HARPER’S

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

VOLUME I.

JUNE TO NOVEMBER, 1850.

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

329 & 331 PEARL STREET,

FRANKLIN SQUARE.

MDCCCL

ADVERTISEMENT.

The Publishers take great pleasure in presenting herewith the first volume of the
New Monthly Magazine. It was projected and commenced in the belief, that it
might be made the means of bringing within the reach of the great mass of the American
people, an immense amount of useful and entertaining reading matter, to which,
on account of the great number and expense of the books and periodicals in which it
originally appears, they have hitherto had no access. The popularity of the work has
outstripped their most sanguine expectations. Although but six months have elapsed
since it was first announced, it has already attained a regular monthly issue of more
than Fifty Thousand Copies, and the rate of its increase is still unchecked. Under
these circumstances, the Publishers would consider themselves failing in duty, as well
as in gratitude, to the public, if they omitted any exertion within their power to increase
its substantial value and its attractiveness. It will be their aim to present, in
a style of typography unsurpassed by any similar publication in the world, every thing
of general interest and usefulness which the current literature of the times may contain.
They will seek, in every article, to combine entertainment with instruction,
and to enforce, through channels which attract rather than repel attention and favor,
the best and most important lessons of morality and of practical life. They will spare
neither labor nor expense in any department of the work; freely lavishing both upon
the editorial aid, the pictorial embellishments, the typography, and the general literary
resources by which they hope to give the Magazine a popular circulation, unequaled
by that of any similar periodical ever published in the world. And they are satisfied
that they may appeal with confidence to the present volume, for evidence of the earnestness
and fidelity with which they will enter upon the fulfillment of these promises
for the future.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

[Pg 1]

HARPER’S

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. I—JUNE, 1850—Vol. I.

A WORD AT THE START.

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, of
which this is the initial number, will be
published every month, at the rate of three dollars
per annum. Each number will contain as
great an amount and variety of reading matter,
and at least as many pictorial illustrations, and
will be published in the same general style, as
the present.

The design of the Publishers, in issuing this
work, is to place within the reach of the great
mass of the American people the unbounded
treasures of the Periodical Literature of the
present day. Periodicals enlist and absorb much
of the literary talent, the creative genius, the
scholarly accomplishment of the present age.
The best writers, in all departments and in every
nation, devote themselves mainly to the Reviews,
Magazines, or Newspapers of the day. And it
is through their pages that the most powerful
historical Essays, the most elaborate critical Disquisitions,
the most eloquent delineations of
Manners and of Nature, the highest Poetry and
the most brilliant Wit, have, within the last ten
years, found their way to the public eye and the
public heart.

This devotion to Periodical writing is rapidly
increasing. The leading authors of Great Britain
and of France, as well as of the United
States, are regular and constant contributors to
the Periodicals of their several countries. The
leading statesmen of France have been for years
the leading writers in her journals. Lamartine
has just become the editor of a newspaper.
Dickens has just established a weekly journal
of his own, through which he is giving to the
world some of the most exquisite and delightful
creations that ever came from his magic pen.
Alison writes constantly for Blackwood. Lever
is enlisted in the Dublin University Magazine.
Bulwer and Croly publish their greatest and
most brilliant novels first in the pages of the
Monthly Magazines of England and of Scotland.
Macaulay, the greatest of living Essayists and
Historians, has enriched the Edinburgh Review
with volumes of the most magnificent productions
of English Literature. And so it is with
all the living authors of England. The ablest
and the best of their productions are to be found
in Magazines. The wealth and freshness of the
Literature of the Nineteenth Century are embodied
in the pages of its Periodicals.

The Weekly and Daily Journals of England,
France, and America, moreover, abound in the
most brilliant contributions in every department
of intellectual effort. The current of Political
Events, in an age of unexampled political activity,
can be traced only through their columns.
Scientific discovery, Mechanical inventions, the
creations of Fine Art, the Orations of Statesmen,
all the varied intellectual movements of
this most stirring and productive age, find their
only record upon these multiplied and ephemeral
pages.

It is obviously impossible that all these sources
of instruction and of interest should be accessible
to any considerable number even of the reading
public, much less that the great mass of the
people of this country should have any opportunity
of becoming familiar with them. They are
scattered through scores and hundreds of magazines
and journals, intermingled with much that
is of merely local and transient interest, and are
thus hopelessly excluded from the knowledge
and the reach of readers at large.

The Publishers of the New Monthly Magazine
intend to remedy this evil, and to place
every thing of the Periodical Literature of the
day, which has permanent value and commanding
interest, in the hands of all who have the slightest
desire to become acquainted with it. Each
number will contain 144 octavo pages, in double
columns: the volumes of a single year, therefore,
will present nearly two thousand pages
of the choicest and most attractive of the Miscellaneous[Pg 2]
Literature of the Age. The Magazine
will transfer to its pages as rapidly as
they may be issued all the continuous tales of
Dickens, Bulwer, Croly, Lever, Warren, and
other distinguished contributors to British Periodicals:
articles of commanding interest from
all the leading Quarterly Reviews of both Great
Britain and the United States: Critical Notices
of the current publications of the day: Speeches
and Addresses of distinguished men upon topics
of universal interest and importance: Notices
of Scientific discoveries, of the progress and
fruits of antiquarian research, of mechanical inventions,
of incidents of travel and exploration,
and generally of all the events in Science, Literature,
and Art in which the people at large have
any interest. Constant and special regard will
be had to such articles as relate to the Economy
of Social and Domestic Life, or tend to promote
in any way the education, advancement,
and well-being of those who are engaged in any
department of productive activity. A carefully
prepared Fashion Plate, and other pictorial illustrations,
will also accompany each number.

The Magazine is not intended exclusively for
any class of readers, or for any kind of reading.
The Publishers have at their command the exhaustless
resources of current Periodical Literature
in all its departments. They have the
aid of Editors in whom both they and the public
have long since learned to repose full and implicit
confidence. They have no doubt that, by
a careful, industrious, and intelligent use of these
appliances, they can present a Monthly Compendium
of the periodical productions of the day
which no one who has the slightest relish for
miscellaneous reading, or the slightest desire to
keep himself informed of the progress and results
of the literary genius of his own age, would
willingly be without. And they intend to publish
it at so low a rate, and to give to it a value
so much beyond its price, that it shall make its
way into the hands or the family circle of every
intelligent citizen of the United States.

[From the Dublin University Magazine.]

MAURICE TIERNAY, THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.

CHAPTER I. “THE DAYS OF THE GUILLOTINE.”

Neither the tastes nor the temper of the
age we live in are such as to induce any
man to boast of his family nobility. We see too
many preparations around us for laying down
new foundations, to think it a suitable occasion
for alluding to the ancient edifice. I will, therefore,
confine myself to saying, that I am not to
be regarded as a mere Pretender because my
name is not chronicled by Burke or Debrett.
My great-grandfather, after whom I am called,
served on the personal staff of King James at the
Battle of the Boyne, and was one of the few who
accompanied the monarch on his flight from the
field, for which act of devotion he was created
a peer of Ireland, by the style and title of Timmahoo—Lord
Tiernay of Timmahoo the family
called it—and a very rich-sounding and pleasant
designation has it always seemed to me.

The events of the time—the scanty intervals
of leisure enjoyed by the king, and other matters,
prevented a due registry of my ancestors’ claims;
and, in fact, when more peaceable days succeeded
it, it was judged prudent to say nothing
about a matter which might revive unhappy recollections,
and open old scores, seeing that there
was now another king on the throne “who knew
not Joseph;” and so, for this reason and many
others, my great-grandfather went back to his
old appellation of Maurice Tiernay, and was
only a lord among his intimate friends and cronies
of the neighborhood.

That I am simply recording a matter of fact,
the patent of my ancestors’ nobility now in my
possession will sufficiently attest: nor is its existence
the less conclusive, that it is inscribed on
the back of his commission as a captain in the
Shanabogue Fencibles—the well-known “Clear-the-way-boys”—a
proud title, it is said, to which
they imparted a new reading at the memorable
battle afore-mentioned.

The document bears the address of a small
public house called the Nest, on the Kells Road,
and contains in one corner a somewhat lengthy
score for potables, suggesting the notion that his
majesty sympathized with vulgar infirmities, and
found, as the old song says, “that grief and sorrow
are dry.”

The prudence which for some years sealed
my grandfather’s lips, lapsed, after a time, into
a careless and even boastful spirit, in which he
would allude to his rank in the peerage, the
place he ought to be holding, and so on; till at
last some of the government people, doubtless
taking a liking to the snug house and demesne
of Timmahoo, denounced him as a rebel, on
which he was arrested and thrown into jail,
where he lingered for many years, and only
came out at last to find his estate confiscated
and himself a beggar.

There was a small gathering of Jacobites in
one of the towns of Flanders, and thither he repaired;
but how he lived, or how he died, I never
learned. I only know that his son wandered
away to the east of Europe, and took service in
what was called Trenck’s Pandours—as jolly a[Pg 3]
set of robbers as ever stalked the map of Europe,
from one side to the other. This was my
grandfather, whose name is mentioned in various
chronicles of that estimable corps, and who was
hanged at Prague afterward for an attempt to
carry off an archduchess of the empire, to whom,
by the way, there is good reason to believe he
was privately married. This suspicion was
strengthened by the fact that his infant child,
Joseph, was at once adopted by the imperial
family, and placed as a pupil in the great military
school of Vienna. From thence he obtained
a commission in the Maria Theresa Hussars, and
subsequently, being sent on a private mission
to France, entered the service of Louis XVI.,
where he married a lady of the queen’s household—a
Mademoiselle de la Lasterie—of high
rank and some fortune; and with whom he lived
happily till the dreadful events of 17—, when
she lost her life, beside my father, then fighting
as a Garde du Corps, on the stair-case at Versailles.
How he himself escaped on that day,
and what were the next features in his history,
I never knew; but when again we heard of
him, he was married to the widow of a celebrated
orator of the Mountain, and he himself an
intimate friend of St. Just and Marat, and all the
most violent of the Republicans.

My father’s history about this period is involved
in such obscurity, and his second marriage
followed so rapidly on the death of his first wife,
that, strange as it may seem, I never knew who
was my mother—the lineal descendant of a
house, noble before the Crusades, or the humble
“bourgeoise” of the Quartier St. Denis. What
peculiar line of political action my father followed
I am unable to say, nor whether he was
suspected with or without due cause: but suspected
he certainly was, and at a time when
suspicion was all-sufficient for conviction. He
was arrested, and thrown into the Temple,
where I remember I used to visit him every
week; and whence I accompanied him one
morning, as he was led forth with a string of
others to the Place de la Grève, to be guillotined.
I believe he was accused of royalism; and I
know that a white cockade was found among
his effects, and in mockery was fastened on his
shoulder on the day of his execution. This
emblem, deep dyed with blood, and still dripping,
was taken up by a bystander, and pinned on my
cap, with the savage observation, “Voila, it is
the proper color; see that you profit by the way
it became so.” As with a bursting heart, and
a head wild with terror, I turned to find my way
homeward, I felt my hand grasped by another—I
looked up, and saw an old man, whose
threadbare black clothes and emaciated appearance
bespoke the priest in the times of the
Convention.

“You have no home now, my poor boy,” said
he to me; “come and share mine.”

I did not ask him why. I seemed to have
suddenly become reckless as to every thing
present or future. The terrible scene I had
witnessed had dried up all the springs of my
youthful heart; and, infant as I was, I was already
a skeptic as to every thing good or
generous in human nature. I followed him,
therefore, without a word, and we walked on,
leaving the thoroughfares and seeking the less
frequented streets, till we arrived in what seemed
a suburban part of Paris—at least the houses
were surrounded with trees and shrubs; and at
a distance I could see the hill of Montmartre
and its wind-mills—objects well known to me
by many a Sunday visit.

Even after my own home, the poverty of the
Père Michel’s household was most remarkable:
he had but one small room, of which a miserable
settle-bed, two chairs, and a table constituted
all the furniture; there was no fire-place, a little
pan for charcoal supplying the only means for
warmth or cookery; a crucifix and a few
colored prints of saints decorated the whitewashed
walls; and, with a string of wooden
beads, a cloth skull-cap, and a bracket with two
or three books, made up the whole inventory of
his possessions; and yet, as he closed the door
behind him, and drew me toward him to kiss
my cheek, the tears glistened in his eyes with
gratitude as he said,

“Now, my dear Maurice, you are at home.”

“How do you know that I am called Maurice?”
said I, in astonishment.

“Because I was an old friend of your poor
father, my child; we came from the same
country—we held the same faith, had the same
hopes, and may one day yet, perhaps, have the
same fate.”

He told me that the closest friendship had
bound them together for years past, and in
proof of it showed me a variety of papers which
my father had intrusted to his keeping, well
aware, as it would seem, of the insecurity of
his own life.

“He charged me to take you home with me,
Maurice, should the day come when this might
come to pass. You will now live with me, and
I will be your father, so far at least as humble
means will suffer me.”

I was too young to know how deep my debt
of gratitude ought to be. I had not tasted the
sorrows of utter desertion; nor did I know from
what a hurricane of blood and anarchy fortune
had rescued me; still I accepted the Père’s
benevolent offer with a thankful heart, and
turned to him at once as to all that was left to
me in the world.

All this time, it may be wondered how I
neither spoke nor thought of my mother, if she
were indeed such; but for several weeks before
my father’s death I had never seen her, nor did
he ever once allude to her. The reserve thus
imposed upon me remained still, and I felt as
though it would have been like a treachery to
his memory were I now to speak of her whom,
in his life-time I had not dared to mention.

The Père lost no time in diverting my mind
from the dreadful events I had so lately witnessed.
The next morning, soon after daybreak,
I was summoned to attend him to the little[Pg 4]
church of St. Blois, where he said mass. It
was a very humble little edifice, which once
had been the private chapel of a chateau, and
stood in a weed-grown, neglected garden, where
broken statues and smashed fountains bore evidence
of the visits of the destroyer. A rude
effigy of St. Blois, upon whom some profane
hand had stuck a Phrygian cap of liberty, and
which none were bold enough to displace, stood
over the doorway; besides, not a vestige of
ornament or decoration existed. The altar,
covered with a white cloth, displayed none of
the accustomed emblems; and a rude crucifix
of oak was the only symbol of the faith remaining.
Small as was the building, it was even
too spacious for the few who came to worship.
The terror which prevailed on every side—the
dread that devotion to religion should be construed
into an adherence to the monarchy, that
submission to God should be interpreted as an
act of rebellion against the sovereignty of human
will, had gradually thinned the numbers, till at
last the few who came were only those whose
afflictions had steeled them against any reverses,
and who were ready martyrs to whatever might
betide them. These were almost exclusively
women—the mothers and wives of those who
had sealed their faith with their blood in the
terrible Place de la Grève. Among them was
one whose dress and appearance, although not
different from the rest, always created a movement
of respect as she passed in or out of the
chapel. She was a very old lady, with hair
white as snow, and who led by the hand a little
girl of about my own age; her large dark eyes
and brilliant complexion giving her a look of
unearthly beauty in that assemblage of furrowed
cheeks, and eyes long dimmed by weeping. It
was not alone that her features were beautifully
regular, or that their lines were fashioned in the
very perfection of symmetry, but there was a
certain character in the expression of the face so
different from all around it, as to be almost
electrical in effect. Untouched by the terrible
calamities that weighed on every heart, she
seemed, in the glad buoyancy of her youth, to
be at once above the very reach of sorrow, like
one who bore a charmed fate, and whom Fortune
had exempted from all the trials of this life. So
at least did I read those features, as they beamed
upon me in such a contract to the almost stern
character of the sad and sorrow-struck faces of
the rest.

It was a part of my duty to place a foot-stool
each morning for the “Marquise,” as she was
distinctively called, and on these occasions it
was that I used to gaze upon that little girl’s
face with a kind of admiring wonder that lingered
in my heart for hours after. The bold
look with which she met mine, if it at first half
abashed, at length encouraged me; and as I
stole noiselessly away, I used to feel as though
I carried with me some portion of that high
hope which bounded within her own heart.
Strange magnetism! it seemed as though her
spirit whispered to me not to be down-hearted
or depressed—that the sorrows of life came and
went as shadows pass over the earth—that the
season of mourning was fast passing, and that
for us the world would wear a brighter and
more glorious aspect.

Such were the thoughts her dark eyes revealed
to me, and such the hopes I caught up from her
proud features.

It is easy to color a life of monotony; any hue
may soon tinge the outer surface, and thus mine
speedily assumed a hopeful cast; not the less
decided, that the distance was lost in vague uncertainty.
The nature of my studies—and the
Père kept me rigidly to the desk—offered little
to the discursiveness of fancy. The rudiments
of Greek and Latin, the lives of saints and
martyrs, the litanies of the church, the invocations
peculiar to certain holy days, chiefly filled
up my time, when not sharing those menial
offices which our poverty exacted from our own
hands.

Our life was of the very simplest; except a
cup of coffee each morning at daybreak, we took
but one meal; our drink was always water.
By what means even the humble fare we enjoyed
was procured, I never knew, for I never
saw money in the Père’s possession, nor did he
ever appear to buy any thing.

For about two hours in the week I used to
enjoy entire liberty, as the Père was accustomed
every Saturday to visit certain persons of his
flock who were too infirm to go abroad. On
these occasions he would leave me with some
thoughtful injunction about reflection or pious
meditation, perhaps suggesting, for my amusement,
the life of St. Vincent de Paul, or some
other of those adventurous spirits whose missions
among the Indians are so replete with heroic
struggles; but still with free permission for me
to walk out at large and enjoy myself as I liked
best. We lived so near the outer Boulevard
that I could already see the open country from
our windows; but fair and enticing as seemed
the sunny slopes of Montmartre—bright as
glanced the young leaves of spring in the gardens
at its foot—I ever turned my steps into the
crowded city, and sought the thoroughfares
where the great human tide rolled fullest.

There were certain spots which held a kind
of supernatural influence over me—one of these
was the Temple, another was the Place de la
Grève. The window at which my father used
to sit, from which, as a kind of signal, I have
so often seen his red kerchief floating, I never
could pass now, without stopping to gaze at;
now, thinking of him who had been its inmate,
now, wondering who might be its present occupant.
It needed not the onward current of
population that each Saturday bore along, to
carry me to the Place de la Grève. It was
the great day of the guillotine, and as many as
two hundred were often led out to execution.
Although the spectacle had now lost every
charm of excitement to the population, from its
frequency, it had become a kind of necessity to
their existence, and the sight of blood alone[Pg 5]
seemed to slake that feverish thirst for vengeance
which no sufferings appeared capable of satiating.
It was rare, however, when some great
and distinguished criminal did not absorb all the
interest of the scene. It was at that period
when the fierce tyrants of the Convention had
turned upon each other, and sought, by denouncing
those who had been their bosom friends, to
seal their new allegiance to the people. There
was something demoniacal in the exultation
with which the mob witnessed the fate of those
whom, but a few weeks back, they had acknowledged
as their guides and teachers. The
uncertainty of human greatness appeared the
most glorious recompense to those whose station
debarred them from all the enjoyments of power,
and they stood by the death-agonies of their
former friends with a fiendish joy that all the
sufferings of their enemies had never yielded.

To me the spectacles had all the fascination
that scenes of horror exercise over the mind of
youth. I knew nothing of the terrible conflict,
nothing of the fierce passions enlisted in the
struggle, nothing of the sacred names so basely
polluted, nothing of that remorseless vengeance
with which the low-born and degraded were
still hounded on to slaughter. It was a solemn
and a fearful sight, but it was no more; and I
gazed upon every detail of the scene with an
interest that never wandered from the spot
whereon it was enacted. If the parade of
soldiers, of horse, foot, and artillery, gave these
scenes a character of public justice, the horrible
mobs, who chanted ribald songs, and danced
around the guillotine, suggested the notion of
popular vengeance; so that I was lost in all my
attempts to reconcile the reasons of these executions
with the circumstances that accompanied
them.

Not daring to inform the Père Michel of
where I had been, I could not ask him for any
explanation; and thus was I left to pick up
from the scattered phrases of the crowd what
was the guilt alleged against the criminals.
In many cases the simple word “Chouan,” of
which I knew not the import, was all I heard;
in others jeering allusions to former rank and
station would be uttered; while against some
the taunt would imply that they had shed tears
over others who fell as enemies of the people,
and that such sympathy was a costly pleasure
to be paid for but with a life’s-blood. Such
entire possession of me had these awful sights
taken, that I lived in a continual dream of them.
The sound of every cart-wheel recalled the dull
rumble of the hurdle—every distant sound
seemed like the far-off hum of the coming multitude—every
sudden noise suggested the clanking
drop of the guillotine! My sleep had no
other images, and I wandered about my little
round of duties pondering over this terrible
theme.

Had I been less occupied with my own
thoughts, I must have seen that Père Michel
was suffering under some great calamity. The
poor priest became wasted to a shadow; for
entire days long he would taste of nothing;
sometimes he would be absent from early morning
to late at night, and when he did return,
instead of betaking himself to rest, he would
drop down before the crucifix in an agony of
prayer, and thus spend more than half the night.
Often and often have I, when feigning sleep,
followed him as he recited the litanies of the
breviary, adding my own unuttered prayers to
his, and beseeching for a mercy whose object I
knew not.

For some time his little chapel had been
closed by the authorities; a heavy padlock and
two massive seals being placed upon the door,
and a notice, in a vulgar handwriting, appended,
to the effect, that it was by the order of the
Commissary of the Department. Could this be
the source of the Père’s sorrow? or did not his
affliction seem too great for such a cause? were
questions I asked myself again and again.

In this state were matters, when one morning,
it was a Saturday, the Père enjoined me to
spend the day in prayer, reciting particularly
the liturgies for the dead, and all those sacred
offices for those who have just departed this
life.

“Pray unceasingly, my dear child—pray with
your whole heart, as though it were for one you
loved best in the world. I shall not return,
perhaps, till late to-night; but I will kiss you
then, and to-morrow we shall go into the woods
together.”

The tears fell from his cheek to mine as he
said this, and his damp hand trembled as he
pressed my fingers. My heart was full to
bursting at his emotion, and I resolved faithfully
to do his bidding. To watch him, as he went,
I opened the sash, and as I did so, the sound of
a distant drum, the well-known muffled roll,
floated on the air, and I remembered it was the
day of the guillotine—that day in which my
feverish spirit turned, as it were in relief, to the
reality of blood. Remote as was the part of
the city we lived in, to escape from the hideous
imaginings of my overwrought brain, I could
still mark the hastening steps of the foot-passengers,
as they listened to the far-off summons,
and see the tide was setting toward the fatal
Place de Grève. It was a lowering, heavy
morning, overcast with clouds, and on its loaded
atmosphere sounds moved slowly and indistinctly;
yet I could trace through all the din of the
great city, the incessant roll of the drums, and
the loud shouts that burst forth, from time to
time, from some great multitude.

Forgetting every thing, save my intense passion
for scenes of terror, I hastened down the
stairs into the street, and at the top of my speed
hurried to the place of execution. As I went
along, the crowded streets and thronged avenues
told of some event of more than common interest;
and in the words which fell from those
around me I could trace that some deep Royalist
plot had just been discovered, and that the
conspirators would all on that day be executed.
Whether it was that the frequent sight of blood[Pg 6]
was beginning to pall upon the popular appetite,
or that these wholesale massacres interested
less than the sight of individual suffering,
I know not; but certainly there was less of
exultation, less of triumphant scorn in the tone
of the speakers. They talked of the coming
event, as of a common occurrence, which, from
mere repetition, was gradually losing interest.

“I thought we had done with these Chouans,”
said a man in a blouse, with a paper cap on his
head. “Pardie! they must have been more
numerous than we ever suspected.”

“That they were, citoyen,” said a haggard-looking
fellow, whose features showed the signs
of recent strife; “they were the millions who
gorged and fed upon us for centuries—who
sipped the red grape of Bourdeaux, while you
and I drank the water of the Seine.”

“Well, their time is come now,” cried a third.

“And when will ours come?” asked a fresh-looking,
dark-eyed girl, whose dress bespoke
her trade of bouquetiere—”Do you call this our
time, my masters, when Paris has no more
pleasant sight than blood, nor any music save
the ‘ça ira’ that drowns the cries at the guillotine?
Is this our time, when we have lost
those who gave us bread, and got in their place
only those who would feed us with carnage?”

“Down with her! down with the Chouan!
à bas la Royaliste!” cried the pale-faced fellow;
and he struck the girl with his fist upon
the face, and left it covered with blood.

“To the lantern with her!—to the Seine!”
shouted several voices; and now, rudely seizing
her by the shoulders, the mob seemed bent
upon sudden vengeance; while the poor girl,
letting fall her basket, begged, with clasped
hands, for mercy.

“See here, see here, comrades,” cried a fellow,
stooping down among the flowers, “she is
a Royalist: here are lilies hid beneath the rest.”

What sad consequences this discovery might
have led to, there is no knowing; when, suddenly,
a violent rush of the crowd turned every
thought into a different direction. It was caused
by a movement of the Gendarmerie à cheval,
who were clearing the way for the approaching
procession. I had just time to place the poor
girl’s basket in her hands, as the onward impulse
of the dense mob carried me forward. I
saw her no more. A flower—I know not how
it came there—was in my bosom, and seeing
that it was a lily, I placed it in my cap for concealment.

The hoarse clangor of the bassoons—the only
instruments which played during the march—now
told that the procession was approaching;
and then I could see, above the heads of the
multitude, the leopard-skin helmets of the dragoons,
who led the way. Save this I could see
nothing, as I was borne along in the vast torrent
toward the place of execution. Slowly as
we moved, our progress was far more rapid
than that of the procession, which was often
obliged to halt from the density of the mob in
front. We arrived, therefore, at the Place a
considerable time before it; and now I found
myself beside the massive wooden railing placed
to keep off the crowd from the space around the
guillotine.

It was the first time I had ever stood so close
to the fatal spot, and my eyes devoured every
detail with the most searching intensity. The
colossal guillotine itself, painted red, and with
its massive ax suspended aloft—the terrible
basket, half filled with sawdust, beneath—the
coarse table, on which a rude jar and a cap
were placed—and, more disgusting than all, the
lounging group, who, with their newspapers in
hand, seemed from time to time to watch if the
procession were approaching. They sat beneath
a misshapen statue of wood, painted red like the
guillotine. This was the goddess of Liberty.
I climbed one of the pillars of the paling, and
could now see the great cart, which, like a boat
upon wheels, came slowly along, dragged by
six horses. It was crowded with people, so
closely packed that they could not move their
bodies, and only waved their hands, which they
did incessantly. They seemed, too, as if they
were singing; but the deep growl of the bassoons,
and the fierce howlings of the mob,
drowned all other sounds. As the cart came
nearer, I could distinguish the faces, amid
which were those of age and youth—men and
women—bold-visaged boys and fair girls—some,
whose air bespoke the very highest station,
and beside them, the hardy peasant, apparently
more amazed than terrified at all he
saw around him. On they came, the great cart
surging heavily, like a bark in a stormy sea;
and now it cleft the dense ocean that filled the
Place, and I could descry the lineaments wherein
the stiffened lines of death were already
marked. Had any touch of pity still lingered
in that dense crowd, there might well have
been some show of compassion for the sad convoy,
whose faces grew ghastly with terror as
they drew near the horrible engine.

Down the furrowed cheek of age the heavy
tears coursed freely, and sobs and broken prayers
burst forth from hearts that until now had
beat high and proudly.

“There is the Duc d’Angeaç,” cried a fellow,
pointing to a venerable old man, who was seated
at the corner of the cart, with an air of calm
dignity; “I know him well, for I was his perruquier.”

