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Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, September, 1880

Author: Various

Release date: January 30, 2005 [eBook #14842]
                Most recently updated: December 19, 2020

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE, VOLUME 26, SEPTEMBER, 1880 ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team






LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._



SEPTEMBER, 1880.



EKONIAH SCRUB: AMONG FLORIDA LAKES

[Illustration: THE FORD.]

[Note: Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by J.B.
LIPPINCOTT & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington.]



"And if you do get lost after that, it's no great matter," said the
county clerk, folding up his map, "for then all you've got to do is to
find William Townsend and inquire."

He had been giving us the itinerary for our "cross-country" journey, by
way of the Lakes, to Ekoniah Scrub. How many of all the Florida
tourists know where that is? I wonder. Or even _what_ it is--the
strange amphibious land which goes on from year to year
"developing"--the solid ground into marshy "parrairas," the prairies
into lakes, bright, sparkling sapphires which Nature is threading, one
by one, year by year, upon her emerald chaplet of forest borderland?
How many of them all have guessed that close at hand, hidden away amid
the shadows of the scrub-oaks, lies her laboratory, where any day they
may steal in upon her at her work and catch a world a-making?

There are three individuals who know a little more about it now than
they did a few weeks since--three, or shall we not rather say four? For
who shall say that Barney gained less from the excursion than the
Artist, the Scribe and the Small Boy who were his fellow-travellers?
That Barney became a party to the expedition in the character, so to
speak, of a lay-brother, expected to perform the servile labor of the
establishment while his superiors were worshipping at Nature's shrines,
in nowise detracted from his improvement of the bright spring holiday.
It was, indeed, upon the Small Boy who beat the mule, rather than upon
the mule that drew the wagon, that the fatigues of the expedition fell.
"He just glimpses around at me with his old eyeball," says the Small
Boy, exasperate, throwing away his broken cudgel, "and that's all the
good it does."

We knew nothing more of Ekoniah when we set out upon our journey than
that it was the old home of an Indian tribe in the long-ago days before
primeval forest had given place to the second growth of "scrub," and
that it was a region unknown to the Northern tourist. It lies to the
south-west of Magnolia, our point of departure on the St. John's River,
but at first our route lay westerly, that it might include the
lake-country of the Ridge.

"It's a pretty kentry," said a friendly "Cracker," of whom, despite the
county clerk's itinerary, we were fain to ask the way within two hours
after starting--"a right pretty kentry, but it's all alike. You'll be
tired of it afore you're done gone halfway."

Is he blind, our friend the Cracker? Already, in the very outset of our
journey, we have beheld such varied beauties as have steeped our souls
in joy. After weeks of rainless weather the morning had been showery,
and on our setting forth at noon we had found the world new washed and
decked for our coming. Birds were singing, rainbows glancing, in
quivering, water-laden trees; flowers were shimmering in the sunshine;
the young growth was springing up glorious from the blackness of
desolating winter fires. Such tender tones of pink and gray! such
fiery-hearted reds and browns and olive-greens! such misty vagueness in
the shadows! such brilliance in the sunlight that melted through the
openings of the woods! "All alike," indeed! No "accidents" of rock or
hill are here, but oh the grandeur of those far-sweeping curves of
undulating surface! the mystery of those endless aisles of
solemn-whispering pines! the glory of color, intense and fiery, which
breathes into every object a throbbing, living soul!

For hours we journeyed through the forest, always in the centre of a
vast circle of scattered pines, upon the outer edge of which the trees
grew dense and dark, stretching away into infinity. Our road wandered
in and out among the prostrate victims of many a summer tempest: now we
were winding around dark "bays" of sweet-gum and magnolia; now skirting
circular ponds of delicate young cypress; now crossing narrow
"branches" sunk deep in impenetrable "hummocks" of close-crowded oak
and ash and maple, thick-matted with vines and undergrowth; now pausing
to gather orchis and pitcher-plants and sun-kisses and andromeda; now
fording the broad bend of Peter's Creek where it flows, sapphire in the
sunshine, out from the moss-draped live-oaks between high banks of red
and yellow clays and soft gray sand, to lose itself in a tangle of
flowering shrubs; now losing and finding our way among the intricate
cross-roads that lead by Bradley's Creek and Darbin Savage's tramway
and the "new-blazed road" of the county clerk's itinerary. Suddenly the
sky grew dark: thunder began to roll, and--were we in the right road?
It seemed suspiciously well travelled, for now we called to mind that
Middleburg was nigh at hand, and thither we had been warned _not_ to
go.

There was a house in the distance, the second we had seen since leaving
the "settle_ments_" near the river. And there we learned that we were
right and wrong: it _was_ the Middleburg road. After receiving sundry
lucid directions respecting a "blind road" and an "old field," we
turned away. How dark it was growing! how weirdly soughed the wind
among the pine tops! how bodingly the thunder growled afar! There came
a great slow drop: another, and suddenly, with swiftly-rushing sound,
the rain was upon us, drenching us all at once before waterproofs and
umbrellas could be made available.

[Illustration: "NOT ALL THE BLANDISHMENTS OF THE SMALL BOY AVAILED."]

It was then that Barney showed the greatness of his soul. In the
confusion of the moment we had run afoul of a stout young oak, which
obstinately menaced the integrity of our axle. It was only possible to
back out of the predicament, but Barney scorned the thought of retreat.
Not all the blandishments of the Small Boy, whether brought to bear in
the form of entreaties, remonstrances, jerks or threats, availed:
Barney stood unmoved, and the hatchet was our only resource. How that
mule's eye twinkled as from time to time he cast a backward glance upon
the Small Boy wrestling with a dull hatchet and a sturdy young
scrub-oak under the pelting rain, amid lightning-flash and
thunder-peal, needs a more graphic pen than mine to describe. A
better-drenched biped than climbed into the wagon at the close of this
episode, or a more thoroughly-satisfied quadruped than jogged along
before him, it would be difficult to find.

As suddenly as they had come up the clouds rolled away, and sunlight
flamed out from the west--so suddenly that it caught the rain halfway
and filled the air with tremulous rainbow hues. Then burst out afresh
the songs of birds, sweet scents thrilled up from flower and shrub, the
very earth was fragrant, and fresh, resinous odors exhaled from every
tree. The sun sank down in gold and purple glory and night swept over
the dark woods. Myriad fireflies flitted round, insects chirped in
every hollow, the whippoorwill called from the distant thicket, the
night-hawk circled in the open glade. A cheerful sound of cow-bells
broke the noisy stillness, the forest opened upon a row of dark
buildings and darker orange trees, and barking of dogs and kindly
voices told us that rest was at hand.

No words can do justice to the hospitality of Floridians, whether
native or foreign. We were now to begin an experience which was to last
us through our entire journey. Here we were, a wandering company of
who-knows-what, arriving hungry, drenched and unexpected long after the
supper-hour, and our mere appearance was the "open sesame" to all the
treasures of house and barn. Not knowing what our hap might be, we had
gone provided with blankets and food, but both proved to be superfluous
wherever we could find a house. Bad might be the best it afforded, but
the best was at our service. At K----'s Ferry it was decidedly _not_
bad. Abundance reigned there, though in a quaint old fashion, and very
soon after our arrival we were warming and drying ourselves before a
cheerful fire, while from the kitchen came most heartening sounds and
smells, as of fizzling ham and bubbling coffee.

Never was seen a prettier place than this as we beheld it by the
morrow's light. The house stands on a high bluff, worthy the name of
hill, which slopes steeply but greenly down to the South Prong of Black
Creek, better deserving the name of river than many a stream which
boasts the designation. We crossed it upon a boom, pausing midway in
sudden astonishment at the lovely view. A long reach of exquisitely
pure water, bordered by the dense overhanging foliage of its high
banks, stretched away to where, a mile below us, a sudden bend hid its
lower course from view, and on the high green bluff which closed the
vista were seen the white house and venerable overarching trees of some
old estate. The morning air was crisp and pure; every leaf and twig
stood out with clean-cut distinctness, to be mirrored with startling
clearness in the stream; the sky was cloudless: no greater contrast
could be imagined from the tender sweetness of yesterday. The birds,
exhilarated by the sparkle in the air, sang with a rollicking
abandonment quite contagious: the very kids and goats on the crags
above the road caught the infection and frisked about, tinkling their
bells and joining most unmelodiously in the song; while Barney,
crossing the creek upon a flatboat, lifted up a tuneful voice in the
chorus.

We turned aside from our route to visit Whitesville, the beautiful old
home of Judge B----. It is a noble great mansion, with broad double
doors opening from every side of a wide hall, and standing in the midst
of a wild garden luxuriant with flowers and shrubs and vines, and with
a magnificent ivy climbing to the top of a tall blasted tree at the
gate. "I came to this place from New Haven in '29," its owner told
us--"sailed from New York to Darien, Georgia, in a sloop, and from
there in a sail-boat to this very spot. I prospected all about: bought
a little pony, and rode him--well, five thousand miles after I began to
keep count. Finally, I came back and settled here."

"Were you never troubled by Indians?" we asked.

"Well, they put a fort here in the Indian war, the government
did--right here, where you see the china trees." It was a beautiful
green slope beside the house, with five great pride-of-Indias in a row
and a glimpse of the creek through the thickets at the foot. "There
never was any engagement here, though. The Indians had a camp over
there at K----'s, where you came from, but they all went away to the
Nation after a while."

"Did you stay here through the civil war?"

"Oh yes. I never took any part in the troubles, but the folks all
suspected and watched me. They knew I was a Union man. One day a
Federal regiment came along and wanted to buy corn and fodder. The men
drew up on the green, and the colonel rode up to the door. 'Colonel,'
says I, 'I can't _sell_ you anything, but I believe the keys are in the
corn-barn and stable doors: I can't hinder your taking anything by
force.' He understood, and took pretty well what he wanted. Afterward
he came and urged me to take a voucher, but I wouldn't do that. By and
by the Confederates came around and accused me of selling to the
Federals, but they couldn't prove anything against me."

"There used to be Confederate head-quarters up there at K----'s?" we
asked.

"Oh yes, and the Federals had it too. General Birney was there for a
while. One day, just after he came, a lot of 'em came over here. One of
my boys was lying very sick in that front chamber just then--the one
you know, the county clerk. Well, an orderly rode up to the door and
called out, 'Here, you damned old rebel, the general wants you.'--'I
don't answer to that name,' said I.--'You don't?'--'No, I
don't.'--'What! ain't you a rebel?'--' I don't answer to that name,'
said I.--'Well, consider yourself my prisoner,' says he; so I walked up
there with him. Judge Price was at head-quarters just then, and he knew
me well. It seems that the general had heard that I kept a regular
rebel commissariat, sending stores to them secretly. Well, when the
judge had told him who I was, the general wrote me a pass at once, and
then asked, 'Is there anything I can do for you?'--'General,' said I,
'my son lies very sick. I should like to see the last of him, and beg
to be permitted to retire.'--'Is that so?' said the general. 'Would you
like me to send you a doctor?' I accepted, and he sent me two. He came
up afterward, and found that his men had torn down the fences, broken
open the store and dragged out goods, set the oil and molasses running,
and done great damage--about four thousand dollars' worth, we
estimated. You see, they thought it was a rebel commissariat. When he
came into the house he asked my wife if she could give him supper.
'General,' said she, 'you have taken away my cooks: if you will send
for your own, I shall be very happy to get supper for you.' He did so,
and spent the night here, sleeping in one of the chambers while his
officers lay all over the piazzas. Next day they all rode away, quite
satisfied, I guess. There were several skirmishes about here afterward,
and we have some pieces of bombs in the house now that fell in the
yard."

[Illustration: LAKE BEDFORD.]

The judge pressed us to stay and dine, but we had arranged for a gypsy
dinner in the woods and were anxious to push on. Push on! How Barney
would smile could he hear the word! He never did anything half so
energetic as to push: he did not even pull.

So we bade farewell to our genial host and started westwardly again. We
were now upon the high land of the Ridge, the backbone of the State,
and though, perhaps, hardly ninety feet above the sea, the air had all
the exhilarating freshness of great altitudes. All through the week
which followed we felt its tonic inspiration and seemed to drink in
intoxicating draughts of health and spirits, and never more than during
the fifteen-mile drive between Black Creek and Kingsley's Pond.

Kingsley's Pond, the highest body of water in the State, is the first
of a long succession of lakes which, lying between the St. John's and
the railway, have only lately been, as it were, discovered by the
Northerner. It is perfectly circular in form, being precisely two miles
across in every direction. Like all the lakes of Florida, it is of
immense depth, and its waters are so transparent that the white sand at
the bottom may be seen glistening like stars. In common with the other
waters of this region, it is surrounded by a hard beach of white sand,
rising gradually up to a beautifully-wooded slope, being quite free
from the marshes which too often render the lakes of Florida
unapproachable.

One of the Northern colonies which within the last two years have
discovered this delightful region has settled on the shores of
Kingsley's Pond. Although an infant of only twenty months, the village
has made excellent growth and gives promise of a bright future. Farming
is not largely followed, the principal industry of these and the other
Northern colonists being orange-culture--a business to which the
climate is wonderfully propitious, the dry, pure air of this district
being alike free from excessive summer heats and from the frosts which
are occasionally disastrous to groves situated on lower ground in the
same latitude.

Though there are few native Floridians in this part of the country, the
neighborhood of the lake rejoices in the possession of a Cracker
doctress of wondrous powers. Who but her knows that chapter in the book
of Daniel the reading of which stays the flowing of blood, or that
other chapter potent to extinguish forest-fires? One does not need a
long residence in the State to learn to appreciate the good-fortune of
the Lakers in this particular.

Not far from the village, on the western shore of the pond, lives the
one "old settler." He met us with the hearty welcome which we had
learned almost to look for as a right, and sitting on his front piazza
in the shade of his orange trees, gladdening our eyes with the view of
his vine-embowered pigpen, we listened to the legend of the pond:

"Yes, I've lived yere four-and-twenty year, but I done kim to Floridy
nigh on forty year ago: walked yere from Georgy to jine the Injun war.
I done found this place a-scoutin' about, and when I got married I kim
yere to settle. The Yankee folks wants to change the name o' the pond
to Summit Lake and one thing or 'nother, but I allays votes square agin
it every time, and allays will. You see, hit don't ought to be changed.
I don't mind the _pond_ part: they mought call it lake ef they think it
sounds better, but Kingsley's it _has_ to be. K-i-n-g-l-e-s-l-e-y:
that, I take it, is the prompt way to spell the name of the man as
named it, and that's the name it has to have. You see hit was this
a-way: Kingsley were a mail-rider--leastways, express--in the _old_
Injun wartime, I dunno how long ago. They was a fort on the pond them
days, over on the south side. Wal, Kingsley were a-comin' down toward
the fort from the no'th when he thort he see an Injun. He looked
behind, and, sure enough, there they was, a-closin' in on him. He
looked ahead agin. Shore's you're bo'hn there was a double row on
'em--better'n a hunderd--on all two sides of the trail. He hadn't a
minit to study, and jist one thing to do, and he done hit. He jist
clapped spurs to his critter and made for the pond. He knowed what they
wanted of him"--confidentially and solemnly: "it were their intention
to ketch him and scalp him alive, you know. Wal, they follered him to
the pond, a-whoopin' and a-yellin' all the way, makin' shore on him.
When he got to the pond he rid right in, the Injuns a'ter him, but his
critter soon began to gin out. When he see that he jist gethered up his
kit and jumped into the water, and swum for dear life. Two mile good
that feller swum, and saved his kit and musket. The Injuns got his
critter, but you never see nothin' so mad as they was to see him git
off that a-way. The soldiers at the fort was a-watchin' all the time.
They run down to meet him: they see he looked kinder foolish as he swum
in, and as soon as he struck the shore he jist flung himself on the
sand, and laid for half an hour athout openin' his eyes or speakin'.
Then he done riz right up and toted his kit to the commander, and axed
to hev the pond named a'ter him. The commander said it mought be so,
and so hit was; and so it _has_ to be, I says, and allays will."

[Illustration: TWIN LAKE.]

It would be impossible to detail the exquisite and varied beauty of the
way between Kingsley's Pond and Ekoniah Scrub. Through the fair
primeval forest we wandered, following the old Alachua Trail, the very
name of which enhanced the charm of the present scene by calling up
thrilling fancies of the past; for this is the famous Indian war-path
from the hunting-grounds of the interior to the settlements on the
frontier, and may well be the oldest and the most adventure-fraught
thoroughfare in the United States. We could hardly persuade ourselves
that we were not passing through some magnificent old estate--of late,
perhaps, somewhat fallen into neglect--so perfect was the lawn-like
smoothness of the grassy uplands, so rhythmical were the undulations of
the slopes, so majestic the natural avenues of enormous oaks, so
admirable the diversity of hill and dell, knoll and glade, shrubbery
and lawn, forest and park, interspersed with frequent sheets of
water--Blue Pond, rivalling the sky in color; Sandhill Pond, deep set
among high wooded slopes, with picturesque log mill and house; Magnolia
Lake, with its flawless mirror; Crystal, of more than crystal
clearness, with gorgeous sunset memories and sweet recollections of
kindly hospitalities in the two homes which crown its twin heights;
Bedford and Brooklyn Lakes, with log cottages beneath clustering trees;
Minnie Lake, and its great alligator sleeping on a log; starry
Lily-Pad; and Osceola's Punch-bowl, deep enough, and none too large, to
hold the potations of a Worthy; Twin Lakes, scarce divided by the
island in their midst; Double Pond, low sunk in the green forest slope,
a perfect circle bisected by a wooded ridge; Geneva Lake, dotted with
islands and beautiful with shining orange-groves;--always among the
lawns and glades, the forest-slopes and aisles of pines, with sough of
wind and song of bird, and fragrant wild perfumes. Always with bright
"bits" of life between the long, grand silences--a group of men faring
on foot across the pine level; a rosy, bareheaded girl--the only girl
in the place--searching for calves in the dingle, who gave us flowers
and told us the road with the sweet, lingering cadence of the South in
her velvet voice; two men riding by turns the mule that bore their
sacks of corn to mill; two boys carrying a great cross-cut saw along a
sloping lakeside, a noble Newfoundland dog frisking beside them; the
fleet bay horse and erect military figure of our host at Crystal Lake
guiding us among the intricacies of the Lake Colony. Always with sunny
memories of happy hours--gypsy dinners beside golden-watered "branch"
or sapphire lake; the cheery half hour in the log house on the hill
above the little grist-mill, with the bright young Philadelphians who
have here cast in their lot; the abundant feast in the farm-house under
the orange trees, and the "old-time" stories of the after-dinner hour;
the pleasant days at Crystal Lake, where our first day's drenching
resulted so happily in a slight illness that detained us in that lovely
spot, and showed us, in the new colony lately settled on this and the
adjacent lakes, how refinement and cultivation, lending elegance to
rude toil and harsh privation, may realize even Utopian dreams.

The great farm on Geneva Lake was the first old plantation which we had
seen since leaving Kingsley's, and this lies on the outskirts of
Ekoniah Scrub, which has long been settled by native Floridians or
Georgians. "Hit ain't a farmin' kentry, above there on the sandhills,"
said our host of the thrifty old farm on Lake Geneva. "It's fine for
oranges an' bananas, but the Scrub's better for plantin'. Talk about
oranges! Look a' that tree afore you! A sour tree hit were--right smart
big, too--but four year ago I sawed it off near the ground and stuck in
five buds. That tree is done borne three craps a'ready--fifteen oranges
the second year from the bud, a hundred and fifty the third, and last
year we picked eight hundred off her. Seedlin's? Anybody mought hev
fruit seven year from the seed, but they must take care o' the trees to
do it. Look a' them trees by the fence: eight year old, them is. Some
of 'em bore the sixth year: every one on 'em is sot full now--full
enough for young trees.

"Yes, that's right smart good orange-land up there in the sandhills.
Forty year ago, when I kim yere, they was nothin' but wild critters in
that lake kentry, as the Yankee folks calls it: all kind o' varmints
they was--bears, tigers, panthers, cats and all kinds. Right smart
huntin' they was, and 'tain't so bad now. They's rabbits and 'coons and
'possums, sure enough, and deer too; and--Cats? Why, cats is plenty,
but they ain't no 'count.

"I niver hunted much myself, but I've heerd an old man tell--Higgins by
name. Ef you could find him and could get him _right_, he'd tell you
right smart o' stories about varmints, and Injuns too. I've heerd him
tell how he went out with some puppies one time to larn 'em to hunt
bear. He heerd one o' the puppies a-screechin', and kase he didn't want
to lose him he run up. The screechin' come from a sort o' scrub, and he
got clost up afore he see it was a she-bear and two cubs. The bear had
the puppy, but when she see Higgins she dropped hit and made for him.
Now, you know, a bear ain't like no varmint nor cow-beast; hit don't go
'round under the trees, but jest makes a road for itself over the
scrub. Higgins hadn't no time to take aim, and ef he'd 'a missed he was
gone, sure 'nough; so he jest drawred his knife, and when she riz up to
clutch him he stuck her plum in the heart. Killed her, dead.

"No, I never had no trouble with Injuns. They was all gone to the
Nation when I settled yere, but I see Billy Bow-legs onct, and Jumper,
too. I was ago-in' through the woods, and I met a keert with three men
in it. Two on 'em was kinder dark-lookin', but I never thort much of
that till the man that was drivin' stopped and axed me ef I knowed who
he had in behind. It was them two chiefs, sure 'nough: right
good-lookin' fellers they was, too."

We had left the sandhills of the Ridge, and had reached the borders of
the Scrub, but there was yet another of the new Northern settlements to
visit. It lay a few miles beyond Geneva Lake, in the flat woods to the
south of Santa Fé Lake, the largest and best known of the group.

Who does not know the dreary flat-woods villages of the South, with
their decaying log cabins and hopelessly unfinished frame houses--with
their white roads, ankle-deep in sand, wandering disconsolately among
fallen trees and palmetto scrub and blackened stumps? Melrose is like
them all, but with a difference. The decaying cabins, new two years
ago, are deserted in favor of the great frame houses, which, unfinished
indeed, have yet a determined air, as if they meant to be finished some
day. The sandy roads are alive with long trains of heavy log-trucks or
lighter freight-wagons; there are men actually buying things in the
three stores; there is a school, with live children playing before the
door; there are saw- and grist-mills buzzing noisily; there is a
post-office, which connects us with the outer world as we receive our
waiting letters; there is a stir of enterprise in the air which speaks
quite plainly of Chicago and the Northern States, whence have come the
colonists; there is talk of a railroad to the St. John's on the east,
and of a canal which shall connect the lakes with one another and with
the railway on the west; there is a really good hotel, where we spend
the night in unanticipated luxury upon a breezy eminence overlooking
the silver sheet of Santa Fé Lake, which stretches away for miles to
the north and eastward.

[Illustration: ALDERMAN'S, ON GENEVA LAKE.]

The morrow was almost spent while we lingered in the neighborhood of
the lake. The road makes a wide circuit to avoid its far-reaching arms
and bays: only here and there are glimpses of the water seen through
the trees and cart-tracks leading off to exquisite points of view upon
its banks. We are in the flat woods again--palmetto-clumps under the
pine trees, pitcher-plants and orchis in the low spots, violets and
pinguicula beside the ditches, vetches and lupines and pawpaw and the
trailing mimosa in the sand. The park-like character of the woods is
gone. Still, there are here and there gentle undulations upon which the
long lines of western sunlight slope away; the lake gleams silvery
through the trees; the air is pure and sparkling as in high altitudes.

It was evening before we could leave the lakeside and plunge into the
dense new growth which adds to the ancient name of Ekoniah the modern
appellation of "Scrub." Amid its close-crowding thickets night came
upon us speedily. How hospitably we were received in the bare new
"homestead" of Parson H----; how generously our hosts relinquished
their one "barred" bed and passed a night of horror exposed to the fury
of myriad mosquitos, whose songs of triumph we heard from our own
protected pillows; how basely Barney requited all this kindness by
breaking into the corn-crib and "stuffing himself as full as a
sausage," as the Small Boy reported,--may not here be dwelt upon.

The early morning was exquisite. Soft mists veiled all the glorious
colors; great spider-webs, strung thick with diamonds, stretched from
tree to tree; a little "pot-hole" pond of lilies exhaled sweet odors;
the lark's ecstatic song thrilled down from upper air. There was a
gentle hill before us, and halfway up a view to the right of a broad
lake, with the log huts of a "settle_ment_" on the high bank. The sun
has drunk up all the mists, and shines bright upon the soft gray satin
of the girdled pine trees in the clearing; flowers are crowding
everywhere--orange milkweed, purple phlox, creamy pawpaw, azure
bluebells, spotted foxgloves, rose-tinted daisies, brown-eyed
coreopsias and unknown flowers of palest blue. Butterflies flit
noiselessly among them, and mocking-birds sing loud in the leafy
screens above. A red-headed woodpecker taps upon a resounding tree and
screams in exultation as he seizes his prey.

We skirted Viola Lake, cresting the high hill, and descending to a
shaded valley where the lapping waters plashed upon the roadside: then
mounted another hill, among thick clustering oaks and giant pines, to
where three lakes are seen spreading broadly out upon a grassy plain
between high wooded slopes. And these are Ekoniah! Twenty years ago a
tiny rivulet, wandering through broad prairies; eight years later a
wider stream, already beginning to encroach upon the grassy borderland;
now a chain of ever-broadening lakes, already drawing near to the hills
which frame in the widespread plain. Famous grazing-lands these were
once, the favored haunts of cattle-drovers, more famous hunting-grounds
in older days, before firm prairie had given place to watery savanna.
There were Indian villages upon the heights above and bloody battles in
the plains below. But who shall tell the story of those days? The
Indians are gone; the cattle-drovers have followed them to the far
South; the new settler of twenty years ago cared nothing for
antiquities or for the legends of an older time. The dead past is
buried: even the sonorous old Indian name has been softened down to
Etonia: be it the happy lot of this chronicler to rescue it from
oblivion!

The lakes of the lately-traversed "Lake Region," frequent as they had
been, were as nothing to those of Ekoniah Scrub. The road rose and fell
over a succession of low hills, each ascent gained discovering a new
sheet of water to right, to left or before us, deep sunk among
thick-clustering trees. At rare intervals the forest would fall away on
either hand, opening up a wide view of cultivated fields, sweeping
grandly down in long stripes of tender green to the billowy verdure of
the broad savanna, where silvery-sparkling lakes lay imbedded and great
round "hummocks" of dark trees uprose like islands in the grassy sea.
In the distance would be barren slopes of rich dark red and silvery
gray, swelling upward to the far dim mystery of pine woods and the blue
arch above.

We ate our dinner beside Lake Rosa, a circular basin of clearest water
rippling and dimpling under the soft breeze. Toward evening we found
the ford, which a paralytic old woman sitting in a sunny corner of a
farm-house piazza had indicated to us as "right pretty." Pretty it was,
indeed, as we came down to it through the most luxuriant of hummocks of
transparent-foliaged sweet-gums and shining-leaved magnolias with one
great creamy flower. "Right pretty" it was, too, in the old woman's
meaning of the word, for Barney drew us through in safety, scarce up to
his knees in the transparent water which reflected so perfectly every
flower and leaf of the dense water-growth. The road beyond was cut
through an arch of close-meeting trees, and farther on it skirted a
broad lake, which already, in its slow, sure, upward progress, had
covered the roadway and was reaching even to the fence which bounds the
field above. In this field is a large mound, never investigated,
although the farmer who owns the property says he has no doubt that it
is the site of an Indian village, for the plough turns up in the fields
around not only arrow-heads, but fragments of pottery and household
utensils. It was not our good-fortune to obtain any of those relics, as
they have not been preserved, and this was the only mound of any extent
which we saw. Such mounds are said, however, to be not infrequent in
this district, and Indian relics are found everywhere.

As we drove along the hillside we began to notice frequent basin-like
depressions of greater or less size, always perfectly circular, always
with the same saucer-shaped dip, always without crack or fissure, yet
appearing to have been formed by a gradual receding of the
substructure, reminding one of the depression in the sand of an
hour-glass or of the grain in a hopper. Many of these concaves were
dry; others had a little water in the bottom; all of them had trees
growing here and there, quite undisturbed, whether in the water or not;
and there was no one who had cared to note how long a time had elapsed
since they had begun their "decline and fall." There is little doubt,
however, that the future traveller will find them developed into lakes,
as, indeed, we found one here and there upon the hilltops.

[Illustration: "THE ONLY GIRL IN THE PLACE."]

How many times we got lost among the lakes and "pot-holes," the fallen
trees and thickets of Ekoniah Scrub, it would be tedious to relate. How
many times we came down to the prairie-level, and, fearful to trust
ourselves upon the treacherous, billowy green, were forced to "try
back" for a new road along the hillside, it would be difficult to say.
The county clerk's itinerary had ended here, and William Townsend
proved to be less ubiquitous than we had been led to expect. Thus it
was that night came down upon us one evening before we had reached a
place of shelter--suddenly, in the thick scrub, not lingeringly, as in
the long forest glades of the lake country. For an hour we pushed on,
trusting now to Barney's sagacity, now to the pioneering abilities of
Artist and Scribe, who marched in the van. Fireflies flitted about,
their unusual brilliancy often cheating us into the fond hope that
shelter was at hand. The ignes-fatui in the valley below often added to
the deception, and after many disappointments we were about to spread
our blankets upon the earth and prepare for a night's rest _al fresco_
when we heard a distant cow-call. Clear and melodious as the far-off
"Ranz des Vaches" it broke upon the stillness, gladdening all our
hearts. How we answered it, how we hastened over logs and through
thickets in the direction of answering voices and glancing lights--no
ignes-fatui now--how we were met halfway by an entire family whom we
had aroused, and with what astonishment we heard ourselves addressed by
name,--can better be imagined than described. By the happiest of
chances we had come upon the home of some people whom we had casually
met upon the St. John's River only a few weeks before, and our dearest
and oldest friends could not have welcomed us more cordially or have
been more gladly met by us.

In the early morning we heard again, between sleeping and waking, the
musical cow-call. It echoed among the hills and over the lakes: there
were the tinkling of bells, the pattering of hoofs, the eager,
impatient sounds of a herd of cattle glad of morning freedom. It was
like a dream of Switzerland. And, hastening out, we found the dream but
vivified by the intense purity of the air surcharged with ozone, the
exquisite clearness of the outlines of the hills, the sparkling
brightness of the lakes in the valley, the freshness of glory and
beauty which overspread all like a world new made.

One of the great events of that day was a desperate fight between two
chameleons in a low oak-scrub on the hilltop. The little creatures
attacked each other with such fury, with such rapid changes of color
from gray to green and from green to brown, with such unexpected
mutations of shape from long and slender to short and squat, with such
sudden dartings out and angry flamings of the transparent membrane
beneath the throat, with such swift springs and flights and glancings
to and fro, as were wonderful to see. It seemed as though both must
succumb to the fierce scratchings and clawings; and when at last one
got the entire head of his adversary in his mouth and proceeded
deliberately to chew it up, we thought that the last act in the tragedy
was at hand. The Small Boy made a stealthy step forward with a view to
a capture, when, presto! change! two chameleons with heads intact were
calmly gazing down upon us with that placid look of their kind which
seemed to assure us that fighting was the last act of which they were
capable.

That day, too, is memorable for the charming scenes it brought us,
impossible for the pencil to reproduce with all their sweet
accessories. We have found the ford at last, where the blue ribbon of
the stream lies across the white sand of our road. The prairie
stretches out broad and green with many circular islets of tree-mounds
in the ocean-like expanse. The winding road beyond the ford leads,
between cultivated fields on one side and the tree-bordered prairie on
the other, up to the low horizon, where soft white thunderheads are
heaped in the hazy blue. The tinkling of cow-bells comes sweetly over
the sea of grass; slow wavelets sob softly in the sedges of the stream;
fish glance through the water; a duck flies up on swiftly-whirring
wing. A great moss-draped live-oak leans over the stream, and the
perfume of the tender grapes which crown it floats toward us on the
air.

Again, after we have climbed the hill to Swan Lake, and have dined
beside Half-moon Pond, and have "laid our course," as the sailors say,
by our map and the sun, straight through the Scrub to visit Lake Ella,
we come out upon the heights above Lake Hutchinson. The dark greens of
the foreground soften into deep-blue shadows in the middle distance.
Lake Hutchinson sparkles, a vivid sapphire, against the distant
silvery-gray of Lake Geneva, while far away the low blue hills melt,
range behind range, into the pale-blue sky.

[Illustration: SANTA FÉ LAKE.]

Our faces were turned homeward, but there were yet many miles of the
Ekoniah country running to northward on the east of the Ridge, and
lakes and lakes and lakes among the scrub-clothed hills. A new feature
had become apparent in many of them: a low reef of marsh entirely
encircling the inner waters and separating them from a still outer
lagoon, reminding us, with a difference, of coral-reefs encircling
lakes in mid-ocean. The shores of these lakes were not marshy, but firm
and hard, like the lakes of the hilltops, with the same smooth
forest-slope surrounding. Is a reverse process going on here, we
wondered, from that we have seen in the prairies, and are these sheets
of water to change slowly into marsh, and so to firm land again? There
are a number of such lakes as these, and on the heights above one of
the largest, which they have called Bethel, a family of Canadian
emigrants have recently "taken up a homestead."

There was still another chain of prairie-lakes, the "Old Field Ponds,"
stretching north and south on our right, and as we wound around them,
plashing now and again through the slowly-encroaching water, we had
'Gator-bone Pond upon our right. The loneliness of the scene was
indescribable: for hours we had been winding in and out among the still
lagoons or climbing and descending the ever-steeper, darker hills.
Night was drawing on; stealthy mists came creeping grayly up from the
endless Old Field Ponds; fireflies and glow-worms and will-o'-the-wisps
danced and glowered amid the intense blackness; frogs croaked,
mosquitos shrilled, owls hooted; Barney's usual deliberate progress
became a snail's pace, which hinted plainly at blankets and the
oat-sack,--when, all at once, a bonfire flamed up from a distant
height, and the sagacious quadruped quickened his pace along the steep
hill-road.

A very pandemonium of sounds saluted our ears as we emerged from the
forest--lowings and roarings and shriekings of fighting cattle, wild
hoots from hoarse masculine throats, the shrill tones of a woman's
angry voice, the discordant notes of an accordion, the shuffle of heavy
dancing feet. We had but happened upon a band of cow-hunters returning
homeward with their spoils, and the fightings of their imprisoned
cattle were only less frightful than their own wild orgies. If we had
often before been reminded of Italian skies and of the freshness and
brightness of Swiss mountain-air, now thoughts of the Black Forest,
with all of weird or horrible that we had ever read of that storied
country, rushed to our minds--robber-haunted mills, murderous inns,
treacherous hosts, "terribly-strange beds." Not that we apprehended
real danger, but to our unfranchised and infant minds the chills and
fevers which mayhap lurked in the mist-clothed forest, or even a
wandering "cat," seemed less to be dreaded than the wild bacchanals who
surrounded us. We would fain have returned, but it was too late. Barney
was already in the power of unseen hands, which had seized upon him in
the darkness; an old virago had ordered us into the house; and when we
had declined to partake of the relics of a feast which strewed the
table, we were ignominiously consigned to a den of a lean-to opening
upon the piazza. A "terribly-strange bed" indeed was the old
four-poster, which swayed and shrieked at the slightest touch, and
myriad the enemies which there lay in wait for our blood. We were not
murdered, however, nor did our unseen foes--as had once been predicted
by a Cracker friend--_quite_ "eat us plum up, bodaciously alive." In
the early morning we fled, though not until we had seen how beautiful a
home the old plantation once had been. These were not Crackers among
whom we had passed the night, but the "native and best." Not a fair
specimen of this class, surely, but such as here and there, in the
remoter corners of the South, are breeding such troubles as may well
become a grave problem to the statesman--the legitimate outgrowth of
the old régime. War-orphaned, untutored, unrestrained, contemning
legitimate authority, spending the intervals of jail-life in wild
revels and wilder crimes,--such were the men in whose ruined home we
had passed the night.

There was yet one more morning among the gorgeous-foliaged
"scrub-hills," one more gypsy meal by a lakeside, one more genial
welcome to a hospitable Cracker board, and we were at home again in the
wide sea of pines which stretches to the St. John's. In the ten days of
our journey we had seen, within a tract of land some thirty miles long
by forty in breadth, more than fifty isolated lakes and three
prairie-chains; had visited four enterprising Northern colonies and
numerous thrifty Southern farms; had found an air clear and
invigorating as that of Switzerland, soft and balmy as in the tropics,
while the gorgeous colorings of tree and flower, of water and sky, were
like a dream of the Orient.

"But there!" said the Small Boy, stopping suddenly with a
half-unbuckled strap of Barney's harness in his hand: "we forgot one
thing, after all: never found William Townsend!"--LOUISE SEYMOUR
HOUGHTON.




CANOEING ON THE HIGH MISSISSIPPI.


CONCLUDING PAPER.


[Illustration: A LYNX STIRS UP THE CAMP.]

Itasca Lake was first seen of white men by William Morrison, an old
trader, in 1804. Several expeditions attempted to find the source of
the Great River, but the region was not explored till 1832--by
Schoolcraft, who regarded himself as the discoverer of Itasca. Much
interesting matter concerning the lake and its vicinity has been
written by Schoolcraft, Beltrami and Nicollet, but the exceeding
difficulty of reaching it, and the absence of any other inducements
thither than a spirit of adventure and curiosity, make visitors to its
solitudes few and far between. Itasca is fed in all by six small
streams, each too insignificant to be called the river's source. It has
three arms--one to the south-east, about three and a half miles long,
fed by a small brook of clear and lively water; one to the south-west,
about two miles and a half long, fed by the five small streams already
described; and one reaching northward to the outlet, about two and a
half miles. These unite in a central portion about one mile square. The
arms are from one-fourth of a mile to one mile wide, and the lake's
extreme length is about seven miles. Its water is clear and warm. July
thirteenth, when the temperature of the air was 76°, the water in the
largest arm of the lake varied between 74° and 80°. We saw no springs
nor evidences of them, and the water's temperature indicates that it
receives nothing from below. Still, it is sweet and pure to the taste
and bright and sparkling to the eye. Careful soundings gave a depth
varying between fourteen and a half and twenty-six feet. The only
island is that named by Schoolcraft after himself in 1832. It is in the
central body of the lake, and commands a partial view of each arm. It
is about one hundred and fifty feet wide by three hundred feet long,
varying in height from its water-line to twenty-five feet, and is
thickly timbered with maple, elm, oak and a thicket of bushes.

On Tuesday morning, July 14, at six o'clock, we paddled away from the
island to the foot of the lake. The outlet is entirely obscured by
reeds and wild rice, through which the water converges in almost
imperceptible current toward the river's first definite banks. This
screen penetrated, I stopped the Kleiner Fritz in mid-stream and
accurately measured width, depth and current. I found the width twenty
feet, the depth on either side of my canoe as she pointed down the
stream thirty-one inches, and the speed of the current two and
one-tenth miles to the hour. The first four miles of the infant's
course is swift and crooked, over a bed of red sand and gravel, thickly
interspersed with mussel and other small shells, and bordered with
reeds. Through these, at two points, we beat our way on foot, dragging
the canoes through unmade channels. Indeed, nearly all of these first
four miles demanded frequent leaps from the boats to direct their swift
and crooked course, until we came to a stretch of savanna country,
through which the river washes its way in serpentine windings for nine
miles with a gentle current from thirty to sixty feet wide, bordered by
high grass, bearing the appearance and having the even depth of a
canal. An easy, monotonous paddle through these broad meadows brought
us to the head of the first rapids, the scene of our two days' upward
struggle. These rapids extend about twelve miles as the river runs,
alternating between rattling, rocky plunges and swift, smooth water,
for the most part through a densely-wooded ravine cleft through low but
abrupt hills, and as lonely and cheerless as the heart of Africa. The
solitude is of that sort which takes hold upon the very soul and weaves
about it hues of the sombrest cast. From our parting with the Indians
on first reaching the river we had neither seen nor heard a human
being, nor were there save here and there remote traces of man's hand.
No men dwell there: nothing invites men there. A few birds and fewer
animals hold absolute dominion. Wandering there, one's senses become
intensely alert. But for the hoot of the owl, the caw of the crow, the
scream of the eagle, the infrequent twitter of small birds, the mighty
but subdued roar of insects, the rush of water over the rocks and the
sigh and sough of the wind among the pines, the lonely wanderer has no
sign of aught but the rank and dank vegetation and a gloomy, oppressive
plodding on and on, without an instant's relief in the sights and
sounds of human life. We entered upon the descent of the rapids in no
very cheerful mood.

The downward way was easier, and we had cleared away, in the upward
struggle, such obstructions as were within our control. Still, we
travelled slowly and wearily, and came out of our first day's homeward
work wet and worn into a camp in the high grass a good twenty miles
from the start of the morning. We drew the canoes from the water, made
our beds of blankets inside, lashed our paddles to the masts for
ridge-poles, thatched our little cabins with our rubber blankets, hung
our mosquito-bars beneath, then cooked and ate under the flare of our
camp-fire, and sought our canoe-beds for that sweet sleep which comes
of weariness of body, but not of mind, under the bright stars and
broad-faced moon shining with unwonted clearness in that clear air.

The night proved very cool. Our outer garments, wet from so much
leaping in and out of the canoes, and rolled up for storage on the
decks over night, were found in the early morning frozen stiff, and had
to be thawed before we could unroll them. The thermometer registered
33° after six o'clock, and frost lay upon all our surroundings.

For two and a half days our course was down a stream winding gracefully
through a broad region of savanna country, occasionally varied by the
crossing of low sandy ridges beautifully graved by lofty yellow pines.
In the savannas the shores are made of black soil drifted in, and
forming, with the dense mass of grass-roots, a tough compound in which
the earthy and vegetable parts are about equal, while the tall grass,
growing perpendicularly from the shore, makes a stretch of walls on
either side, the monotony of which becomes at last so tiresome that a
twenty-feet hill, a boulder as large as a bushel basket or a tree of
unusual size or kind becomes specially interesting. Standing on tiptoe
in the canoes, we could see nothing before or around us but a boundless
meadow, with here and there a clump of pines, and before and behind the
serpent-like creepings of the river. The only physical life to be seen
was in the countless ducks, chiefly of the teal and mallard varieties,
a few small birds and the fish--lake-trout, grass-bass, pickerel and
sturgeon--constantly darting under and around us or poised motionless
in water so clear that every fin and scale was seen at depths of six
and eight feet. The ducks were exceedingly wild--something not easily
accounted for in that untroubled and uninhabited country; but we were
readily able to reinforce our staple supplies with juicy birds and
flaky fish broiled over a lively fire or baked under the glowing coals.

[Illustration: A BLOW ON BALL CLUB LAKE.]

