them stand the princes, and the whole is a phalanx
which stretches entirely across the room. Behind this line, drawn up
in battle array, stand three or four ranks of court ladies.

The act of presentation is very easy and simple.
Formerly—indeed, until within a few years—it must have
been a very perilous and important feat. The courtier (the term is
used inaccurately, but there is no noun to describe a person who goes
to court for a single time) was compelled to walk up a long room, and
to back, bowing, out of the queen’s presence. For ladies who had
trails to manage the ordeal must have been a trying one. Now it has
been made quite easy. There is but one point in which a presentation
to the queen differs from that already described at the prince of
Wales’s levee. You may turn your back to the prince, but after
bowing to the queen you step off into the crowd, still facing her.
There (if you have had the good luck to be presented in the
diplomatic circle) you may stand and watch a most interesting
pageant. To the young royalties, perhaps, it is not very amusing,
though they evidently have their little joke afterward over anything
unusual that occurs. It is natural enough that they should, of
course, and the fatigue which they sustain entitles them to all the
amusement they can get out of what must be to them a very monotonous
and familiar spectacle. There is plenty in it to occupy and interest
the man who sees it for the first or second time. You do not have to
ask “Who is this?” and “Who is that?” The lord
chamberlain announces each person as he or she appears. You hear the
most heroic and romantic names in English history as some
insignificant boy or wizened old woman appears to represent them.
They are not all, by any means, insignificant boys and wizened old
women. Many of the ladies are handsome enough to be well worth
looking at, whether their names be Percy or Stanhope or Brown or
Smith. The young slips of girls who come to be presented for the
first time, frightened and pale or flushed, one admires and feels a
sense of instinctive loyalty to.

The name of each is called out loudly by the lord chamberlain:
“The duchess of Fincastle,” “The countess of
Dorchester,” “Lady Arabella Darling on her marriage,”
etc. The ladies bow very low, and those to whom the queen gives her
hand to kiss nearly or quite touch their knee to the carpet. No act
of homage to the queen ever seems exaggerated, her behavior being so
modest and the sympathy with her so wide and sincere; but ladies very
nearly kneel in shaking hands with any member of the royal family,
not only at court, but elsewhere. It is not so strange-looking, the
kneeling to a royal lady, but to see a stately mother or some soft
maiden rendering such an act of homage to a chit of a boy or a gross
young gentleman impresses one unpleasantly. The curtsy of a lady to a
prince or princess is something between kneeling and that queer
genuflection one meets in the English agricultural districts: the
props of the boys and girls seem momentarily to be knocked away, and
they suddenly catch themselves in descending. It astonished me, I
remember, at a court party, to see one patrician young
woman—”divinely tall” I should describe her if her
decided chin and the evidently Roman turn of her nose and of her
character had not put divinity out of the question—shake hands
with a not very imposing young prince, and bend [pg 298] her regal knees into this curious and
sudden little cramp. I saw her, this adventurous maid, some days
afterward in a hansom cab (shade of her grandmother, think of it!),
directing with her imperious parasol the cabby to this and that shop.
It struck me she should have been a Roman damsel, and have driven a
chariot with three steeds abreast.

The levees and the drawing-rooms may be called the court
ceremonials. There are besides the court festivities, the balls and
concerts at Buckingham Palace. There are four or five of these given
in a season—two balls and two concerts. The balls are the
larger and less select, but much the more amusing. The ball-room of
the palace is a large rectangular apartment. At one end is the
orchestra—at the other a raised dais on which the royalties
sit. On each side, running the length of the hall, are three tiers of
benches, which are for ladies and such gentlemen as can get a seat.
The tiers on the left of the dais are for diplomatists. English
society has the tiers upon the other side. By ten the ball-room is
usually filled with people waiting for the appearance of the
royalties. The band strikes up, and the line of princes and
princesses advances down the long hall leading to the ball-room. The
queen and Prince Albert used formerly to preside at these balls. The
queen does not come now: the prince and princess of Wales take her
place.

First enters a line of gentlemen bearing long sticks. Behind them
come the princesses, bowing on each hand. The princess of Wales
advances first, with a naïve, faltering, hesitating step, a strange
and quite delicious blending of timidity and child-like confidence in
her manner. Then come, walking by twos, some daughters of the queen.
Then approaches the princess of Teck (Mary of Cambridge), a large and
very jolly-looking person, with vast good-nature and a profuse smile,
which she seems to throw all over everybody. A German duchess or two
follow her. The curtsies of these German princesses are indeed quite
wonderful. After entering the hall one of them will espy (such, I
suppose, is the fiction) some persons to whom she wishes to bow, and
she then proceeds to execute a performance of some minutes’
duration. Before curtsying, she stops and seems to “shy,”
and looks at the ladies as a frightened horse examines intently the
object which alarms him: she then sinks slowly backward almost to the
ground, and recovers herself with the same slowness. It would seem
that such a genuflection must be, of necessity, ridiculous. But it is
not so in the least: it is quite successful, and rather pleasing.
After the ladies come the prince of Wales and his suite. The
royalties then all go upon the stage, and after music the ball
begins.

There are two sets of dancers. The princes and princesses open the
ball with the diplomatists and some of the highest nobility on the
space just in front of the dais. The rest of the hall is occupied by
the other dancers, who later in the evening find their way into the
diplomatic set. The dancing in the quadrilles and Lancers is of a
rather stately and ceremonious sort. In waltz or galop the English
always dance the same step, the deux temps, and the aim of the
dancing couple is to go as much like a spinning-top as possible. They
make occasional efforts to introduce puzzling novelties like the
trois temps, the Boston dip, etc., but, I am glad to say,
without any success. The result is, that once having learned to dance
in England, you are safe.

The great hall during the waltz is a brilliant spectacle. There
are many beautiful women, the toilets are dazzling, and all the men
are “flaming in purple and gold.” There is every variety of
magnificent dress. Officers of a Russian body-guard are gold from
head to foot. Hungarians wear purple and fur-trimmed robes of dark
crimson of the utmost splendor. The young men of the Guards’
clubs in gold and scarlet coats, and in spurred boots which reach
above their knees, clank through the halls. Scotch lords sit about,
and exhibit legs of which they are justly proud. Here, with swinging
gait, wanders the queen’s piper, a sort of [pg 299] poet-laureate of the bagpipes, arrayed in
plaid and carrying upon his arm the soft, enchanting instrument to
the music of which, no doubt, the queen herself dances. The music of
the orchestra is perfect, and he must be a dull man who does not feel
the festivity, the buoyancy and the elation of the scene.

Besides the ball-room, many handsome apartments are thrown open,
through which people promenade; and if you will but push aside the
curtains there are balconies where one can look down, by moonlight,
on the lakes and fountains of the gardens, “the watery ways of
palaces.” I do not think the balconies are much occupied: they
are a trifle too romantic for British mammas. But there is plenty of
flirting in the halls and alcoves. One room I remember very
pleasantly, the refreshment-room, which was kept open during the
evening till supper-time. There one could get sandwiches, cold
coffee, champagne, sherry, etc., without having to hurry or be greedy
in the least. I can’t say so much for the supper, though by
waiting a little one could always get something. The princes went
first, then the diplomatists, and then everybody else. The jostling
was such that when young ladies asked for a plate of soup you wished
they had wanted ham and chicken. A young American, I think, would
very much dislike to go up to a table and eat a solitary supper with
ladies looking on, and young and pretty ones, too. But I have seen a
young guardsman, with an enormous helmet and boots as big as himself,
stand up at the table and “solitary and alone” work his
jaws with such effect as to shake and set trembling the whole of his
paraphernalia. Behind him pressed other hungry courtiers, whom his
gigantic helmet shut out from even the possibility of supper, and who
revenged themselves by sarcastic congratulations aside upon the
length and heartiness of his meal.

“Concert” is an expression which to a hungry man has a
strong suggestion of tea and maccaroons. But a court concert gives
you such a supper as only a night’s dancing is ordinarily
supposed to entitle you to. The concerts are given in the ball-room
of the palace, and are much more select than the balls. The royalties
occupy very slight gilt chairs placed just before the orchestra.
There they sit with grace and an appearance of comfort through the
whole of it, while happier and humbler mortals may walk about and
whisper, or seek the refreshment-room, or look at the pictures. They
have very good music, the best singers are provided, and some pretty
familiar songs, like “Home, sweet home,” are sung.

Before the royalties lead the way to supper they step forward to
the bar which divides the orchestra from the audience and say a few
civil things to each of the prominent artists, who in their turn bow
and look very much delighted. I wonder that singers who are almost
queens when they come to American cities, who have here any amount of
praise and attention entirely free from patronage, and who even in
European capitals may have excellent society, should be willing to
put themselves in such a position. While the social status of musical
artists has not been raised relatively in the last quarter of a
century, and while that of the theatrical profession has been indeed,
in London at least, relatively lowered, reason is gradually curing
the old societies of Europe of many of their savage and silly
notions. The cord stretched between the guests and the performers
used to be a feature of musical entertainments at private houses.
Grisi went once to sing at a concert given by the duke of Wellington
at his country-seat. The old man asked her when she would dine.
“Oh, when you do,” she said. He saw her mistake and did not
correct it; so it happened that she dined at the same table with the
guests, and the incident, it is said, excited considerable horror
among people of the old sort. Think how barbarous, how savage, how
utterly uncivilized, is such an instinct! Women, of course, persecute
each other, but it seems inconceivable that a man and a gentleman
could have entertained such a sentiment.

Of course, a supper at a concert is just the same as at a ball,
only there are fewer people and more leisure. The prince of Wales,
and to a less degree the other royalties, move among the throng and
make a point of speaking to any one to whom they wish to be civil.
“The Prince,” as he is commonly called, takes advantage of
the suppers at balls and parties to make himself agreeable. The rule
is, let me remind the reader, to wait until the prince addresses you
before speaking, and to wait also for him, when in conversation, to
turn away: it would be considered very rude to terminate the
interview yourself. A subject in talking with the prince is always
expected to call him “Sir.” The queen is addressed as
“Ma’am.” It is not understood in this country that to
call a man “sir” is a confession of your inferiority to
him. But it is so in England, and the fact illustrates the strong
hold these absurd and uncomfortable egotisms have upon the British
mind. No gentleman in England says “sir” to another, unless
it be a very young person to an old one. [A] A subordinate in an
office might “sir” a superior, but he would not
“sir” a man of the same rank as his superior with whom he
had no connection. “Sir” is the term applied by any
Englishman of whatever rank to a member of the royal family. Our
committees, when princes visit America, usually address them in notes
as “Your Royal Highness.” But “Your Royal
Highness” is not a vocative: it can be used only in the third
person. However, the princes are then in America, and perhaps we are
under no obligation to know everything of their ways at home. Should
the reader ever meet a prince in that prince’s country, I should
advise him to do just as other people do there. He will probably
question, and not unreasonably, if he should accept the implied
inferiority; but the best of all principles for extempore action is
to do what seems the usual thing, unless we have previously decided
from mature consideration to do the unusual thing. It is not the
prince’s fault that he is a prince: he means to be civil to you,
and you can do no good by making him and yourself uncomfortable.
Indeed, a truculent person does not succeed in asserting his
equality. The prince has been so long in that kind of life that he
probably has thought through the mistake under which the republican
stranger is laboring, and considers him a goose. Moreover, an
American may reflect that he will probably have very little in life
to do with princes, and that his interview with a prince has been an
“experience.” It would be about as foolish to assert
one’s dignity with the Mammoth Cave or the Matterhorn. ¹

Besides these balls and concerts there are yet the queen’s and
prince of Wales’s breakfasts or garden-parties, which come off
about 3 P.M. These are the most exclusive and unattainable of all the
court entertainments. There are two or three of these in a season,
and out of all London society only a couple of hundred are invited.
There are certain persons who are always invited, and others who are
eligible and are invited occasionally. A large part of the diplomatic
corps are always present. Each ambassador or minister, with one or
two secretaries of legation, is invariably among the guests; but a
queen’s breakfast is the highest point which a secretary of
legation can touch. No secretary ever dines with the queen: the
minister himself only goes once a year, and he “not without
shedding of blood.”

The dress worn by gentlemen at these breakfasts is a curious one,
and anything but pretty: it consists of a dress-coat and light
trousers. The dress which our diplomatic representatives are now
compelled to wear at the other court ceremonies and festivities needs
a word of mention. Our people in America are somewhat conceited,
somewhat prone to be confident, upon questions of which they know
very little. Congress, at a [pg 301]
distance of many thousand miles from courts, thought itself competent
to decide what sort of court dress an American diplomatist should
wear. An able though crotchety man brought forward a measure, and,
once proposed, it was certain to go through, because to oppose its
passage would have been to be aristocratic and un-American. Mr.
Sumner’s bill required Americans to go in the “ordinary
dress of an American citizen.” There was no attempt to indicate
what that should be. Up to that time our diplomatists had worn the
uniform used by the non-military diplomatists of other countries.
This consists of a blue coat with more or less gold upon it, white
breeches, silk stockings, sword and chapeau.

An attempt or two had been made before by the State Department to
interfere with the trappings of its servants abroad. Marcy issued a
circular requesting American diplomatists to go to court without
uniform. This afforded James Buchanan an opportunity of making one of
the best speeches attributed to him. The circular of Mr. Marcy threw
consternation into the breasts of certain ancient functionaries of
the European courts, for shortly after its appearance the lord high
fiddlestick in waiting called upon Mr. Buchanan, who was then the
United States minister in London, and said that a certain very
distinguished person had heard of the recent wish which the American
government had expressed with regard to the costume of its agents,
and that while she would be happy to see Mr. Buchanan in any dress in
which he might choose to present himself, she yet hoped he would so
far consult her wishes as to consent to carry a sword. “Tell
that very distinguished personage,” said Mr. Buchanan,
“that not only will I wear a sword, as she requests, but, should
occasion require it, will hold myself ready to draw it in her
defence.” This strikes me as in just that tone of respectful
exaggeration and playful acquiescence which a gentleman in this
country may very becomingly take toward the whole question. Neither
Mr. Buchanan nor any one else, I believe, heeded the request of the
Department, and Mr. Marcy himself, it is said, subsequently
repudiated it.

But what was only a request of the State Department in Mr.
Marcy’s time is now a law. I had good opportunities to observe
how very uncomfortable our poor diplomatists were made by this piece
of legislation. Its object was, of course, to give them a very
unpretending and subdued appearance. The result is, that with the
exception of Bengalese nabobs, the son of the mikado of Japan, and
the khan of Khiva, the American legations are the most noticeable
people at any court ceremony or festivity in Europe. When everybody
else is flaming in purple and gold the ordinary diplomatic uniform is
exceedingly simple and modest; but the Yankee diplomats are the most
scrutinized and conspicuous persons to be seen. One of the
secretaries said to me: “I am afraid to wander off by myself
among these ladies: they inspect me as the maids of honor in the
palace of Brobdingnag did Gulliver. I feel toward Columbia as a cruel
mother who won’t dress me like these other little boys.” It
would require more than ordinary courage to attempt to dance in this
rig. I should think that our representatives would huddle together in
the most unconspicuous portion of a room, and never leave it. Said
the secretary above quoted: “I always feel here that I am of
some use to my chief: I am one more pair of legs with which to divide
the gaze of British society.”

The dress in which our diplomats attend court at present is a
plain dress-coat and vest, with knee-breeches, black silk stockings,
slippers, etc. It is difficult to see in what sense this is the
“ordinary dress of an American citizen.” The dress is not
so ugly as it would seem to be; indeed, with the help of a white vest
and liberal watch-chain, it might be made quite becoming were it not
so excessively conspicuous. An English cabinet minister at a party
given in his own house usually wears it, and all persons invited to
the Empress Eugenie’s private parties came got up in [pg 302] that manner. But in London it was not till
recently that American diplomatists were allowed to go to court even
thus attired. Everywhere else in Europe the legations were admitted
in evening dress, the concession of knee-breeches not having been
required. But at Buckingham Palace there are two or three very old
men who were courtiers when Queen Victoria was a baby, and who still
control the court etiquette. These aged functionaries, who can very
well remember Waterloo, and whose fathers remembered the American
Revolution, put down their foot, and would admit no Americans without
the proper garments. The consequence was, that our legation was
compelled to stay at home. This state of things continued until
Reverdy Johnson came out, who arranged what was called “the
Breeches Protocol.” Owing to the unreasonable state of the
public mind during his term of office, this was the only measure
which that good and able man succeeded in accomplishing. The
compromise which Mr. Johnson’s good-humor and the friendly
impulse of the British public toward us at that time wrung from these
ancient chamberlains and gold-sticks (for you may say what you will,
public opinion is irresistible), was to allow the minister and the
two secretaries of legation to appear in the breeches above
described. Americans who are presented at court, and who get
invitations to the festivities, are all required to wear a court
dress. Of what good compelling the poor diplomatists to make
scarecrows of themselves may be I do not know. Mr. Sumner’s
proposition was just one of those absurdities to which men are liable
who have considerable conscience and no sense of humor. Senators and
Congressmen fell in with it because they feared to be un-American,
and because it is not their wont to be very dignified or (in matters
of this sort) very scrupulous.

Footnote 1: (return)

[The rule, more correctly stated, is, that “sir” is
never used except to indicate a difference of age or position so
great as to forbid familiarity or to be incompatible with social
equality. It may be employed by the elder in addressing the
younger, and by the superior in addressing the inferior, as well as
vice versa. Hence the saying, in English society, that only
princes and servants are spoken to as “sir.”]

RAMBLES
AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

An Arab vessel from Bombay, touching at Singapore on her way to
Bangkok, afforded us an opportunity we had been longing for to visit
the most splendid of Oriental cities.

Dining at the house of the Malayan rajah, we chanced to meet the
nárcodah (supercargo), who was also the owner, of the Futtel
Barrie. He was a handsome, courtly, and intelligent Arab, glad always
to mingle with Europeans; and in response to our inquiry whether he
had room for passengers, he proffered us a free ticket to and from
Bangkok, with the use of his own cabin. We must be on board the next
day at noon, he said, and it was already verging toward sunset; so we
had small time for preparation. But with the migratory habits of
Oriental tourists it was easy to throw together a few indispensables;
and we were set down on the Barrie’s quarterdeck, portmanteaus,
sketch-books, specimen-baskets and all, before the anchor was
weighed.

The monsoon was favorable, and seven days’ sail brought us to
the river’s mouth, and a pull thence of thirty miles in the
nárcodah’s boat to the “city of kings.”

Siam is verily the queen of the tropics in regard to the
abundance, variety and unequaled lusciousness of her fruits. Here are
found those of China, greatly enriched in tint and flavor by being
transplanted to this warmer climate; and those of Western Asia, in
this fruitful soil far more productive than in the [pg 303] sterile regions of Persia and Arabia; while
numberless varieties from the Malayan and Indian archipelagoes,
united with the host of those indigenous to the country, complete a
list of some two hundred or more species of edible fruits. In this
clime of perennial freshness trees bear nearly the year round, and so
productive is the soil that the annual produce is almost incredible.
The tax on orchards alone yields to the Crown a revenue of some five
millions of dollars per annum, as I was informed by the late
“second king” of Siam. It is not unusual to find on a
single branch the bud and blossom, together with fruit in several
different stages. Thus, at the merest trifle of expense a table may
be supplied during the entire year with forty or fifty specimens of
fresh, ripe fruit. Among these are many varieties of oranges and
pineapples, pumeloes, shaddocks, pawpaws, guavas, bananas, plantains,
durians, jack-fruit, melons, grapes, mangoes, cocoa-nuts,
pomegranates, soursaps, linchies, custard-apples, breadfruit,
cassew-nuts, plums, tamarinds, mangosteens, rambustans, and scores of
others for which we have no names in our language. Tropical fruits
are generally juicy, sweet with a slight admixture of acid, luscious,
and peculiarly agreeable in a warm climate; and when partaken of with
temperance and due regard to quality they are highly promotive of
health. For this reason Booddhists regard the destruction of a fruit
tree as quite an act of sacrilege, and their sacred books pronounce a
heavy malediction on those who wantonly commit so great a crime. One
who has tasted the fruits of the tropics only at a distance from the
soil that produces them can form no conception of the real flavor of
plums and grapes that never felt the frosty atmosphere of our
northern clime; of oranges plucked ripe from the fragrant stem and
eaten fresh while the morning dew still glitters on their
golden-tinted cheeks; of the rare, rosy pomegranate juice, luscious
as nectar.

After eating the fruits of all climes, I place the mangosteen at
the head of the list as absolutely perfect in flavor and fragrance.
The fruit is spherical in form, about the size of a small orange, of
a rich crimson-purple hue without, and filled with a succulent,
half-transparent pulp that melts in the mouth. There are three
species of the mangosteen tree, but of only one, the Garania
mangostina, is the fruit edible. The others are valuable for
timber, and the bark for the manufacture of a dye that resists the
attacks of every sort of insect.

Next to the mangosteen I should name the custard-apple (Anona
squamosa), a rich and delicate fruit of the form and dimensions
of a medium-sized quince, but made up of lesser cones, each with its
apex directed toward the centre, and each containing a smooth black
seed. The pulp is pure white, about the consistency of a baked
custard, and in flavor very like strawberries and cream.

The delicious soursap is very similar to the custard-apple, but of
larger size and slightly acid in taste. The bearded, rosy rambustan
(Nephelium lappaceum) looks like a mammoth strawberry, but
when the outer hairy covering has been removed a semi-transparent
pulp is revealed, in taste so similar to our best Malaga grapes that
a blind man would be unable to distinguish them.

Pineapples are good and abundant all over South-eastern Asia, but
are in their perfection at Singapore and Malacca, weighing frequently
four pounds or more. Passing, one warm afternoon, along the Singapore
bazaar, I noticed a Chinese fruit-dealer who had among other
delicacies outspread before him the largest and finest pineapples I
had ever seen. As I inquired the price, the Celestial, after a long
harangue on the extraordinary excellence of his wares, and the
trouble he had taken to obtain them, expressed a hope that he should
not be considered extortionate in selling them so very high, the
price demanded for a whole four-pound pineapple, peeled, sliced, and
ready for eating, being the equivalent of half a cent! The ordinary,
medium-sized fruit could be purchased, he knew, at one-fifth of that
sum, and his conscience, no doubt, was chiding him for
extortion.

One of the most singular-looking fruits is the jack-fruit
(Artocarpus integrifolia), growing in all its immensity of
thirty or forty pounds weight directly out of the largest branches or
on the stem of the huge tree. Externally, it has a rough, pale-green
coat: internally, it has a luscious, golden-hued pulp, in which are
embedded a dozen or more smooth, oval seeds about the size of large
chestnuts, which they strikingly resemble in flavor.

The mango (Mangifera Indica) is a drupe of the plum kind,
four or five inches long, and three at least in diameter.
Greenish-colored outside, and not very inviting, you are most
agreeably surprised at the rare, rich flavor of the bright yellow
pulp that adheres like the clinging peach to a large flat seed.

The gamboge tree (Stalagmitis Cambogioides) grows
luxuriantly in Siam, and also in Ceylon. It has small narrow, pointed
leaves, a yellow flower, and an oblong, golden-colored fruit. Even
the stem has a yellow bark, like the gamboge it produces. The drug is
obtained by wounding the bark of the tree, and also from the leaves
and young shoots. The natives say that they have sold it to white
foreigners for hundreds of years past; and we know it was introduced
into Europe early in the seventeenth century.

The plantain (Musa paradisaica) is one of the best gifts of
Providence to the teeming multitudes of tropical lands, living, as
many of them do, without stated homes, and gathering food and drink
as they find them on the roadside and in the jungle. Under a friendly
palm the simple peasants find needed shelter from the sun by day and
the dews by night, while a bunch of plantains or bananas plucked
fresh from the tree will furnish an abundant meal, and the water of a
green cocoa-nut all the drink they desire. The plantain tree grows to
about twenty feet in height, its round, soft stem being composed of
the elongated foot-stalks of the leaves, and its cone of a nodding
flower-spike or cluster of purple blossoms that are very graceful and
beautiful. Like the palms, this tree has no branches, but its smooth,
glossy leaves are from six to eight feet in length and two or more in
breadth. At the root of a leaf a double row of fruit comes out half
around the stalk; the stem then elongates a few inches, and another
leaf is deflected, revealing another double row; and so on, till
there come to be some thirty rows containing about two hundred
plantains, weighing in all sixty or seventy pounds. This mammoth
bunch is the sole product of the tree for the time: after the fruit
is plucked the stalk is cut down, and another shoots up from the same
root; and it is thus constantly renewed for many successive years.
The incalculable blessing of such a tree in regions where the
intolerable heat renders all labor oppressive may be conceived from
the estimate of Humboldt, who reckons the surface of ground needed to
the production of four thousand pounds of ripe plantains to suffice
for the raising of only thirty-three pounds of wheat or ninety-nine
pounds of potatoes. What would induce the indolent East Indian to
make the exchange of crops?

The cassew-nut (Anacardium occidentale) is remarkable as
the only known fruit of which the seed grows on the outside. A
full-grown tree is twenty feet high, with graceful form and
widespread branches. The leaves are oval, and the beautiful crimson
flowers grow in clusters. The fruit is pear-shaped, of a purplish
color outside and bright yellow within; and the seed, which is in the
form of a crescent, looks just as if it had been stuck on the bur
end, instead of growing there. When roasted the kernels are not
unlike a very fine chestnut.

The guava (Psidium pomiferum), of which the noted Indian
jelly is made, is about the size and shape of our sugar
pears—pale, yellowish-green externally, and revealing, when
opened, a soft, rose-colored pulp studded with tiny seeds. Both taste
and odor are very peculiar, and are seldom liked by foreigners till
after long use.

The tamarind tree (Tamarindus Indicus), [pg 305] a huge growth, with trunk a hundred feet
tall and fifteen or more in circumference, has branches extending
widely, and a dense foliage of bright green composite leaves, very
nearly resembling those of the sensitive plant. The flowers, growing
in clusters, are exquisite, of a rich golden tint veined with red;
while the fruit hangs pendent, like bean-pods strung all over the
branches of the mammoth tree. The diminutive leaves, blossoms and
fruit are so singularly opposed to the stately growth as to appear
almost ludicrous, yet the tout ensemble is “a thing of
beauty” never to be forgotten.

It remained for us, on our return to Singapore, to see the spice
plantations, with the beautiful clove and nutmeg trees, about which
every new-comer goes into ecstasies. Mr. Princeps’ estate, one of
the largest and finest on the island, occupies two hundred and fifty
acres, including three picturesque hills—Mount Sophia, Mount
Emily and Mount Caroline, each surmounted by a pretty
bungalow—and from these avenues radiate, intersecting every
portion of the plantation. Here were planted some five thousand
nutmeg trees, and perhaps a thousand of the clove, besides coffee
trees, palms, etc. The nutmeg is an evergreen of great beauty,
conical in shape, and from twenty to twenty-five feet in height, the
branches thickly decorated with polished, deep-green foliage rising
from the ground to the summit. Almost hidden among these emerald
leaves grows the pear-shaped fruit. As it ripens the yellow external
tegument opens, revealing the dark-red mace, that is closely
enwrapped about a thin black shell. This, in turn, encloses a
fragrant kernel, the nutmeg of commerce. Both leaf and blossom are
marked by the same aromatic perfume that distinguishes the fruit.

The clove tree, though somewhat smaller than the nutmeg, is quite
similar in appearance, and, if possible, even more graceful and
beautiful. The leaves are shaped like a lance, the blossoms pure
white and deliciously fragrant, and they cluster thickly on every
branch and twig almost to the summit of the tree. The
cloves—”spice nails,” as they are often
called—are not a fruit, but undeveloped buds, the stem being
the calyx, and the head the folded petals. Their dark color, as we
see them, is due to the smoking process through which they pass in
curing. The clove is a native of the Moluccas, and has been
transplanted to many parts of the East Indies; but nowhere, not even
in its picturesque Faderland, does it thrive better than in
Singapore, Pulo Penang and other islands of the Malayan
Archipelago.