“His hair must be content with sawdust this
morning, instead of powder,” said another; and
a rude laugh followed the ruffian jest.

“See! mark that woman with the long dark
hair—that is La Bretonville, the actress of the
St. Martin.”

“I have often seen her represent terror far
more naturally,” cried a fashionably-dressed
man, as he stared at the victim through his
opera-glass.

“Bah!” replied his friend, “she despises
her audience, voila tout. Look, Henri, if that
little girl beside her be not Lucille of the
Pantheon.”[Pg 7]

“Parbleu! so it is. Why, they’ll not leave
a pirouette in the Grand Opera. Pauvre petite,
what had you to do with politics?”

“Her little feet ought to have saved her head
any day.”

“See how grim that old lady beside her
looks: I’d swear she is more shocked at the
company she’s thrown into, than the fate that
awaits her. I never saw a glance of prouder
disdain than she has just bestowed on poor
Lucille.”

“That’s the old Marquise d’Estelles, the
very essence of our old nobility. They used
to talk of their mesalliance with the Bourbons
as the first misfortune of their house.”

“Pardie! they have lived to learn deeper
sorrows.”

I had by this time discovered her they were
speaking of, whom I recognized at once as the
old marquise of the chapel of St. Blois. My
hands nearly gave up their grasp as I gazed on
those features, which so often I had seen fixed
in prayer, and which now—a thought paler,
perhaps—wore the self-same calm expression.
With what intense agony I peered into the
mass, to see if the little girl, her grand-daughter,
were with her; and, oh! the deep relief I felt
as I saw nothing but strange faces on every
side. It was terrible to feel, as my eyes ranged
over that vast mass, where grief and despair, and
heart-sinking terror were depicted, that I should
experience a spirit of joy and thankfulness; and
yet I did so, and with my lips I uttered my
gratitude that she was spared! But I had not
time for many reflections like this; already the
terrible business of the day had begun, and the
prisoners were now descending from the cart,
ranging themselves, as their names were called,
in a line below the scaffold. With a few exception,
they took their places in all the calm
of seeming indifference. Death had long familiarized
itself to their minds in a thousand shapes.
Day by day they had seen the vacant places
left by those led out to die, and if their sorrows
had not rendered them careless of life, the world
itself had grown distasteful to them. In some
cases a spirit of proud scorn was manifested to
the very last; and, strange inconsistency of
human nature! the very men whose licentiousness
and frivolity first evoked the terrible storm
of popular fury, were the first to display the
most chivalrous courage in the terrible face of
the guillotine. Beautiful women, too, in all the
pride of their loveliness, met the inhuman stare
of that mob undismayed. Nor were these traits
without their fruits. This noble spirit—this
triumphant victory of the well-born and the great—was
a continual insult to the populace, who
saw themselves defrauded of half their promised
vengeance, and they learned that they might
kill, but they could never humiliate them. In
vain they dipped their hands in the red life-blood,
and, holding up their dripping fingers,
asked, “How did it differ from that of the
canaille?” Their hearts gave the lie to the
taunt for they witnessed instances of heroism
from gray hairs and tender womanhood, that
would have shamed the proudest deeds of their
new-born chivalry!

“Charles Gregoire Courcelles!” shouted out
a deep voice from the scaffold.

“That is my name,” said a venerable-looking
old gentleman, as he arose from his seat,
adding, with a placid smile, “but, for half a
century my friends have called me the Duc de
Riancourt.”

“We have no dukes nor marquises; we
know of no titles in France,” replied the functionary.
“All men are equal before the law.”

“If it were so, my friend, you and I might
change places; for you were my steward, and
plundered my chateau.”

“Down with the royalist—away with the
aristocrat!” shouted a number of voices from
the crowd.

“Be a little patient, good people,” said the
old man, as he ascended the steps with some
difficulty; “I was wounded in Canada, and
have never yet recovered. I shall probably be
better a few minutes hence.”

There was something of half simplicity in the
careless way the words were uttered that hushed
the multitude, and already some expressions
of sympathy were heard; but as quickly the
ribald insults of the hired ruffians of the Convention
drowned these sounds, and “Down with
the royalist” resounded on every side, while
two officials assisted him to remove his stock
and bare his throat. The commissary, advancing
to the edge of the platform, and, as it were,
addressing the people, read in a hurried, slurring
kind of voice, something that purported to
be the ground of the condemnation. But of this
not a word could be heard. None cared to
hear the ten-thousand-time told tale of suspected
royalism, nor would listen to the high-sounding
declamation that proclaimed the virtuous zeal
of the government—their untiring energy—their
glorious persistence in the cause of the people.
The last words were, as usual, responded to
with an echoing shout, and the cry of “Vive la
Republique” rose from the great multitude.

“Vive le Roi!” cried the old man, with a
voice heard high above the clamor; but the
words were scarce out when the lips that muttered
them were closed in death; so sudden was
the act, that a cry burst forth from the mob,
but whether in reprobation or in ecstasy I knew
not.

I will not follow the sad catalogue, wherein
nobles and peasants, priests, soldiers, actors,
men of obscure fortune, and women of lofty
station succeeded each other, occupying for a
brief minute every eye, and passing away for
ever. Many ascended the platform without a
word; some waved a farewell toward a distant
quarter, where they suspected a friend to be—others
spent their last moments in prayer, and
died in the very act of supplication. All bore
themselves with a noble and proud courage;
and now some five or six alone remained, of
whose fate none seemed to guess the issue,[Pg 8]
since they had been taken from the Temple by
some mistake, and were not included in the list
of the commissary. There they sat, at the foot
of the scaffold, speechless and stupefied—they
looked as though it were matter of indifference
to which side their steps should turn—to the jail
or the guillotine. Among these was the marquise,
who alone preserved her proud self-possession,
and sat in all her accustomed dignity;
while close beside her an angry controversy
was maintained as to their future destiny—the
commissary firmly refusing to receive them for
execution, and the delegate of the Temple, as
he was styled, as flatly asserting that he would
not re-conduct them to prison. The populace
soon grew interested in the dispute, and the
most violent altercations arose among the partisans
of each side of the question.

Meanwhile, the commissary and his assistants
prepared to depart. Already the massive drapery
of red cloth was drawn over the guillotine,
and every preparation made for withdrawing,
when the mob, doubtless dissatisfied that they
should be defrauded of any portion of the entertainment,
began to climb over the wooden barricades,
and, with furious cries and shouts,
threatened vengeance upon any who would
screen the enemies of the people.

The troops resisted the movement, but rather
with the air of men entreating calmness, than
with the spirit of soldiery. It was plain to see
on which side the true force lay.

“If you will not do it, the people will do
it for you,” whispered the delegate to the
commissary; “and who is to say where they
will stop when their hands once learn the
trick!”

The commissary grew lividly pale, and made
no reply.

“See there!” rejoined the other; “they are
carrying a fellow on their shoulders yonder;
they mean him to be executioner.”

“But I dare not—I can not—without my
orders.”

“Are not the people sovereign?—whose
will have we sworn to obey, but theirs?”

“My own head would be the penalty if I
yielded.”

“It will be, if you resist—even now it is too
late.”

And as he spoke he sprang from the scaffold,
and disappeared in the dense crowd that already
thronged the space within the rails.

By this time, the populace were not only
masters of the area around, but had also gained
the scaffold itself, from which many of them
seemed endeavoring to harangue the mob;
others contenting themselves with imitating the
gestures of the commissary and his functionaries.
It was a scene of the wildest uproar
and confusion—frantic cries and screams, ribald
songs and fiendish yellings on every side. The
guillotine was again uncovered, and the great
crimson drapery, torn into fragments, was waved
about like flags, or twisted into uncouth head-dresses.
The commissary failing in every attempt
to restore order peaceably, and either not
possessing a sufficient force, or distrusting the
temper of the soldiers, descended from the scaffold,
and gave the order to march. This act of
submission was hailed by the mob with the most
furious yell of triumph. Up to that very moment,
they had never credited the bare possibility
of a victory; and now they saw themselves
suddenly masters of the field—the troops,
in all the array of horse and foot, retiring in
discomfiture. Their exultation knew no bounds;
and, doubtless, had there been among them
those with skill and daring to profit by the enthusiasm,
the torrent had rushed a longer and
more terrific course than through the blood-steeped
clay of the Place de la Grève.

“Here is the man we want,” shouted a deep
voice. “St. Just told us, t’other day, that the
occasion never failed to produce one; and see,
here is ‘Jean Gougon;’ and though he’s but
two feet high, his fingers can reach the pin of
the guillotine.”

And he held aloft on his shoulders a misshapen
dwarf, who was well known on the Pont Neuf,
where he gained his living by singing infamous
songs, and performing mockeries of the service
of the mass. A cheer of welcome acknowledged
this speech, to which the dwarf responded
by a mock benediction, which he bestowed
with all the ceremonious observance of an archbishop.
Shouts of the wildest laughter followed
this ribaldry, and in a kind of triumph they carried
him up the steps, and deposited him on the
scaffold.

Ascending one of the chairs, the little wretch
proceeded to address the mob, which he did
with all the ease and composure of a practiced
public speaker. Not a murmur was heard in
that tumultuous assemblage, as he, with a most
admirable imitation of Hebert, then the popular
idol, assured them that France was, at that instant,
the envy of surrounding nations; and
that, bating certain little weaknesses on the
score of humanity—certain traits of softness
and over-mercy—her citizens realized all that
ever had been said of angels. From thence he
passed on to a mimicry of Marat, of Danton,
and of Robespierre—tearing off his cravat, baring
his breast, and performing all the oft-exhibited
antics of the latter, as he vociferated, in a
wild scream, the well-known peroration of a
speech he had lately made—”If we look to
a glorious morrow of freedom, the sun of our
slavery must set in blood!”

However amused by the dwarf’s exhibition,
a feeling of impatience began to manifest itself
among the mob, who felt that, by any longer
delay, it was possible time would be given for
fresh troops to arrive, and the glorious opportunity
of popular sovereignty be lost in the very
hour of victory.

“To work—to work, Master Gougon!”
shouted hundreds of rude voices; “we can not
spend our day in listening to oratory.”

“You forget, my dear friends,” said he
blandly, “that this is to me a new walk in life[Pg 9]
I have much to learn, ere I can acquit myself
worthily to the republic.”

“We have no leisure for preparatory studies,
Gougon,” cried a fellow below the scaffold.

“Let me, then, just begin with monsieur,”
said the dwarf, pointing to the last speaker;
and a shout of laughter closed the sentence.

A brief and angry dispute now arose as to
what was to be done, and it is more than doubtful
how the debate might have ended, when
Gougon, with a readiness all his own, concluded
the discussion by saying,

“I have it, messieurs, I have it. There is a
lady here, who, however respectable her family
and connections, will leave few to mourn her
loss. She is, in a manner, public property, and
if not born on the soil, at least a naturalized
Frenchwoman. We have done a great deal
for her, and in her name, for some time back,
and I am not aware of any singular benefit she
has rendered us. With your permission, then,
I’ll begin with her.”

“Name, name—name her,” was cried by
thousands.

“La voila,” said he, archly, as he pointed
with his thumb to the wooden effigy of Liberty
above his head.

The absurdity of the suggestion was more
than enough for its success. A dozen hands
were speedily at work, and down came the
Goddess of Liberty! The other details of an
execution were hurried over with all the speed
of practiced address, and the figure was placed
beneath the drop. Down fell the ax, and Gougon,
lifting up the wooden head, paraded it
about the scaffold, crying,

“Behold! an enemy of France. Long live
the republic, one and ‘indivisible.'”

Loud and wild were the shouts of laughter
from this brutal mockery; and for a time it
almost seemed as if the ribaldry had turned the
mob from the sterner passions of their vengeance.
This hope, if one there ever cherished
it, was short-lived; and again the cry arose for
blood. It was too plain, that no momentary
diversion, no passing distraction, could withdraw
them from that lust for cruelty, that had
now grown into a passion.

And now a bustle and movement of those
around the stairs showed that something was in
preparation; and in the next moment the old
marquise was led forward between two men.

“Where is the order for this woman’s execution?”
asked the dwarf, mimicking the style
and air of the commissary.

“We give it: it is from us,” shouted the
mob, with one savage roar.

Gougon removed his cap, and bowed a token
of obedience.

“Let us proceed in order, messieurs,” said
he, gravely; “I see no priest here.”

“Shrive her yourself, Gougon; few know
the mummeries better!” cried a voice.

“Is there not one here can remember a prayer,
or even a verse of the offices,” said Gougon, with
a well-affected horror in his voice.

“Yes, yes, I do,” cried I, my zeal overcoming
all sense of the mockery in which the words
were spoken; “I know them all by heart, and
can repeat them from ‘lux beatissima’ down to
‘hora mortis;'” and as if to gain credence for
my self-laudation, I began at once to recite in
the sing-song tone of the seminary,

It is possible I should have gone on to the very
end, if the uproarious laughter which rung
around had not stopped me.

“There’s a brave youth!” cried Gougon,
pointing toward me, with mock admiration.
“If it ever come to pass—as what may not in
these strange times?—that we turn to priest-craft
again, thou shalt be the first archbishop
of Paris. Who taught thee that famous canticle?”

“The Père Michel,” replied I, in no way
conscious of the ridicule bestowed upon me;
“the Père Michel of St. Blois.”

The old lady lifted up her head at these
words, and her dark eyes rested steadily upon
me; and then, with a sign of her hand, she
motioned to me to come over to her.

“Yes; let him come,” said Gougon, as if
answering the half-reluctant glances of the
crowd. And now I was assisted to descend,
and passed along over the heads of the people
till I was placed upon the scaffold. Never can
I forget the terror of that moment, as I stood
within a few feet of the terrible guillotine, and
saw beside me the horrid basket, splashed with
recent blood.

“Look not at these things, child,” said the
old lady, as she took my hand and drew me
toward her, “but listen to me, and mark my
words well.”

“I will, I will,” cried I, as the hot tears
rolled down my cheeks.

“Tell the Père—you will see him to-night—tell
him that I have changed my mind, and resolved
upon another course, and that he is not
to leave Paris. Let them remain. The torrent
runs too rapidly to last. This can not
endure much longer. We shall be among the
last victims! You hear me, child?”

“I do, I do,” cried I, sobbing. “Why is
not the Père Michel with you now?”

“Because he is suing for my pardon; asking
for mercy, where its very name is a derision.
Kneel down beside me, and repeat the ‘angelus.'”

I took off my cap, and knelt down at her feet,
reciting, in a voice broken by emotion, the words
of the prayer. She repeated each syllable
after me, in a tone full and unshaken, and then
stooping, she took up the lily which lay in
my cap. She pressed it passionately to her
lips; two or three times passionately. “Give
it to her; tell her I kissed it at my last moment.
Tell her—”

“This ‘shrift’ is beyond endurance. Away,[Pg 10]
holy father,” cried Gougon, as he pushed me
rudely back, and seized the marquise by the
wrist. A faint cry escaped her. I heard no
more; for, jostled and pushed about by the
crowd, I was driven to the very rails of the
scaffold. Stepping beneath these, I mingled
with the mob beneath; and burning with eagerness
to escape a scene, to have witnessed which
would almost have made my heart break, I
forced my way into the dense mass, and, by
squeezing and creeping, succeeded at last in
penetrating to the verge of the Place. A terrible
shout, and a rocking motion of the mob,
like the heavy surging of the sea, told me that
all was over; but I never looked back to the
fatal spot, but having gained the open streets,
ran at the top of my speed toward home.

(To be continued.)

[From Bender’s Monthly Miscellany.]

WOMEN IN THE EAST.

by an oriental traveler.

There is a gentle, calm repose breathing
through the whole of this poem, which
comes soothingly to the imagination wearied
with the strife and hollowness of modern civilization.
Woman in it is the inferior being;
but it is the inferiority of the beautiful flower,
or of the fairy birds of gorgeous plumage, who
wing their flight amid the gardens and bubbling
streams of the Eastern palace. Life is represented
for the Eastern women as a long dream
of affection; the only emotions she is to know
are those of ardent love and tender maternity.
She is not represented as the companion to man
in his life battle, as the sharer of his triumph
and his defeats: the storms of life are hushed
at the entrance of the hareem; there the lord
and master deposits the frown of unlimited
power, or the cringing reverence of the slave,
and appears as the watchful guardian of the
loved one’s happiness. Such a picture is poetical,
and would lead one to say, alas for human
progress, if the Eastern female slave is thus on
earth to pass one long golden summer—her
heart only tied by those feelings which keep it
young—while her Christian sister has these
emotions but as sun-gleams to lighten and
make dark by contrast, the frequent gloom of
her winter life.

But although the conception is poetical, to
one who has lived many years in the East, it
appears a conception, not a description of the
real hareem life, even among the noble and
wealthy of those lands. The following anecdote
may be given us the other side of the
picture. The writer was a witness of the
scene, and he offers it as a consolation to those
of his fair sisters, who, in the midst of the
troubles of common-place life, might be disposed
to compare their lot with that of the inmate
of the mysterious and happy home drawn
by the poet.

It was in a large and fruitful district of the
south of India that I passed a few years of my
life. In this district lived, immured in his fort,
one of the native rajahs, who, with questionable
justice, have gradually been shorn of their regal
state and authority, to become pensioners of the
East India Company. The inevitable consequence
of such an existence, the forced life of
inactivity with the traditions of the bold exploits
of his royal ancestors, brilliant Mahratta
chieftains, may be imagined. The rajah sunk
into a state of slothful dissipation, varied by the
occasional intemperate exercise of the power
left him within the limits of the fortress, his
residence. This fort is not the place which
the word would suggest to the reader, but was
rather a small native town surrounded by fortifications.
This town was peopled by the descendants
of the Mahrattas, and by the artisans
and dependents of the rajah and his court.
Twice a year the English resident and his assistants
were accustomed to pay visits of ceremony
to the rajah, and had to encounter the
fatiguing sights of dancing-girls, beast-fights,
and music, if the extraordinary assemblage of
sounds, which in the East assume the place of
harmony, can be so called.

We had just returned from one of these visits,
and were grumbling over our headaches, the
dust, and the heat, when, to our surprise, the
rajah’s vabul or confidential representative was
announced. As it was nine o’clock in the
evening this somewhat surprised us. He was,
however, admitted, and after a short, hurried
obeisance, he announced “that he must die!
that there had been a sudden revolt of the
hareem, and that when the rajah knew it, he
would listen to no explanations, but be sure to
imprison and ruin all round him; and that foremost
in the general destruction would be himself,
Veneat-Rao, who had always been the
child of the English Sahibs, who were his
fathers—that they were wise above all natives,
and that he had come to them for help!” All
this was pronounced with indescribable volubility,
and the appearance of the speaker announced
the most abject fear. He was a little
wizened Brahmin, with the thin blue lines of
his caste carefully painted on his wrinkled forehead.
His dark black eyes gleamed with suppressed
impotent rage, and in his agitation he
had lost all that staid, placid decorum which
we had been accustomed to observe in him
when transacting business. When urged to
explain the domestic disaster which had befallen
his master, he exclaimed with ludicrous pathos,
“By Rama! women are devils; by them all
misfortunes come upon men! But, sahibs,[Pg 11]
hasten with me; they have broken through the
guard kept on the hareem door by two old sentries;
they ran through the fort and besieged
my house; they are now there, and refuse to
go back to the hareem. The rajah returns to-morrow
from his hunting—what can I say? I
must die! my children, who will care for them?
what crime did my father commit that I should
thus be disgraced?”

Yielding to these entreaties, and amused at
the prospect of a novel scene, we mounted our
horses and cantered to the fort. The lights
were burning brightly in the bazaars as we
rode through them, and except a few groups
gathered to discuss the price of rice and the
want of rain, we perceived no agitation till we
reached the Vakeel’s house. Arrived here we
dismounted, and on entering the square court-yard
a scene of indescribable confusion presented
itself. The first impression it produced on me
was that of entering a large aviary in which the
birds, stricken with terror, fly madly to and fro
against the bars. Such was the first effect of
our entrance. Women and girls of all ages,
grouped about the court, in most picturesque
attitudes, started up and fled to its extreme end;
only a few of the more matronly ladies stood
their ground, and with terribly screeching voices,
declaimed against some one or something, but
for a long time we could, in this Babel of
female tongues, distinguish nothing. At last
we managed to distinguish the rajah’s name,
coupled with epithets most disrespectful to royalty.
This, and that they, the women, begged
instantly to be put to death, was all that the
clamor would permit us to understand. We
looked appealingly at Veneat Rao, who stood
by, wringing his hands. However, he made a
vigorous effort, and raising his shrill voice, told
them that the sahibs had come purposely to
listen to, and redress their grievances, and that
they would hold durbar (audience) then and
there.

This announcement produced a lull, and enabled
us to look round us at the strange scene.
Scattered in various parts of the court were
these poor prisoners, who now for the first time
for many years tasted liberty. Scattered about
were some hideous old women, partly guardians
of the younger, partly remains, we were told,
of the rajah’s father’s seraglio. Young children
moved among them looking very much
frightened. But the group which attracted our
attention and admiration consisted of about
twenty really beautiful girls, from fourteen to
eighteen years of age, of every country and
caste, in the various costume and ornament of
their races; these were clustering round a fair
and very graceful Mahratta girl, whose tall
figure was seen to great advantage in the blaze
of torchlight. Her muslin vail had half fallen
from her face, allowing us to see her large,
soft, dark eyes, from which the tears were fast
falling, as in a low voice she addressed her
fellow-sufferers. There was on her face a peculiar
expression of patient endurance of ill,
inexpressibly touching. This is not an unfrequent
character in the beauty of Asiatic women;
the natural result of habits of fear, and the entire
submission to the will of others.

Her features were classically regular, with
the short rounded chin, the long graceful neck,
and that easy port of head so seldom seen except
in the women of the East. Her arms
were covered with rich bracelets, and were of
the most perfect form; her hands long and
tapering, the palms and nails dyed with the
“henna.” No barbarously-civilized restraint
rendered her waist a contradiction of natural
beauty; a small, dark satin bodice, richly embroidered,
covered a bosom which had hardly
attained womanly perfection; a zone of gold
held together the full muslin folds of the lower
portion of her dress, below which the white
satin trowsers reached, without concealing a
faultless ankle and foot, uncovered, except by
the heavy anklet and rings which tinkled at
every step she took. After the disturbance
that our entrance had caused, had in a measure
subsided, the children, who were richly dressed
and loaded with every kind of fantastic ornament,
came sidling timidly round us, peering
curiously with their large black eyes, at the
unusual sight of white men.

Considerably embarrassed at the very new
arbitration which we were about to undertake,
B. and I consulted for a little while, after which,
gravely taking our seats, and Veneat Rao having
begged them to listen with respectful attention,
I, at B.’s desire, proceeded to address
them, telling them,

“That we supposed some grave cause must
have arisen for them to desert the palace of the
rajah, their protector, during his absence, and
by violently overpowering the guard, incur his
serious anger (here my eye caught a sight of the
said guard, consisting of two blear-eyed, shriveled
old men, and I nearly lost all solemnity of
demeanor) that if they complained of injustice,
we supposed that it must have been committed
without his highness’s knowledge, but that if
they would quietly return to the hareem we
would endeavor to represent to their master
their case, and entreat him to redress their
grievance.”

I spoke this in Hindusthani, which, as the
lingua franca of the greater part of India, I
thought was most likely to be understood by
the majority of my female audience. I succeeded
perfectly in making myself understood,
but was not quite so successful in convincing
them that it was better that they should return
to the rajah’s palace. After rather a stormy
discussion, the Mahratta girl, whom we had so
much admired on our entrance, stepped forward,
and, bowing lowly before us, and crossing her
arms, in a very sweet tone of voice proceeded
to tell her story, which, she said, was very
much the history of them all. The simple,
and at times picturesque expressions lose much
by translation.

“Sir, much shame comes over me, that I, a[Pg 12]
woman, should speak before men who are not
our fathers, husbands, nor brothers, who are
strangers, of another country and religion; but
they tell us that you English sahibs love truth
and justice, and protect the poor.

“I was born of Gentoo parents—rich, for
I can remember the bright, beautiful jewels
which, as a child, I wore on my head, arms,
and feet, the large house and gardens where
I played, and the numerous servants who attended
me.

“When I had reached my eighth or ninth
year I heard them talk of my betrothal,[1] and
of the journey which we were, previous to the
ceremony, to take to some shrine in a distant
country. My father, who was advancing in
years, and in bad health, being anxious to bathe
in the holy waters, which should give him prolonged
life and health.

“The journey had lasted for many days, and
one evening after we had halted for the day I
accompanied my mother when she went to bathe
in a tank near to our encampment. As I played
along the bank and picked a few wild flowers
that grew under the trees I observed an old
woman advancing toward me. She spoke to
me in a kind voice, asked me my name? who
were my parents? where we were going? and
when I had answered her these questions she
told me that if I would accompany her a little
way she would give me some prettier flowers
than those I was gathering, and that her servant
should take me back to my people.

“I had no sooner gone far enough to be out
of sight and hearing of my mother than the old
woman threw a cloth over my head, and taking
me up in her arms, hurried on for a short distance.
There I could distinguish men’s voices,
and was sensible of being placed in a carriage,
which was driven off at a rapid pace. No
answer was returned to my cries and entreaties
to be restored to my parents, and at sunrise I
found myself near hills which I had never before
seen, and among a people whose language
was new to me.

“I remained with these people, who were
not unkind to me, three or four years; and I
found out that the old woman who had carried
me off from my parents, was an emissary sent
from the rajah’s hareem to kidnap, when they
could not be purchased, young female children
whose looks promised that they would grow up
with the beauty necessary for the gratification
of the prince’s passions.

“Sahibs! I have been two years an inmate
of the rajah’s hareem—would to God I had died
a child in my own country with those I loved,
than that I should have been exposed to the
miseries we suffer. The splendor which surrounds
us is only a mockery. The rajah,
wearied and worn out by a life of debauchery,
takes no longer any pleasure in our society,
and is only roused from his lethargy to inflict
disgrace and cruelties upon us. We, who are
of Brahmin caste, for his amusement, are forced
to learn the work of men—are made to carry
in the gardens of the hareem a palanquin, to
work as goldsmiths—and, may our gods pardon
us, to mingle with the dancing-girls of the bazaar.
His attendants deprive us even of our
food, and we sit in the beautiful palace loaded
with jewels, and suffer from the hunger not
felt even by the poor Pariah.

“Sahibs! you who have in your country
mothers and sisters, save us from this cruel
fate, and cause us to be restored to our parents;
do not send us back to such degradation, but
rather let us die by your orders.”

As with a voice tremulous with emotion, she
said these words, she threw herself at our feet,
and burst into an agony of weeping.

Deeply moved by the simple expression of
such undeserved misfortune, we soothed her as
well as we were able, and promising her and
her companions to make every effort with the
rajah for their deliverance, we persuaded Rosambhi,
the Mahratta girl (their eloquent pleader),
to induce them to return for the night to
the palace. Upon a repetition of our promise
they consented, to the infinite relief of Veneat
Rao, who alternately showered blessings on us,
and curses on all womankind, as he accompanied
us back to the Residency.

And now we had to set about the deliverance
of these poor women. This was a work
of considerable difficulty.

It was a delicate matter interfering with
the rajah’s domestic concerns, and we could
only commission Veneat Rao to communicate
to his highness the manner in which we had
become implicated with so unusual an occurrence
as a revolt of his seraglio; we told him
to express to his highness our conviction that
his generosity had been deceived by his subordinates.
In this we only imitated the profound
maxim of European diplomacy, and concealed
our real ideas by our expressions. This to the
rajah. On his confidential servant we enforced
the disapprobation the resident felt at the system
of kidnapping, of which his highness was
the instigator, and hinted at that which these
princes most dread—an investigation.