By noon of Friday, the 18th, we had come to an average width in the
river of eighty feet and a sluggish flow of six feet in depth. We
halted for our lunch at the mouth of the South (or Plantagenian) Fork
of the Mississippi, up which Schoolcraft's party pursued its way to
Itasca Lake. Thence a short run brought us suddenly upon Lake
Marquette, a lovely sheet of water with clearly-defined and solid
shores, about one mile by two in extent, exactly across the centre of
which the river has entrance and exit. Beyond this, a short mile
brought us to the sandy beaches of Bemidji Lake, the first considerable
body of water in our downward travel, and about one hundred and
twenty-five miles, as the river winds, from Itasca. The real name of
the lake, as used by the Indians and whites adjacent, is Benidjigemah,
meaning "across the lake," and Bemidji is frequently known as Traverse
Lake. It is a lovely, unbroken expanse, about seven miles long and four
miles wide. Its shores are of beautiful white sand, gravel and
boulders, reaching back to open pine-groved bluffs. Our shore-searchers
found agate, topaz, carnelian, etc. Our approach to Bemidji had been
invested with special interest as the first unmistakable landmark in
our lonely wanderings, and as the home of one man--a half-breed--the
only human being who has a home above Cass Lake. We found his hut, but
not himself, at the river's outlet. The lodge is neatly built of bark.
It was surrounded by good patches of corn, potatoes, wheat, beans and
wild raspberries. There is a stable for a horse and a cow, and all
about were the conventional traps of a civilized biped who lives upon a
blending of wit, woodcraft and industry. We greatly wished to see this
hermit, whose nearest neighbors are thirty miles away. His dog welcomed
us with all the passion of canine hunger and days of isolation, but the
master was gone to Leech Lake, as we afterward found from his Cass Lake
neighbors. The wind favored a sail across the lake--a welcome variation
from our hitherto entirely muscular propulsion--so we rigged our spars
and canvas, drifted smoothly out into the trough of the lively but not
angry waves, and swept swiftly across the clear, bright little sea. The
white caps dashed over our decks and a few sharp puffs half careened
our little ships, but the crossing was safely and quickly made. It was
yet only mid-afternoon, but we had paddled steadily and made good
progress nearly four days; so we went into early camp on a bluff
overlooking the entire lake, did our first washing of travel-stained
garments, brought up epistolary arrearages, caught two fine lake-trout
for our next breakfast and went to sound sleep in the
nine-and-a-half-o'clock twilight.

We had been advised that we should need guides in finding our exits
from the lakes, which were obscured by reeds and wild rice. But no
guide was to be had, and we easily found our own way. The river at the
outlet of Bemidji Lake is about one hundred and fifty feet wide, very
shallow, and runs swiftly over a bed of large gravel and boulders
thickly grown with aquatic grass and weeds. We had gone but a little
way when a rattling ahead told of near proximity to swift and rough
water, down which we danced at a speed perilous to the boats, but not
to our personal safety. The river was unusually low, so that the many
bouldery rapids which otherwise would have been welcome were now only
the vexatious hints of what might have been. The shallow foam dashed
down each rocky ledge without channel or choice, and whichever way we
went we soon wished we had gone another. The rocks were too many for
evasion, and the swift current caught our keels upon their half-sunken
heads, which held us fast in imminent peril of a swamp or a capsize,
our only safety lying in open eyes, quick and skilful use of the paddle
or a sudden leap overboard at a critical instant. Added to these
difficulties, a gusty head wind and lively showers obscured the
boulders and the few open channels. So we went on all the forenoon,
hampered by our ponchos, poling, drifting, paddling and peering our
way, blinded by wind and rain, till we came to the last of these
labyrinths, liveliest and most treacherous of all. We were soaked, and
only dreaded an upset for our provisions and equipments. The rapid was
long, rough, swift, crooked. The Kleiner Fritz led the way into the
swirl, and was caught, a hundred feet down, hard and fast by her
bow-keel, swung around against another boulder at her stern, and was
pinned fast in no sort of danger, the water boiling under and around
her, while her captain sat at his leisure as under the inevitable, with
a don't-care-a-dash-ative procrastination of the not-to-be-avoided jump
overboard and wade for deeper water. The Betsy D., following closely,
passed the Fritz with a rush which narrowly escaped the impalement of
the one by the other's sharp nose, struck, hung for a moment, while the
water dashed over her decks and around her manhole, then washed loose
and went onward safely to still water. The Fritz, solid as the
Pyramids, beckoned the Hattie to come on without awaiting the
questionable time of the latter's release; so the namesake of the
hazel-eyed and brown-haired Indiana girl came into the boil and bubble,
sailed gayly by the troubles of the others, was gliding on toward quiet
seas under her skipper's gleeful whoops, when, bang! went her bow upon
a rock, from which a moment's work freed her: tz-z-z-z-z-zip crunched
her copper nails over another just under water, whence she went bumping
and crunching, her captain's prudent and energetic guidance knocking
his flag one way and his wooden hatch the other, till finally his
troubles were behind him. Then the Fritz began to stir. Her commander
went overboard and released her, then leaped astride her deck and
paddled cautiously down the rift and slowly down the quieter water
below, howling through the pelting rain,

  "Then let the world wag along as it will:
       We'll be gay and happy still,"

until he came upon his comrades--one stumbling about over the blackened
roots of grass and underbrush from a recent fire in search of wood for
our needed noon-day blaze; the other with wet matches and birch bark,
and imprecations for which there was ample justification, vainly
seeking that without which hot coffee and broiled bacon cannot be. The
Kleiner Fritz's haversack supplied dry matches, fire began to snap,
coffee boiled, bacon sputtered on the ends of willow rods, hard tack
was set out for each man, and we sat upon our heels for lunch under the
weeping skies and willows, comparing notes and experiences.

[Illustration: PEKAGEMA FALLS.]

Thence, three hours through monotonous savanna and steady rain brought
us to the uppermost bay of Cass Lake, and unexpectedly upon a
straggling Indian village. We bore down upon it with yells, and there
came tumbling out from birch lodges and bark cabins the first human
beings we had seen for more than ten days, in all the ages, sizes,
tints, costumes and shades of filth known to the Chippewas of the
interior wilderness. At first they were a little shy of us, but we got
into a stumbling conversation with the only man of the whole lot who
wore breeches or could compass a little English, and soon the dirty,
laughing, wondering, chattering gang came down to inspect us and our,
to them, marvellous craft, and to fully enjoy what was perhaps the most
interesting event in many a long month of their uneventful lives. Then
we paddled across the bay, or upper lake, out into the broader swells
of Cass Lake itself, pulled four miles across to the northernmost point
of Colcaspi, or Grand Island, and made our second Saturday night's camp
upon its white sands at or very near the spot where Schoolcraft and his
party had encamped in July, forty-seven years before. The landward side
of the beautiful beach is skirted by an almost impenetrable jungle. We
had frequently seen traces, old and new, of deer, moose, bears and
smaller animals, but had seen none of the animals themselves save one
fine deer, and our sleep had been wholly undisturbed by prowlers; so we
sank to rest on Grand Island with no fears of invasion. At midnight the
occupant of the Kleiner Fritz was aroused by a scratching upon the side
of the canoe and low, whining howls. He partially arose, confused and
half asleep, in doubt as to the character of his disturber, which went
forward, climbed upon the deck and confronted him through the narrow
gable of his rubber roof with a pair of fiery eyes, which to his
startled imagination seemed like the blazing of a comet in duplicate.
The owner of the eyes was at arm's length, with nothing but a
mosquito-bar intervening. Then the eyes suddenly disappeared, and the
scratching and howling were renewed in a determined and partially
successful effort to get between the overlapping rubber blankets to the
captain of the Fritz. This movement was defeated by a quick grasp of
the edges of the blankets, and while the animal was snarling and pawing
at the shielded fist of his intended victim lusty shouts went out for
the camp to arouse and see what the enemy might be, as the Fritz was
unwilling to uncover to his unknown assailant. The Hattie's skipper,
hard by, saw that something unusual was on hand, peered out, and so
increased the uproar as to draw the adversary's attack. Then the Betsy
bore down upon us all just as the hungry and persistent beast was
crouching for a leap at the Hattie's jugular, the loud bang of a Parker
rifle rang out upon the stillness, and a fine, muscular lynx lay dead
at the Cincinnati Nimrod's feet. The animal's trail showed that he had
prowled around our bacon and hard tack in contempt, had inspected the
Betsy's commander as he lay on the sand in his blanket and under a huge
yellow mosquito-bar, but had evidently concluded that any man who could
snore as that man usually did was not a good subject for attack, and so
came on down the beach in search of blood less formidably defended. We
renewed our fire, examined our dead disturber, and turned in again to
sound sleep under the assuring suggestion of the Cincinnati man that,
whatever else the jungle might hide, two cannon-balls rarely enter the
same hole.

Our heavy and late slumber was broken by the laugh and chatter of two
Indian women and a child, who in a bark canoe a little way from shore
were regarding our camp in noisy curiosity. My blanket suddenly thrown
aside and a good-morning in English took them by surprise, and they
paddled away vigorously toward a group of lodges some four miles across
the lake. In the glorious sunset of a restful Sunday we crossed the
glassy lake to its outlet, taking two fine lake-trout of four pounds as
we went, and glided out of as beautiful a lake as sun and moon shine
upon into the swift, steady, deep current of what for the first time in
its long way Gulfward bears the full dignity of a river. Its green
banks are some two hundred feet apart. The water has a regular depth of
from five to six feet, and all the way to Lake Winnibegoshish affords
an unbroken channel for a medium-sized Western steamer. The shores,
alternating between low, firm, grass-grown earth and benches of
luxuriant green twenty feet high, grown over with open groves of fine
yellow pines, were so beautiful and regular that we could hardly
persuade ourselves that we should not see, as we rounded the graceful
curves, some fine old mansion of which these turfed knolls and charming
groves seemed the elegant lawns and parks. Our fleet unanimously voted
the river between Cass and Winnibegoshish Lakes the most beautiful of
all its upper course.

[Illustration: BARN BLUFF (C., M. & ST. P. R.R.).]

We began our second week upon the Mississippi with a breakfast of baked
lake-trout, slapjacks, maple syrup and coffee, which embodied the
culinary skill of the entire fleet: then started for Winnibegoshish in
the height of good spirits and physical vigor. In one of our easy,
five-miles-an-hour swings around the graceful curves we were met by a
duck flying close over our heads with noisy quacks. A little farther we
came upon the cause of the bird's lively flight in an Indian boy, not
above nine years old, paddling a large birch canoe, over the gunwale of
which peeped the muzzle of a sanguinary-looking old shot-gun. The
diminutive sportsman was for a moment dashed by our sudden and novel
appearance, but, from the way he urged his canoe and from the
determined set of his dirty face, we had small room to doubt the
ultimate fate of the flying mallard. Another curve brought us in sight
of the home of the little savage, where a dozen Indians, in all stages
of nudity, were encamped upon a high bluff. A concerted whoop from our
fleet brought all of them from their smoky lodges, and we swept by
under their wondering eyes and exclamations. Then the high land was
left behind, and half an hour between low meadows brought us out upon
the yellow sands and heaving swells of Lake Winnibegoshish, the largest
in the Mississippi chain, the dimensions of which, including its lovely
north-eastern bay, are about eleven by thirteen miles. The name
signifies "miserable dirty water lake," but save a faint tinge of brown
its waters are as pure and sparkling as those of any of the upper
lakes. Our entrance upon Winnibegoshish was under a driving storm of
wind and mist, against which we paddled three miles to Duck Point, a
slender finger of wooded sand and boulder reaching half a mile out, at
whose junction with the main land is a miserable village of most
villainous-looking Indians. One man alone could speak a little English,
and through him we negotiated for replenishing our provisions.
Meantime, the storm freshened and embargoed an eight-mile journey
across an open and boiling sea; so we paddled to the outermost joint
upon the jutting finger for a bivouac under the trees, waiting the
hoped-for lull of wind and wave at sunset. The smoke of our fire
invited to our camp the hungry natives, who dogged us at every turn all
the long afternoon, in squads of all numbers under twenty, and of all
ages between two and seventy. One club-footed and club-handed fellow of
forbidding visage protested with hand and head that he neither spoke
nor understood our vernacular. Later, he sidled up to the Hattie's
skipper and said in an earnest _sotto voce_, "Gib me dime." Denied the
dime, he intimated to the Betsy that he doted on bacon, of which we
were each broiling a slice. The Betsy's captain was bent upon securing
an Indian fish-spear, and he pantomimed to the twinkling eyes of the
copper-skin that he would invest a generous chunk of bacon in barbed
iron. The Indian strode back to his village, and soon returned with the
spear, which he transferred to the Betsy's stores.

The conventional Indian maiden besieged the bachelor two-thirds of our
expedition with all the wiles that could be embodied in a comely and
clean-calicoed charmer up in the twenties, who finally bore away from
the Betsy's private stores a fan of stunning colors and other odds and
ends of a St. Paul notion-store; while the guileless commander of the
Hattie, whose cumulative years should have taught him better, and whose
thinly-clad brain-shelter and disreputable attempt at sailor costume
should have blunted all feminine javelins, surrendered to the ugliest
old septuagenarian in the village, and sent her heart away rejoicing in
the ownership of a policeman's whistle courted by her leering eyes and
already smirched by her dirty lips, together with a stock of tea,
crackers and bacon for which her expanded corporosity evinced no
imminent need. At last rid of our importunate acquaintances, we turned
in for a sleep, which we resolved should be broken at the first moment,
dark or light, when we might cross the lake. Before daylight the
Betsy's resonant call awoke us, and in the earliest gray we paddled out
upon a heavy but not foaming sea, and after two and a half hours of
monotonous splashing in the trough of the waves landed for breakfast on
the eastern shore, whence we crossed a lovely bay and passed out once
more upon the river.

A mile on our way we came to the prettiest of the many Indian
burying-grounds which we saw now and then. Formerly, the Indians
deposited their dead upon rude scaffolds well up in the air. Now they
seek high ground and place the bodies of the departed in shallow
graves, over which they build little wooden houses a foot or two high
with gabled roofs, and mark each with a white flag raised upon a pole a
few feet above the sleeper's head. In this neighborhood we inquired of
a stalwart brave concerning our proximity to a portage by means of
which a short walk over to a small lake near the head of Ball Club Lake
and a pull of six miles down the latter would bring us out again into
the river, and save a tedious voyage of twenty-five to thirty miles
through a broad savanna. The Indian in his old birch canoe joined our
fleet, and led us to the beginning of the portage near the foot of
Little Winnipeg Lake. We had carried two canoes and all the baggage
over to the water on the other side of a sandy ridge, leaving only the
Kleiner Fritz to be brought, when our guide and packer, with a
preliminary grunt, said "Money?" inquiring how much we intended to pay
him. He had worked hard for four hours, for which we tried to tell him
that we should pay him one dollar when he should bring over the
remaining canoe; but we could not make him understand what a dollar
was. We then laid down, one after another, four silver quarter-dollars
and two bars of tobacco; whereupon he gave a satisfied grunt and an
affirmative nod, disappeared in the forest, and in less than an hour
returned with the Fritz upon his steaming shoulders, having covered
more than three miles in the round trip.

As we pulled out upon Ball Club Lake a gentle stern wind bade us hoist
our canvas for an easy and pleasant sail of six or seven miles down to
the open river. We glided out gayly before a gentle breeze, and sailed
restfully over the little rippling waves, our speed increasing, though
we hardly noted the signs of a gale driving after us over the hills
behind. The Hattie was leading well over to the port shore, the Fritz
bearing straight down the middle, with the Betsy on the starboard
quarter, when the storm struck us with a vigor that increased with each
gust. The black clouds swished over our heads, seemingly almost within
reach of our paddles. The sails tugged at the sheets with tiresome
strength. The canoes now plunged into a wave at the bows and were now
swept by others astern, as they rushed forward like mettlesome colts or
hung poised upon or within a rolling swell, until, with the increasing
gale, the roaring waves dashed entirely over decks and men. The Hattie
bore away to leeward and rode the gale finely, but at last prudence
bade the furling of her sail. Expecting no such blow the Fritz had not
taken the precaution to arrange her rubber apron for keeping out the
waves from her manhole, and now, between holding the sheet, steering
and watching the gusty wind, neither hand nor eye could be spared for
defensive preparations; so her skipper struck sail and paddled for the
westward shore, with the Betsy lunging and plunging close behind. We on
the windward side sought the smoother water within the reeds, and drove
along rapidly under bare poles, out of sight of the Hattie, separated
at nightfall by miles of raging sea. We rode before the wind to the
foot of the lake, where we were confronted by the alternative of a
toilsome and unsafe paddle around the coast against the storm's full
force, or camping in mutual anxiety as to the fate of the unseen
party--a by no means pleasant sedative for a night's rest upon wild and
uninhabited shores. We decided upon the pull, and labored on, now upon
the easy swells within the reeds, and then tossing upon the crests in
open places, until at last a whirling column of smoke a mile ahead gave
us assurance of the Hattie's safety. The reunited fleet paddled down
into the Mississippi, enlivening the darkness until we could find
camping-ground beyond the marshes by a comparison of storm-experiences
and congratulations that we had escaped the bottom of the lake.

[Illustration: CHURCH AMONG THE PINES (BRAINERD).]

Late in the afternoon of the next day, after a monotonous pull through
the interminable windings of Eagle Nest Savanna, we swept around a
curve of high tillable land upon the uppermost farm cultivated by
whites, eighteen miles above Pekagema Falls, and one hundred and
seventy miles by river beyond the Northern Pacific Railroad. Thomas
Smith and his partner, farming, herding and lumbering at the mouth of
Vermilion River, were the first white men we had seen since July 6,
seventeen days, and with them we enjoyed a chat in straight English.
Nine miles below we camped at River Camp, the second farm downward,
where we were kindly supplied with vegetables and with fresh milk,
which seemed to us then like the nectar of the gods. Thursday, 24th, we
reached Pekagema Falls, a wild pitch of some twenty feet, with rapids
above and below, down which the strong volume of the river plunges with
terrible force in picturesque beauty. A carry around the falls and
three miles of paddling brought us to Grand Rapids, and we rushed like
the wind into the whirl and boil of its upper ledge, down the steep and
crooked incline for two hundred yards, out of which we shot up to the
bank under a little group of houses where Warren Potter and Knox &
Wakefield conduct the uppermost post-office and stores upon the river.
We speedily closed our partly-completed letters and posted them for a
pack-mail upon an Indian's back sixty-five miles to Aitkin, while we
should follow the tortuous river thither for one hundred and fifty
miles. We had hoped for a rest and lift hence to Aitkin upon the good
steamboat City of Aitkin, which makes a few lonely trips each spring
and fall, but the low water had prevented her return from her last
voyage, made ten days before our arrival. Our stores replenished, after
two hours of rest we started again in a driving rain, and under the
hearty _bon voyage_ of a dozen frontiersmen and Indians shot the two
lively lower ledges of Grand Rapids, and came out on smooth water,
whose sluggish flow, broken by a very few rifts, bore us thence one
hundred and fifty miles to the next white settlement at Aitkin. The
entire distance lies through low bottom-lands heavily timbered, and our
course was drearily monotonous. We left Grand Rapids at mid-afternoon
of Thursday, July 24, and camped on Friday night four miles below Swan
River. Late on Saturday we passed Sandy Lake River--where formerly were
a large Indian population and an important trading-post, founded and
for many years conducted by Mr. Aitkin, who was prominently identified
with the early history of that region, and is now commemorated in the
town and county bearing his name, but where now remain only one or two
deserted cabins and a few Indian graves, over which white flags were
flapping in the sultry breeze--and camped two miles below. Monday's
afternoon brought us to Aitkin, so that we had covered one hundred and
fifty miles of sluggish channel, at low summer tide, in three working
days. We had been four weeks beyond possibility of home-tidings, and we
swooped down upon the disciple of Morse in that far-away village with
work that kept him clicking for an hour. We were handsomely taken in by
Warren Potter, a pioneer and an active and intelligent factor in the
business of that region, in whose tasteful home we for the first time
in a month sat down and ate in Christian fashion under a civilized
roof. Having lost a week in the farther wilderness, we decided to take
the rail to Minneapolis, that we might enjoy the beautiful river thence
to Lake Pepin, yet reach our homes within the appointed time. Half a
day was enjoyed at Brainerd, the junction of the Northern Pacific main
line with the St. Paul branch, and the most important town between Lake
Superior and the Missouri. It is beautifully built and picturesquely
scattered among the pines upon the Mississippi's eastern bank, not far
above Crow Wing River. Thence we were carried over the splendid
railway, passing the now abandoned Fort Ripley, winding along or near
to the river and across the wheat-fields, through the busy and
beautiful city of mills, below St. Anthony's roar and down the dancing
rapids to a pleasant island-camp between the green-and-gray bluffs that
bind Minneapolis to Minnehaha--the first really fine scenery this side
of Itasca's solitude. A delightful paddle under a bright morning sun
and over swift, clear water carried us to the little brook whose
laughter, three-quarters of a mile up a deep ravine, has been sent by
Longfellow rippling outward to all the world. We rounded the great
white-faced sand-rock that marks the outlet, paddled as far as we might
up the quiet stream, beached the canoes under the shade of the willows,
walked a little way up the brook, past a deserted mill, under cool
shadows of rock and wood, and enjoyed for half an hour the simple,
seductive charms of the "Laughing Water." Then we tramped back to our
boats, floated down under the old walls of Fort Snelling and between
the chalk-white cliffs which line the broadening river, until we came
in sight of St. Paul's roofs and spires, and soon were enjoying the
thoughtful care and generous hospitality of the Minnesota Boat Club.
Another day's close brought us to Red Wing, backgrounded by the green
bluffs and reddened cliffs of its bold hills. One more pull down the
now broad and islanded stream carried us to Lake Pepin, one of the
loveliest mirrors that reflects the sun, and to Frontenac's white
beach. The keels of the Fritz, the Betsy and the Hattie crunched the
sands at the end of their long journey, the boats were shunted back
upon the railway, and their weary owners were soon dozing in restful
forgetfulness upon the couches of the unsurpassed Chicago, Milwaukee
and St. Paul line.

[Illustration: END OF VOYAGE (FRONTENAC, LAKE PEPIN).]

Beyond reasonable doubt, our party is the only one that ever pushed its
way by boat up the entire course of the farther-most Mississippi.
Beyond any question, our canoes were the first wooden boats that ever
traversed those waters. Schoolcraft, in 1832, came all the way down the
upper river without portages, but he had very high water and many
helpers, in spite of which one of his birch canoes was wrecked. The
correspondent of a New York newspaper claimed the complete trip in his
canoe some five years ago, but his own guide and others told us that
his Dolly Varden never was above Brainerd, and that his portages above
were frequent. So we may well feel an honest pride in our Rushton-built
Rob Roys and our hard knocks, and may remember with pardonable
gratification that upon our own feet and keels we have penetrated the
solitudes lying around the source of the world's most remarkable river,
where no men live and where, probably, not more than two-score white
men have ever been.--A.H. SIEGFRIED.




ADAM AND EVE.



CHAPTER XXVI.


By the time Reuben May entered the little town of Looe he had come to a
decision about his movements and how he should carry out his plan of
getting back to London. Not by going with Captain Triggs, for the
monotonous inaction of a sailing voyage would now be insupportable to
him, but by walking as far as he could, and now and then, whenever it
was possible, endeavoring to get a cheap lift on the road. His first
step must therefore be to inform Triggs of his decision, and to do this
he must get back to Plymouth, a distance from Looe of some fifteen or
sixteen miles.

In going through Looe that morning he had stopped for a few minutes at
a small inn which stood not far from the beach; and having now crossed
the river which divides West from East Looe, he began looking about for
this house, intending to get some refreshments, to rest for an hour or
so, and then proceed on his journey.

Already the town-clock was striking six, and Reuben calculated that if
he started between nine and ten he should have time to take another
good rest on the road--which he had already once that day
traversed--and reach Plymouth Barbican, where the Mary Jane lay, by
daybreak.

The inn found, he ordered his meal and informed the landlady of his
intention.

"Why, do 'ee stop here till mornin', then," exclaimed the large-hearted
Cornish woman. "If 'tis the matter o' the money," she added, eying him
critically, "that's hinderin' 'ee from it, it needn't to, for I'll see
us don't have no quarrel 'bout the price o' the bed."

Reuben assured her that choice, not necessity, impelled his onward
footsteps; and, thus satisfied, she bade him "Take and lie down on the
settle there inside the bar-parlor; for," she added, "'less 'tis the
sergeant over fra Liskeard 'tain't likely you'll be disturbed no ways;
and I shall be in and out to see you'm all right."

Reuben stretched himself out, and, overcome by the excitement and
fatigue of the day, was soon asleep and dreaming of those happier times
when he and Eve had walked as friends together. Suddenly some one
seemed to speak her name, and though the name at once wove itself into
the movement of the dream, the external sound had aroused the sleeper,
and he opened his eyes to see three men sitting near talking over their
grog.

With just enough consciousness to allow of his noticing that one was a
soldier and the other two were sailors, Reuben looked for a minute,
then closed his eyes, and was again sinking back into sleep when the
name of Eve was repeated, and this time with such effect that all
Reuben's senses seemed to quicken into life, and, cautiously opening
his eyes, so as to look without being observed, he saw that it was the
soldier who was speaking.

"Young chap, thinks I," he was saying, "you little fancy there's one so
near who's got your sweetheart's seal dangling to his fob;" and with an
air of self-satisfied vanity he held out for inspection a curious
little seal which Reuben at once recognized as the same which he
himself had given to Eve.

The unexpected sight came upon him with such surprise that, had not the
height of the little table served as a screen to shelter him from view,
his sudden movement must have betrayed his wakefulness.

"He's a nice one for any woman to be tied to, he is!" replied the
younger of the two sailors. "Why, the only time as I ever had what you
may call a fair look at un was one night in to the King o' Proosia's,
and there he was dealing out his soft sawder to little Nancy Lagassick
as if he couldn't live a minute out o' her sight."

"That's about it," laughed the soldier. "He's one of your own sort
there: you Jacks are all alike, with a wife in every port. However," he
added--and as he spoke he gave a complacent stroke to his good-looking
face--"he may thank his stars that a matter of seven miles or so lays
between his pretty Eve and Captain Van Courtland's troop, or there'd
have been a cutting-out expedition that, saving the presence of those I
speak before"--and he gave a most exasperating wink--"might have proved
a trifle more successful than such things have of late."

"Here, I say," said the sailor, flaming up at this ill-timed
jocularity, "p'ra'ps you'll tell me what 'tis you're drivin' at; for
I've got to hear of it if you, or any o' your cloth either, ever made a
find yet. You're mighty 'cute 'bout other folks, though when the
spirits was under yer very noses, and you searched the houses through
'twas knowed to be stowed in, you couldn't lay hold on a single cask.
'Tis true we mayn't have nabbed the men, but by jingo if 't has come to
us bein' made fools of by the women!"

"There, now, stash it there!" said his older comrade, who had no wish
to see a quarrel ensue. "So far as I can see, there's no cause for
bounce 'twixt either o' us; though only you give us a chance of getting
near to them, sergeant," he said, turning to the soldier, "and I'll
promise you shall make it all square with this pretty lass you fancy
while her lover's cutting capers under Tyburn tree."

"'A chance?'" repeated his companion, despondingly: "where's it to come
from, and the only one we'd got cut away from under us by those Hart
chaps?"

"How so? where's the Hart off to, then?" asked the sergeant.

"Off to Port Mellint," said the man addressed. "Nothing but a hoax, I
fancy, but still she was bound to go;" and so saying he tossed off the
remainder of his grog and began making a movement, saying, as he did
so, to his somewhat quarrelsomely-disposed shipmate, "Here, I say,
Bill, come 'long down to the rendezvoos with me, and if there's nothin'
up for to-night what d'ye say to stepping round to Paddy Burke's? He's
asked us to come ever so many times, you know."

"Paddy Burke?" said the sergeant. "What! do you know him? Why, if
you're going there, I'll step so far with you."

"Well, we're bound for the rendezvoos first," said the sailor.

"All right! I can find plenty to do while you're in there."

"Then come along;" and, only stopping to exchange a few words in
passing with the landlady, out they all went, and Reuben was left
alone, a prey to the thoughts which now came crowding into his mind.

For a few minutes he sat with his arms resting on the table as if
communing with himself: then, starting up as if filled with a sudden
resolve, he went out and asked the landlady a few commonplace
questions, and finally inquired whereabouts and in what direction did
the rendezvous lie.

"Close down by the bridge, the first house after you pass the second
turning. Why?" she said: "be 'ee wanting to see anybody there?"

"No," said Reuben: "I only heard the fellows that came in there talking
about the rendezvous, and I wondered whether I'd passed it."

"Why, iss, o' course you did, comin' in. 'Tis the house with the flag
stream-in' over the doorways."

Reuben waited for no further information. He said something about not
knowing it was so late, bade the landlady a rather abrupt farewell, and
went his way.

Down the narrow street he hurried, turned a corner, and found himself
in front of the house indicated, outside which all was dark. Nobody
near, and, with the exception of himself, not a soul to be seen.
Inside, he could hear voices, and the more plainly from the top sash of
the window being a little way open. By the help of the iron stanchion
driven in to support the flagstaff he managed to get up, steady himself
on the window-sill and take a survey of the room. Several men were in
it, and among them the two he had already seen, one of whom was
speaking to a person whom, from his uniform, Reuben took to be an
officer.

The sight apparently decided what he had before hesitated about, and
getting; down he took from his pocket a slip of paper--one he had
provided in case he should want to leave a message for Eve--and rapidly
wrote on it these words: "The Lottery is expected at Polperro tonight.
They will land at Down End as soon as the tide will let them get near."

Folding this, he once more mounted the window-sill, tossed the paper
into the room, lingered for but an instant to see that it was picked
up, then jumped down, ran with all speed, and was soon lost amid the
darkness which surrounded him.

As he hurried from the house an echo seemed to carry to his ears the
shout which greeted this surprise--a surprise which set every one
talking at once, each one speaking and no one listening. Some were for
going, some for staying away, some for treating it as a serious matter,
others for taking it as a joke.

At length the officer called "Silence!" and after a pause, addressing
the men present in a few words, he said that however it might turn out
he considered that he should only be doing his duty by ordering the
boats to proceed to the place named and see what amount of truth there
was in this somewhat mysterious manoeuvre. If it was nothing but a hoax
they must bear to have the laugh once more turned against them; but
should it turn out the truth! The buzz which greeted this bare
supposition showed how favorably his decision was regarded, and the
absent men were ordered to be summoned without delay. Everything was
got ready as quickly as possible, and in a little over an hour two
boats started, fully equipped and manned, to lie in ambush near the
coast midway between Looe and Polperro.

While Fate, in the shape of Reuben May, had been hastening events
toward a disastrous climax, the course of circumstances in Polperro had
not gone altogether smoothly. To Eve's vexation, because of the
impossibility of speaking of her late encounter with Reuben May, she
found on her return home that during her absence Mrs. Tucker had
arrived, with the rare and unappreciated announcement that she had come
to stop and have her tea with them. The example set by Mrs. Tucker was
followed by an invitation to two or three other elderly friends, so
that between her hospitality and her excitement Joan had no opportunity
of noticing any undue change in Eve's manner or appearance. Two or
three remarks were made on her pale face and abstracted air, but this
more by the way of teasing than anything else; while Joan, remembering
the suppressed anxiety she was most probably trying to subdue,
endeavored to come to her aid and assist in turning away this
over-scrutiny of her tell-tale appearance.

The opportunity thus afforded by silence gave time for reflection, and
Eve, who had never been quite straightforward or very explicit about
herself and Reuben May, now began to hesitate. Perhaps, after all, it
would be better to say nothing, for Joan was certain to ask questions
which, without betraying the annoyance she had undergone, Eve hardly
saw her way to answering. Again, it was not impossible but that
Reuben's anger might relent, and if so he would most probably seek
another interview, in which to beg her pardon.

In her heart Eve hoped and believed this would be the case; for,
indignantly as she had defied Reuben's scorn and flung back his
reproaches, they had been each a separate sting to her, and she longed
for the chance to be afforded Reuben of seeing how immeasurably above
the general run of men was the one she had chosen.

"Here, I say, Eve!" exclaimed Joan, as she came in-doors from bidding
good-bye to the last departure: "come bear a hand and let's set the
place all straight: I can't abide the men's coming home to find us all
in a muddle."

Eve turned to with a good will, and the girls soon had the satisfaction
of seeing the room look as bright and cheery as they desired.

"Let's see--ten minutes past 'leben," said Joan, looking at the clock.
"I don't see how 'tis possible for 'em to venture in 'fore wan, 'less
'tis to Yallow Rock, and they'd hardly try that. What do 'ee say, Eve?
Shall we run up out to cliff, top o' Talland lane, and see if us can
see any signs of 'em?"

"Oh do, Joan!"

And, throwing their cloaks over them, off they set.

"Here, give me your hand," said Joan as they reached the gate and
entered upon the path which Eve had last trod with Adam by her side. "I
knaw the path better than you, and 'tis a bit narrow for a pitch-dark
night like this. Take care: we'm come to the watter. That's right. Now
up we goes till we get atop, and then we'll have a good look round us."

Thus instructed, Eve managed to get on, and, stumbling up by Joan's
side, they quickly reached the narrow line of level which seemed to
overhang the depths below.

"We couldn't see them if they were there," said Eve, turning to Joan,
who was still peering into the darkness.

"No, 'tis blacker than I thought," said Joan cheerily: "that's ever so
much help to 'em, and--Hooray! the fires is out! Do 'ee see, Eve? There
ain't a spark o' nothin' nowheres. Ole Jonathan's hoaxed 'em fine this
time: the gawpuses have sooked it all in, and, I'll be bound, raced off
so fast as wind and tide 'ud carry 'em."

"Then they're sure to come now?" said Eve excitedly.

"Certain," said Joan. "They've seed the fires put out, and knaw it
means the bait's swallowed and the cruiser is off. I shouldn't wonder a
bit if they'm close in shore, only waitin' for the tide to give 'em a
proper draw o' water, so that they may send the kegs over."

"Should we go on a bit farther," said Eve, "and get down the hill by
the Warren stile? We might meet some of 'em, perhaps."

"Better not," said Joan. "To tell 'ee the truth, 'tis best to make our
way home so quick as can, for I wudn't say us 'ull have 'em back
quicker than I thought."

"Then let's make haste," exclaimed Eve, giving her hand to Joan, while
she turned her head to take a farewell glance in the direction where it
was probable the vessel was now waiting. "Oh, Joan! what's that?" For a
fiery arrow had seemed to shoot along the darkness, and in quick
succession came another and another.

Joan did not answer, but she seemed to catch her breath, and, clutching
hold of Eve, she made a spring up on to the wall over which they had
before been looking. And now a succession of sharp cracks were heard,
then the tongues of fire darted through the air, and again all was
gloom.

"O Lord!" groaned Joan, "I hope 'tain't nothin's gone wrong with 'em."

In an instant Eve had scrambled up by her side: "What can it be? what
could go wrong, Joan?"

But Joan's whole attention seemed now centred on the opposite cliff,
from where, a little below Hard Head, after a few minutes' watching,
Eve saw a blue light burning: this was answered by another lower down,
then a rocket was sent up, at sight of which Joan clasped her hands and
cried, "Awn, 'tis they! 'tis they! Lord save 'em! Lord help 'em! They
cursed hounds have surely played 'em false."

"What! not taken them, Joan?"

"They won't be taken," she said fiercely. "Do you think, unless 'twas
over their dead bodies, they'd ever let king's men stand masters on the
Lottery's deck?"

Eve's heart died within her, and with one rush every detail of the
lawless life seemed to come before her.

"There they go again!" cried Joan; and this time, by the sound, she
knew their position was altered to the westward and somewhat nearer to
land. "Lord send they mayn't knaw their course!" she continued: "'tis
but a point or two on, and they'll surely touch the Steeple Reef.--Awh,
you blidthirsty cowards! I wish I'd the pitchin' of every man of 'ee
overboards: 'tis precious little mercy you'd get from me. And the
blessed sawls to be caught in yer snarin' traps close into home,
anighst their very doors, too!--Eve, I must go and see what they means
to do for 'em. They'll never suffer to see 'em butchered whilst there's
a man in Polperro to go out and help 'em."

Forgetting in her terror all the difficulties she had before seen in
the path, Eve managed to keep up with Joan, whose flying footsteps
never stayed until she found herself in front of a long building close
under shelter of the Peak which had been named as a sort of
assembling-place in case of danger.

"'Tis they?" Joan called out in breathless agony, pushing her way
through the crowd of men now hastening up from all directions toward
the captain of the Cleopatra.

"I'm feared so;" and his grave face bespoke how fraught with anxiety
his fears were.

"What can it be, d'ee think?"

"Can't tell noways. They who brought us word saw the Hart sail, and
steady watch has been kept up, so that us knaws her ain't back."

"You manes to do somethin' for 'em?" said Joan.

"Never fear but us'll do what us can, though that's mighty little, I
can tell 'ee, Joan."

Joan gave an impatient groan. Her thorough comprehension of their
danger and its possible consequences lent activity to her distress,
while Eve, with nothing more tangible than the knowledge that a
terrible danger was near, seemed the prey to indefinite horrors which
took away from her every sense but the sense of suffering.

By this time the whole place was astir, people running to this point
and that, asking questions, listening to rumors, hazarding a hundred
conjectures, each more wild than the other. A couple of boats had been
manned, ready to row round by the cliff. One party had gone toward the
Warren, another to Yellow Rock. All were filled with the keenest desire
not only to aid their comrades, but to be revenged on those who had
snared them into this cunningly-devised pitfall. But amid all this zeal
arose the question, What could they do?

Absolutely nothing, for by this time the firing had ceased, the contest
was apparently over, and around them impenetrable darkness again
reigned supreme. To show any lights by which some point of land should
be discovered might only serve as a beacon to the enemy. To send out a
boat might be to run it into their very jaws, for surely, were
assistance needed, those on board the Lottery would know that by this
time trusty friends were anxiously watching, waiting for but the
slightest signal to be given to risk life and limb in their service.

The wisest thing to be done was to put everything in order for a sudden
call, and then sit down and patiently abide the result. This decision
being put into effect, the excited crowd began to thin, and before
long, with the exception of those who could render assistance, very few
lookers-on remained. Joan had lingered till the last, and then, urged
by the possibility that many of her house-comforts might be needed, she
hurried home to join Eve, who had gone before her.

With their minds running upon all the varied accidents of a fight, the
girls, without exchanging a word of their separate fears, got ready
what each fancied might prove the best remedy, until, nothing more
being left to do, they sat down, one on each side of the fire, and
counted the minutes by which time dragged out this weary watching into
hours.

"Couldn't 'ee say a few hymns or somethin', Eve?" Joan said at length,
with a hope of breaking this dreadful monotony.

Eve shook her head.

"No?" said Joan disappointedly. "I thought you might ha' knowed o'
some." Then, after another pause, struck by a happier suggestion, she
said, "S'pose us was to get down the big Bible and read a bit, eh? What
do 'ee say?"

But Eve only shook her head again. "No," she said, in a hard, dry
voice: "I couldn't read the Bible now."

"Couldn't 'ee?" sighed Joan. "Then, after all, it don't seem that
religion and that's much of a comfort. By what I'd heard," she added,
"I thought 'twas made o' purpose for folks to lay hold on in times o'
trouble."




CHAPTER XXVII.


It was close upon three o'clock: Joan had fallen into an uneasy doze
and Eve was beginning to nod, when a rattle of the latch made them both
start up.

"It can't be! Iss, it is, though!" screamed Joan, rushing forward to
meet Adam, who caught both the girls in a close embrace.

"Uncle? uncle?" Joan cried.

"All safe," said Adam, releasing her while he strained Eve closer to
his heart. "We're all back safe and sound, and, saving Tom Braddon and
Israel Rickard, without a scratch 'pon any of us."

"Thank God!" sighed Eve, while Joan, verily jumping for joy, cried,
"But where be they to, eh, Adam? I must rin, wherever 'tis, and see
'em, and make sure of it with my awn eyes."

"I left them down to quay with the rest: they're all together there,"
said Adam, unwilling to lose the opportunity of securing a few minutes
alone with Eve, and yet unable to command his voice so that it should
sound in its ordinary tone.

The jar in it caught Joan's quick ear, and, turning, she said, "Why,
whatever have 'ee bin about, then? What's the manin' of it all? Did
they play 'ee false, or how?"

Adam gave a puzzled shake of the head. "You know quite as much about it
as I do," he said. "We started, and got on fair and right enough so far
as Down End, and I was for at once dropping out the kegs, as had been
agreed upon to do, at Sandy Bottom--"

"Well?" said Joan.

"Yes, 'twould ha' been well if we'd done it. Instead of which, no
sooner was the fires seen to be out--meaning, as all thought, that the
Hart was safe off--than nothing would do but we must go on to Yellow
Rock, which meant waiting for over an hour till the tide served for
it."

"But you never gived in to 'em, Adam?"

"Gived in?" he repeated bitterly. "After Jerrem had once put the
thought into their heads you might so well have tried to turn stone
walls as get either one to lay a finger on anything. They wanted to
know what was the good o' taking the trouble to sink the kegs overboard
when by just waitin' we could store all safe in the caves along there,
under cliff."

"Most half drunk, I s'pose?" said Joan.

"By Jove! then they'd pretty soon something to make 'em sober," replied
Adam grimly; "for in little more than half an hour we spied the two
boats comin' up behind us, and 'fore they was well caught sight of
they'd opened out fire."

"And had 'ee got to return it?" asked Joan.

"Not till they were close up we didn't, and then I b'lieve the sight of
us would have been enough; only, as usual, Mr. Jerrem must be on the
contrary, and let fly a shot that knocked down the bow-oar of the
foremost boat like a nine-pin. That got up their blood a bit, and then
at it our chaps went, tooth and nail--such a scrimmage as hasn't been
seen hereabouts since the Happy-go-Lucky was took and Welland shot in
her."

"Lord save us! However did 'ee manage to get off so well?" said Joan.

"Get off?" he said. "Why, we could have made a clean sweep of the whole
lot, and all the cry against me now is that I kept 'em from doing it.
The fools! not to see that our best chance is to do nothing more than
defend ourselves, and not run our necks into a noose by taking life
while there's any help for it!"

"Was the man shot dead that Jerrem fired at?" asked Eve.

"No, I hope not; or, if so, we haven't heard the last of it, for,
depend on it, this new officer, Buller, he's an ugly customer to deal
with, and won't take things quite so easy as old Ravens used to do."

"You'll be faintin' for somethin' to eat," said Joan, moving toward the
kitchen.

"No, I ain't," said Adam, laying a detaining hand upon her. "I couldn't
touch a thing: I want to be a bit quiet, that's all. My head seems all
of a miz-maze like."

"Then I'll just run down and see uncle," said Joan, "and try and
persuade un to come home alongs, shall I?"

Adam gave an expressive movement of his face. "You can try," he said,
"but you haven't got much chance o' bringin' him, poor old chap! He
thinks, like the rest of 'em, that they've done a fine night's work,
and they must keep it up by drinking to blood and glory. I only hope it
may end there, but if it doesn't, whatever comes, Jerrem's the one
who's got to answer for it all."

While he was saying these words Adam was pulling off his jacket, and
now went to the kitchen to find some water with which to remove the
black and dirt from his begrimed face and hands.

Eve hastened to assist him, but not before Joan had managed, by laying
her finger on her lip, to attract her attention. "For goodness
gracious' sake," she whispered, "don't 'ee brathe no word 'bout the
letter to un: there'd be worse than murder 'twixt 'em now."

Eve nodded an assurance of silence, and, opening the door, Joan went
out into the street, already alive with people, most of them bent on
the same errand as herself, anxious to hear the incidents of the fight
confirmed by the testimony of the principal actors.