One singular-looking fruit that I saw in China I must not forget
to mention—the flat peach, called by the Chinese ping
taou, or “peach cake.” It has the appearance of having
been flattened by pressure at the head and stalk, being something
less than three-fourths of an inch through the centre from eye to
stem, and consisting wholly of the stone and skin; while the sides,
which swell around the centre, are only an eighth of an inch in
thickness. Its transverse diameter is about two and a half
inches.

The camphor tree (Laurus camphora) grows abundantly in
China and Japan, producing a very large proportion of the gum that
supplies the markets of Europe and our own country, as well as the
trunks and chests so universally esteemed as protectives against the
ravages of moths and the still more destructive white ant of the
tropics. This tree grows to the height of twenty feet, with a
circumference of about eighteen, and has luxuriant branches from
seven to nine feet in girth. In obtaining the gum, freshly-gathered
branches are cut in small pieces, and steeped in water for several
days, after which they are boiled, the liquid being constantly
stirred until the gum, in the form of a white jelly, begins to
appear, when the whole is poured into a glazed vessel, and becomes
concreted in cooling. It is afterward purified by means of
sublimation, the gum attaching itself to a conical cover placed over
the boiling liquid while at its greatest heat. There is another
species of camphor tree (Dryobalanops camphora) growing in
Borneo; and a single tree is found on the island of [pg 306] Sumatra, a very giant in dimensions, even
amid the huge growth of those dense forests. The gum yielded by this
species is found occupying portions of about a foot or a foot and a
half in the heart of the tree. The Malays and Bugis make a deep
incision in the trunk about fifteen inches from the ground with a
b’ling or Malayan axe, in order to ascertain whether the
gum is there; and when it is found the tree is felled and the
impregnated portion carefully extracted. The same tree, while young,
yields a liquid oily matter that has nearly the same properties as
the camphor, and is supposed to be the first stage of its formation.
Some eight China catties (eleven pounds) of this oil may be obtained
from a medium-sized tree, which, after having been cut off for the
purpose of abstracting the oil, will, if left standing for a few
years, produce abundantly an inferior article of camphor.

In British India we saw whole fields of the opium poppy, stately,
beautiful plants four or five feet high, the stem of a sea-green
color, round, erect and smooth, and the gay blooms of ripe crimson
hue. The plant is an annual, the seed being sown in autumn and the
crop gathered in August. After the flowers have fallen circular
incisions are made close around the capsules of the plant, and from
these wounds exudes a white, milky juice, that is afterward concreted
by the heat of the sun into dark-brown masses. These constitute the
opium of commerce in its crude state; but to prepare it for smoking
the Chinese take it through quite a complicated process, boiling,
purifying and condensing till it assumes the appearance of a thick
gelatinous paste of a purplish-black color.

The habit of opium-smoking is unquestionably the direst curse
under which vast, populous China groans. One who has never visited an
opium shop can have no conception of the fatal fascination that holds
its victims fast bound—mind, heart, soul and conscience, all
absolutely dead to every impulse but the insatiable, ever-increasing
thirst for the damning poison. I entered one of these dens but once,
but I can never forget the terrible sights and sounds of that
“place of torment.” The apartment was spacious, and might
have been pleasant but for its foul odors and still fouler scenes of
unutterable woe—the footprints of sin trodden deep in the
furrows of those haggard faces and emaciated forms. On all four sides
of the room were couches placed thickly against the walls, and others
were scattered over the apartment wherever there was room for them.
On each of these lay extended the wreck of what was once a man. Some
few were old—all were hollow-eyed, with sunken cheeks and
cadaverous countenances; many were clothed in rags, having probably
smoked away their last dollar; while others were offering to pawn
their only decent garment for an additional dose of the deadly drug.
A decrepit old man raised himself as we entered, drew a long sigh,
and then with a half-uttered imprecation on his own folly proceeded
to refill his pipe. This he did by scraping off, with a five-inch
steel needle, some opium from the lid of a tiny shell box, rolling
the paste into a pill, and then, after heating it in the blaze of a
lamp, depositing it within the small aperture of his pipe. Several
short whiffs followed; then the smoker would remove the pipe from his
mouth and lie back motionless; then replace the pipe, and with
fast-glazing eyes blow the smoke slowly through his pallid nostrils.
As the narcotic effects of the opium began to work he fell back on
the couch in a state of silly stupefaction that was alike pitiable
and disgusting. Another smoker, a mere youth, lay with face buried in
his hands, and as he lifted his head there was a look of despair such
as I have seldom seen. Though so young, he was a complete wreck, with
hollow eyes, sunken chest and a nervous twitching in every muscle. I
spoke to him, and learned that six months before he had lost his
whole patrimony by gambling, and came hither to quaff forgetfulness
from these Lethean cups; hoping, he said, to find death as well as
oblivion. By far the larger proportion of the smokers were so
entirely under the [pg 307] influence of
the stupefying poison as to preclude any attempt at conversation, and
we passed out from this moral pest-house sick at heart as we thought
of these infatuated victims of self-indulgence and their starving
families at home. This baneful habit, once formed, is seldom given
up, and from three to five years’ indulgence will utterly wreck
the firmest constitution, the frame becoming daily more emaciated,
the eyes more sunken and the countenance more cadaverous, till the
brain ceases to perform its functions, and death places its seal on
the wasted life.

On “Araby’s plains” I saw for the first time the
beautiful wild palm, the “lighthouse of the desert,” always
an object of intense desire to the weary traveler as he traverses
those sterile regions, for as it looms up in the distance, sometimes
in groups, but more generally standing in solitary grandeur near a
tiny bubbling spring, its waving plumes tell him not only of shelter
and needed rest, but of water also to bathe his tired limbs and
quench the burning thirst that oppresses him almost to death. Should
the friendly tree prove a date-palm, he will find food also—a
dainty repast of ripe, golden fruit, wholesome and
nourishing—ready prepared to his hand. But, after all, to a
traveler over those sterile regions water is the grand desideratum,
and this he is sure to find in the vicinity of the wild palm. The
Bedouins, who consider it beneath their dignity to sow or reap,
gather the date where they can find it growing wild; but the Arabs of
the plains cultivate the tree with great care and skill, thus
improving the size and flavor of the fruit, and producing some twenty
or more varieties. In some they have succeeded in doing away with the
seed altogether; and the seedless dates, being very large and
delicately-flavored, bring always the highest price in the market.
Date-honey is made by expressing the juice of the fresh fruit, and
the luxury of fresh dates may be enjoyed through the entire year by
keeping them in tight vessels, covered over with this honey.
Date-flour, made by exposing the ripe fruit to the heat of the sun
until sufficiently dry to be ground into fine powder, furnishes the
ordinary sustenance of the Arabs in their frequent journeys across
the deserts. This is food in its most condensed form, easily carried
and needing no cooking. It is simply moistened with a little water,
and so eaten. But the value of the date tree is by no means confined
to the fruit. An agreeable beverage, known as palm wine, is drawn
from the trunk by tapping; the trunks of the old trees make excellent
timber; the leaves are used for hats and baskets; and the fibrous
part, when stripped out, makes twine and ropes. Even the stones are
of use—the fresh ones for planting, and the dried are turned to
account—in Egypt for cattle-feed, in China for the manufacture
of Indian ink, and in Spain for making the tooth-powder known as
“ivory black.” The date is indigenous to both Asia and
Africa: it was introduced into Spain by the Moors, and some few trees
are still found even in the south of France. But the most extensive
forests are those of the Barbary states, where they are sometimes
miles in length. When growing thus in groves the palms are very
beautiful, their towering crests waving in unison as they seem to
form an immense natural temple, about which vines and creepers wreath
their graceful tendrils, while birds of varied plumage sing their
matin and vesper songs, plucking meanwhile the golden fruit that
grows in clusters at the very summit of the tree. The Arabs’ mode
of gathering this fruit is odd enough. The trunk, sixty feet high,
has not, it must be remembered, a single branch to hold on by or
furnish a foothold; and, besides, the whole stem is rough with thick
scales or horny protuberances, not very pleasant to the touch of
fingers or palms. So a strong rope is passed across the climber’s
back and under his armpits, and then, after being passed around the
tree, the two ends are knotted firmly together. The rope is next
placed over one of the notches left by the footstalk of an old leaf,
while the man slips the portion that is under his armpits toward the
middle of his back, so as to allow the lower part of [pg 308] the shoulder-blades to rest upon it. Then
with hands and knees he firmly grasps the trunk, and raises himself a
few inches higher; when, still holding fast by knees and feet and one
hand, he with the other slips the rope a little higher up the tree,
letting it rest on another of these horny protuberances, and so on
till the summit is gained. When the fruit is reached it is easily
plucked with one hand, while the gatherer maintains his position with
the other, and the clusters are thrown down into a large cloth held
at the corners by four persons.

The far-famed banian or Indian fig (Ficus Indica) is
perhaps the grandest of tropical trees—the most beautiful of
Nature’s products, even in that fertile soil kissed ever by the
sun’s rays, where she sports with such profusion and variety,
clothing the earth in gorgeous flowers, variegated mosses and
feathery ferns, till it seems to groan beneath the manifold treasures
of beauty and fragrance lavished thereon. This noble tree grows wild
in many Eastern countries and islands, and sometimes attains to a
size and an extent that are marvelous to contemplate. Shoots are
everywhere thrown out toward the ground from the horizontal branches,
increasing in size as they tend downward, till at last they strike
into the ground and become stems. From these shoot new branches,
which in their turn extend and form roots and new stems, till at
length a solitary tree becomes the parent of an extensive grove,
appropriately characterized by the bard as “a pillared shade
high overarched.” And as they are thus continually increasing,
seeming meanwhile almost exempt from the general law of decay, a tiny
sapling borne to the spot in an infant’s hand may come in time to
cover thousands of feet of soil. Such a specimen is the noted Cubber
Burr, growing on a picturesque little island in the river Nerbudda,
near Baroach, in the province of Guzerat. This wonderful tree, named
after a venerated Hindoo saint, occupies a space that exceeds two
thousand feet in circumference. The principal stems number three or
four hundred, and the smaller ones more than three thousand, though
some have been destroyed by high floods, that have carried away not
only portions of the giant tree, but of the banks of the island
itself. The beauty and magnitude of the Cubber Burr are famous all
over the East. Indian armies have encamped beneath its sheltering
branches, and Hindoo festivals, to which thousands of votaries
repair, are often held under its leafy shadow. I was told that
seven thousand people could find ample shelter under its
widespread branches; and we often knew of English gentlemen forming
hunting or shooting excursions to the island, and encamping for weeks
together beneath this delightful pavilion. Their only hosts were
frolicsome monkeys and whole colonies of doves, peacocks,
wood-pigeons and singing birds, that find a permanent abode among the
thick foliage, and plentiful sustenance from the small,
scarlet-colored figs that hang pendent from every branch. The banian
tree may be regarded as a natural temple in Oriental regions, and the
Hindoos especially look upon it with profound veneration. Tiny,
fancifully-adorned temples and pagodas are erected beneath its
shadowy boughs, where are pleasant walks and long vistas of
umbrageous canopy, effectually shielded from the fierce rays of the
tropical sun. Many Brahmins spend their entire lives within these
quiet retreats, and all ranks and classes seek them for rest and
recreation. The banian is styled also “the tree of
councils,” from the prevalent custom of assembling legislators,
magistrates and savants under its protecting canopy to deliberate on
civil affairs; while all around, ensconced in every niche, are the
tutelary gods and goddesses that make up the Hindoo mythology. It is
indeed a quaint, weird spot, full of the witchery of romance and
legendary lore; and though years have passed since I last sat under
the Cubber Burr’s sheltering boughs with a merry party of
picnicking maidens, now grown to womanhood, imagination still loves
to roam among its shadows, and build fairy castles within the mazy
windings of the hoary banian of Nerbudda’s isle.

FANNIE R. FEUDGE.

A LOTOS OF THE NILE.

It was nine o’clock on a night of clear July starlight. The
heat of the day had been intense, and all the guests of The Willows
were assembled on the lawn, intent upon the effort of keeping cool,
if such a thing were at all possible. A hopeless effort it seemed,
however, for the heavy foliage of the trees hung quite motionless,
and the fans which were plied unceasingly made the only possible
approach to a breeze. Everything was so still that the voice of the
river was distinctly audible as it fretted and surged along its rocky
bed, distant at least a mile. The scene was full of the dim,
mysterious look which makes summer starlight so fascinating. White
dresses, shadowy faces, suggestive outlines of form and head, now and
then the glimmer of an ornament: after one had looked long enough it
was even possible to tell who was who, but at first the voices were
the only clue to recognition. Behind the group rose the house, with
light streaming from its lace-draped windows, the pictures and
globe-like lamps of the deserted drawing-room making a charming
effect.

Everybody had been silent for some time—that is, for half a
minute, which seems a long time under such circumstances—when
Mrs. Lancaster’s voice broke the stillness. “Oh for a whiff
of mountain-air or a sea-breeze!” she said. “I came to
spend two weeks with you, dear Mrs. Brantley, and I have spent a
month—who ever did leave The Willows when they meant to
do so?—but I really must be thinking of taking flight. Suppose
we get up a party for the White Sulphur?—it is always so
tiresome to go away by one’s self. Who will join it? Eleanor,
will you?”

“I am not going to the White Sulphur this year,”
answered Eleanor Milbourne.

“Not going to the White Sulphur!” repeated Mrs.
Lancaster in a tone of surprise. Then she laughed. “How stupid I
am!” she said. “Of course I might have known that the
temptation to break the pledge of total abstinence from flirtation
would be too great in that paradise of flirtation. Besides, Mr.
Brent’s yacht is homeward bound, is it not?”

“I am not aware that there is any connection between Mr.
Brent’s yacht and my decision about the White Sulphur,”
answered Miss Milbourne haughtily. Then she turned to the person next
her, a recumbent figure lying at full length on the grass. “I
don’t know anything of which one grows so weary as of
watering-place life when one has seen much of it,” she said.
“Its pettiness, its routine, its vapidity, its gossip, all
oppress one like a hideous nightmare. I don’t think I shall ever
go to a watering-place again.”

“Take care!” said the recumbent. “Don’t make an
abstinence pledge of that kind: you will only be tempted to break it,
for what will you do with yourself in summer?”

“I should like to travel. I am possessed with an intense
desire to see the world and the wonders thereof.”

“With a yacht such a desire would be easily
gratified.”

“But I have no yacht,” said she with a sharp chord in
her voice. It was an expressive voice at all times, and doubly
expressive in this dim, mysterious starlight.

“Mr. Brent has, however, and I am sure he will be happy to
place it at your service.”

“You are very kind to answer for Mr. Brent.”

“I answer for him because I judge him by myself. If I had a
fleet it should be subject to your command.”

“You are very generous,” said she; and now there was a
little ripple as of pleasure in her tone.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Lancaster was calling over the roll of the company
like an orderly sergeant, intent upon beating up [pg 310] recruits for the White Sulphur. “Major
Clare!” she said at last: “where is Major Clare?”
Then, when the gentleman who had just offered Miss Milbourne his airy
fleet responded lazily, “Here!” she added, “You
will go, will you not?”

“I regret to say that it is impossible,” he answered.
“I have danced my last galop at the White Sulphur. This
time next month I shall probably be en route for
Egypt.”

“For Egypt!” she repeated; and a chorus of voices
instantly echoed the exclamation. “For Egypt! Nonsense! You are
jesting.”

“No, I am not jesting,” said Victor Clare, lifting
himself on one elbow: “I am in earnest. I received a letter from
——” (naming a distinguished officer) “to-day,
offering me a position if I would join him in Cairo. I say nothing
about what the position is, because my mind is not yet made up to
accept it; and even if it were, such things should not be published
on the house-tops. But if anybody here has a fancy for joining the
army of the khedive, I may be able to give him a few important
particulars.”

Nobody responded. The gentlemen seemed to prefer enlisting under
Mrs. Lancaster’s banner for the White Sulphur. The ladies
shrugged their shoulders and said the idea was dreadful, Victor Clare
sank back in the grass and addressed himself to Miss Milbourne.

“There is nothing else for me to do,” he said in an
argumentative tone. “I only waste money on the impoverished
acres of that old place of mine. The house itself is falling down
over my head. What remains, then, but to go forth and tempt Fortune
to do her best—or worst? At least the profession of arms has
been in all ages the calling of a gentleman.”

For a minute Eleanor Milbourne did not speak. She sat in the
starlight a graceful, shadowy figure, furling and unfurling her fan
with a slightly nervous motion. Perhaps she was uncertain what to
answer. But at last she spoke in a very low tone: “Yet you said
you had not decided.”

“No, I have not decided. In truth, I have been rooted in
idleness and indifference so long that I scarcely feel as if I cared
enough about myself to take advantage of the offer. Then I cannot
bring myself to think of selling Claremont, though I know that a
penniless man has no right to the luxury of sentimental attachments.
If I were in Egypt it would not matter to me that some upstart
speculator owned the old place.”

“I think it would,” said Miss Milbourne.

“No, it would not” was the obstinate reply.
“I should take care to find a lotos as soon as I reached the
Nile. Whoever eats of that forgets his past life, you know. I have
scant reason for wishing to remember mine,” he added a little
bitterly.

“Memory is certainly more often a sting than a
pleasure,” said Miss Milbourne. “It is strange,” she
added, “that we should both have thought of obtaining
forgetfulness through the same means. When Mr. Brent asked me what he
should bring me from Egypt, I said a lotos of the Nile. If he
fulfills his promise I will share it with you.”

“I am not sure that I care to be indebted even for
forgetfulness to Mr. Brent,” said Victor Clare ungratefully.

He was sorry the moment after for having spoken so curtly, and
would have made amends by promising to accept a dozen lotoses if she
desired to bestow so many upon him; but Miss Milbourne had already
turned to her neighbor on the other side and plunged into
conversation. “Is it not strange that Egypt should be waking
from her sleep of centuries?” she said; and—while the
gentleman whom she addressed took up the theme readily—Mrs.
Lancaster rose and sauntered round the group to where Victor Clare
was lying.

“Come, Monsieur Indolence, and take a walk,” she said.
“I think the policeman’s motto is right—’Keep
moving.’ When one stops to think about anything, even about the
heat, it makes it worse.”

Now, however comfortable a man may be, if he is bidden to rise by
a [pg 311] pretty woman who stands
imperiously over him, the chances are that he obeys. So it was with
Clare. He most assuredly did not want to go with Mrs. Lancaster, and
quite as assuredly he did want to stay just where he was, with
the hem of Eleanor Milbourne’s dress touching him and a pervading
sense of her presence near, even when she encouraged stupid people to
expose their ignorance on the Egyptian question. Yet he found himself
walking away with the pretty widow before five minutes had
passed.

“I know you are not obliged to me,” she said when they
had gone some distance. “But your divinity is talking
commonplaces, or listening to them, which amounts to the same thing;
so I fancied you might spare me ten minutes. I want to know if that
was a mere assertion for effect a minute ago, or if you are in
earnest in thinking of going to Egypt?”

“I never talk for effect,” said Victor with a hauteur
that was spoilt by a slight touch of petulance. “I always mean
what I say, and I certainly am in earnest in thinking of going to
Egypt.”

“May I ask why?”

“I am surprised that you should need to ask. One’s
friends usually know one’s affairs at least as well as one’s
self—sometimes much better. Everybody who knows me knows that I
am a poor man.”

“Not so poor that you need go to Egypt in search of a
fortune, however,” said she, stopping short and looking at him
keenly. “Confess,” she added, “that you are about to
expatriate yourself in this absurd fashion because Eleanor Milbourne
means to marry Marston Brent.”

“Your acuteness has carried you too far,” said he
laughing, but not quite naturally. “Miss Milbourne’s
matrimonial choice is nothing to me. I have thought of this step for
some time. General ——’s letter is a reply to my
application forwarded months ago. Yet now that the answer has
come,” he went on, “I scarcely care to grasp the advantage
it offers. Indifference has infected me like a poison. I feel more
inclined to rust out on the old place than to sound ‘Boots and
saddle’ again.”

“But why rust out?” she asked impetuously. “Are
there not careers enough open to you?” Then, after a minute,
“Are there not other women in the world besides Eleanor
Milbourne?”

“Perhaps so,” a little doggedly. “There are other
stars in the heavens besides Venus, but who sees them when she is
above the horizon?”

“How kind and complimentary you are!” said Mrs.
Lancaster with a slight tone of bitterness in her voice.

“Forgive me,” said he after a minute. “I am a fool
on this subject, and, like a fool, I always say more than I mean. No
doubt there are other women in the world even more beautiful and more
charming than Eleanor Milbourne, but they are nothing to
me.”

“In other words, you are determined to believe that the
grapes above your reach, instead of being sour, are the sweetest in
existence.”

“At least I harm only myself by such an hallucination, if it
is an hallucination.”

“But you may harm yourself more than you imagine,” said
she with a nervous cadence, in her voice. “For the sake of a
hopeless passion for a woman who has no more heart than my fan you
will sacrifice more than you are aware of—more, perhaps, than
you can ever regain.”

She laid her hand—a pretty, white hand, gleaming with
jewels—on his arm at the last words, and it was fortunate,
perhaps, that she could not tell with what an effort he restrained
himself from shaking it impatiently off. A quick feeling of repulsion
came over him like an electric shock. Hitherto he had been somewhat
flattered, somewhat amused, and only occasionally a little bored, by
the favor which the beautiful and wealthy young widow had so openly
accorded him; but now in a second he felt that thrill of disgust
which always comes to a sensitive man when he sees a woman step
beyond the pale of delicate womanhood. If he had been one shade less
of a gentleman, he would have said [pg
312] something which Mrs. Lancaster could never have
forgotten. As it was, he had sufficient command of himself to speak
carelessly. “I was never quick at reading riddles,” he
said. “I am unable to imagine what sacrifice I should make by
indulging the ‘hopeless passion’ for Miss Milbourne with
which you are kind enough to credit me.”

“With which I credit you?” she repeated eagerly.
“Am I wrong, then? If you can tell me that,
Victor—”

But he interrupted her quickly: “You ought to know, Mrs.
Lancaster, that this is a thing which a sensible man only tells to
one woman; but, since you seem to take an interest in the subject,
there is nothing which I need hesitate to acknowledge in the fact
that, however hopeless my passion for Eleanor Milbourne may be, it is
the very essence of my life, and can only end with my life.”

“We all think that when we are young and foolish, and very
much in love,” said Mrs. Lancaster coolly—whatever stab
his words gave the kindly darkness hid—”but I think you
are more than usually mad. If she is not already engaged to Marston
Brent, she will be as soon as he returns. I know that her family
confidently expect the match, and in any case” (emphatically)
“Eleanor Milbourne is the last woman in the world whom a
penniless man need hope to win.”

“I know that as well as you do,” said Clare. “I
have no hope of winning her, and I am going to Egypt next
month.”

He uttered the last words as if he meant them to end the subject,
but it is doubtful whether they would have done so if they had not at
that moment found themselves close upon the house, having paid little
attention to the path which they were following. As they emerged from
the shrubbery they were both a little surprised to see a carriage
standing in the full glow of the light from the open hall door.

“Who can have arrived?” said Mrs. Lancaster, not sorry,
perhaps, for a diversion. “I did not know that Mrs. Brantley was
expecting any one.”

“Who has come, Ellis?” Victor said carelessly to a young
man who emerged from the house as they approached.

“Marston Brent,” was the answer. “It seems the
Clytie made a very quick trip, and came into port yesterday; so of
course her owner has come at once to report his safe arrival at
head-quarters.”

Mrs. Lancaster, whose hand was still on Clare’s arm, felt the
quick start which he gave at this information, but she was a discreet
woman, and she said nothing until they were standing on the verandah
steps and he had bidden her good-night, saying that he must ride back
to Claremont.

“I understand why you will not remain,” she said;
“but do not make any rash resolution about Egypt—above
all, do not commit yourself to anything.” Then she bent
forward and touched his hand lightly. “Tell me when you come
again that you will join my party for the White Sulphur,” she
said softly. “It will be the wisest thing you can do.”

The result of this disinterested advice was, that as soon as he
reached home, after a lonely, starlit ride of six miles, Clare sat
down and wrote to General ——, accepting the position he
had offered, and promising to report in Cairo as soon as
possible.

After this it was several days before the future Egyptian soldier
was seen again at The Willows. What went on in that gay abode during
this interval he neither knew nor sought to know. He endeavored to
banish all memory of the place and the people whom it contained from
his mind. They were nothing to him, he told himself. It was
impossible to say whether he shrank most from the pain of meeting
Eleanor Milbourne with her accepted lover by her side, or from the
thrill of disgust with which the mere thought of Mrs. Lancaster
inspired him. He buried himself in listless idleness at Claremont for
some time: then ordered his horse one day, rode to a neighboring town
and made arrangements for the sale of his property with much the same
feeling as if he had ordered the execution of his mother. It was when
he returned weary and depressed from this [pg
313] excursion that he found a note from Mrs. Brantley
awaiting him.

“DEAR MAJOR CLARE” (it ran), “why have you forsaken
us? We have looked for you, wished for you and talked of you for
days, but you seem to have determined that we shall learn the full
meaning of the verb ‘to disappoint.’ Will you not come over
to dinner to-day? I think you have played hermit quite long
enough.

“Truly yours, L.M.B.”

To say that Clare declined this invitation would be equivalent to
saying that a moth of its own accord kept at a safe distance from the
glowing flame which enticed it. As he read the note his heart gave a
leap. He began to wonder and ask himself why he had remained away so
long. Was it not the sheerest folly and absurdity? What was Eleanor
Milbourne to him that he should banish himself on her account from
the only pleasant house within a radius of twenty miles? A man should
have some self-respect, he thought. He should not let every
inquisitive fool see when and how and where a shaft has wounded him.
Why should he not go? A heartache or two additional would not matter
in Egypt. As for Mrs. Lancaster, he could certainly keep at a safe
distance from her, even if she had not gone to the White
Sulphur, as he hoped to heaven she had.

This devout hope was destined to disappointment. The first person
whom he saw when he entered the well-filled drawing-room of The
Willows was the pretty widow, in radiant looks and radiant spirits,
not to mention a radiant toilette of the lightest possible and most
becoming mourning. Despite his previous resolutions, Clare found
himself gravitating to her side as soon as his respects had been paid
to Mrs. Brantley—a fact which may serve as a small proof of the
weakness of man’s resolve, and his general inability to fight
against fate, especially when it is embodied in a woman’s bright
eyes.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” she asked
after the first salutations were over. “Have you been taking
counsel with solitude on the Egyptian question? Or have you decided
like a sensible man to go to the White Sulphur? Whatever has been the
cause of your absence, you have at least been charitable in
furnishing us with a topic of conversation. I scarcely know what we
should have done without the ‘Victor Clare disappearance,’ as
Mr. Ellis has called it, during the last week.”

“I am sure you ought to be obliged to me, then,” Clare
said, flushing and laughing. “Assuredly I could not have
furnished you with a topic of conversation for a whole week if I had
been present.”

“Opinion has been divided concerning the mystery of your
fate,” she went on. “One party has maintained that, rushing
away in desperation when you heard of Mr. Brent’s arrival, you
started the next day for Suez; the other, that you were hanging about
the grounds, armed to the teeth, and only waiting an opportunity to
dare your rival to deadly combat.”

“How kind one’s friends are, to be sure, especially when
they are in the country, and have nothing in particular with which to
amuse themselves!”

“But what have you been doing? I should like to know,
if you do not object to telling me.”

“I have been very busy making my final arrangements for
leaving the country,” answered he, stretching a point, it must
be owned.

“You are really going, then?” she asked after a
minute’s silence—a minute during which she was horribly
conscious that her changing countenance might readily have betrayed
to any looker-on how deeply she felt this unexpected blow.

“I wrote to General —— on the night I saw you
last, accepting his offer,” Clare answered. “Of course I am
in duty bound, therefore, to report in Cairo as soon as
possible.”

“And you will sell Claremont?”

“I have no alternative.”