This succeeded beyond our expectation, and
the next morning a message was sent from the
palace, intimating that the charges were so
completely unfounded, that the rajah was prepared
to offer to his revolted women, the choice
of remaining in the hareem, or being sent back
to their homes.

Again they were assembled in Veneat Rao’s
house, but this time in much more orderly
fashion, for their vails were down, and except
occasionally when a coquettish movement showed
a portion of some face, we were unrewarded
by any of the bright eyes we had admired on
the previous visit. The question was put to
them one by one, and all with the exception of
a few old women, expressed an eager wish not
to re-enter the hareem.[Pg 13]

After much troublesome inquiry, we discovered
their parents, and were rewarded by
their happy and grateful faces, as we sent them
off under escort to their homes. It was painful
to reflect what their fate would be; they left
us rejoicing at what they thought would be a
happy change, but we well knew that no one
would marry them, knowing that they had
been in the rajah’s hareem, and that they would
either lead a life of neglect, or sink into vice,
of which the liberty would be the only change
from that, which by our means they had escaped.

In the inquiries we made into the circumstances
of this curious case, we found that their
statements were true.

Large sums were paid by the rajah to his
creatures, who traveled to distant parts of the
country, and wherever they could meet with
parents poor enough, bought their female children
from them, or when they met with remarkable
beauty such as Rosambhi’s, did not
hesitate to carry the child off, and by making
rapid marches, elude any vigilance of pursuit
on the part of the parents.

The cruelties and degradations suffered by
these poor girls are hardly to be described.
We well know how degraded, even in civilized
countries the pursuit of sensual pleasures renders
men, to whom education and the respect they
pay the opinion of society, are checks; let us
imagine the conduct of the eastern prince, safe
in the retirement of his court, surrounded by
those dependents to whom the gratification of
their master’s worst passions was the sure road
to favor and fortune.

Besides the sufferings they had to endure
from him, the women of the hareem were exposed
to the rapacities of those who had charge
of them, and Rosambhi did not exaggerate,
when she described herself and her companions
as suffering the pangs of want amid the splendors
of a palace.

This is the reverse of the pleasing picture
drawn by the poet of the Eastern woman’s existence—but,
though less pleasing, it is true—nor
need we describe her in the lower ranks of
life in those countries, where, her beauty faded,
she has to pass a wearisome existence, the
servant of a rival, whose youthful charms have
supplanted her in her master’s affections. The
calm happiness of advancing age is seldom hers—she
is the toy while young—the slave, or the
neglected servant, at best, when, her only merit
in the eyes of her master, physical beauty, is
gone.

Let her sister in the western world, in the
midst of her joys, think with pity on these sufferings,
and when sorrow’s cloud seems darkest,
let her not repine, but learn resignation to her
lot, as she compares it with the condition of the
women of the East; let her be grateful that
she lives in an age and land where woman is
regarded as the helpmate and consolation of
man, by whom her love is justly deemed the
prize of his life.

[From The Ladies’ Companion.]

LETTICE ARNOLD.

By the Author of “Two Old Men’s Tales,” “Emilia Wyndham,” &c.

CHAPTER I.

“No, dearest mother, no! I can not. What!
after all the tenderness, care, and love I
have received from you, for now one-and-twenty
years, to leave you and my father, in your old
age, to yourselves! Oh, no! Oh, no!”

“Nay, my child,” said the pale, delicate,
nervous woman, thus addressed by a blooming
girl whose face beamed with every promise for
future happiness, which health and cheerfulness,
and eyes filled with warm affections could give,
“Nay, my child, don’t talk so. You must not
talk so. It is not to be thought of.” And, as
she said these words with effort, her poor heart
was dying within her, not only from sorrow at
the thought of the parting from her darling, but
with all sorts of dreary, undefined terrors at the
idea of the forlorn, deserted life before her.
Abandoned to herself and to servants, so fearful,
so weak as she was, and with the poor, invalided,
and crippled veteran, her husband, a martyr
to that long train of sufferings which honorable
wounds, received in the service of country, too
often leave behind them, a man at all times so
difficult to sooth, so impossible to entertain—and
old age creeping upon them both; the little
strength she ever had, diminishing; the little
spirit she ever possessed, failing; what should
she do without this dear, animated, this loving,
clever being, who was, in one word, every thing
to her?

But she held to her resolution—no martyr
ever more courageously than this trembling,
timid woman. A prey to ten thousand imaginary
fears, and, let alone the imaginary terrors,
placed in a position where the help she was
now depriving herself of was really so greatly
needed.

“No, my dear,” she repeated, “don’t think
of it; don’t speak of it. You distress me very
much. Pray don’t, my dearest Catherine.”

“But I should be a shocking creature, mamma,
to forsake you; and, I am sure, Edgar would
despise me as much as I should myself, if I
could think of it. I can not—I ought not to
leave you.”

The gentle blue eye of the mother was fixed[Pg 14]
upon the daughter’s generous, glowing face.
She smothered a sigh. She waited a while to
steady her faltering voice. She wished to hide,
if possible, from her daughter the extent of the
sacrifice she was making.

At last she recovered herself sufficiently to
speak with composure, and then she said:

“To accept such a sacrifice from a child, I
have always thought the most monstrous piece
of selfishness of which a parent could be guilty.
My love, this does not come upon me unexpectedly.
I have, of course, anticipated it. I
knew my sweet girl could not be long known
and seen without inspiring and returning the
attachment of some valuable man. I have resolved—and
God strengthen me in this resolve,”
she cast up a silent appeal to the fountain of
strength and courage—”that nothing should
tempt me to what I consider so base. A parent
accept the sacrifice of a life in exchange for the
poor remnant of her own! A parent, who has
had her own portion of the joys of youth in her
day, deprive a child of a share in her turn! No,
my dearest love, never—never! I would die,
and I will die first.”

But it was not death she feared. The idea
of death did not appall her. What she dreaded
was melancholy. She knew the unsoundness
of her own nerves; she had often felt herself,
as it were, trembling upon the fearful verge of
reason, when the mind, unable to support itself,
is forced to rest upon another. She had known
a feeling, common to many very nervous people,
I believe, as though the mind would be overset
when pressed far, if not helped, strengthened,
and cheered by some more wholesome mind;
and she shrank appalled from the prospect.

But even this could not make her waver in
her resolution. She was a generous, just, disinterested
woman; though the exigencies of a
most delicate constitution, and most susceptible
nervous system, had too often thrown upon her—from
those who did not understand such things,
and whose iron nerves and vigorous health rendered
sympathy at such times impossible—the
reproach of being a tedious, whimsical, selfish
hypochondriac.

Poor thing, she knew this well. It was the
difficulty of making herself understood; the
want of sympathy, the impossibility of rendering
needs, most urgent in her case, comprehensible
by her friends, which had added so
greatly to the timorous cowardice, the fear of
circumstances, of changes, which had been the
bane of her existence.

And, therefore, this kind, animated, affectionate
daughter, whose tenderness seemed never
to weary in the task of cheering her; whose
activity was never exhausted in the endeavor to
assist and serve her; whose good sense and
spirit kept every thing right at home, and more
especially kept those terrible things, the servants,
in order—of whom the poor mother, like
many other feeble and languid people, was so
foolishly afraid; therefore, this kind daughter
was as the very spring of her existence; and
the idea of parting with her was really dreadful.
Yet she hesitated not. So did that man behave,
who stood firm upon the rampart till he had
finished his observation, though his hair turned
white with fear. Mrs. Melwyn was an heroic
coward of this kind.

She had prayed ardently, fervently, that day,
for courage, for resolution, to complete the
dreaded sacrifice, and she had found it.

“Oh, Lord! I am thy servant. Do with me
what thou wilt. Trembling in spirit, the victim
of my infirmity—a poor, selfish, cowardly being,
I fall down before Thee. Thou hast showed
me what is right—the sacrifice I ought to make.
Oh, give me strength in my weakness to be
faithful to complete it!”

Thus had she prayed. And now resolved in
heart, the poor sinking spirit failing her within
but, as I said, steadying her voice with an
almost heroic constancy, she resisted her grateful
and pious child’s representation: “I have
told Edgar—dear as he is to me—strong as
are the claims his generous affection gives him
over me—that I will not—I can not forsake
you.”

“You must not call it forsake,” said the
mother, gently. “My love, the Lord of life
himself has spoken it: ‘Therefore shall a man
leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave
unto his wife.'”

“And so he is ready to do,” cried Catherine,
eagerly. “Yes, mother, he desires nothing
better—he respects my scruples—he has offered,
dear Edgar! to abandon his profession and
come and live here, and help me to take care
of you and my father. Was not that beautiful?”
and the tears stood in her speaking eyes.

“Beautiful! generous! devoted! My Catherine
will be a happy woman;” and the mother
smiled. A ray of genuine pleasure warmed her
beating heart. This respect in the gay, handsome
young officer for the filial scruples of her
he loved was indeed beautiful! But the mother
knew his spirit too well to listen to this proposal
for a moment.

“And abandon his profession? No, my sweet
child, that would never, never do.”

“But he says he is independent of his profession—that
his private fortune, though not large,
is enough for such simple, moderate people as
he and I are. In short, that he shall be miserable
without me, and all that charming stuff,
mamma; and that he loves me better, for what
he calls, dear fellow, my piety to you. And
so, dear mother, he says if you and my father
will but consent to take him in, he will do his
very best in helping me to make you comfortable;
and he is so sweet-tempered, so reasonable,
so good, so amiable, I am quite sure he
would keep his promise, mamma.” And she
looked anxiously into her mother’s face waiting
for an answer. The temptation was very, very
strong.

Again those domestic spectres which had so
appalled her poor timorous spirit rose before
her. A desolate, dull fireside—her own tendency[Pg 15]
to melancholy—her poor maimed suffering,
and, alas, too often peevish partner—encroaching,
unmanageable servants. The cook,
with her careless, saucy ways—the butler so
indifferent and negligent—and her own maid,
that Randall, who in secret tyrannized over her,
exercising the empire of fear to an extent which
Catherine, alive as she was to these evils, did
not suspect. And again she asked herself, if
these things were disagreeable now, when Catherine
was here to take care of her, what would
they be when she was left alone?

And then such a sweet picture of happiness
presented itself to tempt her—Catherine settled
there—settled there forever. That handsome,
lively young man, with his sweet, cordial ways
and polite observance of every one, sitting by
their hearth, and talking, as he did, to the general
of old days and military matters, the only
subject in which this aged military man took
any interest, reading the newspaper to him, and
making such lively, pleasant comments as he
read! How should she ever get through the
debates, with her breath so short, and her voice
so indistinct and low? The general would lose
all patience—he hated to hear her attempt to
read such things, and always got Catherine or
the young lieutenant-colonel to do it.

Oh! it was a sore temptation. But this
poor, dear, good creature resisted it.

“My love,” she said, after a little pause,
daring which this noble victory was achieved—laugh
if you will at the expression, but it was a
noble victory over self—”my love,” she said,
“don’t tempt your poor mother beyond her
strength. Gladly, gladly, as far as we are concerned,
would we enter into this arrangement;
but it must not be. No, Catherine; Edgar
must not quit his profession. It would not only
be a very great sacrifice I am sure now, but it
would lay the foundation of endless regrets in
future. No, my darling girl, neither his happiness
nor your happiness shall be ever sacrificed
to mine. A life against a few uncertain years!
No—no.”

The mother was inflexible. The more these
good children offered to give up for her sake,
the more she resolved to suffer no such sacrifice
to be made.

Edgar could not but rejoice. He was an
excellent young fellow, and excessively in love
with the charming Catherine, you may be sure,
or he never would have thought of offering to
abandon a profession for her sake in which he
had distinguished himself highly—which opened
to him the fairest prospects, and of which he
was especially fond—but he was not sorry to
be excused. He had resolved upon this sacrifice,
for there is something in those who truly
love, and whose love is elevated almost to adoration
by the moral worth they have observed
in the chosen one, which revolts at the idea of
lowering the tone of that enthusiastic goodness
and self-immolation to principle which has so
enchanted them. Edgar could not do it. He
could not attempt to persuade this tender, generous
daughter, to consider her own welfare
and his, in preference to that of her parents.
He could only offer, on his own part, to make
the greatest sacrifice which could have been
demanded from him. Rather than part from
her what would he not do? Every thing was
possible but that.

However, when the mother positively refused
to accept of this act of self-abnegation, I can
not say that he regretted it. No: he thought
Mrs. Melwyn quite right in what she said; and
he loved and respected both her character and
understanding very much more than he had
done before.

That night Mrs. Melwyn was very, very low
indeed. And when she went up into her dressing-room,
and Catherine, having kissed her tenderly,
with a heart quite divided between anxiety
for her, and a sense of happiness that would
make itself felt in spite of all, had retired to her
room, the mother sat down, poor thing, in the
most comfortable arm-chair that ever was invented,
but which imparted no comfort to her;
and placing herself by a merry blazing fire,
which was reflected from all sorts of cheerful
pretty things with which the dressing-room was
adorned, her feet upon a warm, soft footstool
of Catherine’s own working, her elbow resting
upon her knee, and her head upon her hand,
she, with her eyes bent mournfully upon the
fire, began crying very much. And so she sat
a long time, thinking and crying, very sorrowful,
but not in the least repenting. Meditating
upon all sorts of dismal things, filled with all
kinds of melancholy forebodings, as to how it
would, and must be, when Catherine was really
gone, she sank at last into a sorrowful reverie,
and sate quite absorbed in her own thoughts,
till she—who was extremely punctual in her
hour of going to bed—for reasons best known
to herself, though never confided to any human
being, namely, that her maid disliked very much
sitting up for her—started as the clock in the
hall sounded eleven and two quarters, and almost
with the trepidation of a chidden child,
rose and rang the bell. Nobody came. This
made her still more uneasy. It was Randall’s
custom not to answer her mistress’s bell the
first time, when she was cross. And poor Mrs.
Melwyn dreaded few things in this world more
than cross looks in those about her, especially
in Randall; and that Randall knew perfectly
well.

“She must be fallen asleep in her chair, poor
thing. It was very thoughtless of me,” Mrs.
Melwyn did not say, but would have said, if
people ever did speak to themselves aloud.

Even in this sort of mute soliloquy she did
not venture to say, “Randall will be very ill-tempered
and unreasonable.” She rang again;
and then, after a proper time yielded to the
claims of offended dignity, it pleased Mrs. Randall
to appear.

“I am very sorry, Randall. Really I had
no idea how late it was. I was thinking about[Pg 16]
Miss Catherine, and I missed it when it struck
ten. I had not the least idea it was so late,”
began the mistress in an apologizing tone, to
which Randall vouchsafed not an answer, but
looked like a thunder cloud—as she went banging
up and down the room, opening and shutting
drawers with a loud noise, and treading with a
rough heavy step; two things particularly annoying,
as she very well knew, to the sensitive
nerves of her mistress. But Randall settled it
with herself—that as her mistress had kept her
out of bed an hour and a half longer than usual,
for no reason at all but just to please herself,
she should find she was none the better
for it.

The poor mistress bore all this with patience
for some time. She would have gone on bearing
the roughness and the noise, however disagreeable,
as long as Randall liked; but her
soft heart could not bear those glum, cross looks,
and this alarming silence.

“I was thinking of Miss Catherine’s marriage,
Randall. That was what made me forget
the hour. What shall I do without her?”

“Yes, that’s just like it,” said the insolent
abigail; “nothing ever can content some people.
Most ladies would be glad to settle their
daughters so well; but some folk make a crying
matter of every thing. It would be well for
poor servants, when they’re sitting over the fire,
their bones aching to death for very weariness,
if they’d something pleasant to think about.
They wouldn’t be crying for nothing, and
keeping all the world out of their beds, like
those who care for naught but how to please
themselves.”

Part of this was said, part muttered, part
thought; and the poor timid mistress—one of
whose domestic occupations it seemed to be to
study the humors of her servants—heard a part
and divined the rest.

“Well, Randall, I don’t quite hear all you
are saying; and perhaps it is as well I do not;
but I wish you would give me my things and
make haste, for I’m really very tired, and I
want to go to bed.”

“People can’t make more haste than they
can.”

And so it went on. The maid-servant never
relaxing an atom of her offended dignity—continuing
to look as ill-humored, and to do every
thing as disagreeably as she possibly could—and
her poor victim, by speaking from time to
time in an anxious, most gentle, and almost
flattering manner, hoping to mollify her dependent;
but all in vain.

“I’ll teach her to keep me up again for
nothing at all,” thought Randall.

And so the poor lady, very miserable in the
midst of all her luxuries, at last gained her bed,
and lay there not able to sleep for very discomfort.
And the abigail retired to her own warm
apartment, where she was greeted with a
pleasant fire, by which stood a little nice
chocolate simmering, to refresh her before she
went to bed—not much less miserable than her
mistress, for she was dreadfully out of humor—and
thought no hardship upon earth could equal
that she endured—forced to sit up in consequence
of another’s whim when she wanted so sadly to
go to bed.

While, thus, all that the most abundant possession
of the world’s goods could bestow, was
marred by the weakness of the mistress and the
ill-temper of the maid—the plentiful gifts of
fortune rendered valueless by the erroneous
facility upon one side, and insolent love of
domination on the other; how many in the
large metropolis, only a few miles distant, and
of which the innumerable lights might be seen
brightening, like an Aurora, the southern sky;
how many laid down their heads supperless that
night! Stretched upon miserable pallets, and
ignorant where food was to be found on the
morrow to satisfy the cravings of hunger; yet,
in the midst of their misery, more miserable,
also, because they were not exempt from those
pests of existence—our own faults and infirmities.

And even, as it was, how many poor creatures
did actually lay down their heads that night, far
less miserable than poor Mrs. Melwyn. The
tyranny of a servant is noticed by the wise man,
if I recollect right, as one of the most irritating
and insupportable of mortal miseries.

Two young women inhabited one small room
of about ten feet by eight, in the upper story of
a set of houses somewhere near Mary-le-bone
street. These houses appear to have been once
intended for rather substantial persons, but have
gradually sunk into lodging-houses for the very
poor. The premises look upon an old grave-yard;
a dreary prospect enough, but perhaps
preferable to a close street, and are filled, with
decent but very poor people. Every room appears
to serve a whole family, and few of the
rooms are much larger than the one I have described.

It was now half-past twelve o’clock, and still
the miserable dip tallow candle burned in a
dilapidated tin candlestick. The wind whistled
with that peculiar wintry sound which betokens
that snow is falling; it was very, very cold; the fire
was out; and the girl who sat plying her needle
by the hearth, which was still a little warmer
than the rest of the room, had wrapped up her
feet in an old worn-out piece of flannel, and had
an old black silk wadded cloak thrown over her
to keep her from being almost perished. The
room was scantily furnished, and bore an air of
extreme poverty, amounting almost to absolute
destitution. One by one the little articles of
property possessed by its inmates had disappeared
to supply the calls of urgent want. An
old four-post bedstead, with curtains of worn-out
serge, stood in one corner; one mattress, with
two small thin pillows, and a bolster that was
almost flat; three old blankets, cotton sheets of
the coarsest description upon it: three rush-bottomed
chairs, an old claw-table, very[Pg 17]
ancient dilapidated chest of drawers—at the top
of which were a few battered band-boxes—a
miserable bit of carpet before the fire-place; a
wooden box for coals; a little low tin fender,
a poker, or rather half a poker; a shovel and
tongs, much the worse for wear, and a very few
kitchen utensils, was all the furniture in the room.
What there was, however, was kept clean; the
floor was clean, the yellow paint was clean;
and, I forgot to say, there was a washing-tub
set aside in one corner.

The wind blew shrill, and shook the window,
and the snow was heard beating against the
panes; the clock went another quarter, but still
the indefatigable toiler sewed on. Now and
then she lifted up her head, as a sigh came
from that corner of the room where the bed
stood, and some one might be heard turning
and tossing uneasily upon the mattress—then
she returned to her occupation and plied her
needle with increased assiduity.

The workwoman was a girl of from eighteen
to twenty, rather below the middle size, and of
a face and form little adapted to figure in a
story. One whose life, in all probability, would
never be diversified by those romantic adventures
which real life in general reserves to the beautiful
and the highly-gifted. Her features were
rather homely, her hair of a light brown, without
golden threads through it, her hands and arms
rough and red with cold and labor; her dress
ordinary to a degree—her clothes being of the
cheapest materials—but then, these clothes were
so neat, so carefully mended where they had
given way; the hair was so smooth, and so
closely and neatly drawn round the face; and
the face itself had such a sweet expression, that
all the defects of line and color were redeemed
to the lover of expression, rather than beauty.

She did not look patient, she did not look resigned;
she could not look cheerful exactly.
She looked earnest, composed, busy, and exceedingly
kind. She had not, it would seem,
thought enough of self in the midst of her
privations, to require the exercise of the virtues
of patience and resignation; she was so occupied
with the sufferings of others that she never
seemed to think of her own.

She was naturally of the most cheerful, hopeful
temper in the world—those people without
selfishness usually are. And, though sorrow
had a little lowered the tone of her spirits to
composure, and work and disappointment had
faded the bright colors of hope; still hope was
not entirely gone, nor cheerfulness exhausted.
But, the predominant expression of every word,
and look, and tone, and gesture, was kindness—inexhaustible
kindness.

I said she lifted up her head from time to
time, as a sigh proceeded from the bed, and its
suffering inhabitant tossed and tossed: and at
last she broke silence and said,

“Poor Myra, can’t you get to sleep?”

“It is so fearfully cold,” was the reply;
“and when will you have done, and come to
bed?”

“One quarter of an hour more, and I shall
have finished it. Poor Myra, you are so nervous,
you never can get to sleep till all is shut up—but
have patience, dear, one little quarter of an
hour, and then I will throw my clothes over your
feet, and I hope you will be a little warmer.”

A sigh for all answer; and then the true
heroine—for she was extremely beautiful, or
rather had been, poor thing, for she was too wan
and wasted to be beautiful now—lifted up her
head, from which fell a profusion of the fairest
hair in the world, and leaning her head upon
her arm, watched in a sort of impatient patience
the progress of the indefatigable needle-woman.

“One o’clock striking, and you hav’n’t done
yet, Lettice? how slowly you do get on.”

“I can not work fast and neatly too, dear
Myra. I can not get through as some do—I
wish I could. But my hands are not so delicate
and nimble as yours, such swelled clumsy things,”
she said, laughing a little, as she looked at them—swelled,
indeed, and all mottled over with the
cold! “I can not get over the ground nimbly
and well at the same time. You are a fine race-horse,
I am a poor little drudging pony—but I
will make as much haste as I possibly can.”

Myra once more uttered an impatient, fretful
sigh, and sank down again, saying, “My feet
are so dreadfully cold!”

“Take this bit of flannel then, and let me
wrap them up.”

“Nay, but you will want it.”

“Oh, I have only five minutes more to stay,
and I can wrap the carpet round my feet.”

And she laid down her work and went to the
bed, and wrapped her sister’s delicate, but now
icy feet, in the flannel; and then she sat down;
and at last the task was finished. And oh, how
glad she was to creep to that mattress, and to
lay her aching limbs down upon it! Hard it
might be, and wretched the pillows, and scanty
the covering, but little felt she such inconveniences.
She fell asleep almost immediately,
while her sister still tossed and murmered.
Presently Lettice, for Lettice it was, awakened
a little, and said, “What is it, love? Poor,
poor Myra! Oh, that you could but sleep as
I do.”

And then she drew her own little pillow from
under her head, and put it under her sister’s,
and tried to make her more comfortable; and
she partly succeeded, and at last the poor delicate
suffering creature fell asleep, and then
Lettice slumbered like a baby.

CHAPTER II.

Early in the morning, before it was light,
while the wintry twilight gleamed through the
curtainless window, Lettice was up, dressing[Pg 18]
herself by the scanty gleam cast from the street
lamps into the room, for she could not afford the
extravagance of a candle.

She combed and did up her hair with modest
neatness; put on her brown stuff only gown, and
then going to the chest of drawers—opening
one with great precaution, lest she should make
a noise, and disturb Myra, who still slumbered
—drew out a shawl, and began to fold it as
if to put it on.

Alas! poor thing, as she opened it, she became
first aware that the threadbare, time-worn
fabric had given way in two places. Had it
been in one, she might have contrived to conceal
the injuries of age: but it was in two.

She turned it; she folded and unfolded: it
would not do. The miserable shawl seemed to
give way under her hands. It was already so
excessively shabby that she was ashamed to go
out in it; and it seemed as if it was ready to
fall to pieces in sundry other places, this dingy,
thin, brown, red, and green old shawl. Mend
it would not: besides, she was pressed for
time; so, with the appearance of considerable
reluctance, she put her hand into the drawer,
and took out another shawl.

This was a different affair. It was a warm,
and not very old, plaid shawl, of various colors,
well preserved and clean looking, and, this
cold morning, so tempting.

Should she borrow it? Myra was still asleep,
but she would be horridly cold when she got
up, and she would want her shawl, perhaps;
but then Lettice must go out, and must be decent,
and there seemed no help for it.

But if she took the shawl, had she not better
light the fire before she went out? Myra would
be so chilly. But then, Myra seldom got up till
half-past eight or nine, and it was now not
seven.

An hour and a half’s, perhaps two hour’s,
useless fire would never do. So after a little
deliberation, Lettice contented herself with
“laying it,” as the housemaids say; that is,
preparing the fire to be lighted with a match:
and as she took out coal by coal to do this, she
perceived with terror how very, very low the
little store of fuel was.

“We must have a bushel in to-day,” she
said. “Better without meat and drink than
fire, in such weather as this.”

However, she was cheered with the reflection
that she should get a little more than usual by
the work that she had finished. It had been
ordered by a considerate and benevolent lady,
who, instead of going to the ready-made linen
warehouses for what she wanted, gave herself
a good deal of trouble to get at the poor workwomen
themselves who supplied these houses,
so that they should receive the full price for
their needle-work, which otherwise must of
necessity be divided.

What she should get she did not quite know,
for she had never worked for this lady before;
and some ladies, though she always got more
from private customers than from the shops,
would beat her down to the last penny, and
give her as little as they possibly could.

Much more than the usual price of such
matters people can not, I suppose, habitually
give; they should, however, beware of driving
hard bargains with the very poor.

Her bonnet looked dreadfully shabby, as poor
little Lettice took it out from one of the dilapidated
band-boxes that stood upon the chest of
drawers; yet it had been carefully covered with
a sheet of paper, to guard it from the injuries
of the dust and the smoke-loaded air.

The young girl held it upon her hand, turning
it round, and looking at it, and she could not
help sighing when she thought of the miserably
shabby appearance she should make; and she
going to a private house, too: and the errand!—linen
for the trousseau of a young lady who
was going to be married.

What a contrast did the busy imagination
draw between all the fine things that young
lady was to have and her own destitution! She
must needs be what she was—a simple-hearted,
God-fearing, generous girl, to whom envious
comparisons of others with herself were as impossible
as any other faults of the selfish—not
to feel as if the difference was, to use the common
word upon such occasions, “very hard.”

She did not take it so. She did not think that
it was very hard that others should be happy
and have plenty, because she was poor and had
nothing. They had not robbed her. What they
had was not taken from her. Nay, at this moment
their wealth was overflowing toward her.
She should gain in her little way by the general
prosperity. The thought of the increased pay
came into her mind at this moment in aid of her
good and simple-hearted feelings, and she brightened
up, and shook her bonnet, and pulled out
the ribbons, and made it look as tidy as she
could; bethinking herself that if it possibly
could be done, she would buy a bit of black
ribbon, and make it a little more spruce when
she got her money.