The gathering-point was the sail-house behind the Peak, and thither, in
company with several friends, Joan made her way, and soon found herself
hailed with delight by Uncle Zebedee and Jerrem, both of whom were by
this time primed up to giving the most extraordinary and vivid accounts
of the fight, every detail of which was entirely corroborated by those
who had been present and those who had been absent; for the constant
demand made on the keg of spirits which, in honor of the _victory_, old
Zebedee had insisted on having broached there, was beginning to take
effect, so that the greater portion of the listeners were now turned
into talkers, and thus it was impossible to tell those who had seen
from those who had heard; and the wrangling, laughter, disputes and
congratulations made such a hubbub of confusion that the room seemed
for the time turned into a very pandemonium.

Only one thing all gave hearty assent to: that was that Jerrem was the
hero on whom the merit of triumph rested, for if he hadn't fired that
first shot ten to one but they should have listened to somebody whom,
in deference to Zebedee, they refrained from naming, and indicated by a
nod in his direction, and let the white-livered scoundrels sneak off
with the boast that the Polperro men were afraid to give fight to them.
Afraid! Why, they were afraid of nothing, not they! They'd give chase
to the Hart, board the Looe cutter, swamp the boats, and utterly rout
and destroy the whole excise department: the more bloodthirsty the
resolution proposed, the louder was it greeted.

The spirit of lawless riot seemed suddenly let loose among them, and
men who were usually kind-hearted and--after their rough
fashion--tenderly-disposed seemed turned into devils whose delight was
in violence and whose pleasure was excess.

While this revelry was growing more fast and furious below Adam was
still sitting quietly at home, with Eve by his side using her every art
to dispel the gloom by which her lover's spirits were clouded--not so
much on account of the recent fight, for Adam apprehended no such great
score of danger on that head. It was true that of late such frays had
been of rare occurrence, yet many had taken place before, and with
disastrous results, and yet the chief actors in them still lived to
tell the tale; so that it was not altogether that which disturbed him,
although it greatly added to his former moodiness, which had originally
sprung out of the growing distaste to the life he led.

The inaction of the time spent in dodging about, with nothing to occupy
him, nothing to interest him, had turned Adam's thoughts inward, and
made him determine to have done with these ventures, in which, except
as far as the gain went, he really had nothing in common with the
companions who took part in them. But, as he very well knew, it was far
easier to take this resolution in thought than it was to put it into
action. Once let the idea of his leaving them get abroad, and
difficulties would confront him whichever way he turned: obstacles
would block his path and suspicion dodge his footsteps.

His comrades, though not very far-seeing men, were quite sharp enough
to estimate the danger of losing sight of one who was in possession of
all their secrets, and who could at any moment lay his finger upon
every hiding-place in their district.

Adam himself had often listened to--and, in company with others,
silently commended--a story told of years gone by, when a brother of
the owner of the Stamp and Go, one Herkles Johns, had been pressed into
the king's service, and had there acquitted himself so gallantly that
on his return a commission had been offered to him, which he, longing
to take, accepted under condition of getting leave to see his native
place again. With the foreboding that the change of circumstances would
not be well received, he seized the opportunity occasioned by the joy
of his return to speak of the commission as a reward offered to him,
and asked the advice of those around as to whether he had not best
accept it. Opposition met him on every side. "What!" they said, "of his
own free will put himself in a place where some day he might be forced
to seize his father's vessel or swear away the lives of those he had
been born among?" The bare idea was inadmissible; and when, from asking
advice, he grew into giving his opinion, and finally into announcing
his decision, an ominous silence fell on those who heard him; and,
though he was unmolested during his stay, and permitted to leave his
former home, he was never known to reach his ship, aboard which his
mysterious disappearance was much talked of, and inquiries set afloat
to find out the reason of his absence; but among those whose name he
bore, and whose confidence he had shared, he seemed to be utterly
forgotten. His name was never mentioned nor his fate inquired into; and
Adam, remembering that he had seen the justice of this treatment, felt
the full force of its reasoning now applied to his own case, and his
heart sank before the difficulties in which he found himself entangled.

Even to Eve he could not open out his mind clearly, for, unless to one
born and bred among them, the dangers and interests of the free-traders
were matters quite beyond comprehension; so that now, when Eve was
pleading, with all her powers of persuasion, that for her sake Adam
would give up this life of reckless daring, the seemingly deaf ear he
turned to her entreaties was dulled through perplexity, and not, as she
believed, from obstinacy.

Eve, in her turn, could not be thoroughly explicit. There was a
skeleton cupboard, the key of which she was hiding from Adam's sight;
for it was not entirely "for her sake" she desired him to abandon his
present occupation: it was because, in the anxiety she had recently
undergone, in the terror which had been forced upon her, the glaze of
security had been roughly dispelled, and the life in all its
lawlessness and violence had stood forth before her. The warnings and
denunciations which only a few hours before, when Reuben May had
uttered them, she had laughed to scorn as idle words, now rang in her
ears like a fatal knell: the rope he had said would hang them all was
then a sieve of unsown hemp, since sprung up, and now the fatal cord
which dangled dangerously near.

The secret thoughts of each fell like a shadow between them: an
invisible hand seemed to thrust them asunder, and, in spite of the love
they both felt, both were equally conscious of a want of that entire
sympathy which is the keystone to perfect union.

"You _were_ very glad to see me come back to you, Eve?" Adam asked, as,
tired of waiting for Joan, Eve at length decided to sit up no longer.

"Glad, Adam? Why do you ask?"

"I can't tell," he said, "I s'pose it's this confounded upset of
everything that makes me feel as I do feel--as if," he added, passing
his hand over his forehead, "I hadn't a bit of trust or hope or comfort
in anything in the world."

"I know exactly," said Eve. "That's just as I felt when we were waiting
for you to come back. Joan asked if we should read the Bible, but I
said no, I couldn't: I felt too wicked for that."

"Wicked?" said Adam. "Why, what should make you feel wicked?"

Eve hesitated. Should she unburden her heart and confess to him all the
fears and scruples which made it feel so heavy and ill at ease? A
moment's indecision, and the opportunity lost, she said in a dejected
tone, "Oh, I cannot tell; only that I suppose such thoughts come to all
of us sometimes."

Adam looked at her, but Eve's eyes were averted; and, seeing how pale
and troubled was the expression on her face, he said, "You are
over-tired: all this turmoil has been too much for you. Go off now and
try to get some sleep. Yes, don't stay up longer," he added, seeing
that she hesitated. "I shall be glad of some rest myself, and to-morrow
we shall find things looking better than they seem to do now."

Once alone, Adam reseated himself and sat gazing abstractedly into the
fire: then with an effort he seemed to try and shake his senses
together, to step out of himself and put his mind into a working order
of thought, so that he might weigh and sift the occurrences of these
recent events.

The first question which had flashed into everybody's mind was, What
had led to this sudden attack? Had they been betrayed? and if so, Who
had betrayed them? Could it be Jonathan? Though the thought was at once
negatived, no other outsider knew of their intended movements. Of
course the matter had been discussed--as all matters were discussed and
voted for or against--among the crew; but to doubt either of them was
to doubt one's self, and any fear of betrayal among themselves was
unknown. The amount of baseness such a suspicion would imply was too
great to be incurred even in thought. What, then, could have led to
this surprise? Had their movements been watched, and this decoy of the
cutter only swallowed with the view of throwing them off their guard?

Adam was lost in speculation, from which he was aroused by the door
being softly opened and Joan coming in. "Why, Adam, I thought to find
'ee in bed," she said. "Come, now, you must be dreadful tired." Then,
sitting down to loosen her hood, she added with a sigh, "I stayed down
there so long as I could, till I saw 'twasn't no good, so I comed away
home and left 'em. 'Tis best way, I b'lieve."

"I knew 'twas no good your going," said Adam hopelessly. "I saw before
I left 'em what they'd made up their minds to."

"Well, perhaps there's a little excuse this time," said Joan, not
willing to blame those who were so dear to her; "but, Adam," she broke
out, while her face bespoke her keen appreciation of his superiority,
"why can't th' others be like you, awh, my dear? How different things
'ud be if they only was!"

Adam shook his head. "Oh, don't wish 'em like me," he said. "I often
wish I could take my pleasure in the same things and in the same way
that they do: I should be much happier, I b'lieve."

"No, now, don't 'ee say that."

"Why, what good has it done that I'm otherwise?"

"Why, ever so much--more than you'll ever know, by a good bit. I
needn't go no further than my awnself to tell 'ee that. P'r'aps you
mayn't think it, but I've bin kep' fra doin' ever so many things by the
thought o' 'What'll Adam say?' and with the glass in my hand I've set
it down untasted, thinkin' to myself, 'Now you'm actin' agen Adam's
wish, you knaw.'"

Adam smiled as he gave her a little shake of the hand.

"That's how 'tis, you see," she continued: "you'm doin' good without
knawin' of it." Then, turning her dark eyes wistfully upon him, she
asked, "Do 'ee ever think a bit 'pon poor Joan while you'm away, Adam?
Come, now, you mustn't shove off from me altogether, you knaw: you must
leave me a dinkey little corner to squeeze into by."

Adam clasped her hand tighter. "Oh, Joan," he said, "I'd give the whole
world to see my way clearer than I do now: I often wish that I could
take you all off to some place far away and begin life over again."

"Awh!" said Joan in a tone of sympathy to which her heart did not very
cordially respond, "that 'ud be a capital job, that would; but you
ain't manin' away from Polperro?"

"Yes, far away. I've bin thinkin' about it for a good bit: don't you
remember I said something o' the sort to father a little time back?"

"Iss, but I didn't knaw there was any more sense to your words than to
threaten un, like. Awh, my dear!" she said with a decided shake of the
head, "that 'ud never do: don't 'ee get hold o' such a thought as that.
Turn your back upon the place? Why, whatever 'ud they be about to let
'ee do it?"

Joan's words only echoed Adam's own thoughts: still, he tried to combat
them by saying, "I don't see why any one should try to interfere with
what I might choose to do: what odds could it make to them?"

"Odds?" repeated Joan. "Why, you'd hold all their lives in your wan
hand. Only ax yourself the question, Where's either one of 'em you'd
like to see take hisself off nobody knows why or where?"

Adam could find no satisfactory reply to this argument: he therefore
changed the subject by saying, "I wish I could fathom this last
business. 'Tis a good deal out o' the course o' plain sailing. So far
as I know by, there wasn't a living soul but Jonathan who could have
said what was up for to-night."

"Jonathan's right enough," said Joan decidedly. "I should feel a good
deal more mistrust 'bout some of 'em lettin' their tongues rin too
fast."

"There was nobody to let them run fast to," said Adam.

"Then there's the writin'," said Joan, trying to discover if Adam knew
anything about Jerrem's letter.

Adam shook his head. "'Tisn't nothing o' that sort," he said. "I don't
know that, beyond Jerrem and me, either o' the others know how to
write; and I said particular that I should send no word by speech or
letter, and the rest must do the same; and Jonathan would ha' told me
if they'd broke through in any way, for I put the question to him 'fore
he shoved off."

"Oh, did 'ee?" said Joan, turning her eyes away, while into her heart
there crept a suspicion of Jonathan's perfect honesty. Was it possible
that his love of money might have led him to betray his old friends?
Joan's fears were aroused. "'Tis a poor job of it," she said,
anxiously. "I wish to goodness 't had happened to any o' the rest, so
long as you and uncle was out of it."

"And not Jerrem?" said Adam, with a feeble attempt at his old teasing.

"Awh, Jerrem's sure to fall 'pon his feet, throw un which way you
will," said Joan. "Besides, if he didn't"--and she turned a look of
reproach on Adam--"Jerrem ain't you, Adam, nor uncle neither. I don't
deny that I don't love Jerrem dearly, 'cos I do"--and for an instant
her voice seemed to wrestle with the rush of tears which streamed from
her eyes as she sobbed--"but for you or uncle, why, I'd shed my heart's
blood like watter--iss that I would, and not think 'twas any such great
thing, neither."

"There's no need to tell me that," said Adam, whose heart, softened by
his love for Eve, had grown very tender toward Joan. "Nobody knows you
better than I do. There isn't another woman in the whole world I'd
trust with the things I'd trust you with, Joan."

"There's a dear!" said Joan, recovering herself. "It does me good to
hear 'ee spake like that. 'Tis such a time since I had a word with 'ee
that I began to feel I don't know how-wise."

"Well, yes," said Adam, smiling, "'tis a bravish spell since you and me
were together by our own two selves. But I declare your talk's done me
more good than anything I've had to-day. I feel ever so much better now
than I did before."

Joan was about to answer, when a sound made them both start and stand
for a moment listening.

"'Tis gone, whatever it was," said Adam, taking a step forward. "I
don't hear nothing now, do you?"

Joan pushed back the door leading to the stairs. "No," she said: "I
reckon 'twas nothin' but the boards. Howiver, 'tis time I went, or I
shall be wakin' up Eve. Her's a poor sleeper in general, but, what with
wan thing and 'nother, I 'spects her's reg'lar wornout, poor sawl!
to-night."




CHAPTER XXVIII.


Wornout and tired as she felt when she went up stairs, Eve's mind was
so excited by the day's adventures that she found it impossible to lull
her sharpened senses into anything like repose, and after hearing Joan
come in she lay tossing and restless, wondering why it was she did not
come up, and what could possibly be the cause of her stopping so long
below.

As time went on her impatience grew into anxiety, which in its turn
became suspicion, until, unable longer to restrain herself, she got up,
and, after listening with some evident surprise at the stair-head,
cautiously stole down the stairs and peeped, through the chink left by
the ill-fitting hinge of the door, into the room.

"There isn't another woman in the whole world I'd trust with the things
I'd trust you with, Joan," Adam was saying. Eve bent a trifle farther
forward. "You've done me more good than anything I've had to-day. I
feel ever so much better now than I did before."

An involuntary movement, giving a different balance to her position,
made the stairs creak, and to avoid detection Eve had to make a hasty
retreat and hurry back, so that when Joan came up stairs it was to find
her apparently in such a profound sleep that there was little reason to
fear any sound she might make would arouse her; but long after Joan had
sunk to rest, and even Adam had forgotten his troubles and anxieties,
Eve nourished and fed the canker of jealousy which had crept into her
heart--a jealousy not directed toward Joan, but turned upon Adam for
recalling to her mind that old grievance of not giving her his full
trust.

At another time these speeches would not have come with half the
importance: it would have been merely a vexation which a few sharp
words would have exploded and put an end to. But now, combined with the
untoward circumstances of situation--for Eve could not confess herself
a listener--was the fact that her nerves, her senses and her conscience
seemed strained to a point which made each feather-weight appear a
burden.

Filled with that smart of wounded love whose sweetest balm revenge
seems to supply, Eve lay awake until the gray light of day had filled
the room, and then, from sheer exhaustion, she fell into a doze which
gradually deepened into a heavy sleep, so that when she again opened
her eyes the sun was shining full and strong.

Starting up, she looked round for Joan, but Joan had been up for a
couple of hours and more. She had arisen very stealthily, creeping
about with the hope that Eve would not be disturbed by her movements,
for Adam's great desire was that Eve's feelings should be in no way
outraged by discovering either in Uncle Zebedee or in Jerrem traces of
the previous night's debauch; and this, by Joan's help, was managed so
well that when Eve made her appearance she was told that Uncle Zebedee,
tired like herself, was not yet awake, while Jerrem, brisked up by
several nips of raw spirit, was lounging about in a state of lassitude
and depression which might very well be attributed to reaction and
fatigue.

Perhaps if Eve could have known that Adam was not present she would
have toned down the amount of cordiality she threw into her greeting of
Jerrem--a greeting he accepted with such a happy adjustment of pleasure
and gratitude that to have shown a difference on the score of Adam's
absence would have been to step back into their former unpleasant
footing.

"Adam's gone out," said Jerrem in answer to the inquiring look Eve was
sending round the kitchen.

"Oh, I wasn't looking for Adam," said Eve, while the rush of vexed
color denied the assertion: "I was wondering where Joan could be."

"She was in here a minute ago," said Jerrem, "telling me 'twas a shame
to be idlin' about so."

"Why, are you still busy?" said Eve.

"No, nothin' to speak of but what 'ull wait--and fit it should--till
I'd spoken to you, Eve. I ain't like one who's got the chance o' comin'
when he's minded to," he added, "or the grass wouldn't ha' had much
chance o' growin' under my feet after once they felt the shore. No,
now, don't look put out with me: I ain't goin' to ask ye to listen to
nothin' you don't want to hear. I've tried to see the folly o' that
while I've bin away, and 'tis all done with and pitched overboard; and
that's what made me write that letter, 'cos I wanted us two to be like
what we used to be, you know."

"I wish you hadn't written that letter, though," said Eve, only half
inclined to credit Jerrem's assertions.

"Well, as things have turned out, so do I," said Jerrem, who, although
he did not confess it to himself, would have given all he possessed to
feel quite certain Eve would keep his secret. "You see, it's so awkard
like, when everybody's tryin' to ferret out how this affair came about.
You didn't happen to mention it to nobody, I s'pose?" and he turned a
keen glance of inquiry toward Eve.

"Me mention it?" said Eve: "I should think not! Joan can tell you how
angry we both were, for of course we knew that unless Adam had some
good cause he wouldn't have wished it kept so secret."

"And do you think I should have quitted a word to any livin' soul but
yourself?" exclaimed Jerrem. "I haven't much sense in your eyes, I
know, Eve, but you might give me credit o' knowing who's to be trusted
and who isn't."

"What's that about trustin'?" said Joan, who now made her appearance.
"I tell 'ee what 'tis, Mr. Jerrem, you'm not to be trusted anyhows.
Why, what could 'ee ha' bin thinkin' of to go sendin' that letter you
did, after Adam had spoke to 'ee all? There'd be a purty set-out of it,
you knaw, Jerrem, if the thing was to get winded about. I, for wan,
shouldn't thank 'ee, I can tell 'ee, for gettin' my name mixed up with
it, and me made nothin' better than a cat's-paw of."

"Who's goin' to wind it about?" said Jerrem, throwing his arm round her
and drawing her coaxingly toward him. "You ain't, and I ain't, and I'll
answer for it Eve ain't; and so long as we three keep our tongues
atween our teeth, who'll be the wiser--eh?"

"Awh, that's all very fine," returned Joan, far from mollified, "but
there's a somebody hasn't a-kept their tongues silent; and who it can
be beats me to tell. Did Jonathan knaw for certain 'bout the landin'?
or was it only guess-work with un?"

"I ain't sure; but Jonathan's safe enough," said Jerrem, "and so's the
rest too. 'Twarn't through no blabbin', take my word for that: 'twas a
reg'lar right-down set scheme from beginnin' to end, and that's why I
should ha' liked to ha' give 'em a payin'-out that they wouldn't ha'
forgot in a hurry. I'd ha' scored their reckonin' for 'em, I can tell
*'eel"

"Awh! iss, I dare say," said Joan with scornful contempt: "you allays
think you knaws better than they you'm bound to listen to.
Howsomedever, when all's said and done, I shall finish with the same I
began with--that you'd no right to send that letter."

"Well, you've told me that afore," said Jerrem sullenly.

"Iss, and now I tells 'ee behind," retorted Joan, "and to front and to
back, and round all the sides--so there!"

"Oh, all right!" said Jerrem: "have your talk out: it don't matter to
me;" and he threw himself down on the settle with apparent unconcern,
taking from his breast-pocket a letter which he carefully
unfolded.--"Did you know that I'd got a letter gived me to Guernsey,
Eve," he said--"one they'd ha' kept waitin' there for months for me?"

Eve looked up, and, to her vexation, saw Jerrem reading the letter
which on her first arrival she had written: the back of it was turned
toward her, so as to ostentatiously display the two splotches of red
sealing-wax.

"Why, you doan't mane to say you've a-got _he?_" exclaimed Joan, her
anger completely giving way to her amazement. "Well, I never! after all
this long whiles, and us a-tryin' to stop un, too!--Eve, do 'ee see
he's got the letter you writ, kisses and all?"

"Joan!" exclaimed Eve in a tone of mingled reproof and annoyance, while
Jerrem made a feint of pressing the impressions to his lips, casting
the while a look in Eve's direction, which Joan intercepting, she said,
"Awh! iss I would, seeing they'm so much mine as Eve's, and you doan't
know t'other from which."

"That's all you can tell," said Jerrem.

"Iss, and all you can tell, too," replied Joan; adding, as the frown on
his face betokened rising anger, "There, my dear, you'd best step
inside wi' me and get a drop more o' your mornin's physic, I reckon."

"Physic?" growled Jerrem. "I don't want no physic--leastwise, no more
than I've had from you already."

"Glad to hear it," said Joan. "When you change your mind--which, depend
on it, 'ull be afore long--you'll find me close to hand.--I must make
up a few somethin's for this evenin'," she said, addressing Eve, "in
case any of 'em drops in. Adam's gone off," she added, "I don't know
where, nor he neither till his work's done."

"Might just as well have saved hisself the trouble," growled Jerrem.

"No, now, he mightn't," replied Joan. "There's spurrits enough to wan
place and t'other to float a Injyman in, and the sooner 'tis got the
rids of the better, for 'twill be more by luck than good management if
all they kegs is got away unseen."

"Oh, of course Adam's perfect," sneered Jerrem. Then, catching sight of
Eve's face as he watched Joan go into the kitchen, he added with a
desponding sigh, "I only wish I was; but the world's made for some: I
s'pose the more they have the more they get."

Eve did not answer: perhaps she had not heard, as she was just now
engaged in shifting her position so as to escape the dazzling rays of
the sun, which came pouring down on her head. The movement seemed to
awaken her to a sense of the day's unusual brightness, and, getting up,
she went to the window and looked out. "Isn't it like summer?" she
said, speaking more to herself than to Jerrem. "I really must say I
should like to have gone somewhere for a walk."

The words, simple in themselves, flung in their tone a whole volume of
reproach at Adam, for to Eve's exacting mind there could be no
necessity urgent enough to take Adam away without ever seeing her or
leaving a message for her.

"Well, come out with me," said Jerrem: "there's nothin' I should like
better than a bit of a stroll. I'd got it in my head before you spoke."

Eve hesitated.

"P'r'aps you'm thinkin' Adam 'ud blame 'ee for it?"

"Oh dear, no, I'm not: I'm not quite such a slave to Adam's opinion as
that. Besides," she added, feeling she was speaking, with undue
asperity, "surely everybody may go for a walk without being blamed by
anybody for it: at all events, I mean to go."

"That's right," said Jerrem.--"Here, I say, Joan, me and Eve's goin'
out for a little."

"Goin' out? Where to?" said Joan, coming forward toward the door, to
which he had advanced.

"Oh, round about for a bit--by Chapel Rock and out that ways."

"Well, if you goes with her, mind you comes back with her. D'ee hear,
now?--Don't 'ee trust un out o' yer sight, Eve, my dear--not further
than you can see un, nor so far if you can help it."

"You mind yer own business," said Jerrem.

"If you was to do that you'd stay at home, then," said Joan, dropping
her voice; "but that's you all over, tryin' to put your finger into
somebody's else's pie.--I doubt whether 'twill over-please Adam
either," she added, coming back from watching them down the street;
"but, there! if he and Eve's to sail in one boat, the sooner he learns
'twon't always be his turn to handle the tiller the better."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was getting on for three o'clock when Adam, having completed all the
business he could accomplish on that day, was returning home. He had
been to the few gentlemen's houses near, had visited most of the large
farms around, and had found a good many customers ready to relieve him
of a considerable portion of the spirit which, by reason of their
living so near at hand, would thus evade much of the danger attendant
on a more distant transfer.

Every one had heard of the recent attack on the Lottery, and much
sympathy was expressed and many congratulations were tendered on
account of their happy escape.

Adam was a general favorite, looked up to and respected as an honest,
straight-forward fellow; and so little condemnation was felt against
the trade carried on that the very magistrate consented to take a
portion of the goods, and saw no breach of his office in the admonition
he gave to keep a sharp lookout against these new-comers, who seemed
somewhat over-inclined to show their teeth.

Adam spoke freely of the anxiety he felt as to the result of the
encounter, but very few seemed to share it. Most of them considered
that, having escaped, with the exception of strengthened vigilance no
further notice would be taken, so that his mind was considerably
relieved about the matter, and his heart felt lighter and his pace more
brisk in returning than when in the morning he had set out on his
errand.

His last visit had been to Lizzen, and thence, instead of going back by
the road, he struck across to the cliff by a narrow path known to him,
and which would save him some considerable distance.

The day was perfect--the sky cloudless, the sea tranquil: the young
verdure of the crag-crowned cliffs lay bathed in soft sunshine. For a
moment Adam paused, struck by the air of quiet calm which overspread
everything around. Not a breath of wind seemed abroad, not a sail in
sight, not a sound to be heard. A few scattered sheep were lazily
feeding near; below them a man was tilling a fresh-cleared patch of
ground; far away beyond two figures were standing side by side.

Involuntarily, Adam's eyes rested on these two, and while he gazed upon
them there sprang up into his heart the wish that Eve was here. He
wanted her--wanted to remind her of the promise she had given him
before they parted, the promise that on his return she would no longer
delay, but tell him the day on which he might claim her for his wife. A
minute more, and with all speed he was making a straight cut across the
*cliff-side. Disregarding the path, he scrambled over the projections
of rock and trampled down the furze, with only one thought in his
mind--how soon he could reach home.

"Where's Eve, Joan?" he asked as, having looked through two of the
rooms, he came, still in breathless haste, into the outer kitchen,
where Joan was now busily engaged in baking her cakes.

"Ain't her outside nowheres?" said Joan, wiping her face with her apron
to conceal its expression.

"No, I can't see her."

"Awh, then, I reckon they'm not come in yet;" and by this time she had
recovered herself sufficiently to turn round and answer with
indifference.

"Who's they?" said Adam quickly.

"Why, her went out for a bit of a stroll with Jerrem. They--"

But Adam interrupted her. "Jerrem?" he exclaimed. "Why should she go
out with Jerrem?"

"Awh, he's right enough now," said Joan. "He's so sober as a judge, or
I wouldn't ha' suffered 'en anighst her. Eve thought she should like a
bit of a walk, and he offered to go with her; and I was very glad of it
too, for Tabithy wanted to sandy the floors, so their room was better
for we than their company."

"'Tis very strange," said Adam, "that Eve can't see how she puts me out
by goin' off any way like this with Jerrem. I won't have it," he added,
with rising anger, "and if she's to be my wife she sha'n't do it,
either; so she'd best choose between us before things go too far."

"Awh, don't 'ee take it like that," said Joan soothingly. "'Twasn't
done with no manin' in it. Her hadn't any more thought o' vexin' 'ee
than a babby; nor I neither, so far as that goes, or I should ha' put a
stopper on it, you may be sure. Why, go and meet 'em. They'm only out
by Chapel Rock: they left word where they was goin' a-purpose."

A little mollified by this, Adam said, "I don't tell Eve everything,
but Jerrem and I haven't pulled together for a long time, and the more
we see o' one another the worse it is, and the less I want him to have
anything to say to Eve. He's always carryin' on some game or 'nother.
When we were at Guernsey he made a reg'lar set-out of it 'bout some
letter that came there to him. Well, who could that have been from?
Nobody we know anything about, or he'd have said so. Besides, who
should want to write to him, or what business had he to go blabbin'
about which place we were bound for? I haven't seen all the soundings
o' that affair clear yet, but I mean to. I ain't goin' to be 'jammed in
a clench like Jackson' for Jerrem nor nobody else."

Joan made no answer. She seemed to be engaged in turning her crock
round, and while bending down she said, "Well, I should go after 'em if
I was you. They'm sure not to be very far off, and I'll get tea ready
while you'm gone."

Adam moved away. Somewhat reluctant to go, he lingered about the rooms
for some time, making up his mind what he should do. He could not help
being haunted by an idea that the two people he had seen standing were
Eve and Jerrem. It was a suspicion which angered him beyond measure,
and after once letting it come before him it rankled so sorely that he
determined to satisfy himself, and therefore started off down the
street, past the quay and up by the steps.

"Here, where be goin' to?" called out a voice behind him.

Without stopping Adam turned his head. "Oh, Poll, is that you?" he
said.

"Iss."

"Have ye seen Eve pass this way? I think she'd got Jerrem with her."

"S'pose if I have?" said Poll, with whom Adam was no favorite: "they
doesn't want you. You stay where you be now. I hates to see anybody
a-spilin' sport like that."

With no very pleasant remark on the old woman Adam turned to go on.

"Awh, you may rin," she cried, "but you woan't catch up they. They was
bound for Nolan Point, and they's past there long afore now."

Then the two he had seen were they! An indescribable feeling of
jealousy stung Adam, and, giving way to his temper in a volley of oaths
against old Poll, he turned back, repassed her and went toward home,
while she stood enjoying his discomfiture, laughing heartily at it as
she called out, "I hears 'ee. Swear away! I don't mind yer cusses, not
I. Better hear they than be deef."




CHAPTER XXIX.


"Joan, you needn't expect me till you see me"--Joan turned quickly
round to see Adam at the door, looking angry and determined--"and you
can tell Eve from me that as it seems all one to her whatever companion
she has, I don't see any need for forcing myself where I am told I
should only be one in the way."

"Adam--" But the door was already slammed, and Joan again left in
possession of the kitchen.--"Now, there 'tis," she said in a tone of
vexation, "just as I thought: a reg'lar piece o' work made all out o'
nothin'. Drabbit the maid! If her's got the man her wants, why can't
her study un a bit? But somehow there's bin a crooked stick lyin' in
her path all day to-day: her's nipped about somethin', I'm positive
sure o' that; and they all just come home too, and everythin', and now
to be at daggers--drawn with one 'nother! 'Tis terrible, 'tis."

Joan's reflections, interrupted by the necessary attention which her
cakes and pasties made upon her, lasted over some considerable time,
and they had not yet come to an end when two of the principal objects
of them presented themselves before her. "Why, wherever have 'ee bin
to?" she said peevishly. "Whatever made 'ee stay away like this
for--actin' so foolish, when you knaws, both of 'ee, what a poor temper
Adam's got if anythin' goes contrary with un?"

Jerrem shrugged his shoulders, while Eve, at once assuming an injured
air for such an unmerited attack, said, "Really, Joan, I don't know
what you mean. Old Poll Potter has just been telling us that Adam came
flying and fuming up her way, wanting to know if she'd seen us, and
then, when she said where we'd gone to, he used the most dreadful
language to her--I'm sure I don't know for what reason. He chose to go
out without me this morning."

"But that was 'bout business," said Joan.

"Oh, business!" repeated Eve. "Business is a very convenient word when
you don't want to tell a person what your real errand is. Not that I
want to pry into Adam's secrets--far from it. He's quite welcome to
keep what he likes from me, only I'd rather he wouldn't tell me half
things. I like to know all or none."

Joan looked mystified, and Jerrem, seeing she did not know what to say,
came to the rescue. "I'm sure I'm very vexed if I've been the cause of
anything o' this, Eve," he said humbly.

"You needn't be at all vexed: it's nothing at all to do with you. You
asked me to go, and I said yes: if I hadn't wanted to go I should have
said no. Any one would think I'd committed a crime, instead of taking a
simple walk, with no other fault than not happening to return home at
the very same minute that it suited Adam to come back at."

"But how is it he's a seed you if you haven't a seed he?" said Joan,
fairly puzzled by this game of cross-purposes. "He came home all right
'nuf, and then went off to see whereabouts he could find 'ee to; and
'bout quarter'n hour after back he comes in a reg'lar pelt, and says,
'You tell Eve,' he says, 'that I'm not goin' to foace myself where I'm
told I sha'n't be wanted.' Awh, my dear, he'd seed 'ee somewheres," she
continued in answer to Eve's shrug of bewilderment: "I could tell that
so soon as iver I'd clapped eyes on un."

"And where's he off to now?" said Eve, determined to have an immediate
settlement of her wrongs.

"I can't tell: he just flung they words at me and was gone."

Eve said no more, but with the apparent intention of taking off her hat
went up stairs, while Joan, bidding Jerrem go and see if Uncle Zebedee
was roused up yet, returned to her previous occupation of preparing the
tea. When it was ready she called out, "Come 'long, Eve;" but no answer
was returned. "Tay's ready, my dear." Still no reply.--"She can't ha'
gone out agen?" thought Joan, mounting the stairs to ascertain the
cause of the silence, which was soon explained by the sight of Eve
flung down on the bed, with her head buried in the pillow.--"Now,
whatever be doin' this for?" exclaimed Joan, bending down and
discovering that Eve was sobbing as if her heart would break. "Awh,
doan't cry now, there's a dear: 't 'ull all come straight agen. Why,
now, you'll see Adam 'ull be back in no time. 'Twas only through bein'
baulked when he'd a come back o' purpose to take 'ee out."

"How was I to know that?" sobbed Eve.

"No, o' course you didn't, and that's what I told un. But, lors! 'tis
in the nature o' men to be jealous o' one 'nother, and with Adam more
partickler o' Jerrem; so for the future you must humor un a bit, 'cos
there's things atwixt they two you doan't know nothin' of, and so can't
allays tell when the shoe's pinchin' most."

"I often think whether Adam and me will be happy together," said Eve,
sitting up and drying her eyes. "I'm willing to give in, but I won't be
trampled upon."

"And he won't want to trample 'pon 'ee, neither. Only you study un a
bit, and you'll soon learn the measure o' Adam's foot. Why, 'tis only
to see un lookin' at 'ee to tell how he loves 'ee;" and Joan
successfully kept down a rising sigh as she added, "Lors! he wouldn't
let a fly pitch 'pon 'ee if he could help it."

"If he'd seen us before he came in first he'd have surely told you?"
said Eve.

"Awh, he hadn't seen 'ee then," said Joan, "'cos, though he was a bit
vexed, he wasn't in no temper. 'Twas after he went out the second time
that he must have cast eyes on 'ee some way. Jerrem wasn't up to none
of his nonsense, was he?" she asked. '"Cos I knaws what Jerrem is. He
don't think no more o' givin' 'ee a kiss or that than he does o'
noddin' his head or crookin' his elbaw; and if Adam caught un at that,
it 'ud be enough for he."

Eve shook her head. "Jerrem never takes none of those liberties with
me," she said: "he knows I won't allow him to. The whole of the time we
did nothing but talk and walk along till we came to a nice place, and
then we stayed for a little while looking at the view together, and
after that came back."

"'Tis more than I can make out, then," said Joan, "'cos, though I
wondered when you set off whether Adam would 'zactly relish your bein'
with Jerrem, I never thought 'twould put un out like this."

"It makes me feel so miserable!" said Eve, trying to keep back her
tears; "for oh, Joan"--and she threw her arms round Joan's neck--"I do
love him very dearly!"

"Iss, my dear, I knaws you do," returned Joan soothingly, "and he loves
you too."

"Then why can't we always feel the same, Joan, and be comfortable and
kind and pleasant to one another?"

"Oh lors! that 'ud be a reg'lar milk-and-watter set-out o' it. No, so
long as you doan't carry on too far on the wan tack I likes a bit of a
breeze now and then: it freshens 'ee up and puts new life into 'ee. But
here, come along down now, and when Adam comes back seem as if nothin'
had happened, and p'r'aps seein' you make so light of it 'ull make un
forget all about it."

So advised, Eve dried her eyes and smoothed down her ruffled
appearance, and in a short time joined the party below, which now
included Uncle Zebedee, Barnabas Tadd and Zeke Teague, who had brought
word that the Hart had only that morning returned to Fowey, entirely
ignorant of the skirmish which had taken place between the Looe boats
and the Lottery, and that, though it was reported that the man shot had
been shot dead, nothing was known for certain, as it seemed that the
men of Looe station were not over-anxious to have the thing talked
about.

"I should think they wasn't, neither," chuckled Uncle Zebedee.
"Sneakin', cowardly lot! they was game enough whiles they was creepin'
up behind, but, lors! so soon as us shawed our faces, and they seed
they'd got men to dale with, there was another tale to tell, and no
mistake. I much doubt whether or no wan amongst 'em had ever smelt
powder afore our Jerrem here let 'em have a sniff o' his mixin'. 'Tis
my belief--and I ha'n't a got a doubt on the matter, neither--that if
he hadn't let fly when he did they'd ha' drawed off and gone away
boastin' that they'd got the best o' it."

"Well, and more's the pity you didn't let 'em, then," said Joan. "I
would, I knaw. Safe bind's safe find, and you can never tell when
fightin' begins where 'tis goin' to end to."

"It shouldn't ha' ended where it did if I'd had my way," said Jerrem.

"Awh, well! there, never mind," said old Zebedee. "You'll have a chance
agen, never fear, and then we must make 'ee capen. How'd that plaze
'ee, eh?"

Jerrem's face bespoke his satisfaction. "Take care I don't hold 'ee to
yer word," he said, laughing. "I've got witnesses, mind, to prove it:
here's Barnabas here, and Zeke Teague, and they won't say me nay, I'll
wager--will 'ee, lads?"

"Wa-all, bide a bit, bide a bit," said Zebedee, winking in appreciation
of this joke. "There'll be two or three o' the oldsters drap in durin'
the ebenin', and then us 'll have a bit of a jaw together on it, and
weigh sides on the matter."

As Uncle Zebedee anticipated, the evening brought a goodly number of
visitors, who, one after another, came dropping in until the
sitting-room was pretty well filled, and it was as much as Eve and Joan
could manage to see that each one was comfortably seated and provided
for.

There were the captains of the three vessels, with a portion of the
crew of each, several men belonging to the place--all more or less
mixed up with the ventures--and of course the crew of the Lottery, by
no means yet tired of having their story listened to and their
adventure discussed. Adam's absence was felt to be a great relief, and
each one inwardly voted it as a proof that Adam himself saw that he'd
altogether made a missment and gone nigh to damage the whole concern.
Many a jerk of the head or the thumb accompanied a whisper that "he'd a
tooked hisself off," and drew forth the response that "'twas the proper
line to pursoo;" and, feeling they had no fear of interruption, they
resigned themselves to enjoyment and settled down to jollity, in the
very midst of which Adam made his appearance. But the time was passed
when his presence or his absence could in any way affect them, and,
instead of the uncomfortable silence which at an earlier stage might
have fallen upon the party, his entrance was now only the occasion of
hard hits and rough jokes, which Adam, seeing the influence under which
they were made, tried to bear with all the temper he could command.

"Don't 'ee take no notice of 'em," said Joan, bending over him to set
down some fresh glasses. "They ain't worth yer anger, not one among
'em. I've kept Eve out of it so much as I could, and after now there
won't be no need for her to come in agen; so you go outside there.
Her's a waitin' to have a word with 'ee."

"Then wait she may," said Adam: "I'm goin' to stop where I am.--Here,
father," he cried, "pass the liquor this way. Come, push the grog
about. Last come first served, you know."

The heartiness with which this was said caused considerable
astonishment.

"Iss, iss, lad," said old Zebedee, his face glowing under the effects
of hot punch and the efforts of hospitality. "That's well said. Set to
with a will, and you'll catch us up yet."

During the laughter called forth by this challenge, Joan took another
opportunity of speaking. "Why, what be 'bout, Adam?" she said, seeing
how unlike his speech and action were to his usual self. "Doan't 'ee go
and cut off your naws to spite yer face, now. Eve's close by here.
Her's as sorry as anythin', her is: her wouldn't ha' gone out for
twenty pounds if her'd knawed it."

"I wish you'd hold yer tongue," said Adam: "I've told you I'm goin' to
stop here. Be off with you, now!"

But Joan, bent on striving to keep him from an excess to which she saw
exasperation was goading him, made one more effort. "Awh, Adam," she
said, "do 'ee come now. Eve--"

"Eve be--"

But before the word had well escaped his lips Joan's hand was clapped
over his mouth. Too late, for Eve had come up behind them, and as Adam
turned his head to shake Joan off he found himself face to face before
her, and the look of outraged love she fixed upon him made his heart
quail within him. What could he do? what should he say? Nothing now,
for before he could gather up his senses she had passed by him and was
gone.

A sickening feeling came over Adam, and he could barely put his lips to
the glass which, in order to avert attention, he had caught up and
raised to his mouth. At a blow all the resolutions he had forced
himself to were upset and scattered, for he had returned with the
reckless determination of plunging into whatever dissipation chanced to
be going on.

He had roamed about, angry and tormented, until the climax of passion
was succeeded by an overpowering sense of gloom, to get away from which
he had determined to abandon himself, and, flinging all restraint
aside, sink down to that level over which the better part of his nature
had vainly tried to soar. But now, in the feeling of degradation which
Eve's eyes had flashed upon him, the grossness of these excesses came
freshly before him, and the knowledge that even in thought he had
entertained them made him feel lowered in his own eyes; and if in his
eyes, how must he look in hers?

Without a movement he knew every time that she entered the room: he
heard her exchange words with some of those present, applaud a song of
Barnabas Tadd's, answer a question of Uncle Zebedee's, and, sharpest
thorn of all, stand behind Jerrem's chair, talking to him while some of
the roughest hits were being made at his own mistaken judgment in
holding back those who were ready to have "sunk the Looe boats and all
aboard 'em."

In the anguish of his heart Adam could have cried aloud. It seemed to
him that until now he had never tasted the bitterness of love nor
smarted under the sharp tooth of jealousy. There were lapses when,
sending a covert look across the table, those around him faded away and
only Eve and Jerrem stood before him, and while he gazed a harsh,
discordant laugh would break the spell, and, starting, he would find
that it was his own voice which had jarred upon his ear. His head
seemed on fire, his senses confused. Turning his eyes upon the tumbler
of grog which he had poured out, he could hardly credit that it still
stood all but untasted before him. A noisy song with a rollicking
chorus was being sung, and for a moment Adam shut his eyes, trying to
recollect himself. All in vain: everything seemed jumbled and mixed
together.

Suddenly, in the midst of the clamor, a noise outside was heard. The
door was burst violently open and as violently shut again by Jonathan,
who, throwing himself with all his force against it, cried out, "They'm
comin'! they'm after 'ee--close by--the sodjers. You'm trapped!" And,
exhausted and overcome by exertion and excitement, his tall form swayed
to and fro, and then fell back in a death-like swoon upon the floor.

_The Author of "Dorothy Fox."_

[TO BE CONTINUED.]




A VILLEGGIATURA IN ASISI.


To most travellers a visit to Asisi is a flying visit. They drive over
from Perugia or up from the railway station, and if, besides San
Francesco and Santa Chiara, they see the cathedral and San Damiano,
they believe themselves to have exhausted the sights of the town. The
beautiful front of what was once a temple of Minerva can be seen in
passing through the piazza in which it stands: the departing visitors
glance back at the city from the plain, and--"Buona notte, Asisi!"

Yet this town, as well as most Italian _paesi_, would reward a more
lengthened stay, and, unlike many of them, a refined life is possible
here. A person at once studiously and economically inclined might do
much worse than commit himself to spend several months in the city of
St. Francis. We did so last year, on the same principle that made us in
childhood prefer the cherries that the birds had pecked, finding them
the sweetest. We had heard Asisi abused: it was out of the world, it
was desperately dull and there was nothing to eat. We therefore sent
and engaged an apartment for the summer, and our confidence was not
betrayed.

Perhaps the hotels are not good: we have never tried them. But the
market is excellent for a mountain-city, and in the autumn figs and
grapes are cheap and abundant. There are apartments to be let, and
servants to be had who, with a little instruction, soon learn to cook
in a civilized manner.