She said nothing more, but he saw [pg
314] her hand—the same white jeweled hand that had
gleamed on his arm in the starlight—go to her throat with a
quick, convulsive movement. Instead of the thrill of repulsion which
he had felt before, a sudden sense of pity and regret came over him
now. He was not enough of a puppy to feel a certain keen enjoyment
and gratified vanity in the realization of this woman’s folly. He
appreciated, on the contrary, how entirely she had been a spoiled
child of fortune all her life—a queen-regnant, to whom all
things must submit themselves—and he felt how bitter must be
this first sharp proof of her own impotence to secure the toy on
which she had set her heart. It was these thoughts which made his
voice almost gentle when he spoke again: “You must not think
that I am ungrateful for your kind interest in my behalf. You can
imagine, perhaps, how much I hate to part with Claremont, which has
been the seat of my family for generations; but when a thing must be
done there is no use in making a moan over it. I cannot sacrifice my
life to a tradition of the past; and that would be what I should do
if I clung to the old place, instead of cutting loose with one sharp
stroke and swimming boldly out to sea.”

“But you might stay if you would,” said she with that
tremulous accent which the French call “tears in the
voice.”

“No, I could not stay,” said Clare resolutely.
“I have no money, nor any means of making any in
America.”

This ended the discussion. Even Mrs. Lancaster, fast and daring
and willful as she was, could not say, “I have
money—more than I know what to do with: take it.” Her eyes
said as much, but Clare did not look at her eyes. A minute longer
passed in embarrassed silence. Then somebody came up, and Victor was
able to walk away. As he crossed the room he saw Eleanor Milbourne
for the first time since his arrival. He had not even inquired if she
was still at The Willows, and her unexpected appearance, for he had
begun to fear that she was gone, filled him with a rush of feelings
of which the first and most prominent was delight. After all, did it
matter whether or not she was engaged to Marston Brent? Simply to
look at her was enough to fill a man’s soul with pleasure, to
steep him in that “dewlight of repose” which only a few
rare things on this earth of ours are capable of inspiring. Did any
sane person ever fly from the sight of Venus when she held her court
all alone in the lovely summer heaven, because he could not possess
her magic lustre for his own? The comparison was not at all highflown
to Clare, whatever it may seem to anybody else. He had always
entertained as much hope of winning the star as of winning the woman;
and as for an abstract question of beauty, he would have held that
Venus herself could not have surpassed Eleanor Milbourne. She was an
adorable goddess whom any man might be content to worship from a
distance, he thought; and he was preparing to go and sun himself in
the glance of her eyes, which seemed like bits of heaven in their
blueness and their fairness, when Mrs. Brantley touched his arm and
bade him take a newly-arrived piece of white muslin in to dinner.
Clare looked a little crestfallen, but against the decision of his
hostess on this important subject what civilized man was ever known
to revolt? He took the white muslin in to dinner, and had the
satisfaction of finding himself separated by the length of the table
from Miss Milbourne.

After dinner Mrs. Brantley claimed his attention. It seemed that
there was a plan under discussion for showing the sole lion of the
neighborhood—a hill of considerable eminence known as
Farley’s Mount—to the guests of The Willows. But it was
distant twelve miles, What did Major Clare think of their starting
early, breaking the ride by rest and luncheon at Claremont, then
going on to the mountain, making the ascent, and returning by
moonlight?

“It will not do at all,” said Victor. “Twenty-four
miles is too much to be undertaken on a July day by a mere party of
pleasure. You would break yourselves down and see nothing. I
[pg 315] propose an amendment: Take two
days instead of one, and spend a night on the mountain. If you have
never camped on a mountain, the novelty is well worth experiencing,
and these midsummer nights have scarcely any length, you know. Then
the sunrise is magnificent.”

“That is exactly what we will do,” cried Mrs. Brantley,
clapping her hands with childish glee. And the proposal, being
submitted to the company, was unanimously carried.

Meanwhile, Eleanor Milbourne was walking with Mr. Brent in the
soft summer twilight on the lawn.

“You should not press me so hard,” she said as they
paced slowly to and fro. “I fear I can never give you what you
desire, but I cannot tell yet. Grant me a little time.”

“A little time! But think how much time you have had!”
the gentleman urged, not without reason. “You said when I went
abroad that you were not sure enough of your heart to accept me then,
but that you would give me a final answer when I returned. You had
all the months of my absence to consider what this answer should be,
and when I came for it, spending not so much as an hour in tarrying
on the road, I found that it was not ready for me—that I had
yet longer to wait. Eleanor, is this kind? is it even just?”

“It is neither,” said Eleanor, turning to him with a
strange deprecation on her fair proud face. “I know that you
have been everything that is patient and generous, and I am
sorry—oh I am more than sorry—to have seemed to trifle
with you; but what can I do? Remember that when I decide, it is for
my whole life. You cannot doubt that I will hold fast to my promise
when it is once given.”

“I do not doubt it, and therefore I desire that promise above
all things.”

“But you would not desire the letter without the
spirit?” said she eagerly. “I dare not bind myself—I
dare not—until I am certain of myself.”

“But, good Heavens!” said Marston Brent, who, although
usually the most quiet and dignified of human beings, was now fairly
driven to vehemence, “when do you mean to be certain of
yourself? Surely you have had time enough. Can you not love me,
Eleanor?” he asked a little wistfully. “If that is
it—if that is the doubt that holds you back—say so, and
let me go. Anything is better than suspense like this.”

But Eleanor was plainly not ready to say that. She stood still for
a moment, then turned to him with a sudden light of resolve in her
eyes. “You are right,” she said. “This must end. I may
be weak and foolish, but I have no right to make you suffer for my
weakness and my folly. I pledge myself to tell you to-morrow night
whether or not I can be your wife. You will give me till then, will
you not? It is the last delay I shall ask.”

“I wish you would understand that you could not ask anything
which I should not be glad to grant,” said he, a little sadly.
“For Heaven’s sake, do not think of me as your
persecutor—do not force yourself to answer me at any given
time. I can wait.”

“You have waited,” said she
gratefully—”waited too long already. Do not encourage me
in my weakness. Believe that I will tell you to-morrow night my final
decision.”

Later in the evening, Victor Clare was leaving the drawing-room as
Miss Milbourne entered it. They came face to face rather
unexpectedly, and while the gentleman fell back, the lady extended
her hand.

“Have you stayed away so long that you have forgotten your
friends, Major Clare?” she said with a smile which was bright
but rather tremulous, like a gleam of sunshine on rippling water.
“You have not even said good-evening to me, and yet you have an
air as if you had said good-night to the rest of the
company.”

“So I have,” answered Victor, smiling in turn, partly
from the pleasure of meeting her, partly from the sheer magnetism of
her glance, “but it is no fault of mine that I have not been
able to speak to you: I have found no
opportunity.”

“But I thought you always said that; people made
opportunities when they desired to do so?”

“Then the time has come for me to retract my assertion. As a
general rule, a man cannot make opportunities: he can only take
advantage of them when they come, as I hope to take advantage of the
present,” he added smiling.

“But I thought you were going home?”

“I was going home a minute ago, but so long as you
will let me talk to you I shall stay.”

“It is a very small favor to grant,” said Eleanor,
blushing a little. “But why were you leaving so early?”

“Partly because I had no hope of seeing you; partly because I
am not a ‘young duke’ to pencil a line to my steward and know
that a princely collation will be served at noon to-morrow for half a
hundred, or even for a dozen or two people.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, for though she caught the
allusion to Disraeli’s rose-colored romance, the application
puzzled her.

“I see you have not heard of our gypsy plan,” he
answered, and at once proceeded to detail it.

She was not so much delighted as he expected, but a pretty, lucid
gleam came into her eyes at the mention of Claremont.

“I shall be glad to see your home,” she said quietly.
“I have heard so much of its beauty and its antiquity.”

“It is pretty, and it is old,” said he, “but it
will not be mine much longer. I am negotiating its sale
now.”

She started: “What! you were in earnest, then? You are really
going to Egypt?”

“Yes, I am going to Egypt. Why should I stay? What has life
to offer me here save vegetation? There, at least, I can find
action.”

She looked at him with a strange, wistful expression which struck
and startled him. He felt as if a prisoned soul suddenly sprang up
and gazed at him out of the clear blue depths of her eyes. “Oh
what a good thing it is to be a man!” she said. “How free
you are! how able to do what you please and go where you
please—to seek action and to find it! Oh, Major Clare, you
ought to thank God night and day that He did not make you a
woman!”

“I am glad, certainly, that I am a man,” said Victor
honestly. “But you are the last woman in the world from whom I
should have expected to hear such rebellious sentiments.”

“I am not rebellious,” said Eleanor more quietly.
“What is the good of it? All the rebellion in the world could
not make me a man; and I have no fancy to be an unsexed woman. But
nobody was ever more weary of conventional routine, nobody ever
longed more for freedom and action than I do.”

It was on the end of Victor’s tongue to say, “Then come
with me to Egypt,” but he caught himself in time. Was he mad to
imagine that “the beautiful Miss Milbourne”—a woman
at whose feet the most desirable matches of “society” had
been laid—would end her brilliant career by marrying a soldier
of fortune, and expatriating herself from her country and her
kindred? He gave a grim sort of smile which Eleanor did not quite
understand, as he said: “Where is your lotos? It ought to make
you more content with the things that be.”

“I have it,” Eleanor said with child-like simplicity.
“Mr. Brent remembered and brought it to me. I have not forgotten
my promise to share it with you.”

“Take it to the mountain to-morrow night, then,” said he
quickly. “Let us eat it together there. I should like to link
you even with my farewell to the past.”

And, since an interruption came just then, they parted with this
understanding.

The next day Major Clare was standing on the terrace of
Claremont—a stately, solidly-built old house, bearing itself
with an air of conscious pride and disdain of modern frippery,
despite certain significant signs of decay—when his guests
arrived in formidable procession. There was something of the
“old school” in his manner of welcoming them—a grace
and courtesy which struck more [pg 317]
than one of them as at once very perfect and very charming.

“The man suits the house, does he not?” said Mrs.
Brantley to Mrs. Lancaster. “It is like a vintage of rare old
wine in an old bottle. We fancy that it has an aroma which it would
lose in a new cut-glass decanter.”

“I always thought Major Clare had delightful manners,”
said Mrs. Lancaster, who could not trust herself to say anything
more. She felt with a pang how much she would have liked to bring
wealth and prosperity and elegant hospitality back again to the old
house, if its owner had not been so madly blind to his own interest,
so absurdly in love with Eleanor Milbourne’s statue-like face, so
insanely intent upon periling life and limb in the service of the
viceroy of Egypt. The pretty widow gave a sigh as she arranged her
hair before the quaint, old-fashioned mirror in the chamber to which
the ladies had been conducted. If he had only been reasonable, how
different things might be! She walked to a window which overlooked
the garden with its formal walks and terraces, its borders of box and
summer-houses of cedar. “He will change his mind before the
month is out,” she thought. “A man cannot surrender all the
associations of his past and the home of his fathers without a
struggle.”

This consideration lost some of its consoling force, however,
when, a few minutes later, two people, walking slowly and evidently
talking earnestly, passed down the vista of one of the garden alleys,
and were lost to sight behind a tall, clipped hedge. Even at that
distance there was no mistaking the figure and bearing of Clare;
neither was there another woman who walked with that free, stately
grace in a riding-habit which Eleanor Milbourne possessed. “If
she is engaged to Marston Brent, he might certainly put an end to
such open flirtation as this,” Mrs. Lancaster said between her
teeth. “If he were not blind or mad, he might see that she is so
much in love with Victor that she would go with him to Egypt
to-morrow if he asked her to do so.”

An old and sensible proverb with which we are all acquainted says
that it is never well to judge others by ourselves; and if Mrs.
Lancaster had possessed the invisible cap of the prince in the
fairy-tale, and had followed the pair who had just passed out of
sight, she would have received an immediate proof of the truth of
this aphorism. They had paused in a square near the heart of the
garden—a green, shaded spot, in the centre of which an empty
basin bore witness to a departed fountain, though no pleasant murmur
of water had broken the stillness for many a long day. Round the
margin of this still ran a seat on which Eleanor sat down. Victor
remained standing before her. A lime tree near by cast a soft,
flickering shadow over them, and the tall hedges of evergreen which
enclosed the square made a sombre but effective background.

“You see that ruin and decay are all that I have to offer you
here,” Victor was saying with a cadence of bitterness in his
voice. “But if you had courage enough to end the life which you
despise, to cut loose from all the ties which bind you in America,
and go with me to Egypt, there I might have a future and a
career for you to share—there at least, you would find
freedom and action and life.”

A flush came to Eleanor’s cheek, and a light gleamed suddenly
in her eyes, as if the very wildness of this proposal lent it
fascination; but she shook her head, smiling a little sadly.
“You are of my world,” she said: “you ought to know
better than that. I am not so brave as you think. I must do what is
expected of me, and I am expected to marry Marston Brent.”

“Forget the world and come with me.”

“That is impossible. If I had only myself to care for, I
would; but there are others of whom I must think.” She was
silent for a moment, then looked up at him piteously. “They have
sacrificed so much for me at home,” she said, “and they are
so proud of me. They hope, desire, count on this marriage: I cannot
disappoint them. Mr. Brent himself has been most kind and patient,
and he does [pg 318] not expect very
much. I am a coward, perhaps, but what can I do?”

Again he said, “You can come with me.”

Again she answered, “It is impossible. Do you not see that it
is impossible? Starting forth on a new career, it would be insane for
you to burden yourself with a wife. As for me, I am no more fit to
marry a poor man than to be a housemaid. Victor, it is hopeless. For
Heaven’s sake, let us talk of it no longer! The only thing we can
do is to forget that we have ever talked of it at all.”

“Will that be easy for you? I confess that nothing on earth
could be harder for me.”

“No, it will not be easy, but I shall try with all my
strength to do it. God only knows,” putting her hand suddenly to
her face, “how I shall live if I am not able to do
it.” Then passionately, “Why did you speak? Why did you
make the misery greater by dragging it to the light, so that we could
face it, talk of it, discuss it? Oh why did you do it?”

“Because I wanted to see if you were not made of braver stuff
than other women,” said he almost sternly. “In my maddest
hours I never dreamed of speaking, until—what you said last
night. Thinking of that after I came home, I resolved to give you one
opportunity to break through the artificial trammels of your life,
and find the freedom you professed to desire. It was better to do
this, I thought, than to be tormented all my life by a regret, a
doubt, lest I had lost happiness where one bold stroke might have
gained it.”

“And now that you have found that I am not brave, that
I am like all the other conventional women of my class, are you not
sorry that you have inflicted useless pain upon yourself?”

“Of myself I do not think at all, and even when I think of
you I cannot regret having spoken. Let the misery be what it will, it
is something to have faced it together—it is everything to know
that you love me, though you refuse to share my life.”

“You must not say that,” said she, starting and
shrinking as if from a blow. “How can I venture to acknowledge
that I love you when I am going to marry Marston Brent?”

“Are you going to marry him?”

“Have I not told you so?”

He turned from her and took one short, quick turn across the
square. Like every man in his position, he felt outraged and
indignant, without pausing to consider how infinitely more inexorable
the laws of society are with regard to women than to men. He
could put Mrs. Lancaster’s fortune aside and go his way—to
Egypt or to the dogs—without anybody crying out against his
criminal folly, his criminal disregard of the duties and traditions
of his class. But if Eleanor Milbourne put Marston Brent’s
princely fortune aside and disappointed all her friends, what
remained to her but the bitter condemnation of those friends in
particular and of society in general?

When he came back she rose to meet him, making a picture worth
remembering as she stood in her graceful youth and picturesque habit
by the broken fountain, with the sombre cedar hedge behind and the
intense azure of the summer sky above.

“Let us go,” she said. “By prolonging this we only
give ourselves useless pain. All is said that can be said. Nothing
remains now but to forget; and that can best be done in silence.
Victor, let us go.”

There was a tone of pathos, a tone as if she was not quite sure of
herself, in those last words, which made Clare refrain from answering
her. He turned silently, and they entered a green alley which led to
the foot of the terrace surrounding the house. As they walked along,
Marston Brent’s figure appeared at the end of the vista,
advancing toward them, and it was this apparition which first made
Clare speak: “If you will not think me fanciful—I am sure
you will not think me presumptuous—promise me that before you
give that man his answer you will share the lotos with me of which
you have spoken. I may be superstitious, but I feel as if we
[pg 319] shall gain new strength with
which to face the future after we have together renounced the
past.”

She shook her head. “I am not superstitious enough to think
that it will enable us to forget one pang,” she said. “But
if you desire it, I promise.”

When the afternoon shadows were lengthening the party from The
Willows set forth again, and reached the foot of the mountain a
little before sunset, making the ascent in time to see the
day-god’s last radiance streaming over the fair, broad expanse of
country beneath them. There was a small cabin on the summit which was
to be devoted to the ladies, and round the camp-fire which was soon
sparkling brightly the gentlemen proposed to spend the night on the
blankets with which they were all plentifully provided. Meanwhile,
the party, dividing into groups and pairs, were soon scattered here
and there, perched on the highest points of rock, enjoying the cool,
fresh air which came as a message of love from the glowing west, and
chattering like a chorus of magpies.

When the evening collation was over—a gypsy-like repast for
which every one seemed to have an excellent appetite—Mr. Brent
asked Eleanor if she would not accompany him to the eastern side of
the mountain to see the moon rise. While she hesitated, uncertain
what to say, Clare’s voice spoke quietly at her side. “Miss
Milbourne has an engagement with me,” he said. “I
fear you must defer the pleasure of admiring the moon in her society
for a little while, Mr. Brent.” Then to Eleanor, “Shall we
go now?”

She assented, and they walked away. Mr. Brent, thus left behind,
naturally felt aggrieved, and turned to Mrs. Brantley with some
slight irritation stirring his usually courteous repose.

“It strikes me that Major Clare’s manners decidedly lack
polish,” he said with an air of grave reprehension. “Is it
true, as I am told, that he is going to sell that fine old place
where we spent the day, and emigrate to Egypt?”

“He is quite ready for a lunatic asylum,” said Mrs.
Lancaster, who was standing near. “But, whatever his folly may
be, I certainly do not agree with you, Mr. Brent, in thinking that
his manners need any improvement.”

Meanwhile, Eleanor was saying, “You should not have spoken so
curtly to Mr. Brent.”

“If I can avoid it, I shall never speak to him again,”
Clare answered. “Don’t let us talk of him. I did not bring
you away to discuss anybody we have left behind, or anything of which
we have talked before. We are to be like immortals—to forget
the past and live only in the present.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Round to a point from whence we can overlook
Claremont.”

She said nothing more, and he led her to the eastern side of the
mountain, where, near the verge of an almost precipitous descent,
they sat down together under the shadow of a great gray rock. From
this point the view was more extensive than any they had commanded
before. The rolling country, with the sunset glory fading from it,
lay like a panorama at their feet—shadowy woods melting into
blue distance, streams glancing here and there into sight, fields
rich with cultivation bounded by fences that looked like a
spider’s thread. To the left Claremont, seated above its
terraces, made an imposing landmark. Behind it the moon was rising
majestically in a cloudless sky. After they had been silent for some
time, Clare turned and looked at his companion. “How beautiful
you are!” he said abruptly. “I wish I had a picture of you
as you sit there now. It would be worth everything else in the world
to me. But perhaps, after all, the best pictures are those which are
taken on the heart.”

“You have forgotten,” said Eleanor, trying to smile,
“that we are going to eat the lotos in order to efface all
pictures.”

“Nay,” said he. “I thought it was to enable us to
forget everything but the present, and this is the
present.”

“But it will be the past in a little while,” said she,
“and we must forget it, like all the rest. Victor, we
must forget! [pg 320] They say
that all things are possible to resolution: let us resolve to do
that.”

For some time longer they sat silent. Then Clare said, with
something like a groan, “Would to God I could die here and now,
or else that there was some spell by which one could make
memory a blank!”

“Let us try the lotos,” said Eleanor. “See, I
brought it as you told me.”

From her pocket she drew a paper which, being opened, proved to
contain the dried petals of a flower, evidently an aquatic plant.
Yellow and lifeless as it was, Eleanor looked at it with wistful
reverence. “It came from Egypt,” she said: then she added,
“where you are going.”

“We will see if there is any magic in it,” said
Clare.

So, together they took the dried petals and began to eat them,
smiling a little sadly at each other as they did so.

“Herodotus says that when the Nile is full, ‘and all the
grounds round it are a perfect sea, there grows a vast quantity of
lilies which the Egyptians call lotos, in the water,'” said
Clare. “He adds that this flower, especially the root of it, is
very sweet. If this is the same, it has certainly changed its flavor
since that time.”

“It is not disagreeable,” said Eleanor. “But I fear
we shall not find the effect for which we have hoped. It is of the
lotos fruit that Homer and Tennyson have written.”

“And the lotos flower of mythology is an East Indian, not an
Egyptian, aquatic; but since we desire to link our fancy with
the flower of the Nile, we will ignore the poets and the Brahmins.
After all, we only desire it as a symbol of the renunciation of the
past on which we have agreed. Eleanor, what if we should indeed
resolve to leave the past behind us from this hour, and face our
future together?”

He looked at her imploringly and passionately, but instead of
replying she put her hand to her head. “How strangely dizzy I
am!” she said. “Can it—do you think it can be the
lotos?”

“Dizzy!” he repeated. “Then I must take you from
the edge of this precipice. Perhaps it is that which affects you. It
could not have been the lotos, or I should feel it too. Come, let me
lead you round the rock.”

But when he attempted to rise he found that to him, too, a sudden
strange dizziness came. A constriction seemed gathering about his
heart, a mist seemed rising before his eyes. Before he had half risen
he sank back against the rock.

“Do you feel it too?” she asked quickly.

“Yes,” he said slowly, putting his hand also to his
head. “What can it mean? Could there have been anything wrong in
that plant? The lotos itself is harmless, either flower or fruit.
Eleanor, my darling!” he cried with sudden alarm. “Good
Heavens! what is the matter? How pale you look!”

“I—I do not think it could have been the lotos. It must
have been some poisonous plant,” said she faintly. “This
giddiness and numbness increase.” Then she held out her hands
tremulously. “Hold me,” she said. “The earth seems
slipping away from me. Oh, Victor, what if it should be
fatal?”

“Do not imagine such a thing,” he said. “It is
impossible! The plant has probably some narcotic property which
affects you temporarily. Lean on me until it is over. My God! how mad
I was to have suffered you to eat it!”

“Do not blame yourself,” she said, clinging to him, her
fair head drooping heavily on his breast. “It was I who spoke of
it—who sent for it—”

She stopped, gasping a little, and pressing her hand to her heart,
where an iron clutch seemed arresting the circulation. A glance at
her face filled Clare with a terror which he had not felt before.
Partly this, partly his own sensations, told him that the poison of
the plant which they had shared between them was
fatal—one of the swift and terrible agents of death which
abound in the East—and a sense too horrible to be dwelt upon
came to him, warning him that aid, to avail at all, must be summoned
quickly.

But how? The summit of the mountain was large, the rest of the
party were [pg 321] far from them. He
had purposely led his companion to this remote spot, where, even if
he had been able to raise his voice, there was none to hear. As for
leaving her, he doubted his own ability to walk ten steps. He felt
sure that if he succeeded in gaining his feet he should reel and fall
like a drunken man.

Still, the attempt must be made, and that instantly. Every second
lessened the hope of its success—with every pulse-beat he felt
the awful, reeling numbness increase. How much longer he could retain
his consciousness he could not tell. He saw plainly that Eleanor was
losing hers.

“My darling,” he said, striving vainly to unclasp the
arms that clung to him, “I must go—I must call assistance:
this may be more serious than I thought. Try to rouse yourself,
Eleanor: I must go!”

Alas! it was easy to say—it was awfully impossible to do.
Even when Eleanor relaxed her already half-unconscious embrace, and
he strove to rise, he found that not even desperation could give the
requisite power. He literally could not gain his feet. Every effort
failed: he sank back hopelessly.

Then he tried to raise his voice in a cry for help, but it refused
to obey his bidding. He was not able to speak above a broken whisper.
Finding this to be the case, he turned in an agony of despair to the
girl beside him—the girl whom, with a last effort, he drew to
his breast.

“Eleanor,” he said, “it is hopeless. If this
is poison we must die! Oh, my darling, can you forgive me? O
my God, send us help! Eleanor, can you hear me? Eleanor, will you not
speak to me?”

For a minute all was silence. Then the fair head raised itself,
and the lids slowly and heavily lifted from the blue, flower-like
eyes. The moon, which had now risen high in the cloudless July
heaven, shone full on her face as she said, “Kiss me.”

For the first time their lips met: when they parted both were
cold.

Still clinging together, they were found. At their feet lay a
fragment of the deadly-poisonous Egyptian river-plant which Marston
Brent had ignorantly plucked for a lotos.

CHRISTIAN REID.

ECHO.

FROM THE RUSSIAN OF PUSCHKTN.

OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.

CHAPTER IX.

Sometimes it was our simple hosts who led the conversation, which
then, especially as they became at ease with us, always drifted more
or less into the supernatural. Nor was this surprising, as the tales,
legends, old manners and customs amongst the Tyrolese are thoroughly
interwoven with threads of heathen mythology and with the occult
belief of the Middle Ages.

VALLEY AND BEEHIVES.

Franz had a wonderful credence in lucky and unlucky days. Tuesday
and Thursday were witches’ days, and Wednesday was also evil,
seeing Judas hanged himself on a Wednesday; therefore never drive
cattle to the Olm on that day. Moreover, he believed that when two
persons sneezed together a soul was loosed from purgatory. As for
witches and ghosts, he knew enough about them too. Did not the
witches still dance every night at eight o’clock on their
meeting-place by Bad Scharst? His brother Jörgel could have told us
about that if he would. The pächter Josef had likewise experiences
which he might relate were he not so shy. “Josef was returning
through the Reinwald one Thursday night, and had just crossed over
the Giessbach when he met a black figure, whom he greeted in
God’s name; but the figure moved on, making no answer as a
Christian would have done. He had not gone much farther up the wood
when he met a second black form. Crossing himself, Josef spoke out
boldly a ‘God greet you!’ but again silence. The figure had
vanished. Josef crossed himself and prayed. Nevertheless, he met a
third, and, waxing bold, not only greeted him, but turning round
looked fixedly at the black figure to see whether it were sorcerer,
gypsy, ghost or witch. And there, behold! it stood, grown as tall as
a tree, grinning at Josef until he thought it best to escape. Next
day the black cow went dry: otherwise you might say that Josef’s
hobgoblins were fir trees.”

Whilst Jakob laughed at Josef’s phantoms, he could not help
telling us in his turn a tale which he considered much more
noteworthy: “There was no denying that one winter’s night a
huntsman, [pg 323] losing himself in the
deep snow, took refuge in a forsaken senner-hut. Content to suffer
hunger if only thus sheltered for the night, he was shortly surprised
by the entrance of a black man, who not only welcomed him to the hut,
but proposed cooking him some supper; an offer most thankfully
accepted. Upon this, the black man lighted a fire, suddenly produced
a frying-pan, which had been invisible before, and began cooking
strauben and cream pancakes from equally hidden stores. When supper
was ready the huntsman begged the good-natured black cook to sit down
and eat with him; and a very hearty meal he seemed to make, although,
to the surprise of the huntsman, the food turned as black as a cinder
before it entered his mouth. Both men lay down to rest; and after a
comfortable sleep the hunter, rising up to go, thanked the black man
for his kind hospitality, adding, ‘May God reward you!’
‘Oh,’ replied the other, uttering a great sigh of relief,
‘may God in His mercy equally reward you for those words! When I
walked on the earth I laughed at religion: I was therefore sent back
in the spirit to toil until some mortal should thank me in God’s
name for what I had done for him. This you have done, and now I am
free;’ and so saying he vanished.”