And now the bonnet is on, and she does not
think it looks so very bad, and Myra’s shawl, as
reflected in the little threepenny glass, looks
quite neat. Now she steals to the bed in order
to make her apologies to Myra about the shawl
and fire, but Myra still slumbers. It is half-past
seven and more, and she must be gone.

The young lady for whom she made the linen
lived about twenty miles from town, but she
had come up about her things, and was to set
off home at nine o’clock that very morning.
The linen was to have been sent in the night
before, but Lettice had found it impossible to
get it done. It must per force wait till morning
to be carried home. The object was to get
to the house as soon as the servants should be
stirring, so that there would be time for the
things to be packed up and accompany the young
lady upon her return home.

Now, Lettice is in the street. Oh, what a
morning it was! The wind was intensely cold[Pg 19]
the snow was blown in buffets against her face;
the street was slippery: all the mud and mire
turned into inky-looking ice. She could scarcely
stand; her face was blue with the cold; her
hands, in a pair of cotton gloves, so numbed
that she could hardly hold the parcel she carried.

She had no umbrella. The snow beat upon
her undefended head, and completed the demolition
of the poor bonnet; but she comforted herself
with the thought that its appearance would
now be attributed to the bad weather having
spoiled it. Nay (and she smiled as the idea
presented itself), was it not possible that she
might be supposed to have a better bonnet at
home?

So she cheerfully made her way; and at last
she entered Grosvenor-square, where lamps
were just dying away before the splendid
houses, and the wintry twilight discovered the
garden, with its trees plastered with dirty snow,
while the wind rushed down from the Park
colder and bitterer than ever. She could hardly
get along at all. A few ragged, good-for-nothing
boys were almost the only people yet to be seen
about; and they laughed and mocked at her,
as, holding her bonnet down with one hand, to
prevent its absolutely giving way before the
wind, she endeavored to carry her parcel, and
keep her shawl from flying up with the other.

The jeers and the laughter were very uncomfortable
to her. The things she found it the most
difficult to reconcile herself to in her fallen state
were the scoffs, and the scorns, and the coarse
jests of those once so far, far beneath her; so
far, that their very existence, as a class, was
once almost unknown, and who were now little,
if at all, worse off than herself.

The rude brutality of the coarse, uneducated,
and unimproved Saxon, is a terrible grievance
to those forced to come into close quarters with
such.

At last, however, she entered Green-street,
and raised the knocker, and gave one timid,
humble knock at the door of a moderate-sized
house, upon the right hand side as you go up
to the Park.

Here lived the benevolent lady of whom I
have spoken, who took so much trouble to break
through the barriers which in London separate
the employers and the employed, and to assist
the poor stitchers of her own sex, by doing
away with the necessity of that hand, or those
many hands, through which their ware has
usually to pass, and in each of which something
of the recompense thereof must of necessity be
detained.

She had never been at the house before; but
she had sometimes had to go to other genteel
houses, and she had too often found the insolence
of the pampered domestics harder to bear than
even the rude incivility of the streets.

So she stood feeling very uncomfortable; still
more afraid of the effect her bonnet might produce
upon the man that should open the door,
than upon his superiors.

But “like master, like man,” is a stale old
proverb, which, like many other old saws of our
now despised as childish ancestors, is full of pith
and truth.

The servant who appeared was a grave, gray-haired
man, of somewhat above fifty. He stooped
a little in his gait, and had not a very fashionable
air; but his countenance was full of kind
meaning, and his manner so gentle, that it
seemed respectful even to a poor girl like this.

Before hearing her errand, observing how
cold she looked, he bade her come in and warm
herself at the hall stove; and shutting the door
in the face of the chill blast, that came rushing
forward as if to force its way into the house, he
then returned to her, and asked her errand.

“I come with the young lady’s work. I was
so sorry that I could not possibly get it done in
time to send it in last night; but I hope I have
not put her to any inconvenience. I hope her
trunks are not made up. I started almost before
it was light this morning.”

“Well, my dear, I hope not; but it was a
pity you could not get it done last night. Mrs.
Danvers likes people to be exact to the moment
and punctual in performing promises, you must
know. However, I’ll take it up without loss
of time, and I dare say it will be all right.”

“Is it come at last?” asked a sweet, low
voice, as Reynolds entered the drawing-room.
“My love, I really began to be frightened for
your pretty things, the speaker went on, turning
to a young lady who was making an early
breakfast before a noble blazing fire, and who
was no other a person than Catherine Melwyn.

“Oh, madam! I was not in the least uneasy
about them, I was quite sure they would come
at last.”

“I wish, my love,” said Mrs. Danvers, sitting
down by the fire, “I could have shared in your
security. Poor creatures! the temptation is
sometimes so awfully great. The pawnbroker
is dangerously near. So easy to evade all inquiry
by changing one miserably obscure lodging
for another, into which it is almost impossible
to be traced. And, to tell the truth, I had not
used you quite well, my dear; for I happened
to know nothing of the previous character of
these poor girls, but that they were certainly
very neat workwomen; and they were so out
of all measure poor, that I yielded to temptation.
And that you see, my love, had its usual effect
of making me suspicious of the power of temptation
over others.”

Mrs. Danvers had once been one of the loveliest
women that had ever been seen: the face
of an angel, the form of the goddess of beauty
herself; manners the softest, the most delightful.
A dress that by its exquisite good taste and elegance
enhanced every other charm, and a voice
so sweet and harmonious that it made its way
to every heart.

Of all this loveliness the sweet, harmonious
voice alone remained. Yet had the sad eclipse
of so much beauty been succeeded by a something
so holy, so saint-like, so tender, that the
being who stood now shorn by sorrow and suffering[Pg 20]
of all her earthly charms, seemed only to
have progressed nearer to heaven by the exchange.

Her life had, indeed, been one shipwreck, in
which all she prized had gone down. Husband,
children, parents, sister, brother—all!—every
one gone. It had been a fearful ruin. That
she could not survive this wreck of every earthly
joy was expected by all her friends: but she
had lived on. She stood there, an example of
the triumph of those three: faith, hope, and
charity, but the greatest of these was charity.

In faith she rested upon the “unseen,” and
the world of things “seen” around her shrunk
into insignificance. In hope she looked forward
to that day when tears should be wiped from
all eyes, and the lost and severed meet to part
never again. In charity—in other words, love—she
filled that aching, desolate heart with
fresh affections, warm and tender, if not possessing
the joyous gladness of earlier days.

Every sorrowing human being, every poor
sufferer, be they who they might, or whence
they might, found a place in that compassionate
heart. No wonder it was filled to overflowing:
there are so many sorrowing sufferers in this
world.

She went about doing good. Her whole life
was one act of pity.

Her house was plainly furnished. The “mutton
chops with a few greens and potatoes”—laughed
at in a recent trial, as if indifference to
one’s own dinner were a crime—might have
served her. She often was no better served.
Her dress was conventual in its simplicity.
Every farthing she could save upon herself was
saved for her poor.

You must please to recollect that she stood
perfectly alone in the world, and that there was
not a human creature that could suffer by this
exercise of a sublime and universal charity.
Such peculiar devotion to one object is only
permitted to those whom God has severed from
their kind, and marked out, as it were, for the
generous career.

Her days were passed in visiting all those
dismal places in this great city, where lowly
want “repairs to die,” or where degradation
and depravity, the children of want, hide themselves.
She sat by the bed of the inmate of the
hospital, pouring the soft balm of her consolations
upon the suffering and lowly heart. In
such places her presence was hailed as the first
and greatest of blessings. Every one was
melted, or was awed into good behavior by her
presence. The most hardened of brandy-drinking
nurses was softened and amended by her
example.

The situation of the young women who have
to gain their livelihood by their needle had
peculiarly excited her compassion, and to their
welfare she more especially devoted herself.
Her rank and position in society gave her a
ready access to many fine ladies who had an
immensity to be done for them: and to many
fine dress-makers who had this immensity to do.

She was indefatigable in her exertions to diminish
the evils to which the young ladies—”improvers,”
I believe, is the technical term—are
in too many of these establishments exposed.
She it was who got the work-rooms properly
ventilated, and properly warmed. She it was
who insisted upon the cruelty and the wretchedness
of keeping up these poor girls hour after
hour from their natural rest, till their strength
was exhausted; the very means by which they
were to earn their bread taken away; and they
were sent into decline and starvation. She made
fine ladies learn to allow more time for the preparation
of their dresses; and fine ladies’ dress
makers to learn to say, “No.”

One of the great objects of her exertions was
to save the poor plain-sewers from the necessary
loss occasioned by the middlemen. She did not
say whether the shops exacted too much labor,
or not, for their pay; with so great a competition
for work, and so much always lying unsold
upon their boards, it was difficult to decide.
But she spared no trouble to get these poor
women employed direct by those who wanted
sewing done; and she taught to feel ashamed
of themselves those indolent fine ladies who,
rather than give themselves a little trouble to
increase a poor creature’s gains, preferred going
to the ready-made shops, “because the other
was such a bore.”

In one of her visits among the poor of Mary-lebone,
she had accidentally met with these two
sisters, Lettice Arnold and Myra. There was
something in them both above the common
stamp, which might be discerned in spite of
their squalid dress and miserable chamber; but
she had not had time to inquire into their previous
history—which, indeed, they seemed unwilling
to tell. Catherine, preparing her wedding
clothes, and well knowing how anxious
Mrs. Danvers was to obtain work, had reserved
a good deal for her; and Mrs. Danvers had
entrusted some of it to Lettice, who was too
wretchedly destitute to be able to give any
thing in the form of a deposit. Hence her uneasiness
when the promised things did not appear
to the time.

And hence the rather grave looks of Reynolds,
who could not endure to see his mistress
vexed.

“Has the workwoman brought her bill with
her, Reynolds?” asked Mrs. Danvers.

“I will go and ask.”

“Stay, ask her to come up; I should like to
inquire how she is going on, and whether she
has any other work in prospect.”

Reynolds obeyed; and soon the door opened,
and Lettice, poor thing, a good deal ashamed
of her own appearance, was introduced into this
warm and comfortable breakfast-room, where,
however, as I have said, there was no appearance
of luxury, except the pretty, neat breakfast,
and the blazing fire.

“Good morning, my dear,” said Mrs. Danvers,
kindly; “I am sorry you have had such a
wretched walk this morning. Why did you not[Pg 21]
come last night? Punctuality, my dear, is the
soul of business, and if you desire to form a private
connection for yourself, you will find it of
the utmost importance to attend to it. This
young lady is just going off, and there is barely
time to put up the things.”

Catherine had her back turned to the door,
and was quietly continuing her breakfast. She
did not even look round as Mrs. Danvers spoke,
but when a gentle voice replied:

“Indeed, madam, I beg your pardon. Indeed,
I did my very best, but—”

She started, looked up, and rose hastily from
her chair. Lettice started, too, on her side, as
she did so; and, advancing a few steps, exclaimed,
“Catherine!”

“It must—it is—it is you!” cried Catherine
hastily, coming forward and taking her by the
hand. She gazed with astonishment at the
worn and weather-beaten face, the miserable
attire, the picture of utter wretchedness before
her. “You!” she kept repeating, “Lettice!
Lettice Arnold! Good Heavens! where are
they all? Where is your father? Your mother?
Your sister?”

“Gone!” said the poor girl. “Gone—every
one gone but poor Myra!”

“And she—where is she? The beautiful
creature, that used to be the pride of poor Mrs.
Price’s heart. How lovely she was! And you,
dear, dear Lettice, how can you, how have you
come to this?”

Mrs. Danvers stood like one petrified with
astonishment while this little scene was going
on. She kept looking at the two girls, but said
nothing.

“Poor, dear Lettice!” Catherine went on in
a tone of the most affectionate kindness, “have
you come all through the streets and alone this
most miserable morning? And working—working
for me! Good Heavens! how has all
this come about?”

“But come to the fire first,” she continued,
taking hold of the almost frozen hand.

Mrs. Danvers now came forward.

“You seem to have met with an old acquaintance,
Catherine. Pray come to the fire,
and sit down and warm yourself; and have you
breakfasted?”

Lettice hesitated. She had become so accustomed
to her fallen condition, that it seemed
to her that she could no longer with propriety
sit down to the same table with Catherine.

Catherine perceived this, and it shocked and
grieved her excessively. “Do come and sit
down,” she said, encouraged by Mrs. Danvers’s
invitation, “and tell us, have you breakfasted?
But though you have, a warm cup of tea this
cold morning must be comfortable.”

And she pressed her forward, and seated her,
half reluctant, in an arm-chair that stood by the
fire: then she poured out a cup of tea, and
carried it to her, repeating,

“Won’t you eat? Have you breakfasted?”

The plate of bread-and-butter looked delicious
to the half-starved girl: the warm cup of tea
seemed to bring life into her. She had been
silent from surprise, and a sort of humiliated
embarrassment; but now her spirits began to
revive, and she said, “I never expected to have
seen you again, Miss Melwyn!”

“Miss Melwyn! What does that mean?
Dear Lettice, how has all this come about?”

“My father was ill the last time you were in
Nottinghamshire, do you not recollect, Miss
Melwyn? He never recovered of that illness;
but it lasted nearly two years. During that
time, your aunt, Mrs. Montague, died; and her
house was sold, and new people came; and you
never were at Castle Rising afterward.”

“No—indeed—and from that day to this
have never chanced to hear any thing of its
inhabitants. But Mrs. Price, your aunt, who
was so fond of Myra, what is become of her?”

“She died before my poor father.”

“Well; but she was rich. Did she do nothing?”

“Every body thought her rich, because she
spent a good deal of money; but hers was only
income. Our poor aunt was no great economist—she
made no savings.”

“Well; and your mother? I can not understand
it. No; I can not understand it,” Catherine
kept repeating. “So horrible! dear, dear
Lettice—and your shawl is quite wet, and so is
your bonnet, poor, dear girl. Why did you not
put up your umbrella?”

“For a very good reason, dear Miss Melwyn;
because I do not possess one.”

“Call me Catherine, won’t you? or I will
not speak to you again.” But Mrs. Danvers’s
inquiring looks seemed now to deserve a little
attention. She seemed impatient to have the
enigma of this strange scene solved. Catherine
caught her eye, and, turning from her friend,
with whom she had been so much absorbed as
to forget every thing else, she said:

“Lettice Arnold is a clergyman’s daughter,
ma’am.”

“I began to think something of that sort,”
said Mrs. Danvers; “but, my dear young lady,
what can have brought you to this terrible state
of destitution?”

“Misfortune upon misfortune, madam. My
father was, indeed, a clergyman, and held the
little vicarage of Castle Rising. There Catherine,”
looking affectionately up at her, “met
me upon her visits to her aunt, Mrs. Montague.”

“We have known each other from children,”
put in Catherine.

The door opened, and Reynolds appeared—

“The cab is waiting, if you please, Miss
Melwyn.”

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! I can’t go just this
moment. Bid the man wait.”

“It is late already,” said Reynolds, taking
out his watch. “The train starts in twenty
minutes.”

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! and when does the
next go? I can’t go by this. Can I, dear
Mrs. Danvers? It is impossible.”

“Another starts in an hour afterward.”[Pg 22]

“Oh! that will do—tell Sarah to be ready
for that. Well, my dear, go on, go on—dear
Lettice, you were about to tell us how all this
happened—but just another cup of tea. Do you
like it strong?”

“I like it any way,” said Lettice, who was
beginning to recover her spirits, “I have not
tasted any thing so comfortable for a very long
time.”

“Dear me! dear me!”

“You must have suffered very much, I fear,
my dear young lady,” said Mrs. Danvers, in a
kind voice of interest, “before you could have
sunk to the level of that miserable home where
I found you.”

“Yes,” said Lettice. “Every one suffers
very much, be the descent slow or rapid, when
he has to fall so far. But what were my sufferings
to poor Myra’s!”

“And why were your sufferings as nothing
in comparison with poor Myra’s?”

“Ah, madam, there are some in this world
not particularly favored by nature or fortune,
who were born to be denied; who are used to
it from their childhood—it becomes a sort of
second nature to them, as it were. They
scarcely feel it. But a beautiful girl, adored
by an old relation, accustomed to every sort of
indulgence and luxury! They doated upon the
very ground she trod on. Oh! to be cast down
to such misery, that is dreadful.”

“I don’t see—I don’t know,” said Catherine,
who, like the world in general, however much
they might admire, and however much too
many might flatter Myra, greatly preferred
Lettice to her sister.

“I don’t know,” said she, doubtingly.

“Ah! but you would know if you could see!”
said the generous girl. “If you could see what
she suffers from every thing—from things that
I do not even feel, far less care for—you would
be so sorry for her.”

Mrs. Danvers looked with increasing interest
upon the speaker. She seemed to wish to go
on with the conversation about this sister, so
much pitied; so she said, “I believe what you
say is very true. Very true, Catherine, in spite
of your skeptical looks. Some people really do
suffer very much more than others under the
same circumstances of privation.”

“Yes, selfish people like Myra,” thought
Catherine, but she said nothing.

“Indeed, madam, it is so. They seem to
feel every thing so much more. Poor Myra—I
can sleep like a top in our bed, and she very
often can not close her eyes—and the close
room, and the poor food. I can get along—I
was made to rough it, my poor aunt always
said—but Myra!”

“Well but,” rejoined Catherine, “do pray
tell us how you came to this cruel pass? Your
poor father—”

“His illness was very lingering and very
painful—and several times a surgical operation
was required. My mother could not bear—could
any of us?—to have it done by the poor
blundering operator of that remote village. To
have a surgeon from Nottingham was very expensive;
and then the medicines; and the necessary
food and attendance. The kindest and
most provident father can not save much out of
one hundred and ten pounds a year, and what
was saved was soon all gone.”

“Well, well,” repeated Catherine, her eyes
fixed with intense interest upon the speaker.

“His deathbed was a painful scene,” Lettice
went on, her face displaying her emotion, while
she with great effort restrained her tears: “he
trusted in God; but there was a fearful prospect
before us, and he could not help trembling
for his children. Dear, dear father! he reproached
himself for his want of faith, and
would try to strengthen us, ‘but the flesh,’ he
said, ‘was weak.’ He could not look forward
without anguish. It was a fearful struggle to
be composed and confiding—he could not help
being anxious. It was for us, you know, not
for himself.”

“Frightful!” cried Catherine, indignantly;
“frightful! that a man of education, a scholar,
a gentleman, a man of so much activity in doing
good, and so much power in preaching it, should
be brought to this. One hundred and ten
pounds a year, was that all? How could you
exist?”

“We had the house and the garden besides,
you know, and my mother was such an excellent
manager; and my father! No religious
of the severest order was ever more self-denying,
and there was only me. My aunt Price,
you know, took Myra—Myra had been delicate
from a child, and was so beautiful, and she was
never made to rough it, my mother and my
aunt said. Now I seemed made expressly for
the purpose,” she added, smiling with perfect
simplicity.

“And his illness, so long! and so expensive!”
exclaimed Catherine, with a sort of cry.

“Yes, it was—and to see the pains he took
that it should not be expensive. He would be
quite annoyed if my mother got any thing nicer
than usual for his dinner. She used to be
obliged to make a mystery of it; and we were
forced almost to go down upon our knees to
get him to have the surgeon from Nottingham.
Nothing but the idea that his life would be more
secure in such hands could have persuaded
him into it. He knew how important that was
to us. As for the pain which the bungling old
doctor hard by would have given him, he would
have borne that rather than have spent money.
Oh, Catherine! there have been times upon
times when I have envied the poor. They have
hospitals to go to; they are not ashamed to ask
for a little wine from those who have it; they
can beg when they are in want of a morsel of
bread. It is natural. It is right—they feel it
to be right. But oh! for those, as they call it,
better born, and educated to habits of thought
like those of my poor father!… Want is,
indeed, like an armed man, when he comes into
their dwellings.”[Pg 23]

“Too true, my dear young lady,” said Mrs.
Danvers, whose eyes were by this time moist;
“but go on, if it does not pain you too much,
your story is excessively interesting. There is
yet a wide step between where your relation
leaves us, and where I found you.”

“We closed his eyes at last in deep sorrow.
Excellent man, he deserved a better lot! So,
at least, it seems to me—but who knows? Nay,
he would have reproved me for saying so. He
used to say of himself, so cheerfully, ‘It’s a rough
road, but it leads to a good place.’ Why could
he not feel this for his wife and children? He
found that so very difficult!”

“He was an excellent and a delightful man,”
said Catherine. “Well?”…

“Well, my dear, when he had closed his eyes,
there was his funeral. We could not have a
parish funeral. The veriest pauper has a piety
toward the dead which revolts at that. We did
it as simply as we possibly could, consistently
with common decency; but they charge so
enormously for such things: and my poor mother
would not contest it. When I remonstrated a
little, and said I thought it was right to prevent
others being treated in the same way, who could
no better afford it than we could, I shall never
forget my mother’s face: ‘I dare say—yes,
you are right, Lettice; quite right—but not
this—not his. I can not debate that matter.
Forgive me, dear girl; it is weak—but I can
not.’

“This expense exhausted all that was left of
our little money: only a few pounds remained
when our furniture had been sold, and we were
obliged to give up possession of that dear, dear,
little parsonage, and we were without a roof to
shelter us. You remember it, Catherine!”

“Remember it! to be sure I do. That
sweet little place. The tiny house, all covered
over with honey-suckles and jasmines. How
sweet they did smell. And your flower-garden,
Lettice, how you used to work in it. It was
that which made you so hale and strong, aunt
Montague said. She admired your industry so,
you can’t think. She used to say you were
worth a whole bundle of fine ladies.”

“Did she?” and Lettice smiled again. She
was beginning to look cheerful, in spite of her
dismal story. There was something so inveterately
cheerful in that temper, that nothing
could entirely subdue it. The warmth of her
generous nature it was that kept the blood and
spirits flowing.

“It was a sad day when we parted from it.
My poor mother! How she kept looking back—looking
back—striving not to cry; and Myra
was drowned in tears.”

“And what did you do?”

“I am sure I don’t know; I was so sorry for
them both; I quite forget all the rest.”

“But how came you to London?” asked
Mrs. Danvers. “Every body, without other resource,
seem to come to London. The worst
place, especially for women, they can possibly
come to. People are so completely lost in London.
Nobody dies of want, nobody is utterly
and entirely destitute of help or friends, except
in London.”

“A person we knew in the village, and to
whom my father had been very kind, had a son
who was employed in one of the great linen-warehouses,
and he promised to endeavor to get
us needle-work; and we flattered ourselves,
with industry, we should, all three together, do
pretty well. So we came to London, and took
a small lodging, and furnished it with the remnant
of our furniture. We had our clothes,
which, though plain enough, were a sort of little
property, you know. But when we came
to learn the prices they actually paid for work,
it was really frightful! Work fourteen hours a
day apiece, and we could only gain between
three and four shillings a week each—sometimes
hardly that. There was our lodging to pay,
three shillings a week, and six shillings left for
firing and food for three people; this was in the
weeks of plenty. Oh! it was frightful!”

“Horrible!” echoed Catherine.

“We could not bring ourselves down to it at
once. We hoped and flattered ourselves that
by-and-by we should get some work that would
pay better; and when we wanted a little more
food, or in very cold days a little more fire, we
were tempted to sell or pawn one article after
another. At last my mother fell sick, and then
all went; she died, and she had a pauper’s
funeral,” concluded Lettice, turning very pale.

They were all three silent. At last Mrs.
Danvers began again.

“That was not the lodging I found you in?”

“No, madam, that was too expensive. We
left it, and we only pay one-and-sixpence a
week for this, the furniture being our own.”

“The cab is at the door, Miss Melwyn,”
again interrupted Reynolds.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! I can’t go, indeed,
Mrs. Danvers, I can’t go;” with a pleading
look, “may I stay one day longer?”

“Most gladly would I keep you, my dearest
love; but your father and mother…. And
they will have sent to meet you.”

“And suppose they have, John must go back,
but stay, stay, Sarah shall go and take all my
boxes, and say I am coming to-morrow; that
will do.”

“And you travel alone by railway? Your
mother will never like that.”

“I am ashamed,” cried Catherine, with energy,
“to think of such mere conventional difficulties,
when here I stand in the presence of real misery.
Indeed, my dear Mrs. Danvers, my mother will
be quite satisfied when she hears why I staid.
I must be an insensible creature if I could go
away without seeing more of dear Lettice.”

Lettice looked up so pleased, so grateful, so
happy.

“Well, my love, I think your mother will
not be uneasy, as Sarah goes; and I just remember
Mrs. Sands travels your way to-morrow,
so she will take care of you; for taken care
of you must be, my pretty Catherine, till you[Pg 24]
are a little less young, and somewhat less handsome.”

And she patted the sweet, fall, rosy cheek.

Catherine was very pretty indeed, if you care
to know that, and so it was settled.

And now, Lettice having enjoyed a happier
hour than she had known for many a long day,
began to recollect herself, and to think of poor
Myra.

She rose from her chair, and taking up her
bonnet and shawl, which Catherine had hung
before the fire to dry, seemed preparing to
depart.

Then both Catherine and Mrs. Danvers began
to think of her little bill, which had not been
settled yet. Catherine felt excessively awkward
and uncomfortable at the idea of offering
her old friend and companion money; but Mrs.
Danvers was too well acquainted with real
misery, had too much approbation for that spirit
which is not above earning, but is above begging,
to have any embarrassment in such a
case.

“Catherine, my dear,” she said, “you owe
Miss Arnold some money. Had you not better
settle it before she leaves?”

Both the girls blushed.

“Nay, my dears,” said Mrs. Danvers, kindly;
“why this? I am sure,” coming up to them,
and taking Lettice’s hand, “I hold an honest
hand here, which is not ashamed to labor, when
it has been the will of God that it shall be by
her own exertions that she obtains her bread,
and part of the bread of another, if I mistake
not. What you have nobly earned as nobly
receive. Humiliation belongs to the idle and
the dependent, not to one who maintains herself.”

The eyes of Lettice glistened, and she could
not help gently pressing the hand which held
hers.

Such sentiments were congenial to her heart.
She had never been able to comprehend the
conventional distinctions between what is honorable
or degrading, under the fetters of which
so many lose the higher principles of independence—true
honesty and true honor. To work
for her living had never lessened her in her
own eyes; and she had found, with a sort of
astonishment, that it was to sink her in the eyes
of others. To deny herself every thing in food,
furniture, clothing, in order to escape debt, and
add in her little way to the comforts of those
she loved, had ever appeared to her noble and
praiseworthy. She was as astonished, as many
such a heart has been before her, with the
course of this world’s esteem, too often measured
by what people spend upon themselves,
rather than by what they spare. I can not get
that story in the newspaper—the contempt expressed
for the dinner of one mutton chop,
potatoes, and a few greens—out of my head.

Catherine’s confusion had, in a moment of
weakness, extended to Lettice. She had felt
ashamed to be paid as a workwoman by one
once her friend, and in social rank her equal;
but now she raised her head, with a noble frankness
and spirit.

“I am very much obliged to you for recollecting
it, madam, for in truth the money is very much
wanted; and if—” turning to her old
friend, “my dear Catherine can find me a little more
work, I should be very greatly obliged to
her.”

Catherine again changed color. Work! she
was longing to offer her money. She had
twenty pounds in her pocket, a present from
her godmother, to buy something pretty for her
wedding. She was burning with desire to put
it into Lettice’s hand.

She stammered—she hesitated.

“Perhaps you have no more work just now,”
said Lettice. “Never mind, then; I am sure
when there is an opportunity, you will remember
what a pleasure it will be to me to work
for you; and that a poor needlewoman is very
much benefited by having private customers.”

“My dear, dear Lettice!” and Catherine’s
arms were round her neck. She could not help
shedding a few tears.