We have a fancy that there is a different moral atmosphere in a town
surrounded by olive trees and one set in vineyards, the former being
more sober and reserved, the latter more joyous and expansive. The
latter may, indeed, carry its spirit too far--like the little city of
Zagorolo near Rome, where the inhabitants are noted at the same time
for the strength and excellence of their wines and for the
quarrelsomeness of their dispositions. Palestrina, a little way off on
the hillside, with a flowing skirt of vines all about it, breathes
laughter in its very air. One may sit in Bernardini's--known to all
visitors to the city of Fortune--and hear the travellers who come there
laugh over mishaps which they would have growled over anywhere else.
The comparison might be made of many other towns.

Asisi is set in a world of olives. They swing like smoke from a censer
all through the corn and grain of the plain; they roll up the hills and
mountains, climbing the almost perpendicular heights like goats; they
crawl through the ravines; they cover the tiny plateaus set between the
crowded hills; and plantations of slim young trees are set through the
city, bending like long feathers and turning a soft silver as the wind
passes over them. It is delightful to walk under the olive trees in
early summer, when they hang full of strings of tiny cream-colored
blossoms. In winter these blossoms will have changed to a small black
fruit. The trees are as rugged as the roughest old apple trees, and
many of them are supported only on a hollow half-circle of trunk or on
two or three mere sticks. One wonders how these slender fragments of
trunk can support that spreading weight above, especially in wind and
tempest, and how that wealth of blossom and fruit can draw sufficient
sustenance through such narrow and splintered channels; but the olive
is tough, and the oil that runs in its veins for blood keeps it ever
vigorous.

True to my fancy--which, indeed, it helped to nourish--Asisi is a
serious town. It has even an air of gentle melancholy, which is not,
however, depressing, but which inclines to thoughtfulness and study.
Travellers are familiar with its aspect--the crowning citadel with the
ring of green turf between it and the city, which stretches across the
shoulders of the mountain, row above row of gray houses, with the
magnificent pile of the church and convent of St. Francis at its
western extremity, clasped to the steep rock with a hold that an
earthquake could scarcely loosen. Three long streets stretch from east
to west, the central one a very respectable street, clean, well-paved,
and delightfully quiet. You may sit in a window there and hear nothing
the livelong day but the drip of a fountain and the screaming of clouds
of swallows, which are, without exception, the most impudent birds that
can be imagined. Annoyed one day by the persistent "peeping" of a
swallow that had perched in a nook just outside my window, I leaned out
and frightened him away with my handkerchief. He darted down to a
little olive-plantation below, and a minute after up came a score or
two of swallows and began flying round in a circle directly before my
window, screaming like little demons. Now and then one would dart out
of the circle and make a vicious dip toward my face, with the evident
wish to peck my eyes out, so that I was glad to draw back. It reminded
me of the famous circular battery which attacked one of the Confederate
forts during our civil war, and it was quite as well managed.

The _vetturino_ whom we took from the station up to the town on our
arrival told me, when I gave my address, that the Sor Filomena had gone
away from Asisi, and I had better go to the hotel Leone. I insisted on
being taken to the Sor Filomena's house. He replied that the house was
closed, and renewed his recommendations of the Leone. After the
inevitable combat we succeeded in having ourselves set down at our
lodgings, where Sor Filomena's rosy face appeared at the open door.

"Why did you tell such a lie?" I asked of the unblushing vetturino,
using the rough word _bugia_.

He looked insulted: "I have not told a bugia."

With a philosophical desire for information I repeated the question,
using the milder word _mensogna_. He drew himself up, looked virtuous
and declared that he had not told a mensogna.

"Why, then," I asked, "have you said one thing for another?"

It was just what he wanted. He immediately began a profuse verbal
explanation of why one thing was sometimes better to say than another,
why one was truer than another, and so mixed up his _una cosa_ and _un'
altra cosa_ as to put me quite _hors de combat_, and send me into the
house with the impression that I ought to be ashamed of myself for
having told somebody a lie. It brought to my mind one of my father's
favorite quotations: "Some things can be done as well as some other
things."

I was shown to my room, which was rough, as all rooms in Asisi are, but
large and high. As Sor Filomena said, it had _un' aria signorile_ in
spite of the coarse brick floor and the ugly doors and lumpy walls.
Some large dauby old paintings gave a color to the dimness, there were
a fine old oak secretary black with age, a real bishop's carved stool
with a red cushion laid on it, and a long window opening on to a view
of the wide plain with its circling mountains and its many cities and
_paesetti_--Perugia shining white from the neighboring hill; Spello and
Spoleto standing out in bold profile in the opposite direction;
Montefalco lying like a gray pile of rocks on a southern hilltop; the
village and church of Santa Maria degli Angeli nestled like a flock of
cloves in the plain; and half a dozen others.

I ordered writing-table and chair to be set before the window, and
enthroned upon the bishop's tabouret an unabridged Worcester--this
being probably his first visit to Asisi--and I was immediately at home.

The servant, Maria, whose maternal grandmother was a countess, was
making some last arrangements in the room.

"Come and see what a beautiful new moon there is," I said to her.

She came to the window and looked toward the west. "That isn't the
moon: it is a star," she said, fixing her eyes upon Venus.

It was quite characteristic of her class. They all think _forestieri_
do not know the moon from a star.

I pointed lower down, to where an ecstatic crescent was melting in the
sunset gold.

She gazed at it a moment, then said: "It is beautiful: I never noticed
it before. I never look at the sky except to see what the weather is to
be. It is for you signori to look at beautiful things, not for us
_poveretti_.--Do you see the sky in America?" she asked presently.

I assured her that we do, and that the sun, moon and stars shine in it
just as here in Italy.

She was greatly puzzled. "I thought that America was under ground," she
said.

I remembered Galileo and held my peace. Besides, in these days of
universal knowledge, when we hear scientific terms lisped by infant
lips, it is refreshing to see an example of fine old-fashioned
ignorance. Yet this woman had better manners than are to be found in
most drawing-rooms, a sweet, courteous dignity, and in matters which
came within her personal knowledge great good sense and judgment. Only
she had never learned that from the centre of the earth all directions
are up.

Of course a stranger's first visit in Asisi is to the basilica of San
Francesco, and, though I had seen it before, I lost no time in renewing
my acquaintance with it. This church is not only the jewel of Asisi,
but one of the most precious of Italy. It is among churches what a
person of genius is in a crowd. The rich marbles one sees elsewhere
suggest the mechanic in their arrangement, and one grows almost tired
of them; but here the soul of Art and Faith has poured itself out,
covering all the wide walls, the ceilings, the sides of arches, the
ribs of groinings--every foot of space, in short--with life and color;
and how much more precious is one of those solemn pearly faces than a
panel of alabaster or the most cunning mosaic of marbles! In the upper
church alone there are twenty-two large frescoes of Cimabue and thirty
of Giotto. Over these pours the light from fourteen large colored
windows, unimpeded by side-aisles. When the sun beats upon these
windows the church seems to be filled with a transparent mist softly
tinted with a thousand rich hues. The deep-blue, star-sown vault
sparkles and the figures on the walls become a vision.

The upper church has been in danger of losing its beautiful choir, a
marvel of carving and _intarsio_, which Cavalcasella, inspector of fine
arts in Italy, removed for the odd reason that it was a work of the
fourteenth century, while the church was of the thirteenth, and to be
in perfect keeping should have a stone choir. I have not learned
whether this hyper-purist will require of the congregation a
thirteenth-century costume when the church is again open for service.

These beautiful stalls, one hundred and two in number, are now placed
for safe-keeping in what was the infirmary of the adjoining college.
Possibly, when the work going on _pian piano_ in the church is
completed, they may be restored to their original place. Their sombre
richness would show well in that radiant atmosphere.

The work in the church is, however, well done, and was greatly needed,
for those precious frescoes were gradually going to decay. No touch of
pencil is allowed: the work is one of preservation merely, and is being
conducted with the greatest care. The loosened _intonaco_ is found by
tapping lightly on the wall: plaster is then slipped underneath and the
painting firmly pressed to its place. At first _gesso_ was used, but it
was found not to answer the purpose. Every smallest fragment of
painting is saved, and the blank spaces are filled in with plaster
which is painted a light gray. This freshens and throws out the
adjoining colors.

It is customary to call the lower church "devotional." With many, a
dark church is always devotional. I should rather call it sympathetic.
Every sort of mood may here find itself reflected, and the sinner be as
much at home as the saint. Anger and hate may hide as well as devotion:
the artist may dream, the weary may rest, the stupid doze. The only
objects which ever seemed to me utterly incongruous there were a brisk
company of hurried tourists, red-covered guidebook in hand, clattering
with sharp-sounding boot-heels up the dim nave and talking with sharp,
loud voices at the very steps of the altar where people were kneeling
at the most solemn moment of the mass. But even these invariably soften
their tones and their movements after a while.

This church has always some pleasant surprise for the frequent visitor.
The morning light shows one picture, the evening light another: the
sunrise adorns this window, the sunset that. There is no hour from dawn
to dark in which some gem of ancient painting does not look its best,
while little noticed, if seen at all, at other hours. Some are seen by
a reflected light; others, when the church is so dark that one may
stumble against a person in the nave, gather to themselves the dim and
scattered rays like an aureole, from which they look out with soft
distinctness; and there are others, again, upon which a sun-ray,
finding a narrow passage through arch after arch, alights with a sudden
momentary glory that is almost startling.

It is a fascinating place, that middle church--never light, but always
traversed by some varying illumination which is ever lost in shadows.
And in those shadows how much may lurk of present material beauty and
of beautiful memory! Here, before the chapel of St. Louis, Raphael
lingered, learning the frescoed Sibyls of its vault so by heart that he
almost reproduced them afterward in the Pace at Rome--that dear Raphael
who did not fear being called a plagiarist, his soul was so full of
beauty, and he so transfigured whatever he touched with that suave
pencil of his that seemed to have been clipped in light for a color.
And where did the feet of Michael Angelo rest when he stood in the
transept and praised that Crucifixion painted on the wall? One might
expect that the stones would have been conscious of the Orpheus they
supported.

In the college adjoining the church there were a year ago but fifteen
monks, and no others are admitted. When these fifteen shall be dead the
convent--_Sacro Collegio_ they call it--will pass entirely into the
hands of the government, which now uses the greater part of it for a
school for the sons of poor teachers, who are sent here from all parts
of Italy.

Accompanied by a professor of the college, we went over that part of
the building not appropriated to the monks. It is a little town in
itself, and has something of the variety and contrasts of a town. To go
from the vast refectory to that upper part of the building called the
Ghetto, with its interminable low and narrow corridor and lines of
little chambers, is to see the two extremes of which building is
capable.

Without intending to write a statistical article, I may give a few of
the dimensions we took note of. The refectory is one hundred and ninety
feet long and forty wide, and is capable of seating at table five
hundred persons. The tables run around the room, with a single row of
seats against the wall, and are served from the centre of the hall.
Quite across one end extends a painting of the Last Supper. At one side
is a tiny pulpit, from which in the old time one would read aloud while
the monks ate.

The infirmary and rooms used for storing articles in ordinary use
occupy twenty large chambers. The five elementary school-rooms are each
fifty feet square, the kitchen is eighty-three feet square, and the
fencing-hall and garden adjoining contain together over sixty-six
hundred square feet. The cistern under the cloister is of nearly the
same size.

There is water in profusion--in the court, the kitchen, the boys'
wash-rooms, wherever it can be needed. In the entry from the principal
court is an odd fourteenth-century fountain which is a perfect
calendar. It is set against the wall, and is in twelve compartments,
answering to the twelve months of the year. In the frieze above are
carved roses, red stone on a white ground--in some compartments thirty,
in others thirty-one, answering to the days of the month. All the
fountains are made of the crimson-and-white stone of Asisi, which is
seen everywhere about the city--in vases for holy water, in pavements,
in garden-walls, in the foundations of houses. The stone, a red
sandstone, is found in plenty in the adjoining mountains, and has a
rich, soft crimson hue with irregular lines of white. But it is very
hard to work, and could scarcely be made to pay the expense of the
necessary machinery.

"For what I should have to pay for a bath of red marble, about one
hundred lire (twenty dollars)," said the Count B---- to me, "I could
buy a bath of Carrara."

"Baths of crimson marble and of Carrara!" I thought, and remembered
with an involuntary shudder my dear native zinc.

But to return to the Sacro Collegio. In one of the immense labyrinthine
cellars is a _botte_ for wine capable of containing five thousand
litri. There, it is said--I know not how truly--once a year, when the
botte was emptied, came four of the spiritual fathers of the college
above, with a table and chairs, and played a certain game of cards,
which was one of their simple amusements. Whether this meeting was
intended as an exorcism of any evil influences which might threaten the
new must about to be put in, or a mild bacchanalian tribute to the
empty space from which they had drawn so much comfort and cheerfulness
during the year, or whether the wine left some fine perfume behind it
which they wished to inhale, tradition saith not. Maybe the fathers
never went there, and the story is merely _ben trovato_.

In the school of design we admired a copy of some of the carving of the
choir of the cathedral of Asisi. The leaves were remarkably crisp and
all the lines full of life. My guide told me that this choir and the
famous one of St. Peter's in Perugia were designed by the same artist,
but that of Perugia was executed by another and more timid hand, while
this of Asisi was carved by the artist himself.

Our last visit in the college was to the grand _loggia_--finer than
anything of the kind I have seen in Italy except the Loggia del
Paradiso of Monte Casino, which is open, while this of San Francesco is
closed. The grandeur of this loggia, with its lofty arches and long
perspective, is in harmony with the magnificence of the view to be seen
from it. Seated there, on the stone divan that runs the whole length of
the colonnade, I listened a while to the very interesting talk of my
companion. This gentleman, Professor Cristofani, is said to be one of
the most learned men in Umbria, and has studied so thoroughly his
native province as to be an authority on all that concerns its history
and antiquities. A native of Asisi, he has devoted himself especially
to that city, and his _Storia di Asisi_ and _Guida di Asisi_ are
monuments of learned and patient research. He has written also a
history of San Damiano which has lately been translated in England.

The government took possession of this church and convent of San
Damiano, the first home of St. Clara and her companions, and proposed
establishing there a school of arts and trades; but Lord Ripon
persuaded them to sell the property to him, and in his turn presented
it to the _frati_ from whom it had been taken. It is a rough place, but
interesting in memories.

"I have a book _in petto_," the professor said, "which will, I think,
be more valuable and interesting than the others. I have collected
material for a history of the church and convent of St. Francis, and
shall write it as soon as I have time. I should be glad if it could be
illustrated."

While he spoke my imagination was already turning over the leaves of a
history of that stately monument, around which clusters so much of
Middle-Age story, and looking at copies of forms and faces which to
remember is a dream of rainbows and angels. There should be that quaint
Madonna who points her thumb over her shoulder at St. Francis while she
asks her Son to bless him, and the three saints and the Madonna of the
north transept, and the pictures at the entrance of the chapel of San
Martino, and the vault of the chapel of St. Louis, and a thousand other
lovely things.

And, "Signor Professore," I said eagerly, "how I should like to
translate that work, pictures and all, into English!"

He cordially consented, with many compliments.

As we left the loggia he pointed to the arch opposite the
entrance-door. "That is the arch of suicides," he said: "more than one
man has thrown himself down that precipice."

We were joined by a Benedictine monk as we went but, who proposed that
we should go up the campanile. It is pleasant to visit the bells of a
famous or favorite church. It is like seeing a poet whose songs we have
heard, and pleasanter in some respects; for while the poet may mantle
himself in commonplace at our approach, like Olympus in clouds, one can
always waken the spirit of song in these airy singers.

The way up this campanile is very rough, a mere gravelly path, and one
can only maintain his footing by holding a rope that runs all the way
up, following the four sides. Reaching the large chamber at the top, we
paid our respects to the seven bells, whose intricate changes I had so
many times tried to follow. Their ringing is a puzzle. In the middle
hung the melancholy _campanone_, with a silvery soprano by its side--a
very Dante and Beatrice among bells.

We stayed to hear the noon Angelus strike, and while the last stroke
was still booming around the great bell I took a step toward it and
stretched my hand out.

I was instantly snatched backward, with a profusion of excuses.

"It is said," the professor explained, "that if a bell be touched, even
with the finger-tip, while ringing, it will instantly break. I do not
know if it be true, but it is worth guarding against."

It was indeed! A fine appetite I should have had for my breakfast, at
that moment awaiting me, if I had had to reflect over it that the great
bell of the great basilica of St. Francis of Asisi had that very
morning been cracked into pieces by my fore finger! What visions of
horrified crowds of _Asisinati_, of black storms of newspaper items, of
censuring gossip the world over, would have come between me and that
purple pigeon smothered in rice which Maria had promised me! The pope
himself would have known me individually out of the cloud of his
subjects, and have frowned upon my image. And how it would have been
whispered behind me to the end of my days, "That is the lady who broke
the great bell of St. Francis"! But I had not broken it, and it still
hangs sound and strong, to send its melancholy sweet music out to meet
the centuries as they roll in storm and sunshine over the eastern
mountains. Let us be thankful for the evils which might have happened
and did not.

I cannot resist the temptation to relate a little incident concerning
this same learned Professor Cristofani, it struck me as so quaint. He
is a poor man--literature, and even teaching, do not pay very well in
Italian paesi--and he has a family. Cheaply as servants may be
employed, he could not afford one, and his wife was not very well. Last
summer the _Alpinisti_ visited Asisi, and some of the principal
members, having an introduction to him, wished to visit him. Their stay
in Asisi was short, and, being sunrise-and-mountain-top people, they
made their call at six o'clock in the morning on their way to the top
of Mount Asio, from which Asisi takes its name, and, I may here add,
the correct spelling of its name, which I have followed. A servant from
the Leone Hotel showed the visitors to the house, and very stupidly
knocked at the kitchen-door. A loud "_Avanti!_" from within answered
the knock. The door was opened by the guide, revealing a tableau. The
professor, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up and an apron tied on, was
earnestly kneading a mass of dough preparatory to sending it to the
baker's oven, where everybody bakes their bread, and his pretty blonde
young daughter was making coffee at the kitchen fire.

"Well, I am a poor man, and my wife was sick," he said afterward, in
telling the story, with a sad smile in his eyes, which are as blue and
almost as blind as violets.

These stories awaken a laugh only at the time, but gain a certain
sublimity when years have gilded them--like that one of St.
Bonaventura, which this reminds us of: When the two legates sent by the
pope of that time to carry the scarlet beretta of a cardinal to St.
Bonaventura set out in search of him, they were obliged to follow him
to a little Franciscan convent at a short distance from Florence, where
he had retired for devotion and to practise for a while the humble
rules of his order. As these two dignified prelates came solemnly
around an angle of the building they glanced through the open
kitchen-window, and were astonished to see the personage they sought
engaged in washing the supper-dishes. He accosted them with perfect
calmness, and, learning their errand, requested them to hang the hat in
a tree near by till he should have finished washing the dishes. They
complied, and the pots and pans and plates having been attended to, the
whole community adjourned to the chapel and the saint received the
dignity of prince of the Church.

The eight days' festa of Corpus Domini opened in Asisi with one of the
most exquisite sights I have ever seen, the procession of the cathedral
as it passed from San Francesco through Via Superba on its return to
the cathedral. We took our places in a window reserved for us, and
waited. There all was quiet and deserted. The air was perfumed by
sprigs of green which each one had strewn before his own house. One
living creature alone was visible--a little boy who knelt in the middle
of the street and carefully placed small yellow flowers in the form of
an immense sunflower chalked out on the pavement. Here and there, in
some stairway-window, a shrine had been prepared, with its Madonna,
lamp and flowers. It was near noon of a bright June day, but the houses
were so high that the sun struck only on the upper stories of the north
side of the street. All below was in that transparent shadow wherein
objects look like pictures of themselves or like reflections in clear
water. The whole street was indeed a picture, with its gray houses set
in irregular lines, and as distinct in character as a line of men and
women would have been. On the building opposite our window was an
inscription telling that Metastasio had lived there--on another a date,
1419.

In 1419, when they piled the stones of that wall, Christopher Columbus
was not born, yet the basilica of St. Francis had been built more than
one hundred and fifty years; and on such a June day as this the
Asisinati leaned from their windows to see a Corpus Domini procession
come up the street, just as they were now doing. It came through the
fragrant silence and clear shadow like a vision. I could not restrain
an exclamation of surprise and delight, for I had not dreamed of
anything so beautiful. The procession would have been striking
anywhere, but shut in as it was between the soft gray of the opposite
stone houses, with the green-sprinkled street beneath and the glorious
blue above, it was as wonderful as if, looking down into clear deeps of
water, one should see the passing of some pageant of an enchanted city
buried deep in the crystalline waves centuries ago. There was nothing
here but the procession, leisurely occupying the whole street, treading
out faint odors without raising a particle of dust. The crowd that in
other places always obscures and spoils such a display here followed on
behind. The leisureliness of an Italian religious procession is
something delicious, as well as the way they have of forming hollow
squares and leaving the middle of the street sacred to the grander
dignities.

The members of the different societies wore long robes of red, blue or
of gray trimmed with red, and had small three-cornered pieces of the
material of the robe suspended by a string at the back of the neck, to
be drawn up over the head if necessary. The arms of the societies were
embroidered on the breast or shoulder, and each one had its great
painted banner of Madonna or saint and a magnificent crucifix with a
veil as rich as gold, silver, silk and embroidery could make it. There
were the white _camicie_ half covering the brown robes of long-bearded,
bare-ankled Cappuccini, and sheets of silver and gold in the vestments
of the other clergy.

Presently the canopy borne over the Host appeared, with the
incense-bearers walking backward before it and swinging out faint
clouds of smoke: the voices of the choir grew audible, singing the
_Pange lingua_, and everybody knelt. In a few minutes all was over.

There was a fair in connection with this feast, the most notable part
of which was dishes of all sorts set on tables or spread on the grass
of the pleasant piazza of St. Peter's, the Benedictine church, with no
roof over but the sky. The brown and yellow-green earthenware for
kitchen use would have delighted any housekeeper. We bought some tiny
saucepans with covers, and capable of holding a small teacupful, for a
cent each. Italian housekeepers make great use of earthen saucepans and
jars for cooking. One scarcely ever sees tin--iron almost never. In
rich houses copper is much used, but brown ware is seen everywhere.

The next notable festa, and the great feast of Asisi, is the Pardon,
called variously the Pardon of Asisi, the Pardon of St. Francis and the
Porziuncola.

In the old times, and particularly when this indulgence could be
obtained only in Asisi, the concourse of people was so great that there
were not roofs to cover them, and many slept in the open air. But since
the favor has been extended to other churches, as well as from other
reasons, the number is greatly diminished, and consists chiefly of
people in _villeggiatura_ near by and of a few hundred Neapolitan
peasants, who with undiminished fervor come to obtain the Pardon, and
whose singular performance, called _gran ruota_ (the great wheel),
everybody goes to see.

The Catholic reader will know that this Pardon can be obtained only
from vespers of the first to vespers of the second day of August, and
that while in every other church communion is a necessary condition, it
is sufficient to merely pass through the chapel of the Porziuncola, for
which St. Francis obtained the indulgence from Pope Honorius.

There is a large fair in connection with this festa--merchandise of all
sorts in the piazza and corso, and a cattle-fair in the upper part of
the town. The long white road stretching from Asisi to Santa Maria
degli Angeli in the plain was quite black with _contadini_ coming up
with their goods in the early dawn, and a sound of hoofs and of many
feet told that the procession was passing the house. There were carts
full of produce, men leading white and dove-colored cattle, and women
with large round baskets on their heads. These baskets contained live
fowl. In one a large melancholy turkey meditated on his approaching
fate: in another, two of lighter disposition swung their long necks
about and viewed the scene. One of these baskets was as pretty as the
blackbird pie of famous memory. In it sat eight chickens of an age to
make their début on the platter, all settled into a fluffy, soft-gray
cushion, out of which their little heads and necks and half-raised
wings peeped and turned and fluttered in a manner that testified to the
agitation of their spirits. The woman carrying this basket would have
made a pretty caryatid, chickens and all, so straight was she, so
robust her shoulders and so full and regular the oval of her face.

The cattle were superb--some immensely large, others delicately small,
and all with such long, slim, pointed horns as made one shrink. Those
strong, high-lifted heads carried their weapons like unsheathed
scymitars. Red cords were twined across their foreheads from horn to
horn, and red tassels swung beside their faces. This procession passed
in almost entire silence, with only a pattering of hoofs that sounded
like heavy rain.

Presently appeared a light wagon in which sat alone a large fleshy
woman, who had quite the expression of one making a triumphal entry
into the city. Her black hair was elaborately dressed in braids
fastened with gold pins and in short curls on the forehead, and was
lightly covered with a black lace veil. Her dress was a sky-blue silk,
with a lace shawl carefully draped over the wide shoulders. Her hands
were loaded with rings and her neck with gold chains, and a large
medallion swung over two large brooches. There was a smile of conscious
superiority on her coarsely-handsome face as she glanced over the
contadini, who humbly made way for her. A small, meek, well-dressed man
who walked beside the wagon seemed to be the proprietor of its
occupant, and to be somewhat oppressed by his good fortune. There was
no room for him in the wagon. It occurred to me that this might be an
avatar of the old woman of Banbury Cross.

The crowd thinned away like rain that from a heavy shower falls only in
scattered drops, and I was about turning from the window when my eyes
fell upon a beautiful bit of color across the way, standing out, as so
much Italian color does, against the background of a gray stone wall.
It was an odd, slim cone, something over five feet high, made of grass
and clover sprinkled through with burning poppies. I was just thinking
that this verdure must be fastened to a pole set into the ground when
it began to move. The fresh, long grass waved, the poppies glowed like
live coals when blown upon, two slim brown feet and ankles appeared
under the green fringe, and the dimpled elbow of a slim brown arm
peeped out above. Nothing else human was visible as this figure walked
away up the street toward the fair. Poor Ruth! She had neither cows,
pigs nor chickens, but she came with such riches as she could glean at
the roadside from bountiful Nature, clothed and covered from the top of
her invisible head down to her well-turned ankles in a garment as fair
as fancy could weave.

Later, Count B---- came to take me to the cattle-fair, where we found
the upper piazza all a drift of shaded snow at one side with cows and
oxen, and at the other a shining chestnut-color with horses and
donkeys. We walked among these creatures, my companion warding away
from me their long horns and telling me some little items of bovine
character which may be known the world over, but which were new to me.
Some cattle are women-haters, he said, and in a country where women
have so much to do with the cattle that was a great defect. The buyer
detected the flaw in this way: he passed his hand slowly down the
creature's back from the neck to the tail: then a woman would do the
same. If the animal made any difference between the two or looked round
at the woman, he would not buy. They try them also when they are eating
in the stall. If the animal looks round when it is eating at the person
who is approaching, it is ill-natured.

We went then to see the old theatre, where plays used to be performed
on great occasions. It was a large circle of stone wall, a miniature of
the old amphi-theatre of the Roman Forum, with the sky for a roof. But
now a vegetable-garden grows where the spectacle once was seen, and
along the walls where the audience sat and gazed deep-hued wallflowers
bloom and delicate jasmine-vines hang out their white stars.

Farther on is an old city-gate, which, unfortunately, was to be torn
down to make way for a new road. Those gates are veritable pictures,
with their beautiful round arches and the niche with its fresco
underneath. This porta preserved perfectly in the crimson stone the
smooth slide down which the suspended gate slipped at night or in times
of danger.

Returning through the piazza, I saw the balcony of a public building
draped with red satin, and a flag hung out in it. While this flag was
out, Count B---- said, no creature which was sold could be returned to
the seller, no matter what flaw might be discovered in it after the
bargain was concluded. It was then the time to get rid of women-hating
cows and oxen and "made-up" horses.

In the afternoon we went to the church of St. Francis to see the
_piccola ruota_ of the Neapolitan peasants, which is apparently a
rehearsal for the _gran ruota_ to be performed in the Porziuncola the
day following. These people were all gone, when we reached the church,
to follow a relic-bearing procession of Franciscans to the little
chapel built over the spot where St. Francis was born, and the
spectators took advantage of the opportunity to range themselves about
the walls and wherever they could find places. We were scarcely in the
seats offered us in the choir when a murmur of subdued exclamations, a
trampling of many feet and a cloud of dust that filled the vestibule
announced the return of the procession. The gates of the iron grating
which shut off the chancel and transepts from the nave were opened to
admit the monks with their relic, and closed immediately to exclude the
crowd. After the short function was ended they were again opened, and
the crowd rushed in and began to run around the altar.

These people were all poor: many were old and had to be held up and
helped along by a younger person at either side. The women wore
handkerchiefs on their heads, and many wore those sandals made of a
piece of leather tied up over the foot with strings which give these
peasants their popular name of _sciusciari_, an imitative word derived
from the scuffling sound of the sandals in walking. They hurried
eagerly on, hustling each other, murmuring prayers and ejaculations,
and seemed quite unconscious of the crowd of persons who had come there
to stare, perhaps to laugh, at them. The Asisinati looked on without
taking any part, and with a curiosity not unmingled with contempt. "The
Neapolitans are so material!" they say.

These repeated circlings of the altar, I was told, are intended as so
many visits, each time they go round having the value of a visit. Many
of these people seek the Pardon not only for themselves, but for
friends who are unable to come. The absent confess and communicate at
their parish church at home, and unite their intention with that of the
person who makes the visit for them.

My _padrona di casa_ told me an anecdote in illustration of this
materialism of the Neapolitans, which the Asisinati are anxious not to
be thought to share: On the first of August several years before, she
said, when the church of St. Francis was full of people waiting around
the confessionals, a man at one of them was observed to be disputing
with the priest inside. Pressed so closely as they were, many might
excuse themselves for being aware that the penitent was refusing to
agree to the penance imposed by the priest, who consequently declined
to give him absolution. The priest cut the dispute short by closing the
wicket and addressing himself to the penitent at the other side. The
man left his place and wandered disconsolately about the church,
followed by many curious eyes, for not to listen in silent submission
to the penance imposed by the priest is a rare scandal. After a while
he seemed to have resolved on a compromise, but it was no longer
possible to obtain his place in advance of the crowd, where each one
waited his turn. He took a post, therefore, directly opposite the front
of the confessional, as near as he could get, but with half the width
of the nave between, and waited till the priest should be visible. The
moment came when the confessor, turning from one penitent to another,
was seen from the front. The man leaned eagerly forward, and throwing
out his right hand with three fingers extended, as if playing _morra_,
called out, "Quello del casotiello, volete farlo per tre?" ("You in the
confessional there, will you do it for three?") (These peasants call
the confessional _casotiello_.) Whether the bargain related to a number
of prayers to be said, a number of visits or of masses, does not
concern us.

The next afternoon we went down to Santa Maria degli Angeli in the
plain, the very penetralia of the Pardon. Those who have visited this
church know that the little chapel of the Porziuncola, which is
enclosed in its midst like the heart in a body, has two doors--one at
the lower end, the other at the upper right corner. It is very dim
except when its altar is blazing with candles and its hanging lamps
lighted. As we have already said, a visit to this chapel or merely
passing through it, for a person who has confessed, satisfies the
outward conditions of the Pardon.

In the gran ruota which we were about to witness the Neapolitans
entered in an unbroken line at the lower door, passed out without
stopping at the upper, ran down the side-aisle of the church and out of
the door, in again at the great door, up the nave, and again through
the chapel, repeating this over and over for fifteen or twenty minutes.
While they make the wheel no one else enters the chapel: all are
spectators.

It was for these poor people the supreme moment. They had come from
afar at an expense which they could ill afford; they had endured
fatigue, perhaps hunger; and they had been mocked at. But, so far, they
had accomplished their task. They had confessed their sins with all the
fervor and sincerity of which they were capable, had visited the
birthplace, the home, the basilica and the distant mountain-retreat of
St. Francis, and they had gathered the miraculous yellow fennel-flowers
of the mountain. Now they were to receive the Pardon. The chains of
hell had fallen from them in confession: at the moment of entering the
chapel the bonds of Purgatory would also be loosened, and if they
should drop dead there, or die before having committed another sin,
they would fly straight to heaven as larks into the morning sky. No
passing from a miserable present to a miserable Purgatory, but
unimaginable bliss in an instant. Their ideal bliss might not be the
highest which the human mind is capable of conceiving, but it was the
highest that they could conceive, and their souls strained blindly
upward to that point where imagination faints against the thrilling
cord with which the body holds the spirit in tether. To these people
heaven was not a mere theological expression, a vague place which might
or might not be: it was as real as the bay and the sky of Naples and
the smoking volcano that nursed for ever their sense of unknown
terrors. It was as real as the poppies in their grass and the oranges
ripening on their trees. Maria Santissima, in her white robe and the
blue mantle where they could count the creases, was there, with ever
the vision of a Babe in her arms, and Gesù, the arms of whose cross
should fall into folds of a glorious garment about his naked crucified
form, in sleeves to his hands, in folds about his feet and raised into
a crown about his head. Into this blessed company no earthly pain could
enter to destroy their delights. Cold and hunger and the dagger's point
could never find them more, nor sickness rack them, nor betrayal set
their blood in a poisoned flame, nor earthquakes chill them with
terror. Lying in that heavenly sunshine, with fruit-laden boughs within
reach and heaps of gold beside them if they should wish for it, they
could laugh at Vesuvius licking in vain with its fiery tongue toward
them, and at the black clouds heavy with hail that would spread ruin
over the fields far away from these celestial vineyards and the waving
grain of Paradise.

Exalted by such visions, what to them were the gazing crowd and their
own rags and squalor? They entered the Porziuncola singing: they came
out at the side-door transfigured, and silent except for some
breathless "Maria!" or "Gesù!" Their arms were thrown upward, their
glowing black eyes were upraised, their thin swarthy faces burned with
a vivid scarlet, their white teeth glittered between the parted lips.
Round and round they went like a great water-wheel that revolves in sun
and shadow, and the spray it tossed up as it issued from the
Porziuncola was rapture, the fiery spray of the soul.

At last all remained outside the chapel, making two long lines from
either side the door down the nave to the open air, their faces ever
toward the chapel. Then they began to sing in voices as clear and sweet
as a chorus of birds. Not a harsh note was there. They sang some hymn
that had come down to them from other generations as the robins and the
bobo-links drop their songs down to future nestlings, and ever a
long-drawn note stretched bright and steady from one stanza to another.
So singing, they stepped slowly backward, always gazing steadily at the
lighted altar of the Porziuncola, visible through the door, and,
stepping backward and singing, they slowly drew themselves out of the
church, and the Pardon for them was over.

But though Asisi is not without its notable sights, the chief pleasures
there are quiet ones. A walk down through the olive trees to the dry
bed of the torrent Tescio will please one who is accustomed to rivers
which never leave their beds. One strays among the rocks and pebbles
that the rushing waters have brought down from the mountains, and
stands dryshod under the arches of the bridges, with something of the
feeling excited by visiting a deserted house; with the difference that
the Undine people are sure to come rushing down from the mountains
again some day. There one searches out charming little nooks which
would make the loveliest of pictures. There was one in the Via del
Terz' Ordine which was a sweet bit of color. Two rows of stone houses
facing on other streets turn their backs to this, and shade it to a
soft twilight, till it seems a corridor with a high blue ceiling rather
than a street. There it lies forgotten. No one passes through it or
looks into it. In one spot the tall houses are separated by a rod or so
of high garden-wall with an arch in the middle of it, and under the
arch is a door. Over this arch climbs a rose-vine with dropping
clusters of tiny pink roses that lean on the stone, hang down into the
shadow or lift and melt into the liquid, dazzling blue of the sky.
Except the roses and the sky all is a gray shadow. It reminds one of
some lovely picture of the Madonna with clustering cherub faces about
her head, and you think it would not be discordant with the scene if a
miraculous figure should steal into sight under that arch. It is one of
the charms of Italy that it can always fitly frame whatever picture
your imagination may paint.

One finds a pleasant and cultivated society there too. One of my most
highly-esteemed visitors was the _canonico priore_ of the cathedral,
whose father had been an officer in the guard of the First Napoleon. A
pious and dignified elderly man, this prelate is not too grave to be
sometimes amusing as well as instructive. In his youth he had the
privilege of being intimate with Cardinal Mezzofanti, who apparently
took a fancy to the young Locatelli--"Tommassino" he called him, which
is a musical way of saying Tommy. At length he offered to give him
lessons in Greek. Full of proud delight at such a privilege, the
student went with his books for the first lesson, and was most kindly
received.

"Listen, Tommassino!" the cardinal said, turning over the leaves of a
great folio. "Here is a magnificent passage of St. Chrysostom's;" and
he read it out enthusiastically in fine, sonorous Greek.

"But I do not understand what it means," said the pupil.

"To be sure;" and the savant at once translated the passage into
musical Italian, and pointed out its beauties of thought and
expression. And so on, passage after passage, but never a word of
grammar.

Another time it was another of the Fathers or a heathen poet or a
chapter from the Bible read, translated and commented upon; but never
from first to last did Tommassino learn to conjugate a verb or form a
sentence from his learned professor.

"Mezzofanti," the prior said, "was as good as he was learned. He lived
simply, would not have been known from a common priest by his dress in
the street, and visited the sick like a parish priest."

Just at the foot of the hill on which Asisi is built a farm-school was
established a few years ago, the first director being the Benedictine
abate Lisi, a nobleman by birth and a farmer-monk by choice. His death
a year or two ago was deeply regretted. To this establishment boys are
sent, instead of to prison, after their first conviction for an offence
against the law. We saw this school on a former visit to Asisi, and
were much amused to see the tall, raw-boned abate stride about in his
long black robe, which some of his motions threatened to rend from top
to bottom. Clergymen habituated to the wearing of the long robe
acquire, little by little, a restrained step and carriage, somewhat
like a woman's, so that in ordinary masculine dress they may be
discovered by their walk: one would say that they walk like women
dressed in men's garments. The free stride in a narrow petticoat is
almost comical.

On this occasion we had a new exemplification of the almost incredible
riches of Italy, for the abate Lisi's house was crowded with objects
dug up in digging cellars and drains and in cultivating the farm,
though there had been no intention to excavate and the owner was rather
embarrassed than otherwise by the riches he had acquired. Ancient coins
of many different nations, fragments of exquisite architectural
carving, statuary and household utensils, loaded shelves, tables and
drawers. Italy would seem to be wrought of such like a coral-reef, down
to its very foundations in the deep.

The abate had no utopian ideas concerning his work, though he heartily
devoted his life to it. "These boys," he said, "will go out
contadini--still thieves, if you will--but they will limit themselves
to stealing a third out of their master's portion of the produce."

In Asisi we learned to understand what we may call atmospheric
politics, and it confirmed our former opinion that the Italian people
do not care a fig who governs them if only they are well fed. When they
are hungry they rebel, and the only freedom they covet is freedom from
the pangs of hunger. They are equally well pleased with the pope or
with "Vittorio," as they called him, if their simple meal is always
within reach; and if on feast-days they can have a chicken, red wine
instead of white, and a _dolce_, their contentment rises to enthusiasm.

A drought or a destructive rain is therefore to be feared by any
government, especially if there be malcontents to make use of it. There
was quite a severe drought in Asisi last summer, and loud and deep were
the imprecations we heard against the government. As the vines withered
and the corn shrank, so withered and shrank the king and his ministers
in the esteem of these poor people. Count Bindangoli told me that they
very much feared some democratic demonstration, and that they were
anxiously looking forward to the winter. In vain for weeks we looked
over to Perugia for rain (rain comes to Asisi only from that
direction). In vain were prayers in the churches, processions and
promises. We saw the gray showers sail around the horizon, heard their
far-off thunders, saw the lightning zigzag down through the slanting
torrents, and almost saw the hills grow green under them. The only
tempests we had were those we saw brooding on the brows of scowling
contadini. They talked openly of a republic, they were sick of the
devouring taxes, they regretted the papacy: there was certainly danger
of some "scompiglio," my padrone di casa assured me.

At length, after long weeks of waiting, Perugia disappeared in a gray
deluge: the rain came marching like an army across the plain toward us;
its first scattered drops printed the dust, its sheets of water
drenched the windows, its small torrents rushed down the steep streets.
The mountains grew dim and almost disappeared: we were shut in with
hope and a fresh delight. Then the deluge settled into a gentle rain,
under which the grapes swelled out their globes, the corn rustled with
a fuller growth and the hearts of men grew content. The king and his
ministers also budded out into new beauty, and flourished in popular
esteem like the green bay tree, and the republic was quenched--till the
next drought.

_The Author of "Signor Monaldini's Niece._"




HORSE-RACING IN FRANCE,


TWO PAPERS.--I.

[Illustration: THE RACE-COURSE AT LONGCHAMPS.]

The passion for horse-racing, which for more than two centuries has
made the sport a national one in England, cannot be said to exist in
France, and the introduction of this "pastime of princes" into the
latter country has been of comparatively recent date. Mention, it is
true, has been found of races on the plain of Les Sablons as early as
1776, and in the next year a sweepstakes of forty horses, followed by
one of as many asses, was run at Fontainebleau in the presence of the
court. But it is not until 1783 that one meets with the semblance of an
organization, and this as a mere caprice of certain grandees, who
affected an English style in everything, and who thought to introduce
the customs of the English turf along with the _chapeau Anglais_ and
the riding-coat. It was notably the comte d'Artois (afterward Charles
X.), the duc de Chartres (Philippe Égalité), the marquis de Conflans
and the prince de Guéménée who fancied themselves obliged, in their
character of Anglomaniacs, to patronize the race-course; but the public
of that time, to whom this imitation of English manners was not only an
absurdity, but almost a treason against the state, gave but a cold
reception to the attempted innovation. Racing, too, from its very
nature, found itself in direct conflict with all the traditions of the
ancient school of equitation, and it encountered from the beginning the
severe censure and opposition of horsemen accustomed to the measured
paces of the _manége_, whose highest art consisted in consuming a whole
hour in achieving at a gallop the length of the terrace of St. Germain.
The professors of this equestrian minuet, as solemn and formal in the
saddle as was the dancer Dupré in the ballets of the period, predicted
the speedy decay of the old system of horsemanship and the extinction
of the native breed of horses if France should allow her soil to be
invaded by foreign thoroughbreds with their English jockeys and
trainers. The first French sportsmen--to use the word in its limited
sense--thus found themselves not only unsupported by public opinion,
but alone in the midst of an actively-hostile community, and no one can
say how the unequal contest might have ended had not the graver events
of the Revolution intervened to put an end, for a time at least, not
only to the luxurious pleasures, but to all the hopes and ambitions, of
the noble class of idlers.

The wars with England that followed retarded for a quarter of a century
the introduction of racing into France. The first ministerial ordinance
in which the words _pur sang_ occur is that of the 3d of March, 1833,
signed by Louis Philippe and countersigned by Adolphe Thiers,
establishing a register of the thoroughbreds existing in France--in
other words, a national _stud-book_, by which name it is universally
known. The following year witnessed the foundation of the celebrated
Society for the Encouragement of the Improvement of Breeds of French
Horses, more easily recognized under the familiar title of the "Jockey
Club." The first report of this society exposed the deplorable
condition of all the races of horses in the country, exhausted as they
had been by the frightful draughts made upon them in the imperial wars,
and concluded by urging the necessity of the creation of a pure native
stock, of which the best individuals, to be selected by trial of their
qualities of speed and endurance upon the track, should be devoted to
reproduction. This was the doctrine which had been practically applied
in England, and which had there produced in less than a century the
most important and valuable results. France had but to follow the
example of her neighbor, and, borrowing from the English stock of
thoroughbreds, to establish a regular system of races as the means of
developing and improving the breed of horses upon her own soil.