“Yes,” said Moidel, “these tales are as true as the
gospel. You know Nanni, the maid who sings so sweetly? Her father
some years since went on a pilgrimage with two other peasants to
Maria Zell. Arriving late one night at a solitary farm-house, they
rapped at the door, requesting a lodging. The bauer, however, excused
himself: it was from no evil intention, he said, but he could not
take strangers in. The three wanderers pleaded how ill would be their
condition if left in the fields all night. Still the bauer made no
other reply, until, on their pressing him, he finally declared, half
in anger, that they must themselves be responsible for their
night’s rest. He wished to treat them well, but could offer them
no better bed than the top of the oven in the stube. This offer they
willingly accepted, but hardly had they lain down when a
peasant-woman entered with a pail of water and brushes. In spite of
their entreaties, she scrubbed and scrubbed away all night, and
hardly had she finished when, the work not pleasing her, she began
scrubbing the floor and woodwork over again. Thus the cleaning lasted
the livelong night, until in the early morning the maid-servant
entered and the woman disappeared; the floor and walls being, to
their astonishment, as dry and dusty as the evening before. Whereupon
they spoke to the bauer of their troublesome visitor. ‘Do not
accuse me,’ he replied ‘of inhospitality: this is a strange
matter, from which I would fain have kept you. Intolerable as it has
been to you, it is still worse for me, knowing that the woman who
thus scrubs, and with so much din, is my poor dead wife. Her brain,
when she was alive, was quite turned about cleaning. She could not
even go to church with me and the neighbors, but must stay at home
and clean. So, being a bad manager, and not washing her soul white,
she seems unfit for heaven, and must needs come here every night to
continue her work. Even masses don’t seem to help
her.'”

Such tales were either related by the hut-fire on airy mountain or
in the fir woods. Moidel might have told us ghost-stories in the barn
at night, but there, in the solitary darkness, they appeared to her
too horribly real, especially with sleepy auditors, who might any
moment drop into unconsciousness, leaving her in a dismal fright over
her own tale.

One afternoon, accompanied by this faithful companion, we
determined to attack the summit of the mountain, which in a mantle of
fir wood rose immediately behind the huts. We were anxious to see
what lay on the other side, but after a hard though exhilarating
climb we learned that the mountain was but a huge overhanging
shoulder, the rocky head of the giant rising up in the midst of wide
sweeping moors some six miles distant. We changed, therefore, the
object of our excursion, determining to visit the highest Olm of the
district, [pg 324] Ober Kofel. Turning
to the left, we pursued the moorland plateau until in half an hour we
had reached a solitary white cabin. The door was firmly closed, but a
pile of fire-wood and a rake, evidently flung recently down, were
sufficient signs of habitation. A more lonely scene could not well be
conceived. No trees nor flowers, only some yellow thistles growing by
the side of a murmuring brook, which had persistently gone rushing on
until it had worn the pebbles in its bed flat and thin. Tawny,
dun-colored mountains rose behind, but before the hut the trät
or open space, covered with the greenest turf, extended to a platform
of rocks, where the glossy shrubs of the mountain rhododendron grew,
presenting a scene well worth the climb. The view outward embraced
the deep wooded gorge of the Giessbach, revealing far beyond the
black, sinuous lines of distant mountains, cutting across the evening
horizon. Black-brown crags some eight thousand feet high, peaked with
snow, rose to the right; but the great snow spectacle was to the
left. There the proud crests of the Hoch Gall, Wild Gall and
Schnebige Nock rose out of a vast white glittering amphitheatre, a
peculiar, bare, conical rock standing like an Alpine sphinx strangely
forth from this desert of snow.

We sat on our verdant patch enjoying the wild, grand scenery, the
wind playing around us in concert with a little calf which had just
been promoted to a bell. At length the figure of a tall young man
flitted in front of a distant cross, and advancing toward us proved
to be the solitary senner of Ober Kofel. As he was the lord of the
domain, and moreover acquainted with Moidel, it was not many minutes
ere he sat on the grass before us. After giving us a welcome, he
began talking to Moidel about the military exercises which were to
begin again this week.

“The Ausserkofers,” he said, “went down for the
drilling immediately after their ascent of the Wild Gall: I am glad I
was not drawn.”

Then Moidel communicated to him that Jakob must leave on the
morrow for drill, and that Tilemaker Martin, Carpenter Barthel’s
son, would arrive in the morning to take his place as herdsman.

The party now dropped into a dignified silence, which might have
lasted as long as we had remained had it not appeared pleasanter to
keep the senner intent on a story, rather than on each feature of our
several faces.

Speaking proper German, also proving to be understood by him, one
of the group began: “Of course you have heard of the clever
Tyrolese peasant, still living, Hans Jakob Fetz?”

Neither he nor Moidel had ever heard of him, and as they both
pricked up their ears, they learned the following: Fetz possesses a
little farm called the Pines. It has, however, the disadvantage of
lying on both sides of a wild rushing torrent, the Ache, a river
given to inundations in the spring, and over which there is no bridge
in his neighborhood. Thus, though Hans Jakob could sit at his door,
and almost count the ears of corn in his fields across the river, he
must make a circuit of five miles to reach them. Such an immense loss
of time and labor troubled him no little, and, as he had no desire to
sell his property, he determined by hook or by crook to remedy the
evil. Day and night he turned the perplexing problem over in his
mind. He might, to be sure, swim across, but then there were his
tools to be carried. At last it flashed upon him: Why not make an
aërial car? He bought for this purpose some very thick iron wire,
stretched it in two parallel lines across the river, fastening the
four ends very firmly; constructed a bench on iron rollers, which,
sustained by the wire, ran across the river in a trice, and his
aërial car was a reality. Here, indeed, was a triumph. It worked
admirably, and the whole neighborhood became excited and astonished
about the air-railway, as they called it. The news spreading, it
brought finally some gentlemen from the town of Dornbirn, who were
wild to have a ride across the river. Hans Jakob refused it: he
doubted the strength being sufficient for more than one passenger;
but they [pg 325] persisting in their
urgent demand, he at last reluctantly consented. They would not, or
else they could not, go without him. So, the party being seated on
the bench, he unfastened the hook, when they should have been
instantly whirled across. But, alas! his fears proved true: the wire
gave way, and down they all went, plump into the wild rushing river.
A great fright and wetting—that was all, for the time being,
until the gentlemen, although they had promised not to say a word on
the subject, having whispered it to this friend and that, leaving no
part uncolored, the town of Dornbirn grew scandalized at a mad
peasant’s audacity. The authorities took it in hand, and a solemn
gendarme visited Hans Jakob with strict orders from government to
desist from such perilous, hairbreadth inventions for the future.
Poor Hans! he now regarded himself not only as the laughing-stock of
the whole country, but as a ruined man. He had spent all his savings
on his first venture; but neither official reprimand nor loss of his
money could keep his busy, active brain from puzzling out an improved
plan, which, having perfected it in his mind, he boldly carried out.
Instead of two simple iron wires, he employed two double coils, with
a single wire in the centre and six feet higher. He stretched across
two other strong parallel wires. He then contrived a little car with
two seats and a cover against sun and rain. To the benches and the
awning he fastened rollers, so that the car was propelled across both
above and below. The weight which it would bear he proved to be
fifteen hundredweight, and unfastened from the iron hooks which kept
it to the bank, the car ran across in a few seconds with an easy,
agreeable motion. Practice and a close investigation proved it now a
perfect success. All the censures and ridicule were forgotten, and it
proves at the present time both convenient and amusing to the
gentlemen, ladies and children of the neighborhood. Hans Jakob
willingly conveys them across the river in his flying car. He will,
however, receive no fixed payment. He constructed it simply for his
own use: were he to make a trade of it, he must either take out a
patent, or else make some concessions to government, neither of which
he has any inclination to do.

The senner and Moidel listened in astonishment. They had
understood every word. Although they had never heard of Hans Jakob
before, there was a full account of him in the Brixen calendar, an
almanac which the senner owned to having had by him for the last
eight months—another noticeable instance how tales and good
advice in print are lost upon a people who, hitherto quietly
slumbering, find for their hearts and minds enough to do in carrying
on their slow agriculture and pattering their prayers. I believe that
popular lecturers conversant with the dialect would be of infinite
service in the rural districts of the Tyrol.

The senner, after this entertainment, offered us the hospitality
of his hut. A lordly bowl of intensely rich cream was placed before
us in the sleeping-room, with the sole option of lapping like the men
of Gideon, seeing we were not sufficiently naturalized for each to
carry a horn spoon in her pocket, had not a little tin drinking mug
been fortunately remembered.

The next day the young tilemaker Martin, carrying his bundle,
arrived at about nine. He had left the Hof at three that morning,
making the whole journey of twenty-four miles on foot without a stop.
Franz therefore seized hold of the frying-pan, and we dined an hour
earlier than the usual time of ten. After coffee, Jakob had to
initiate his successor into the various advantages of the several
Alpine pastures, to point out the cattle and goat paths, and to
introduce Martin to Kohli, Kraunsi, Blasi, Zottel, Nageli and all the
other cows, as well as to Tiger, Schweiz and their fellow-oxen. We
set out to accompany them, but the cattle were too far away on
distant heights for us to continue long in the scramble. We therefore
sat on a breezy mountain platform watching the athletic young men
grow ever smaller, more indistinct, whilst Jakob’s voice was
borne to us on the [pg 326] rarefied air
as he called lovingly, “Krudeli, Krudeli” to the calves,
and “Köss, Köss” to the cows.

“It is a miracle,” said Moidel, “how Martin, who
was so weak and consumed away by his accident, should thus have
recovered.”

“What accident?” asked we.

“Why, does not the Herrschaft know how last November, on his
very name-day, Martin was nearly killed? Young Niederberg—he
who wears the finest carnations on his hat, but who then, it being
cold weather, wore three cock’s feathers gained in
wrestling-matches—strutted down the Edelsheim street, arm in
arm with his great friend, the fair-haired Hansel of Heinwiese, a
rude young churl, praising each other for their strength of limb and
good looks. Martin at the time was leaning against his father’s
door. ‘The devil!’ said Niederberg: ‘why do you stay at
your father’s, when there is better wine and company at the
Blauen Bock?’ Martin, however, replied that he was a hard-working
man, who could only spare time to see his old father and sick sister
on a festival. ‘No,’ said Heinwiese in anger, ‘thou art
nothing but a miserable milk-sop, never at a wrestling-match, never
at a dance.’ ‘But,’ put in Niederberg, ‘we’ll
teach thee to dance and sing;’ and so saying, he suddenly plunged
the blade of his big pocket-knife below Martin’s ribs.

“Why he had become their prey none could tell, unless they
were lost in drink. Great was the clamor in the usually quiet
village. A doctor was sent for, who at first declared Martin’s
wound to be mortal. Then his young wife and little children were
fetched with many tears from the tileyard, and the priest came with
the Holy Death Sacrament. But the prayers and viaticum saved Martin.
Still, for many months he had a frightful illness, and even in March
he was so weak you could have knocked him down with a feather.
Niederberg was immediately taken into custody, and was sentenced to
sit in Bruneck Castle till St. John the Baptist’s Day, fully six
months, to pay the doctor’s bill, and two hundred gulden to
Martin; but the latter sum, being an evil-minded youth, though rich,
he has never paid. He will leave that to Heinwiese, he says, who put
him up to the deed: besides, why pay a man who had recovered? He
would have stood the funeral and settled with the widow. However,
father talks of dealing with Niederberg, for he must not thus despoil
patient Martin.”

Here, indeed, was a stabbing worthy of hot Italy, rather than
cooler, quieter Tyrol. It proved, too, that the serpent and old Adam
still moved in that garden of Eden, Edelsheim.

Jakob and the hero of the tragedy now returned, bright and brisk,
bearing armfuls of edelweiss, long sprays of stag-horn’s moss,
and showing us with genuine pleasure roots of the edelraute, which
they had gathered on the high ledges for us. This is a little
insignificant plant, but called by the Tyrolese the noble rue, and
prized by them far more than the edelweiss; perhaps one reason being
that when dried it is said to emit a delicious scent, for which
reason the housewives place it amongst linen. Jakob looked like a
mountain dryad, his broad-brimmed beaver being completely covered
with purple Michaelmas daisies, glowing amongst sheaves of silvery
edelweiss, falling round in a soft gray woolen fringe. Aided by Jakob
and Martin, we had the gratification of gathering edelweiss
ourselves, always a notable feat. Martin really had most miraculously
recovered. After those twenty-four miles of hard walking, followed by
a climb of several thousand feet, we left him felling a pine tree as
we bade Jakob adieu, for he was to leave very early in the
morning.

A comical scene ensued after our return to the barn. Visitors of
course we had none: Martin’s arrival had been an immense event.
Thus, as we sat in the barn partaking of hot wine and cake, great
masses of shadow all around, with light breaking in only from the
lantern, forming altogether a perfect Rembrandt effect, we heard a
cheerful voice wishing us “Good-night and sweet repose”
through the door. Immediately, believing [pg
327] it to be the pächter’s moidel, a young lady usually
engaged in cutting hay, one of the party rashly invited the voice to
enter—an invitation instantly accepted in the most perfect good
faith by either a mad woman or a tramp in a big, flapping straw hat,
who seated herself in the golden light of the lantern, adding perhaps
to the breadth and freedom of this Rembrandt picture, but certainly
not to its ease. Ravenously consuming some cake, she attacked us with
a continuous battery of God bless yous! Moidel, however, was up to
the occasion, and it was not long ere she managed to get the
unacceptable visitor outside the door, we begging her to bolt and bar
it well, for after this call we were afraid of more lurking
intruders. Moidel, however, bade us have no fears. The woman was
neither cracked nor a Welscher: she was only a very poor
Bachernthalerin, whose hut was generally under water. It was
accessible now, however, and the poor soul had been round begging
milk at the senner-huts.

CHAPTER X.

Life in the mountains was not half so ideal as we once foolishly
might have imagined. Still, the visit thither had surpassed our
expectations, and it was with no little regret that we bade farewell
to the familiar barn the following morning. We settled a bill with
the pachter at parting, including the dinner given to the knowing
Ignaz. It amounted to the sum of one gulden. Who would not stay up at
an Olm?

Again we gave the day to the ten-mile walk, now a steep but
pleasant descent, choosing the village of Rein as our first
halting-place. It was still early, a lovely autumn morning, the
mountains rising in all their impressive majesty, but for a time all
our powers of admiration and enjoyment were suddenly marred by the
sight of meek sheep led to the shambles at the very window.

We would have hurried on, if we could, without stopping, but we
had rashly promised to write our names in the important visitors’
book, besides paying a small bill for wine. The landlord could not at
all perceive why, as meat had to be eaten, any one could object to a
preliminary exhibition, especially when the butcher could only make
his rounds at stated times, and it was so convenient by the kitchen
door. Indeed, so deadened in delicate perceptions were these people
that the landlord observing a rare plant in one of our hands, he
actually called the butcher in to tell us its name. The man, having
at that moment ended his first stroke of business, came in
red-handed, and proved a botanist. It was a Woodsia
hyperborea—that was the Latin name—and was rare in
those parts, he said; but the Herrschaft should come earlier for
flowers. July was the month. Then there was geum, and pale
blue-fringed campanulas, and rich lilac asters, yellow violets, the
white scented wax-flower, arnica and yellow aconite, both excellent
medicines; there were thunder-flowers, and blood-drops, and grass of
Parnassus, and hundreds more, all cut down by the scythes. There were
four thousand plants and upward in the Tyrol; only, alas! like the
gentians, many species were being perfectly exterminated.

His energy interested us, and his hands were under the table. Frau
Anna expressed great disappointment at the various beautiful
gentians, common in Switzerland, being rare in the Tyrol.

“Ladies,” replied the botanist with emphasis, “you
know not the reason? Why, there is hardly a species of gentian which
is not torn up by the roots for the making of schnapps. Schnapps is
good when rheumatism works in the bones: there is then no better
lotion; and a thimbleful of cheerfulness in the morning, and another
of sleep at night, are what I wish for our wirth, myself and every
peasant daily; but why need they pull up all the gentians, which were
bits of heaven scattered over the mountain-sides? I know that their
roots are better for schnapps distilling than those of other plants,
or even than bilberries or cranberries; but oh for a little
moderation, cutting the roots gently! for whilst a bit is left in the
ground the plant springs up again. ‘Poor as a root-grubber’
is the proverb. I’m glad it is. For if they were not so wanton,
they would not be so poor. They mostly come from the Zillerthal.
It’s a special trade. The men climb the mountains as soon as the
snow melts. They build themselves rude huts, and spend the summer
searching for and digging up roots. Now, however, as they have cut
their own throats, so to speak, they must climb often to high
mountain-ledges, letting themselves down by ropes, to gather fine
roots, which they still sometimes find of the thickness of my wrist.
In the late autumn they collect their bundles of dried gentian roots,
which they carry to the distilling vats, where the Enzian, so
dear to the Tyroler, is made.”

COWS COMING DOWN THE HILLSIDE BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM.

And the butcher, who had grown quite pathetic over the
[pg 329] gentians, rose to return to his
occupation. It was curious to observe the honorable position which he
held with landlord, landlady and Moidel. What a surgeon or soldier
would be in a higher class, that the butcher was to them. In this
case, too, we joined in respect—a feeling we might entertain
for many more of his trade, perhaps, had we the opportunity of
judging. But we must onward.

Ere long a young woman wearing a pointed black felt hat,
ornamented with yellow everlastings, overtook us and joined company
with Moidel, giving us, however, equally the benefit of her
conversation, whilst she insisted upon carrying a bag. She lived in
Rein, she told us, and had now to consult the doctor in Taufers a
second time about perpetual stitching pains in her throat. The doctor
said it was quinsy, and arose from cold. Perhaps, she said, if she
could bring herself to smoke a meerschaum, like other women in Rein,
she might keep the mischief out; but it struck her as a disgrace to a
female, and it made a great hole in the pocket. Those who were born
in such a village as Rein were in an evil plight. The cottages were
badly built, the kitchens reeked with smoke, and were so bitterly
cold in winter, though the fowls had to roost there, that water froze
in them. In fact, no one could stay in the kitchen in winter. Then
all the family must crowd into the stube, living and sleeping there.
When Nanni Muckhaus had the typhus she and her children and
grandchildren must lie down together; and then all the neighbors had
to visit her, unless they chose to pass as brutes; and so that was
how the typhus spread. Fortunately, her husband and she were alone:
they had no burdens. Still, life was hard—a vale of tears or a
vale of snow. If the gentry could see the Reinthal in the winter,
choked up with avalanches, they would say so. Her man had, however,
enough to keep them. He had a license for the shooting of gemsen and
other game, which he might use from holy Jakobi’s Day to
Candlemas. He had this year killed only five gemsen so far. The Post
at Taufers was greedy for gemsen now, and bought up every ounce of
the flesh at nineteen kreuzers the pound—bought snow-hens, too,
at forty kreuzers each, and would never let her husband’s gun be
idle. When Candlemas came, and he could no longer shoot, then he
worked in their fields; for we might not think it, but he, being a
thrifty soul, had saved fifty gulden and bought some land. But oh the
labors, the toils to which a Reinthaler was subjected! If his land
lay on the mountain-side, he and his woman must slave and toil like
beasts of burden, for what would be the help of horse or cow for
riding, driving or ploughing on such steep, upright land? “The
holy watch-angels help us!” she said. “Look up there and
you will see, ladies, the truth of what I tell you.”

Pointing with her finger, she drew our attention to the small
figure of a man working upon a dizzy height some three thousand feet
above us, his legs, like a pair of compasses, comically revealing a
triangle of blue sky between them, whilst we with difficulty made out
the figures of two women helping him.

“That’s Seppl Mahlgruben and his daughters cutting down
their green oats, too tardy to ripen. Some years since Moidel, the
eldest girl, working on that precise point, knelt one inch too far
over the precipice and was hurled into eternity, where a better
fortune, I pray God, awaited her than the cruel trials of
Reinthal.”

Moidel told us afterward that she thought our informant took too
gloomy a view, probably occasioned by “her stitching
pains.” Still, she owned to its being a toilsome, perilous life
in every season of the year save summer.

In a broad sylvan meadow at the end of the narrow defile, within
sound of the chief waterfall, we had the joy of seeing again the rest
of our party, who had made an afternoon excursion thither to meet us.
At a quiet, rural little inn just below, with an outside gallery
possessing a view of the still, deep gorge in front and softer
meadows beyond, kind hearts had already ordered coffee and rolls for
nine. All were unanimous, however, [pg
330] that the ample supply was sufficient for ten, and the
good woman of Rein was pressed to enter and partake. This she
gratefully declined, adding, however, that it would be friendly and
helpful of us to allow her to drink a cup of coffee there at six in
morning on her return journey to Rein. Not that she had expected the
least attention to be offered her, and hoped that it was not intended
as a different mode of payment for her carrying a lady’s handbag.
Although we had felt that one good turn deserved another, we made her
mind easy on that score, and she went tripping forward.

For us there was still no hurry. The evening sky was brilliantly
clear, the mountain-summits and dark fir woods shone forth a
burnished gold, so that it seemed almost a sin to dive into the deep
shadows of the valley below. Besides, the inn possessed some beehive
sheds, and a view beyond which must not escape the pencil of the
artists, who busily sketched whilst the others rested, enjoying the
great crimson bars of sunset drawn across the dewy valley to the
rippling sound of a mad, merry little mill-brook.

How much sympathy and respect has been afforded in all ages and
climes to those serviceable creatures, bees!

Unlike Virgil, the good Tyrolese, however, would call them monks
and nuns dwelling in cells, rather than “citizens.”
Formerly they delighted in erecting the most ornamental dwellings
which they could devise for them, helping them in their constant toil
by planting balmy thyme and other sweet honey-yielding flowers around
the hives. These were constructed of wood, gayly painted with holy
monograms and devices to add a blessing and security to the provident
labors of the little inmates. They were, in fact, beatified
bees, who had to be solemnly invited to attend the death mass
when the owner died, else they would fly away, refusing to stay. If a
swarm of bees hung to a house, it was simply as a warning that fire
would break out there.

The beehives at this little inn still stood fresh, compact, with
flowers blooming around them, the kindly woman evidently taking great
pride in her bees. This, however, is not always the case. The grand
beehives, like the grand old halls and castles of the Tyrol, are
falling into decay: in both instances the paintings on the walls are
peeling off or growing indistinct; the present generation has either
lost its love for honey or much of its reverence for the bees—a
fact difficult to define amongst a people with almost credulous
veneration and intense belief in old customs. Still, much of the
freshness and simplicity of the peasants is passing away with the
discarding of their picturesque costumes.

As a certain endurable routine had been arrived at within the
walls of the Elephant, we agreed, before retiring to rest, to remain
still several days there, availing ourselves of the splendid weather
to explore more thoroughly the beautiful, varied neighborhood of
Taufers.

But, alas! the clear brilliant air and the deep rosy sunset had
deceived us. The next morning mists and clouds obstructed the view,
finally dissolving into a pitiless downfall, that detained us
prisoners in the house, which was silent as the grave but for the
rain steadily pattering against the casements.

Weary of the wet and without occupation, our disengaged minds,
wandering out into the mist and rain, dreamily contemplated a slow
band of pilgrims defiling along the distant hillside. Had the day
been bright and clear, we should have seen them as sheaves of corn or
clover stuck to dry upon light stakes with branching arms, the upper
bundle being placed aslant to act as shelter to the rest. As it was,
however, in the plashing rain it required no effort to believe them
tired, defenceless pilgrims ever wandering on. Some despondingly beat
their arms upon their breasts, others, heavy and exhausted, fell upon
their knees; here a woman defended her infant from the biting blast,
there an old man with rugged hair looked mournfully backward; but
these were only a few amongst the endless figures [pg 331] of the tragic band, on a long, unceasing
march.

Everywhere in the Tyrol, especially in the gloaming, whether in
Alpine meadow or arable land of the valley, such weird companies may
be seen. Bands of Indians, societies of cowled monks, ancient
Italians fleeing from a buried city, wandering Israelites,—such
and many others are the shapes which these drying sheaves of corn,
hay or clover assume, all combining to act as one vast funeral
procession of the summer that is no more.

A PROCESSION.

In the afternoon a different company from these natural objects in
the distance came to occupy our minds for the time being. Gradually
the up stairs sitting-room, which we had foolishly perhaps imagined
reserved for our party of nine, became invaded by priests in long
coats down to their heels and muddy top-boots. We, the new-comers
from the mountains, now learnt that this was the daily occurrence,
and really the most unpleasant feature of the house, where the
landlord and landlady remained as sleepy and unimpressionable as
ever. We were soon, in fact, obliged to vacate the room, driven out
not only by the fumes of bad tobacco, but by the unsatisfactory stare
which was leveled at each intruder. The kellnerin, generally a slow,
incommunicative mortal, now passed, from cellar to sitting-room in a
flutter of excitement, her tongue, otherwise dormant, moving like a
mill-clapper in the enlivening society of her spiritual fathers.
These were the shepherds of the different adjoining parishes, whose
custom it was to derive mental and corporeal comfort in sipping their
acid wine and smoking their cheap tobacco in company. There might not
have been any great harm in it, but nevertheless it seemed an
apparent falling away from the singularly bright example which a good
man, born only ten minutes from the Elephant, in the village of
Mühlen, had once set them.

The priest Michael Feichter, at his death in 1832 the head of the
clerical seminary at Brixen, became for a time, through his extreme
goodness and grace, the unseen regenerator of the Church in the
Tyrol. A simple, guileless man, with intense love and cheerfulness,
he acted as if God his friend were ever by his side. The entire
Bible, which he had chiefly studied on his knees, he knew literally
by heart. Birds, flowers and stones gave him subjects for stirring
sermons, and his evening conversations with his pupils were fraught
with the most beneficent consequences through his intense sympathy
and the power he unwittingly possessed of diving deep into the
conscience. Sorrows were met invariably by him with a cheerful
“Dominus providebit” or “parcat Deus.” Cheating
and deceit pained him greatly, and he therefore rejoiced to become
acquainted with honest Jews, conscientious officials and religious
soldiers. Thoughts of wealth and station never troubled him. He
walked like a child through the world. When unable to wear his
scholastic gown he moved about, his serene face beaming with cheerful
urbanity from under the shadow of a broad-brimmed cocked hat, his
pride and delight, as it spared him both sunshade and umbrella. His
old coat of [pg 332] an antique cut
still bore on the under side of a flap the dyer’s mark. His
waistcoat and stockings were of black knitted wool. On festive
occasions, however, he fastened to the back of his coat collar a
fluttering band denoting his doctorate. There was something humorous
in his appearance: he knew it and laughed at it, and yet, says one of
his pupils, “though we joined in the laugh, his whole person and
demeanor touched us deeply: we knew that he was not of this
world.”

Was it strange that we felt a great discrepancy between the memory
of this guileless man and some of the self-indulgent priests, once
his pupils, in the upper stube?

The next day, the rain promising still to detain us prisoners,
Moidel, fearing that her important services must be missed at the
Hof, bravely defied wet and mud and tramped resolutely home. In the
afternoon, utterly tired out, we too determined to shift our quarters
to Edelsheim, and, engaging a large jolting vehicle, were borne
through mire, rain and mist from the Elephant to the Hof.

Long before we reached the door we saw cheerful lights gleaming
from the long rows of windows. Anton, Moidel, the aunt, Uncle Johann
were at the door to receive us and our belongings. They felt sure,
somehow, that we should come.

The floors of our rooms had been scrubbed white as snow in our
absence, but we must not hesitate to enter with our damp shoes. Were
not the rooms our own? Letters and newspapers were carefully laid
according to their various directions, and with flowers and dainty
dishes covered the supper-table. Moro, the good house-dog, stood by
our chairs or caressed the hand of his favorite, E——. We
felt that we had come home—to our home in the Tyrol.

MARGARET HOWITT.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

COLORADO AND THE SOUTH PARK.