“But to return to business,” said Mrs. Danvers,
“for I see Miss Arnold is impatient to be
gone. What is your charge, my dear? These
slips are tucked and beautifully stitched and
done.”

“I should not get more than threepence, at
most fourpence, at the shops for them. Should
you think ninepence an unreasonable charge?
I believe it is what you would pay if you had
them done at the schools.”

“Threepence, fourpence, ninepence! Good
Heavens!” cried Catherine; “so beautifully
done as these are; and then your needles
and thread, you have made no charge for
them.”

“We pay for those ourselves,” said Lettice.

“But my dear,” said Mrs. Danvers, “what
Catherine would have to pay for this work, if
bought from a linen warehouse, would at least
be fifteen pence, and not nearly so well done,
for these are beautiful. Come, you must ask
eighteen pence; there are six of them; nine
shillings, my dear.”

The eyes of poor Lettice quite glistened.
She could not refuse. She felt that to seem
over delicate upon this little enhancement of
price would be really great moral indelicacy.
“Thank you,” said she, “you are very liberal;
but it must only be for this once. If I am to
be your needlewoman in ordinary, Catherine, I
must only be paid what you would pay to
others.”

She smiled pleasantly as she said this; but
Catherine could not answer the smile. She felt
very sad as she drew the nine shillings from her
purse, longing to make them nine sovereigns.
But she laid the money at last before Lettice
upon the table.

Lettice took it up, and bringing out an old
dirty leathern purse, was going to put it in.

“At least, let me give you a better purse,”
said Catherine, eagerly, offering her own handsome[Pg 25]
one, yet of a strong texture, for it was her
business purse.

“They would think I had stolen it,” said Lettice,
putting it aside. “No, thank you, dear, kind
Catherine. Consistency in all things; and my
old leather convenience seems to me much more
consistent with my bonnet than your beautiful
one. Not but that I shall get myself a decent
bonnet now, for really this is a shame to be
seen. And so, good-by; and farewell, madam.
When you have work, you won’t forget me, will
you, dear?”

“Oh, Catherine has plenty of work,” put in
Mrs. Danvers, “but somehow she is not quite
herself this morning”—again looking at her
very kindly. “You can not wonder, Miss Arnold,
that she is much more agitated by this
meeting than you can be. My dear, there are
those pocket-handkerchiefs to be marked, which
we durst not trust to an unknown person. That
will be a profitable job. My dear, you would
have to pay five shillings apiece at Mr. Morris’s
for having them embroidered according to that
pattern you fixed upon, and which I doubt not
your friend and her sister can execute. There
are six of them to be done.”

“May I look at the pattern? Oh, yes! I
think I can do it. I will take the greatest possible
pains. Six at five shillings each! Oh!
madam!—Oh, Catherine!—what a benefit this
will be.”

Again Catherine felt it impossible to speak.
She could only stoop down, take the poor hand,
so roughened with hardships, and raise it to her
lips.

The beautiful handkerchiefs were brought.

“I will only take one at a time, if you please.
These are too valuable to be risked at our lodgings.
When I have done this, I will fetch another,
and so on. I shall not lose time in getting
them done, depend upon it,” said Lettice,
cheerfully.

“Take two, at all events, and then Myra can
help you.”

“No, only one at present, at least, thank
you.”

She did not say what she knew to be very
true, that Myra could not help her. Myra’s
fingers were twice as delicate as her own;
and Myra, before their misfortunes, had mostly
spent her time in ornamental work—her aunt
holding plain sewing to be an occupation rather
beneath so beautiful and distinguished a creature.
Nevertheless, when work became of so
much importance to them all, and fine work
especially, as gaining so much better a recompense
in proportion to the time employed, Myra’s
accomplishments in this way proved very
useless. She had not been accustomed to that
strenuous, and, to the indolent, painful effort,
which is necessary to do any thing well. To
exercise self-denial, self-government, persevering
industry, virtuous resistance against weariness,
disgust, aching fingers and heavy eyes—temptations
which haunt the indefatigable laborer
in such callings, she was incapable of:
the consequence was, that she worked in a very
inferior manner. While Lettice, as soon as she
became aware of the importance of this accomplishment
as to the means of increasing her
power of adding to her mother’s comforts, had
been indefatigable in her endeavors to accomplish
herself in the art, and was become a very
excellent workwoman.

CHAPTER III.

And now she is upon her way home. And
oh! how lightly beats that honest simple
heart in her bosom: and oh! how cheerily sits
her spirit upon its throne. How happily, too,
she looks about at the shops, and thinks of what
she shall buy; not what she can possibly do
without; not of the very cheapest and poorest
that is to be had for money, but upon what she
shall choose!

Then she remembers the fable of the Maid
and the Milk-pail, and grows prudent and
prosaic; and resolves that she will not spend
her money till she has got it. She begins to
limit her desires, and to determine that she will
only lay out six shillings this morning, and keep
three in her purse, as a resource for contingencies.
Nay, she begins to grow a little Martha-like
and careful, and to dream about savings-banks;
and putting half-a-crown in, out of the
way of temptation, when she is paid for her first
pocket-handkerchief.

Six shillings, however, she means to expend
for the more urgent wants. Two shillings
coals; one shilling a very, very coarse straw
bonnet; fourpence ribbon to trim it with; one
shilling bread, and sixpence potatoes, a half-pennyworth
of milk, and then, what is left?—one
shilling and a penny-half-penny. Myra
shall have a cup of tea, with sugar in it; and a
muffin, that she loves so, and a bit of butter.
Four-pennyworth of tea, three-pennyworth of
sugar, two-pennyworth of butter, one penny
muffin; and threepence-halfpenny remains in
the good little manager’s hands.

She came up the dark stairs of her lodgings
so cheerfully, followed by a boy lugging up her
coals, she carrying the other purchases herself—so
happy! quite radiant with joy—and opened
the door of the miserable little apartment.

It was a bleak wintry morning. Not a single
ray of the sun could penetrate the gray fleecy
covering in which the houses were wrapped;
yet the warmth of the smoke and fires was
sufficient so far to assist the temperature of the
atmosphere as to melt the dirty snow; which
now kept dripping from the roofs in dreary
cadence, and splashing upon the pavement below.

The room looked so dark, so dreary, so
dismal! Such a contrast to the one she had
just left! Myra was up, and was dressed in
her miserable, half-worn, cotton gown, which
was thrown round her in the most untidy, comfortless[Pg 26]
manner. She could not think it worth
while to care how such a gown was put on.
Her hair was dingy and disordered; to be sure
there was but a broken comb to straighten it
with, and who could do any thing with such a
comb? She was cowering over the fire, which
was now nearly extinguished, and, from time to
time, picking up bit by bit of the cinders, as
they fell upon the little hearth, putting them on
again—endeavoring to keep the fire alive.
Wretchedness in the extreme was visible in her
dress, her attitude, her aspect.

She turned round as Lettice entered, and
saying pettishly, “I thought you never would
come back, and I do so want my shawl,” returned
to her former attitude, with her elbows
resting upon her knees, and her chin upon the
palms of her hands.

“I have been a sad long time, indeed,” said
Lettice, good-humoredly; “you must have been
tired to death of waiting for me, and wondering
what I could be about. But I’ve brought something
back which will make you amends. And,
in the first place, here’s your shawl,” putting it
over her, “and thank you for the use of it—though
I would not ask your leave, because I
could not bear to waken you. But I was sure
you would lend it me—and now for the fire.
For once in a way we will have a good one.
There, Sim, bring in the coals, put them in that
wooden box there. Now for a good lump or
two.” And on they went; and the expiring
fire began to crackle and sparkle, and make a
pleased noise, and a blaze soon caused even that
room to look a little cheerful.

“Oh dear! I am so glad we may for once be
allowed to have coal enough to put a spark of
life into us,” said Myra.

Lettice had by this time filled the little old
tin kettle, and was putting it upon the fire, and
then she fetched an old tea-pot with a broken
spout, a saucer without a cup, and a cup without
a saucer; and putting the two together, for
they were usually divided between the sisters,
said:

“I have got something for you which I know
you will like still better than a blaze, a cup of
tea. And to warm your poor fingers, see if you
can’t toast yourself this muffin,” handing it to
her upon what was now a two-pronged, but had
once been a three-pronged fork.

“But what have you got for yourself?” Myra
had, at least, the grace to say.

“Oh! I have had such a breakfast. And
such a thing has happened! but I can not and
will not tell you till you have had your own
breakfast, poor, dear girl. You must be ravenous—at
least, I should be in your place—but
you never seem so hungry as I am, poor Myra.
However, I was sure you could eat a muffin.”

“That was very good-natured of you, Lettice,
to think of it. It will be a treat. But oh! to
think that we should be brought to this—to
think a muffin—one muffin—a treat!” she added
dismally.

“Let us be thankful when we get it, however,”
said her sister: “upon my word. Mrs.
Bull has given us some very good coals. Oh,
how the kettle does enjoy them! It must be
quite a treat to our kettle to feel hot—poor
thing! Lukewarm is the best it mostly attains
to. Hear how it buzzes and hums, like a
pleased child.”

And so she prattled, and put a couple of spoonfuls
of tea into the cracked tea-pot. There
were but about six in the paper, but Myra liked
her tea strong, and she should have it as she
pleased this once. Then she poured out a cup,
put in some milk and sugar, and, with a smile
of ineffable affection, presented it, with the
muffin she had buttered, to her sister. Myra
did enjoy it. To the poor, weedy, delicate
thing, a cup of good tea, with something to eat
that she could relish, was a real blessing. Mrs.
Danvers was right so far: things did really go
much harder with her than with Lettice; but
then she made them six times worse by her discontent
and murmuring spirit, and Lettice made
them six times better by her cheerfulness and
generous disregard of self.

While the one sister was enjoying her breakfast,
the other, who really began to feel tired,
was very glad to sit down and enjoy the fire.
So she took the other chair, and, putting herself
upon the opposite side of the little table, began
to stretch out her feet to the fender, and feel
herself quite comfortable. Three shillings in
her purse, and three-pence halfpenny to do just
what she liked with! perhaps buy Myra a roll
for tea: there would be butter enough left.

Then she began her story. But the effect it
produced was not exactly what she had expected.
Instead of sharing in her sister’s thankful joy for
this unexpected deliverance from the most abject
want, through the discovery of a friend—able
and willing to furnish employment herself, and
to recommend them, as, in her hopeful view of
things, Lettice anticipated, to others, and promising
them work of a description that would pay
well, and make them quite comfortable—Myra
began to draw a repining contrast between
Catherine’s situation and her own.

The poor beauty had been educated by her
silly and romantic old aunt to look forward to
making some capital match. “She had such a
sweet pretty face, and so many accomplishments
of mind and manner,” for such was the way the
old woman loved to talk. Accomplishments of
mind and manner, by the way, are indefinite
things; any body may put in a claim for them
on the part of any one. As for the more positive
acquirements which are to be seen, handled,
or heard and appreciated—such as dancing,
music, languages, and so forth, Myra had as
slender a portion of those as usually falls to the
lot of indulged, idle, nervous girls. The poor
beauty felt all the bitterness of the deepest
mortification at what she considered this cruel
contrast of her fate as compared to Catherine’s.
She had been indulged in that pernicious habit
of the mind—the making claims. “With claims
no better than her own” was her expression[Pg 27]
for though Catherine had more money, every
body said Catherine was only pretty, which last
sentence implied that there was another person
of Catherine’s acquaintance, who was positively
and extremely beautiful.

Lettice, happily for herself, had never been
accustomed to make “claims.” She had, indeed,
never distinctly understood whom such
claims were to be made upon. She could not
quite see why it was very hard that other people
should be happier than herself. I am sure she
would have been very sorry if she had thought
that every body was as uncomfortable.

She was always sorry when she heard her
sister talking in this manner, partly because she
felt it could not be quite right, and partly because
she was sure it did no good, but made
matters a great deal worse; but she said
nothing. Exhortation, indeed, only made matters
worse: nothing offended Myra so much as
an attempt to make her feel more comfortable,
and to reconcile her to the fate she complained
of as so hard.

Even when let alone, it would often be some
time before she recovered her good humor; and
this was the case now. I am afraid she was a
little vexed that Lettice and not herself had met
with the good luck first to stumble upon Catherine,
and also a little envious of the pleasing
impression it was plain her sister had made. So
she began to fall foul of Lettice’s new bonnet,
and to say, in a captious tone,

“You got money enough to buy yourself a
new bonnet, I see.”

“Indeed, I did,” Lettice answered with simplicity.
“It was the very first thing I thought
of. Mine was such a wretched thing, and
wetted with the snow—the very boys hooted at
it. Poor old friend!” said she, turning it upon
her hand, “you have lost even the shape and
pretension to be a bonnet. What must I do
with thee? The back of the fire? Sad fate!
No, generous companion of my cares and labors,
that shall not be thy destiny. Useful to the
last, thou shalt light to-morrow’s fire; and that
will be the best satisfaction to thy generous
manes.”

“My bonnet is not so very much better,” said
Myra, rather sulkily.

“Not so very much, alas! but better, far
better than mine. And, besides, confess, please,
my dear, that you had the last bonnet. Two
years ago, it’s true; but mine had seen three;
and then, remember, I am going into grand company
again to-morrow, and must be decent.”

This last remark did not sweeten Myra’s
temper.

“Oh! I forgot. Of course you’ll keep your
good company to yourself. I am, indeed, not
fit to be seen in it. But you’ll want a new
gown and a new shawl, my dear, though, indeed,
you can always take mine, as you did this
morning.”

“Now, Myra!” said Lettice, “can you really
be so naughty? Nay, you are cross; I see it
in your face, though you won’t look at me.
Now don’t be so foolish. Is it not all the same
to us both? Are we not in one box? If you
wish for the new bonnet, take it, and I’ll take
yours: I don’t care, my dear. You were always
used to be more handsomely dressed than me—it
must seem quite odd for you not to be so. I
only want to be decent when I go about the
work, which I shall have to do often, as I told
you, because I dare not have two of these expensive
handkerchiefs in my possession at once.
Dear me, girl! Have we not troubles enough?
For goodness’ sake don’t let us make them.
There, dear, take the bonnet, and I’ll take
yours; but I declare, when I look at the two,
this is so horridly coarse, yours, old as it is
looks the genteeler to my mind,” laughing.

So thought Myra, and kept her own bonnet,
Lettice putting upon it the piece of new ribbon
she had bought, and after smoothing and rubbing
the faded one upon her sister’s, trimming with
it her own.

The two friends in Green-street sat silently
for a short time after the door had closed upon
Lettice; and then Catherine began.

“More astonishing things happen in the real
world than one ever finds in a book. I am sure
if such a reverse of fortune as this had been
described to me in a story, I should at once have
declared it to be impossible. I could not have
believed it credible that, in a society such as
ours—full of all sorts of kind, good-natured
people, who are daily doing so much for the
poor—an amiable girl like this, the daughter of
a clergyman of the Church of England, could
be suffered to sink into such abject poverty.”

“Ah! my dear Catherine, that shows you
have only seen life upon one side, and that its
fairest side—as it presents itself in the country.
You can not imagine what a dreadful thing it
may prove in large cities. It can not enter into
the head of man to conceive the horrible contrasts
of large cities—the dreadful destitution of
large cities—the awful solitude of a crowd. In
the country, I think, such a thing hardly could
have happened, however great the difficulty is
of helping those who still preserve the delicacy
and dignity with regard to money matters, which
distinguishes finer minds—but in London what
can be done? Like lead in the mighty waters,
the moneyless and friendless sink to the bottom,
Society in all its countless degrees closes over
them: they are lost in its immensity, hidden
from every eye, and they perish as an insect
might perish; amid the myriads of its kind, unheeded
by every other living creature. Ah, my
love! if your walks lay where mine have done,
your heart would bleed for these destitute
women, born to better hopes, and utterly shipwrecked.”

“She was such a dear, amiable girl,” Catherine
went on, “so cheerful, so sweet-tempered—so
clever in all that one likes to see people
clever about! Her mother was a silly woman.”

“So she showed, I fear, by coming to London,”
said Mrs. Danvers.[Pg 28]

“She was so proud of Myra’s beauty, and
she seemed to think so little of Lettice. She
was always prophesying that Myra would make
a great match; and so did her aunt, Mrs. Price,
who was no wiser than Mrs. Arnold; and they
brought up the poor girl to such a conceit of
herself—to ‘not to do this,’ and ‘it was beneath
her to do that’—and referring every individual
thing to her comfort and advancement, till, poor
girl, she could hardly escape growing, what she
certainly did grow into, a very spoiled, selfish
creature. While dear Lettice in her simplicity—that
simplicity ‘which thinketh no evil’—took
it so naturally, that so it was, and so it
ought to be; that sometimes one laughed, and
sometimes one felt provoked, but one loved her
above all things. I never saw such a temper.”

“I dare say,” said Mrs. Danvers, “that your
intention in staying in town to-day was to pay
them a visit, which, indeed, we had better do.
I had only a glance into their apartment the
other day, but it occurred to me that they
wanted common necessaries. Ignorant as I was
of who they were, I was thinking to get them
put upon Lady A——’s coal and blanket list,
but that can not very well be done now. However,
presents are always permitted under certain
conditions, and the most delicate receive
them; and, really, this is a case to waive a feeling
of that sort in some measure. As you are
an old friend and acquaintance, there can be no
harm in a few presents before you leave town.”

“So I was thinking, ma’am, and I am very
impatient to go and see them, and find out what
they may be most in want of.”

“Well, my dear, I do not see why we should
lose time, and I will order a cab to take us, for
it is rather too far to walk this terrible day.”

They soon arrived at the place I have described,
and, descending from their cab, walked
along in front of this row of lofty houses looking
upon the grave-yard, and inhabited by so
much human misery. The doors of most of the
houses stood open, for they were all let in rooms,
and the entrance and staircase were common as
the street. What forms of human misery and
degradation presented themselves during one
short walk which I once took there with a friend
employed upon a mission of mercy!

Disease in its most frightful form, panting to
inhale a little fresh air. Squalid misery, the
result of the gin-shop—decent misery ready to
starve. Women shut up in one room with great
heartless, brutal, disobedient boys—sickness resting
untended upon its solitary bed. Wailing infants—scolding
mothers—human nature under
its most abject and degraded forms. No thrift,
no economy, no attempt at cleanliness and order.
Idleness, recklessness, dirt, and wretchedness.
Perhaps the very atmosphere of towns; perhaps
these close, ill-ventilated rooms; most certainly
the poisonous gin-shop, engender a relaxed state
of nerves and muscles, which deprives people
of the spirits ever to attempt to make themselves
a little decent. Then water is so dear,
and dirt so pervading the very atmosphere.
Poor things, they give it up; and acquiesce in,
and become accustomed to it, and “avec un mal
heur sourd dont l’on ne se rend pas compte,”
gradually sink and sink into the lowest abyss
of habitual degradation.

It is difficult to express the painful sensations
which Catherine experienced when she entered
the room of the two sisters. To her the dirty
paper, the carpetless floor, the miserable bed,
the worm-eaten and scanty furniture, the aspect
of extreme poverty which pervaded every thing,
were so shocking, that she could hardly restrain
her tears. Not so Mrs. Danvers.

Greater poverty, even she, could rarely have
seen; but it was too often accompanied with
what grieved her more, reckless indifference,
and moral degradation. Dirt and disorder,
those agents of the powers of darkness, were
almost sure to be found where there was extreme
want; but here the case was different.
As her experienced eye glanced round the
room, she could perceive that, poor as was the
best, the best was made of it; that a cheerful,
active spirit—the “How to make the best of it”—that
spirit which is like the guardian angel
of the poor, had been busy here.

The floor, though bare, was clean; the bed,
though so mean, neatly arranged and made;
the grate was bright; the chairs were dusted;
the poor little plenishing neatly put in order.
No dirty garments hanging about the room;
all carefully folded and put away they were;
though she could not, of course, see that, for
there were no half-open drawers of the sloven,
admitting dust and dirt, and offending the eye.
Lettice herself, with hair neatly braided, her
poor worn gown carefully put on, was sitting
by the little table, busy at her work, looking
the very picture of modest industry. Only one
figure offended the nice moral sense of Mrs.
Danvers: that of Myra, who sat there with her
fine hair hanging round her face, in long, dirty,
disheveled ringlets, her feet stretched out and
pushed slip-shod into her shoes. With her
dress half put on, and hanging over her, as
the maids say, “no how,” she was leaning
back in the chair, and sewing very languidly
at a very dirty piece of work which she held
in her hand.

Both sisters started up when the door opened.
Lettice’s cheeks flushed with joy, and her
eye sparkled with pleasure as she rose to receive
her guests, brought forward her other
only chair, stirred the fire, and sent the light
of a pleasant blaze through the room. Myra
colored also, but her first action was to stoop
down hastily to pull up the heels of her shoes;
she then east a hurried glance upon her dress,
and arranged it a little—occupied as usual with
herself, her own appearance was the first thought—and
never in her life more disagreeably.

Catherine shook hands heartily with Lettice,
saying, “We are soon met again, you see;”
and then went up to Myra, and extended her
hand to her. The other took it, but was evidently
so excessively ashamed of her poverty,[Pg 29]
and her present appearance, before one who had
seen her in better days, that she could not speak,
or make any other reply to a kind speech of
Catherine’s, but by a few unintelligible murmurs.

“I was impatient to come,” said Catherine—she
and Mrs. Danvers having seated themselves
upon the two smaller chairs, while the sisters
sat together upon the larger one—”because,
you know, I must go out of town so very soon,
and I wanted to call upon you, and have a little
chat and talk of old times—and, really—really—”
she hesitated. Dear, good thing, she was
so dreadfully afraid of mortifying either of the
two in their present fallen state.

“And, really—really,” said Mrs. Danvers,
smiling, “out with it, my love—really—really,
Lettice, Catherine feels as I am sure you would
feel if the cases were reversed. She can not
bear the thoughts of her own prosperity, and at
the same time think of your misfortunes. I
told her I was quite sure you would not be hurt
if she did for you, what I was certain you
would have done in such a case for her, and
would let her make you a little more comfortable
before she went. The poor thing’s wedding-day
will be quite spoiled by thinking about
you, if you won’t, Lettice.”

Lettice stretched out her hand to Catherine
by way of answer; and received in return the
most warm and affectionate squeeze. Myra
was very glad to be made more comfortable—there
was no doubt of that; but half offended,
and determined to be as little obliged as possible.
And then, Catherine going to be married
too. How hard!—every kind of good luck to
be heaped upon her, and she herself so unfortunate
in every way.

But nobody cared for her ungracious looks.
Catherine knew her of old, and Mrs. Danvers
understood the sort of thing she was in a minute.
Her walk had lain too long amid the
victims of false views and imperfect moral
training, to be surprised at this instance of their
effects. The person who surprised her was
Lettice.

“Well, then,” said Catherine, now quite relieved,
and looking round the room, “where
shall we begin? What will you have? What
do you want most? I shall make you wedding
presents, you see, instead of you making them
to me. When your turn comes you shall have
your revenge.”

“Well,” Lettice said, “what must be must
be, and it’s nonsense playing at being proud. I
am very much obliged to you, indeed, Catherine,
for thinking of us at this time; and if I must
tell you what I should be excessively obliged to
you for, it is a pair of blankets. Poor Myra
can hardly sleep for the cold.”

“It’s not the cold—it’s the wretched, hard,
lumpy bed,” muttered Myra.

This hint sent Catherine to the bed-side.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” cried she, piteously,
“poor dear things, how could you sleep at all?
Do they call this a bed? and such blankets!
Poor Myra!” her compassion quite overcoming
her dislike. “No wonder. My goodness! my
goodness! it’s very shocking indeed.” And the
good young thing could not help crying.

“Blankets, dear girls! and a mattress, and a
feather bed, and two pillows. How have you
lived through it? And you, poor Myra, used
to be made so much of. Poor girl! I am so
sorry for you.”

And oh! how her heart smote her for all she
had said and thought to Myra’s disadvantage.
And oh! how the generous eyes of Lettice
beamed with pleasure as these compassionate
words were addressed to her sister. Myra was
softened and affected. She could almost forgive
Catherine for being so fortunate.

“You are very kind, indeed, Catherine,” she
said.

Catherine, now quite at her ease, began to
examine into their other wants; and without
asking many questions, merely by peeping about,
and forming her own conclusions, was soon pretty
well aware of what was of the most urgent necessity.
She was now quite upon the fidget to
be gone, that she might order and send in the
things; and ten of the twenty pounds given her
for wedding lace was spent before she and Mrs.
Danvers reached home; that lady laughing, and
lamenting over the wedding gown, which would
certainly not be flounced with Honiton, as Catherine’s
good god-mother had intended, and looking
so pleased, contented, and happy, that it did
Catherine’s heart good to see her.

CHAPTER IV.

In the evening Mrs. Danvers seemed rather
tired, and the two sat over the fire a long
time, without a single word being uttered; but,
at last, when tea was finished, and they had
both taken their work, Catherine, who had been
in profound meditation all this time, began:

“My dear Mrs. Danvers, are you rested?
I have a great deal to talk to you about, if you
will let me.”

“I must be very much tired, indeed, Catherine,
when I do not like to hear you talk,” was
the kind reply.

Mrs. Danvers reposed very comfortably in her
arm-chair, with her feet upon a footstool before
the cheerful blazing fire; and now Catherine
drew her chair closer, rested her feet upon the
fender, and seemed to prepare herself for a
regular confidential talk with her beloved old
friend.

“My dear Mrs. Danvers, you are such a
friend both of my dear mother’s and mine, that
I think I may, without scruple, open my whole
heart to you upon a matter in which more than
myself are concerned. If you think me wrong
stop me,” said she, laying her hand affectionately[Pg 30]
upon that of her friend, and fixing those honest,
earnest eyes of hers upon her face.

Mrs. Danvers pressed the hand, and said:

“My love, whatever you confide to me you
know is sacred; and if I can be of any assistance
to you, dear girl, I think you need not scruple
opening your mind; for you know I am a sort
of general mother-confessor to all my acquaintance,
and am as secret as such a profession demands.”

Catherine lifted up the hand; she held it,
pressed it, and continued to hold it; then she
looked at the fire a little while, and at last
spoke.

“Did you never in your walk in life observe
one evil under the sun, which appears to me to
be a most crying one in many families, the undue
influence exercised by, and the power allowed
to servants?”

“Yes, my dear, there are few of the minor
evils—if minor it can be called—that I have
thought productive of more daily discomforts
than that. At times the evils assume a much
greater magnitude, and are very serious indeed.
Alienated hearts—divided families—property to
a large amount unjustly and unrighteously diverted
from its natural channel—and misery,
not to be told, about old age and a dying bed.”

Catherine slightly shuddered, and said:

“I have not had an opportunity of seeing
much of the world, you know; what you say is
rather what I feared it might be, than what I
have actually observed; but I have had a sort
of divination of what might in future arise. It
is inexplicable to me the power a servant may
gain, and the tyrannical way in which she will
dare to exercise it. The unaccountable way in
which those who have every title to command,
may be brought to obey is scarcely to be believed,
and to me inexplicable.”

“Fear and indolence, my dear. Weak spirits
and a weak body, upon the one side; on the
other, that species of force which want of feeling,
want of delicacy, want of a nice conscience, want
even of an enlarged understanding—which rough
habits and coarse perceptions bestow. Believe
me, dear girl, almost as much power is obtained
in this foolish world by the absence of certain
qualities as by the possession of others. Silly
people think it so nice and easy to govern, and
so hard to obey. It requires many higher
qualities, and much more rule over the spirit to
command obedience than to pay it.”