This reasoning seemed logical enough, but the administration of the
_Haras_, or breeding-stables--which is in France a branch of the civil
service--opposed this innovation, and contended that the only pure type
of horse was the primitive Arab, and that every departure from this
resulted in the production of an animal more or less degenerate and
debased. The reply of the Jockey Club was, that the English
thoroughbred is, in fact, nothing else than a pure Arab, modified only
by the influences of climate and treatment, and that it would be much
wiser and easier to profit by a result already obtained than to
undertake to retrace, with all its difficulties and delays, the same
road that England had taken a century to travel.

The experience gained since 1833 has shown that the conclusions of the
Jockey Club were right, but the evidence of facts and of the results
obtained has not yet brought the discussion to a close. The
administration of the Haras still keeps up its opposition to the
raising of thoroughbreds, and will no doubt continue to do so for some
time to come, so tenacious is the hold of routine--or, as the
Englishman might say, of red tape--upon the official mind in France,
whether the question be one of finance, of war or of the breeding of
horses.

But it is not only against the ill-will of the administration that the
Jockey Club has had to struggle during all these years: it has had also
to contend with the still more disheartening indifference of the public
in the matter of racing. There is no disputing the fact that the
genuine lover of the horse, the _homme de cheval_--or, if I may be
forgiven a bit of slang for the sake of its expressiveness, the
_horsey_ man, whether he be coachman or groom, jockey or trainer--is
not in France a genuine product of the soil, as he seems to be in
England. Look at the difference between the cabman of London and his
brother of Paris, if there be enough affinity between them to justify
this term of relationship. The one drives his horse, the other seems to
be driven by his. In London the driver of an omnibus has the air of a
gentleman managing a four-in-hand: in Paris the imbecile who holds the
reins looks like a workman who has been hired by the day to do a job
that he doesn't understand. So pronounced is this antipathy--for it is
more than indifference--of the genuine man of the people toward all
things pertaining to the horse that, notwithstanding all the
encouragements that for nearly half a century have been lavishly
offered for the purpose of developing a public taste in this direction,
not a single jockey or trainer who can properly be called a Frenchman
has thus far made his appearance. All the men and boys employed in the
racing-stables are of English origin, though many, perhaps most, of
them have been born in France; but the purity of their English blood,
so important in their profession, is as jealously preserved by
consanguineous marriages as is that of the noble animals in their
charge. It was an absolute necessity for the early turfmen of France to
import the Anglo-Saxon man with the Anglo-Arabian horse if they would
bring to a creditable conclusion the programme of 1833. And during all
the long period that has since elapsed what courage and patience, what
determined will, to say nothing of the prodigious expenditure of money,
have been shown by the founders of the race-course in France and by
their successors! Their perseverance has had its reward, indeed, in the
brilliancy of the results obtained, but there is still due to them an
ampler tribute of recognition than they have yet received, and it will
be a grateful duty to dwell for a while upon the history of the Jockey
Club.

Of its fourteen original members but two survive, the duc de Nemours
and M. Ernest Leroy. The other twelve were His Royal Highness the duc
d'Orléans, M. Rieussec, who was killed by the infernal machine of
Fieschi, the comte de Cambis, equerry to the duc d'Orléans, Count
Demidoff, Fasquel, the chevalier de Machado, the prince de la Moskowa,
M. de Normandie, Lord Henry Seymour, Achille Delamarre, Charles Lafitte
and Caccia. To these fourteen gentlemen were soon added others of the
highest rank or of the first position in the aristocratic world of
Paris. People began to talk with bated breath of the Jockey Club and of
its doings, and strange stories were whispered of the habits of some of
its distinguished members. The eccentricities of Count Demidoff and of
Major Frazer, the obstreperous fooleries of Lord Henry Seymour, the
studied extravagances of Comte d'Alton-Shee, created in the public mind
the impression that the club was nothing less than a sort of infernal
pit, peopled by wicked dandies like Balzac's De Marsay, Maxime de
Trailles, Rastignac, etc. Even the box of the club at the opera was
dubbed with the uncanny nickname _loge infernale_, and the talk of the
town ran upon the frightful sums lost and won every night at the tables
of the exclusive _cercle_, while the nocturnal passer-by pointed with a
shudder to the windows of the first floor at the corner of the Rue de
Grammont and the Boulevard, glimmering until morning dawn with a light
altogether satanic. The truth must be confessed that _jeunesse dorée_
of the period affected a style somewhat "loud." There was exaggeration
in everything--in literature--for it was the epoch of the great
romantic impulse--in art, in politics: what wonder, then, that the
distractions of high life should over-pass the boundaries of good
taste, and even of propriety? The Jockey Club in the time of Louis
Philippe did but recall the good old days of Brookes's and of White's,
of the two Foxes, of George Selwyn and of Sheridan. But how changed is
all this! There is not to-day in Paris, perhaps in the world, a more
sedate, reputable and in every sense temperate club than the "Jockey."
It concerns itself only with racing, the legitimate object of its
foundation, and nothing else is discussed in its salons, if we except
one room, which under the Empire was baptized "The Camp of Châlons,"
for the reason that it had come to be reserved for the use of the old
soldiers, who met there to talk over incidents of army life. Baccarat,
that scourge of Parisian clubs, is forbidden, and lovers of play are
obliged to content themselves with a harmless rubber of whist. As one
black ball in six is sufficient to exclude a candidate--or, to use the
official euphemism, to cause his "postponement"--it is not difficult
for the coterie that controls the club to keep it clear of all noisy,
or even of merely too conspicuous, individuality. Lord Henry Seymour
would be "pilled" to-day by a probably unanimous vote. A candidate may
enjoy all the advantages of wealth and position, he may have the entrée
to all the salons, and may even be a member of clubs as exclusive as
the Union and the Pommes-de-Terre, and yet he may find himself unable
to gain admission to the Jockey. Any excess of notoriety, any marked
personal eccentricity, would surely place him under the ban. Scions of
ancient families, who have had the wisdom to spend in the country and
with their parents the three or four years succeeding their college
life, would have a much better chance of admission than a leader of
fashion such as I have described. The illustrious General de Charette;
M. Soubeyran, at that time governor of the _Crédit foncier_ of France;
the young Henry Say, brother-in-law of the prince A. de Broglie, rich
and accomplished, and the owner, moreover, of a fine racing-stable;
together with many other gentlemen whose private lives were above
suspicion,--have been blackballed for the simple reason that they were
too widely known. As to foreigners, let them avoid the mortification of
certain defeat by abstaining from offering themselves, unless indeed
they should happen to be the possessors of a great historic name or
should occupy in their own country a position out of the reach of
ordinary mortals. This careful exclusion of all originality and
diversity has, by degrees, communicated to the club a complexion
somewhat negative and colorless, but at the same time, it must be
admitted, of the most perfect distinction. The most influential
members, although generally very wealthy, live in Paris with but few of
the external signs of luxury, and devote their incomes to home comforts
and to the improvement of their estates. If one should happen to meet
on the Champs Élysées a mail-coach or a _daumont_ [an open carriage,
the French name of which has been adopted by the English, like
_landau_, etc. It is drawn by two horses driven abreast, and each
mounted by a postilion. The nearest English equivalent is a
"victoria."] that makes the promenaders turn and look back, or if there
be an _avant-scène_ at the Variétés or the Palais Royal that serves as
a point of attraction for all the lorgnettes of the theatre, one may be
quite sure that the owners of these brilliant turnouts and the
occupants of this envied box are not members of the club--"_the_ Club,"
_par excellence_, for thus is it spoken of in Paris. It is considered
quite correct at the club to devote one's self to the raising of cattle
and sheep, as the comtes de Bouvillé, de Béhague, de Hauteserre and
others have done with such success, and one may even follow the example
of the comte de Falloux, the eloquent Academician, in emblazoning with
one's arms a pen of fat pigs at a competitive show, without in the
least derogating from one's dignity. One may also sell the wine from
one's vineyards and the iron from one's furnaces--for the iron industry
is in France looked upon as a sort of heritage of the nobility--but to
get money by any other means than those I have indicated would be
considered in the worst possible taste. On the other hand, it is
permitted to any member of the club to lose as much money as he pleases
without loss of the respect of his fellows, and the surest way to
arrive at this result is to undertake the breeding and running of
horses.

As to the external appearance and bearing of the perfect clubman, it is
very much that of Disraeli's hero, "who could hardly be called a dandy
or a beau. There was nothing in his dress, though some mysterious
arrangement in his costume--some rare simplicity, some curious
happiness--always made him distinguished: there was nothing, however,
in his dress, which could account for the influence that he exercised
over the manners of his contemporaries;" and it is probably a fact that
a member of the club is never noticed by passers on the street on
account of anything in his dress or appearance. In short, the club
seems to have adopted for its motto _Sancta simplicitas_, and the
descendants of the old nobility of France, excluded as they practically
are to-day from all public employment save that of the army, seem
determined to live amongst themselves, in tranquillity and retirement,
in such a way as to attract the least possible notice from the press or
from the crowd. Their portraits never find their way into the
illustrated papers, and no penny-a-liner ventures to make them the
subject of a biographical sketch: indeed, any one rash enough to seek
to tread upon this forbidden ground would find himself met at the
threshold by a dignified but very decided refusal of all information
and material necessary to his undertaking.

As an illustration of the care taken by the ruling spirits of the club
to preserve the attitude which they have assumed toward the public, it
may be worth mentioning that Isabelle, who for a long time enjoyed the
distinction of serving the club as its accredited flower-girl, and who
in that capacity used to hold herself in readiness every evening in her
velvet tub at the foot of the staircase of the splendid apartments at
the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue Scribe--the present location of
the club--was dismissed for no other reason than that she had become
too extensively known to the gay world of Paris. Excluded from the
sacred paddock on the race-course, she is to-day compelled to content
herself on great occasions with selling her flowers on the public turf
from a pretty basket-wagon drawn by a pair of coquettish black ponies,
or "toy" ponies in the language of the day.

Notwithstanding the magnificence of the present quarters of the club to
which I have referred, one cannot help regretting that, unlike the
Agricultural Society and the Club of the Champs Élysés, it is obliged
to confine itself to one story of the building--the first floor,
according to continental enumeration--though the rental of this floor
alone amounts to some three hundred thousand francs a year.

The committee on races, composed of fifteen members (founders) and
fifteen associate members--the latter elected every year by the
founders--represents the club in all that concerns its finances and
property, votes the budget, the programme of all races and the
conditions of the prizes, and not only legislates in making the laws
that govern the course, but acts also as judge in deciding questions
that may arise under the code that it has established. And as a
legislative body it has its hands almost as full as that of the state,
for the budget of the society grows from year to year as rapidly as the
nation's, and there are now forty-nine turfs for which it is
responsible or to which it has extended its protection. The presidency
of the committee, after having been held for many years by the lamented
Vicomte Daru, passed on his death last year to M. Auguste Lupin, the
oldest proprietor of race-horses in France. To M. Lupin, moreover,
belongs the honor of being the first breeder in France who has beaten
the English in their own country by gaining the Goodwood Cup in 1855
with Jouvence--success that was renewed by his horse Dollar in 1864. M.
Lupin, who had six times won the Jockey Club Purse (the French Derby)
and twice the Grand Prix de Paris, occupies very much the same position
in France that Lord Falmouth holds in England, and, like him, he never
bets. His colors, black jacket and red cap, are exceedingly popular,
and received even more than their wonted share of applause in the year
1875, the most brilliant season in the history of his stables, when he
carried off all the best prizes with St. Cyr, Salvator and Almanza. His
stud, which has numbered amongst its stallions the Baron, Dollar and
the Flying Dutchman, is at Vaucresson, near Versailles. His
training-stables are at La Croix, St. Ouen.

Of the remaining members of the committee on races, the best known are
the prince de la Moskowa, the comte A. de Noailles, Henry Delamarre,
Comte Frédéric de Lagrange, Comte A. des Cars, J. Mackenzie-Grieves,
Comte H. de Turtot, the duc de Fitz-James, Baron Shickler, the prince
A. d'Aremberg, Prince Joachim Murat, Comte Roederer, the marquis de
Lauriston, Baron Gustave de Rothschild, E. Fould and the comtes de St.
Sauveur, de Kergorlay and de Juigné. Most of these gentlemen run their
horses, or have done so, and the list will be found to comprise, with
two or three exceptions, the principal turfmen of France. The comte de
Juigné and the prince d'Aremberg, both very rich, and much liked in
Paris, have formed a partnership in turf matters, and the colors they
have adopted, yellow and red stripes for the jacket, with black cap,
are always warmly welcomed. In 1873, with Montargis, they won the
Cambridgeshire Stakes, which were last year carried off by the American
horse Parole, and in 1877 they renewed the exploit with Jongleur. The
count, on this latter occasion, had taken no pains to conceal the
merits of his horse, but, on the contrary, had spoken openly of what he
believed to be his chances, and had even advised the betting public to
risk their money upon him. As the English were giving forty to one
against him, the consequence of M. de Juigné's friendly counsel was
that the morning after the race saw a perfect shower of gold descending
upon Paris, the English guineas falling even into the white caps held
out with eager hands by the scullions of the cafés that line the
Boulevard. One well-known restaurateur, Catelain, of the Restaurant
Helder on the Boulevard des Italiens, pocketed a million of francs, and
testified his satisfaction, if not his gratitude, by forthwith
baptizing a new dish with the name of the winning horse. The comte de
Juigné himself cleared three millions, and many members of the club
were made the richer by sums ranging from one hundred to one hundred
and fifty thousand francs. The marquis de Castellane, an habitual
gambler, who happened to have put only a couple of hundred louis on the
horse, could not hide his chagrin that his venture had returned him but
a hundred and sixty thousand francs. Jongleur won the French Derby (one
hundred and three thousand francs) in 1877, besides thirteen other
important races. He was unfortunately killed while galloping in his
paddock in September, 1878.

The Scotch jacket and white cap of the duc de Fitz-James, owner of the
fine La Sorie stud, and the same colors, worn by the jockeys of the duc
de Fézenzac, have won but few of the prizes of the turf, and another
nobleman, the comte de Berteux (green jacket, red cap) is noted for the
incredible persistency of his bad luck. M. Édouard Fould, whose mount
is known by the jackets hooped with yellow and black and caps of the
latter color, is the proprietor of the well-known D'Ibos stud at the
foot of the Pyrenees, one of the largest and best-ordered
establishments of the kind in France; and it is to him and to his
uncle, the late Achille Fould, that the South owes in a great degree
the breeding and development of the thoroughbred horse. M. Delâtre
(green jacket and cap) raises every year, at La Celle St. Cloud, some
twenty yearlings, of which he keeps but three or four, selling the rest
at Tattersall's, Rue Beaujon, to the highest bidder. They generally
bring about six thousand francs a head, on an average.

The feeling against Germany after the war led to a proposition to expel
from the club all members belonging to that country; and it was only
the liking and sympathy felt for one of them, Baron Schickler, a very
wealthy lover of the turf and for a long time resident in France, which
caused a rejection of the motion. Baron Schickler, however, has
nominally retired from the turf since 1870, and his horses are now run
under the pseudonyme of Davis. His colors are white for the jacket,
with red sleeves and cherry cap. Another member, Mr. A. de Montgomery,
the excellent Norman breeder and the fortunate owner of La Toucques and
of Fervaques, has also given up racing under his own name, and devotes
himself exclusively to the oversight of the Rothschild stables. The
good-fortune which the mere possession of this distinguished name would
seem sufficient to ensure has not followed the colors of Baron Gustave
de Rothschild in the racing field, where his blue jackets and yellow
caps have not been the first to reach the winning-post in the contests
for the most important prizes. He buys, nevertheless, the best mares
and the finest stallions, and he has to-day, in his excellent stud at
Meautry, the illustrious Boïard, who had won, before he came into the
baron's possession, the Ascot Cup of 1873 and the Grand Prix de Paris.
The Rothschild training-stables are at Chantilly. Boïard, as well as
Vermont, another of the grandest horses ever foaled in France, and a
winner also of the Grand Prix de Paris, was formerly in possession of
M. Henry Delamarre, who in the days of the Empire enjoyed a short
period of most remarkable success, having won the French Derby no less
than three times within four years. His choice of colors was a maroon
jacket with red sleeves and black cap. He had some lesser triumphs last
year, at the autumn meeting in the Bois de Boulogne, where his mare
Reine Claude won the Prix du Moulin by two lengths, his horse Vicomte,
who up to that time had been running so badly, taking the Prix
d'Automne, while the second prize of the same name was carried off by
Clélié, thus gaining for the Delamarre stables three races out of the
five contested on that day. All M. Delamarre's horses come from the
Bois-Roussel stud, belonging to Comte Roederer.

There remain to be mentioned, amongst the number of gentlemen who are
in the habit of entering their horses for races in France, a Belgian,
the comte de Meeüs, one of whose horses was the favorite in the race
last mentioned, and though beaten, as often happens with favorites, he
and other animals from the same stables have this year carried away
several of the provincial prizes; M.L. André, owner of this season's
winners of the steeple-chase handicap known as the Prix de Pontoise and
of several hurdle-races; M.A. de Borda, who was unsuccessful in the
present year in three at least of the races in which he had entered;
M.E. de la Charme, who in June, 1879, took the Grand Prix du
Conseil-Général (handicap) at Lyons, and in September won at Vincennes
the hurdle-race Prix de Charenton; the marquis de Caumont-Laforce,
whose colors were first this summer at Moulins in the Prix du
Conseil-Général, and in the third Criterium at Fontainebleau, as well
as in the grand handicap at Beauvais last July; M.P. Aumont, who has
been not without some good luck in the provinces during the past
season; M. Moreau-Chaslon, whose successes of late have hardly been in
proportion to his numerous entries, though he won the last Prix des
Villas at Vésinet, the Prix du Jockey Club (three thousand francs) at
Châlons-sur-Saône and the Prix du Mont-Valérien at the Bois de
Boulogne; and, to bring to an end our long list of devotees of the
turf, we add the name of M. Ephrussi, who, amongst the numerous races
in which he has entered horses in 1879, has been victorious in not a
few--for instance, in the steeple-chase handicap at La Marche, called
the Prix de Clairefontaine, in L'Express at Fontainebleau, in the Prix
de Neuilly at the Bois de Boulogne, and in the handicap for the Prix
des Écuries at Chantilly, as well as in a race for gentlemen riders
only at Maison-Lafitte. Besides these and others, he gained last August
the Jockey Club Prize (five thousand francs) at Châlons-sur-Saône, the
Prix de Louray at Déauville for the like amount, another of the same
figures at Vichy, and the six thousand francs of the Grand Prix du
Havre. Most of the gentlemen last named are the owners of a
comparatively small number of horses, which are, perhaps without
exception, entrusted to the care of the famous trainer Henry Jennings
of La Croix, St. Ouen, near Compiègne.

Henry Jennings is a character. His low, broad-brimmed beaver--which has
gained him the sobriquet of "Old Hat"--pulled well down over a
square-built head, the old-fashioned high cravat in which his neck is
buried to the ears, the big shoes ensconced in clumsy gaiters, give him
more the air of a Yorkshire gentleman-farmer of the old school than of
a man whose home since his earliest youth has been in France. He is one
of the most original figures in the motley scene as he goes his rounds
in the paddock, mysterious and knowing, very sparing of his words, and
responding only in monosyllables even to the questions of his patrons,
while he whispers in the ears of his jockeys the final instructions
which many an interested spectator would give something to hear.
Beginning his career in the service of the prince de Beauvan, from
which he passed first to that of the duc de Morny and afterward to that
of the comte de Lagrange, he is now a public trainer upon his own
account, with more than a hundred horses under his care. No one has
devoted more intelligent study to the education of the racer or shown a
more intuitive knowledge of his nature and of his needs. It was he who
first threw off the shackles of ancient custom by which a horse during
the period of training was kept in such an unnatural condition, by
means of drugs and sweatings, that at the end of his term of probation
he was a pitiful object to behold. The pictures and engravings of
twenty years ago bear witness to the degree of "wasting" to which a
horse was reduced on the eve of a race, and the caricatures of the
period are hardly over-drawn when they exhibit to us the ghost of an
animal mounted by a phantom jockey. When people saw that Jennings was
able to bring to the winning-post horses in good condition, whose
training had been based upon nothing but regular work, they at first
looked on in astonishment, but afterward found their profit in
imitating his example. Under this rational system it has been proved
that the animal gains in power and endurance while he loses nothing in
speed. The same intrepid trainer has ventured upon another innovation.
Impressed with the inconveniences of shoeing, and annoyed by the
difficulty of finding a skilful smith in moving from one place to
another in the country, he conceived the idea of letting his horses go
shoeless, both during training and on the track; and, despite all that
could be urged against the practice his horses' feet are in excellent
condition. His many successes on the turf have not, however, been
crowned, as yet, by the Grand Prix de Paris, though in 1877 he thought
to realize the dream of his ambition with Jongleur, whom he had trained
and whom he loved like a son; and when the noble horse was beaten by an
outsider, St Christopher, "Old Hat" could not control an exhibition of
ill-humor as amusing as it was touching. When Jongleur died Jennings
wept for perhaps the first time in his life, and he was still unable to
restrain his tears when he described the tortures of the poor beast as
he struck his head against the sides of his box in the agonies of
lockjaw.

Let us close our list--in which, however, we have endeavored to
enumerate only the principal figures upon the French turf--with two
names; and first that of the young Edmond Blanc, heir to the immense
fortune gained by his late father as director of the famous
gaming-tables of Monaco. The latter, like a prudent parent, forbade his
son to race or to play, and Edmond, obeying the letter of the law--at
least during the lifetime of his father--was known, if known at all
upon the course, under the pseudonyme of James. At present, however, he
is the owner of an important stud and stable which are constantly
increasing, and which bid fair before long to take rank amongst the
principal establishments in the country. Waggish tongues have whispered
that when he had to make choice of colors he naturally inclined to
"rouge et noir," but finding these already appropriated by M. Lupin,
the representative of "trente et quarante" was forced to content
himself with tints more brilliant perhaps, but less suggestive. But let
him laugh who wins. The annals of the turf for 1879 inscribe the name
of M. Blanc as winner of the Grand Prix de Paris. It was his mare,
Nubienne, who first reached the winning-post by a neck in a field of
eleven horses, M. Fould's Saltéador being second, with barely a head
between him and the third, Flavio II., belonging to the comte Frédéric
de Lagrange.

This latter proprietor, the most celebrated of all--in the sense of
being the most widely known and the most talked about--I have reserved
for the end of my catalogue. Comte de Lagrange made his début upon the
turf in the year 1857, now more than twenty years ago, by buying
outright the great stable of M. Alexander Aumont, which boasted at that
time amongst its distinguished ornaments the famous Monarque, who had,
before passing into the hands of his new owner, gained eight races in
eight run, and who, under the colors of the comte, almost repeated the
feat by winning eight in nine; and of these two were the Goodwood Cup
and the Newmarket Handicap. Afterward, at the Dangu stud, he achieved a
fame of another sort, but in the eyes of horsemen perhaps still more
important. Never has sire transmitted to his colts his own best
qualities with such certainty and regularity. Hospodar, Le Mandarin,
Trocadéro were amongst his invaluable gifts to the comte, but his
crowning glory is the paternity of the illustrious Gladiateur, the
Eclipse of modern times. Gladiateur, said the baron d'Étreilly, recalls
Monarque as one hundred recalls ten. There were the very same lines,
the same length of clean muscular neck well set on the same deep and
grandly-placed shoulders, the same arching of the loins, the same
contour of hips and quarters, but all in proportions so colossal that
every one who saw him, no matter how indifferent to horseflesh in
general, remained transfixed in admiration of a living machine of such
gigantic power.

The first appearance of Gladiateur upon the race-course was at the
Newmarket autumn meeting of 1864, where he won the Clearwell Stakes,
beating a field of twelve horses. He was kept sufficiently "shady,"
however, during the winter to enable his owner to make some
advantageous bets upon him, though it required careful management to
conceal his extraordinary powers. His training remains a legend in the
annals of the stables of Royal-Lieu, where the jockeys will tell you
how he completely knocked all the other horses out of time, and how two
or three of the very best put in relay to wait upon him were not enough
to cover the distance. Fille-de-l'Air herself had to be sacrificed, and
it was in one of these terrible gallops that she finished her career as
a runner. Mandarin alone stood out, but even he, they say, showed such
mortal terror of the trial that when he was led out to accompany his
redoubtable brother he trembled from head to foot, bathed in sweat. In
1865, Gladiateur gained the two thousand guineas and the Derby at
Epsom, and for the first time the blue ribbon was borne away from the
English. "When Gladiateur runs," said the English papers at this time,
"the other horses hardly seem to move." The next month he ran for the
Grand Prix de Paris. His jockey, Harry Grimshaw, had the coquetry to
keep him in the rear of the field almost to the end, as if he were
taking a gallop for exercise, and when Vertugadin reached the last turn
the favorite, some eight lengths behind, seemed to have forgotten that
he was in the race at all. The public had made up its mind that it had
been cheated, when all at once the great horse, coming up with a rush,
passed all his rivals at a bound, to resume at their head his former
easy and tranquil pace. There had not been even a contest: Gladiateur
had merely put himself on his legs, and all had been said. These three
victories brought in to Comte de Lagrange the sum of four hundred and
forty-one thousand seven hundred and twenty-five francs, to say nothing
of the bets. Gladiateur afterward won the race of six thousand mètres
(two miles fourteen furlongs) which now bears his name, and also the
Great St. Leger at Doncaster. He was beaten but once--in the
Cambridgeshire, where he was weighted at a positively absurd figure,
and when, moreover, the track was excessively heavy. After his
retirement from the turf he was sold in 1871 for breeding purposes in
England for two hundred thousand francs, and died in 1876.

Like M. Fould and several other brethren of the turf, Comte de Lagrange
felt the discouragements of the Franco-German war, and sold all his
horses to M. Lefèvre. Fortunately, however, he had retained in his stud
at Dangu a splendid lot of breeding-mares, and with these he has since
been able to reconstruct a stable of the first order, though the effort
has cost him a very considerable sum. Indeed, he himself admits that to
cover expenses he would have to make as much as thirty thousand pounds
every year. Four times victorious in the French Derby before 1870, he
has since repeated this success for two successive years--in 1878 with
Insulaire, and in 1879 with Zut. His colors (blue jacket with red
sleeves and a red cap) are as well known in England as in his own
country. Within the last six years he has three times won the Oaks at
Epsom with Regalia, Reine and Camelia, the Goodwood Cup with Flageolet,
the two thousand guineas and the Middlepark and Dewhurst Plates with
Chamant. On the 12th of June, last year, at Ascot, he gained two races
out of three, and in the third one of his horses came in second.

But the count is by no means always a winner, nor does he always win
with the horse that, by all signs, ought to be the victor. He has
somehow acquired, whether justly or not, the reputation of being a
"knowing hand" upon the turf, and all turfmen will understand what is
implied in the term, whether of good or of evil. His stable has been
called a "surprise-box," which simply means that the "horse carrying
the first colors does not always carry the money;" that people who
think they know the merits of his horses frequently lose a good deal by
the unexpected turn of affairs upon the track; and that the count, in
short, manages to take care of himself in exercising the undoubted
right of an owner, as by rule established, to win if he can with any
one of the horses that he may have running together for any given
event. Nothing dishonorable, according to the laws of the turf, has
ever been proved, nor perhaps even been charged, against him; but as
one of his countrymen, from whom I have just now quoted, remarks, "He
is fond of showing to demonstration that a man does not keep two
hundred horses in training just to amuse the gallery."

These repeated triumphs, as well as the not less frequent ones of MM.
Lefèvre, Lupin and de Juigné, have naturally set the English
a-thinking. They have to admit that the time has passed when their
handicappers could contemptuously give a French horse weights in his
favor, and a party headed by Lords Falmouth, Hardwicke and Vivian and
Sir John Astley of the London Jockey Club has been formed with the
object of bringing about some modifications of the international code.

A war of words has ensued between Admiral Rous and Viscount Daru, the
respective presidents of the two societies, in the course of which the
admiral has urged that as English horses are admitted to only two races
in France, the Grand Prix de Paris and the D[/e]auville Cup, while
French horses are at liberty to enter upon any course in England, it is
quite time that a reciprocity of privileges were recognized, and that
racers be put upon an equal footing in the two countries. Not at all,
replies M. Daru; and for this reason: there are three times as many
race-horses in England as in France, and the small number of the latter
would bring down the value of the French prizes to next to nothing if
the stakes are based, as they are in England, upon the sum-total of the
entries. In France the government, the encouragement societies, the
towns, the railway companies, all have to help to make up the purses,
and often with very considerable sums. Would it be fair to let in
English horses in the proportion of, say, three to one--supposing the
value of the horses to be equal--to carry off two-thirds of these
subscriptions? To this the Englishman answers, not without a show of
reason, that if the foreign horses should come into France in any great
numbers this very circumstance would make the entrance-moneys a
sufficient remuneration to the winner, and that the government, the
Jockey Club and the rest would be relieved from a continuance of their
subventions. The discussion is still kept up, and it is not unlikely
that the successors of MM. Rous and Daru will keep on exchanging notes
for some years without coming nearer to a solution than the diplomats
have come to a settlement of the Eastern Question.

I have said that the Jockey Club of Paris grants subventions to the
racing societies of the provinces, which it takes under its patronage
to the number of about forty-five, but it undertakes the actual
direction of the races at only three places--namely, Chantilly,
Fontainebleau and Déauville-sur-Mer--besides those of Paris. Up to
1856, the Paris races were run on the Champ de Mars, where the track
was too hard and the turns were very sharp and awkward. In the
last-mentioned year the city ceded to the Société d'Encouragement the
open field at Longchamps, lying between the western limit of the Bois
de Boulogne and the river Seine. The ground measures about sixty-six
hectares in superficial area, and this ample space has permitted the
laying out of several tracks of different lengths and of varying form,
and has avoided any necessity for sharp turns. The whole race-course is
well sodded, and the ground is as good as artificially-made ground can
be. It is kept up and improved by yearly outlays, and these very
considerable expenses are confided to Mr. J. Mackenzie-Grieves, so well
known for his horsemanship to all the promenaders of the Bois.

The race-course at Longchamps enjoys advantages of situation and
surroundings superior, beyond all question, to those of any other in
the world. The approaches to it from Paris are by an uninterrupted
succession of the most charming drives--the Champs Élysées, the grand
avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, and finally through the lovely shaded
alleys of the Bois. Arrived at the Cascade, made famous by the attempt
of Berezowski upon the life of the czar in 1867, the eye takes in at a
glance the whole of the vast space devoted to the race-course,
overlooked to the right by a picturesque windmill and an ancient
ivy-mantled tower, and at the farther extremity by the stands for
spectators. To the left the view stretches over the rich undulating
hills of S[\e]vres and of Meudon, strewn with pretty villas and towers
and steeples, and rests in the dim distance upon the blue horizon of
Les Verriéres.

The elegant central stand or tribune, of brick and stone, is reserved
for the chief of the state. In the time of the last presidency it was
almost always occupied by the marshal, a great lover of horses, and by
his little court; but his successor, M. Grévy, whose sporting
propensities are satisfied by a game of billiards or a day's shooting
with his pointers, generally waives his privilege in favor of the
members of the diplomatic corps.

The stand to the left of the track is the official tribune, very gay
and attractive in the days of the Empire, when it was filled by the
members of the municipal council of Paris and their families, but
to-day rather a blot upon the picture, the wives of the Republican
ædiles belonging to a lower--though, in this case, a newer--stratum of
society than did their imperial predecessors. The Jockey Club reserves
for itself the first stand to the right, from which all women are
rigorously excluded. The female element, however, is represented upon
the lower ranges of benches, though the ladies belonging to the more
exclusive circles of fashion prefer a simple chair upon the gravel of
the paddock. It is there, at the foot of the club-stand, that may be
seen any Sunday in spring, expanding under the rays of the vernal sun,
the fresh toilettes that have bloomed but yesterday, or it may be this
very morning, in the conservatories of Worth and Laferrière. The
butterflies of this garden of sweets are the jaunty hats whose tender
wings of azure or of rose have but just unfolded themselves to the
light of day. My figure of "butterfly hats" has been ventured upon in
the hope that it may be found somewhat newer than that of the
"gentlemen butterflies" which the reporters of the press have chased so
often and so long that the down is quite rubbed from its wings, to say
nothing of the superior fitness of the comparison in the present case.
In fact, the gentlemen do but very rarely flutter from flower to flower
within the sacred confines of the paddock, but are much more apt to
betake themselves in crowds to the less showy parterre of the
betting-ground, where, under the shadow of the famous chestnut tree,
such enormous wagers are laid, and especially do they congregate in the
neighborhood of the tall narrow slates set up by such well-known
bookmakers as Wright, Valentine and Saffery.

Each successive year sees an increase in the number of betters, who
contribute indirectly, by means of subscriptions to the races, a very
important proportion of the budget of the Jockey Club. But if any one
should imagine from this constant growth of receipts that the taste for
racing is extending in France, and is likely to become national, he
would be making a great mistake: what is growing, and with alarming
rapidity, is the passion for gambling, for the indulgence of which the
"improvement of the breed of horses" is but a convenient and
sufficiently transparent veil. Whether the money of the player rolls
around the green carpet of the race-course or upon that of M. Blanc at
Monte Carlo, the impulse that keeps it in motion is the same, and the
book-maker's slate is as dangerous as the roulette-table. The manager
of the one piles up a fortune as surely as the director of the other,
and in both cases the money seems to be made with an almost
mathematical certainty and regularity. They tell of one day--that of
the Grand Prix of 1877--when Saffery, the Steel of the French turf and
the leviathan of bookmakers, cleared as much as fifty thousand dollars.
Wright, Valentine, Morris and many more make in proportion to their
outlay. Four or five years ago these worthies had open offices on the
Rue de Choiseul and the Boulevard des Italiens, where betting on the
English and French races went on night and day; but the police,
following the lead of that of London, stepped in to put an end to this
traffic in contraband goods, and the shops for the sale of this sort of
merchandise are now shut up. But if all this has been done, and if even
those great _voitures de poules_ which once made the most picturesque
ornament of the turf, have been banished out of sight, it has been
impossible to uproot the practice of betting, which has more devotees
to-day than ever before. It has been discovered in other countries than
France that the only way to deal with an ineradicable evil is to check
its growth, and an attempt to prohibit pool-selling a year or two ago
in one of the States of this Union only resulted in the adoption of an
ingenious evasion whereby the _pictures_ of the horses entered were
sold at auction--a practice which is, if I am not misinformed, still
kept up. The same fiction, under another form, is to be seen to-day in
France. In order to bet openly one has to buy an entrance--ticket to
the paddock, which costs him twenty francs, whereas the general entry
to the grounds is but one franc, and any one found betting outside the
enclosure or _enceinte_ of the stables is liable to arrest. The police,
no doubt, are willing to accept the theory that a man who can afford to
pay twenty francs for a little square of rose- or yellow-tinted paper
is rich enough to be allowed to indulge in any other extravagant freaks
that he pleases.

But with all the numerous bets that are made, and the excitement and
interest, that must necessarily be aroused, there is nothing of the
turbulent and uproarious demonstration so characteristic of the English
race-course. The "rough" element is kept away from the French turf,
partly because it would find its surroundings there uncongenial with
its tastes, and partly by the small entrance-fee required; and one is
thus spared at Longchamps the sight of those specimens of the various
forms of human misery and degradation that offend the eye at Epsom and
infest even the more aristocratic meetings of Ascot and Goodwood. At
the French races, too, one never hears the shrieks and howls of an
English crowd, save perhaps when in some very important contest the
favorite is beaten, and even then the yells come from English throats:
it is the bookmakers' song of victory. A stranger at Longchamps would
perceive at once that racing has no hold upon the popular heart, and
that, so far as it is an amusement at all apart from the gambling
spirit evoked, it is merely the hobby and pastime of a certain number
of idle gentlemen. As to the great mass of spectators, who are not
interested in the betting, they go to Longchamps as they would go to
any place where uniforms and pretty toilettes and fine carriages are to
be seen; for the Parisian, as one of them has well said, "never misses
a review, and he goes to the races, although he understands nothing
about them: the horses scarcely interest him at all. But there he is
because he must do as 'all Paris' does: he even tries to master a few
words of the barbarous jargon which it is considered _bon-ton_ to speak
at these places, for it seems that the French language, so rich, so
flexible, so accurate, is insufficient to express the relations and
affinities between man and the horse."

The _enceinte du pesage_, often called in vulgar English "the
betting-ring," or the enclosure mentioned above to which holders of
twenty-franc tickets are admitted, at Longchamps is scrupulously
guarded by the stewards of the Jockey Club from the invasion of the
_demi-monde_--a term that I employ in the sense in which it is
understood to-day, and not in that which it bore twenty years ago. A
woman of this demi-monde, which the younger Dumas has defined as that
"community of married women of whom one never sees the husbands," may
enter the paddock if she appears upon the arm of a gentleman, but the
really objectionable element is obliged to confine itself to the
five-franc stands or to wander over the public lawns. Some of the
fashionable actresses of the day and the best-known _belles-petites_
may be seen sunning themselves in their victorias or their
"eight-springs" by the side of the track in front of the stands, but
this is not from any interest that they feel in the performances of Zut
or of Rayon d'Or, but simply because to make the "return from the
races" it is necessary to have been to them, and every woman of any
pretension to fashion, no matter what "world" she may belong to, must
be seen in the gay procession that wends its way through the splendid
avenue on the return from Longchamps.

The great day at Longchamps, that crowns the Parisian season like the
"bouquet" at the end of a long series of fire-works, is the
international fête of the Grand Prix de Paris, run for the first time
in 1863. It is open to entire horses and to fillies of all breeds and
of all countries, three-year-olds, and of the prize, one hundred
thousand francs, half is given by the city of Paris and half by the
five great railway companies. It was the late duc de Morny who first
persuaded the municipal council and the administrations of the railways
to make this annual appropriation; ail of which, together with the
entries, a thousand francs each, goes to the winner, after deducting
ten thousand francs given to the second horse and five thousand to the
third. Last year the amount won by Nubienne, carrying fifty-three and a
half kilogrammes, was one hundred and forty-one thousand nine hundred
and seventy-five francs, and the time made was three minutes
thirty-three seconds on a track of three thousand mètres--one mile
seven furlongs, or three furlongs longer than that of the Derby at
Epsom.

The fixing of Sunday for this international contest has aroused the
prejudices of the English, and has been the occasion of a long
correspondence between Admiral Rous and Viscount Daru, but the
committee on races has refused to change the day, contending, with
reason, that the French people cannot be expected to exchange their
usages for those of a foreign country. Although it is understood that
Queen Victoria has formally forbidden the prince of Wales to assist at
these profane solemnities, this interdict has not prevented the
appearance there of some of the principal personages of England, and we
have several times noticed the presence of the dukes of St. Albans,
Argyll, Beaufort and Hamilton, the marquis of Westminster and Lords
Powlett, Howard and Falmouth; though the last, be it said, is believed
to be influenced by his respect for the day in his refusal to run his
horses in France.

Those who remember the foundation of the Grand Prix will recall the
extraordinary excitement of the occasion, when the whole population of
Paris, as one of the enemies of the new system of racing said, turned
out as they would to a capital execution or the drawing of a grand
lottery or the ascension of a monster balloon: the next day the name of
the winner was in everybody's mouth, and there was but one great man in
the universe for that day at least--he who had conceived the idea of
the Grand Prix de Paris. The receipts on this occasion amounted to
eighty-one thousand francs: last year they were two hundred and forty
thousand. I subjoin a list of the winners from 1863 to 1879, inclusive:

  Years.  Horses.         Owners.               Nationality.

  1863    The Ranger      H. Savile             English.
  1864    Vermont         H. Delamarre          French.
  1865    Gladiateur      Comte F. de Lagrange  French.
  1866    Ceylon          Duke of Beaufort      English.
  1867    Feryacques      A. de Montgomery      French.
  1868    The Earl        Marquis of Hastings   English.
  1869    Glaneur         A. Lupin              French.
  1870    Sornette        Major Fridolin (Ch.   French.
                            Lafitte)
  1871    (Not run).
  1872    Cremorne        H. Savile             English.
  1873    Boïard          H. Delamarre          French.
  1874    Trent           W.R. Marshall         English.
  1875    Salvator        A. Lupin              French.
  1876    Kisber          Baltazzi              Hungarian.
  1877    St. Christophe  Comte F. de Lagrange  French.
  1878    Thurio          Prince Soltikoff      Russian.
  1879    Nubienne        Edmond Blanc          French.

It will be seen by this list that the superiority of the English-bred
horse over the French is far from being established. Of sixteen races,
the English have gained but five, [Since this article was written the
Grand Prix has again been won (June, 1880) by an English horse, Robert
the Devil.] while they have been three times second and four times
third, and in 1875 their three representatives came in last. The winner
of the Epsom Derby has been beaten several times, as in the case,
amongst others, of Blair Athol by Vermont and Doncaster by Boïard. The
winners of the two chief prizes of last year were a French, an English
and an Hungarian horse--Gladiateur, Cremorne and Kisber. It may be
remarked also that the winner of the French Derby, as it is called,
which is run at Chantilly a fortnight earlier, is almost never the
gainer of the Grand Prix, the only exceptions having been Boïard and
Salvator. This result is no doubt the consequence of the system of
training too long in vogue in France, and upheld by Tom Jennings and
the Carters, which consists in bringing a horse to the post in the
maximum of his condition upon a given day and for a given event. The
animal can never be in better state, and if he does not win the race
for which he has been specially prepared, it is because he is not good
enough: he cannot be made to do any better than he has done. But if it
is hard to bring a horse to this culminating point of training, it is
still more difficult to keep him there, even for a period of a few
days. Training has been compared to the sides of a triangle: when one
has reached the apex one must perforce begin to descend. It being,
then, impossible that the animal should support for any length of time
the extreme tension of his whole organism that perfect training
supposes, it but very rarely happens that the horse prepared according
to this system--for the French Derby, for example--can be maintained in
such a condition as to enable him to win the Epsom Derby or the Grand
Prix de Paris. We have heretofore referred to the reaction against this
practice of excessive training, and to the efforts of Henry Jennings in
the direction of a reform--efforts which within the last few years have
been crowned with great success.

But we must now return to the Grand Prix. An invalid who had been
forbidden by his doctor to read the newspapers for several months, and
who should chance to make his first promenade on the Boulevards on the
eve of the Grand Prix, would know at a glance that something
extraordinary was about to happen. At every step he would meet the
unmistakable garb that announces the Englishman on his travels--at
every turn he would hear the language of Shakespeare and of Mr.
Labouchere adorned with a good deal of horse-talk. Coney's Cosmopolitan
Bar, Rue Scribe, is full on this day of betters and bookmakers, and
possibly of Englishmen of a higher rank, whilst its silver
_gril_--which is not of silver, however, but polished so bright as
almost to look like it--smokes with the broiling steak, and the gin
cocktails and brandy-and-soda flow unceasingly. Toward midnight,
especially--after the Salon des Courses has closed its doors--is
Coney's to be seen in its glory. The circus of the Champs Élysées,
where Saturday is the favorite day, makes on this particular Saturday
its largest receipts in the year; the Jardin Mabille is packed; the
very hackney-coachmen wear the independent, half-insolent look that
they have had since morning and will have till the evening of the next
day--unfailing sign in Paris that some great spectacle is impending;
milliners and dressmakers are out of their wits; the world has gone
mad. The restaurant-waiters and the barbers of the Boulevard may
condescend, if you happen to be a regular customer and given to
tipping, to enlighten you on the chances of the respective horses. The
most knowing in these matters are supposed to be Pierre, the host of
the Grand Café, right under the rooms of the Jockey Club, and the
rotund Henry, keeper of the Restaurant Bignon, Avenue de l'Opéra, the
confidant of certain turfmen, who may favor him with invaluable hints
if their _salmis_ of woodcocks should have been a success or their
_cotelette double_ be done to a turn. Charles, of the Café Durand,
Place de la Madeleine, and Henry, the barber of the Boulevard des
Italiens, are also posted in the quotations and keep themselves well
informed.