On the 15th of August, 1871, two brothers and a
sister—Sepia, an artist, Levell, an engineer, and Scribe, who
is the narrator—left Chicago by the North-western Railroad,
bound for Denver in Colorado, about eleven hundred miles west. The
first day we were climbing the gradual ascent from the Lakes to the
Mississippi, which we crossed at 4.30 P.M., at Clinton. The thirty
years which had elapsed since I first traversed this region had
changed it from wild, unbroken prairie to a well-cultivated country,
full of corn-fields, cattle and flourishing towns. Then I traveled in
a wagon four miles an hour, and had to find my own meat in the shape
of a deer from the grove, a grouse from the prairie or a duck from
the river. Now we rushed across the State in six hours, stopping
fifteen minutes for dinner in a fine brick hotel, metropolitan in
charges, if not in fare. In 1840, when we arrived at the great river,
we waited two or three hours for the ferry-boat, and finally had to
cross in a “dug-out,” which seemed but a frail vessel to
stem the rapid currents and whirling eddies of the Mississippi. Now
we crossed upon a railroad bridge of iron, which cost more money than
all Iowa contained in 1840. Still, I fancy that the first method of
traveling was the more interesting.

Through the still summer afternoon we rushed on over the rolling
prairies of Iowa, dotted with towns and villages and covered with
great corn- and wheat-farms. Here in 1840 was absolute wilderness: we
made our hunting-camp seventy-five miles west of the river, and we
were twenty miles away from any white settler. Wolves howled and
[pg 333] panthers screamed around our
camp, we lived upon elk and deer meat, and our only visitors in two
weeks were some Sac and Fox Indians, who disapproved of our intrusion
upon their hunting-grounds.

At 9 A.M. on the 16th we arrived at Council Bluffs, and crossed
the turbid and furious Missouri in a steam ferry-boat to Omaha in
Nebraska. For many years Council Bluffs was one of the remotest
military posts: to go there was to be banished from the world. Now it
is a town of ten thousand inhabitants, struggling to overtake its
rival on the other bank, Omaha, which has sixteen thousand.

Here our baggage was rechecked for Denver, for at Omaha begins the
Union Pacific Railroad. A great road it is, and great are its
charges. On the North-western, as on most others, the charge is about
four cents per mile, but the Union Pacific, to which corporation
Congress gave the usual land-grant, and more than enough money to
build the road, cannot afford to carry you for less than ten. This
may arise from the custom which has prevailed of giving free passes
to all Congressmen, governors, editors and other privileged classes,
so that, half the passengers paying nothing, the others have to pay
double. Not only are the fares high, but you are charged for extra
baggage. Like the elephant, who can drag a cannon or pick up a pin,
this great corporation is able to give free passes to a whole
legislature or to charge me twenty-five cents for five pounds of
extra baggage.

From Nebraska into Wyoming, and we are nearly out of the United
States, though the old flag still flies over us. The people here talk
about going to the “States.” All the region hereabouts,
from the middle of Nebraska, lies in what used to be called by the
French Les Mauvaises Terres, or “Bad Lands,” and was
eloquently described by Irving in Astoria as the Great
American Desert. “This region,” he writes, “resembles
one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, and spreads forth into
undulating and treeless plains and desolate sandy wastes, which are
supposed by geologists to have formed the ancient floor of the ocean
countless ages ago, when its primeval waves beat against the granite
bases of the Rocky Mountains. It is a land where no man permanently
abides, for in certain seasons of the year there is no food either
for the hunter or his steed. The herbage is parched and withered, the
streams are dried up, the buffalo, the elk and the deer have wandered
to distant parts, leaving behind them a vast, uninhabited
solitude.”

But this “land where no man permanently abides” is
rapidly being settled, and is found to be rendered very fertile by
the simple process of irrigation, which costs less than the manuring
of Eastern farms. So the Great American Desert recedes before the
immigrant, and, like the noble savage, is found to be a myth.

On the railroad midway between Cheyenne and Denver lies the new
town of Greeley. Although not on the maps in 1870, it now contains
fifteen hundred inhabitants, forty or fifty stores, six hotels,
churches, schools, and all the apparatus of civilization. This
aspiring town, 4779 feet above the sea-level, is an example of those
colony towns so successful in the West, and on which we must depend
for rebuilding society in the South. Greeley is surrounded by fertile
farms, and every city lot looks fresh and green: all this is effected
by irrigation. Two canals have been dug from the head-waters of the
Platte—one twenty-six miles long, which will water fifty
thousand acres; the other ten miles long, to furnish water for the
town and five thousand acres. The prairie where it is not irrigated
now, in midsummer, looks burned up and covered with a parched
herbage, which, however unpromising to the eye, is really good sweet
hay, dried and preserved by the hand of Nature for the buffalo and
antelope, and now cropped by the flocks and herds of the white
man.

Denver, the capital of the Territory, contains about eight
thousand inhabitants. It is a true specimen of a Western town which
fully believes in itself, and blows a loud trumpet from its elevation
of five thousand feet. It was said [pg
334] of old “that the meek shall inherit the earth,”
but it was not by that quality that the Denverites obtained
their location. Here are plenty of hotels, three banks and a mint:
five railroads centre here, bringing in ten thousand tons of freight
per month. Denver has schools and churches in satisfactory numbers,
and her merchants sell ten millions of dollars’ worth of goods
per annum. Considering that the place was only settled in 1858, and
has in these fifteen years been destroyed both by fire and water, and
almost starved by an Indian blockade, it must be admitted to be a
pretty smart specimen of a Western city.

We ride in a ‘bus, city fashion, to the Broadwell House, a
fatigued-looking structure of the earlier period, but probably no
worse than the others. Directly we begin to plan an excursion to the
South Park, seventy-five miles distant, and going out to look for
wagon and horses, we catch our first sight of the Rocky Mountains, a
line of dim, misty heights, with the more pronounced outline of the
foot-hills beneath. We engage a strong covered wagon, with a good
pair of horses and a driver, the latter only seventeen years old, but
owner of the team, and carrying himself man-fashion, with the
precocity of the Western youth. The wagon is brought to the hotel and
loaded, so as to be ready for an early start in the morning: we have
a tent and camp-equipage, with gun and fishing-rods for Levell and
Scribe, and the sketching-gear belonging to Sepia.

So on the 18th, at 8 A.M., we drive over the bridge which crosses
Cherry Creek, and then cross six miles of uninhabited prairie, seamed
with gulches, and brown with withered herbage and cactus—no
verdure except along the canals, where several species of
Artemisia and a prickly poppy with a large white flower grow
profusely. We then begin to mount the bare foot-hills, among which
are curious masses of red rock as large as city churches, and washed
by the storms of ages into various fantastic forms. We then enter a
ravine or cañon through which flows Bear Creek, a tributary of the
Platte.

Along Bear Creek are ranches where good crops of wheat are raised,
and butter and milk made for the Denver market. The grass in this
region makes the most delicious butter; indeed, I may say that I
never tasted poor butter in Colorado. In the month of August it is as
sweet and fragrant as the very best of our June butter in the States.
The time will come when the butter of Colorado will be sent to the
Atlantic cities: at present there is no surplus made.

We now began to ascend Bear Mountain by a road cut along its side:
it was smooth and easy of ascent, but only wide enough for one
carriage, with a precipice of several hundred feet on either side, so
that we shuddered to think of the consequences of our meeting a
wagon. Happily, we met with none, although we overtook one, and had
to keep behind it till we reached the summit. Then down the other
side to a strip of bottom-land on a creek, where we camped for the
night, having come twenty miles from Denver.

August 19. Rose at five and breakfasted on fried pork, corn
bread and coffee. Started at ten, and drove fourteen miles to Omaha
Ranch; then to St. Louis Ranch, six miles, Roland’s Ranch, five
miles, and Bailey’s, five miles, on the North Fork of the South
Fork of the Platte. The weather was fine, and the air beautifully
clear and bracing. The road wound among the mountains, up a rocky
ravine, down a wooded cañon, then through little parks, surrounded by
high hills and set with magnificent sugar pines, and carpeted with
fresh grass and abundant flowers. In the ravines and on the
mountain-sides the road was narrow, but we were lucky and met
nothing, although we frequently overtook the immense wagons drawn by
five or six yoke of oxen, and driven by the most ferocious-looking
teamsters whom I have ever seen, brandishing enormous whips, which
crack like rifle-shots in the woods. We found, however, that, being
civilly entreated, they would always turn out of the road to let us
pass. We were now at an elevation of probably six thousand feet,
[pg 335] having been constantly
ascending since we left Denver; and this evening we rose still
higher, having climbed a long mountain which overlooked the
head-waters of the Platte.

Our last descent of fifteen hundred feet in three miles brought us
to the neat log tavern kept by W.L. Bailey, where we found a supper
of trout just from the river, together with mountain-raspberries and
delicious cream, and clean, comfortable beds. When we looked out next
morning everything appeared so pleasant in this sheltered valley, and
the house was so comfortable, that we determined to stay here a day
and enjoy some sketching and fishing. Sepia took her pencils and
ascended the hill behind the house, and we others got out our rods
and followed the example set us by Simon Peter.

The Platte, which ran through the meadow about a quarter of a mile
away, was a brown, shallow stream, twenty feet wide, fretting over a
rocky bed, with little pools and rapids which had a promising look;
so we looped on a red and a brown hackle and began to cast. Levell
walked down stream about a quarter of a mile before he began, so as
to leave a piece of water for the Scribe. The sun shone very bright
and hot, and only a few small trout answered my invitations. They
were darker and less brilliant in color than our Salmo
fontinalis, and were, I think, Salmo Lewisii, which
inhabits these waters. The valley was about half a mile wide, and
shut in on each side by mountains of red granite, crowned with pines.
Bailey’s people were making hay in the valley, and I sat down on
a fragrant haycock to await the return of my companion. Presently I
observed a horseman coming up the valley: he was a hunter, followed
by a couple of hounds, with the carcass of a mountain-sheep, or
bighorn (Ovis montana), on the saddle in front of him. He told
me he had killed it on the mountain behind us, and was taking it to
Bailey’s for sale. It was an animal something in color like a
deer, and about as heavy, though shorter in the leg, with very large
curved horns, like those of a ram. He said they were numerous in
these mountains, and he had killed six of them in a day, but had to
lower them down the precipices with a lariat, which was hard work. I
asked if the story was true that these creatures would throw
themselves from high rocks, and, turning over in the air, pitch upon
their horns with safety. He said he had hunted them many years, but
never saw that performance. Being asked if he thought they could do
it, he replied that he reckoned they could, but would be
smashed if they did. Being interrogated on the subject of grizzly
bears, he replied that there were grizzlies hereabouts, but
that he never hunted them: he had no use for grizzlies.

In a couple of hours Levell returned, having fished the stream for
a mile or more: he had got about twenty small trout. We found that
Sepia had been more successful than ourselves, for she had made some
effective water-color sketches of the scenery.

Aug. 21. We started this morning at seven, and drove up the
Platte Valley five miles to Slaight’s, through a very picturesque
region. Passed some heavy wagons bound to the mines, and met the
mail-stage coming down the valley from Fairplay, with four horses at
a gallop: we were luckily able to draw off and let them pass, which
they did in a cloud of dust, through which could be dimly seen the
long-bearded, red-shirted miners. A saw-mill at Slaight’s, with
two houses and some fields of oats. Then eight miles to
Heffron’s, at the forks of the river, where there are a
post-office and one house. Two miles beyond we stopped to feed our
horses in a lovely park-like bit of open forest of sugar pines. This
species resembles the yellow pine of the Southern States, with the
same rich purple trunk and widespreading branches. Many of them had
been girdled by the Indians to obtain the sweet inner bark, which is
a favorite luxury of the Utes. We see very few birds in these
mountains, which are too wild for the warblers and insect-eating
birds. We met with the mountain-grouse, a bird of about the size and
color of Tetrao [pg 336]
cupido, and one or two hawks. We also saw in the bushes at the
roadside the mountain-rabbit (Lepus artemisia), which from its
large size we at first mistook for a fawn. From Heffron’s we
continue to ascend for six miles, till just beyond a small lake we
got the first view of the Park: it lay before us like a vast basin,
some hundreds of feet below, surrounded with a rim of high
mountains.

The Park itself is 9842 feet above the sea-level, or half as high
again as Mount Washington. The surrounding rim is some two thousand
feet higher, while in the distance, north, south and west, may be
seen the snowy summits, fourteen thousand feet high, of Gray’s
Peak, Pike’s Peak, Mount Lincoln, and

The South Park is sixty miles long and thirty wide, with a surface
like a rolling prairie, and contains hills, groves, lakes and streams
in beautiful variety. It formerly abounded with buffalo and other
game, and was a favorite winter hunting-ground of the Indians and the
white trappers, but since the great influx of miners the buffaloes
have mostly disappeared. Such, however, is the excellence of the
pasture that great herds of cattle are driven up here to feed during
the summer. Several towns and villages have sprung up around the
mines in this vicinity, such as Hamilton, Fairplay and Tarryall, to
which a stage-coach runs three times a week from Denver.

In our old atlases, forty years ago, we used to see the Rocky
Mountains laid down as a great central chain or back-bone of the
continent; but they are rather a congeries of groups scattered over
an area of six hundred miles in width and a thousand miles long:
among them are hundreds of these parks, from a few acres in extent to
the size of the State of Massachusetts. These mountains differ so
entirely from those usually visited and described by travelers, the
Alps, the Scottish Highlands and the White Mountains, that one can
scarcely believe that this warm air and rich vegetation exist ten
thousand feet above the sea. In climate the Colorado mountains
approach more nearly to the Andes, where the snow-line varies from
fourteen thousand to seventeen thousand feet. Here snow begins at
twelve thousand feet, and increases in quantity to the extreme height
of the tallest peaks, about fourteen thousand two hundred and fifty
feet, though even these are often bare in August. In these parks the
cattle live without shelter in winter, and the timber is large and
plentiful at eleven thousand feet elevation. Glaciers are wanting,
but instead we have the rich vegetation, the wide range of mountains,
the pure, dry and balmy atmosphere, and a variety, a depth and a
softness of color which can hardly be equaled on earth.

Having stopped an hour to enjoy the view from the brow of the
mountain which forms the rim of the Park, we were overtaken by one of
the sudden rains which occur here, and had to drive six miles along
the level bottom, till, crossing a brook, we found ourselves at
sunset near a large log cabin, where we were glad to be allowed to
lie down on the floor under shelter.

It was occupied by some young people named McLaughlin, two sisters
and a brother, who had come up from the Plains, where their family
lived, with a herd of cattle, from the milk of which the girls made
one hundred pounds of butter per week, for which they got fifty cents
a pound in the mines. In the fall they returned home, leaving the
cattle for the winter in certain sheltered regions called “the
range.” They were stout, healthy young women, who did not fear
to stay here all alone for days at a time while their brother was
galloping about the Park on his broncho after his cattle. They did
not keep tavern, but were often obliged to take in benighted
travelers like ourselves, to whom they gave the shelter of their roof
and the privilege of cooking at their stove. The house was about
forty by twenty feet, all in one room, though one end was parted off
by blankets, behind which they admitted the lady of our party.
Sometimes they were visited by Utes, who are not unfriendly, though,
like most Indians, they [pg 337] are
audacious beggars. “They try to scare us sometimes,” said
Jane: “they tell us, ‘Bimeby Utes get all this
country—then you my squaw,’ but we don’t scare worth a
cent.” Their nearest neighbor is a sister four miles away, who
is the wife of Squire Lechner, innkeeper and justice of the
peace.

Aug. 23. Started this morning at eleven for Lechner’s.
Passed some deserted mining-camps, where the surface had been seamed
and scarred by the diggers; then across a creek, where we saw ducks
and a red-tailed hawk. Squire Lechner has a large log tavern on the
brow of a hill: he was absent, but his wife took us in. Sepia went on
the hill to sketch, and we others drove off in search of a
trout-brook of which we heard flattering accounts. It was a very
pretty stream, winding through the prairie with the gentle murmur so
loved by the angler and poet, and lacked nothing but fish to make it
perfect. It was rendered somewhat turbid by the late rains, so that
if the trout were there they could not see our flies. We are told
that trout are plenty on the other side of the mountains. “Go to
the Arkansas,” they say, “and you will find big
ones.”

We found Mrs. Lechner a friendly person, like her sisters. She
told us that before her marriage her father kept this tavern. In
1864, most of the men being away in the Union army, they found the
house one morning surrounded by a band of mounted rebels, who had
come up from Texas through New Mexico to make a raid on the mines.
They were a savage-looking band, about fifty in number, and were led
by a man who had formerly worked for her father, and whom she
recognized. They took what money and gold-dust was in the house, and
seized all the best horses about the place; but when she saw them
taking away her saddle-pony, she cried out, “Oh, Tom Smith! I
didn’t think you was that mean, to rob me of my pony! Wasn’t
you always well treated here?” He seemed to relent at this
appeal, and not only restored her horse, but two of her father’s
also. The people collected and pursued the robbers, most of whom were
captured or killed, but the leader escaped. Mrs. Lechner said she was
glad he got away. “Tom must have had some good in him or he
wouldn’t have given me back my pony.”

Aug. 24. Rose this morning at daybreak, and enjoyed the
sight of a sunrise among these snowy peaks. Nothing can surpass the
delicate tints of rose-color, silver gray, gold and purple which
suffuse these summits in early morning. I called Sepia to sketch
them, but what human colors can reproduce such glories? We left at
seven, and drove to Bailey’s, thirty-five miles, before sunset,
stopping an hour at noon. On the top of a mountain, about 4 P.M., we
were caught in a furious squall, attended with rain, snow and hail,
with terrific thunder and lightning, which struck a tree close by.
And here I must pay my tribute to the admirable qualities of our
horses—steady, prompt and courageous; no mountain too steep for
them to climb, no precipice too abrupt to descend; and they stood the
pelting of that pitiless storm like four-legged philosophers. We
found Bailey’s house apparently full, but they made room for us.
A handsome buggy and pair arrived soon after, from which descended a
well-dressed gentleman and lady, whom we found to be the
superintendent of a silver-mine at Hamilton and his wife. They told
us that there was a very good boarding-house at that place, with fine
scenery all around, which we ought to have seen. But in truth we had
as much fine scenery as we could contain: we were saturated with it,
and a few mountains more would have been wasted.

Aug. 25. A fine clear morning, and we started early, hoping
to drive through to Denver, forty-five miles, but in about fifteen
miles one of the horses lost a shoe, which it was thought necessary
to replace, the road being rocky; so we went slowly to the junction,
where was a blacksmith. He proved to be a mixture of tavern-keeper,
farmer and blacksmith, and it was considered a favor to be shod by a
man of such various talents. [pg 338]
Deliberately he searched for a shoe: that found, he looked for the
hammer. Who had seen the hammer? It was remembered that little Johnny
had been playing with it. Johnny was looked for, and finally brought,
but was unable or unwilling to find the tool so essential to our
progress. “Look for it, Johnny,” said the blacksmith; and
he looked, but to no purpose. After waiting an hour for reason to
dawn upon the mind of this infant, the blacksmith put on the shoe
with the help of a hatchet, and we proceeded; but so much time had
been lost night overtook us twelve miles from Denver. We tried at two
taverns, which were full of teamsters, and we were obliged to diverge
three miles down Bear’s Creek Cañon to the house of Strauss. The
good woman, after a mild protest, admitted us and gave us a supper of
venison, with good beds. Strauss has a fine ranch along the creek,
where he raises forty bushels of wheat to the acre, and his wife
milks thirty-six cows and makes two hundred pounds of butter at a
churning. Besides this, she cultivates a flower-garden, with many
varieties of bloom, irrigated by a ditch from the creek.

Arrived at Denver at noon of the 26th, and found the mercury at
90°, and were glad to leave the crowded hotel next morning for
Chicago.

I have only described what we actually saw, which was but a small
part of the wonders and delights of Colorado. We were humble
travelers, unattached to any party of Congressmen or of railroad
potentates: we were not ushered into the Garden of the Gods, assisted
up Gray’s Park, or introduced to the Petrified Forest; but we saw
enough of the new and beautiful to give us lasting recollections of
Colorado and the South Park.

S.C. CLARKE.

THE PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY.

“Do you know anything about this ‘grange’
business?” asked a lady from the city the other day; and she
added, “I can hardly take up a magazine or newspaper without
falling on the words ‘grange,’ ‘Patrons of
Husbandry,’ ‘farmers’ movement,’ and all
that.”

“Why, I am a Patron myself,” I replied.

“What! you have a grange here in this little New
Jersey sandbank?” she exclaimed incredulously, and plied me with
a storm of questions.

It was a quiet, rainy evening, and I devoted the whole of it to
answering her queries, reading documents from our head-quarters, and
quoting Mr. Adams’s treatise on the Railroad Systems and
other authorities to explain the present war between producers and
carriers; and, believing that there are many others who, like my
friend, are disposed to look into this “grange business,” I
will give them the substance of our conversation. A great deal of
that which has found its way into the press touching our order is
more characterized by confidence than correctness of statement. In a
late magazine article it is stated that the organization known as the
Patrons of Husbandry “was originally borrowed from an
association which for many years had maintained a feeble existence in
a community of Scotch farmers in North Carolina.” This statement
has no foundation in fact. The order is not the out-growth directly,
or even indirectly, of any pre-existing organization. It is the
result, so far as it is possible to trace impulses to their source,
of the suggestion of a lady, communicated some years ago to Mr. O.H.
Kelley, the present secretary of the National Grange, and the person
who has done more than any other to establish [pg 339] the order as it exists to-day. The
suggestion was in substance this: Why cannot the farmers protect
themselves by a national organization, as do other trades and
professions? Mr. Kelley seized the idea with enthusiasm, worked out
the plan of a secret society, and traveled over the country seeking
to arouse the farmers to organize for their mutual advantage. He met
with constant disappointment at first, and his family and friends
implored him to abandon a project which threatened to absorb every
cent he possessed, as it did all his time and energy. But he
persevered against every discouragement, and to-day he may well be
proud of the results of his devotion.

The first grange was organized in St. Paul, Minnesota, and called
the “North Star Grange,” and it is one of the most
efficient subordinate granges in the country to this day. Another was
organized in Washington, one in Fredonia, New York, one in Ohio,
another in Illinois, and a few others during the same year in
different places. This was very nearly six years ago. Since that time
they have been constantly increasing—at first slowly, then with
a rapidity unheard of in the history of secret or any other
organizations in this country or the world. We can hardly count three
years since the order fairly began to grow, and now the granges are
numbered by the thousand. Ten States on the twenty-fifth of June last
had over a hundred granges, and seven of these between two and five
hundred. Iowa to-day has seventeen hundred and ten, and others in
process of organization. Thirty-one of the States and Territories had
subordinate or both subordinate and State granges, according to the
June returns. There were eight at that date in Canada, twenty-three
in Vermont, five in New York State, three in New Jersey, two in
Pennsylvania, and one in Massachusetts. Up to this time there has
been little effort made to extend the organization into the Eastern
and Middle States, but at present deputies from the National Grange
are being sent to these “benighted regions,” and the leaven
is working finely. To show how rapidly the order is extending it will
be only necessary to add that seven hundred and one charters for new
granges were issued during the single month of May.

The discussion of party politics is excluded from the order by
common consent, as well as by the terms of its constitution. How much
this one wise provision tends to preserve harmony among those of
different sects and political parties needs no comment. We know that
on one or both of these rocks most great popular organizations have
been wrecked. So far, the Patrons of Husbandry have worked together
with great harmony, and the slight discords have been nothing more
than the surface ripples on a great onward-setting current. Men and
women are received on terms of absolute equality throughout all the
seven degrees. Four are degrees conferred in subordinate granges, and
the higher in the State granges or in the National Grange—the
seventh in the latter only, constituting a national senate and court
of impeachment, and having charge also of the secret work of the
order. All officers are chosen by ballot—those of the National
Grange for three years, of State granges for two years, and of
subordinate granges for one year. The names of the first four degrees
are respectively, for men and women, Laborer and Maid, Cultivator and
Shepherdess, Harvester and Gleaner, Husbandman and Matron; and the
initiations are not only exceedingly impressive and beautiful, but
really instructive. It may also be added that they are never tedious,
which will be agreeable information to those who, in entering secret
societies, have been dragged through long, meaningless rigmaroles,
conscious of being made a spectacle of, and preserving their temper
only by the most strenuous efforts.

Into the initiations of the order of the Patrons there enter as
machinery or symbols music and song, the expression of exalted
sentiments, ceremonies replete, without exception, with significance
and instruction, together with fruits and grains and flowers and
simple feasts. [pg 340] Two fundamental
objects of the organization are social and intellectual culture. The
widespread realization of the importance of these among the people is
the first great step toward securing them, and the first unmistakable
sign that such step has already been taken is the rebelling against
pure drudgery. Said the Master of the National Grange, Mr. Dudley W.
Adams, in a late address: “It will doubtless be a matter of
surprise to them” (editors, lawyers, politicians, etc.) “to
learn that farmers may possibly entertain some wish to enjoy life,
and have some other object in living besides everlasting hard work
and accumulating a few paltry dollars by coining them from their own
life-blood and stamping them with the sighs of weary children and
worn wives. What we want in agriculture is a new Declaration of
Independence. We must do something to dispel old prejudices and beat
down old notions. That the farmer is a mere animal to labor from
morning till eve, and into the night, is an ancient but abominable
heresy.”… “We have heard enough, ten times enough, about
the ‘hardened hand of honest toil,’ the supreme glory of
‘the sweating brow,’ and how magnificent the suit of coarse
homespun which covers a form bent with overwork.”… “I
tell you, my brother-workers of the soil, there is something worth
living for besides hard work. We have heard enough of this
professional blarney. Toil in itself is not necessarily glorious. To
toil like slaves, raise fat steers, cultivate broad acres, pile up
treasures of bonds and lands and herds, and at the same time bow and
starve the god-like form, harden the hands, dwarf the immortal mind
and alienate the children from the homestead, is a damning disgrace
to any man, and should stamp him as worse than a brute.”

Thus the farmers have joined the great strike of labor against
drudgery, and it will never end until it is fully recognized that,
while every unproductive life is a dishonorable life, drudgery is no
less degrading than pure idleness. To be sure, the sages in all times
have taught that there was a time to sing and dance as well as a time
to labor, but it is not fifty years since it was generally accepted
by the masses that a person might spend every day of his adult life
in monotonous manual labor, and yet, other things being favorable, be
just as intelligent, just as polished in manner, and graceful in
bearing as if his occupation was varied and the more laborious
portions of it never continued long at a time. To-day this fallacy is
beginning to be generally recognized. Go into any farming district,
and you will find that the farmer’s sons who are regularly
engaged in one kind of labor all day, as ploughing, planting, mowing,
are great, awkward, heavy-mannered youths, while his daughters are,
in comparison, easy in their movements and agreeable in their
address; and simply because, though their labor has been as
unremitting, it has been far less monotonous. As a general rule, they
go from one thing to another, and through a great variety of muscular
exercises from hour to hour.

It is no wonder, then, that the farmers’ sons, to get rid of
the terrible monotony of farm-labor as now organized, find peddling
tin kettles an acceptable substitute, or turning somersets in a
third-class circus a fortunate escape. The reason why our country
youths are so impatient of farm-labor is not that they are less
virtuous than formerly, but that they are wiser; and the railroad has
opened a thousand fields for their ambitious daring undreamed of as
possibilities in the olden time. Not even the combination of
attractions afforded by the granges, with their libraries and
reading-rooms, their processions and picnics, the decoration of
grange halls in company with the ladies of the order, the working of
degrees, the music, social reunions, balls and concerts, can keep
young men on the farm unless something is done to render the labor
less monotonous and disagreeable.

One of the Patrons during a late discussion of these questions
predicted, from the growing intelligence of the people, and their
better understanding of the possibilities of organization, that
within a few years we shall see magnificent [pg
341] social palaces, something like the famous one at Guise,
in many places in this country; and he went on to show how social and
industrial life might be organized so as to secure the most complete
liberty of the individual or family, magnificent educational
advantanges, remunerative occupation and varied amusements for all,
with perfect insurance against want for orphans, for the sick and the
aged. Each palace was to be the centre of a great agricultural
district exploited in the most scientific manner, and through the
varied economies resulting from combination all the luxuries of
industry and all the conditions for high culture were to be secured
to all who were willing to labor even one-half the hours that the
farmer now does. It was a glowing picture, and certainly very
entertaining, whether a possibility of this, or, as one of the
company suggested, of some happier planet than ours.