“Yes, no doubt one does not think enough
of that. Jeremy Taylor, in his fine prayers, has
one for a new married wife just about to enter
a family: he teaches her to pray for ‘a right
judgment in all things; not to be annoyed at
trifles; nor discomposed by contrariety of accidents;’
a spirit ‘to overcome all my infirmities,
and comply with and bear with the infirmities
of others; giving offense to none, but doing good
to all I can, but I think he should have added
a petition for strength to rule and guide that
portion of the household which falls under her
immediate care with a firm and righteous hand,
not yielding feebly to the undue encroachment
of others, not suffering, through indolence or a
mistaken love of peace, evil habits to creep over
those who look up to us and depend upon us, to
their own infinite injury as well as to our own.’
Ah! that is the part of a woman’s duty hardest
to fulfill; and I almost tremble,” said the young
bride elect, “when I think how heavy the responsibility;
and how hard I shall find it to acquit
myself as I desire.”

“In this as in other things,” answered Mrs.
Danvers, affectionately passing her hand over
her young favorite’s smooth and shining hair,
“I have ever observed there is but one portion
of real strength; one force alone by which we
can move mountains. But, in that strength we
assuredly are able to move mountains. Was this
all that you had to say, my dear?”

“Oh, no—but—it is so disagreeable—yet I
think. Did you ever notice how things went on
at home, my dear friend?”

“Yes—a little I have. One can not help, you
know, if one stays long in a house, seeing the
relation in which the different members of a
family stand to each other.”

“I thought you must have done so; that
makes it easier for me—well, then, that was one
great reason which made me so unwilling to
leave mamma.”

“I understand.”

“There is a vast deal of that sort of tyranny
exercised in our family already. Ever since I
have grown up I have done all in my power to
check it, by encouraging my poor, dear mamma,
to exert a little spirit; but she is so gentle, so
soft, so indulgent, and so affectionate—for even
that comes in her way…. She gets attached
to every thing around her. She can not bear
new faces, she says, and this I think the servants
know, and take advantage of. They venture to
do as they like, because they think it will be too
painful an exertion for her to change them.”

“Yes, my dear, that is exactly as things go
on; not in your family alone, but in numbers that
I could name if I chose. It is a very serious
evil. It amounts to a sin in many households.
The waste, the almost vicious luxury, the idleness
that is allowed! The positive loss of what
might be so much better bestowed upon those
who really want it, to the positive injury of those
who enjoy it! The demoralizing effect of pampered
habits—the sins which are committed
through the temptation of having nothing to do,
will make, I fear, a dark catalogue against the
masters and mistresses of families; who, because
they have money in abundance, and hate trouble,
allow all this misrule, and its attendant ill consequences
upon their dependents. Neglecting
‘to rule with diligence,’ as the Apostle commands
us, and satisfied, provided they themselves
escape suffering from the ill consequences, except
as far as an overflowing plentiful purse is
concerned. Few people seem to reflect upon
the mischief they may be doing to these their
half-educated fellow creatures by such negligence.”[Pg 31]

Catherine looked very grave, almost sorrowful,
at this speech—she said:

“Poor mamma—but she can not help it—indeed
she can not. She is all love, and is gentleness
itself. The blessed one ‘who thinketh
no evil.’ How can that Randall find the heart
to tease her! as I am sure she does—though
mamma never complains. And then, I am
afraid, indeed, I feel certain, when I am gone
the evil will very greatly increase. You, perhaps,
have observed,” added she, lowering her
voice, “that poor papa makes it particularly
difficult in our family—doubly difficult. His
old wounds, his injured arm, his age and infirmities,
make all sorts of little comforts indispensable
to him. He suffers so much bodily,
and he suffers, too, so much from little inconveniences,
that he can not bear to have any thing
done for him in an unaccustomed way. Randall
and Williams have lived with us ever since I was
five years old—when poor papa came back from
Waterloo almost cut to pieces. And he is so
fond of them he will not hear a complaint against
them—not even from mamma. Oh! it is not
her fault—poor, dear mamma!”

“No, my love, such a dreadful sufferer as the
poor general too often is, makes things very difficult
at times. I understand all that quite well;
but we are still only on the preamble of your
discourse, my Catherine; something more than
vain lamentation is to come of it, I feel sure.”

“Yes, indeed. Dear generous mamma! She
would not hear of my staying with her and giving
up Edgar; nor would she listen to what he was
noble enough to propose, that he should abandon
his profession and come and live at the Hazels,
rather than that I should feel I was tampering
with my duty, for his sake, dear fellow!”

And the tears stood in Catherine’s eyes.

“Nothing I could say would make her listen
to it. I could hardly be sorry for Edgar’s sake.
I knew what a sacrifice it would be upon his
part—more than a woman ought to accept from
a lover, I think—a man in his dotage, as one
may say. Don’t you think so, too, ma’am?”

“Yes, my dear, indeed I do. Well, go on.”

“I have been so perplexed, so unhappy, so
undecided what to do—so sorry to leave this
dear, generous mother to the mercy of those
servants of hers—whose influence, when she is
alone, and with nobody to hearten her up a little,
will be so terribly upon the increase—that I have
not known what to do. But to-day, while I was
dressing for dinner, a sudden, blessed thought
came into my mind—really, just like a flash of
light that seemed to put every thing clear at once—and
it is about that I want to consult you, if
you will let me. That dear Lettice Arnold!—I
knew her from a child. You can not think
what a creature she is. So sensible, so cheerful,
so sweet-tempered, so self-sacrificing, yet so
clever, and firm, and steady, when necessary.
Mamma wants a daughter, and papa wants a
reader and a backgammon prayer. Lettice
Arnold is the very thing.”

Mrs. Danvers made no answer.

“Don’t you think so? Are you not sure?
Don’t you see it?” asked poor Catherine, anxiously.

“Alas! my dear, there is one thing I can
scarcely ever persuade myself to do; and that
is—advise any one to undertake the part of
humble friend.”

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! I know it’s a terrible
part in general; and I can’t think why.”

“Because neither party in general understands
the nature of the relation, nor the exchange of
duties it implies. For want of proper attention
to this, the post of governess is often rendered so
unsatisfactory to one side, and so very uncomfortable
to the other, but in that case at least
something is defined. In the part of the humble
friend there is really nothing—every thing depends
upon the equity and good-nature of the
first party, and the candor and good-will of the
second. Equity not to exact too much—good-nature
to consult the comfort and happiness of
the dependent. On that dependent’s side, candor
in judging of what is exacted; and good-will
cheerfully to do the best in her power to be
amiable and agreeable.”

“I am not afraid of mamma. She will never
be exacting much. She will study the happiness
of all who depend upon her; she only does it
almost too much, I sometimes think, to the
sacrifice of her own comfort, and to the spoiling
of them—and though papa is sometimes so suffering
that he can’t help being a little impatient,
yet he is a perfect gentleman, you know. As
for Lettice Arnold, if ever there was a person
who knew ‘how to make the best of it,’ and sup
cheerfully upon fried onions when she had lost
her piece of roast kid, it is she. Besides, she is
so uniformly good-natured, that it is quite a
pleasure to her to oblige. The only danger
between dearest mamma and Lettice will be—of
their quarreling which shall give up most to
the other. But, joking apart, she is a vast deal
more than I have said—she is a remarkably clever,
spirited girl, and shows it when she is called
upon. You can not think how discreet, how
patient, yet how firm, she can be. Her parents,
poor people, were very difficult to live with, and
were always running wrong. If it had not been
for Lettice, affairs would have got into dreadful
confusion. There is that in her so right, such
an inherent downright sense of propriety and
justice—somehow or other I am confident she
will not let Randall tyrannize over mamma when
I am gone.”

“Really,” said Mrs. Danvers, “what you say
seems very reasonable. There are exceptions to
every rule. It certainly is one of mine to have
as little as possible to do in recommending young
women to the situation of humble friends. Yet
in some cases I have seen all the comfort you
anticipate arise to both parties from such a connection;
and I own I never saw a fairer chance
presented than the present; provided Randall
is not too strong for you all; which may be
feared.”

“Well, then, you do not disadvise me to talk[Pg 32]
to mamma about it, and I will write to you as
soon as I possibly can; and you will be kind
enough to negotiate with Lettice, if you approve
of the terms. As for Randall, she shall not be
too hard for me. Now is my hour; I am in
the ascendant, and I will win this battle or
perish; that is, I will tell mamma I won’t be
married upon any other terms; and to have
‘Miss’ married is quite as great a matter of
pride to Mrs. Randall as to that dearest of
mothers.”

The contest with Mrs. Randall was as fierce
as Catherine, in her worst anticipations, could
have expected. She set herself most doggedly
against the plan. It, indeed, militated against
all her schemes. She had intended to have
every thing far more than ever her own way
when “Miss Catherine was gone;” and though
she had no doubt but that she should “keep the
creature in her place,” and “teach her there
was only one mistress here” (which phrase
usually means the maid, though it implies the
lady), yet she had a sort of a misgiving about it.
There would be one at her (Mrs. Melwyn’s)
ear as well as herself, and at, possibly, her
master’s, too, which was of still more importance.
And then “those sort of people are so
artful and cantankerous. Oh! she’d seen enough
of them in her day! Poor servants couldn’t have
a moment’s peace with a creature like that in
the house, spying about and telling every thing
in the parlor. One can’t take a walk, or see a
poor friend, or have a bit of comfort, but all
goes up there. Well, those may put up with
it who like. Here’s one as won’t, and that’s
me myself; and so I shall make bold to tell
Miss Catherine. General and Mrs. Melwyn
must choose between me and the new-comer.”

Poor Catherine! Mrs. Melwyn cried, and
said her daughter was very right; but she was
sure Randall never would bear it. And the
general, with whom Randall had daily opportunity
for private converse while she bound up
his shattered arm, and dressed the old wound,
which was perpetually breaking out afresh, and
discharging splinters of bone, easily talked her
master into the most decided dislike to the
scheme.

But Catherine stood firm. She had the support
of her own heart and judgment; and the
greater the difficulty, the more strongly she felt
the necessity of the measure. Edgar backed
her, too, with all his might. He could hardly
keep down his vexation at this weakness on one
side, and indignation at the attempted tyranny
on the other, and he said every thing he could
think of to encourage Catherine to persevere.

She talked the matter well over with her
father. The general was the most testy, cross,
and unreasonable of old men; always out of
humor, because always suffering, and always
jealous of every body’s influence and authority,
because he was now too weak and helpless to
rule his family with a rod of iron, such as he,
the greatest of martinets, had wielded in better
days in his regiment and in his household alike.
He suffered himself to be governed by Randall,
and by nobody else; because in yielding to
Randall, there was a sort of consciousness of
the exercise of free will. He ought to be influenced
by his gentle wife, and clever, sensible
daughter; but there was no reason on earth,
but because he chose to do it, that he should
mind what Randall said.

“I hate the whole pack of them! I know
well enough what sort of a creature you’ll bring
among us, Catherine. A whining, methodistical
old maid, with a face like a hatchet, and a figure
as if it had been pressed between two boards,
dressed in a flimsy cheap silk, of a dingy brown
color, with a cap like a grenadier’s. Your
mother and she will be sitting moistening their
eyes all day long over the sins of mankind; and,
I’ll be bound, my own sins won’t be forgotten
among them. Oh! I know the pious creatures,
of old. Nothing they hate like a poor old veteran,
with a naughty word or two in his mouth
now and then. Never talk to me, Catherine,
I can’t abide such cattle.”

“Dearest papa, what a picture you do draw!
just to frighten yourself. Why, Lettice Arnold
is only about nineteen, I believe; and though
she’s not particularly pretty, she’s the pleasantest-looking
creature you ever saw. And as for
bemoaning herself over her neighbors’ sins, I’ll
be bound she’s not half such a Methodist as
Randall.”

“Randall is a very pious, good woman, I’d
have you to know, Miss Catherine.”

“I’m sure I hope she is, papa; but you must
own she makes a great fuss about it. And I
really believe, the habit she has of whispering
and turning up the whites of her eyes, when she
hears of a neighbor’s peccadillos, is one thing
which sets you so against the righteous, dearest
papa; now, you know it is.”

“You’re a saucy baggage. How old is this
thing you’re trying to put upon us, did you
say?”

“Why, about nineteen, or, perhaps, twenty.
And then, who’s to read to you, papa, when I
am gone, and play backgammon? You know
mamma must not read, on account of her chest,
and she plays so badly, you say, at backgammon;
and it’s so dull, husband and wife playing,
you know.” (Poor Mrs. Melwyn dreaded, of
all things, backgammon; she invariably got
ridiculed if she played ill, and put her husband
into a passion if she beat him. Catherine had
long taken this business upon herself.)

“Does she play backgammon tolerably? and
can she read without drawling or galloping?”

“Just at your own pace, papa, whatever that
may be. Besides, you can only try her; she’s
easily sent away if you and mamma don’t like
her. And then think, she is a poor clergyman’s
daughter; and it would be quite a kind action.”

“A poor parson’s! It would have been more
to the purpose if you had said a poor officer’s.
I pay tithes enough to the black coated gentlemen,
without being bothered with their children,[Pg 33]
and who ever pays tithes to us, I wonder?
I don’t see what right parsons have to marry at
all; and then, forsooth, come and ask other
people to take care of their brats!”

“Ah! but she’s not to be taken care of for
nothing; only think what a comfort she’ll be.”

“To your mamma, perhaps, but not to me.
And she’s always the first person to be considered
in this house, I know very well; and I know
very well who it is that dresses the poor old
soldier’s wounds, and studies his comforts—and
he’ll study hers; and I won’t have her vexed
to please any of you.”

“But why should she be vexed? It’s nothing
to her. She’s not to live with Lettice. And I
must say, if Randall sets herself against this
measure, she behaves in a very unreasonable
and unworthy manner, in my opinion.”

“Hoity toity! To be sure; and who’s behaving
in an unreasonable and unworthy manner
now, I wonder, abusing her behind her back, a
worthy, attached creature, whose sole object it
is to study the welfare of us all? She’s told me
so a thousand times.”

“I daresay. Well, now, papa, listen to me.
I’m going away from you for good—your little
Catherine. Just for once grant me this as a
favor. Only try Lettice. I’m sure you’ll like
her; and if, after she’s been here a quarter of a
year, you don’t wish to keep her, why part with
her, and I’ll promise not to say a word about it.
Randall has her good qualities, I suppose, like
the rest of the world; but Randall must be
taught to keep her place, and that’s not in this
drawing-room. And it’s here you want Lettice,
not in your dressing-room. Randall shall have
it all her own way there, and that ought to content
her. And besides, papa, do you know, I
can’t marry Edgar till you have consented, because
I can not leave mamma and you with nobody
to keep you company.”

“Edgar and you be d——d! Well, do as you
like. The sooner you’re out of the house the
better. I shan’t have my own way till you’re
gone. You’re a sad coaxing baggage, but you
have a pretty face of your own, Miss Catherine.”

If the debate upon the subject ran high at
the Hazels, so did it in the little humble apartment
which the two sisters occupied.

“A humble friend! No,” cried Myra, “that
I would never, never be; rather die of hunger
first.”

“Dying of hunger is a very horrible thing,”
said Lettice, quietly, “and much more easily
said than done. We have not, God be thanked
for it, ever been quite so badly off as that; but
I have stood near enough to the dreadful gulf
to look down, and to sound its depth and its
darkness. I am very thankful, deeply thankful,
for this offer, which I should gladly accept, only
what is to become of you?”

“Oh! never mind me. It’s the fashion now,
I see, for every body to think of you, and nobody
to think of me. I’m not worth caring for, now
those who cared for me are gone. Oh! pray,
if you like to be a domestic slave yourself, let
me be no hindrance.”

“A domestic slave! why should I be a domestic
slave? I see no slavery in the case.”

“I call it slavery, whatever you may do, to
have nothing to do all day but play toad-eater
and flatterer to a good-for-nothing old woman;
to bear all her ill-humors, and be the butt for all
her caprices. That’s what humble friends are
expected to do, I believe; what else are they
hired for?”

“I should neither toady nor flatter, I hope,”
said Lettice; “and as for bearing people’s ill-humors,
and being now and then the sport of
their caprices, why that, as you say, is very
disagreeable, yet, perhaps, it is what we must
rather expect. But Mrs. Melwyn, I have always
heard, is the gentlest of human beings.
And if she is like Catherine, she must be free
from caprice, and nobody could help quite loving
her.”

“Stuff!—love! love! A humble friend love
her unhumble friend; for I suppose one must
not venture to call one’s mistress a tyrant. Oh,
no, a friend! a dear friend!” in a taunting,
ironical voice.

“Whomever it might be my fate to live with,
I should try to love; for I believe if one tries to
love people, one soon finds something lovable
about them, and Mrs. Melwyn, I feel sure, I
should soon love very much.”

“So like you! ready to love any thing and
every thing. I verily believe if there was nothing
else to love but the little chimney-sweeper
boy, you’d fall to loving him, rather than love
nobody.”

“I am sure that’s true enough,” said Lettice,
laughing; “I have more than once felt very
much inclined to love the little boy who carries
the soot-bag for the man who sweeps these
chimneys—such a saucy-looking, little sooty
rogue.”

“As if a person’s love could be worth having,”
continued the sister, “who is so ready to
love any body.”

“No, that I deny. Some few people I do find
it hard to love.”

“Me for one.”

“Oh, Myra!”

“Well, I beg your pardon. You’re very kind
to me. But I’ll tell you who it will be impossible
for you to love—if such a thing can be:
that’s that testy, cross, old general.”

“I don’t suppose I shall have much to do
with the old general, if I go.”

“If you go. Oh, you’re sure to go. You’re
so sanguine; every new prospect is so promising.
But pardon me, you seem quite to have
forgotten that reading to the old general, and
playing backgammon with him, are among your
specified employments.”

“Well, I don’t see much harm in it if they
are. A man can’t be very cross with one when
one’s reading to him—and as for the backgammon,
I mean to lose every game, if that will
please him.”[Pg 34]

“Oh, a man can’t be cross with a reader?
I wish you knew as much of the world as I do,
and had heard people read. Why, nothing on
earth puts one in such a fidget. I’m sure I’ve
been put into such a worry by people’s way of
reading, that I could have pinched them. Really,
Lettice, your simplicity would shame a child of
five years old.”

“Well, I shall do my best, and besides I shall
take care to set my chair so far off that I can’t
get pinched, at least; and as for a poor, ailing,
suffering old man being a little impatient and
cross, why one can’t expect to get fifty pounds
a year for just doing nothing.—I do suppose it
is expected that I should bear a few of these
things in place of Mrs. Melwyn; and I don’t
see why I should not.”

“Oh, dear! Well, my love, you’re quite made
for the place, I see; you always had something
of the spaniel in you, or the walnut-tree, or any
of those things which are the better for being ill-used.
It was quite a proverb with our poor
mother, ‘a worm will turn, but not Lettice.'”

Lettice felt very much inclined to turn now.
But the mention of her mother—that mother
whose mismanagement and foolish indulgence
had contributed so much to poor Myra’s faults—faults
for which she now paid so heavy a penalty—silenced
the generous girl, and she made
no answer.

No answer, let it proceed from never so good
a motive, makes cross people often more cross;
though perhaps upon the whole it is the best
plan.

So Myra in a still more querulous voice went
on:

“This room will be rather dismal all by one’s
self, and I don’t know how I’m to go about, up
and down, fetch and carry, and work as you
are able to do…. I was never used to it. It
comes very hard upon me.” And she began to
cry.

“Poor Myra! dear Myra! don’t cry: I never
intended to leave you. Though I talked as if I
did, it was only in the way of argument, because
I thought more might be said for the kind of life
than you thought; and I felt sure if people were
tolerably kind and candid, I could get along very
well and make myself quite comfortable. Dear
me! after such hardships as we have gone
through, a little would do that. But do you
think, poor dear girl, I could have a moment’s
peace, and know you were here alone? No,
no.”

And so when she went in the evening to
carry her answer to Mrs. Danvers, who had
conveyed to her Catherine’s proposal, Lettice
said, “that she should have liked exceedingly to
accept Catherine’s offer, and was sure she should
have been very happy herself, and would have
done every thing in her power to make Mrs.
Melwyn happy, but that it was impossible to
leave her sister.”

“If that is your only difficulty, my dear, don’t
make yourself uneasy about that. I have found
a place for your sister which I think she will like
very well. It is with Mrs. Fisher, the great
milliner in Dover-street, where she will be taken
care of, and may be very comfortable. Mrs.
Fisher is a most excellent person, and very anxious,
not only about the health and comfort of
those she employs, but about their good behavior
and their security from evil temptation.
Such a beautiful girl as your sister is, lives in
perpetual danger, exposed as she is without protection
in this great town.”

“But Myra has such an abhorrence of servitude,
as she calls it—such an independent high
spirit—I fear she will never like it.”

“It will be very good for her, whether she
likes it or not. Indeed, my dear, to speak sincerely,
the placing your sister out of danger in
the house of Mrs. Fisher ought to be a decisive
reason with you for accepting Catherine’s proposal—even
did you dislike it much more than
you seem to do.”

“Oh! to tell the truth, I should like the plan
very much indeed—much more than I have
wished to say, on account of Myra: but she
never, never will submit to be ruled, I fear, and
make herself happy where, of course, she must
obey orders and follow regulations, whether she
likes them or not. Unfortunately, poor dear,
she has been so little accustomed to be contradicted.”

“Well, then, it is high time she should begin;
for contradicted, sooner or later, we all of us are
certain to be. Seriously, again, my dear, good
Lettice—I must call you Lettice—your innocence
of heart prevents you from knowing what
snares surround a beautiful young woman like
your sister. I like you best, I own; but I have
thought much more of her fate than yours, upon
that account. Such a situation as is offered to
you she evidently is quite unfit to fill: but I
went—the very day Catherine and I came to
your lodgings and saw you both—to my good
friend Mrs. Fisher, and, with great difficulty,
have persuaded her at last to take your sister.
She disliked the idea very much; but she’s an
excellent woman: and when I represented to
her the peculiar circumstances of the case, she
promised she would consider the matter. She
took a week to consider of it—for she is a very
cautious person is Mrs. Fisher; and some people
call her very cold and severe. However, she
has decided in our favor, as I expected she would.
Her compassion always gets the better of her
prudence, when the two are at issue. And so
you would not dislike to go to Mrs. Melwyn’s?”

“How could I? Why, after what we have
suffered, it must be like going into Paradise.”

“Nay, nay—a little too fast. No dependent
situation is ever exactly a Paradise. I should
be sorry you saw things in a false light, and
should be disappointed.”

“Oh, no, I do not wish to do that—I don’t
think—thank you for the great kindness and interest
you are so kind as to show by this last remark—but
I think I never in my life enjoyed one
day of unmixed happiness since I was quite a
little child; and I have got so entirely into the[Pg 35]
habit of thinking that every thing in the world
goes so—that when I say Paradise, or quite
happy, or so on, it is always in a certain sense—a
comparative sense.”

“I am glad to see you so reasonable—that is
one sure way to be happy; but you will find
your crosses at the Hazels. The general is not
very sweet-tempered; and even dear mild Mrs.
Melwyn is not perfect.”

“Why, madam, what am I to expect? If I
can not bear a few disagreeable things, what do
I go there for? Not to be fed, and housed, and
paid at other people’s expense, just that I may
please my own humors all the time. That
would be rather an unfair bargain, I think. No:
I own there are some things I could not and
would not bear for any consideration; but there
are a great many others that I can, and I shall,
and I will—and do my best, too, to make happy,
and be happy; and, in short, I don’t feel the
least afraid.”

“No more you need—you right-spirited creature,”
said Mrs. Danvers, cordially.

Many were the difficulties, endless the objections
raised by Myra against the proposed plan
of going to Mrs. Fisher. Such people’s objections
and difficulties are indeed endless. In their
weakness and their selfishness, they like to be
objects of pity—they take a comfort in bothering
and wearying people with their interminable
complaints. Theirs is not the sacred outbreak
of the overloaded heart—casting itself upon another
heart for support and consolation under
suffering that is too strong and too bitter to be
endured alone. Sacred call for sympathy and
consolation, and rarely made in vain! It is the
wearying and futile attempt to cast the burden
of sorrow and suffering upon others, instead of
seeking their assistance in enduring it one’s self.
Vain and useless endeavor, and which often bears
hard upon the sympathy even of the kindest and
truest hearts!

Ineffectually did Lettice endeavor to represent
matters under a cheerful aspect. Nothing was
of any avail. Myra would persist in lamenting,
and grieving, and tormenting herself and her sister;
bewailing the cruel fate of both—would
persist in recapitulating every objection which
could be made to the plan, and every evil consequence
which could possibly ensue. Not that
she had the slightest intention in the world of
refusing her share in it, if she would have suffered
herself to say so. She rather liked the
idea of going to that fashionable modiste, Mrs.
Fisher: she had the “âme de dentelle” with
which Napoleon reproached poor Josephine.
There was something positively delightful to her
imagination in the idea of dwelling among rich
silks, Brussels laces, ribbons, and feathers; it was
to her what woods, and birds, and trees were to
her sister. She fancied herself elegantly dressed,
walking about a show-room, filled with all sorts
of beautiful things; herself, perhaps, the most
beautiful thing in it, and the object of a sort of
flattering interest, through the melancholy cloud
“upon her fine features.” Nay, her romantic
imagination traveled still farther—gentlemen
sometimes come up with ladies to show-rooms,—who
could tell? Love at first sight was not
altogether a dream. Such things had happened….
Myra had read plenty of old, rubbishy novels
when she was a girl.

Such were the comfortable thoughts she kept
to herself; but it was, as I said, one endless complaining
externally.

Catherine insisted upon being allowed to advance
the money for the necessary clothes, which,
to satisfy the delicacy of the one and the pride of
the other, she agreed should be repaid by installments
as their salaries became due. The sale
of their few possessions put a sovereign or so
into the pocket of each, and thus the sisters
parted; the lovely Myra to Mrs. Fisher’s, and
Lettice, by railway, to the Hazels.

(To be continued.)

ERUPTION OF MOUNT ETNA IN 1669.

“For many days previous the sky had been
overcast, and the weather, notwithstanding
the season, oppressively hot. The thunder and
lightning were incessant, and the eruption was
at length ushered in by a violent shock of an
earthquake, which leveled most of the houses
at Nicolosi. Two great chasms then opened
near that village, from whence ashes were
thrown out in such quantities, that, in a few
weeks, a double hill, called Monte Rosso, 450
feet high, was formed, and the surrounding
country covered to such a depth, that, nothing
but the tops of the trees could be seen. The
lava ran in a stream fifty feet deep, and four
miles wide, overwhelming in its course fourteen
towns and villages; and had it not separated
before reaching Catania, that city would have
been virtually annihilated as were Herculaneum
and Pompeii. The walls had been purposely
raised to a height of sixty feet, to repel the
danger if possible, but the torrent accumulated
behind them, and poured down in a cascade of
fire upon the town. It still continued to advance,
and, after a course of fifteen miles, ran
into the sea, where it formed a mole 600 yards
long. The walls were neither thrown down
nor fused by contact with the ignited matter,
and have since been discovered by Prince Biscari,
when excavating in search of a well known
to have existed in a certain spot, and from the
steps of which the lava may now be seen curling
over like a monstrous billow in the very act of
falling.

“The great crater fell in during this eruption,
and a fissure, six feet wide and twelve
miles long, opened in the plain of S. Leo. In
the space of six weeks, the habitations of 27,000
persons were destroyed, a vast extent of the
most fertile land rendered desolate for ages, the
course of rivers changed, and the whole face of
the district transformed.”—Marquis of Ormonde’s
Autumn in Sicily.[Pg 36]

VOLCANIC ERUPTION—MOUNT ETNA IN 1849.