On Sunday morning by ten o'clock the Bois de Boulogne is filled with
pedestrians, who take their breakfast on the grass to while away the
time of waiting. The restaurants Madrid and the Cascade, where the
tables are spread amidst flowers and shaded by trees--a feature that is
duly remembered in the bills, like an _hors d'oeuvre_--are turning
visitors away. Toward half-past two the enclosure of the paddock is
absolutely full: not a vacant chair is to be found, and a fearful
consumption of iced champagne begins at the buffet. For, strange to
say, the weather is always fine on this day, and the Encouragement
Society is as notorious for its good-luck in this respect as the
Skating Club and the Steeple-chase Society are for quite the opposite.
By degrees--and perhaps helped by the champagne--the vast throng will
be observed, as the supreme moment approaches, to depart from its
habitually staid and calm demeanor, and finally to show some signs of
enthusiasm, though without growing in the least noisy and turbulent,
like that at Epsom on the Derby Day. Once in a year, however, I as the
French say, doesn't make a custom, and the Parisian crowd, to quote its
own expression, "croit que c'est arrivé." The applause, in case the
winner is a French horse, comes from patriotic motives: if he happens
to be English it is given from a feeling of courtesy; and the crowd
having done its duty in either case, the famous "return," that has
often furnished a subject for the painter, begins. And a wondrous sight
it is. Up to six o'clock the innumerable carriages continue to defile
upon the several routes that lead to the city, forming a procession of
which the head touches the Place de la Concorde, whilst the extremity
still reaches to the tribunes of Longchamps. And when evening comes on,
and bets are settled, and heated brains seek to prolong the day's
excitement far into the night, such haunts as the Mabille grow so noisy
that the police is generally obliged to interfere. There was a time
when, on these occasions, that jolly nobleman, the duke of Hamilton,
then a prominent figure on the French turf, did not disdain to lead his
followers to the battle in person, and to practise the noble art of
boxing upon all comers, whether policemen or bookmakers. But these
deeds of former days are now but traditions: His Grace has married,
which is said to have taught him wisdom, and the bookmakers have grown
into millionaires, with a sense of the gravity becoming their
position.--L. LEJEUNE.




MRS. PINCKNEY'S GOVERNESS


The short October day had come to an end. It had been one of those
soft, misty, delicious days common enough at this season of the year.
The gathering darkness perplexed the young girl who, without maid or
escort of any kind, stood peering through the gloom at the little
way-station. Discouraged, apparently, at the result of her search, she
entered the station-house, and inquired, in rather a depressed voice,
if they knew whether Mrs. Pinckney had sent a carriage or vehicle of
any kind for her: "she was expected," she added.

Youth and good looks are naturally effective, and the young Irishman in
authority there, Michael Redmond, was by no means insensible to their
influence. He darted out with an air of alacrity, returning, however,
almost immediately with the depressing information that Mrs. Pinckney's
carriage was not there. "She went herself to the city this morning,
madam," he said, with an effort at consolation. "Perhaps in her absence
the servants have forgotten--" Here he paused.

"It is very unfortunate," she murmured, evidently not accustomed to
such emergencies. Nature, however, although ill-seconded by her
previous life, had given her both courage and decision. "Is there
nothing here which I can hire? is there nobody to drive me to Mrs.
Pinckney's?"

"I'll see, madam," returned the young man.

Why he used the term "madam," which was undoubtedly misplaced, toward
so youthful a person, is only to be explained by an idea he had of
exaggerated respect, a kind of protection apparently to her loneliness
and helplessness.

He darted headlong out again into the darkness. "There is a boy here
with an open wagon, madam," returning almost as quickly as he went out.
"It is not an elegant conveyance, but--" and he hesitated--"it is the
only one."

"Oh, it will do, thank you: anything will do which can carry me to the
house. Is there room for my trunk?"

Michael with strong, serviceable arms swung the trunk lightly into the
wagon. She was already seated, the boy, who was to drive, beside her.

"Oh, thank you." She drew a diminutive purse from her travelling-bag,
and was evidently about to recompense him when something in his manner
deterred her. She thanked him again, for gracious words fell lightly
and easily from her lips, and the little vehicle went rattling out upon
the road.

Mrs. Pinckney's house was four or five miles from the station: the boy
drove at a furious pace, and it was by good luck rather than by good
guidance that no catastrophe occurred. The beautiful day was succeeded
by a cloudy evening: neither moon nor stars were visible, and as they
passed through the avenue leading to the house, under the branches of
magnificent old trees, large drops of rain began to fall. The light
which shone through the open door revealed camp-chairs still standing
on the lawn, and children's toys were scattered over the veranda. The
boy's rough feet as he carried in her trunk annihilated the face of a
smart French doll, and Miss Featherstone's dress caught on, and was
torn by, a nail in a dilapidated rocking-horse. The light came from a
picturesque-looking lamp which hung from an arch in the centre of a
broad, low hall. She rang the bell: the sound reverberated through the
house, yet no one came. The boy, who had stood the trunk on end,
growing impatient, rang again: they heard voices, hubbub and confusion,
children's cries, servants summoned, a man speaking very volubly in
French. Then very imperfect English sentences were shouted in a kind of
despair. The door was divided in the middle, with a large brass knocker
as an appendage to the upper half. Miss Featherstone, growing anxious
and impatient, sounded this vigorously, which brought a maid, who had
evidently quite lost her head, to the door.

"This is Mrs. Pinckney's?" said the young girl in prompt, cheerful
tones. "I am Miss Featherstone, the governess, whom Mrs. Pinckney
expects."

"Yes, ma'am," replied the servant in an absent, distracted manner.

"Marie!" shrieked the French voice in shrill tones of alarm and anger.

"Please, miss, I must go. Do come in and sit down: I'll send
somebody--"

"Marie! Marie!--Where is that _vilaine femme?"_

At the second summons she fled, leaving Miss Featherstone and the boy,
standing with her trunk on his shoulders, on the threshold.

The young girl walked in, sat down in a large leathern chair, and was
taking out her purse to pay her driver when a little fat man, with a
very red face and bushy black hair, came flying through the hall,
carrying a child in his arms. He was followed by two or three sobbing
children and the girl whom Miss Featherstone had already seen. "My dear
mees," he said, never stopping until he reached the governess, "see
this leetle enfant, this cher petit Henri. He has already one
contortion--spasm--what you call it?--and I fear he goes to have one
other. Ma chère mademoiselle, have you some experience? Is it that you
know what we shall do?"

The child lay pale and unconscious in the arms of the distressed little
foreigner. Miss Featherstone tore off her gloves; her purse, unheeded,
fell on the floor; she led the way into the nearest room, which proved
to be the dining-room, the helpless group following. "Bring a tub of
hot water for his feet," she said in calm, decided tones. She was
seated, and had taken the child in her arms.--"Now, monsieur"--to the
Frenchman--"will you be kind enough to give me some ice from that
pitcher on the sideboard behind you?"

She drew a delicate little handkerchief from her pocket, and, putting
pieces of ice in it, held it to the child's head. "Some one," she
continued, "take off his shoes and stockings."

Her composure restored a degree of order, although no one seemed to
have recovered their senses sufficiently to obey her as to the child's
shoes. The boy who had acted as her driver knelt down and proceeded to
accomplish it. When the poor little feet were up to the knees in hot
water and the child was evidently reviving, she said, "The doctor
should be sent for immediately. As this boy has a horse and wagon at
the door, it would be best to send him. What is the name of your family
physician?"

"Doctor Harris."

"You know where he lives?"

"Oh yes, ma'am, very well."

"Stop a moment: some one write a line, so that there shall be no
mistake."

The foreigner flung up his hands with a gesture of despair. "It is so
difficile for me to write l'Anglais--" he began.

With the child lying on her left arm she opened her bag with her
right--the little driver, the most collected person besides herself of
the party, holding it up to her--found a scrap of paper and a pencil
and wrote a brief, urgent appeal to the physician to come immediately,
mentioning that the mother was from home, and signing herself "Laura
Featherstone, governess."

Sooner than she would have believed possible Doctor Harris appeared: he
came in his own gig, the little driver who had been so active in the
events of the evening vanishing entirely from the scene, and, as it was
afterward remembered, in the confusion without his douceur.

Doctor Harris, a comparatively young man, was cheerful and reassuring.
"There will probably be no recurrence of the convulsions," he said,
examining the child, who was sleeping tranquilly in the young girl's
arms; "but what was the exciting cause? what has he been eating?"

"I find him with a grand heap of the raisins and the nuts," replied the
French tutor excitedly. "Madame goes to town this morning and takes la
bonne pour s'en servir--le pauvre enfant est abandonné, voilà tout!"
Gesticulating with much vehemence, he sat down at the conclusion as if
exhausted by his efforts.

"What has been done for the child?" asked the physician in a cautious
whisper.

The little Frenchman rose; his eyes flashed; he waved his fat, short
arms toward Miss Featherstone: "Cette chère mademoiselle, she is one
angel from the sky: she do it all," with increased animation and
violence--"ice for his head, hot water for his feet. I could not tink,
I was so *_accablé_"

This vehement declamation not being calculated to ensure the patient's
slumbers, Doctor Harris ordered the little fellow to be undressed and
put to bed immediately. "I should like to see you, my dear young lady,
when you are at leisure," he said as Miss Featherstone rose, still with
the child in her arms, and was following the maid to the nursery: "I
have directions to leave in case of a recurrence. However, I don't
think there will be any return of the convulsions," he added.

The maid, reduced to helplessness by terror, looked on while Miss
Featherstone undressed the sleeping boy. She laid him in the bed,
ordered the servant to sit by his side until her return, put the candle
on the floor so that it would not shine in his face, and went out to
meet the doctor.

"Who will be with the child during the night?" was his first query.

"_Hèlas!_ I do not know," cried the foreigner with a gesture of
despair.

"If there is no one else to take care of him I will," replied the young
girl cheerfully.

"It is infâme!" said the tutor.--"Cette chère mademoiselle has but
arrived: she is weary. Parbleu! she must be hungry. Why not somebody
tink of dis?--My dear mees, have you had dinner? Non? J'en etais sûr,"
with a groan.

Mr. Brown--for that was the tutor's very English name--was so dramatic
in the expression of his good feeling that Miss Featherstone could not
repress a smile as she turned to the physician, and, taking out her
pencil and a little memorandum-book, said, "If you'll give me
directions, Doctor Harris, I think that I'm perfectly competent to take
care of the child."

Doctor Harris, who was gallant and a bachelor, made a whispered
remonstrance referring to her fatigue, but she replied gravely, "I am
in perfect health, and it never makes me ill to sit up with a sick
person: I have had experience." Some painful remembrance evidently
agitated her, for her voice suddenly failed.

They were interrupted by the sound of carriage-wheels rolling rapidly
up the avenue.

"Voici madame!" cried Mr. Brown, who flew to the door to hand Mrs.
Pinckney out.

He had taken the earliest opportunity to enlighten her as to the
child's illness, for they heard her exclaim, "I know it: oh, I have
heard of it! Where is the doctor?"

Mrs. Pinckney was tall and slight: she had blonde hair, large,
beautiful eyes--they were blue--and regular features. In short, she was
exceedingly pretty: so thought Doctor Harris, and he made many salaams
before her.

"Oh, doctor," she exclaimed, rushing up to him and grasping his arm,
"is there any danger? Tell me, is there any danger?"

"Not the slightest, ma'am," he replied promptly.

She wouldn't be reassured: "But why not? Convulsions are so serious,
they are so terrible! I had a relative who was ruined for life by
epilepsy: he was a handsome fellow, but he lost good looks, mind,
everything. Oh, Doctor Harris, don't tell me that my poor little Harry
is to have epilepsy!" She had the art of puckering her forehead into a
thousand wrinkles, yet looking lovely in spite of it.

"I certainly shall not tell you anything of the kind," said the doctor
with a reassuring smile, "for it wouldn't be true; but who is the
relative who had epilepsy?"

"Oh, a nephew of my husband, and he had a dreadful fall. He fell out of
a second-story window: it was in the country, and rather a low house,
but it finished him, poor fellow! Oh, doctor, sit down: I am tired to
death, and this news has so upset me! Will you assure me, upon your
honor, that my child will never have epilepsy?"

"Sincerely, Mrs. Pinckney, I don't think there is the least danger; but
you must be careful as to what he eats. Nuts and raisins are not a
particularly wholesome diet for a child three years old."

She looked about inquiringly, and did not seem the least surprised as
her eye fell on Miss Featherstone.

The tutor, still irate from his alarm, exclaimed, "You take la bonne,
madame. I am occupy with mes élèves: then I am not in his care."

Mrs. Pinckney, who was not an irritable woman, took no notice of this
implied reproach: "What is to be done with him to-night, Doctor Harris?
Can you sleep here?" As he shook his head, "You'll come the first thing
in the morning? Oh, doctor, can I go to bed and sleep comfortably? Do
you assure me that there is not the slightest danger of a recurrence of
those dreadful spasms?"

When the distressed mother spoke of sleeping comfortably a smile, which
all his admiration for the fair widow could not restrain, flickered
over Doctor Harris's face: "I was about to give this young lady"--and
he turned to Miss Featherstone--"directions for the night, as we didn't
expect you home: she has been very kind and efficient, and was going to
take care of the child; but now--"

He was interrupted by Mrs. Pinckney crossing the room, seizing Miss
Featherstone's hand and kissing her with effusion: "My dear Miss
Featherstone--your name is Featherstone, is it not?--I have no words to
thank you sufficiently."

"Oh, the chère mees!" burst forth the little Frenchman. "I was so full
of frighten I not know what to do, which way to turn myself; and she,
so calm, so _smooth_," he said, hesitating for a word, and apparently
discomfited when he found it--"she take the helm, she issue the orders:
every one obey, and the child is saved." After this peroration he
glanced around as if for applause.

"I was about to say," resumed Doctor Harris, "that, now that the nurse
has returned, Miss Featherstone, who has been travelling all day, had
better have some dinner and be sent to bed."

"Oh, certainly," replied Mrs. Pinckney; "and now that I'm so much
relieved I'd like some dinner myself.--Mr, Brown, do you know what
prospects there are of our having any dinner?"

The tutor shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands with a
deprecatory gesture: "I know not, my dear madame. Les enfants et moi,
we have our dinner at two o'clock: we did not comprehend that madame
would return to-night," as a happy apologetic afterthought.

Mrs. Pinckney glanced at a little watch which she took from her belt:
"Twelve o'clock, but the servants probably have not gone to bed."--She
rang the bell. "Mary," to a maid who entered, "tell the cook to make
some tea and send in cold chicken or beef--whatever is left from
dinner."

"I think the fire is out, Mrs. Pinckney," the servant hesitatingly
replied.

"Oh, no matter: let her get a few chips and make a fire: I _must_ have
my tea."--Doctor Harris rose. "Oh, doctor, don't go until you have
taken one more look at my darling."

The nursery was on the same floor. Mrs. Pinckney insisted on kissing
the child, much to the physician's annoyance. He checked her, and
carefully refrained from talking himself while in the room. As he was
taking leave at the front door she repeated, "Now, doctor, you're sure
I can be comfortable--that I can go to bed and go to sleep? Tell me
positively"--and she looked earnestly in his face--"that the child will
never have another convulsion."

He laughed, and bent an admiring tender, gaze on the pretty mother, who
stood appealingly before him: "My dear Mrs. Pinckney, I cannot swear
positively that Harry will never have another convulsion, particularly
if he is allowed to eat nuts and raisins _ad libitum_: however, with
ordinary care I don't think it at all probable."--"Is it possible," he
reflected as he drove home, "that I want to marry that woman, selfish
and inconsiderate as she is? Why, she would have let the governess, a
perfect stranger, sit up with the child if I hadn't interfered! She is
awfully pretty, though. I can't help liking her: then, her money would
be a comfortable addition to my professional emoluments."

Although the hot, strong tea was very grateful in her exhausted
condition, this, with the very excitements of the day, kept Miss
Featherstone awake the brief remainder of the night. She breakfasted
the following morning with the children and their tutor. To her great
surprise, little Harry, looking pale and wan, was at the table.

"Madame is too ill to rise," Mr. Brown announced in his very best
English, "and the bonne is attending her. Will this dear mees take the
head of the table and us oblige by pouring out the coffee?"

Miss Featherstone cheerfully acceded, and left her own breakfast
cooling while she coaxed and consoled the little invalid, who was quite
fretful after his last night's experiences. She was making an attempt
to eat something herself when Mrs. Pinckney sent for her, and, as there
was no one to take care of the child, she carried him in her arms to
his mother's room.

"Good-morning, Miss Featherstone;" and she devoured the curly-headed
boy with kisses. Mrs. Pinckney, reclining on large pillows, looked
prettier than ever. No degree of negligence affected her appearance:
her light, curling, slightly-dishevelled hair and delicate, clear skin
were the more attractive under conditions which would be fatal to many
women. "Sit down, Miss Featherstone.--Adèle!" calling to the nurse,
"you must take dear little Harry away: I want to talk to Miss
Featherstone. Be very careful of him: don't let him eat or over-fatigue
himself. And, Adèle, after lunch come and help me dress: I think I
should feel better for a drive.--Don't you think I should feel better
for a drive, Miss Featherstone? I'm in miserable health," she added as
the door closed on the nurse and child, "I've had so much trouble. I've
lost my husband--he died of consumption"--she seized her
pocket-handkerchief and began to cry: "I was alone, except for
servants, with him at St. Augustine. I think his family were very
inconsiderate. I wrote letter after letter, telling them of his
condition and begging and imploring them to come to my assistance; but
no one came. I had just left him for a few hours to get a little
rest--I was so worn out with anxiety and the responsibility--and he
died--alone--with his nurse--" Sobs choked her voice.

Miss Featherstone rose and kissed her: it was a way she had of
comforting. Mrs. Pinckney received the caress graciously, and pressed
her hand.

"Then my income is not nearly so large as it was," she resumed, "and
I'm obliged to practise a great deal of economy. I've discharged my
maid, and share the children's nurse with them, and Adèle is growing
quite discontented with double duty. I parted with Baptiste also: it
was a frightful sacrifice, for he was just a perfect butler. I'm always
having economy talked at me by my husband's family, and I hate it!"
with a discontented sigh. "I had a house in New York," she continued,
"which they urged me to give up. They said I couldn't afford to keep
both, and it was better for the children to keep the country-house, and
that here on the river it would be easy to get to town. I'm
extravagantly fond of going to the theatre and opera, and have had in a
great measure to relinquish it. I went even when I was in mourning: the
doctors said I must be amused. We'll go sometimes this winter
together," she added coaxingly. "Well, now, Miss Featherstone, as to
your rôle of governess: I don't feel as if you were to be anything but
my nice new friend, you were so kind last night to my dear little
Harry. You teach the common English branches and the rudiments of
Latin, French and music? Mr. Brown--is it not an odd name for such a
thorough Frenchman? but his father was English, although he was born
and educated in France--Mr. Brown teaches them Latin and French at
present, but I don't know how long I shall keep him; so you'll be
relieved of that. I shall want you to act as a friend in the
household--I'm so much of an invalid--sit at the head of the table
occasionally, and give orders to the servants."

Miss Featherstone looked slightly perplexed. Her duties as governess
were mingling in a distracting manner with those of housekeeper.

"The children are so young," Mrs. Pinckney said apologetically, "they
can't be kept at their lessons from morning till night. Rose is eleven,
Alfred nine, Dick seven. Harry might possibly learn his alphabet, but I
doubt it. You can arrange the hours and studies to suit yourself; and I
want you to govern and manage the children--relieve me in that way as
much as possible. I hope you'll be very comfortable and happy in my
house, Miss Featherstone. If there is anything out of the way in your
room or anywhere else, let me know. I'm sure we shall be good friends;"
and with a hearty, affectionate kiss she dismissed the governess.

As Miss Featherstone descended the stairs she met Doctor Harris,
gallant and gay, with a rose in his buttonhole, followed by the nurse
and child, on a visit of reassurance to the fair mother.

Nothing is truer than that homely old proverb, "The lame and the lazy
are always provided for;" and Mrs. Pinckney was provided for
effectually when she lit upon Miss Featherstone. Just before Christmas
the governess was summoned to an interview with Mrs. Pinckney, who was,
as usual, in bed: "Oh, my dear Miss Featherstone, I'm in despair--ill
again. Christmas coming, and my husband's brother, Colonel Pinckney, is
on his way to make us a visit. If there's any one I feel nervous and
fidgety before, it is Colonel Pinckney: he seems to look you through
and see all your faults and weaknesses: at least, he does mine, and he
makes me see them too, which I don't like one bit. I do the best I can:
I'm in such miserable health, and have had so much to break me down.
Did you ever know any one, dear Miss Featherstone, who had had so much
trouble?--my husband's death and all."

The young girl did not reply. Visions of her own lonely home rose
before her--her mother fading slowly away under an accumulation of
misfortunes; her only brother shot in the Union army; her father
sinking into almost a dishonored grave through hopeless liabilities
brought on indirectly by the war; she, petted and idolized, the only
remaining member of the family, seeking her daily bread and finding a
pittance by working among strangers. She hung her head and had not a
word with which to reply.

"I dare say you've had troubles of your own," exclaimed Mrs. Pinckney.
"Of course you have, or you wouldn't be here, you dear creature! It is
well for me that you are here, though," kissing her affectionately.
"Now, everything must be just right when this haughty, fastidious
brother-in-law of mine comes. He isn't apt to find fault, but I am
conscious that he is secretly criticising my dress, my dinners, the
gaucheries of the servants, my moral qualities, even the way I turn my
sentences. I shouldn't mind trying to talk my very best English if he
were not prying into my motives: it is difficult to be on one's guard
in every direction," with a sigh.

"I should think he'd be very disagreeable," said Miss Featherstone.

"No:" the _no_ was hesitating. "He is dangerously attractive: at least
he attracts me. I'm all the time wondering what he is thinking, which
keeps me perpetually thinking of him. He is a Southerner, you know, and
was in the army; so you must be very careful,'my dear mees,' as Mr.
Brown says, not to come out with your 'truly loyal' sentiments: he
won't like them."

"I don't care whether he likes them or not." Miss Featherstone's face
was crimson: it was the first spark of temper she had shown since she
came into the house.

Mrs. Pinckney looked at her in surprise, then laughed: "I'm delighted
to see something human about you: I thought you were a saint."

"By no manner of means," returned the governess curtly.

"I shall warn Dick not to get upon the subject of the war," was the
note that Mrs. Pinckney, inconsequent as she generally was, made of the
scene.--"But I'm forgetting why I sent for you," she said aloud. "I
want you to go to town and buy Christmas presents and quantities of
things to eat and drink. I was going myself, but I never can count upon
a day as to being well with any certainty," with rather an ostentatious
sigh. "I've made out a list: there's plenty of money, isn't there?"

Miss Featherstone had the care of the money and accounts: "Yes,"
hesitatingly; "that is--"

"No matter," interrupted Mrs. Pinckney. "I have accounts at hosts of
places. The carriage is ordered to take you to the station: will you be
ready, dear, at ten o'clock?"

Miss Featherstone looked at her watch and hurried to her room.

It was snowing when she returned from New York: great flakes fell on
her as she stepped, loaded with bundles, out of the carriage. The
children met her with joyful whoops at the front door: "Oh, here's
clear little Miss Featherstone, and we know she's got our Christmas
presents.--You can't deny it. Hurrah!"

They dragged her into the dining-room, where the table, decked with
flowers, was handsomely arranged for dinner. A blazing wood-fire roared
on the hearth: in front of it stood a tall, handsome man with a
military air. He was dark, with brilliant eyes, a certain regularity of
features, and, as his passport declared, his hair was dark brown and
curly. Colonel Pinckney looked haughty and impenetrable, as his
sister-in-law had described him. Mrs. Pinckney, exquisitely dressed,
reclined in a large chair by the corner of the fireplace: she held up a
pretty fan to screen her face from the heat, and was talking gayly to
her brother-in-law. At a table in a corner Mr. Brown, by the light of a
large lamp, was endeavoring, with great difficulty, to read an English
paper.

"Oh, mamma, see poor little Miss Featherstone loaded down with boxes
and bundles!" shrieked the children, dragging her up to the fire.

"Dear children, do go and get Adèle to take them," said their
mother.--"Here, Mary," to a servant who entered, "carry these packages
up to my dressing-room.--There are more in the carriage?" in reply to a
remark of Miss Featherstone.--"Adèle," to her maid, who stood at the
door, "bring in everything you find in the carriage."

Two or three weeks passed, and Colonel Pinckney made no sign of
departure. In spite of his unsocial tendencies, he drove and dined out
with his sister-in-law, for many nice people chose this winter to
remain at their country-houses. He took long walks by himself, and made
inroads into the school-room, for he was very fond of the children.
Mrs. Pinckney was less frequently indisposed, and exerted herself in a
measure to entertain him. She never, by any accident, occupied herself,
and was one morning lying back in a large chair by a coal-fire in the
library, her little idle hands resting on her lap, when Colonel
Pinckney, who had been examining the books on the shelves which lined
the room, assumed his usual position, with his back to the fire, and
startled his sister-in-law by exclaiming, "Where did you get your white
slave, Virginia?"--Mrs. Pinckney looked bewildered--"this young girl
who fills so many places in the house? She appears to be nurse,
housekeeper, governess and maid-of-all-work in one."

"My dear Dick, what do you mean?" exclaimed Mrs. Pinckney with some
indignation. "Do you think I impose upon Miss Featherstone? I love her
dearly. Then my delicate health, and you know I'm obliged to be
economical."

Colonel Pinckney made a movement of impatience and almost disgust.,
"How much do you pay her?" he abruptly exclaimed, turning his flashing
eyes upon his companion.

"How angry you look! how you frighten me!" said Mrs. Pinckney, who had
a trick of coming out with everything she thought. "I pay her"--and she
stammered--"two hundred dollars a year."

"The devil!" he exclaimed. "I beg your pardon, Virginia, but I can
hardly believe it. What an absurd compensation for all that girl does!
Why, one of your dresses frequently costs more than that: I see your
bills, you know."

"I'm very sorry you do if this is the use you make of your knowledge,"
replied Mrs. Pinckney in an injured tone. "She is in mourning, and does
not require many dresses: besides, Richard, no one preaches economy to
me more than you do. I'm sick of the very word," petulantly.

"What position, really, is she supposed to occupy?"

"She is the governess," said Mrs. Pinckney in a sulky tone.

"Now listen, Virginia. I have seen that young girl darning stockings in
the school-room and at the same time hearing the children's lessons; I
have seen her arrange the dinner-table, with the children clinging to
her skirts; I have seen her with the keys, giving out the stores; I
know she keeps your accounts; and I can readily comprehend where those
clear, well-expressed letters came from, although signed by you, which
I have frequently received in my character of guardian and executor."

"You certainly don't think I meant to deceive you as to the letters?"

"Oh no," replied her brother-in-law: "I don't think you in the least
deceitful, Virginia;" and in his own mind reflected, "'Hypocrisy is the
homage which vice pays to virtue.'"

Nobody likes hypocrisy, to be sure, but Mrs. Pinckney did not take the
trouble to veil her peccadilloes. Easy and indolent as she was, being
now thoroughly roused by his thinly-veiled contempt, she endeavored to
be disagreeable in her turn. With the most innocent air in the world
she exclaimed, "I declare, Dick, I believe you're in love with Miss
Featherstone, although you like fair women--"

"And she is dark," he interrupted.

"Regular features--"

"And her dear little nose is slightly _retroussèe_; but you cannot
deny, Virginia, that she has a most captivating air."

"I'm fond of her, but I do not think her captivating." Mrs. Pinckney
was now thoroughly out of temper. She was not naturally envious, but
she could be roused to envy. "And so you're in love with her?"
satirically.

"How can I help it?" he returned with a mocking air. "She has
magnificent eyes, a bewildering smile: then she has that _je ne sais
quoi_, as our foreign friend would say. There is no defining it, there
is no assuming it. To conclude, I consider Miss Featherstone
dangerously attractive."

"Just what I told her you were," returned Mrs. Pinckney, who saw he was
trying to tease her, and had recovered by this time her equanimity. In
spite of his phlegm he looked interested. "You'd better take care and
make no reference to the war, for she is furiously loyal, I can tell
you," said Mrs. Pinckney, recalling the conversation. "Since when have
you been in love with her?"

"From the very first moment I saw her, when she entered the
dining-room, her cheeks brilliant from the cold, her lovely eyes,
blinded by the light, peering through their long lashes, a little
becoming embarrassment in her air as she saw your humble servant--laden
down with your bundles, and your children, as usual, clinging to her
skirts."

"Dick, how disagreeable you are!" and Mrs. Pinckney began to pout
again.

"We are all her lovers," he maliciously continued--"all the men
here--Doctor Harris, Mr. Brown and--" he bowed expressively.

"Doctor Harris?" exclaimed his sister-in-law. This defection cut her to
the heart.

"The day my namesake and godchild, little Dick, was ill I went to the
nursery, as in duty bound: you know how fond I am of that child. There
was Miss Featherstone, not the nurse, interested and concerned, sitting
by the patient. There was Doctor Harris, interested and absorbed with
Miss Featherstone. His looks were unmistakable: I saw it at a glance.
And as for Mr. Brown, he raves about this 'dear mees' or 'cette chère
mademoiselle' by the hour together. She carried his heart by storm the
first time he saw her, as she did mine."

"How far does your admiration lead you? Do you wish any assistance from
me?"

"As you please: I am indifferent," he returned, shrugging his
shoulders. "Seriously, Virginia--I say this in my character of guardian
and adviser-general to the family--I think what you give her is a
beggarly pittance in return for all she does, and I suggest that you
raise her salary."

Miss Featherstone, although prejudiced at first against Colonel
Pinckney, grew by degrees to like him. His manner to her was grave and
respectful; he carried off the children, quite conveniently sometimes,
when she was almost worn out with fatigue; and the air of friendly
interest with which his dark eyes rested upon her was in a manner
comforting. Their little interviews, although she was unconscious of
it, gave zest to her life.

One cold morning, as she sat before breakfast with little Harry on her
lap, warming his hands before the dining-room fire, Colonel Pinckney
exclaimed, "Miss Featherstone, did you have the care of that child last
night?"

"Yes," as she pressed the fat little hands in hers.

"And dressed him this morning?"

"Why, yes. Colonel Pinckney, excuse me: why shouldn't I?"

"Virginia is the most selfish human being I ever knew in my life," he
burst forth. "You, after working like a slave during the day, cannot
even have your night's rest undisturbed. I'll speak to her, and insist
upon it that this state of things shall not continue any longer."

Miss Featherstone looked annoyed: "Mr. Pinckney"--she never would, if
she remembered it, call him "Colonel"--"I beg that you will do nothing
of the kind. Mrs. Pinckney is quite ill with a cold: she can scarcely
speak above a whisper, and she required Adèle's services during the
night. I volunteered--it was my own arrangement--sleeping with the
child," eagerly.

"Oh yes," he returned, "you are remarkably well suited to each
other--you and Virginia: you give, and she takes," sarcastically.
"Listen, Miss Featherstone. I have known that woman twelve years--it is
exactly twelve years since my unfortunate brother married her--and in
all that time I never knew her consider but one human being, and that
was herself."

"Indeed, you're very much mistaken, Colonel--that is, Mr.--Pinckney, as
far as I am concerned. Mrs. Pinckney is really very kind to me. I am
exceedingly fond of her, but I cannot bear to see things going wrong,
and when I can I make them right. Mrs. Pinckney is in delicate health."

"That's all nonsense," he interrupted. "She spends her time studying
her sensations. If she were poor she'd have something better to do. I
think you are doing wrong morally, Miss Featherstone. You are
encouraging her in idleness and selfishness by taking her duties and
bearing them on your young shoulders.--Now, Harry, come here," to that
small individual, who slowly and unwillingly descended from the
governess's lap: "leave Miss Featherstone, my young friend, to pour out
the coffee and eat her own breakfast. Adèle is with mamma, is she?
Well, Uncle Dick will give Harry his breakfast."

The cold was intense the following day, yet Miss Featherstone, well
muffled up, was on her way to the hall-door, where the sleigh was
waiting to take her to the station.

"Forgive me," exclaimed Colonel Pinckney, who waylaid her, much to her
annoyance, "but what are you going to do for the family now?"

"I am going to New York to get a cook," she replied with a decided air.

"Do you know the state of the thermometer?"

"I don't care anything about it," with some obstinacy, tugging at the
button of her glove.

"But I do," he said. "Now, Miss Featherstone, while I'm here I am
master of the house, and if it's necessary to go to town it's I that am
going--to use Pat's vernacular--and not you. Give me directions, and
I'll follow them implicitly."

"So Dick went, did he?" said Mrs. Pinckney. She was propped up in bed
with large pillows: Miss Featherstone, still in her bonnet, sat by her
side.

"Yes: it was very kind, for I don't know what would have become of the
children all day, poor things! and you sick."

Mrs. Pinckney glanced searchingly at her. "Dick is very kind when he
pleases, and exceedingly efficient," returned the invalid: "I've no
doubt he'll bring back a capital cook."

"I had a great prejudice against Mr. Pinckney," said Miss Featherstone,
slowly smoothing out her gloves, "but I confess it has vanished, there
is something so straightforward and manly about him; and he certainly
is very kind."

"He does not flatter you at all?"

"Oh no; and that is one reason I like him. I detest the gallant, tender
manner which many men affect toward women."

"Doctor Harris, for instance?"

"Well, Doctor Harris, for instance," returned Miss Featherstone,
smiling, and blushing a little.

"Doctor Harris has certainly made love to her, and Dick as certainly
hasn't. I wonder--oh, how I wonder!--whether he was in earnest the
other day?" Her large blue eyes were fixed scrutinizingly on the
governess, although she thought, not said, these things. "He thinks you
do a great deal too much in the house, and was quite abusive to me
about it: he actually swore when he discovered the amount of your
salary. Now, my dear Miss Featherstone, you may name your own price:
I'll give you anything you ask, for no amount of money can represent
the comfort you are to me."

"I don't want one cent more than I at present receive," replied the
governess, kissing her fondly.

A few days after Colonel Pinckney--a self-constituted committee,
apparently, for the prevention of cruelty to governesses--surprised
Miss Featherstone in the school-room. She was seated before the fire in
a low chair, little Harry, who was fretful from a cold, lying on her
lap, the other children clustered around her. As he softly opened the
door he heard these words: "'Blondine,' replied the fairy Bienveillante
sadly,' no matter what you see or hear, do not lose courage or hope.'"
As she told the story in low, drowsy tones she was also mending the
heel of a little stocking.

"It is abominable!" the colonel cried: "you are worn out with fatigue:
I hear it in your voice. I called you a 'white slave' to Virginia:
nothing is truer. You've today given out supplies from the store-room,
you were in the kitchen a long time with the new cook, you set the
lunch-table--don't deny it, for I saw you--besides taking care of the
children and hearing their lessons."

"While Mrs. Pinckney is ill this is absolutely necessary," she returned
with decision: "of course it makes some confusion having a new cook--"

"Children," he interrupted, "this séance is to be broken up: scamper
off to Adèle to get ready: I'll ask mamma to let you drive to the
station in the coupé to meet Mr. Brown: there will certainly be room
for such little folks.--And as to you, Miss Featherstone, as head of
the house _pro tem_. I order you to put on your hat and cloak and walk
in the garden for a while with me: the paths are quite hard and dry."

"Mamma! mamma! we are to drive to the station: Uncle Dick says so,"
shrieked the children, breaking up a delicious little doze into which
Mrs. Pinckney had fallen while Adèle sat at her sewing in the darkened
room.

"Is Uncle Dick going with you?"

"No, he is going to walk in the garden with Miss Featherstone."

Mrs. Pinckney felt quite cross: "He is positively insolent, ordering
things about in this way, interrupting my nap and all. What, under
Heaven, should I do without her if he is in earnest about Miss
Featherstone?"

If she could have heard what Colonel Pinckney was saying in the garden
she would have been still crosser.

"I want to enlighten you a little as to my fair sister-in-law," he
began after a few commonplaces.

"Oh, please don't, Colonel Pinckney"--unconsciously she was sliding
into the "Colonel." "I'd much rather you wouldn't. I think--" and she
hesitated.

"What do you think?"

"Why"--and she looked embarrassed--"I am afraid I shall not love Mrs.
Pinckney as well if you analyze and show up all her little weaknesses.
We could none of us bear it," she continued warmly. "Remember that
line--

  Be to her faults a little blind.

I like to love people, and feel like a woman in some novel I've read:
'Long and deeply let me be beguiled with regard to the infirmities of
those I love.'"

"You're an angel!" he cried.

Miss Featherstone looked startled and annoyed.

Colonel Pinckney, with much self-possession, recovered himself
immediately. "We all know it," he continued jestingly--"Mr. Brown, the
children, servants and all; but, in spite of this, you shall not be
imposed upon. Now, I wish to give you a résumé of Mrs. Pinckney's
life--"

"Oh, Colonel Pinckney! when we are under her roof!"

"It is a shelter bought with my father's money," he returned. "But you
must and shall hear me: it is necessary. She is the incarnation of
selfishness: in a young person it could go no further. One can pardon
anything rather than selfishness. She entirely exhausted our charity
during poor Harry's long illness. She travelled with every comfort that
money could give: she had her maid, Harry had his man, the children
were left with my mother. One winter they went to Nassau, the next to
the south of France: from both places she wrote such despairing letters
that my poor old father and mother were nearly beside themselves. It
was like the explosion of a bomb-shell in the household when a letter
came from Virginia. Sometimes I used to read and suppress them: they
were filled with shrieks and lamentations. Harry was in a rapid
decline; the mental torture was more than she could bear; some one must
come immediately out to her, etc. The first winter my eldest brother
went, to the serious injury of his business: he is a lawyer. I went
when they were in Europe, my wound not yet healed. By George! Harry
looked in better health than I: every one thought I was the invalid.
The doctor was called in immediately, who said I had endangered my life
by the expedition. I found out my lady had been to balls and on
excursions all the time she was writing those harrowing letters."

"Is it possible," said Miss Featherstone, "that you think Mrs. Pinckney
is false--that she deliberately tells untruths?"

"Not a bit of it," interrupted Colonel Pinckney. "She loves to complain
and make herself an object of sympathy. Poor Harry, of course, had a
constant cough, and whenever he took cold all his distressing symptoms
were aggravated: then she'd write her letters. By the time they were
received he would be pretty well again. You can see for yourself what
she is: she sends for Doctor Harris, has Adèle sleep on a mattress on
the floor in her room, leaving little Harry to keep you awake all
night--a fine preparation for the drudgery of the next day--then toward
evening she rises, makes a beautiful toilette, and drives with me
several miles to a dinner-party. Not a month ago, you remember, this
occurred when we went to Judge Lawrence's. To go back to my poor
brother: let me tell you what happened from her crying wolf so often.
The next winter they went to St. Augustine: we live in Virginia, you
know. A few weeks after their arrival the alarming letters began and
continued to appear. I took it upon myself to suppress most of them,
for really I had grown scarcely to believe a word she said with regard
to her husband, and, as I am sanguine, thought poor Harry would
overcome the disease, as our father had before him, and live to a good
old age. One morning, however, a telegram came: he was dead!" Colonel
Pinckney could scarcely speak. Recovering himself a little, he
continued in husky tones: "He died alone with his nurse: Virginia,
taking care of herself as usual, was in another room asleep."

"I wonder what they are talking about?" thought Mrs. Pinckney, twisting
her pretty neck in all directions so she could see them from her bed.
Their two heads were close together: he was speaking earnestly, and
Miss Featherstone's eyes were on the ground.

Mrs. Pinckney dressed and went down to dinner, although she had not
quite recovered the use of her voice. "Dick," she whispered, "it was a
fine move, your sending the children away this afternoon, so that you
could have Miss Featherstone all to yourself. Did you come to the
point?"

"No, but I will one of these days: I am preparing her mind," he added
mischievously.

As time went on a vague uneasiness seized the young governess. She
imagined Mrs. Pinckney was growing cool in her manner toward her:
certainly, Doctor Harris, who was constantly at the house, was becoming
importunate in his attentions. Once she looked up suddenly at as
prosaic a place as the dinner-table. Colonel Pinckney was gazing both
ardently and admiringly upon her. "Certainly I must be losing my senses
to imagine these men in love with me: it's preposterous."

Mr. Brown put the matter at rest, as far as he was concerned, for one
day, as she returned from a walk, he accosted her on the veranda, and
with a series of the most violent grimaces and gesticulations, his eyes
flashing, his face working in every possible direction, he told her
that he was _dèsolè_: his life depended upon her. He was so odd and
absurd in his avowal that she burst out laughing: then, as she beheld
an indignant, inquiring expression on his honest red countenance, she
grew frightened, sank on a seat and wept hysterically. This encouraged
him: he sat down beside her and exclaimed, "Dear mees"--and he peered
at her blandly--"your life is empty: so is mine. Let it be for me--oh,
so beautiful!"--and he spread out his little fat hands with
rapture--"to comfort and console one heavenly existence, _ensemble."_
He placed a hand on each stout knee and gazed benignly down upon her.

She hung her head as sheepishly as if she returned the little
foreigner's affection--afraid of wounding him, she was speechless--when
at this unlucky moment Colonel Pinckney, coming suddenly round the
house, walked up the steps. She saw him glance at her--Mr. Brown's back
was toward him--and a smile he evidently couldn't restrain stole over
his face.

"Oh, Mr. Brown, I'm so sorry!" she found courage at length to say. "You
are very kind--you've always been kind to me from the moment I entered
the house--but indeed you must never speak on this subject again." She
shook hands with him in her embarrassment, apparently as a proof of
friendship, then ran into the house.

"Virginia, what do you think has happened to me?" cried Colonel
Pinckney, bursting into his sister-in-law's room, which he seldom
invaded. "Yesterday, as I came up the steps, I surprised Mr. Brown, who
was offering himself--bad English, poverty and all--to Miss
Featherstone. This minute--by George!--I stumbled into the dining-room,
and there is Doctor Harris going through the same performance."

"Sit down and tell me all about it," exclaimed Mrs. Pinckney, her
curiosity overcoming her pique.

"Each time," continued Colonel Pinckney, "the lover's back was turned
toward me, while I had a most distinct view of Miss Featherstone, who
was blushing, hanging her head and looking as distressed as possible,
poor little soul!"

"Why! won't she accept the doctor?" said Mrs. Pinckney with animation.

"It didn't look like it. I couldn't hear what he said, but his back had
a hopeless expression. Did you know that she came from one of the best
families in Philadelphia, that most aristocratic of cities, and that
they were very wealthy? Her only brother was killed in the war, and she
is the sole unfortunate survivor."