But whatever dreams for the future may be entertained by some of
the Patrons, it is certain that they have work directly at hand, and
that they are grappling it with a will. The Iowa granges, through
agents appointed from among their members, now purchase their
machinery and farming implements direct from the manufacturer and by
wholesale. That State saved half a million during 1872 in this way,
and Missouri, through the executive committee of her State grange,
has just completed a contract in St. Louis for the same purpose. All
members of the granges are thus enabled to secure these articles at
greatly reduced prices; and as there are over three hundred and fifty
granges, with a larger membership than in many other States, this is
a very important item.

Now, in regard to the railroads, with which it is generally
supposed the Patrons of Husbandry are in fierce conflict. Certainly,
to the outside observer, the agriculturists of the South and West
seem to have most grievous burdens to bear. It costs the price of
three bushels of corn to carry one to the grain-marts by rail, and
the whole world knows that they have been burning their three-year
old crops as fuel in nearly all the Western States. Meanwhile, it
seems clear that there is not too much corn raised, since a great
famine has just swept over Persia, and others are threatening in
different parts of the world.

The present high rates of transportation were never anticipated by
the farmer. If in the beginning some great route charged high rates
for carrying, his dissatisfaction was soothed by the assurance that
the road had cost an enormous outlay of capital, and that as soon as
the company was partially reimbursed the rates would be lowered. The
sequel generally proved that the rates went up instead of down, and
the still angrier mood of the farmer was again quieted by a new hope:
a great competing railroad line was projected, and finally finished.
Competition would certainly bring down the prices. This was the
reasonable way to expect relief. Competition always had that effect.
Alas for the simple producer! He had borne his burdens long and
patiently only to learn the truth of George Stevenson’s pithy
apothegm, that “where combination is possible competition is
impossible.” The two great companies combined, became
consolidated into one, and, having their victim completely in their
power, swindled him without pity and divided the spoils between
them.

The characteristic of the day is the tendency to consolidation.
But nothing can prevent the people from fearing the results of great
monopolies and “rings,” or from organizing to circumvent
their schemes. Those who make no calculation for the growing
intelligence of industry are walking blindly. Never were the people
so conscious of their power—never so fully aware that in this
country the machinery for correcting abuses lies in the degree of
concentration with which public opinion can be brought to bear in a
given direction. Once let the people become fully aroused to the
existence of an evil or abuse, and there is no interest nor
combination of interests that can long hold out against them. The
trouble heretofore has been the multiplicity of conflicting opinions
everywhere disseminated, [pg 342] and
the consequent difficulty of agreeing upon measures, and uniting a
great number of people in their adoption for the accomplishment of
certain ends. If we may rely upon the promise of the order of the
Patrons of Husbandry, now slowly and surely sweeping toward the
eastern shores of the country, and yet still widening and extending
in the West, where it rose, we may hope that this is the great moving
army of the people so long waited for, which is to work out the vexed
problems of labor and capital by a sudden but peaceful
revolution.

The record of the vast work that the order of the Patrons has
accomplished for its members exists at present in a detached and
scattered form among the different granges, and in piles of yet
unused documents at the national head-quarters. The full history of
the movement is promised, and in good time will doubtless appear.

Since the first part of this paper was written the Iowa granges
have increased to over one thousand seven hundred and fifty.
Twenty-nine new ones were organized during the week ending July 24.
Over one-third of all the grain-elevators of the State are owned or
controlled by the granges, which had, up to December last, shipped
over five million bushels of grain to Chicago, besides cattle and
hogs in vast quantities; and the reports received from these
shipments show an increased profit to the producers of from ten to
forty per cent. over that of the old “middlemen” system;
and by the complete buying arrangements which the Western granges
have effected it is calculated that the members save on an average
one hundred dollars a year each. Large families find their expenses
reduced by three or four hundred dollars annually, aside from amounts
saved on sewing-machines, pianos, organs, reapers, mowers,
corn-shellers and a hundred other costly articles; all of which any
member of any grange can obtain to-day at a saving of from
twenty-five to forty per cent. They are ordered in quantity from the
manufacturers by the agents of the State granges of the West, and a
single order even from a member of a new-formed grange in Vermont
will be incorporated in the general State order. The granges of the
Eastern and Middle States are as yet mostly engaged in the work of
organizing, and have not yet realized the pecuniary advantages
accruing to older granges. By this vast co-operative and entirely
cash system all parties are well satisfied except certain unfortunate
middlemen, who find their “occupation gone,” and themselves
obliged to become producers or to enter into the sale of the numerous
small and low-priced articles not yet affected by the movement.

MARIE ROWLAND.

[It is desirable that an organization which is assuming such
proportions and promising such results should be examined from every
point of view, and the foregoing article, written from that of an
enthusiastic member of the order, will, we may hope, assist in
throwing light upon the subject. If there is some degree of vagueness
in its statement of the aims and purposes with which the movement has
been set on foot, it is probable that this exactly represents the
state of mind of the great majority of those who are engaged in it.
The one tangible thing which it would seem to be accomplishing, a
combination of the farmers for the purchase of pianos and
agricultural implements at wholesale prices, is not of a very
startling character; and if this can be attained at no greater cost
or trouble to the individual “Patrons” than that of
“decorating the granges” and taking part in the singing and
the symbolical rites, a considerable advantage will no doubt have
been gained. How the cost of transportation is to be reduced, or why
the railroads, by facilitating the exchange of productions, should
have become the bête noire of the producers, are points on
which more definite information would seem to be required. But
“the people” being now “aroused,” and the
revolution in progress, we have only to await events in that hopeful
state of mind which such announcements are calculated to
inspire.—ED.]

ON THE CHURCH STEPS.

CHAPTER VI.

I had a busy week of it in New York—copying out
instructions, taking notes of marriages and intermarriages in 1690,
and writing each day a long, pleading letter to Bessie. There was a
double strain upon me: all the arrangements for my client’s
claims, and in an undercurrent the arguments to overcome Bessie’s
decision, went on in my brain side by side.

I could not, I wrote to her, make the voyage without her. It would
be the shipwreck of all my new hopes. It was cruel in her to have
raised such hopes unless she was willing to fulfill them: it made the
separation all the harder. I could not and would not give up the
plan. “I have engaged our passage in the Wednesday’s
steamer: say yes, dear child, and I will write to Dr. Wilder from
here.”

I could not leave for Lenox before Saturday morning, and I hoped
to be married on the evening of that day. But to all my pleading came
“No,” simply written across a sheet of note-paper in my
darling’s graceful hand.

Well, I would go up on the Saturday, nevertheless. She would
surely yield when she saw me faithful to my word.

“I shall be a sorry-looking bride-groom,” I thought as I
surveyed myself in the little mirror at the office. It was Friday
night, and we were shutting up. We had worked late by gaslight, all
the clerks had gone home long ago, and only the porter remained, half
asleep on a chair in the hall.

It was striking nine as I gathered up my bundle of papers and
thrust them into a bag. I was rid of them for three days at least.
“Bill, you may lock up now,” I said, tapping the sleepy
porter on the shoulder.

“Oh, Mr. Munro, shure here’s a card for yees,”
handing me a lady’s card.

“Who left it, Bill?” I hurriedly asked, taking it to the
flaring gaslight on the stairway.

“Two ladies in a carriage—an old ‘un and a pretty
young lady, shure. They charged me giv’ it yees, and druv’
off.”

“And why didn’t you bring it in, you blockhead?” I
shouted, for it was Bessie Stewart’s card. On it was written in
pencil: “Westminster Hotel. On our way through New York. Leave
on the 8 train for the South to-night. Come up to dinner.”

The eight-o’clock train, and it was now striking nine!

“Shure, Mr. Charles, you had said you was not to be disturbed
on no account, and that I was to bring in no messages.”

“Did you tell those ladies that? What time were they
here?”

“About five o’clock—just after you had shut the
dure, and the clerks was gone. Indeed, and they didn’t wait for
no reply, but hearin’ you were in there, they druv’ off the
minute they give me the card. The pretty young lady didn’t like
the looks of our office, I reckon.”

It was of no use to storm at Bill. He had simply obeyed orders
like a faithful machine. So, after a hot five minutes, I rushed up to
the Westminster. Perhaps they had not gone. Bessie would know there
was a mistake, and would wait for me.

But they were gone. On the books of the hotel were registered in a
clear hand, Bessie’s hand, “Mrs. M. Antoinette Sloman and
maid; Miss Bessie Stewart.” They had arrived that afternoon,
must have driven directly from the train to the office, and had
dined, after waiting a little time for some one who did not come.

“And where were they going?” I asked of the sympathetic
clerk, who seemed interested.

“Going South—I don’t know where. The elder lady
seemed delicate, and the [pg 344] young
lady quite anxious that she should stay here to-night and go on in
the morning. But no, she would go on to-night.”

I took the midnight train for Philadelphia. They would surely not
go farther to-night if Mrs. Sloman seemed such an invalid.

I scanned every hotel-book in vain. I walked the streets of the
city, and all the long Sunday I haunted one or two churches that my
memory suggested to me were among the probabilities for that day.
They were either not in the city or most securely hid.

And all this time there was a letter in the New York post-office
waiting for me. I found it at my room when I went back to it on
Monday noon.

It ran as follows:

“WESTMINSTER HOTEL. “Very sorry not to see you—Aunt
Sloman especially sorry; but she has set her heart on going to
Philadelphia to-night. We shall stay at a private house, a quiet
boarding-house; for aunt goes to consult Dr. R—— there,
and wishes to be very retired. I shall not give you our address: as
you sail so soon, it would not be worth while to come over. I will
write you on the other side. B.S.”

Where’s a Philadelphia directory? Where is this Dr.
R——? I find him, sure enough—such a number Walnut
street. Time is precious—Monday noon!

“I’ll transfer my berth to the Saturday steamer: that
will do as well. Can’t help it if they do scold at the
office.”

To drive to the Cunard company’s office and make the transfer
took some little time, but was not this my wedding holiday? I sighed
as I again took my seat in the car at Jersey City. On this golden
Monday afternoon I should have been slowly coming down the Housatonic
Valley, with my dear little wife beside me. Instead, the unfamiliar
train, and the fat man at my side reading a campaign newspaper, and
shaking his huge sides over some broad burlesque.

The celebrated surgeon, Dr. R——, was not at home in
answer to my ring on Monday evening.

“How soon will he be in? I will wait.”

“He can see no patients to-night sir,” said the man;
“and he may not be home until midnight.”

“But I am an impatient,” I might have urged, when
a carriage dashed up to the door. A slight little man descended, and
came slowly up the steps.

“Dr. R——?” I said inquiringly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Just one minute, doctor, if you please. I only want to get
an address from you.”

He scanned me from head to foot: “Walk into my office, young
man.”

I might have wondered at the brusqueness of his manner had I not
caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the mantelshelf. Dusty
and worn, and with a keen look of anxiety showing out of every
feature, I should scarcely have recognized myself.

I explained as collectedly as possible that I wanted the address
of one of his patients, a dear old friend of mine, whom I had missed
as she passed through New York, and that, as I was about to sail for
Europe in a few days, I had rushed over to bid her good-bye.
“Mrs. Antoinette Sloman, it is, doctor.”

The doctor eyed me keenly: he put out his hand to the little
silver bell that stood on the table and tapped it sharply. The
servant appeared at the door: “Let the carriage wait,
James.”

Again the watchful, keen expression. Did he think me an escaped
lunatic, or that I had an intent to rob the old lady? Apparently the
scrutiny was satisfactory, for he took out a little black book from
his pocket, and turning over the leaves, said, “Certainly, here
it is—No. 30 Elm street, West Philadelphia.”

Over the river, then, again: no wonder I had not seen them in the
Sunday’s search.

“I will take you over,” said Dr. R——,
replacing the book in his pocket again. “Mrs. Sloman is on my
list. Wait till I eat a biscuit, and I’ll drive you over in my
carriage.”

Shrewd little man! thought I: if I am a convict or a lunatic with
designs on Mrs. Sloman, he is going to be there to see.

“Till he ate a biscuit?” I should think so. To his
invitation, most courteously urged, that I should come and share his
supper—”You’ve just come from the train, and you
won’t get back to your hotel for two hours, at
least”—I yielded a ready acceptance, for I was really very
hungry: I forget whether I had eaten anything all day.

But the biscuit proved to be an elegant little supper served in
glittering plate, and the doctor lounged over the tempting bivalves
until I could scarce conceal my impatience.

“Do you chance to know,” he said carelessly, as at last
we rose from the table and he flung his napkin down, “Mrs.
Sloman’s niece, Miss Stewart?”

“Excellently well,” I said smiling: “in fact, I
believe I am engaged to be married to her.”

“My dear fellow,” said the doctor, bursting out
laughing, “I am delighted to hear it! Take my carriage and go. I
saw you were a lawyer, and you looked anxious and hurried; and I made
up my mind that you had come over to badger the old lady into making
her will. I congratulate you with all my soul—and myself,
too,” he added, shaking my hand. “Only think! Had it not
been for your frankness, I should have taken a five-mile ride to
watch you and keep you from doing my patient an injury.”

The good doctor quite hurried me into the carriage in the effusion
of his discovery; and I was soon rolling away in that luxurious
vehicle over the bridge, and toward Bessie at last.

I cannot record that interview in words, nor can I now set down
any but the mere outline of our talk. My darling came down to meet me
with a quick flush of joy that she did not try to conceal. She was
natural, was herself, and only too glad, after the contretemps
in New York, to see me again. She pitied me as though I had been a
tired child when I told her pathetically of my two journeys to
Philadelphia, and laughed outright at my interview with Dr.
R——.

I was so sure of my ground. When I came to speak of the
journey—our journey—I knew I should prevail. It
was a deep wound, and she shrank from any talk about it. I had to be
very gentle and tender before she would listen to me at all.

But there was something else at work against me—what was
it?—something that I could neither see nor divine. And it was
not altogether made up of Aunt Sloman, I was sure.

“I cannot leave her now, Charlie. Dr. R—— wishes
her to remain in Philadelphia, so that he can watch her case. That
settles it, Charlie: I must stay with her.”

What was there to be said? “Is there no one else, no one to
take your place?”

“Nobody; and I would not leave her even if there
were.”

Still, I was unsatisfied. A feeling of uneasiness took possession
of me. I seemed to read in Bessie’s eyes that there was a thought
between us hidden out of sight. There is no clairvoyant like a lover.
I could see the shadow clearly enough, but whence, in her outer life,
had the shadow come? Between us, surely, it could not be. Even
her anxiety for her aunt could not explain it: it was something
concealed.

When at last I had to leave her, “So to-morrow is your last
day?” she said.

“No, not the last. I have changed my passage to the Saturday
steamer.”

The strange look came into her face again. Never before did blue
eyes wear such a look of scrutiny.

“Well, what is it?” I asked laughingly as I looked
straight into her eyes.

“The Saturday steamer,” she said
musingly—”the Algeria, isn’t it? I thought you were in
a hurry?”

“It was my only chance to have you,” I explained, and
apparently the argument was satisfactory enough.

With the saucy little upward toss with which she always dismissed
a subject, “Then it isn’t good-bye to-night?” she
said.

“Yes, for two days. I shall run over again on
Thursday.”

CHAPTER VII.

The two days passed, and the Thursday, and the Friday’s
parting, harder for Bessie, as it seemed, than she had thought for.
It was hard to raise her dear little head from my shoulder when the
last moment came, and to rush down stairs to the cab, whose shivering
horse and implacable driver seemed no bad emblem of destiny on that
raw October morning.

I was glad of the lowering sky as I stepped up the gangway to the
ship’s deck. “What might have been” went down the cabin
stairs with me; and as I threw my wraps and knapsack into the double
state-room I had chosen I felt like a widower.

It was wonderful to me then, as I sat down on the side of the
berth and looked around me, how the last two weeks had filled all the
future with dreams. “I must have a genius for
castle-building,” I laughed. “Well, the reality is cold and
empty enough. I’ll go up on deck.”

On deck, among the piles of luggage, were various metal-covered
trunks marked M——. I remember now watching them as they
were stowed away.

But it was with a curious shock, an hour after we had left the
dock, that a turn in my solitary walk on deck brought me face to face
with Fanny Meyrick.

“You here?” she said. “I thought you had sailed in
the Russia! Bessie told me you were to go then.”

“Did she know,” I asked, “that you were
going by this steamer?”

On my life, never was gallantry farther from my thoughts: my
question concerned Bessie alone, but Fanny apparently took it as a
compliment, and looked up gayly: “Oh yes: that was fixed months
ago. I told her about it at Lenox.”

“And did she tell you something else?” I asked
sharply.

“Oh yes. I was very glad to hear of your good prospect. Do be
congratulated, won’t you?”

Rather an odd way to put it, thought I, but it is Fanny
Meyrick’s way. “Good prospect!” Heavens! was that the
term to apply to my engagement with Bessie?

I should have insisted on a distincter utterance and a more
flattering expression of the situation had it been any other woman.
But a lingering suspicion that perhaps the subject was a distasteful
one to Fanny Meyrick made me pause, and a few moments after, as some
one else joined her, I left her and went to the smokestack for my
cigar.

It was impossible, in the daily monotony of ship-life, to avoid
altogether the young lady whom Fate had thrown in my way. She was a
most provokingly good sailor, too. Other women stayed below or were
carried in limp bundles to the deck at noon; but Fanny, perfectly
poised, with the steady glow in her cheek, was always ready to amuse
or be amused.

I tried, at first, keeping out of her way, with the Trois
Mousquetaires for company. But it seemed to me, as she knew of my
engagement, such avoidance was anything but complimentary to her.
Loyalty to her sex would forbid me to show that I had read her
secret. Why not meet her on the frank, breezy ground of
friendship?

Perhaps, after all, there was no secret. Perhaps her feeling was
only one of girlish gratitude, however needless, for pulling her out
of the Hudson River. I did not know.

Nor was I particularly pleased with the companion to whom she
introduced me on our third day out—Father Shamrock, an Irish
priest, long resident in America, and bound now for Maynooth. How he
had obtained an introduction to her I do not know, except in the
easy, fatherly way he seemed to have with every one on board.

“Pshaw!” thought I, “what a nuisance!” for I
shared the common antipathy to his country and his creed. Nor was his
appearance prepossessing—one of Froude’s “tonsured
peasants,” as I looked down at the square shoulders,
[pg 347] the stout, short figure and the
broad beardlessness of the face of the padre. But his voice, rich and
mellow, attracted me in spite of myself. His eyes were sparkling with
kindly humor, and his laugh was irresistible.

A perfect man of the world, with no priestly austerity about him,
he seemed a perpetual anxiety to the two young priests at his heels.
They were on their dignity always, and, though bound to hold him in
reverence as their superior in age and rank, his songs and his gay
jests were evidently as thorns in their new cassocks.

Father Shamrock was soon the star of the ship’s company.
Perfectly suave, his gayety had rather the French sparkle about it
than the distinguishing Italian trait, and his easy manner had a dash
of manliness which I had not thought to find. Accomplished in various
tongues, rattling off a gay little chanson or an Irish song,
it was a sight to see the young priests looking in from time to time
at the cabin door in despair as the clock pointed to nine, and Father
Shamrock still sat the centre of a gay and laughing circle.

He had rare tact, too, in talking to women. Of all the ladies on
the Algeria, I question if there were any but the staunchest
Protestants. Some few held themselves aloof at first and declined an
introduction. “Father Shamrock! An Irish priest! How can
Miss Meyrick walk with him and present him as she does?” But the
party of recalcitrants grew less and less, and Fanny Meyrick was very
frank in her admiration. “Convert you?” she laughed over
her shoulder to me. “He wouldn’t take the trouble to
try.”

And I believe, indeed, he would not. His strong social nature was
evidently superior to any ambition of his cloth. He would have made a
famous diplomat but for the one quality of devotion that was lacking.
I use the word in its essential, not in its religious
sense—devotion to an idea, the faith in a high purpose.

We had one anxious day of it, and only one. A gale had driven most
of the passengers to the seclusion of their state-rooms, and left the
dinner-table a desert. Alone in the cabin, Father Shamrock, Fanny
Meyrick, a young Russian and myself: I forget a vigilant duenna, the
only woman on board unreconciled to Father Shamrock. She lay prone on
one of the seats, her face rigid and hands clasped in an agony of
terror. She was afraid, she afterward confessed to me, to go to her
state-room: nearness and voices seemed a necessity to her.

When I joined the party, Father Shamrock, as usual, was the
narrator. But he had dropped out of his voice all the gay humor, and
was talking very soberly. Some story he was telling, of which I
gathered, as he went on, that it was of a young lady, a rich and
brilliant society woman. “Shot right through the heart at
Chancellorsville, and he the only brother. They two, orphans, were
all that were left of the family. He was her darling, just two years
younger than she.

“I went to see her, and found her in an agony. She had not
kissed him when he left her: some little laughing tiff between them,
and she had expected to see him again before his regiment marched.
She threw herself on her knees and made confession; and then she took
a holy vow: if the saints would grant her once more to behold his
body, she would devote herself hereafter to God’s holy
Church.

“She gathered all her jewels together in a heap and cast them
at my feet. ‘Take them, Father, for the Church: if I find him I
shall not wear them again—or if I do not find him.’

“I went with her to the front of battle, and we found him
after a time. It was a search, but we found his grave, and we brought
him home with us. Poor boy! beyond recognition, except for the ring
he wore; but she gave him the last kiss, and then she was ready to
leave the world. She took the vows as Sister Clara, the holy vows of
poverty and charity.”

“But, Father,” said Fanny, with a new depth in her eyes,
“did she not die [pg 348] behind
the bars? To be shut up in a convent with that grief at her
heart!”

“Bars there were none,” said the Father gently.
“She left her vocation to me, and I decided for her to become a
Sister of Mercy. I have little sympathy,” with a shrug half
argumentative, half deprecatory—”but little sympathy with
the conventual system for spirits like hers. She would have wasted
and worn away in the offices of prayer. She needed action. And
she had the full of it in her calling. She went from bedside to
bedside of the sick and dying—here a child in a fever; there a
widow-woman in the last stages of consumption—night after
night, and day after day, with no rest, no thought of
herself.”

“Oh, I have seen her,” I could not help interposing,
“in a city car. A shrouded figure that was conspicuous even in
her serge dress. She read a book of Hours all the time, but I
caught one glimpse of her eyes: they were very brilliant.”

“Yes,” sighed the Father, “it was an unnatural
brightness. I was called away to Montreal, or I should never have
permitted the sacrifice. She went where-ever the worst cases were of
contagion and poverty, and she would have none to relieve her at her
post. So, when I returned after three months’ absence, I was
shocked at the change: she was dying of their family disease. ‘It
is better, so,’ she said, ‘dear Father. It was only the
bullet that saved Harry from it, and it would have been sure to come
to me at last, after some opera or ball.’ She died last
winter—so patient and pure, and such a saintly
sufferer!”

The Father wiped his eyes. Why should I think of Bessie? Why
should the Sister’s veiled figure and pale ardent face rise
before me as if in warning?

Of just such overwhelming sacrifice was my darling capable were
her life’s purpose wrecked. Something there was in the portrait
of the sweet singleness, the noble scorn of self, the devotion
unthinking, uncalculating, which I knew lay hidden in her soul.

The Father warmed into other themes, all in the same key of mother
Church. I listened dreamily, and to my own thoughts as well.

He pictured the priest’s life of poverty, renunciation,
leaving the world of men, the polish and refinement of scholars, to
take the confidences and bear the burdens of grimy poverty and
ignorance. Surely, I thought, we do wrong to shut such men out of our
sympathies, to label them “Dangerous.” Why should we turn
the cold shoulder? are we so true to our ideals? But one glance at
the young priests as they sat crouching in the outer cabin, telling
their beads and crossing themselves with the vehemence of a
frightened faith, was enough. Father Shamrock was no type. Very
possibly his own life would show but coarse and poor against the
chaste, heroic portraits he had drawn. He had the dramatic faculty:
for the moment he was what he related—that was all.

Our vigilant duenna had gradually risen to a sitting posture, and
drawn nearer and nearer, and as the narrator’s voice sank into
silence she said with effusion, “Well, you are a good
man, I guess.”

But Fanny Meyrick sat as if entranced. The gale had died away,
and, to break the spell, I asked her if she wanted to take one peep
on deck, to see if there was a star in the heavens.

There was no star, but a light rising and falling with the
ship’s motion, which was pronounced by a sailor to be Queenstown
light, shone in the distance.

The Father was to leave us there. “We shall not make it
to-night,” said the sailor. “It is too rough. Early in the
morning the passengers will land.”

“I wish,” said Fanny with a deep sigh, as if wakening
from a dream, “that the Church of Rome was at the bottom of the
sea!”

CHAPTER VIII.

Arrived at our dock, I hurried off to catch the train for London.
The Meyricks lingered for a few weeks in Wales before coming to
settle down for the winter. I was glad of it, for I could make my
arrangements unhampered. [pg 349] So I
carefully eliminated Clarges street from my list of lodging-houses,
and finally “ranged” myself with a neat landlady in
Sackville street.

How anxiously I awaited the first letter from Bessie! As the
banker’s clerk handed it over the counter to me, instead of the
heavy envelope I had hoped for, it was a thin slip of an affair that
fluttered away from my hand. It was so very slim and light that I
feared to open it there, lest it should be but a mocking envelope,
nothing more.

So I hastened back to my cab, and, ordering the man to drive to
the law-offices, tore it open as I jumped in. It enclosed simply a
printed slip, cut from some New York paper—a list of the
Algeria’s passengers.

“What joke is this?” I said as I scanned it more
closely.

By some spite of fortune my name was printed directly after the
Meyrick party. Was it for this, this paltry thing, that Bessie has
denied me a word? I turned over the envelope, turned it inside
out—not a penciled word even!

The shadow that I had seen on that good-bye visit to Philadelphia
was clear to me now. I had said at Lenox, repeating the words after
Bessie with fatal emphasis, “I am glad, very glad, that Fanny
Meyrick is to sail in October. I would not have her stay on this side
for worlds!” Then the next day, twenty-four hours after, I told
her that I too was going abroad. Coward that I was, not to tell her
at first! She might have been sorry, vexed, but not
suspicious.

Yes, that was the ugly word I had to admit, and to admit that I
had given it room to grow.

My first hesitancy about taking her with me, my transfer from the
Russia to the later steamer, and, to crown all, that leaf from
Fanny’s pocket-book: “I shall love him for ever and
ever”!

And yet she had faith in me. She had told Fanny Meyrick we
were engaged. Had she not?

My work in London was more tedious and engrossing than I had
expected. Even a New York lawyer has much to learn of the law’s
delay in those pompous old offices amid the fog. Had I been working
for myself, I should have thrown up the case in despair, but advices
from our office said “Stick to it,” and I stayed.

Eating out my own heart with anxiety whenever I thought of my home
affair, perhaps it was well for me that I had the monotonous, musty
work that required little thought, but only a persistent plodding and
a patient holding of my end of the clue.

In all these weeks I had nothing from Bessie save that first cruel
envelope. Letter after letter went to her, but no response came. I
wrote to Mrs. Sloman too, but no answer. Then I bethought me of Judge
Hubbard, but received in reply a note from one of his sons, stating
that his father was in Florida—that he had communicated with
him, but regretted that he was unable to give me Miss Stewart’s
present address.

Why did I not seek Fanny Meyrick? She must have come to London
long since, and surely the girls were in correspondence. I was too
proud. She knew of our relations: Bessie had told her. I could not
bring myself to reveal to her how tangled and gloomy a mystery was
between us. I could explain nothing without letting her see that she
was the unconscious cause.

At last, when one wretched week after another had gone by, and we
were in the new year, I could bear it no longer. “Come what
will, I must know if Bessie writes to her.”

I went to Clarges street. My card was carried into the
Meyricks’ parlor, and I followed close upon it. Fanny was sitting
alone, reading by a table. She looked up in surprise as I stood in
the doorway. A little coldly, I thought, she came forward to meet me,
but her manner changed as she took my hand.

“I was going to scold you, Charlie, for avoiding us, for
staying away so long, but that is accounted for now. Why didn’t
you send us word that you were ill? Papa is a capital
nurse.”