“The mass extended for a breadth of about
1000 paces, advancing gradually, more
or less rapidly according to the nature of the
ground over which it moved, but making steady
progress. It had formed two branches, one
going in a northerly, and the other in a westerly
direction. No danger beyond loss of trees or
crops was apprehended from the former, but the
second was moving in a direct line for the town
of Bronte, and to it we confined our attention.
The townspeople, on their part, had not been
idle. I have before mentioned the clearance
which they made of their goods, but precautions
had also been taken outside the town, with a
view, if possible, to arrest the progress of the
lava; and a very massive wall of coarse loose
work was in the course of erection across a
valley down which the stream must flow. We
heard afterward, that the impelling power was
spent before the strength of this work was put
to the test, but had it failed, Bronte had been
lost. It is not easy to convey by words any
very accurate idea. The lava appeared to be
from thirty to forty feet in depth, and some
notion of its aspect and progress may be formed
by imagining a hill of loose stones of all sizes,
the summit or brow of which is continually falling
to the base, and as constantly renewed by
unseen pressure from behind. Down it came in
large masses, each leaving behind it a fiery
track, as the red-hot interior was for a moment
or two exposed. The impression most strongly
left on my mind was that of its irresistible force.
It did not advance rapidly; there was no difficulty
in approaching it, as I did, closely, and
taking out pieces of red-hot stone; the rattling
of the blocks overhead gave ample notice of
their descent down the inclined face of the
stream, and a few paces to the rear, or aside,
were quite enough to take me quite clear of
them; but still onward, onward it came, foot by
foot it encroached on the ground at its base,
changing the whole face of the country, leaving
hills where formerly valleys had been, overwhelming
every work of man that it encountered
in its progress, and leaving all behind one black,
rough, and monotonous mass of hard and barren
lava. It had advanced considerably during the
night. On the previous evening I had measured
the distance from the base of the moving hill to
the walls of a deserted house which stood, surrounded
by trees, at about fifty yards off, and,
though separated from it by a road, evidently
exposed to the full power of the stream. Not
a trace of it was now left, and it was difficult
to make a guess at where it had been. The
owners of the adjacent lands were busied in all
directions felling the timber that stood in the
line of the advancing fire, but they could not in
many instances do it fast enough to save their
property from destruction; and it was not a
little interesting to watch the effect produced
on many a goodly tree, first thoroughly dried by
the heat of the mass, and, in a few minutes after
it had been reached by the lava, bursting into
flames at the base, and soon prostrate and destroyed.
It being Sunday, all the population
had turned out to see what progress the enemy
was making, and prayers and invocations to a
variety of saints were every where heard around.
‘Chiamate Sant’ Antonio, Signor,’ said one
woman eagerly to me, ‘per l’amor di Dio, chiamate
la Santa Maria.’ Many females knelt
around, absorbed in their anxiety and devotion,
while the men generally stood in silence gazing
in dismay at the scene before them. Our guide
was a poor fiddler thrown out of employment
by the strict penance enjoined with a view to
avert the impending calamity, dancing and music
being especially forbidden, even had any one
under such circumstances been inclined to indulge
in them.”

The Marquis of Ormonde was adventurous
enough, despite the fate of Empedocles and of
Pliny, to ascend in the evening to see the Bocca
di Fuoco, which is at an elevation of about
6000 feet. The sight which met his eyes was,
he tells us, and we may well believe it, one of
the grandest and most awful it had ever been
his fortune to witness:

“The evening had completely closed in, and
it was perfectly dark, so that there was nothing
which could in any way injure or weaken the
effect. The only thing to which I can compare
it is, as far as can be judged from representations
of such scenes, the blowing up of some
enormous vessel of war, the effect being permanent
instead of momentary only. Directly facing
us was the chasm in the mountain’s side from
which the lava flowed in a broad stream of
liquid fire; masses of it had been forced up on
each side, forming, as it got comparatively cool,
black, uneven banks, the whole realizing the
poetic description of Phlegethon in the most
vivid manner. The flames ascended to a considerable
height from the abyss, and high above
them the air was constantly filled with large
fiery masses, projected to a great height, and
meeting on their descent a fresh supply, the
roar of the flames and crash of the falling blocks
being incessant. Advancing across a valley
which intervened, we ascended another hill, and
here commanded a view of the ground on which
many of the ejected stones fell, and, though well
to windward, the small ashes fell thickly around
us. The light was sufficient, even at the distance
we stood, to enable us to read small print,
and to write with the greatest ease. The thermometer
stood at about 40°, but, cold though
it was, it was some time before we could resolve
to take our last look at this extraordinary
sight, and our progress, after we had done so,
was retarded by the constant stoppages made
by us to watch the beautiful effect of the light,
as seen through the Bosco, which we had entered
on our return.”—Marquis of Ormonde’s Autumn
in Sicily.

[Pg 37]

AMERICAN LITERATURE.

We believe it was M. l’Abbé Raynal who
said that America had not yet produced a
single man of genius. The productions now
under our notice will do more to relieve her
from this imputation than the reply of President
Jefferson:

“When we have existed,” said that gentleman, “so
long as the Greeks did before they produced Homer, the
Romans Virgil, the French a Racine and a Voltaire, the
English a Shakspeare and a Milton, we shall inquire
from what unfriendly causes it has proceeded that the
other countries of Europe, and quarters of the earth,
shall not have inscribed any poet of ours on the roll of
fame.”

The ingenuity of this defense is more apparent
than its truth; for although the existence of
America, as a separate nation, is comparatively
recent, it must not be forgotten that the origin
of her people is identical with that of our own.
Their language is the same; they have always
had advantages in regard of literature precisely
similar to those which we now enjoy; they have
free trade, and a little more, in all our best
standard authors. There is, therefore, no analogy
whatever between their condition and that
of the other nations with whom the attempt has
been made to contrast them. With a literature
ready-made, as it were, to their hand, America
had never to contend against any difficulties
such as they encountered. Beyond the ballads
of the Troubadours and Trouveres, France had
no stock either of literature or of traditions to
begin upon; the language of Rome was foreign
to its people; Greece had but the sixteen letters
of Cadmus; the literature of England struggled
through the rude chaos of Anglo-Saxon, Norman,
French, and monkish Latin. If these difficulties
in pursuit of knowledge be compared with the
advantages of America, we think it must be
admitted that the president had the worst of the
argument.

But although America enjoys all these advantages,
it can not be denied that her social condition
presents impediments of a formidable
character toward the cultivation of the higher
and more refined branches of literature. Liberty,
equality, and fraternity are not quite so favorable
to the cultivation of elegant tastes as might be
imagined; where every kind of social rank is
obliterated, the field of observation, which is the
province of fiction, becomes proportionately narrow;
and although human nature must be the
same under every form of government, the liberty
of a thorough democracy by no means
compensates for its vulgarity. It might be
supposed that the very obliteration of all grades
of rank, and the consequent impossibility of acquiring
social distinction, would have a direct
tendency to turn the efforts of genius in directions
where the acquisition of fame might be supposed
to compensate for more substantial rewards; and
when men could no longer win their way to a
coronet, they would redouble their exertions to
obtain the wreath. The history of literature,
however, teaches us the reverse: its most brilliant
lights have shone in dark and uncongenial
times. Amid the clouds of bigotry and oppression,
in the darkest days of tyranny and demoralization,
their lustre has been the most brilliant.
Under the luxurious tyranny of the empire,
Virgil and Horace sang their immortal strains;
the profligacy of Louis the Fourteenth produced
a Voltaire and a Rosseau; amid the oppression
of his country grew and flourished the gigantic
intellect of Milton; Ireland, in the darkest times
of her gloomy history, gave birth to the imperishable
genius of Swift; it was less the liberty
of Athens than the tyranny of Philip, which made
Demosthenes an orator; and of the times which
produced our great dramatists it is scarcely
necessary to speak. The proofs, in short, are
numberless. Be this, however, as it may, the
character of American literature which has
fallen under our notice must demonstrate to
every intelligent mind, what immense advantages
she has derived from those sources which
the advocates of her claims would endeavor to
repudiate. There is scarcely a page which
does not contain evidence how largely she has
availed herself of the learning and labors of others.

We do not blame her for this; far from it.
We only say that, having reaped the benefit, it
is unjust to deny the obligation; and that in
discussing her literary pretensions, the plea
which has been put forward in her behalf is
untenable.—Dublin University Magazine.

MILKING IN AUSTRALIA.

This is a very serious operation. First, say
at four o’clock in the morning, you drive
the cows into the stock-yard, where the calves
have been penned up all the previous night in a
hutch in one corner. Then you have to commence
a chase after the first cow, who, with a
perversity common to Australian females, expects
to be pursued two or three times round
the yard, ankle deep in dust or mud, according
to the season, with loud halloas and a thick stick.
This done, she generally proceeds up to the fail,
a kind of pillory, and permits her neck to be
made fast. The cow safe in the fail, her near
hind leg is stretched out to its full length, and
tied to a convenient post with the universal
cordage of Australia, a piece of green hide. At
this stage, in ordinary cases, the milking commences;
but it was one of the hobbies of Mr.
Jumsorew, a practice I have never seen followed
in any other part of the colony, that the cow’s
tail should be held tight during the operation.
This arduous duty I conscientiously performed
for some weeks, until it happened one day that
a young heifer slipped her head out of an ill-fastened
fail, upset milkman and milkpail,
charged the head-stockman, who was unloosing
the calves, to the serious damage of a new pair
of fustians, and ended, in spite of all my efforts,
in clearing the top rail of the stock-yard, leaving
me flat and flabbergasted at the foot of the fence.—From
“Scenes in the Life of a Bushman” (Unpublished.)[Pg 38]

[From Household Words.]

LIZZIE LEIGH.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I

When Death is present in a household on a
Christmas Day, the very contrast between
the time as it now is, and the day as it has often
been, gives a poignancy to sorrow—a more utter
blankness to the desolation. James Leigh
died just as the far-away bells of Rochdale
church were ringing for morning service on
Christmas Day, 1836. A few minutes before
his death, he opened his already glazing eyes,
and made a sign to his wife, by the faint motion
of his lips, that he had yet something to say.
She stooped close down, and caught the broken
whisper, “I forgive her, Anne! May God forgive
me.”

“Oh my love, my dear! only get well, and
I will never cease showing my thanks for those
words. May God in heaven bless thee for saying
them. Thou’rt not so restless, my lad!
may be—Oh God!”

For even while she spoke, he died.

They had been two-and-twenty years man
and wife; for nineteen of those years their life
had been as calm and happy, as the most perfect
uprightness on the one side, and the most complete
confidence and loving submission on the
other, could make it. Milton’s famous line
might have been framed and hung up as the
rule of their married life, for he was truly the
interpreter, who stood between God and her;
she would have considered herself wicked if she
had ever dared even to think him austere,
though as certainly as he was an upright man,
so surely was he hard, stern, and inflexible.
But for three years the moan and the murmur
had never been out of her heart; she had rebelled
against her husband as against a tyrant
with a hidden, sullen rebellion, which tore up
the old landmarks of wifely duty and affection,
and poisoned the fountains whence gentlest love
and reverence had once been forever springing.

But those last blessed words replaced him on
his throne in her heart, and called out penitent
anguish for all the bitter estrangement of later
years. It was this which made her refuse all
the entreaties of her sons, that she would see
the kind-hearted neighbors, who called on their
way from church, to sympathize and condole.
No! she would stay with the dead husband that
had spoken tenderly at last, if for three years
he had kept silence; who knew but what, if
she had only been more gentle and less angrily
reserved he might have relented earlier—and
in time!

She sat rocking herself to and fro by the side
of the bed, while the footsteps below went in
and out; she had been in sorrow too long to
have any violent burst of deep grief now; the
furrows were well worn in her cheeks, and the
tears flowed quietly, if incessantly, all the day
long. But when the winter’s night drew on,
and the neighbors had gone away to their homes,
she stole to the window, and gazed out, long
and wistfully, over the dark, gray moors. She
did not hear her son’s voice, as he spoke to her
from the door, nor his footstep, as he drew
nearer. She started when he touched her.

“Mother! come down to us. There’s no
one but Will and me. Dearest mother, we do
so want you.” The poor lad’s voice trembled,
and he began to cry. It appeared to require
an effort on Mrs. Leigh’s part to tear herself
away from the window, but with a sigh she
complied with his request.

The two boys (for though Will was nearly
twenty-one, she still thought of him as a lad)
had done every thing in their power to make
the house-place comfortable for her. She herself,
in the old days before her sorrow, had
never made a brighter fire or a cleaner hearth,
ready for her husband’s return home, than now
awaited her. The tea-things were all put out, and
the kettle was boiling; and the boys had calmed
their grief down into a kind of sober cheerfulness.
They paid her every attention they could
think of, but received little notice on her part;
she did not resist—she rather submitted to all
their arrangements; but they did not seem to
touch her heart.

When tea was ended—it was merely the form
of tea that had been gone through—Will moved
the things away to the dresser. His mother
leant back languidly in her chair.

“Mother, shall Tom read you a chapter?
He’s a better scholar than I.”

“Ay, lad!” said she, almost eagerly. “That’s
it. Read me the Prodigal Son. Ay, ay, lad.
Thank thee.”

Tom found the chapter, and read it in the
high-pitched voice which is customary in village-schools.
His mother bent forward, her
lips parted, her eyes dilated; her whole body
instinct with eager attention. Will sat with his
head depressed, and hung down. He knew why
that chapter had been chosen; and to him it
recalled the family’s disgrace. When the reading
was ended, he still hung down his head in
gloomy silence. But her face was brighter
than it had been before for the day. Her eyes
looked dreamy, as if she saw a vision; and by
and by she pulled the Bible toward her, and
putting her finger underneath each word, began
to read them aloud in a low voice to herself;
she read again the words of bitter sorrow and
deep humiliation; but most of all she paused
and brightened over the father’s tender reception
of the repentant prodigal.

So passed the Christmas evening in the Upclose
Farm.

The snow had fallen heavily over the dark
waving moorland, before the day of the funeral.
The black, storm-laden dome of heaven lay
very still and close upon the white earth, as
they carried the body forth out of the house
which had known his presence so long as its
ruling power. Two and two the mourners followed,
making a black procession in their winding
march over the unbeaten snow, to Milne-row
church—now lost in some hollow of the[Pg 39]
bleak moors, now slowly climbing the heaving
ascents. There was no long tarrying after the
funeral, for many of the neighbors who accompanied
the body to the grave had far to go, and
the great white flakes which came slowly down,
were the boding forerunners of a heavy storm.
One old friend alone accompanied the widow
and her sons to their home.

The Upclose Farm had belonged for generations
to the Leighs; and yet its possession
hardly raised them above the rank of laborers.
There was the house and outbuildings, all of an
old-fashioned kind, and about seven acres of
barren, unproductive land, which they had never
possessed capital enough to improve; indeed,
they could hardly rely upon it for subsistence;
and it had been customary to bring up the sons
to some trade—such as a wheelwright’s, or
blacksmith’s.

James Leigh had left a will, in the possession
of the old man who accompanied them home.
He read it aloud. James had bequeathed the
farm to his faithful wife, Anne Leigh, for her
life-time; and afterward, to his son William.
The hundred and odd pounds in the savings’-bank
was to accumulate for Thomas.

After the reading was ended, Anne Leigh sat
silent for a time; and then she asked to speak
to Samuel Orme alone. The sons went into
the back-kitchen, and thence strolled out into
the fields, regardless of the driving snow. The
brothers were dearly fond of each other, although
they were very different in character.
Will, the elder, was like his father, stern, reserved,
and scrupulously upright. Tom (who
was ten years younger) was gentle and delicate
as a girl, both in appearance and character.
He had always clung to his mother and dreaded
his father. They did not speak as they walked,
for they were only in the habit of talking about
facts, and hardly knew the more sophisticated
language applied to the description of feelings.

Meanwhile their mother had taken hold of
Samuel Orme’s arm with her trembling hand.

“Samuel, I must let the farm—I must.”

“Let the farm! What’s come o’er the
woman?”

“Oh, Samuel!” said she, her eyes swimming
in tears, “I’m just fain to go and live in Manchester.
I mun let the farm.”

Samuel looked and pondered, but did not
speak for some time. At last he said,

“If thou hast made up thy mind, there’s no
speaking again it; and thou must e’en go.
Thou’lt be sadly pottered wi’ Manchester ways;
but that’s not my look-out. Why, thou’lt have
to buy potatoes, a thing thou hast never done
afore in all thy born life. Well! it’s not my
look-out. It’s rather for me than again me.
Our Jenny is going to be married to Tom Higginbotham,
and he was speaking of wanting a
bit of land to begin upon. His father will be
dying sometime, I reckon, and then he’ll step
into the Croft Farm. But meanwhile—”

“Then, thou’lt let the farm,” said she, still
as eagerly as ever.

“Ay, ay, he’ll take it fast enough, I’ve a
notion. But I’ll not drive a bargain with thee
just now; it would not be right; we’ll wait a
bit.”

“No; I can not wait, settle it out at once.”

“Well, well; I’ll speak to Will about it. I
see him out yonder. I’ll step to him, and talk
it over.”

Accordingly he went and joined the two lads,
and without more ado, began the subject to them.

“Will, thy mother is fain to go live in Manchester,
and covets to let the farm. Now, I’m
willing to take it for Tom Higginbotham; but I
like to drive a keen bargain, and there would
be no fun chaffering with thy mother just now.
Let thee and me buckle to, my lad! and try
and cheat each other; it will warm us this cold
day.”

“Let the farm!” said both the lads at once,
with infinite surprise. “Go live in Manchester!”

When Samuel Orme found that the plan had
never before been named to either Will or Tom,
he would have nothing to do with it, he said,
until they had spoken to their mother; likely
she was “dazed” by her husband’s death; he
would wait a day or two, and not name it to
any one; not to Tom Higginbotham himself, or
may be he would set his heart upon it. The
lads had better go in and talk it over with their
mother. He bade them good day, and left
them.

Will looked very gloomy, but he did not
speak till they got near the house. Then he
said,

“Tom, go to th’ shippon, and supper the
cows. I want to speak to mother alone.”

When he entered the house-place, she was
sitting before the fire, looking into its embers.
She did not hear him come in; for some time
she had lost her quick perception of outward
things.

“Mother! what’s this about going to Manchester?”
asked he.

“Oh, lad!” said she, turning round and
speaking in a beseeching tone, “I must go and
seek our Lizzie. I can not rest here for thinking
on her. Many’s the time I’ve left thy
father sleeping in bed, and stole to th’ window,
and looked and looked my heart out toward
Manchester, till I thought I must just set out
and tramp over moor and moss straight away
till I got there, and then lift up every downcast
face till I came to our Lizzie. And often,
when the south wind was blowing soft among
the hollows, I’ve fancied (it could but be fancy,
thou knowest) I heard her crying upon me; and
I’ve thought the voice came closer and closer,
till it last it was sobbing out “Mother” close to
the door; and I’ve stolen down, and undone the
latch before now, and looked out into the still,
black night, thinking to see her, and turned sick
and sorrowful when I heard no living sound but
the sough of the wind dying away. Oh! speak
not to me of stopping here, when she may be
perishing for hunger, like the poor lad in the[Pg 40]
parable.” And now she lifted up her voice and
wept aloud.

Will was deeply grieved. He had been old
enough to be told the family shame when, more
than two years before, his father had had his
letter to his daughter returned by her mistress
in Manchester, telling him that Lizzie had left
her service some time—and why. He had
sympathized with his father’s stern anger;
though he had thought him something hard, it
is true, when he had forbidden his weeping,
heart-broken wife to go and try to find her poor
sinning child, and declared that henceforth they
would have no daughter; that she should be as
one dead; and her name never more be named
at market or at meal-time, in blessing or in
prayer. He had held his peace, with compressed
lips and contracted brow, when the
neighbors had noticed to him how poor Lizzie’s
death had aged both his father and his mother;
and how they thought the bereaved couple
would never hold up their heads again. He
himself had felt as if that one event had made
him old before his time; and had envied Tom
the tears he had shed over poor, pretty, innocent,
dead Lizzie. He thought about her sometimes,
till he ground his teeth together, and
could have struck her down in her shame. His
mother had never named her to him until now.

“Mother!” said he at last. “She may be
dead. Most likely she is.”

“No, Will; she is not dead,” said Mrs.
Leigh. “God will not let her die till I’ve seen
her once again. Thou dost not know how I’ve
prayed and prayed just once again to see her
sweet face, and tell her I’ve forgiven her,
though she’s broken my heart—she has, Will.”
She could not go on for a minute or two for the
choking sobs. “Thou dost not know that, or
thou wouldst not say she could be dead—for
God is very merciful, Will; He is—He is much
more pitiful than man—I could never ha’ spoken
to thy father as I did to Him—and yet thy
father forgave her at last. The last words he
said were that he forgave her. Thou’lt not be
harder than thy father, Will? Do not try and
hinder me going to seek her, for it’s no use.”

Will sat very still for a long time before he
spoke. At last he said, “I’ll not hinder you.
I think she’s dead, but that’s no matter.”

“She is not dead,” said her mother, with low
earnestness. Will took no notice of the interruption.

“We will all go to Manchester for a twelvemonth,
and let the farm to Tom Higginbotham.
I’ll get blacksmith’s work; and Tom can have
good schooling for awhile, which he’s always
craving for. At the end of the year you’ll
come back, mother, and give over fretting for
Lizzie and think with me that she is dead—and
to my mind, that would be more comfort
than to think of her living;” he dropped his
voice as he spoke these last words. She shook
her head, but made no answer. He asked again,

“Will you, mother, agree to this?”

“I’ll agree to it a-this-ons,” said she. “If I
hear and see naught of her for a twelvemonth
me being in Manchester looking out, I’ll just
ha’ broken my heart fairly before the year’s
ended, and then I shall know neither love nor
sorrow for her any more, when I’m at rest in
the grave—I’ll agree to that, Will.”

“Well, I suppose it must be so. I shall not
tell Tom, mother, why we’re flitting to Manchester.
Best spare him.”

“As thou wilt,” said she, sadly, “so that we
go, that’s all.”

Before the wild daffodils were in flower in
the sheltered copses round Upclose Farm, the
Leighs were settled in their Manchester home;
if they could ever grow to consider that place
as a home, where there was no garden, or outbuilding,
no fresh breezy outlet, no far-stretching
view, over moor and hollow—no dumb animals
to be tended, and, what more than all
they missed, no old haunting memories, even
though those remembrances told of sorrow, and
the dead and gone.

Mrs. Leigh heeded the loss of all these things
less than her sons. She had more spirit in her
countenance than she had had for months, because
now she had hope; of a sad enough kind,
to be sure, but still it was hope. She performed
all her household duties, strange and complicated
as they were, and bewildered as she
was with all the town-necessities of her new
manner of life; but when her house was “sided,”
and the boys come home from their work, in
the evening, she would put on her things and
steal out, unnoticed, as she thought, but not
without many a heavy sigh from Will, after
she had closed the house-door and departed. It
was often past midnight before she came back,
pale and weary, with almost a guilty look upon
her face; but that face so full of disappointment
and hope deferred, that Will had never the
heart to say what he thought of the folly and
hopelessness of the search. Night after night
it was renewed, till days grew to weeks, and
weeks to months. All this time Will did his
duty toward her as well as he could, without
having sympathy with her. He staid at home
in the evenings for Tom’s sake, and often wished
he had Tom’s pleasure in reading, for the
time hung heavy on his hands, as he sat up for
his mother.

I need not tell you how the mother spent the
weary hours. And yet I will tell you something.
She used to wander out, at first as if
without a purpose, till she rallied her thoughts,
and brought all her energies to bear on the one
point; then she went with earnest patience
along the least known ways to some new part
of the town, looking wistfully with dumb entreaty
into people’s faces; sometimes catching
a glimpse of a figure which had a kind of momentary
likeness to her child’s, and following
that figure with never wearying perseverance,
till some light from shop or lamp showed the
cold, strange face which was not her daughter’s.
Once or twice a kind-hearted passer-by, struck
by her look of yearning woe, turned back and[Pg 41]
offered help, or asked her what she wanted.
When so spoken to, she answered only, “You
don’t know a poor girl they call Lizzie Leigh,
do you?” and when they denied all knowledge,
she shook her head and went on again. I think
they believed her to be crazy. But she never
spoke first to any one. She sometimes took a
few minutes’ rest on the door-steps, and sometimes
(very seldom) covered her face and cried;
but she could not afford to lose time and chances
in this way; while her eyes were blinded with
tears, the lost one might pass by unseen.

One evening, in the rich time of shortening
autumn-days, Will saw an old man, who, without
being absolutely drunk, could not guide
himself rightly along the foot-path, and was
mocked for his unsteadiness of gait by the idle
boys of the neighborhood. For his father’s
sake, Will regarded old age with tenderness,
even when most degraded and removed from
the stern virtues which dignified that father; so
he took the old man home, and seemed to believe
his often-repeated assertions that he drank
nothing but water. The stranger tried to
stiffen himself up into steadiness as he drew
nearer home, as if there were some one there,
for whose respect he cared even in his half-intoxicated
state, or whose feelings he feared
to grieve. His home was exquisitely clean and
neat even in outside appearance; threshold,
window, and window-sill, were outward signs
of some spirit of purity within. Will was rewarded
for his attention by a bright glance of
thanks, succeeded by a blush of shame, from a
young woman of twenty or thereabouts. She
did not speak, or second her father’s hospitable
invitation to him to be seated. She seemed
unwilling that a stranger should witness her
father’s attempts at stately sobriety, and Will
could not bear to stay and see her distress.
But when the old man, with many a flabby
shake of the hand, kept asking him to come
again some other evening and see them, Will
sought her downcast eyes, and, though he could
not read their vailed meaning, he answered,
timidly, “If it’s agreeable to every body, I’ll
come—and thank ye.” But there was no answer
from the girl to whom this speech was in
reality addressed; and Will left the house, liking
her all the better for never speaking.

He thought about her a great deal for the
next day or two; he scolded himself for being
so foolish as to think of her, and then fell to
with fresh vigor, and thought of her more than
ever. He tried to depreciate her; he told himself
she was not pretty, and then made indignant
answer that he liked her looks much better
than any beauty of them all. He wished he
was not so country-looking, so red-faced, so
broad-shouldered; while she was like a lady,
with her smooth, colorless complexion, her
bright dark hair, and her spotless dress. Pretty,
or not pretty, she drew his footsteps toward
her; he could not resist the impulse that made
him wish to see her once more, and find out
some fault which should unloose his heart from
her unconscious keeping. But there she was,
pure and maidenly as before. He sat and
looked, answering her father at cross-purposes,
while she drew more and more into the shadow
of the chimney-corner out of sight. Then the
spirit that possessed him (it was not he himself,
sure, that did so impudent a thing!) made him
get up and carry the candle to a different place,
under the pretence of giving her more light at
her sewing, but, in reality, to be able to see
her better; she could not stand this much longer,
but jumped up, and said she must put her little
niece to bed; and surely, there never was, before
or since, so troublesome a child of two
years old; for, though Will staid an hour and a
half longer, she never came down again. He
won the father’s heart, though, by his capacity
as a listener, for some people are not at all particular,
and, so that they themselves may talk
on undisturbed, are not so unreasonable as to
expect attention to what they say.