"She might do many a worse thing than marry Doctor Harris: he is well
educated and a gentleman."

"She could do a better thing, and that is to marry me," exclaimed the
colonel. "I'm going to give her a chance, and will tell you the result
immediately. I wonder who'll stumble in upon my wooing?" and with
mirthful eyes he darted out of the room.

"I never knew a man so changed," soliloquized Mrs. Pinckney. "He used
to be haughty and reserved: now he talks a great deal, uses slang
expressions and romps and plays with the children like any ordinary
mortal. One can never tell whether he is in earnest or not. I don't
believe he'd have told me if he'd really meant to offer himself."

A day or two afterward Miss Featherstone had occasion to go to town. It
was exceedingly inconvenient, for she was needed everywhere as usual,
but gloves and boots must be replenished, even by impecunious heroines.
As she came down Colonel Pinckney handed her into the carriage and
followed her. She felt a little annoyed, but supposed he was driving
only to the station: however, he sent the coachman home, and when the
cars came up he entered and took his seat beside her.

"You look depressed, Miss Featherstone: I hope that my going to New
York meets with your approbation? I've been neglecting a thousand
necessary matters, and the pleasure of your company to-day gave me the
necessary incentive."

He was so frank as to his motives that Miss Featherstone laid aside her
reserve in a measure, and became communicative. "Everything has
changed, Colonel Pinckney," she said with a sigh. "Mrs. Pinckney has
grown decidedly cool, and I think you have opened my eyes so that I
don't love her quite as much as I did. I am sorry: I should rather have
been blind. Then--" She paused, feeling that her confidences must go no
further.

"Then," he continued, "it makes it very embarrassing that the tutor and
family physician should both have fallen in love with you."

"I think of leaving," she continued, neither admitting nor
contradicting his assertion. "Forgive me: you have spoken from the best
motives, but I think you have made trouble," she added hesitatingly.
"Mrs. Pinckney is now continually on the alert to prevent my working;
she will no longer let little Harry sleep in my room; she orders the
dinner for the first time since I've been in the house; the children
are swooped off by Adèle as soon as their school-hours are over; and
everything is odd, strange and uncomfortable. I think I must go away. I
wrote an advertisement to put in the papers: perhaps you could do it
for me?" she said timidly: "I dread going to the offices."

"Certainly," he replied courteously, and put it in his pocket.

Colonel Pinckney appeared to share her depression, and he sat for some
time silent: then he said in an agitated voice, "It will be a sorrowful
day for that house when you leave it: I never knew such a
transformation as you have effected. Until this winter my only
associations with it have been of dirt, gloom and disorder: the
children were neglected and fretful, the dinners shocking and ill
served; and this with an army of servants and money spent _ad libitum_.
Now, on the contrary, the rooms are fresh, cheerful and agreeable;
there are pleasant odors, bright fires, attractive meals; the children
perfect both in appearance and manner; and all this owing to the
influence--perhaps I ought to say labors--of one young, inexperienced
girl. I've always imagined I disliked efficient women: I've changed my
mind. When I was young a fair, indolent creature, always well dressed
and smiling, was my beau ideal: now a brunette, bright and
energetic--some one who never thinks of herself, but is making
everybody else happy and comfortable--this is my present divinity." He
smiled tenderly upon her.

Miss Featherstone endeavored to shake off her embarrassment. He was a
frank, kind-hearted man, entirely unlike his sister-in-law's idea of
him, with an exaggerated gratitude for her exertions in his brother's
family. She would not be so silly as to imagine every man was being
transformed into a lover. "You are kinder to me than I deserve," she
said, then changed the conversation.

She expected to meet him as she took the train to return, but he was
nowhere to be seen. He did not even appear when the train stopped, and
she had a solitary drive to the house.

"Did you know that Dick had gone?" said Mrs. Pinckney at the
dinner-table, levelling scrutinizing glances from her lovely blue eyes.

"No," answered the governess with sudden depression and embarrassment:
"he said nothing about leaving this morning. You know Colonel Pinckney
went to New York in the train that I did."

"You didn't see him after your arrival?"

"No: he put me on a car and left me."

"I suspect it was an after-thought," said Mrs. Pinckney. "I had a
telegram, directing me to send on his travelling-bag by express: the
rest of his luggage was to be left until further orders.--Is it
possible that she has refused him?" thought Mrs. Pinckney behind her
fan. She was occupying her usual seat by the fire: Miss Featherstone
was in a low chair, with Harry on her lap, the other children hanging
about her. She was telling them a story, but they were not as well
entertained as usual. The young governess was unlike herself to-night,
and little touches, dramatic effects and gay inflections of the voice
were lacking.

A month passed, and nothing had been heard from Colonel Pinckney. "He
might have written just one line," said his sister-in-law querulously.
She was in her favorite position, propped up by pillows on the bed,
Miss Featherstone at her side waiting to receive orders, for gradually
all her old duties had been permitted to slip back into her willing
hands. "Certainly he seemed to enjoy himself when he was here; yet not
one line of thanks or remembrance have I received. I heard," she said
mysteriously, "that Dick was very devoted to Miss Livingstone at
Saratoga last summer--there's no end to the women who have been in love
with _him_: perhaps this sudden move has something to do with her.
Nothing but a great emergency can excuse him," petulantly.

That day, for the first time, the children wearied Miss Featherstone,
and she carried them in a body to Adèle, saying that she had a violent
headache and was going out in the garden for a walk. As she paced
slowly up and down the tears fell over her pale cheeks. The only window
from which she could be seen was Mrs. Pinckney's, and that lady, she
knew, was too much absorbed in her own sensations to give her a
thought. "How I despise myself!" she murmured, "how degraded I am in my
own eyes! Can I ever recover my self-respect? I'm so miserable that I
should like to die because Colonel Pinckney has left the house,
and"--she hesitated--"because his sister-in-law thinks he was drawn
away by Miss Livingstone, Oh!"--and she groaned and clasped her hands
frantically together--"and all this agony for a man who has never
uttered a word of love to me!" Here a remembrance of his whole air and
manner rather contradicted this thought. "Everything wearies me: I am
actually impatient of the children, and when Mrs. Pinckney wails and
complains I can scarcely listen with decency. I want to burst out upon
her and say, 'You silly, tiresome woman! you have had your dream of
love and your husband; you have still four dear children; you have a
home, plenty of money, hosts of friends, besides youth and good looks;
while I am--oh, how desolate!'"

This imaginary attack upon Mrs. Pinckney seemed to comfort her
somewhat, for she dried her tears and tried to form a plan of action:
"He evidently didn't put my advertisement in the paper, for I've looked
in vain for it. I must go away where I shall never see Colonel Pinckney
again. I'll stifle, throttle, this miserable love, and endeavor once
more to be enduring and courageous."

Just then the house-door opened: some one walked down the veranda steps
and came rapidly in her direction.

"I have been looking everywhere for you," cried Colonel Pinckney; and
he seized both her hands: "no one seemed to know where you had gone."

The bright color rose in her cheeks, and in spite of her resolve her
eyes beamed with delight. She murmured inarticulately that she had told
Adèle, then relapsed into silence.

"I have to implore your forgiveness for neglecting to obey as to the
advertisement, but the truth is----" and he hesitated--"I have a plan.
It may not meet with your concurrence," he added, "but I wished to
submit it before you made other and irrevocable arrangements."

"You have thought of some position for me?" she forced herself to say,
all the bloom and delight vanishing from her face.

"Yes. I know an individual who wants precisely such a person as you
are, for--a wife."

"Colonel Pinckney!" she exclaimed indignantly.

"Do forgive me, dear Miss Featherstone. I am such a confounded
poltroon"--and he seized her hands again--"that I dare not risk my
fate; but that person is"--and he looked down upon her, his heart
beating so violently that he could scarcely speak--"that person
is--myself!"

Of what happened then Mrs. Pinckney, roused by her brother-in-law's
return, was cognizant, for actually, in the open air, with her blue
eyes bent eagerly upon them, he clasped the governess in his arms. "It
is a fact accomplished!" cried the fair widow with a sigh, and sank
back upon her pillows.




THE HOME OF THE GENTIANS.

  There is a lonesome hamlet of the dead
    Spread on a high ridge, up above a lake--
  A quiet meadow-slope, unfrequented,
    Where in the wind a thousand wild flowers shake.

  But most of all, the delicate gentian here,
    Serenely blue as the sweet eyes of Hope,
  Doth prosper in th' untroubled atmosphere,
    Where wide its fringèd eyelids love to ope.

  You cannot set a foot upon the ground
    On warm September noons, in this old croft,
  But there some satiny blossom crushed is found,
    Swift springing up to look again aloft.

  Prized! sung of poets! sought for singly where
    Adventurous feet may hardly dare to climb!
  Here, scattered lavishly and without care,
    In all the sweet luxuriance of their prime.

  Ah! how the yellow-thighed, brown-coated bee
    Dives prodigally into those blue deeps
  Of glistening, odorless satin fair to see,
    And soon forgetting wherefore, trancèd, sleeps!

  And how the golden butterflies skim over,
    And poise, all fondly, on these lifted lips,
  Leaving the riches of the sweet red clover
    For the blue gentians' fine and fairy tips!

  Beautiful wildlings, proud, refined and shy!
    Mysteries ye are, have been, and yet shall be:
  The secrets of your being in ye lie,
    And no man yet hath found their hidden key.

  Might we not laugh at our world's vaunted lore,
    For ever boasting, "This, and this, I know"?
  Not all the science of its hard-won store
    Can make one single fringèd gentian grow.
                                              --HOWARD GLYNDON.




NEWPORT A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.


There is a magnetism in places which has as strong and subtle a potency
as that which belongs to certain persons. Newport, Rhode Island, is not
an inapt example of the class of which I speak. The wonderful mildness
of the air, coupled with its exhilarating qualities; the fertility of
the soil, which throws tropical vegetation over the stern realism of
crag and precipice; the mixture of the wildest features of Nature with
its softest and most intoxicating influences,--all these anomalies,
unexplained even by the proximity of the itself inexplicable Gulf
Stream, combine to form a perfect and most desirable whole. Nor is this
description over-colored or the offshoot of the latter-day caprice that
has made of the place a fashionable resort. The very name of the State
suggests that of a classic island famed for its atmosphere; and as
Verrazano, writing in 1524, compares Block Island to Rhodes, it is
possible that hence arose its title. Neal in 1717, and the Abbé Robin
in 1771, both speak of Newport as the Paradise of New England, and
endorse its Indian appellation, Aquidneck, or the Isle of Peace.
Berkeley, dean of Derry, who came here in 1729 full of zealous but
utopian plans of proselytism, writes of it that "the climate is warmer
than Italy, and far preferable to Bermuda" (his original destination).
Indeed, it is to the good man's enthusiasm for Newport that we owe his
burst of poetical prophecy, "Westward the course of empire takes its
way."

If the staid and reverend Berkeley, he whom Swift, writing to Lord
Carteret, recommends as "one of the first men in the kingdom for
learning and virtue," and of whom Pope exclaims, "To Berkeley every
virtue under heaven," found here this fascination, what wonder that
more excitable pilgrims of Latin blood made of it a Mecca? The French
particularly came often to Newport in early colonial days, and have
left jottings of their stay and the pleasure it afforded them. Monsieur
de Crèvecoeur visited it in 1772, and found delight in its natural
beauties. He notes the bay and harbor, the approach to which he
considers remarkably fine, and admires the acacia and plane trees which
line the roads, all of which, unfortunately, were destroyed during the
Revolution. The young attaché of the French legation of to-day, who
chafes at the diplomatic duties which delay his shaking off the dust of
Washington for the delights of Newport, hardly comprehends how much
heredity has to do with his appreciation of it. He does not stop to
think, as he sips his post-prandial coffee at Hartman's window, of the
line of French chivalry that a century ago made their favorite
promenade by the spot where he now sits. His mind, running on Mrs.
A----'s ball or Mrs. B----'s lawn-tennis, is far from dreaming of the
irresistible De Lauzun, the gallant De Fersen, a fugitive from the love
of a queen, but destined to serve her as lackey in her need, the two
handsome Viosmenils, the baron Cromot du Bourg, the duc de Deux-Ponts,
or any of the brilliant cortége of a bygone day. But what memories the
mere enumeration of their names brings up! Rank and valor were the
heritage of all of them, an heroic but unhappy end the fate of most.
Who can say that the aroma of their presence does not still linger
round the old town, up and down the narrow streets where they passed
with gay jests and clanking sword, or in the quaint mansions, still
peeping out from behind century-old hedges, where they left the record
of their graces in the heart of their host and of their loves on his
window-pane? What can be pleasanter than for the American pen to linger
over the page of history that chronicles the generous sympathy which
brought this fine flower of France to our shores? Where is the heart,
even in our cynical nineteenth century, which holds enthusiasm an
anachronism, that does not thrill at the recollection of the chivalry
that quitted the luxury and revels of Versailles to dare the dangers of
an ocean-voyage (then no ten-day pleasure-trip) for a cause that still
hung in the balances of success? Viewed practically, the help offered
was even more deserving of praise. The French are not an adventurous
nation: they are not fond of travelling. Hugo says Paris is the world,
and to the average Frenchman it embodies the world it comprises: it
_is_ the world. Expatriated, he would rather dwell, like the poet, on a
barren island within sight of the shores of France than seek or find
new worlds to conquer. It must therefore be conceded that the sentiment
which brought us our allies in 1780 was a hearty one, nor had they
encouragement from the example of others; for, although La Fayette,
young and full of ardor, had fired the hearts of his compatriots, and
made it the fashion to help us even before the alliance in 1778, yet
the expedition of that year under the comte d'Estaing had been an utter
failure. There was, however, a strong incentive which brought the young
nobles of the time to us, and that was the one which the old
philosopher declared to be at the bottom of every case--a woman. In
this particular instance the prestige was heightened by the fact that
she was also a queen. Marie Antoinette was then at the zenith of her
beauty and power. The timid, shrinking dauphiness, forced to the arms
of an unwilling husband, himself a mere cipher, had expanded into a
fascinating woman, reigning triumphantly over the court and the
affections of her vacillating spouse. The birth, after years of
wedlock, of several children completed her conquest and gave her the
dominion she craved, and she now threw her influence unreservedly into
the balance for the American colonies, little dreaming she was therein
laying the first stone toward her own ruin.

On the 6th of February, 1778, the treaty between the United States and
France was signed, followed in July of the same year by a declaration
from the king protecting neutral ships, although bound for hostile
ports and carrying contraband goods. Meanwhile, on the 13th of April,
the French fleet had sailed from Toulon under the command of D'Estaing,
who had with him on the Languedoc, his flagship, a regularly appointed
envoy, Girard de Rayneville, who had full power to recognize the
independence of the States, Silas Deane, one of the American
commissioners, and such well-known officers as the comte de la
Motte-Piquet, the Bailli de Suffren, De Guichen, D'Orvilliers, De
Grasse and others. The history of this first expedition is a short and
disastrous one. The voyage was long, owing to the ships being unequally
matched in speed, and it was ninety days after leaving Toulon before
they anchored in Delaware Bay. D'Estaing had hoped to surprise Lord
Howe, who was guarding the mouth of the Delaware to strengthen the
position of Sir Henry Clinton at Philadelphia, but when the fleet
arrived Clinton had evacuated Philadelphia, and was in the harbor of
New York. Here the French admiral followed him, but, finding no pilots
at Sandy Hook willing to take him over the bar, he on Washington's
recommendation proceeded to Rhode Island to co-operate with Sullivan,
who was in command of the army there, which was divided into two
brigades under Generals Greene and La Fayette. On the 29th of July,
1778, the French fleet appeared off Newport, to the delight of the
inhabitants, who were suffering from the English occupation, and saw in
prospect an end to their troubles. But, alas! their joy was premature.
Sullivan was so slow in moving that the moment for action was lost.
Lord Howe, having received reinforcements, appeared off Point Judith,
where D'Estaing tried to meet and give him battle; but a hurricane
coming up, both fleets were obliged to spend their energies in saving
themselves from destruction, and before the storm passed the French
ships were so scattered that all hope of success had to be abandoned.
D'Estaing found himself on the 13th of August separated from his
convoy, and his ship, Le Languedoc, bereft of rudder and masts, forced
to an encounter with three English vessels. His fleet rallied round
him, but it was too late after a disastrous action to do anything but
repair damages: in fact, Lord Howe had already reached Sandy Hook.
D'Estaing appeared off Newport on the 20th to announce that he should
be obliged by instructions to go to Boston for provisions and water,
and thus ended the first visit of the French to Newport, to the dismay
of the inhabitants. Sullivan criticised D'Estaing severely, but was
obliged by La Fayette to retract: indeed, it is a question whether the
fault of failure lay in Sullivan's procrastination or in want of
judgment on the part of the French commander, who nevertheless, on his
return to France, interested himself to induce the government to send
out twelve thousand men to America. La Fayette also, through his
friendship with Vergennes, exerted himself toward the same end, the
proposition being not unfavorably received by the government, which
merely demurred as to the number of troops required. Before leaving
France, however, La Fayette had secured full consent to the expedition,
and on him devolved the grateful task of bearing to Congress and
Washington the news of the co-operation of that country. The fleet was
prepared at Brest, and was placed under Admiral de Ternay, the command
of the troops being given to the comte de Rochambeau, not through court
favor, but in consideration of the affection of the army for him.

Jean Baptiste de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau and marshal of France, was
born in Vendôme in 1725. At sixteen he served under the maréchal de
Broglie, was afterward aide to the duc d'Orléans, and distinguished
himself in the battles of Crevelt, Minden, Closterkamp and Corbach,
being seriously wounded several times. A thorough soldier, Rochambeau
possessed not only courage, but a clear, practical eye, accompanied by
foresight and judgment. His memoirs show him to have taken more kindly
to the camp than the court, and outside of war to have been fond of the
sports of a country gentleman. His appearance in Trumbull's picture of
the surrender of Cornwallis shows us more of a Cincinnatus than of an
Alexander. He was reserved in his manner, even with his officers, and
De Fersen, writing to his father, complains of it, acknowledging,
however, that it was shown less with him than with others. Later on he
does Rochambeau justice, and says: "His example had its effect on the
army, and the severe orders he gave restrained everybody and enforced
that discipline which was the admiration of the Americans and of the
English who witnessed it. The wise, prudent and simple conduct of M. de
Rochambeau has done more to conciliate America to us than the gain of
four battles."

With this representative soldier of his time came so fine a showing of
the noblesse of France, fresh from the most brilliant court of Europe,
that they are worth a short description. They are interesting, if from
nothing else, from the fact that they are the men who appear on the
page of history one day steeped in the enervating luxury and intrigue
of Versailles and Marly, the next fighting and dying with the courage
of the lionhearted Henri de la Rochejaquelin in Vendée, leaving as an
epitaph on their whole generation the words of the Chouan chief,
"Allons chercher l'ennemi! Si je recule, tuez moi; si j'avance, suivez
moi; si je meurs, vengez moi!" Never even in Napoleon's campaigns,
where each man had as incentive a name and fortune to carve, was there
such a race of soldiers as these same aristocrats.

First and foremost, let us mention Armand Louis de Gontaut, duc de
Lauzun, the duc de Biron of the Vendée. He was the gayest gallant of
the time, and whether with the Polish princess Czartoriski, the
beautiful Lady Sarah Bunbury--George III.'s admiration as he saw her
making hay at Holland House--Mesdames de Stainville and de Coig and the
rollicking actresses of the Comédie Française, or Mrs. Robinson (the
prince of Wales's "Perdita,"), seems to have had universal success. We
except the record that gives him the love of Marie Antoinette. To him
was entrusted in this expedition the legion that bore his name, with
Count Arthur Dillon as coadjutor. The maréchals-de-camp were the two
brothers Viosmenil, celebrated for their beauty, and the marquis de
Chastelleux, a member of the Institute and possessed of some literary
merit. He had written a piece called _La Félicité publique_, which drew
from the wits of the day the following epigram:

  À Chastelleux la place académique:
  Qu' a-t-il donc fait? Un livre bien conçu.
  Vous l'appelez _La Félicité publique_;
  Le public fut heureux, car il n'en a rien su.

He printed twenty-four impressions of his travels in America by the aid
of a printing-press on the squadron, the first record of a book having
been published privately in the colonies. The aides of De Rochambeau
were the handsome Swede Count de Fersen, the marquis de Vauban, Charles
de Lamette (who fought a famous duel in the Bois de Boulogne with the
duc de Castries), De Dumas and De Laubedières: De Tarli was intendant.
The list of officers comprised such historic names as those of the
marquis de Laval-Montmorenci, the duc de Deux-Ponts (colonel of the
regiment raised in Alsace that bore his name), his two brothers,
Vicomte de Chartres, De Custine, D'Olonne, De Montesquieu and the
vicomte de Noailles. The last named had, as ambassador to England, the
task entrusted to him of bearing to Lord Weymouth the news of the
French alliance with America.

The fleet which appeared off Newport on the 11th of July, 1780,
comprised seven ships of the line--the Duc de Bourgogne, Neptune,
Conquérant, Provence, Eveillé, Jason and Ardent--the frigates
Surveillante, Amazone and Gentille, the corvette Fantasque (which was a
hospital-ship) and the cutter La Guêpe. There were thirty-two
transports with the expeditionary corps of five thousand men. Admiral
de Ternay, wisely profiting by D'Estaing's experience, lost no time in
reaching his destination. He was welcomed by the sight of the French
flag planted both on Point Judith and Newport Point, this being the
signal agreed on with La Fayette that all was well. Only a few days
later he would have been intercepted by an English squadron, Admiral
Graves having sailed from Portsmouth early in the season, intending to
prevent the French reaching Newport, but his plans were deranged by the
bad weather. The squadron entered the beautiful harbor of Newport with
flying flags and pennons bright with the golden fleur-de-lys of France.

From the earliest days of the colony Newport had taken a prominent
place in its history. Its natural advantages had early singled it out
for both commercial and social distinction. One of the first governors,
Coddington, was its original settler. An openly-avowed freedom from
prejudice was among the first declared principles of Rhode Island.
Quakers and Jews were gladly received, and while the former brought
with them the temperance and moderation peculiar to their tenets, the
latter grafted on Newport commerce the spirit of enterprise which made
the town celebrated in colonial annals for its prosperity and
importance. The Jewish merchants were men of good origin, fine presence
and character. They were many of them of high birth in Spain and
Portugal, and they have bequeathed to posterity a record of stately
hospitality and unblemished integrity. The names of Lopez, Riviera,
Seixas and Touro are honored and respected still in their former home,
and the fine arch that towers over the gay promenade of to-day gives
entrance to their last resting-place, so solemn and so majestic a home
of the dead that it drew from the Nestor of American poets a stirring
apostrophe to the manes of the dead sons of Israel. The fine harbor and
bay of Newport soon attracted commerce from all nations, which heaped
its wharves with riches and made princes and magnates of its
merchants--a position they seemed born to sustain. The Overings,
Bannisters, Malbones and Redwoods kept open house and exercised lavish
hospitality--witness, as told by the Newport _Herald_ of June 7, 1766,
the story of Colonel Godfrey Malbone's feast on the lawn of his burning
mansion, so fine an edifice that its cost had been a hundred thousand
dollars in 1744; but the house taking fire at the time he had invited
guests to dinner, he thus feasted rather than disappoint them, and all
through the long summer night they held high revel and pledged each
other in jovial toasts while the flames of the burning building
illumined these Sardanapalian orgies. Year after year added to the
importance of this city by the sea: year after year the Indies poured
into its warehouses the riches with which Newport, out of its
abundance, dowered New York, Boston and Hartford and ornamented and
enriched the stately homes of its merchants. There is, however, one
blot on its scutcheon--one which darkens the picture of this prosperity
and the means that helped make it--and that is the slave-trade. Yes,
the town which was to give birth to William Ellery Channing was one of
the first to become interested in this baleful traffic. It is true it
was denounced by the Legislature, which as early as 1652 made it penal
to hold slaves, yet statistics show that between 1730 and 1752 the
return cargoes of all ships from the West Indies consisted of them. The
slave-trade of Newport bore fruit in other evils. At this time there
were no less than forty distilleries at work, and this rum, exported to
Africa, bought and brought home the human freight. However, in 1774 the
importation was prohibited, and all male children born after 1784 were
declared to be free.

Nowhere was there a more courtly and elegant society than in Newport.
The rules of etiquette were rigorously adhered to, and there was no
jesting on so sacred a topic as the honor and respect due to those whom
the good rector of Trinity was wont to allude to as moving in higher
spheres. De Ségur a year or two later says of it: "Other parts of
America were only beautiful by anticipation, but Rhode Island was
complete. Newport, well and regularly built, contained a numerous
population, whose happiness was indicated by its prosperity. It offered
delightful circles composed of enlightened men and modest and handsome
women, whose talents heightened their personal attractions." To-day,
Newport is the rendezvous of the best society of the land. Handsome
women and clever men meet and greet there, but can the society be more
distinguished than, from this description, it must have been a century
ago? We wonder if the stately dames who in the eighteenth century held
court here would quite approve of the _laissez-aller_ of modern
intercourse. The youth of to-day, whose highest praise for his fair
partner of the cotillon is often that she is "an awfully good fellow,"
has little kinship with his ancestor, who used to wait at the
street-corner to see the object of his devotion go by under the convoy
of her father and mother and a couple of faithful colored footmen,
thinking himself happy meanwhile if his divinity gave him a shy glance.
The gay girl of the period, who scampers in her pony chaise down the
avenue from one engagement to the other, and whose most sacred
confidence is apt to be that she adores horses and loves "pottering
about the stable," is, with all her charms, quite different from the
blushing little beauty of 1780, who in powdered hair, quilted petticoat
and high, red-heeled shoes gave her lover a modest little glance at the
street-corner, thinking it a most delicious and unforeseen bit of
romance to have a lover at all. But other times other manners, and
nineteenth-century men and women are no doubt as charming in their way
as were our pretty ancestresses and their gallants of a century ago.

The prosperity of Newport received a check from the Revolution. The
English occupation resulted in a vandalism that destroyed the fine
mansions, turned public buildings, and even Trinity Church, into
barracks for the soldiers and stables for their horses, laid waste the
country, cut down the trees and obliterated the landmarks. Thus the
French found it, and they were welcomed as possible deliverers and
defenders from the English rule. Rochambeau and his staff reached
Newport in the frigate Hermione on the afternoon of the 11th of July,
and the next day the troops were landed, many of them being ill and all
in need of rest after the long voyage and cramped quarters. The forts
were put in possession of the French, who proceeded to remodel them
into a better condition to resist a siege. General Heath, hearing at
Providence the news of the arrival of the fleet, came down to Newport
to greet Rochambeau, whom he met on shore, going afterward on board the
Duc de Bourgogne to see the admiral, who in return saluted the town
with thirteen guns. On the evening of the 12th Rochambeau dined with
General Heath, a grand illumination of the town taking place afterward,
and each day saw some new festivity to welcome the guests who had made
the American cause their own. The army had been stationed across the
island guarding the town, the right toward the ships and the left upon
the sea, Rochambeau thus carefully covering the position of his vessels
by the batteries. Everything was _en fête_. The people were delighted
with the manners and courtly polish of the French. Robin says of the
discipline insisted on at Newport, "The officers employed politeness
and amenity, the common soldiers became mild, circumspect and
moderate." The French at Newport were no longer the frivolous race,
presumptuous, noisy, full of fatuity, they were reputed to be. They
lived quietly and retired, limiting their society to their hosts, to
whom every day they became dearer. These young nobles of birth and
fortune, to whom a sojourn at court must have given a taste for
dissipation and luxury, were the first to set an example of frugality
and simplicity of life. They showed themselves affable, popular, as if
they had never lived but with men who were on an equality. Every one
was won, even the Tories, and their departure saddened even more than
their arrival had alarmed. Rochambeau also alludes to the discipline of
the army, and says: "It was due to the zeal of the generals and
superior officers, and above all to the goodwill of the soldiers. It
contributed not a little to make the State of Rhode Island acquiesce in
the proposition I made it, to repair at our expense the mansions which
the English had mutilated, so that they might serve as barracks for the
soldiers if the inhabitants would lodge the officers. We spent twenty
thousand crowns in repairing the houses, and left in the place many
marks of the generosity of France toward its allies."

We have before us an old plan of Newport in 1777, and a list of the
officers' hosts. We find the general quartered at 302 New lane, corner
of Clark and Mary streets. Its proprietor, William Hunter, was
president of the Eastern Navy Board at Boston and an earnest upholder
of the rights of the colonies. The gallant and all-conquering Lauzun
was at the widow Deborah Hunter's, No. 264 Thames street. Mrs. Hunter
was the mother of two charming daughters, whom Lauzun eulogizes in his
journal. His praise has been often quoted, yet it is worth repeating,
as it shows this Lovelace in a new and pleasing light. He says: "Mrs.
Hunter is a widow of thirty-six who has two daughters, whom she has
well brought up. She conceived a friendship for me, and I was treated
like one of the family. I passed my time there. I was ill, and she took
care of me. I was not in love with the Misses Hunter, but had they been
my sisters I could not have been fonder of them." The two Viosmenils
and their aides were at Joseph Wanton's, in Thames street. The Wantons
had been governors of Rhode Island from 1732: Joseph Wanton was the
last governor under the Crown. He is described as wearing a large white
wig with three curls--one falling down his back and one forward over
each shoulder. De Chastelleux lodged with Captain Maudsly, at No. 91
Spring street; De Choisy at Jacob Riviera's in Water street; the
marquis de Laval and the vicomte de Noailles at Thomas Robinson's, in
Water street; the marquis de Custine, the commander of the regiment
Saintonge, at Joseph Durfey's, 312 Griffin street; Colonel Malbone
entertained Lieutenant-Colonel de Querenel at No. 83 Thames street;
while Colonel John Malbone was the host of the commandant Desandrouins,
the colonel of the engineers, at No. 28 of the same street; William
Coggeshall of No. 135 Thames street had the baron de Turpin and De
Plancher for guests; De Fersen and the marquis de Darnas were at the
house of Robert Stevens, and De Laubedières and Baron de Closen at that
of Henry Potter, both in New lane; Madame McKay, 115 Lewis street,
quartered De Lintz and Montesquieu; Joseph Antony, at 339 Spring
street, Dumas; and Edward Hazard, of 271 Lewis street, the two
D'Olonnes. Admiral de Ternay was much on his ship, but lodged at
Colonel Wanton's in Water street; his captains, De la Chaise and
Destouches, were at Abraham Redwood's, 78 Thames street.

On the 21st of July, Admirals Graves and Arbuthnot arrived off the
harbor with eleven vessels--one of ninety, six of seventy-four, three
of sixty-four, and one of fifty guns. The following day the number was
increased to nineteen, and from this time the French squadron was
effectually blockaded in Newport. Although doubt seems to have been
felt by some as to the good intentions of the French army, the general
feeling on their arrival was one of joy. On Sunday, the 15th, the
intelligence became known in Philadelphia, where Congress was then
sitting. Washington ordered the soldiers to wear a black-and-white
cockade as a symbol of the alliance, the American cockade being black
and the French white, but seems withal to have felt nervous and
impatient for some decisive action. He sent La Fayette to Newport to
urge Rochambeau to make an attack on New York, but the latter replied
that he expected from the admiral de Guichen, who commanded the West
India squadron, five ships of war, and declined to take any steps until
his army was in better condition. La Fayette, who was young and full of
ardor, was hardly pleased with Rochambeau's caution, but apologized for
his impetuosity on the ground of disliking to see the French troops
shut up in Newport while there was so much to be done. To this
Rochambeau replied that he had an experience of forty years, and that
of fifteen thousand men who had been killed and wounded under his
orders he could not reproach himself with the loss of a single person
killed on his account. He desired, however, a personal interview with
Washington--a request which from some reason the commander-in-chief did
not seem anxious to grant. There was at times a coolness in the
relations between Rochambeau and Washington, arising perhaps from a
different estimate of La Fayette; but the cloud, if there was any, was
never very perceptible or of any long duration. On the 21st of August a
committee of the General Assembly of the State, at that time in session
at Newport, presented Rochambeau and De Ternay with a formal address of
welcome. De Rochambeau's reply was full of manliness and good-will. He
said, "The French troops are restrained by the strictest discipline,
and, acting under General Washington, will live with the Americans as
their brethren. I assure the General Assembly that as brethren not only
my life, but the lives of the troops under my command, are entirely
devoted to their service." This frank avowal dissipated a fear felt by
some that the French might have some ulterior motive in coming to the
assistance of the colonies.

It is not to be supposed that the belles of Newport were indifferent to
the advent of these fascinating French paladins, or that the gallant
Gauls were unmoved by the beauty and grace of the Newport women. With
one accord they joined in admiration of their fair hostesses, not only
for their charms of face and figure, but for the purity and innocence
of their characters, which made a deep impression on these Sybarites,
accustomed as they were to the atmosphere of intrigue and vice peculiar
to the French court of the day. We find the record of this enthusiasm
in the letters and journals of the officers, but for a picture of the
special belles of the time there is none more correct than that
furnished by the prince de Broglie and the comte de Ségur, who visited
Newport the following year. They note particularly Miss Champlin, the
daughter of a rich merchant who lived at No. 119 Thames street. Mr.
Champlin had large shipping interests, which he managed with great
enterprise. At his house De Broglie was introduced by De Vauban, who as
aide to De Rochambeau had met all the Newport notables, and the prince
writes: "Mr. Champlin was known for his wealth, but more for the lovely
face of his daughter. She was not in the room when we entered, but
appeared a moment after. She had beautiful eyes, an agreeable mouth, a
lovely face, a fine figure, a pretty foot, and the general effect was
attractive. She added to these advantages that of being charmingly
_coiffée_ in the Paris style, besides which she spoke and understood
our language." Of the Hunters, Lauzun's hostesses, De Broglie says:
"The elder, without being regularly handsome, had a noble appearance
and an aristocratic air. She was graceful, intellectual and refined.
Her toilette was as finished as Miss Champlin's, but she was not as
fresh, in spite of what De Fersen said. The younger, Nancy Hunter, is
not so modish, but a perfect rosebud. Her character is gay: she is
always laughing, and has beautiful teeth--a thing not common in
America." But Vauban, who on this occasion acted as master of
ceremonies, promised the prince a greater treat for the morrow, and
took him on that day to a house on the corner of Touro street and the
Park, where they found a serious and silent old gentleman, who received
them without compliment or raising his hat and answered their questions
in monosyllables. The lively Frenchmen would have made a short visit
had not the door opened and a young girl entered; and here De Broglie's
own raptures must speak: "It was Minerva herself who had exchanged her
warlike vestments for the charms of a simple shepherdess. She was the
daughter of a Shaking Quaker. Her headdress was a simple cap of fine
muslin plaited and passed round her head, which gave Polly the effect
of the Holy Virgin." Yes, this was Polly Lawton (or Leighton), the very
pearl of Newport beauties, of whom the prince says in continuation:
"She enchanted us all, and, though evidently a little conscious of it,
was not at all sorry to please those whom she graciously called her
friends. I confess that this seductive Lawton appeared to me a
_chef-d'oeuvre_ of Nature, and in recalling her image I am tempted to
write a book against the finery, the factitious graces and the coquetry
of many ladies whom the world admires." Ségur says: "She was a nymph
rather than a woman, and had the most graceful figure and beautiful
form possible. Her eyes appeared to reflect as in a mirror the meekness
and purity of her mind and the goodness of her heart." Polly chides the
count, according to the rules of her faith, for coming in obedience to
the king, against the command of God, to make war. "What could I reply
to such an angel?" says the entranced Frenchman, "for she seemed to me
a celestial being. Certainly, had I not been married and happy in my
own country I should, while coming to defend the liberty of the
Americans, have lost my own at the feet of Polly Lawton." We fear the
comtesse de Ségur would hardly have relished her lord's raptures over
the pretty Quakeress, and would have quite approved of Rochambeau's
order which sent him back to his post.

Among this bevy of Continental beauties, to whom we may add the names
of the lovely Miss Redwood--to whose charms sailors in the street would
doff their hats, holding them low till she had passed--the two Miss
Ellerys, Miss Sylven, Miss Brinley, Miss Robinson and others, it is not
wonderful that the French officers bore patiently the enforced
blockade. They indulged in constant festivities, to which they invited
their fair enslavers. A deputation of Indians, numbering nineteen and
consisting of members of the Tuscarora, Caghnawgas and Oneida tribes,
visited the camp on the 2d of August. They were cordially received by
Rochambeau, who gave them a dinner at which they were reported to have
behaved well. After dining with General Heath they performed their
war-dance, which was a novel and interesting sight to the French
officers. As a return for this entertainment the French army gave a
grand review, preceded by firing of cannon. The sight must have been a
fine one. The regiments were among the flower of European chivalry,
some of them of historical celebrity, such as the regiment of Auvergne,
whose motto was "_Sans tache_" and one of whose captains, the famous
D'Assas, is said to have saved a whole brigade at the expense of his
life, crying, as he saw the enemy approaching on his unsuspecting
comrades, "À moi Auvergne! voilà les ennemis!" and fell dead. The
uniforms of the troops were most effective. The officers wore white
cockades and the colors of their regiments faced with white cloth. The
Bourbonnais regiment was in black and red, Saintonge in white and
green, Deux-Ponts in white; the Soissonnais wore pink facings and
grenadier caps with pink and white plumes, while the artillery were in
blue with red facings. The savages were delighted with the pageant, but
in spite of its splendor expressed more astonishment at seeing trees
loaded with fruit hanging over tents which the soldiers had occupied
for months than at anything else. They took their departure in
September, being presented with blankets and other gifts by Rochambeau.

Perhaps the finest display was that which celebrated the French king's
birthday on Friday, the 25th of August. The ships were decorated with
the flags of all nations during the day and brilliantly illuminated at
night. High mass was celebrated on the flag-ship, after which a number
of salutes were fired. The town joined in the festivity. The bells of
Trinity were rung and the inhabitants decorated their houses with
flags. The autumn was spent in agreeable pastimes, but with the
approach of winter it became necessary to put the army into comfortable
quarters. The houses which Rochambeau had offered to repair were ready,
and the regiments were installed in them; the State-House, which had
been used as a hospital by the English, was put to the same use by the
French; and an upper room in it was fitted up as a chapel, where masses
were said for the sick and dying by the ábbe de Glesnon, the chaplain
of the expedition. The list of the dead was soon to include no less a
person than Admiral de Ternay. He was taken ill of a fever early in
December, and brought on shore to the Hunter house, where he died on
the 15th, being buried with great pomp in Trinity churchyard on the
following day. The coffin was carried through the streets by sailors:
nine priests followed, chanting a requiem for the departed hero. The
tomb placed over the remains by order of Louis XVI. in 1785 having
become injured by the ravages of time, the United States government in
1873, with the co-operation of the marquis de Noailles, then French
minister, had it moved into the vestibule of the church, placing a
granite slab over the tomb. One of Rochambeau's aides ascribes the
admiral's death to chagrin at having let five English ships escape him
in an encounter.

The winter passed slowly. Rochambeau ordered a large hall to be built
as a place of meeting for his officers, but it was not completed until
nearly spring. Meanwhile, the Frenchmen gave occasionally a handsome
ball to the American ladies, such as that of which, in January, the
officers of the regiment De Deux-Ponts were the hosts, and one given by
the handsome Viosmenils on the anniversary of the signing of the treaty
of alliance, February 6, 1781. But the crowning festivity of the French
stay in Newport took place in March, when Washington visited it for the
purpose of witnessing the departure of an expedition comprising part of
the French fleet under Destouches, which was to co-operate with La
Fayette on the Chesapeake. The barge of the French admiral was sent for
the American chief, and he crossed the bay from the Connecticut shore,
landing at Barney's Ferry on the corner of Long Wharf and Washington
street. The sight must have been an imposing one--the beautiful harbor
of Newport full of stately ships of war and gay pleasure-craft, the
French troops drawn up in a close line, three deep, on either side from
the ferry-house up Long Wharf and Washington street to Clarke street,
where it turned at a right angle and continued to Rochambeau's
head-quarters, while the inhabitants, wild with enthusiasm, crowded the
wharves and quays to see the two commanders meet. Both were men of fine
and stately presence: Washington was in the full prime of his imposing
manhood, the very picture of a nation's chief; the French marshal was
covered with brilliant decorations, and stood with doffed hat to
welcome the hero of Valley Forge. In the evening the town was
brilliantly illuminated, and, as at that time many of the people were
very poor, the town council ordered that candles should be distributed
to all who were not well off enough to buy them, so that every house
might have lights in its windows. The procession on this occasion was
led by thirty boys bearing candles fixed on staffs: Washington and De
Rochambeau followed, and behind them came a concourse of citizens. The
night was clear and there was not a breath to fan the torches. The
brilliant cortége marched through the principal streets, and then
returned to the Vernon house, corner of Clarke and Mary streets, where
Washington and Rochambeau were quartered. Washington waited on the
door-step until all the officers and his friends had entered the house,
and then turning to the boys who had acted as torch-bearers thanked
them for their services. It may be believed that these young patriots
felt well repaid. The French officers were much impressed with the
looks and bearing of the American chief. De Fersen, writing to his
father, says: "His fine and majestic countenance, at the same time
honest and sweet, answers perfectly to his moral qualities. He has the
air of a hero. He is very reserved and speaks little, but is polite and
frank. There is an air of sadness about him which is not unbecoming,
but renders him more interesting." A few evenings after the French gave
a grand ball to Washington, which he opened with the beautiful Miss
Champlin, at whose house he had taken tea on that evening. The gallant
Frenchmen seized the instruments from the band and themselves played
the music of the minuet "A Successful Campaign" for a couple
representing so much beauty and valor. The entertainment was given in
Mrs. Cowley's assembly-rooms in Church street, and Desoteux,
aide-de-camp to Baron Viosmenil, had charge of the decorations. An
eye-witness says of the ball: "The room was ornamented in an exceeding
splendid manner, and the judicious arrangement of the various
decorations exhibited a sight beautiful beyond expression, and showed
the great taste and delicacy of M. de Zoteux, one of Viosmenil's aides.
A superb collation was served, and the ceremonies of the evening were
conducted with so much propriety and elegance that they gave the
highest satisfaction."

Perhaps it would be interesting to the participants of the gay Newport
cotillons of to-day to know the names of the dances with which the
company regaled themselves a hundred years ago. They were "The Stony
Point" (so named in honor of General Wayne), "Miss McDonald's Reel," "A
Trip to Carlisle," "Freemason's Jig" and "The Faithful Shepherd." As
Benoni Peckham, the fashionable hair-dresser of the day, advertises in
the Newport _Mercury_ a "large assortment of braids, commodes, cushions
and curls for the occasion," we may guess that the belles of Newport
made elaborate toilettes. One of them, writing to a friend in New York,
speaks of a dress she had worn at some festivity which probably was not
unlike many at Washington's ball. "I had," she says, "a most stiff and
lustrous petticoat of daffodil-colored lutestring, with flowered gown
and sleeves lined with crimson. My cap was of gauze raised high in
front, with doublings of red and bows of the same, and was sent me
direct by the bark Fortune from England." So it seems the Newport
beauties did not disdain the exports of the mother-country they were at
war with. A few nights later the citizens gave a ball in honor of the
two heroes.