“But I have not been ill,” I said, bewildered,
“only very busy and very anxious.”

“I should think so,” still holding my hand, and looking
into my face with an expression of deep concern. “Poor fellow!
You do look worn. Come right here to this chair by the fire, and let
me take care of you. You need rest.”

And she rang the bell. I suffered myself to be installed in the
soft crimson chair by the fire. It was such a comfort to hear a
friendly voice after all those lonely weeks! When the servant entered
with a tray, I watched her movements over the tea-cups with a
delicious sense of the womanly presence and the home-feeling stealing
over me.

“I can’t imagine what keeps papa,” she said,
chatting away with woman’s tact: “he always smokes after
dinner, and comes up to me for his cup of tea afterward.”

Then, as she handed me a tiny porcelain cup, steaming and
fragrant, “I should never have congratulated you, Charlie, on
board the steamer if I had known it was going to end in this
way.”

This way! Then Bessie must have told her.

“End?” I said stammering: “what—what
end?”

“In wearing you out. Bessie told me at Lenox, the day we took
that long walk, that you had this important case, and it was a great
thing for a young lawyer to have such responsibility.”

Poor little porcelain cup! It fell in fragments on the floor as I
jumped to my feet: “Was that all she told you? Didn’t
she tell you that we were engaged?”

For a moment Fanny did not speak. The scarlet glow on her cheek,
the steady glow that was always there, died away suddenly and left
her pale as ashes. Mechanically she opened and shut the silver
sugar-tongs that lay on the table under her hand, and her eyes were
fixed on me with a wild, beseeching expression.

“Did you not know,” I said in softer tones, still
standing by the table and looking down on her, “that day at
Lenox that we were engaged? Was it not for that you
congratulated me on board the steamer?”

A deep-drawn sigh as she whispered, “Indeed, no! Oh dear!
what have I done?”

“You?—nothing!” I said with a sickly smile;
“but there is some mistake, some mystery. I have never had one
line from Bessie since I reached London, and when I left her she was
my own darling little wife that was to be.”

Still Fanny sat pale as ashes, looking into the fire and muttering
to herself. “Heavens! To think—Oh, Charlie,” with a
sudden burst, “it’s all my doing! How can I ever tell
you?”

“You hear from Bessie, then? Is she—is she well? Where
is she? What is all this?” And I seated myself again and tried
to speak calmly, for I saw that something very painful was to be
said—something that she could hardly say; and I wanted to help
her, though how I knew not.

At this moment the door opened and “papa” came in. He
evidently saw that he had entered upon a scene as his quick eye took
in the situation, but whether I was accepted or rejected as the
future son-in-law even his penetration was at fault to discover.

“Oh, papa,” said Fanny, rising with evident relief,
“just come and talk to Mr. Munro while I get him a package he
wants to take with him.”

It took a long time to prepare that package. Mr. Meyrick, a cool,
shrewd man of the world, was taking a mental inventory of me, I felt
all the time. I was conscious that I talked incoherently and like a
school-boy of the treaty. Every American in London was bound to have
his special opinion thereupon, and Meyrick, I found, was of the
English party. Then we discussed the special business which had
brought me to England.

“A very unpresentable son-in-law,” I read in his eye,
while he was evidently astonished at his daughter’s prolonged
absence.

Our talk flagged and the fire grew gray in its flaky ashes before
Fanny again appeared.

“I know, papa, you think me very rude to keep Mr. Munro so
long waiting, [pg 351] but there were
some special directions to go with the packet, and it took me a long
time to get them right. It is for Bessie, papa—Bessie Stewart,
Mr. Munro’s dear little fiancée“

Escaping as quickly as possible from Mr. Meyrick’s neatly
turned felicitations—and that the satisfaction he expressed was
genuine I was prepared to believe—hurried home to Sackville
street.

My bedroom was always smothering in its effect on me—close
draperies to the windows, heavy curtains around the bed—and I
closed the door and lighted my candle with a sinking heart.

The packet was simply a long letter, folded thickly in several
wrappers and tied with a string. The letter opened abruptly:

“What I am going to do I am sure no woman on earth ever did
before me, nor would I save to undo the trouble I have most
innocently made. What must you have thought of me that day at Lenox,
staying close all day to two engaged people, who must have wished me
away a thousand times? But I did not dream you were engaged.

“Remember, I had just come over from Saratoga, and knew
nothing of Lenox gossip, then or afterward. Something in your manner
once or twice made me look at you and think that perhaps you were
interested in Bessie, but hers to you was so cold, so distant,
that I thought it was only a notion of my jealous self.

“Was I foolish to lay so much stress on that anniversary
time? Do you know that the year before we had spent it together,
too?—September 28th. True, that year it was at Bertie Cox’s
funeral, but we had walked together, and I was happy in being near
you.

“For, you see, it was from something more than the Hudson
River that you had brought me out. You had rescued me from the stupid
gayety of my first winter—from the flats of fashionable life.
You had given me an ideal—something to live up to and grow
worthy of.

“Let that pass. For myself, it is nothing, but for the deeper
harm I have done, I fear, to Bessie and to you.

“Again, on that day at Lenox, when Bessie and I drove
together in the afternoon, I tried to make her talk about you, to
find out what you were to her. But she was so distant, so repellant,
that I fancied there was nothing at all between you; or, rather, if
you had cared for her at all, that she had been indifferent to
you.

“Indeed, she quite forbade the subject by her manner; and
when she told me you were going abroad, I could not help being very
happy, for I thought then that I should have you all to myself.

“When I saw you on shipboard, I fancied, somehow, that you
had changed your passage to be with us. It was very foolish; and I
write it, thankful that you are not here to see me. So I scribbled a
little note to Bessie, and sent it off by the pilot: I don’t know
where you were when the pilot went. This is, as nearly as I remember
it, what I wrote:

“‘DEAR BESSIE: Charlie Munro is on board. He must have
changed his passage to be with us. I know from something that he
has just told me that this is so, and that he consoles
himself already for your coldness. You remember what I told you
when we talked about him. I shall try now. F.M.’

“Bessie would know what that meant. Oh, must I tell you what
a weak, weak girl I was? When I found out at Lenox, as I thought,
that Bessie did not care for you, I said to her that once I thought
you had cared for me, but that papa had offended you by his
manner—you weren’t of an old Knickerbocker family, you
know—and had given you to understand that your visits were not
acceptable.

“I am sure now that it was because I wanted to think so that
I put that explanation upon your ceasing to visit me, and because
papa always looked so decidedly queer whenever your name was
mentioned.

“I had always had everything in life that I wanted, and I
believed that in due time you would come back to me.

“Bessie knew well enough what that [pg
352] pilot-letter meant, for here is her answer.”

Pinned fast to the end of Fanny’s letter, so that by no chance
should I read it first, were these words in my darling’s
hand:

“Got your pilot-letter. Aunt is much better. We shall be
traveling about so much that you need not write me the progress of
your romance, but believe me I shall be most interested in its
conclusion. BESSIE S.”

It was all explained now. My darling, so sensitive and spirited,
had given her leave “to try.”

CHAPTER IX.

But was that all? Was she wearing away the slow months in
passionate unbelief of me? I could not tell. But before I slept that
night I had taken my resolve. I would sail for home by the next
steamer. The case would suffer, perhaps, by the delay and the change
of hands: D—— must come out to attend to it himself,
then, but I would suffer no longer.

No use to write to Bessie. I had exhausted every means to reach
her save that of the detectives. “I’ll go to the office,
file my papers till the next man comes over, see Fanny Meyrick, and
be off.”

But what to say to Fanny? Good, generous girl! She had indeed done
what few women in the world would have had the courage to
do—shown her whole heart to a man who loved another. It would
be an embarrassing interview; and I was not sorry when I started out
that morning that it was too early yet to call.

To the office first, then, I directed my steps. But here Fate lay
perdu and in wait for me.

“A letter, Mr. Munro, from D—— & Co.,”
said the brisk young clerk. They had treated me with great respect of
late, for, indeed, our claim was steadily growing in weight, and was
sure to come right before long. I opened and read:

“The missing paper is found on this side of the
Atlantic—what you have been rummaging for all winter on the
other. A trusty messenger sails at once, and will report himself to
you.”

“At once!” Well, there’s only a few days’ delay,
at most. Perhaps it’s young Bunker. He can take the case and end
it: anybody can end it now.

And my heart was light. “A few days,” I said to myself
as I ran up the steps in Clarges street.

“Miss Fanny at home?” to the man, or rather to the
member of Parliament, who opened the door—”Miss Meyrick, I
mean.”

“Yes, sir—in the drawing-room, sir;” and he
announced me with a flourish.

Fanny sat in the window. She might have been looking out for me,
for on my entrance she parted the crimson curtains and came
forward.

Again the clear glow in her cheek, the self-possessed Fanny of
old.

“Charlie,” she began impetuously, “I have been
thinking over shipboard and Father Shamrock, and all. You didn’t
think then—did you?—that I cared so very much for you? I
am so glad that the Father bewitched me as he did, for I can remember
no foolishness on my part to you, sir—none at all. Can
you?”

Stammering, confused, I seemed to have lost my tongue and my head
together. I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of
self-reproach, and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle
and sympathetic. I had dreaded the rôle; but here was a new
turn of affairs; and, I own it, my self-love was not a little
wounded. The play was played out, that was evident. The curtain had
fallen, and here was I, a late-arrived hero of romance, the chivalric
elder brother, with all my little stock of
property-phrases—friendship of a life, esteem, etc.—of no
more account than a week-old playbill.

For, I must confess it, I had rehearsed some little forgiveness
scene, in which I should magnanimously kiss her hand, and tell her
that I should honor her above all women for her courage and her
truth; and in which she would cry [pg
353] until her poor little heart was soothed and calmed; and
that I should have the sweet consciousness of being beloved, however
hopelessly, by such a brilliant, ardent soul.

But Mistress Fanny had quietly turned the tables on me, and I
believe I was angry enough for the moment to wish it had not been
so.

But only for a moment. It began to dawn upon me soon, the rare
tact which had made easy the most embarrassing situation in, the
world—the bravura style, if I may call it so, that had
carried us over such a difficult bar.

It was delicacy, this careless reminder of the fascinating
Father, and perhaps there was a modicum of truth in that
acknowledgment too.

I took my leave of Fanny Meyrick, and walked home a wiser man.

But the trusty messenger, who arrived three days later, was not,
as I had hoped, young Bunker or young Anybody. It was simply Mrs.
D——, with a large traveling party. They came straight to
London, and summoned me at once to the Langham Hotel.

I suppose I looked somewhat amazed at sight of the portly lady,
whom I had last seen driving round Central Park. But the twin Skye
terriers who tumbled in after her assured me of her identity soon
enough.

“Mr. D—— charged me, Mr. Munro,” she began
after our first ceremonious greeting, “to give this into no
hands but yours. I have kept it securely with my diamonds, and those
I always carry about me.”

From what well-stitched diamond receptacle she had extracted the
paper I did not suffer myself to conjecture, but the document was
strongly perfumed with violet powder.

“You see, I was coming over,” she proceeded to explain,
“in any event, and when Mr. D—— talked of sending
Bunker—I think it was Bunker—with us, I persuaded him to
let me be messenger instead. It wasn’t worth while, you know, to
have any more people leave the office, you being away, and—Oh,
Ada, my dear, here is Mr. Munro!”

As Ada, a slim, willowy creature, with the surprised look
in her eyes that has become the fashion of late, came gliding up to
me, I thought that the reason for young Bunker’s omission from
the party was possibly before me.

Bother on her matrimonial, or rather anti-matrimonial, devices!
Her maternal solicitude lest Ada should be charmed with the poor
young clerk on the passage over had cost me weeks of longer stay. For
at this stage a request for any further transfer would have been
ridiculous and wrong. As easy to settle it now as to arrange for any
one else; so the first of April found me still in London, but leaving
it on the morrow for home.

“Bessie is in Lenox, I think,” Fanny Meyrick had said to
me as I bade her good-bye.

“What! You have heard from her?”

“No, but I heard incidentally from one of my Boston friends
this morning that he had seen her there, standing on the church
steps.”

I winced, and a deeper glow came into Fanny’s cheek.

“You will give her my letter? I would have written to her
also, but it was indeed only this morning that I heard. You will give
her that?”

“I have kept it for her,” I said quietly; and the adieus
were over.

SARAH C. HALLOWELL.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

HOW THEY “KEEP A HOTEL” IN TURKEY.

The charity of Islam is an article of practice as well as of
faith, and manifests itself in ways astonishing to visitors from
Christian lands. Thus, the impunity—nay, the protection and
sympathy—afforded to the street-beggar, and the way in which
the very poor divide their crust with those still more
poverty-stricken than themselves, surprise the stranger who observes
the scene in the open streets. Then, too, the public fountains, which
are charitable offerings from pious persons, are more numerous in
Constantinople than in any other city in the world. Nor does the law
of kindness restrict itself to man. Islam has anticipated Mr. Bergh,
and “The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals”
had as its founder in the Orient no less a personage than Mohammed,
whom “the faithful” revere as the Messenger (Résoul) of
God, and whom we improperly term Prophet. The Koran specially
inculcates kindness to the brute creation, and so thoroughly does the
Mussulman obey the mandate that the streets are filled with homeless,
masterless dogs, whose melancholy lives Moslem piety will not abridge
by water-cure, as in Western lands. This is the more curious because
the dog is an unclean animal, whose touch defiles the true believer.
Therefore no one keeps a dog, or harbors him, or does more than throw
him a bone or scraps of food.

Should a camel fall sick in the desert, or break a limb, his
master does not mercifully put him out of his pain, but leaves him
there to die “when it pleases Allah.” The same sentiment
runs through the whole of Eastern life, and it is notably manifested
in religious foundations, which also serve as schools, and in khans
or caravansaries, which are the Eastern substitutes for hotels. The
khans had their origin in charity in the good old times of primitive
Mohammedanism, before its simplicity was lost by contact with other
creeds. They were wayside buildings intended for the use of
commercial travelers or pilgrims, affording shelter from storms and
protection from wild beasts, but no further accommodation. The
hospitable doors were ever open, but the apparition of “mine
host,” ready to offer you board and lodging for a reasonable
compensation, was undreamt of in the early Turkish philosophy. Every
traveler literally “took up his bed and walked “—or
rode—away in the morning, leaving the room he had tenanted as
bare as he found it. Everybody had to bring his own cooking utensils,
provender and materials for making a fire.

What in other countries is left for commercial enterprise to
effect for the sake of profit is accomplished here by pious people,
who leave legacies for the purpose, and never figure in newspapers,
before or after death, as the reward of their munificence or charity.
Many a wayworn traveler has blessed the memory of those truly
religious men or women on reaching the rugged walls of a khan after a
long day’s ride under a Syrian sun or the pitiless down-pours of
rain characteristic of the same region.

Some of these khans on the road to Damascus or other large Eastern
cities are spacious buildings, and the scene presented within them
when some caravan stops overnight, or several parties of travelers
meet there, is picturesque in the extreme. Everybody wears
bright-colored garments and everybody is armed, and the grunt of the
camel and bray of the donkey make night, if not musical, certainly
most melancholy to the untrained ear.

But innovation has crept in, and the city khan is now a kind of
bastard hotel, with a rude host, who makes you pay for your own
lodging and the provender of your animal; and as part and parcel of
the establishment you also find a coffee-shop, coffee being the
primal necessity of Oriental well—being, taking precedence even
of tobacco, which, however, always accompanies it. There is
[pg 355] always a bazaar close by, at
which you can purchase savory kibabs of mutton and other
cooked food. Men are no more ashamed to eat in the street than they
are to pray there; so you may see multitudes taking their meals al
fresco at the hours of morning, midday or sunset, after
prayers.

Neither does the Mussulman need elaborate bed and bedding for his
repose. He does not undress as we do, but only loosens his garments,
without taking them off, and stretches himself on top of his bed or
rug, as the case may be. When the weather is cold, he takes off his
shoes, but wraps his head and the upper part of his person tightly in
his blanket or shawl, at apparent risk of suffocation. Keeping the
feet warm and the head cool, which is our great sanitary law, is
reversed by the Turk, for he keeps his head covered and his feet
uncovered as much as he possibly can. In the morning he gets up,
shakes himself, tightens his garments, performs his matutinal
ablutions, and his toilet is made for the day. Under these
circumstances it will be seen that many things which we should regard
as essential necessaries in our hostelry, would be pure superfluities
to our Turkish or Arab brother.

Of course, in these places you meet a great mixture of
nationalities and all classes and conditions, for the rich, in the
absence of other hotel accommodations, must use them as well as the
poor; only, as every man brings his own things with him, you find
more luxury and comfort in some of the arrangements than in others.
You may see rich merchants from Bagdad or Damascus sitting on piles
of costly cushions, attended by obsequious slaves, and smoking
perfumed Shiraz out of silver narghiles, whose long, snake-like tubes
are tipped with precious amber and encircled by rows of precious
stones worth a prince’s ransom. Huddled together, in striking
contrast to this picture, you may see, crouched on their old rugs and
smoking the common clay chibouque, a bevy of street-beggars, also
enjoying themselves after their fashion.

These khans serve also as shops or bazaars for the traveling
merchant, Persian or Turk, who is ever ready to show you his wares,
without seeming to care much whether you buy or not.

The city khans are very simply built in a quadrangle, with small
rooms, like convent cells, running all round it. These are used both
as sleeping-rooms and shops. The stables for the animals and the
store-rooms are in a covered corridor beneath. As there are permanent
residents here, and valuable merchandise and other articles stored
away, there is a gate strongly bolted and barred, and often sheathed
in iron, and a gate-keeper, generally to be seen sleeping or smoking,
whose sole business is to prevent the entrance of improper or
suspicious persons.

The evenings at the khan used to be, and sometimes still are,
enlivened by the presence of the almés or dancing-girls, whose
ancestors may have danced the same wild and wanton dances before
Cleopatra. The singing-girls, monotonously chanting the same dolorous
and drowsy tunes, with imitation guitar accompaniment on the
sââb were also wont to wound the drowsy ear of night for the
diversion of the guests. Drowsier and more sleep-compelling still
were the interminable tales spun out by the professional
story-teller, giving ragged versions of the Arabian Nights’
Entertainments for the delectation of the tireless native
listeners.

In those old days, too, the khans used to be the resort of the
slave-merchants, who kept stowed safely away, for inspection and
purchase, Circassian, Georgian or more dingy beauties, to suit all
tastes. But civilization, in its encroachments on Turkey, has
compelled the cessation of open sales of either white or black slaves
in public places, though so long as the social and domestic system of
the East remains unchanged, the sale of women for the house or harem
will continue. It is conducted, however, with more privacy, and
Christians are not permitted the privilege of viewing the
proceedings. This restriction has taken away from the khans one of
their former great attractions.

To European or American travelers accustomed to the ease, luxury
and profusion of our modern hotels, where the guests enjoy more
comforts than most of them get at home, this kind of entertainment
for man and beast certainly does not seem attractive. Yet there is
enjoyment in it when the khan is tolerably free from fleas and
“such small deer,” and one is accustomed “to roughing
it,” and blessed with a good appetite and digestion.

Yet, truth to tell, it is more picturesque than pleasant at the
best—more gratifying to the eye than to the other senses,
especially to those of smell and hearing. For the odors arising from
Turkish or Arab cooking are not those of Araby the Blest; and the
close contiguity of the beasts of burden assails both the senses
named more pungently than pleasantly. Besides, the Oriental,
generally making it a rule to wrap up his head carefully in the
covering, snores stertorously throughout the night; so that silence,
which we regard as necessary for repose, does not rule over the khan;
and when daybreak comes, the startled traveler may imagine Babel has
broken loose again, since both men and animals rise with the dawn,
and make most diabolical noises to indicate that they have risen.

Enterprising Europeans have set up many hotels in Eastern cities,
but they are almost exclusively resorted to by strangers or Europeans
resident in the country. Even the high Turks, lapped in luxury and
sybaritic in their habits of personal ease, prefer their own hotel
system to ours, carrying all their comforts along with them, and a
retinue of servants to take charge of them. You will very rarely see
a Turkish gentleman, even if educated in Europe, stopping at
Messeir’s or any of the great Eastern hotels on the European
plan.

At Messeir’s in Constantinople, or at Shepheard’s hotel in
Cairo—places of historic interest almost, through the vivid
descriptions of travelers like the authors of Eothen and
The Crescent and the Cross—a most motley medley of
Western nationalities may be encountered, the adventurers, tourists
and wanderers of the world congregated there during the winter
months, and presenting a panoramic view of all the peculiar phases
and contrasts of European civilization, more antagonistic there than
elsewhere. There you see the German savant with his round spectacles,
round face and round figure; the lean and restless Frenchman; the
imperturbable Englishman, drinking his bottled beer under the shadow
of the Pyramids; and the angular American, more curious, but more
cosmopolite, than any of them. The returning Englishman or
Englishwoman who has spent twenty years in India also presents an
anomalous type, proving how climate and mode of life may alter the
original; for it is curious to contrast the round, rosy faces of the
fresh English girls outward bound with the sharp, sallow faces and
flashing, restless eyes which characterize those who are returning.
The babel of tongues at these tables-d’hôte, where
conversations are being carried on in every European language, is
most perplexing at first, though French and English predominate.
Altogether, for the student of character there is no better field
than one of these European hotels in the East—none where the
lines of difference can be found more sharply defined; for travel and
contact with strangers appear only to bring out the contrasts more
clearly, and produce a more direct antagonism, instead of softening
down or assimilating them, as one might expect.

Very few travelers see the city khans—fewer still ever
venture to pass a night within their walls. Even on the routes of
desert-travel the pilgrims for pleasure avoid them, substituting
their own tents for the stone walls, and confiding in the
arrangements made by their dragomen or guides, who contract to make
the necessary provision for all their wants for a stipulated
sum—one-half usually in advance, the balance payable at the
expiration of the trip. To do these men justice, as a rule they
provide liberally and well in all respects, their reputation and
recommendations being their capital and stock in trade for securing
[pg 357] subsequent tourists. Yet it
cannot be doubted that this system has robbed the Eastern tour of
some of its most salient and striking peculiarities, and has deprived
the traveler of much opportunity for insight into the real life of
the Oriental, only to be seen while he is journeying from place to
place, since his own house is generally closed against the stranger,
and it is only in the khan that a glimpse of his mode of life can be
obtained.

The khan, like the harem, is one of the peculiar institutions of
the East, and will probably so continue, in spite of the advancing
tide of European civilization; which, however it may affect the outer
aspects of that life, has as yet made little impression on its more
essential features. The men may wear the Frank dress (all but the
hat, which they will not accept), may smoke cigars instead of
chibouques, and drink “gaseous lemonade” (champagne), in
defiance of the Prophet’s prohibition; the women may send from
the high harems for French fashions, and “fearfully and
wonderfully” array themselves therein; but in other respects the
people will stubbornly adhere to their own social system and habits
of life.

It follows that the traveler who goes to the East to study the
manners and customs of its people will get only an imperfect and
outside view if he makes himself comfortable in one of the hybrid
European hotels we have described, instead of braving the picturesque
discomforts of the Oriental hotel or khan, which he will find
endurable by taking a few preliminary precautions easily suggested to
him on the spot.

EDWIN DE LEON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE
CALIFORNIAN AT VIENNA.

I am in bonds and fetters through not understanding the German
tongue. It is a weary torture to be a stupid, uncomprehended
foreigner. I am lost in a linguistic swamp. It is necessary to employ
one man to talk to another. The commisionnaire does not
understand more than half I say. What might he not be interpreting to
the other fellow? The most trivial want costs me a world of anxiety
and trouble. I desired some blotting-paper. I went to a little
stationery shop. I said, “Paper! paper! für die blot, you know.
Ich bin Englisher—er: ink no dry; what you call um? Vas? vas?
Hang it!” They took down all sorts of paper—letter-paper,
wrapping-paper, foolscap, foreign post. I tried to make my want known
by signs. I made myself simply ridiculous. The shopkeeper stared at
me in perplexity, disgust and despair. Then he discussed the matter
with his wife. I fretted, perspiring vigorously. I went away. I went
to a commissionnaire at my hotel. It required five minutes to explain
the matter to him. He discussed the matter with the portier.
The portier is quite buried under gold lace and brass buttons. The
commissionnaire returns to me. He thinks he knows what I require, but
is not quite certain. All this trouble for a bit of blotting-paper!
It is so with everything. Every little matter of every-day life,
which at home to think of and do are almost identical, here costs so
much time, labor and anxiety! My strength is all gone when I have
purchased a paper of pins and a bottle of ink. Breakfast and dinner
task me to the utmost. The slightest deviation from established
custom seems to act on the people at the restaurant like a wrong
figure in a table of logarithms. It required three days to convince a
stunted boy in a long-tailed coat that I did not wish beer for
dinner. He would bring [pg 358] beer. I
would say, “I don’t want beer! I want my—some
dinner.” He would depart and take counsel with the head-waiter,
and I would feel as if I had been doing something for which I ought
to be corrected. The latter functionary approaches and exclaims with
domineering voice, “Vat you vants?” I reply with meekness,
“Dinner, sir, if you please.” He brings me an elegantly
bound book containing the bill of fare. But it is in German: I look
at it knowingly: Sanscrit would be quite as intelligible. I put my
finger on a word which I suppose means soup. I look up meekly at the
functionary. He glowers contemptuously upon me. He recommends me to
an underling, and bustles off to guests more important. There are in
the dining-hall French, German, Italian, English and Japanese.
Tongues, plates, knives and forks clatter inside—wheels roll,
rumble and clatter over the stony pavement outside. I wait for my
soup. Hours seem to lag by. I appeal in vain to other waiters. Life
is too busy and important a matter with them to pay any attention to
me.

The aristocratic German waiter is cool and indifferent. It is
beneath his dignity to approach you within half an hour after you sit
down. He knows you are hungry, and enjoys your pangs. He is sensible
of every signal, every expression of the eye with which you regard
him. To appear not to know is the chief business of his life. He will
with the minutest care arrange a napkin while a half dozen hungry men
at different tables are trying to arrest his attention. Before I met
this man my temper was mild and amiable: I believed in doing by my
fellows as I would be done by. Now I am changed. I never visit the
Vienna restaurant but I dwell in thought on battle, murder, pistols,
bowie-knives, blood, bullets and sudden death. After eating a meal it
requires another hour to pay for it. A nobleman, dressed de
rigueur, condescends to take my money after he has made me wait
long enough. There are two of these officials at the hotel. One in
general manner resembles a heavy dealer in bonds and government
securities—the other a modest, charming young clergyman of the
Church of England. One morning, when the atmosphere was very sultry,
I ventured to open a window. The dealer in government securities shut
it immediately, and gave me a look which humiliated me for the day. I
said I wanted, if possible, air enough to support life while eating
my breakfast. He said that was against the rules of the house: the
windows must not be opened. There was too much dust blowing in the
street. What were a few common lives compared to the advent of dust
in that dining-room?

You must live here by rule. Novelty is treason. It is the
unalterable rule of life that because things have been done in a
certain manner, so must they ever be done. It requires almost a
revolution to have an egg boiled hard in Vienna. I said at my first
meal, “Ein caffee und egg mit hard.” It may be seen that I
speak German with the English accent. The eggs came soft-boiled. I
suppose that the nobleman who attended on my table went to the prince
in disguise who governed the culinary department, and informed him of
this new demand in the matter of eggs. It is presumable that the
prince pronounced against me, for next morning my eggs were still
soft-boiled. Then I braced myself up and said, “See here! I want
mine zwei eggs, you know, hard, hard! You understand?” The
nobleman looked at me with contempt. The eggs came about one-tenth of
a degree harder than the previous morning. I resolved to gain my
point. I saw how necessary it was to put more force, vigor, spirit
and savagery into my culinary instructions to the nobleman. This
despotism should not prevail against me. When the free, easy and
enlightened American among the effete and crumbling monarchies of
Europe shrieks for hard-boiled eggs, they must be produced, though
the House of Hapsburg should reel, stumble and totter.