Will did gather this much, however, from the
old man’s talk. He had once been quite in a
genteel line of business, but had failed for more
money than any greengrocer he had heard of:
at least, any who did not mix up fish and game
with greengrocery proper. This grand failure
seemed to have been the event of his life, and
one on which he dwelt with a strange kind of
pride. It appeared as if at present he rested
from his past exertions (in the bankrupt line),
and depended on his daughter, who kept a small
school for very young children. But all these
particulars Will only remembered and understood,
when he had left the house; at the time
he heard them, he was thinking of Susan. After
he had made good his footing at Mr. Palmer’s,
he was not long, you may be sure, without
finding some reason for returning again and
again. He listened to her father, he talked to
the little niece, but he looked at Susan, both
while he listened and while he talked. Her
father kept on insisting upon his former gentility,
the details of which would have appeared
very questionable to Will’s mind, if the sweet,
delicate, modest Susan had not thrown an inexplicable
air of refinement over all she came
near. She never spoke much: she was generally
diligently at work; but when she moved, it
was so noiselessly, and when she did speak, it
was in so low and soft a voice, that silence,
speech, motion, and stillness, alike seemed to
remove her high above Will’s reach, into some
saintly and inaccessible air of glory—high above
his reach, even as she knew him! And, if she
were made acquainted with the dark secret behind,
of his sister’s shame, which was kept ever
present to his mind by his mother’s nightly
search among the outcast and forsaken, would
not Susan shrink away from him with loathing,
as if he were tainted by the involuntary relationship?
This was his dread; and thereupon
followed a resolution that he would withdraw
from her sweet company before it was too late.
So he resisted internal temptation, and staid at
home, and suffered and sighed. He became[Pg 42]
angry with his mother for her untiring patience
in seeking for one who, he could not help hoping,
was dead rather than alive. He spoke sharply
to her, and received only such sad, deprecatory
answers as made him reproach himself, and
still more lose sight of peace of mind. This
struggle could not last long without affecting
his health; and Tom, his sole companion through
the long evenings, noticed his increasing languor,
his restless irritability, with perplexed
anxiety, and at last resolved to call his mother’s
attention to his brother’s haggard, care-worn
looks. She listened with a startled recollection
of Will’s claims upon her love. She noticed
his decreasing appetite, and half-checked sighs.

“Will, lad! what’s come o’er thee?” said
she to him, as he sat listlessly gazing into the
fire.

“There’s naught the matter with me,” said
he, as if annoyed at her remark.

“Nay, lad, but there is.” He did not speak
again to contradict her; indeed she did not
know if he had heard her, so unmoved did he
look.

“Would’st like to go back to Upclose Farm?”
asked she, sorrowfully.

“It’s just blackberrying time,” said Tom.

Will shook his head. She looked at him a
while, as if trying to read that expression of
despondency and trace it back to its source.

“Will and Tom could go,” said she; “I must
stay here till I’ve found her, thou know’st,”
continued she, dropping her voice.

He turned quickly round, and with the authority
he at all times exercised over Tom, bade
him begone to bed.

When Tom had left the room he prepared to
speak.

CHAPTER II.

“Mother,” then said Will, “why will you
keep on thinking she’s alive? If she were but
dead, we need never name her name again.
We’ve never heard naught on her since father
wrote her that letter; we never knew whether
she got it or not. She’d left her place before
then. Many a one dies is—”

“Oh, my lad! dunnot speak so to me, or my
heart will break outright,” said his mother, with
a sort of cry. Then she calmed herself, for she
yearned to persuade him to her own belief.
“Thou never asked, and thou’rt too like thy
father for me to tell without asking—but it
were all to be near Lizzie’s old place that I
settled down on this side o’ Manchester; and
the very day after we came, I went to her
old missus, and asked to speak a word wi’ her.
I had a strong mind to cast it up to her, that she
should ha’ sent my poor lass away without telling
on it to us first; but she were in black, and
looked so sad I could na’ find in my heart to
threep it up. But I did ask her a bit about our
Lizzie. The master would have her turned
away at a day’s warning (he’s gone to t’other
place; I hope he’ll meet wi’ more mercy there
than he showed our Lizzie—I do); and when the
missus asked her should she write to us, she says
Lizzie shook her head; and when she speered
at her again, the poor lass went down on her
knees, and begged her not, for she said it would
break my heart (as it has done, Will—God knows
it has),” said the poor mother, choking with her
struggle to keep down her hard, overmastering
grief, “and her father would curse her—Oh,
God, teach me to be patient.” She could not
speak for a few minutes. “And the lass
threatened, and said she’d go drown herself in
the canal, if the missus wrote home—and so—

“Well! I’d got a trace of my child—the
missus thought she’d gone to th’ workhouse to
be nursed; and there I went—and there, sure
enough, she had been—and they’d turned her
out as soon as she were strong, and told her she
were young enough to work—but whatten kind
o’ work would be open to her, lad, and her baby
to keep?”

Will listened to his mother’s tale with deep
sympathy, not unmixed with the old bitter
shame. But the opening of her heart had unlocked
his, and after a while he spoke.

“Mother! I think I’d e’en better go home.
Tom can stay wi’ thee. I know I should stay
too, but I can not stay in peace so near—her—without
craving to see her—Susan Palmer, I
mean.”

“Has the old Mr. Palmer thou telled me on
a daughter?” asked Mrs. Leigh.

“Ay, he has. And I love her above a bit.
And it’s because I love her I want to leave
Manchester. That’s all.”

Mrs. Leigh tried to understand this speech for
some time, but found it difficult of interpretation.

“Why should’st thou not tell her thou lov’s
her? Thou’rt a likely lad, and sure o’ work.
Thou’lt have Upclose at my death; and as for
that I could let thee have it now, and keep mysel’
by doing a bit of charring. It seems to me
a very backward sort o’ way of winning her to
think of leaving Manchester.”

“Oh, mother, she’s so gentle and so good—she’s
downright holy. She’s never known a
touch of sin; and can I ask her to marry me,
knowing what we do about Lizzie, and fearing
worse! I doubt if one like her could ever care
for me; but if she knew about my sister, it
would put a gulf between us, and she’d shudder
up at the thought of crossing it. You don’t
know how good she is, mother!”

“Will, Will! if she’s so good as thou say’st,
she’ll have pity on such as my Lizzie. If she
has no pity for such, she’s a cruel Pharisee, and
thou’rt best without her.”

But he only shook his head, and sighed; and
for the time the conversation dropped.

But a new idea sprang up in Mrs. Leigh’s
head. She thought that she would go and see
Susan Palmer, and speak up for Will, and tell
her the truth about Lizzie; and according to
her pity for the poor sinner, would she be worthy
or unworthy of him. She resolved to go the
very next afternoon, but without telling any one[Pg 43]
of her plan. Accordingly she looked out the
Sunday clothes she had never before had the
heart to unpack since she came to Manchester,
but which she now desired to appear in, in
order to do credit to Will. She put on her old-fashioned
black mode bonnet, trimmed with real
lace; her scarlet cloth cloak, which she had had
ever since she was married; and always spotlessly
clean, she set forth on her unauthorized
embassy. She knew the Palmers lived in Crown-street,
though where she had heard it she could
not tell; and modestly asking her way, she arrived
in the street about a quarter to four
o’clock. She stopped to inquire the exact
number, and the woman whom she addressed
told her that Susan Palmer’s school would not
be loosed till four, and asked her to step in and
wait until then at her house.

“For,” said she, smiling, “them that wants
Susan Palmer wants a kind friend of ours; so
we, in a manner, call cousins. Sit down, missus,
sit down. I’ll wipe the chair, so that it shanna
dirty your cloak. My mother used to wear them
bright cloaks, and they’re right gradely things
again’ a green field.”

“Han ye known Susan Palmer long?” asked
Mrs. Leigh, pleased with the admiration of her
cloak.

“Ever since they comed to live in our street.
Our Sally goes to her school.”

“Whatten sort of a lass is she, for I ha’ never
seen her?”

“Well, as for looks, I can not say. It’s so
long since I first knowed her, that I’ve clean
forgotten what I thought of her then. My master
says he never saw such a smile for gladdening
the heart. But may be it’s not looks you’re
asking about. The best thing I can say of her
looks is, that she’s just one a stranger would
stop in the street to ask help from if he needed
it. All the little childer creeps as close as they
can to her; she’ll have as many as three or four
hanging to her apron all at once.”

“Is she cocket at all?”

“Cocket, bless you! you never saw a creature
less set up in all your life. Her father’s cocket
enough. No! she’s not cocket any way. You’ve
not heard much of Susan Palmer, I reckon, if you
think she’s cocket. She’s just one to come quietly
in, and do the very thing most wanted; little
things, maybe, that any one could do, but that
few would think on, for another. She’ll bring
her thimble wi’ her, and mend up after the
childer o’ nights—and she writes all Betty
Harker’s letters to her grandchild out at service—and
she’s in nobody’s way, and that’s a great
matter, I take it. Here’s the childer running
past! School is loosed. You’ll find her now,
missus, ready to hear and to help. But we
none on us frab her by going near her in schooltime.”

Poor Mrs. Leigh’s heart began to beat, and
she could almost have turned round and gone
home again. Her country breeding had made
her shy of strangers, and this Susan Palmer appeared
to her like a real born lady by all accounts.
So she knocked with a timid feeling at the indicated
door, and when it was opened, dropped a
simple curtsey without speaking. Susan had
her little niece in her arms, curled up with fond
endearment against her breast, but she put her
gently down to the ground, and instantly placed
a chair in the best corner of the room for Mrs.
Leigh, when she told her who she was.

“It’s not Will as has asked me to come,” said
the mother, apologetically, “I’d a wish just to
speak to you myself!”

Susan colored up to her temples, and stooped
to pick up the little toddling girl. In a minute
or two Mrs. Leigh began again.

“Will thinks you would na respect us if you
knew all; but I think you could na help feeling
for us in the sorrow God has put upon us; so I
just put on my bonnet, and came off unknownst
to the lads. Every one says you’re very good,
and that the Lord has keeped you from falling
from His ways; but maybe you’ve never yet
been tried and tempted as some is. I’m perhaps
speaking too plain, but my heart’s welly
broken, and I can’t be choice in my words as
them who are happy can. Well, now! I’ll tell
you the truth. Will dreads you to hear it, but
I’ll just tell it you. You mun know”—but here
the poor woman’s words failed her, and she could
do nothing but sit rocking herself backward and
forward, with sad eyes, straight-gazing into
Susan’s face, as if they tried to tell the tale of
agony which the quivering lips refused to utter.
Those wretched stony eyes forced the tears down
Susan’s cheeks, and, as if this sympathy gave the
mother strength, she went on in a low voice, “I
had a daughter once, my heart’s darling. Her
father thought I made too much on her, and that
she’d grow marred staying at home; so he said
she mun go among strangers, and learn to rough
it. She were young, and liked the thought of
seeing a bit of the world; and her father heard
on a place in Manchester. Well! I’ll not weary
you. That poor girl were led astray; and first
thing we heard on it, was when a letter of her
father’s was sent back by her missus, saying she’d
left her place, or, to speak right, the master had
turned her into the street soon as he had heard
of her condition—and she not seventeen!”

She now cried aloud; and Susan wept too.
The little child looked up into their faces, and,
catching their sorrow, began to whimper and
wail. Susan took it softly up, and hiding her
face in its little neck, tried to restrain her tears,
and think of comfort for the mother. At last
she said:

“Where is she now?”

“Lass! I dunnot know,” said Mrs. Leigh,
checking her sobs to communicate this addition
to her distress. “Mrs. Lomax telled me she
went—”

“Mrs. Lomax—what Mrs. Lomax?”

“Her as lives in Brabazon-street. She telled
me my poor wench went to the workhouse fra
there. I’ll not speak again’ the dead; but if her
father would but ha’ letten me—but he were one
who had no notion—no, I’ll not say that; best[Pg 44]
say naught. He forgave her on his death-bed.
I dare say I did na go th’ right way to work.”

“Will you hold the child for me one instant?”
said Susan.

“Ay, if it will come to me. Childer used to
be fond on me till I got the sad look on my face
that scares them, I think.”

But the little girl clung to Susan; so she
carried it up-stairs with her. Mrs. Leigh sat by
herself—how long she did not know.

Susan came down with a bundle of far-worn
baby-clothes.

“You must listen to me a bit, and not think
too much about what I’m going to tell you.
Nanny is not my niece, nor any kin to me that
I know of. I used to go out working by the
day. One night, as I came home, I thought
some woman was following me; I turned to look.
The woman, before I could see her face (for she
turned it to one side), offered me something. I
held out my arms by instinct: she dropped a
bundle into them with a bursting sob that went
straight to my heart. It was a baby. I looked
round again; but the woman was gone. She
had run away as quick as lightning. There was
a little packet of clothes—very few—and as if
they were made out of its mother’s gowns, for
they were large patterns to buy for a baby. I
was always fond of babies; and I had not my
wits about me, father says; for it was very cold,
and when I’d seen as well as I could (for it was
past ten) that there was no one in the street, I
brought it in and warmed it. Father was very
angry when he came, and said he’d take it to
the workhouse the next morning, and flyted me
sadly about it. But when morning came I could
not bear to part with it; it had slept in my arms
all night; and I’ve heard what workhouse bringing
is. So I told father I’d give up going out
working, and stay at home and keep school, if I
might only keep the baby; and after a while, he
said if I earned enough for him to have his comforts,
he’d let me; but he’s never taken to her.
Now, don’t tremble so—I’ve but a little more to
tell—and may be I’m wrong in telling it; but I
used to work next door to Mrs. Lomax’s, in
Brabazon-street, and the servants were all thick
together; and I heard about Bessy (they called
her) being sent away. I don’t know that ever
I saw her; but the time would be about fitting
to this child’s age, and I’ve sometimes fancied it
was hers. And now, will you look at the little
clothes that came with her—bless her!”

But Mrs. Leigh had fainted. The strange
joy and shame, and gushing love for the little
child had overpowered her; it was some time
before Susan could bring her round. There she
was all trembling, sick impatience to look at the
little frocks. Among them was a slip of paper
which Susan had forgotten to name, that had
been pinned to the bundle. On it was scrawled
in a round stiff hand:

“Call her Anne. She does not cry much, and
takes a deal of notice. God bless you and forgive
me.”

The writing was no clew at all; the name
“Anne,” common though it was, seemed something
to build upon. But Mrs. Leigh recognized
one of the frocks instantly, as being made out of
part of a gown that she and her daughter had
bought together in Rochdale.

She stood up, and stretched out her hands in
the attitude of blessing over Susan’s bent head.

“God bless you, and show you his mercy in
your need, as you have shown it to this little
child.”

She took the little creature in her arms, and
smoothed away her sad looks to a smile, and
kissed it fondly, saying over and over again,
“Nanny, Nanny, my little Nanny.” At last
the child was soothed, and looked in her face
and smiled back again.

“It has her eyes,” said she to Susan.

“I never saw her to the best of my knowledge
I think it must be hers by the frock. But where
can she be?”

“God knows,” said Mrs. Leigh; “I dare not
think she’s dead. I’m sure she isn’t.”

“No! she’s not dead. Every now and then
a little packet is thrust in under our door, with
may be two half-crowns in it; once it was half-a-sovereign.
Altogether I’ve got seven-and-thirty
shillings wrapped up for Nanny. I never
touch it, but I’ve often thought the poor mother
feels near to God when she brings this money.
Father wanted to set the policeman to watch,
but I said, No, for I was afraid if she was watched
she might not come, and it seemed such a holy
thing to be checking her in, I could not find in
my heart to do it.”

“Oh, if we could but find her! I’d take her
in my arms, and we’d just lie down and die
together.”

“Nay, don’t speak so!” said Susan gently,
“for all that’s come and gone, she may turn
right at last. Mary Magdalen did, you know.”

“Eh! but I were nearer right about thee
than Will. He thought you would never look
on him again, if you knew about Lizzie. But
thou’rt not a Pharisee.”

“I’m sorry he thought I could be so hard,”
said Susan in a low voice, and coloring up. Then
Mrs. Leigh was alarmed, and in her motherly
anxiety, she began to fear lest she had injured
Will in Susan’s estimation.

“You see Will thinks so much of you—gold
would not be good enough for you to walk on,
in his eye. He said you’d never look at him as
he was, let alone his being brother to my poor
wench. He loves you so, it makes him think
meanly on every thing belonging to himself, as
not fit to come near ye—but he’s a good lad,
and a good son—thou’lt be a happy woman if
thou’lt have him—so don’t let my words go
against him; don’t!”

But Susan hung her head and made no answer.
She had not known until now, that Will thought
so earnestly and seriously about her; and even
now she felt afraid that Mrs. Leigh’s words
promised her too much happiness, and that they
could not be true. At any rate the instinct of
modesty made her shrink from saying any thing[Pg 45]
which might seem like a confession of her own
feelings to a third person. Accordingly she
turned the conversation on the child.

“I’m sure he could not help loving Nanny,”
said she. “There never was such a good little
darling; don’t you think she’d win his heart if
he knew she was his niece, and perhaps bring
him to think kindly on his sister?”

“I dunnot know,” said Mrs. Leigh, shaking
her head. “He has a turn in his eye like his
father, that makes me—. He’s right down good
though. But you see I’ve never been a good
one at managing folk; one severe look turns me
sick, and then I say just the wrong thing, I’m so
fluttered. Now I should like nothing better than
to take Nancy home with me, but Tom knows
nothing but that his sister is dead, and I’ve not
the knack of speaking rightly to Will. I dare
not do it, and that’s the truth. But you mun
not think badly of Will. He’s so good hissel,
that he can’t understand how any one can do
wrong; and, above all, I’m sure he loves you
dearly.”

“I don’t think I could part with Nancy,” said
Susan, anxious to stop this revelation of Will’s
attachment to herself. “He’ll come round to
her soon; he can’t fail; and I’ll keep a sharp
look-out after the poor mother, and try and catch
her the next time she comes with her little parcels
of money.”

“Ay, lass! we mun get hold of her; my
Lizzie. I love thee dearly for thy kindness to
her child; but, if thou can’st catch her for me,
I’ll pray for thee when I’m too near my death to
speak words; and while I live, I’ll serve thee
next to her—she mun come first, thou know’st.
God bless thee, lass. My heart is lighter by a
deal than it was when I comed in. Them lads
will be looking for me home, and I mun go,
and leave this little sweet one,” kissing it. “If
I can take courage, I’ll tell Will all that has
come and gone between us two. He may come
and see thee, mayn’t he?”

“Father will be very glad to see him, I’m sure,”
replied Susan. The way in which this was spoken
satisfied Mrs. Leigh’s anxious heart that she had
done Will no harm by what she had said; and
with many a kiss to the little one, and one more
fervent tearful blessing on Susan, she went homeward.

CHAPTER III.

That night Mrs. Leigh stopped at home;
that only night for many months. Even Tom,
the scholar, looked up from his books in amazement;
but then he remembered that Will had
not been well, and that his mother’s attention
having been called to the circumstance, it was
only natural she should stay to watch him.
And no watching could be more tender, or
more complete. Her loving eyes seemed never
averted from his face; his grave, sad, care-worn
face. When Tom went to bed the mother
left her seat, and going up to Will where he
sat looking at the fire, but not seeing it, she
kissed his forehead, and said,

“Will! lad, I’ve been to see Susan Palmer!”

She felt the start under her hand which was
placed on his shoulder, but he was silent for a
minute or two. Then he said,

“What took you there, mother?”

“Why, my lad, it was likely I should wish
to see one you cared for; I did not put myself
forward. I put on my Sunday clothes, and
tried to behave as yo’d ha liked me. At least
I remember trying at first; but after, I forgot
all.”

She rather wished that he would question
her as to what made her forget all. But he
only said,

“How was she looking, mother?”

“Will, thou seest I never set eyes on her
before; but she’s a good, gentle-looking creature;
and I love her dearly as I have reason to.”

Will looked up with momentary surprise;
for his mother was too shy to be usually taken
with strangers. But after all it was natural in
this case, for who could look at Susan without
loving her? So still he did not ask any questions,
and his poor mother had to take courage,
and try again to introduce the subject near to
her heart. But how?

“Will!” said she (jerking it out, in sudden
despair of her own powers to lead to what she
wanted to say), “I’ve telled her all.”

“Mother! you’ve ruined me,” said he, standing
up, and standing opposite to her with a
stern, white look of affright on his face.

“No! my own dear lad; dunnot look so
scared, I have not ruined you!” she exclaimed,
placing her two hands on his shoulders and
looking fondly into his face. “She’s not one to
harden her heart against a mother’s sorrow.
My own lad, she’s too good for that. She’s
not one to judge and scorn the sinner. She’s
too deep read in her New Testament for that.
Take courage, Will; and thou mayst, for I
watched her well, though it is not for one
woman to let out another’s secret. Sit thee
down, lad, for thou look’st very white.”

He sat down. His mother drew a stool
toward him, and sat at his feet.

“Did you tell her about Lizzie, then?” asked
he, hoarse and low.

“I did, I telled her all; and she fell a crying
over my deep sorrow, and the poor wench’s sin.
And then a light comed into her face, trembling
and quivering with some new, glad thought;
and what dost thou think it was, Will, lad?
Nay, I’ll not misdoubt but that thy heart will
give thanks as mine did, afore God and His
angels, for her great goodness. That little
Nanny is not her niece, she’s our Lizzie’s own
child, my little grandchild.” She could no
longer restrain her tears, and they fell hot and
fast, but still she looked into his face.

“Did she know it was Lizzie’s child? I do
not comprehend,” said he, flushing red.

“She knows now: she did not at first, but
took the little helpless creature in, out of her[Pg 46]
own pitiful, loving heart, guessing only that it
was the child of shame, and she’s worked for
it, and kept it, and tended it ever sin’ it were a
mere baby, and loves it fondly. Will! won’t
you love it?” asked she, beseechingly.

He was silent for an instant; then he said,
“Mother, I’ll try. Give me time, for all these
things startle me. To think of Susan having to
do with such a child!”

“Ay, Will! and to think (as may be yet) of
Susan having to do with the child’s mother!
For she is tender and pitiful, and speaks hopefully
of my lost one, and will try and find her
for me, when she comes, as she does sometimes,
to thrust money under the door for her baby.
Think of that Will. Here’s Susan, good and
pure as the angels in heaven, yet, like them,
full of hope and mercy, and one who, like them,
will rejoice over her as repents. Will, my lad,
I’m not afeared of you now, and I must speak,
and you must listen. I am your mother, and I
dare to command you, because I know I am in
the right and that God is on my side. If He
should lead the poor wandering lassie to Susan’s
door, and she comes back crying and sorrowful,
led by that good angel to us once more, thou
shalt never say a casting-up word to her about
her sin, but be tender and helpful toward one
‘who was lost and is found,’ so may God’s
blessing rest on thee, and so mayst thou lead
Susan home as thy wife.”

She stood, no longer as the meek, imploring,
gentle mother, but firm and dignified, as if the
interpreter of God’s will. Her manner was so
unusual and solemn, that it overcame all Will’s
pride and stubbornness. He rose softly while
she was speaking, and bent his head as if in
reverence at her words, and the solemn injunction
which they conveyed. When she had
spoken, he said in so subdued a voice that she
was almost surprised at the sound, “Mother,
I will.”

“I may be dead and gone—but all the same—thou
wilt take home the wandering sinner,
and heal up her sorrows, and lead her to her
Father’s house. My lad! I can speak no
more; I’m turned very faint.”

He placed her in a chair; he ran for water.
She opened her eyes and smiled.

“God bless you, Will. Oh! I am so happy.
It seems as if she were found; my heart is so
filled with gladness.”

That night, Mr. Palmer staid out late and
long. Susan was afraid that he was at his
old haunts and habits—getting tipsy at some
public-house; and this thought oppressed her,
even though she had so much to make her
happy, in the consciousness that Will loved her.
She sat up long, and then she went to bed,
leaving all arranged as well as she could for
her father’s return. She looked at the little,
rosy sleeping girl who was her bed-fellow, with
redoubled tenderness, and with many a prayerful
thought. The little arms entwined her neck
as she lay down, for Nanny was a light sleeper,
and was conscious that she, who was loved with
all the power of that sweet childish heart, was
near her, and by her, although she was too
sleepy to utter any of her half-formed words.

And by-and-by she heard her father come
home, stumbling uncertain, trying first the windows,
and next the door-fastenings, with many
a loud, incoherent murmur. The little innocent
twined around her seemed all the sweeter and
more lovely, when she thought sadly of her
erring father; And presently he called aloud
for a light; she had left matches and all arranged
as usual on the dresser, but, fearful
of some accident from fire, in his unusually intoxicated
state, she now got up softly, and putting
on a cloak, went down to his assistance.

Alas! the little arms that were unclosed
from her soft neck belonged to a light, easily
awakened sleeper. Nanny missed her darling
Susy, and terrified at being left alone in the
vast, mysterious darkness, which had no bounds,
and seemed infinite, she slipped out of bed, and
tottered in her little night-gown toward the
door. There was a light below, and there
was Susy and safety! So she went onward
two steps toward the steep, abrupt stairs; and
then dazzled with sleepiness, she stood, she
wavered, she fell! Down on her head, on the
stone floor she fell! Susan flew to her, and
spoke all soft, entreating, loving words; but
her white lids covered, up the blue violets of
eyes, and there was no murmur came out of the
pale lips. The warm tears that rained down,
did not awaken her; she lay stiff, and weary
with her short life, on Susan’s knee. Susan
went sick with terror. She carried her up-stairs,
and laid her tenderly in bed; she dressed
herself most hastily, with her trembling fingers.
Her father was asleep on the settle down stairs;
and useless, and worse than useless if awake.
But Susan flew out of the door, and down the
quiet, resounding street, toward the nearest
doctor’s house. Quickly she went; but as
quickly a shadow followed, as if impelled by
some sudden terror. Susan rung wildly at the
night-bell—the shadow crouched near. The
doctor looked out from an up-stairs window.

“A little child has fallen down stairs at
No. 9, Crown-street, and is very ill—dying I’m
afraid. Please, for God’s sake, sir, come directly.
No. 9, Crown-street.”

“I’ll be there directly,” said he, and shut the
window.

“For that God you have just spoken about—for
His sake—tell me are you Susan Palmer?
Is it my child that lies a-dying?” said the
shadow, springing forward, and clutching poor
Susan’s arm.

“It is a little child of two years old—I do not
know whose it is; I love it as my own. Come
with me, whoever you are; come with me.”

The two sped along the silent streets—as
silent as the night were they. They entered
the house; Susan snatched up the light, and
carried it up-stairs. The other followed.

She stood with wild glaring eyes by the bed
side, never looking at Susan, but hungrily gazing[Pg 47]
at the little, white, still child. She stooped
down, and put her hand tight on her own heart,
as if to still its beating, and bent her ear to the
pale lips. Whatever the result was, she did
not speak; but threw off the bed-clothes wherewith
Susan had tenderly covered up the little
creature, and felt its left side.

Then she threw up her arms with a cry of
wild despair.

“She is dead! she is dead!”

She looked so fierce, so mad, so haggard,
that for an instant Susan was terrified—the
next, the holy God had put courage into her
heart, and her pure arms were round that
guilty, wretched creature, and her tears were
falling fast and warm upon her breast. But
she was thrown off with violence.

“You killed her—you slighted her—you let
her fall down those stairs! you killed her!”

Susan cleared off the thick mist before her,
and gazing at the mother with her clear, sweet,
angel-eyes, said, mournfully,

“I would have laid down my life for her.”

“Oh, the murder is on my soul!” exclaimed
the wild, bereaved mother, with the fierce impetuosity
of one who has none to love her and
to be beloved, regard to whom might teach
self-restraint.

“Hush!” said Susan, her finger on her lips.
“Here is the doctor. God may suffer her to
live.”

The poor mother turned sharp round. The
doctor mounted the stair. Ah! that mother was
right; the little child was really dead and gone.

And when he confirmed her judgment, the
mother fell down in a fit. Susan, with her
deep grief had to forget herself, and forget her
darling (her charge for years), and question the
doctor what she must do with the poor wretch,
who lay on the floor in such extreme of misery.

“She is the mother!” said she.