I said on the third morning, “Haben Sie ein hot Feuer in your
kitchen?” Ja. “And hot Wasser?” Ja. “And will you
put this hot Feuer under the said hot [pg
359] Wasser, and in that hot Wasser put the eggs and keep them
there zehn Minuten, zwanzig Minuten, or a day or a week—any
length of time, so that they are only boiled hard, just like stones,
brickbats, rocks, boulders or the gray granite crest of Yosemite? I
want mine eggs hard.” Then I ground my teeth and looked wicked
and savage, and squirmed viciously in my chair. There was some
improvement in the eggs that morning, but they were not hard
boiled.

The Viennese spend most of their time in the open air, drinking
beer and coffee, reading light newspapers, eating and smoking. In the
English and American sense they have neither politics nor religion.
The government and the Church provide these articles, leaving the
people little to do save enjoy themselves, float lazily down
life’s stream, and die when their souls become too spiritualized
to remain longer in their bodies.

I am fast becoming German. I have my coffee at nine: it requires
two hours to drink it. Then I dream a little, smoke a cigar and drink
a glass of beer. At twelve comes dinner. This I eat at a café table
on the sidewalk, with more beer. At two I take a nap. At five I
awake, drink another glass of beer, and dream. From that time until
nine is occupied in getting hungry for supper. This occupies two
hours. Then more beer and tobacco. Some time in the night I retire.
Sometimes I am aware of the operation of disrobing, sometimes not.
This is Viennese life. One day merges into another in a vague, misty
sort of way. Time is not checked off into short, sharp divisions as
in busy, bustling America. From the windows opposite mine, on the
other side of the street, protrude Germans with long pipes. They sit
there hour after hour, those pipes hanging down a foot below the
window-sill. Occasionally they emit a puff of smoke. This is the only
sign of life about them.

The window-sills are furnished with cushions to lean on when you
gaze forth. The one in mine is continually dropping down into the
street below, and a man in a brass-mounted cap, who calls himself a
“Dienstmann,” does a good business in picking it up and
bringing it up stairs at ten kreutzers a trip. The kreutzer is a
copper coin equivalent to an English farthing. Every day here seems a
sort of holiday, and in this respect Sunday stands pre-eminent.

The ladies, as a rule, are fine-looking, shapely, well-dressed and
particular as to the fit of their gaiters and hose—a most
refreshing sight to one for a year accustomed to the general
dowdiness which in this respect prevails in England. Most of the
English girls seem to have no idea that their feet should be dressed.
The Viennese lady is very tasteful. She is neither slipshod nor
gaudy. I never beheld more dainty toilettes. Everything about them,
as a sailor would say, is cut “by the lifts and
braces.”

Vienna abounds in great bath-houses. I have tested one. I wandered
about the establishment asking every one I met for a warm bath. Some
pointed in one direction, some in another, and after blundering back
and forth for a while, I found myself before a woman. For fifty
kreutzers she gave me a ticket. Then she called for Marie. Marie, a
black-eyed, bright German girl, came. She went to a shelf and
burdened herself with a quantity of linen. Then she signed for me to
follow. I did so in an expectant, wondering and rather anxious frame
of mind. Marie showed me into a neatly-furnished bath-room. She
spread a linen sheet in the tub, and turned on the water. I waited
for the tub to fill and Marie to depart. Marie seemed in no hurry. I
pondered over the possibilities involved in a German
“Warm-bad.” Perhaps Marie will attempt to scrub me! Never!
At last she goes. I remove my collar. Suddenly Marie returns: it is
to bring another towel. There is no lock on the door—nothing
with which to defend one’s self. I bathe in peace, however. On
emerging I examine the pile of linen Marie has left. There is a small
towel, and two large aprons without strings, long enough to reach
from the shoulders [pg 360] to the
knees. I study over their possible use. I conclude they are to dry
the anatomy with. On subsequent inquiry I ascertained that they were
to be worn while I rang the bell and Marie came in to substitute hot
water for cold.

The American commission to the exhibition occupies a bare,
disconsolate, shabby suite of rooms. They resemble much the editorial
offices of those ephemeral daily papers which, commencing with very
small capital, after a spasmodic career of a few months fall
despairingly into the arms of the sheriff. I had once occasion to
visit the commission on a little matter of business. What that was I
have forgotten: I recollect only the multiplicity of doors in those
apartments. When I turned to depart, I opened every door but the
proper one. I went into closets, private apartments and intricate
passages, and after making the entire round without discovering
egress, I made another tour of them, but still could not find where I
had entered. A solitary American was seated in the reading-room
looking weary and homesick, and I asked him if he could tell me the
right road out of the American commission. He said he hardly knew:
this was his first visit, but he’d try. So both of us went
prospecting around and opening all the doors we met, while a
deaconish old gentleman behind a desk looked on apparently
interested, yet offering nothing in the way of information or
suggestion. I presume, however, this is the only amusement the man
has in this forlorn place. I was beginning to think of descending by
way of the windows when the strange American at last found a door
which led into the main entry, and we both left at the same time,
glad to escape.

I will do one side of the American department in the exhibition
stern justice. It commences with a long picture placed there by the
Pork Packers’ Association of Cincinnati, descriptive of the
processes which millions of American hogs are subjected to while
being converted into pork. There are hogs going in long procession to
be killed, and going, too, in a determined sort of way, as if they
knew it was their business to be killed. Then come hogs killed, hogs
scalded, hogs scraped, hogs cut up into shoulders, hams, sides,
jowls; hogs salted, hogs smoked. Underneath this sketch are a number
of unpainted buggy and carriage wheels; next, a pile of pick-handles;
not far off, a little mound of grindstones; after the grindstones, a
platoon of clothes-wringers; next, a solitary iron wheel-barrow
communing with a patent fire-extinguisher; following these a crowd of
green iron pumps, with sewing-machines in full force. Such is a bit
of the American department.

It is the fashion here that every one should have a growl at the
general slimness and slovenliness of our department. Every one gives
our drooping eagle a kick. This is all wrong. We can’t send our
greatest wonders and triumphs to Europe. There is neither room nor
opportunity in the building for showing off one of our political
torchlight processions, or a vigilance-committee hanging, or a
Chicago or Boston fire, or a steamboat blow-up, or a railway
smash-up. Were the present chief of the commission a man of
originality and talent, he might even now save the national
reputation by bundling all the pumps, churns, patent clothes-washers,
wheel-barrows and pick-handles out of doors, and converting one of
the United States rooms into a reservation for the Modocs, and the
other into a corral for buffaloes and grizzly bears. These, with a
mustang poet or two from Oregon, a few Hard-Shell Democrats, a live
American daily paper, with a corps of reporters trained to squeeze
themselves through door-cracks and key-holes, might retrieve the
national honor, if shown up realistically and artistically.

PRENTICE MULFORD.

GHOSTLY WARRIORS.

So strong a resemblance exists between a battle-scene of a
mediaeval Spanish poet and the culminating incidents of Lord
Macaulay’s Battle of the Lake Regillus, as to justify
somewhat extended citations. Of the Spanish writer, [pg 361] Professor Longfellow says, in his note upon
the extract from the Vida de San Millan given in the Poets
and Poetry of Europe, “Gonzalo de Berceo, the oldest of the
Castilian poets whose name has reached us, was born in 1198. He was a
monk in the monastery of Saint Millan, in Calahorra, and wrote poems
on sacred subjects in Castilian Alexandrines.” According to the
poem, the Spaniards, while combating the Moors, were overcome by
“a terror of their foes,” since “these were a numerous
army, a little handful those.”

Turn now to the Battle of the Lake Regillus. In a series of
desperate hand-to-hand conflicts the Romans have on the whole been
worsted by the allied Thirty Cities, armed to reinstate the Tarquins
upon their lost throne. Their most vaunted champion,
Herminius—”who kept the bridge so well”—has
been slain, and his war-horse, black Auster, has barely been rescued
by the dictator Aulus from the hands of Titus, the youngest of the
Tarquins.

The scene of the following stanza is [pg
362] at Rome, where the watchers at the gates have learned
from the Great Twin Brethren the issue of the day:

Of course, we are not to be understood as intimating that Macaulay
was consciously or otherwise guilty of a plagiarism. Indeed, he was
at the pains, in his preface to the poem in question, to point out
how certain of its features were designedly taken, and others might
fairly be conceived to have been taken, from ballads of an age long
before Livy, whom he cites in the matter of the Great Twin Brethren.
He has even detailed a circumstance, in reference to the legendary
appearance of the divine warriors, curiously relevant to the
resemblance just pointed out. “In modern times,” he wrote,
“a very similar story actually found credence among a people
much more civilized than the Romans of the fifth century before
Christ. A chaplain of Cortez, writing about thirty years after the
conquest of Mexico,…had the face to assert that, in an engagement
against the Indians, Saint James had appeared on a gray horse at the
head of the Castilian adventurers. Many of those adventurers were
living when this lie was printed. One of them, honest Bernal Diaz,
wrote an account of the expedition…. He says that he was in the
battle, and that he saw a gray horse with a man on his back, but that
the man was, to his thinking, Francesco de Morla, and not the
ever-blessed apostle Saint James. ‘Nevertheless,’ Bernal
adds, ‘it may be that the person on the gray horse was the
glorious apostle Saint James, and that I, sinner that I am, was
unworthy to see him.'” Other striking instances of identity
between classical, Castilian and Saxon legends are detailed by Lord
Macaulay in the learned and interesting general preface to his
Lays of Ancient Rome. But the reappearance of this particular
story in such remote times and places, and with such marked
similarities and variations, would entitle it to a place among the
indestructible popular legends collated by Mr. Baring-Gould in his
Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.

A WARNING TO LOVERS.

“Metildy, you are the most good-for-nothin’,
triflin’, owdacious, contrary piece that ever lived.”

“Oh, ma!” sobbed Matilda, “I couldn’ help
myself—’deed I couldn’.”

“Couldn’ help yourself? That’s a pretty way to talk!
Ain’t he a nice young man?”

“Yes’m.”

“Got money?”

“Yes’m.”

“And good kinfolks?”

“Yes’m.”

“And loves you to destrackshun?”

“Yes’m.”

“Well, in the name o’ common sense, what did you send him
home for?”

“Well, ma, if I must tell the truth, I must, I s’pose,
though I’d ruther die. You see, ma, when he fetcht his cheer
clost to mine, and ketcht holt of my hand, and squez it, and dropt on
his knees, then it was that his eyes rolled and he began
breathin’ hard, and his gallowses kept a creakin and a
creakin’, I till I thought in my soul somethin’ terrible
was the matter with his in’ards, his vitals; and that flustered
and skeered me so that I bust out a-cryin’. Seein’ me do
that, he creaked worse’n ever, and that made me cry harder; and
the harder I cried the harder he creaked, till all of a sudden it
came to me that it wasn’t nothin’ but his gallowses; and then
I bust out a laughin’ fit to kill myself, right in his face. And
then he jumpt up and run out of the house mad as fire; and he
ain’t comin’ back no more. Boo-hoo, ahoo, boo-hoo!”

“Metildy,” said the old woman sternly, “stop
sniv’lin’. You’ve made an everlastin’ fool of
yourself, but your cake ain’t all dough yet. It all comes of them
no ‘count, fashionable sto’ gallowses—’
‘spenders’ I believe they calls ’em. Never mind, honey!
I’ll send [pg 363] for Johnny, tell
him how it happened, ‘pologize to him, and knit him a real nice
pair of yarn gallowses, jest like your pa’s; and they never do
creak.”

“Yes, ma,” said Matilda, brightening up; “but let
me knit ’em.”

“So you shall, honey: he’ll vally them a heap more than
if I knit ’em. Cheer up, Tildy: it’ll all be right—you
mind if it won’t.”

Sure enough, it proved to be all right. Tildy and Johnny were
married, and Johnny’s gallowses never creaked any
more.

NOTES.

Milton, in his famous description of the woman Delilah, sailing
like a stately ship of Tarsus “with all her bravery on, and
tackle trim,” is particular to note “an amber scent of
odorous perfume, her harbinger.” Perfume as an adjunct of
feminine dress has been celebrated from the days of the earliest
poet, and probably will be to the latest; but it was reserved for the
modern toilet to project a regular theory of harmony between odors
and colors—a theory which might never have been dreamed of in
the studio of the painter, but is not unworthy of the boudoir of the
belle. It is the young Englishwomen at Vienna who, if we may believe
Eugène Chapus, have taken the initiative in this new refinement of
coquetry, which employs not only a greater variety and quantity of
perfume than in previous years, but employs it according to a certain
scientific system. At balls, perfumes are especially de
rigueur, and it is in her ball-dress that Araminta aims to
establish a species of relation between the nature of the perfume she
carries and the general character of the toilette she wears. That is
to say, gravely proceeds Monsieur Chapus, if pink predominates in the
stuff of her gown, the proper perfume will be essence of roses; if
light yellow, it will be Portugal water; if the color be réséda
(which has such a run at present for ladies’ costumes), the
chosen perfume will be an essence of mignonette; and so on with the
other flowers corresponding to the shades commonly used in fresh
ball-toilettes. Undoubtedly to a Rimmel the relation between
different odors and different styles of personal beauty or personal
traits would be as obvious as is this newly-discovered harmony
between perfume and costume; but we fear that the new fashion is due
to coquettish art rather than aesthetic taste, and that, like many
another whim of the drawing-room, it will die out before the science
is fairly established.

The enfant terrible plays an important rôle in literature
as in society during these modern days, and although a little of him
goes a good way, yet it must be owned that his sayings are sometimes
spicy.

A grandfather was holding Master Tom, a youth of five, on his
knees, when the youngster suddenly asked him why his hair was white.
“Oh,” says grandpapa, “that’s because I’m so
old. Why, don’t you know that I was in the ark?”

“In the ark?” cries Tommy: “why you aren’t
Noah, are you, grandpapa?”

“Oh no, I’m not Noah.”

“Ah, then you’re Shem.”

“No, not Shem, either.”

“Oh, then I suppose you’re Japhet.”

“No, you haven’t guessed right: I’m not
Japhet.”

“Well, then, grandpapa,” said the child, driven to the
extremity of his biblical knowledge, “you must be one of the
beasts.”

Not less critical was the comment of a lad who was taken to church
one Sunday for the first time.

“You see, Augustus,” said his fond mamma, anxious to
impress his tender mind at such a moment with lasting remembrances,
“how many people come here to pray to God?”

“Yes, but not so many as go to the circus,” says the
practical lad.

Quite natural, also, was the reply of a little lady who was found
crying by her mother because one of her companions had given her a
slap.

“Well, I hope you paid her back?” cried the angry
mother, her indignation getting the better of her
judgment.

“Oh yes, I paid her back before-hand!”

Another little girl, after attending the funeral of one of her
schoolmates, which ceremony had been conducted at the school, was
giving an animated account of the exercises on her return home.

“And I suppose you were all sobbing as if your hearts would
break, poor things!” says papa.

“Oh no,” replies the child: “only the front row
cried.”

It was one of the features of the shah-mania that British
journalism was overrun and surfeited with Persian topics, Persian
allusions and fragments of the Persian language and literature. Every
pedant of the press displayed an unexpected and astonishing
acquaintance with Persian history, Persian geography, Persian manners
and customs. Desperate cramming was done to get up Persian quotations
for leading articles, or at least a saying or two from Hafiz or Saadi
of the sort commonly found at the end of a lexicon or in some popular
book of maxims. Ludicrous disputes arose between morning papers as to
the comparative profundity of each other’s researches into
Persian lore; but the climax was capped, we think, by one London
journal, which politely offered advice to Nasr-ed-Dîn about his
conduct and his reading. “Should Nasr-ed-Dîn be impressed by
English flattery,” said this editor gravely, “with an
exaggerated sense of his own importance, His Majesty, as a
corrective, may recall to mind the Persian fable of ‘Ushter wa
Dirâz-kush,’ from the ‘Baharistân’ of Jaumy.” In
ordinary times an explanation might be vouchsafed of what the said
fable is, but none was given in the present instance, it being taken
for granted, during the shah’s visit, that the Baharistân of
Jaumy was as familiar to the average Englishman as Mother Goose. Upon
the whole, our country has not been wholly unfortunate in not seeing
the shah. Horace’s famous “Persicos odi, puer,
apparatus,” has a very close application in the “Persian
stuff” with which British journalism has lately been
flooded.

says Cowper. To describe the holiday amusement provided for the
shah in England as having been a grand “variety
entertainment” would feebly represent the mixture actually
furnished him. One day, for example (a Monday), His Majesty began by
reviewing the Fire Brigade; and then Captain Shaw was presented to
the shah—likewise Colonel Hogg; and then, according to the
Morning Advertiser, “Joe Goss, Ned Donelly, Alex. Lawson,
and young Horn had the honor of appearing and boxing before the shah
and a small company, at which His Majesty seemed highly
delighted;” and next came deputations successively from the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Society for the
Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the Bible Society, the Church
Missionary Society, and the Evangelical Alliance; then a deputation
from the Mohammedans residing in London was presented, and Sir Moses
Montefiore had a private interview with His Majesty; and finally, to
wind up the day’s programme, the shah, attended by many princes
and princesses, and an audience of 34,000 people, witnessed a
performance at the Crystal Palace expressly selected to suit his
taste—namely, gymnastic feats by Germans and Japanese, followed
by “Signor Romah” on the trapeze. All this was done before
dinner; and the curious combination of piety and pugilism,
missionaries and acrobats, may be supposed to have had the effect of
duly “impressing” the illustrious guest.

A French writer some time since informed his countrymen that in
America wooden hams were a regular article of manufacture. This is a
fact not generally known; but at any rate, according to Pierre Véron,
we have not yet quite outdone the Old World in the arts of commercial
fraud. Worthy Johnny Crapaud used to flatter himself that he
outwitted the grocers in buying his coffee unground, but now rogues
make artificial coffee-kernels in a mould, and the Paris police court
(which does not appreciate [pg 365]
ingenuity of that sort) lately gave six months in prison to some
makers of sham coffee-grains, thus interfering with a business which
was earning twenty thousand dollars a year. Some of the Paris
pastry-cooks make balls for vol-au-vent with a hash of rags
allowed to soak in gravy; sham larks and partridges for pâtés are
constructed out of chopped-up meat, neatly shaped to represent those
birds; peddlers of sweet-meats sell marshmallow paste made out of
Spanish white; the fish-merchant inserts the eyes of a fresh mackerel
in a stale turbot, to trick his sharp customers; and as to drinks,
one dyer boldly puts over his door “Burgundy Vintages!”
They make marble of pasteboard and diamonds of glass. Adulteration on
adulteration, moans M. Véron, all is adulteration!

The problem of aërial navigation seems at present to be agitating
as many pseudo-scientific minds as did that of perpetual motion not
many years ago, or the philosopher’s stone at a more remote
period. It possesses perhaps a still stronger attraction in the
danger connected with the experiments—the source, we suppose,
of the eagerness shown by Professor Wise and his associates to
fly to evils that they know not of. Perpetual motion received
its quietus from the blasts of ridicule. Air-voyaging has a worse foe
to encounter. It may survive the attacks of gayety, but it will
succumb, we fancy, to the resistless force of
gravity.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine. New York:
Holt & Williams.

The task formerly undertaken by Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland, in
adapting to our language the songs of Heine, is now well supplemented
with some versions from among his prose works by another
Philadelphian translator, Mr. Simon Adler Stern. Heine’s prose,
delicate in its pellucid brightness as any of his poetry, cannot be
held too precious by the interpreter. The latter must have all his
wits about him, or he will not find English at once simple enough and
distinguished enough to stand for the original. To get at Heine’s
prose exactly in another language must be almost as hard as to get at
his poetry. The principal selection made by Mr. Stern is a long
rambling rhapsody called “Florentine Nights,” in which the
author professes to pour into the ears of a dying mistress the
history of some of his former amours and exaltations, the natural
jealousy of the listener going for a stimulus in the recital. His
first love, however, is an idealization—a Greek statue which he
visits by moonlight, as Sordello in Browning’s poem does the

This weird love-ballad in prose must have taxed the translator
almost as much as if it had been in rhyme; for although an
interpreter of poetry undeniably has the difficulties of form to
struggle with, yet there is, on the other hand, an inspiration and
waft of feeling in the metre which lends him wings and helps him on.
If Mr. Stern does not encumber his style with a betrayal of the
difficulties he has got over—if he does not give us pedantry
and double-epithets, so common in vulgar renderings from the
German—he certainly shows no timidity in turning the polished
familiarity of Heine’s prose into our commonest vernacular.
“What lots of pleasure I found on my arrival;” “for
the men, lots of patience:” trivialities of expression like
these are not rare in his version. If they are not quite what Heine
would have written if he had been writing in English, at least the
fault of familiarity is [pg 366] better
than the fault of hardness; and these translations are never at all
hard or uncomfortable. When we add that Mr. Stern gives us an index
without showing what works the extracts are taken from, and that he
gives us an article on Heine without any mention that we can discover
of Heine’s wife, we have vented about all the objections we can
make to this welcome publication; and they are very few to find in a
collection of hundreds of “scintillations.”

The pleasures that remain for the reader are manifold: so
liberally and judiciously are the extracts chosen that we get a
complete exhibit of Heine’s mind on nearly all the topics he
occupied himself about. We have his views on French and German
politicians; on French, German and English authors; on art and
poetry; on his own soul and character; on religion; besides a great
deal of that persiflage, the most exquisite persiflage surely that
ever was heard, which flutters clear away from the regions of sense
and information, yet which only a man of sense and information could
have uttered.

Heine came to Paris in 1831, and saw all the sights and found
everything “charming.” His wit is a little cheap, perhaps,
when he calls the Senate Chamber at the Luxembourg “the
necropolis in which the mummies of perjury are embalmed;” at
least it becomes tiresome to hear his constant disparagement of the
politics which he chose to live under, and which protected him so
agreeably; but he is his own keen self where he observes that the
signs of the revolution of 1830, what he calls the legend of
liberté, egalité, fraternité at the street-corners, had
“already been wiped away.” Victor Hugo, for his part, did
not find it so: he says that the years 1831 and 1832 have, in
relation to the revolution of July, the aspect of two mountains,
where you can distinguish precipices, and that they embody “la
grandeur révolutionnaire.” The cooler spectator from Hamburg
inspects at Paris “the giraffe, the three-legged goat, the
kangaroos,” without much of the vertigo of precipices, and he
sees “M. de La Fayette and his white locks—at different
places, however,” for the latter were in a locket and the hero
was in his brown wig. Elsewhere he associates “the virtuous La
Fayette and James Watt the cotton-spinner.” The age of industry,
commerce and the Citizen-King, in fact, was not quite suited to the
poet who celebrated Napoleon; yet was Heine’s admiration of
Napoleon not such as an epic hero would be comfortable under:
“Cromwell never sank so low as to suffer a priest to anoint him
emperor,” he says in allusion to the coronation. He respects
Napoleon as the last great aristocrat, and says the combined powers
ought to have supported instead of overturned him, for his defeat
precipitated the coming in of modern ideas. The prospect for the
world after his death was “at the best to be bored to death by
the monotony of a republic.” Ardent patriots in this country
need not go for sympathy to the king-scorner Heine. For the theory of
a commonwealth he had small love: “That which oppresses me is
the artist’s and the scholar’s secret dread, lest our modern
civilization, the laboriously achieved result of so many centuries of
effort, will be endangered I by the triumph of Communism.” We
have drifted into the citation of these sentiments because many
conservatives think of Heine only as an irreconcilable destroyer and
revolutionist, and do not care to welcome in him the basis of
attachment to order which must underlie every artist’s or
author’s love of freedom. “Soldier in the liberation of
humanity” as he was, that liberation was to be the result of
growth, not of destruction. As for Communism, it talks but
“hunger, envy and death.” It has but one faith,
happiness on this earth; and the millennium it foresees is “a
single shepherd and a single flock, all shorn after the same pattern,
and bleating alike.” Such passages are the true reflection of
Heine’s keen but not great mind, miserably bandied between the
hopes of a republican future, that was to be the death of art and
literature, and the rags of a feudal present, whose conditions
sustained him while they disgusted him. If Heine fought, scratched
and bit with all his might among the convulsions of the politics he
was helpless to rearrange, he was equally mordant when he turned his
attention to society, and perhaps more frightfully impartial. He
hated the English for “their idle curiosity, bedizened
awkwardness, impudent bashfulness, angular egotism, and vacant
delight in all melancholy objects.” As for the French, they are
“les comédiens ordinaires du bon Dieu;” yet “a
blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle more pleasing to the Lord than a
praying Englishman.” And Germany: “Germany alone possesses
those colossal fools whose caps reach unto the heavens, [pg 367] and delight the stars with the ringing of
their bells.” Thus shooting forth his tongue on every side,
Heine is shown “in action” by this little cluster of
“scintillations,” and the whole book is the shortest
definition of him possible, for it makes the saliencies of his
character jut out within a close compass. It can be read in a couple
of hours, and no reading of the same length in any of his complete
writings would give such a notion of the most witty, perverse,
tender, savage, pitiable and inexcusable of men.

Monographs, Personal and Social. By Lord Houghton. New York: Holt
& Williams.

Lord Houghton is one of those fortunate persons who seem to find
without trouble the exact niches in life which Nature has designed
them to fill. There probably never entered the world a man more
eminently made to appreciate the best kind of “high life”
which London has offered in the present century; and he has been able
to avail himself of it to his heart’s content. The son of a
Yorkshire squire in affluent circumstances and of high character,
Monckton Milnes was not spoilt by finding, as he might have done had
he been the heir to a dukedom, the world at his feet; whilst at the
same time all the good things were within his reach by a little of
that exertion which does so much toward enhancing the enjoyment of
them. From the period of his entry upon London life he displayed that
anxiety to know celebrities which, though in a somewhat different
way, was a marked feature of his contemporary and acquaintance, Crabb
Robinson; and the story illustrative of this tendency which gained
him the sobriquet of “the cool of the evening” will
be always associated with the name he has since merged in a less
familiar title.

Lord Houghton has now passed through some sixty London seasons,
during which he has been more or less acquainted with nearly every
social and literary celebrity in the English metropolis. Having
regard to this circumstance, and the fact of his possessing a
polished and graceful style of expressing himself, one would
naturally expect a great deal from this volume of reminiscences. Nor
will such expectations be entirely disappointed. The monographs are
eight in number, and will be read with varying degrees of interest,
according to the taste of the reader, as well as the subjects and
quality of the papers. The portrait which will perhaps be the newest
to American readers is that of Harriet, Lady Ashburton, wife of the
second Baring who bore that title. Lady Ashburton was daughter of the
earl of Sandwich, and Lord Houghton says of her: “She was an
instance in which aristocracy gave of its best and showed at its
best, although she may have owed little to the qualities she
inherited from an irascible race and to an unaffectionate
education”—a sentence reminding us of a remark in the
London Times, that “with certain noble houses people are
apt to associate certain qualities—with the Berkeleys, for
instance, a series of disgraceful family quarrels.” Lady
Ashburton appears to us from this account to have been a brilliant
spoilt child of fortune, who availed herself of her great social
position to do and say what, had she remained Lady Harriet Montagu
with the pittance of a poor nobleman’s daughter, she would hardly
have dared to do or say. It is one of the weak points of society in
England that a woman who has rank, wealth, and ability, and contrives
to surround herself with men of wit to whom she renders her house
delightful, can be as hard and rude as she pleases to the world in
general. Fortunately, in most cases native kindness of heart usually
hurries to heal the wound that “wicked wit” may have made.
This would scarcely seem to have been so with Lady Ashburton, for
Lord Houghton tells us that “many who would not have cared for a
quiet defeat shrank from the merriment of her victory,” one of
them saying, “I do not mind being knocked down, but I can’t
stand being danced upon afterward.” Lord Houghton, however,
defines this “jumping” as “a joyous sincerity that no
conventionalities, high or low, could restrain—a festive nature
flowing through the artificial soil of elevated life.” And it
must be owned that there was at least nothing petty or rancorous in a
nature which showed so rare an appreciation of genius, and an equal
capacity for warm and disinterested friendship.