The visit of the French to Newport terminated soon after this fête.
Washington and Rochambeau, it is said, planned in the Vernon house an
attack on New York, and in May the vicomte de Rochambeau brought to his
father from France the news of the sailing from Brest, under Admiral de
Grasse, of a large squadron laden with supplies and reinforcements. The
restrictions imposed on him by De Sartines were removed, and the new
ministry sent him full powers to act. He therefore determined upon an
immediate move, for his troops were becoming demoralized through long
inactivity. After a conference with Washington at Weathersfield a
summer campaign was resolved upon, and, returning to Newport,
Rochambeau proceeded to make arrangements for it. The troops began to
move on the 10th of June, almost a year from the date of their arrival.
A farewell dinner was given on the Due de Bourgogne to which about
sixty Newport people were asked. The next day the whole army left camp
and marched to Providence, so ending a sojourn which, although not
productive of positive advantage, will long remain a brilliant page in
the history of Newport.

A few words on the after fate of these gay Frenchmen. The story is not
a bright one. The times that tried men's souls were at hand, and many
of them fell victims. The comte de Rochambeau, made a marshal by Louis
XVI., narrowly escaped death under Robespierre. In 1803 Napoleon gave
him a pension and the grand cross of the Legion of Honor: he died in
1807. Lauzun perished on the scaffold, sentenced by the Tribunal in
January, 1794. The night before his death he was calm, slept and ate
well. When the jailer came for him he was eating his breakfast. He
said, "Citizen, permit me to finish." Then, offering him a glass, he
said, "Take this wine: you need strength for such a trade as you ply."
D'Estaing, on his return from America, was commander at Grenada. He
became a member of the Assembly of Notables, but being suspected by the
Terrorists was guillotined on the 29th of April, 1793. The vicomte de
Rochambeau was killed at the battle of Leipsic; Berthier became
military confidant to Napoleon, was made marshal of France and murdered
at Bamberg; the comte de Viosmenil was made marshal at the Restoration;
his brother the marquis was wounded and died, defending the royal
family; the comte de Darnas, who helped their flight, barely escaped
with his life; Fersen was killed in a riot at Stockholm; the comte
Christian de Deux-Ponts was captured by Nelson while on a
boat-excursion at Porto Cavallo: Nelson generously released him on
learning who he was; Desoteux, the master of ceremonies of the Newport
assembly, became the celebrated Chouan chief in Vendée; Dumas was
president of the Assembly, general of division, fought at Waterloo and
took a high rank in the constitutional monarchy of 1830. With what
interest and sympathy must the Newport belles have watched the career
of their quondam admirers! How must the tragic fate of some of them
have saddened friendly hearts beyond the ocean they had once traversed
as deliverers! The lot of the fair danseuses of the French balls at
Newport was in most cases the ordinary one, and yet the record of their
loves and their graces leaves a gracious fragrance amid their former
haunts in the city by the sea. In the old streets and peeping from the
quaint latticed windows we can with a little imagination see their
graceful figures and fair faces, or find in the Newport drawing-rooms
their pictured likenesses on the wall or in the persons of their
descendants, often no less piquante and attractive than the dames of
1780. Miss Champlin married, and until lately her grandson was living
in the old house, the home of five successive generations; her brother,
Christopher Champlin, married the beautiful Miss Redwood; one of the
Miss Ellerys took for a husband William Channing and became the mother
of a famous son; her granddaughter was the wife of Washington Allston;
the Miss Hunters married abroad--one the comte de Cardignan, the other
Mr. Falconet, a Naples banker.

We pass over the sad fate of Newport for years following the
Revolution--the misery and dilapidation that succeeded its former
prosperity. We turn from the picture which a later French traveller,
Brissot de Warville, draws of its poverty and desolation in 1788 to
look at the renaissance, the rejuvenation that rescued this historic
spot from oblivion. To-day lines of villas and stately mansions have
uplifted themselves on the avenues, and gay crowds throng the streets.
The shadowy forms of a past generation may still haunt the scenes of
their former triumphs, but must rejoice over the life and light that
nineteenth-century revels have dowered them with. The world rolls on,
and brings in its course new actors, new scenes, a new drop-curtain,
but men and women are always men and women. The loves, hopes, fears,
disappointments or triumphs of to-day,--these, if nothing else, link us
to a past generation. The idler on the club piazza, if not a Lauzun or
Fersen, may no doubt arouse himself as nobly in a grand question of
right or wrong (have we not seen it in our own generation?), unsheathe
his sword and become, like Lytton's hero, "now heard of, the first on
the wall:" the pretty belle of the afternoon fête, may she not have the
same heart of steel and a spirit as true as that of some
eighteenth-century ancestress? There is room, then, even in this
historic spot, for the gay modern cortêge, for the life, the light, the
prosperity and pleasure which embalm old memories and keep a centennial
on the shrines where the youth and chivalry of a century ago lived,
loved and have left the subtle odor of past adventure to add a
mysterious but not unlovely fragrance to present experience.--FRANCES
PIERREPONT NORTH.




STUDIES IN THE SLUMS



V.--DIET AND ITS DOINGS.


Later and more scientific investigations have tended to confirm the
truth of the rather broad statement made by Buckle in his _History of
Civilization_, that rice and potatoes have done more to establish
pauperism than any and all causes besides. A food easily procured,
sufficiently palatable to ensure no dissatisfaction, and demanding no
ingenuity of preparation, would seem the ideal diet, the promised rest
for weary housekeepers and anxious political economists; but the latter
class at least have found their work made double and treble by the
results of such diet, while social reformers--above all, the advocates
of total abstinence--are discovering that till varied and savory food
and drink are provided the mass of the people will and must crave the
stimulant given by alcoholic drinks.

National dietaries and their results on character and life, fascinating
as the investigation is, have no place in the present paper, the design
of which is simply to show the existing state of the food-question
among the poor. Of these, poor Irish form far the larger proportion, a
German or French pauper being almost an anomaly. Thrift seems the
birthright of both the French and German peasant, as well as of the
middle class, and their careful habits, joined to the better rate of
wages in America, soon make them prosperous and well-to-do citizens. It
is in the tenement-houses that we must seek for the mass of the poor,
and it is in the tenement-houses that we find the causes which,
combined, are making of the generation now coming up a terror in the
present and a promise of future evil beyond man's power to reckon. They
are a class apart, retaining all the most brutal characteristics of the
Irish peasant at home, but without the redeeming light-heartedness, the
tender impulses and strong affections of that most perplexing people.
Sullen, malicious, conscienceless, with no capacity for enjoyment save
in drink and the lowest forms of debauchery, they are filling our
prisons and reformatories, marching in an ever-increasing army through
the quiet country, and making a reign of terror wherever their
footsteps are heard. With a little added intelligence they become
Socialists, doing their heartiest to ruin the institutions by which
they live. The Socialistic leader knows well with what he deals, and
can sound every chord of jealousy and suspicion and revenge lying open
to his touch. On the rich lies the whole responsibility of want and
disease and crime. Equalize property, and these three dark shadows flee
fast before the sunshine of prosperity. Character, intelligence, common
decencies and common virtues have nothing to do with present
conditions, and the ardent leveller of class-distinctions counts as his
enemy any one who seeks to give the poor a truer knowledge of how far
their earnings may be made to go toward securing better food or less
pestilent homes.

Yet foul air and overcrowding would be less fatal in their results were
food understood. The well-filled stomach gives strange powers of
resistance to the body, and nothing shows this more strongly than the
myriad cases of children and infants who are taken from the
tenement-houses to the sanitariums at Bath or Rockaway. A week or two
of pure air and plenty of milk gives a look almost of health to
children who have been brought there often with glazed eyes and
pinched, ghastly little faces. Air has meant half, but many mothers
have been persuaded to give milk or oatmeal porridge instead of weak
tea and bread poisoned with alum, and have found the child's strength
become a permanent and not temporary fact.

That these children are alive at all, that fatherhood and motherhood
are allowed to be the right of drunkards and criminals of every grade,
is a problem whose present solution passes any human power, but which
all lovers of their kind must sooner or later face. In the mean time
the children are with us, born to inheritances that tax every power
good men and women can bring to bear. Hopeless as the outlook often
seems, salvation for the future of the masses lies in these children.
Not in a teaching which gives them merely the power to grasp at the
mass of sensational reading, which fixes every wretched tendency and
blights every seed of good, but in a practical training which shall
give the boys trades and force their restless hands and mischievous
minds to occupations that may ensure an honest living, while the girls
find work from which, with few fortunate exceptions, they are still
debarred.

The American distaste for domestic service seems to be shared in even
greater degree by the children of foreigners born in this country and
to a certain extent Americanized. The mothers have usually been
servants, and still "go out to days' work," but, no matter how numerous
the family, such life for any daughter is despised and discouraged from
the beginning. Work in a bag-factory or any one of the thousand, but to
the employés profitless, industries of a great city is eagerly sought,
and hardships cheerfully endured which if enforced by a mistress would
lead to a riot. To be a shop-girl seems the highest ambition. To have
dress and hair and expression a frowsy and pitiful copy of the latest
Fifth Avenue ridiculousness, to flirt with shop-boys as feeble-minded
and brainless as themselves, and to marry as quickly as possible, are
the aims of all. Then come more wretched, thriftless, ill-managed
homes, and their natural results in drunken husbands and vicious
children; and so the round goes on, the circle widening year by year
till its circumference touches every class in society, and would make
our great cities almost what sober country-folk believe them--"seas of
iniquity."

Happily, to know an evil is to have taken the first step in its
eradication. The work only recently begun--the past five years having
seen its growth from a very humble and insignificant beginning to its
present promising proportions--holds the solution of at least one
equation of the problem. To have made cooking and industrial training
the fashion is to have cleared away at a leap the thorny underbrush and
tangled growth on that Debatable Ground, the best education for the
poor, and to find one's feet firmly set in a way leading to a Promised
Land to which every believer in the new system is an accredited guide.
That cooking-schools and the knowledge of cheap and savory preparation
of food must soon have their effect on the percentage of drunkards no
one can question; but with them, save indirectly, this present paper
does not deal, its object being rather to show what "daily bread" means
to the lower classes of New York, the same showing applying with almost
equal force to the working poor of any large town throughout the
country. Knowledge of this sort must come from patient waiting and
watching as one can, rather than from any systematized observation. The
poor resent bitterly, and with justice, any apparent interference or
spying, and only as one comes to know them well can anything but the
most outside details of life be obtained. In the matter of food there
is an especial touchiness and testiness, every woman being convinced
that to cook well is the birthright of all women. I have found the same
conviction as solidly implanted in far higher grades of society, and it
may be classed as one of the most firmly-seated of popular delusions
that every woman keeps house as instinctively and surely when her time
comes as a duck takes to water.

Such was the faith of Norah Boylan, tenant of half the third floor in a
tenement-house whose location need not be given a "model
tenement-house," six stories high and swarming from basement to attic,
forty children making it hideous with the screaming and wrangling of
incessant fights, while in and over all rested the penetrating,
sickening "tenement-house smell," not to be drowned by steam of washing
or scent of food. Norah's tongue was ready with the complaint all
tongues made in 1878--hard times; and she faced me now with hands on
her hips and a generally belligerent expression: "An' shure, ma'am, you
know yourself it's only a dollar a day he's been earnin' this many a
day, an' thankful enough to get that, wid Mike overhead wearin' his
tongue out wid askin' for work here an' there an' everywhere. An'
how'll we live on that, an' the rint due reg'lar, an' the agent poppin'
in his ugly face an' off wid the bit o' money, no matter how bare the
dish is? Bad cess to him! but I'd like to have him hungered once an'
know how it feels. If I hadn't the washin' we'd be on the street this
day."

"What do you live on, Norah?"

"Is it 'live'? Thin I could hardly say. It's mate an' petatys an' tea,
an' Pat will have his glass. He's sober enough--not like Mike, that's
off on his sprees every month; but now we don't be gettin' the same as
we used. Pat says there's that cravin' in him that only the whiskey 'll
stop. It's tin dollars a month for the rooms, an' that's two an' a half
a week steady; an' there's only seven an' a half left for the five
mouths that must be fed, an' the fire an' all, for I can't get more'n
the four dollars for me washin'. It's the mate you must have to put
strength in ye, an' Pat would be havin' it three times a day, an' now
it's but once he can; an' that's why he's after the whiskey. The
children an' meself has tay, an' it's all that keeps us up."

"How do you cook your meat, Norah?"

Norah looked at me suspiciously: "Shure, the bit we get don't take
long. I puts it in the pan an' lets it fry till we're ready. Poor folks
can't have much roastin' nor fine doin's. An' by that token it's time
it was on now, if you won't mind, ma'am. The children 'll be in from
school, an' they must eat an' get back."

"I am going in a few moments, Norah. Go right on."

Norah moved aside her boiler, drew a frying-pan from her closet, put in
a lump of fat and laid in a piece of coarse beef some two pounds in
weight. A loaf of bread came next, and was cut up, the peculiar white
indicating plainly what share alum had had in making the lightness to
which she called my attention. A handful of tea went into the tall tin
teapot, which was filled from the kettle at the back of the stove.

"That isn't boiling water, is it?" I ventured.

"It'll boil fast enough," Norah answered indifferently as she pulled
open the draughts, and soon had the top of the stove red hot. The steak
lay in its bed of fat, scorching peacefully, while the tea boiled,
giving off a rank and herby smell.

"Pat doesn't get home to dinner, then, Norah?"

"There's times he does, but mostly not. They'd like a hot bite an' sup,
but it's too far off. There's five goes from here together, an' a
pailful for each--bread an' coffee mostly, an' a bit o' bacon for some.
It's a hot supper I used to be gettin' him, but the times is too hard,
an' we're lucky if we can have our tea an' bread, an' molasses maybe
for the children. Many's the day I wish myself back in old Ireland."

As she talked the children came rushing up the stairs, Norah the
second, pale-faced and slender, leading the way; and I took my leave,
burning to speak, yet knowing it useless. Fried boot-heel would have
been as nourishing and as tooth-some as that steak, and boiled
boot-heel as desirable and far less harmful a drink, yet any word of
suggestion would have roused the quick Irish temper to fever-heat.

"It's Norah can cook equal to myself," Norah had said with pride as she
emptied the black and smoking mass into a dish; and these methods
certainly cannot be said to be difficult to follow.

There is no conservatism like the conservatism of ignorance, yet in
this case want of knowledge there certainly was not. Norah had lived
for two years before her marriage with a family the mistress of which
had taught her patiently and indefatigably till she became able to set
a fairly-cooked meal upon the table, but the knowledge acquired then
seemed to have been laid aside as having no connection with her own
life. I have seen the same thing--though, happily, only in exceptional
cases--among educated Indians, girls who had spent years in the schools
at Faribault or under the direct training of missionaries reverting on
marriage to old wigwam habits, and content to eat the parched corn and
boiled dog of their early experience. The same law holds in full force
among many of the Irish, who, no matter how well trained or how
exacting in their demand for varied food while servants, quickly lose
the desire, and allow only a certain fixed order from which it is
wellnigh impossible to move them.

In this case, tolerably well-to-do at first, hard times had brought
them to this swarming tenement-house, from the various rooms of which,
as I passed down the stairs, came the same odor of burning fat and the
rank steam of long-boiled coffee or tea. My errand had been to find the
address of a little shop-girl, a niece of Norah's, a child who had been
educated at one of the ward schools, and whom no power could induce to
take a place as waitress or chambermaid. To stand twelve or fourteen
hours behind the counter of a Grand street store met her ideas of
gentility and of personal freedom far better than yielding to the
requirements of a mistress; and the six dollars a week went in cheap
finery till the hard times forced her to make it part of the family
fund. Then sore trouble came. The father had died, the mother was in
hospital, from which she was never likely to come out, and Katy, thrown
utterly on her own resources, had found her six dollars all inadequate
to the demands her habits made, and, frightened and perplexed, went
from one cheap boarding-house to another, four or five girls clubbing
together to pay for the wretched room they called home, and still
striving to keep up the appearance necessary for their position. Cheap
jewelry, banged hair and a dress modelled after the latest extremity of
fashion were the ambition of each and all, but neither jewelry nor
puffs and ruffles had been sufficient to keep off the attack of
pneumonia through which these same girls had nursed her, sitting up
turn by turn at night, and taking her duty by day that the place might
still be kept open for her.

Katy's cheeks were flushed and an ominous cough still lingered, but she
spoke cheerfully: "It's my last day in: I can go to-morrow. It's the
beef-tea has done it, I do believe. Did you know Maria brought it to me
every day? I don't know what I'll do without it."

"Learn to make it yourself, Katy."

"Me?" and Katy laughed incredulously. "When would I get time? and what
would I make it on? We don't have a fire but Sundays, and only a show
of one then. And I don't want it, either: I ain't used to it."

"What do you live on, Katy?"

"Why, we did have breakfast and tea here--coffee and meat for
breakfast, and bread and butter and tea for supper. I get a cream-cake
or some drop-cakes for dinner, but for a good while I've just paid a
dollar a week for my share of the room, and bought something for
breakfast--'most always a pie. You can get a splendid pie for five
cents, and a pretty good one for three; and it's plenty too. That's the
way the girls in the bag-factory do. They don't get but three dollars a
week, and it takes seventy-five cents for their room, so they haven't
got anything for board. Mary Jones says she's settled on pie, because
it stays by better'n anything, and once in a while she goes down to
Fulton Market and has some coffee. I do too, but it spoils you for next
day. You keep thinking how'd you'd like a cup when the chills go
crawling all over you, but it's no use."

"Couldn't it be made in the store? The girls could club together, and
it would cost much less than your pies and candy. The gas is always
burning, and you could have a little water-boiler."

"You don't know much about stores to think that. Why, Mr. Levy watches
like a cat to see we don't eat peanuts or candy: we're fined if he
catches us. I've a good mind to take board at the 'Home,' only I should
hate to be bossed 'round, and you can't get in very often, either, it's
so crowded. But I don't mind so much now, for you see"--Katy's pale
cheeks grew pink--"Jim and I don't mean to wait long. He has ten
dollars a week, and we can manage on that. He says he's 'most poisoned
with the stuff his boarding-house keeper gives him, and he wants me to
keep house. I just laugh. That's a servant-girl's work: 'tain't mine."

The old story. I had seen "Jim," and knew him as rather a
sensible-looking young fellow for an East Side clerk in a cheap store.
What sort of future could lie before them? What help could come from
this untrained child, herself helpless and with too limited
intelligence to understand what demand the new life made upon her? and
could any way be found to open her eyes and make her desire better
knowledge?

Busy with this always fresh problem, I had come to a side street
leading to the market from which two or three small groceries draw
their supplies, and stopped for a moment to look at the flabby,
half-decayed vegetables, the coarse beef and measly-looking pork from
which comes the sickly, heavy smell preceding positive putrefaction.

"Look away! Get the sense of it all," said a brisk voice behind me--a
voice I knew well as that of one who gave days, and often nights, to
work in these very streets. "Did you see that tall woman with the big
basket and a face like a chimney-swallow? She runs a boarding-house
'round on Madison street, and this is the stuff she feeds them on. Poor
wretch! She has a drunken husband and three drinking sons. She means
well, would like to do better by her boarders, but there is rent and
gas and wear and tear of all sorts, and she buys bob veal and stale
fish and rotten vegetables and alum bread, trying to make the ends
meet. I've been there and tasted the messes that come to her table, and
I would drink too if forced to live on them. She's got sense, a
little--enough not to fly in a rage when I told her the food was enough
to make a drunkard of every man in the house. 'I can't help it,' she
said, crying. 'I've only just so much money, and the girl spoils most
of what I do get.'--'Cook yourself,' I said.--'I can't,' she answered:
'I don't know any better than the girl. I'll do anything you say.' I am
not a cook: I could not tell her anything. 'Go to cooking-school,' I
said: 'it'll pay you.'--'I've neither time nor money,' she said; and
there it ended. What's to be done? I've just come round the market. It
is dinner-time, and I think every other man was eating pie. The same
money might have bought him a bowl of strong soup or a plate of savory
and nourishing stew, if there had been anybody with sense enough to
provide it. Up and down, in and out, wherever I go, I see that cooks
are the missionaries needed. Come in here a moment."

I followed up the steps of a "Home" for sailors, planned to give them a
refuge from the traps known as "sailors' boarding-houses." The long
dining-room we entered was spotlessly clean, and some thirty men were
dining. I looked for a moment as my friend spoke with some one sitting
at the head of the table, then passed out.

"You saw," he said, "plenty of food, and all clean as a whistle, but
what sort? Steak fried to a crisp, soggy potatoes, underdone cabbage
and pork, bread rank with alum, and coffee whose only merit is warmth.
Those men are filled, but not fed. The bread alone is condensed
dyspepsia. In an hour the weaker stomachs will have what they call 'a
goneness.' They will crave something, and poor R---- will have half a
dozen of them half drunk or wholly so on his hands by night. He will
pray and exhort, and bundle them up to the Mission if he can, and cry
as he tells me how they will give way and yield to the devil whether or
no. And so it goes. Women must get hold of this thing. It's the first
item in your temperance crusade, and till the people have better food
there is no law or influence that can make them give up drinking. I
wouldn't if I were they."

Here the talk ended. My impetuous friend disappeared around a corner,
and I went my way, a little surer than before of the fact which was
already so distinct a belief it needed no new foundations, that better
food will and must mean better living. Hard times are passing, but none
the less is there still the imperative demand for wider knowledge of
what food those hard-earned dollars shall buy. Philanthropists may urge
what reforms they will--less crowding, purer air, better sanitary
regulations--but this question of food underlies all. The knowledge
that is broad enough to ensure good food is broad enough to mean better
living in all ways; and not till such knowledge is the property of all
women can we look for the "emancipation" from some of the deepest evils
that curse the life of woman in the slums and out. Toward that end all
women who long to help, yet see no outlook, may work, and with its full
recognition will come the day for which we wait--a day whose faint dawn
even now flushes the east and gives promise, dim yet sure, of the
slowly-nearing light, holding even when most clouded the certainty of

  Purer manners, nobler laws.
                                --HELEN CAMPBELL.




DELECTATIO PISCATORIA.

THE UPPER KENNEBEC.

  From the great mere set round with sunbright mountains
    Full born the river leaps,
  Dashing the crystal of a thousand fountains
    Down its romantic steeps.

  'Tis now a torrent whose untamed endeavor
    Is eager for the sea,
  Angry that rock or reef should hinder ever
    Its frantic liberty.

  Then, for a space, a lake and river blended,
    It sleeps with tranquil breast,
  As if its haste and rage at last were ended,
    And all it sought was rest.

  In spicy woodpaths by its rapids straying,
    I hear, with lingering feet,
  Its liquid organ and the treetops playing
    Te Deums strangely sweet.

  I break the covert: pictured far emerges
    On the enraptured sight
  The arrowy flow, green isles, a cascade's surges,
    Foam-flaked in rosy light,

  Still pools, and purples of the sleepy sedges,
    The skyward forest-wall,
  Old sorrowing pines and hazy mountain-ledges,
    And soft blue over all.

  O golden hours of summer's precious leisure!
    From care and toil apart
  Fresh drawn, I taste the angler's gentle pleasure
    With friend of equal heart.

  Trout leap and glitter, and the wild duck flutters
    Where beds of lilies blow:
  A loon his long, weird lamentation utters,
    And Echo feels his woe.

  We see in hemlock shade the reedy shallow,
    Where, screened by dusky leaves,
  The guileless moose comes down to browse and wallow
    On still balsamic eves.

  The great blue heron starts as if we sought her,
    On pinions of surprise,
  And to our lure the darlings of the water
    In pink and crimson rise.

  Still gliding on, how throng the sweet romances
    Of Youth's enchanted land!
  A lordly eagle, as our bark advances,
    Glares on us, sad and grand.

  Onward we float where mellow sunset glory
    Streams o'er the lakelet's breast,
  And every ripple tells a golden story
    Of the transfigured west.

  Onward, into the evening's calm and beauty,
    To camp and sleep we go:
  Thrice bless'd are lives, in tasks of love and duty,
    That end in such a glow!
                                 --HORATIO NELSON POWERS.




THE RUIN OF ME.



(TOLD BY A YOUNG MARRIED MAN.)


I am Poverty scuffing about in old shoes and rubbers. I _was_ one of
those who, at a good salary, think up smart things to put around in the
corners of the Chicago _Times_. When every newspaper, from the London
_Punch_ down, was making jokes about Elihu Burritt's _Sanskrit for the
Fireside_, it was I who beat them all by saying in solid nonpareil,
"The best way to learn Sanskrit is to board in a family of
Sanskritters." It was I who said, "Let the Communists carry pistols:
they may shoot each other;" and, "Sara Bernhardt's children are
articles of _virtu_."

_O quam me delectat_ Sara Bernhardt! I love such diversified, such
picturesque gifts. Sculpture, painting, acting, writing! This is why I
loved Lydia, who was an adept at numberless arts and accomplishments.
She was a brunette with a clear, cream-tinged skin, red cheeks, rolling
black eyes, ripe velvety lips, and hair of a beautiful hue and rich
lustre--raven black, yet purple as the pigeon's wing in the sun. I
believe it is true that dark people belong to the pre-historic races:
centuries of sunlight are fused in their glowing complexion. Blondes
are beautiful--both the rosy ones with pinkish eyelids and warm golden
locks, and the pale ones with ash-colored hair, gray eyes and dark
brows and lashes--but a florid brunette excels them all.

In seeing Lydia you would make the mistake that you usually make in
judging girls: entering among them, you think their attitudes proclaim
their traits. For instance, you take the most giggling one for a
simpleton, but afterward learn that she is a good scholar and has
accepted the Greek chair in a Western college, and looking again you
see she has a strong frame, a capable head and large bright eyes. Lydia
dressed in the mode, wore the high-heeled shoes that give such a dainty
look to the foot and gait, and came into a room with a great effusion
of fashionableness; yet she was not in the least what she seemed. She
had a great deal of what is more pleasing than mere appearance, and
that is character. She was ambitious and energetic. She did tatting
when she did nothing else--said it concealed her lack of repose and
liability to fidget. She was able to draw _la quintessence de tout_:
she could make a mountain-spring of a mole-hill. She also had a touch
of temper: those who are perfectly amiable are nothing else.

I was a youth blue-eyed and fair of face, tall, thin and having a
complying spirit that has been--But let me not anticipate. The race
after fashion ever wearied me--I shall stop early at some
standing-collar or heavy-neckcloth period--and I never cared much for
money--could live with it or without it, desiring "this man's art or
that man's scope" rather than his cash. There is such a great majority
of poor folks, I expected to be one of them; still, I had a taste for
honesty, asked favors of nobody, considered the least debt a
degradation, and thought myself better than most rich people. I was of
the family and the religion of Plato, who peddled oil to pay his
expenses while travelling in Egypt.

We discover in others what they most wish to hide: therefore I early
discovered that Lydia's mother, who had a large girl-family, and who
knew that the supply of some one to love greatly exceeds the demand,
was anxious to secure me as a son-in-law. I was glad of it, for, let
poets and novelists say what they will, the young fellow who marries
with the approval of friends drifts happily on, while the rash boy who
weds against the good sense of his elders is dragged bleeding along a
rough way. So I married Lydia, and began life in gladness and content.
I liked her family and they liked me. It puzzles me to see how the
English mother-in-law, who is a grum-voiced, dogmatic and belligerent
person with a jointure to bequeath, came to be engrafted on our
literature. The inoffensive delicacy of an American elderly woman
forbids her the rôle of her British sister. Our mother-in-law troubles
are mostly confined to our low foreign population. Neither have we a
character similar to the silly, spiteful, dried-up old maid of English
literature and its American imitations, our spinsters being generally
stout and jolly personages and rather over-fond of children. My
mother-in-law was very nice, and we were the best of friends.

Rich relations, as a general thing, are abominable: the mere possession
of one sometimes makes a person disagreeable. Show the person with a
rich cousin the most secluded cot among mountains, and, "Oh, you should
see my cousin's house on Michigan Avenue!" is the reply; or a beautiful
room speaking the noble quality of its occupant, and, "Call that nice?
You should see my cousin's house on Michigan Avenue!" is remarked. But
Lydia's rich relations, the Stenes of Chicago, appeared to be
exceptions. They were very clannish people, fond of their own kin to
the last degree. They came from Michigan, and were of the old colony
stock, regular Yankee-Doodle folks, the older ones and many of the
younger ones still using New England idioms and quaint phrases that
came long ago from the East--yes, from the holts of old England's
Suffolk perhaps. You could not persuade one of them to call jelly
anything but "jell" or a repast anything but a "meal of victuals," and
they said "dooty" and "roomor" and "noos" and "clawg," and sometimes
would pop out "his'n" and "her'n." Several of the Stenes had been in
business thirty years in metropolitan Chicago, yet they spoke in the
twang of a Yankee hill-country. The women of the family were famous
housekeepers--too neat to keep a cat lest there might be a cat hair on
the carpet, and never liking visitors unless there was a dreadful note
of preparation, and then they received grandly. To show Lydia their
good-will, they gave her profuse wedding-presents and a splendid
trousseau. On my side I bought a neat cottage, paying cash down--all
the money I had. It was one of a square of cottages principally
occupied by young married people having plenty of children, and a
joyous crew they were. Our street had a broad roadway and flagged
sidewalks edged with neat turf in which fine trees were growing, and
was lined with beautiful homes of varied architecture, suggesting
charming interiors. A row of tall, "high-stoop" New York houses with
dark stone trimmings stood next to a row of English basements of
tuck-pointed brick, and next to them was a range of houses of light,
cheerful Joliet stone, with awnings at the windows and carriage-steps
as clean as gravestones. Then came an old cottage fixed up nobby, then
a comfortable old wooden mansion, then a splendid dwelling in the style
of the fifteenth century, and after that the palace of a railway
grandee. Here and there on a corner stood a Gothic church. All day
well-dressed people trod our pavements and beautiful carriages rolled
by our windows. Our cottage was my ideal of perfection: it had few
rooms, but those spacious. We had no sitting-room. Let me see: what
does that word suggest to my mind? A table heaped with stale
newspapers, a stand piled with sewing, a darned carpet, scratched
furniture and fly-specked wall-paper.

Lydia's presents filled our house. All were Eastlake and in good taste,
the colors sage-green, pumpkin-yellow and ginger-brown, dashed with
splashes of peacock feathers and Japanese fans. The vases were
straddle-legged and pot-bellied Asiatic shapes. Dragons in bronze and
ivory, sticky-looking faïence and glittering majolica, stood in the
corners. Silk embroideries representing the stork--a scrawny bird with
a scalp-lock at the back of its neck, looking like a mosquito when
flying--and porcelain landscapes out of drawing, like a child's first
attempts, peopled by individuals with the expression of having their
hair pulled, hung 'twixt our dados and friezes. Lydia's young-lady
friends gave her their works in oil or water-colors done in a fine,
free-hand style that may one day form a school of its own. Our Chicago
girls are people of _nous_. Their talk is "fluent as the flight of a
swallow:" their manners are delightful--American manners must be
excellent, so many Englishmen marry American girls. Their playing makes
us glad the seven poor strings of the old musicians have been
multiplied to seven times seven: no Chicago girl is a musician unless
she has the masters at her finger-tips. And they are readers too. You
would suppose, judging from the papers, that our Chicagoans are
inordinately fond of reading about the indiscretions of rustic wives,
and are given to a perusal of the news in startling headlines: but such
is not the fact. We are great readers of the distinguished magazines
and of first-rate books, and our taste for art is keen. When we go
abroad we don't care so much for mountains and rivers--they are like
potatoes and pork to a man who is visiting: we have them at home--but
we _are_ after art. Ruskin says no people can be great in art unless it
lives among beautiful natural objects; which is hard on us Chicago
folks. If we had any mountainous or rocky tracts we should not live in
them. If we possessed a Mount Vesuvius we should use it for getting up
bogus eruptions to draw tourists to our hotels, and we should tap the
foot of the mountain to draw off the lava for our streets.

Lydia's finery had a subduing effect upon me, who had bounded my
aspirations to what was distinctly within my grasp--namely, things

  Plain, but not sordid--though not splendid, clean.

Lydia was an expert housekeeper. "I love a little house that I can
clean all over," said she. She would have liked a Roman villa made of
polished marble, that could be scrubbed from top to bottom, or a house
of the melted and dyed cobble-stones that some genius has promised to
give us. Her china-closet was a picture, with platters in rows and cups
hanging on little brass hooks under the shelves. Our whole house was
exquisite, and became quite renowned for its elegance and charm.
Lydia's exuberant vitality was attractive: her relations and friends
liked to come there. Some of our friends were of the high, haughty,
tone-y sort, which would have been well enough if we had not incurred
debts in our housekeeping.

  What and how great the merit and the art
  To live on little with a thankful heart!

Lydia's rich uncle, Nathan Stene, gave us a bookcase that caused my
heart to sink with an appalling premonition at its first appearance, it
was so huge and high. How we got it into our parlor without cutting off
the top and bottom words cannot explain. That bookcase was my first
step toward ruin. I had a good many books--not of scientific but of
delightful literature, the best works of the best authors--and my books
were as shabby as Charles Lamb's library. There never were such
dilapidated volumes as my De Quinceys. Lydia had _Young Mrs. Jardine_
and lots of other

  Stickjaw pudding that tires the chin,
  With the marmalade spread ever so thin;

and her books were new-looking. She said mine looked disgustingly dirty
in our new bookcase, so I had them rebound; and this was my next step
toward ruin. Lydia wanted a long peacock-feather duster to dust the top
of the bookcase. I bought that. Our only long tablecloth was a damask,
engarlanded and diapered and resplendent with a colored border
warranted to wash. I had to buy napkins to go with it. I bought a
butter-knife to match a solid silver butter-dish, and a set of
individual salt-spoons to match salt-cellars, and nut-picks and
crackers to match something else. Moreover, there was a magnificent
opera-glass that required to be matched with theatre-going--_not_ as I
was wont to go, in an old overcoat having its pockets stuffed with old
playbills. But why enumerate?

On the strength of her wedding-presents Lydia became a gladiatrix in
the arena of society. She already belonged to three clubs: she joined
four more--Private Theatrical, a History of Art, a Conversation and a
Suffrage Club. I myself belong to but one, the Cremation Club--am an
officer in that: I split kindlings. As the bordered tablecloth was
suitable for lunch-parties, Lydia entertained her friends at an hour
when I was about town looking up paragraphs, but I have no doubt she
carried it off bravely, and their discussions were as important as
those of a poultry convention on the question of feathers or no
feathers on chickens' legs.

At this time I found that great feasts make small comforts scarce.
Often, on coming home and finding Lydia out, I had Ionic hours alone,
when I refreshed myself with the great shouting, cheering and laughter
of the Greek armies and people that gladden our dull hearts even now,
and for want of anything better I regaled myself on the feasts offered
by Machaon (first Scotchman) in the _Iliad_, and by Nestor, on the
table with azure feet and in the goblet with four handles and four
feet, with gold turtles drinking at the brim from the handles. Or I
supped with Achilles while Patroclus turned the meat on the bed of
wide, glowing embers and the tent brightened in the blaze. Once, when I
was seeking something for that newspaper bore, Woman's Sphere, I
lunched with the Suffragists. Each character of the Suffrage Club was
as clear as a figure cut on a sapphire. The president, a matron of
sixty wearing waving gray hair and dressed in black, with plenty of
white lace under her chin, had the air of a woman used to command a
large family and accustomed to plenty of money and to good society. Her
voice was the agreeable barytone of her years, its thin tones entirely
gone, and her good English was like gentle music: nevertheless, an
occasional strong tone or gesture revealed her determined will. The
Suffragists were handsomely dressed, were self-possessed and
appreciative of each other's company, and were of all ages, one being a
plain young girl quietly looking on and enjoying the world more than a
self-wrapped belle is capable of doing.

But to my tale, which is to me more absorbing than _Rob Roy, Robinson
Crusoe_ and _Boots at the Swan_ combined. Of all our visitors I
preferred Uncle Nathan Stene. Not that I liked him personally. He was
the typical rich man: I should know he was rich wherever I met him.
There are thousands like him: they despise me utterly. Uncle Nathan had
a scorn for poor people. He disdained whole States that gave him a bad
market, and regarded young fellows who smoke and go to the theatre as
beggars' dogs. He was of middle height, with reddish complexion, sandy
hair and eyebrows, quick, sharp gray eyes, and features of a short,
clean, close aquiline cut, with thin, dry lips--a man of iron, pig
iron. When young he might have been facetious, but he had concentrated
his energies entirely on money, till there was nothing left to go in
other directions, and his humor was now as sombre as the grin of a
hanged man. He had self-conceit, which is a talent when combined with
some other qualities. Doctor Johnson's observation, that to make money
requires talents, is true: a dull man cannot do it. Uncle Nate had to
remember thirty thousand articles in his business of wholesale
druggist. He was a perfect devil-fish for sucking the goodness from
every business he was concerned in--banking, railroading, and so on. He
belonged to the Chicago Board of Trade, and was particularly useful in
getting those fellows in Indianapolis on a string, sending the wheat
up, up, until the Hoosiers had made a few hundred thousands, and then,
when they thought they were going to make millions, letting it down and
scooping them. My habit of listening intently to Uncle Nate's
telegrammatic style of talk caused him to like me. I resembled King
Lear: I talked with those who were wise, and said little, and Nathan's
aphorisms about trade and politics made good paragraphs when boiled
down to the crisp cracklins.

While I worked and Lydia entertained we were waltzing like the wind
down to ruin. No use to cry, "Ho! great gods! Hilloa! you're wanted
here!" On we went.

Worrying over pecuniary affairs gradually sapped my mind. To lose one's
eyes or all one's relations, or to be bitten by a mad dog, will not
unhinge the brain so completely as pecuniary anxiety. My paragraphs,
spite of Nate's verbum saps., lost their originality. I resigned my
post on the _Times_. I became the collector on commission of certain
rents of Uncle Nathan's. Whoso collects rents in Chicago tenements
should know how to box or else to run: I could do neither. I got little
or nothing out of the devils and devillets, my respected uncle's
tenants. He had a genius for the despatch of business: I had none;
therefore he concluded I was an ass, and wondered how he came to be
pleased with me. Oh, 'tis a good thing to know what you can do, and to
do that, and know what you cannot do, and leave that alone. Dull as
weeds of Lethe was my task. 'Twas terrible! I thought it would never
end. No greater misery could be imagined than what I endured in
Nathan's service.

One morning of those days I picked up a note in Lydia's writing hastily
scrawled as follows: "I have discovered your retreat: I must see you.
At seven o'clock wave the lamp three times across the window if all is
well."

In my undecided way I pinned the note to the blue silk pincushion on
Lydia's dressing-case. I had a sudden jealous suspicion of an
acquaintance of ours, a furiously-striking English
traveller--"Bone-Boiler to the Queen" or something--who had a long,
silky, sweeping moustache blowing about in the wind, and parted his
hair "sissy." But I went to work all the same.

That day Uncle Nate was a worse screw than ever. "How is it you never
hit a clam?" asked he.

"Your tenants have nothing, so I get nothing," I replied.

"Nonsense! They must have something. Drunken loafers are driving about
in livery-rigs everywhere--sure sign of prosperity."

"Your people are not out," I said.

"They sit around the house reading yesterday's newspapers."

"They can't get work," said I.

"Everybody that wants to work is in the ditch now-a-days: _that_ I
_know_" said the old man.

"Some are sick."

"They are well enough to walk three miles to a brewery after a free
drink."

"Some are too young to work."

"Hah! what's the use of having a parcel of young ones to be poor
relations to the rest of the world?" asked he.

"Some are positively starving," said I.

"What of that? You have to let them starve. Five hundred thousand
starved in India last year, a country overrun with sacred snakes and
animals of all sorts that they might have eaten. Three millions starved
in China, and they tore up their English railway, the only thing that
could save them. What are you going to do about it? Starving! Bet they
are wallowing in the theatre every night," said Nathan.

"The theatre with Lawrence Barrett! I wish they might see anything so
elevating. Perhaps _Othello_ might make some impression on them, such a
stupendous temperance lecture it is!" I groaned.

"If _you_ would leave the theatre alone you wouldn't be quite so short
as you are now," asserted Uncle Nate, almost popping open with
contempt.

"'Short,' man! 'Short' in your throat!" shouted I, forgetting myself.

"Yes, short; and it's my opinion you've shorted me in this business."

I could not kick our uncle out of his premises, so I got out myself,
not to return; and I left in debt to him as well as to the rest of the
world. I went homeward. Though it was August, a cold wind blew from the
lake, whipping the large, flapping leaves of the castor-bean plants in
the front yards to rags. I quaffed the lake in the wet wind. "No
wonder," I thought, "we're three parts water: our world is." A young
fellow on the street-car platform smoked a cigar that smelled like
pigweed, cabbage-stalks and other garden rubbish burning, and made me
sick. He enjoyed it, though: in fact, all, including the street-car
driver himself, were on that day more than usually engaged in the
intense enjoyment of being Chicagoans. All but me, miserable. The very
windows and pavements of our streets, being clean and cold, sent a
chill to my bones.

When I reached home Lydia was pinning on her habergeon, her neck-armor
of ribbons and lace, before the mirror. "What is this?" I asked,
pointing to the suspicious note, still pinned to the cushion.

"That's the note that has to be found in my room in the play of _Lost
in London_," she answered, turning the great lamps of her eyes on mine.

As I had nothing to say to this, I went and lay down on the sofa before
the parlor-fire. Though a grate in January is a poor affair--I never
knew any human being who really depended on one in winter to speak in
praise of it--on a cool August day it is delicious. I fell into a warm
doze before the fire, then into a series of agreeable naps. When Lydia
said supper was ready I did not want any, and at bedtime I was too
stiff to move easily.

After this, during several weeks, my bedchamber became to me a place
full of sweet dreams and rest and quiet breathing. Luxurious
indifference, a pleasure in hearing the crickets in the grass of the
midsummer gardens, and voices talking afar--a satisfaction in seeing
the polished walnut, marble and china and plenteous linen towels of my
washstand, my altar to Hebe, and in seeing through a window,

  While day sank or mounted higher,
  The light, aërial gallery, golden railed,
  Burn like a fringe of fire

on some remote palace of the city. These and other sensations of
malarial fever occupied me for a while. In half dreams I then enjoyed
the minutest details of life in an old farm-house that had been my
home, or walked through a picture-gallery I had once frequented, seeing
each picture strangely perfect and splendidly limned. Light diet and
keeping quiet--which every Westerner knows to be the cure of this
fever--cured me. I came forth looking like a _swairth_, one of those
words marked "obs." in the dictionary--means phantom of a person about
to die. It ought to be revived; so here goes--_swairth_.

  Leaden before, my eyes were dross of lead.

I was pale and lank, but things had settled themselves in my mind: I
had gone back to my old ideas of honor and freedom; my mind was made
up.

"Well, Lydia," said I, "you wanted to manage: you were bound to wear
the breeches. As you make your pants, so you must sit in them."

"You awful man!" said she.

"Now I will manage," said I.

"Indeed! Nothing would please me better," said she.

"I will sell our house and all that's in it, and get out of debt," said
I.

"You mean to be one of the lower classes and wear old rags," she
exclaimed.

"We have no class-distinctions but the Saving Class and the Wasting
Class. I shall be of the first class. As to clothes, they are
despicable," I replied.

"People who despise clothes can't get any."

"Well, I've done all I'm going to do toward developing the West, which
consists in getting into debt, as far as I can see."

When an able woman submits she submits completely. Lydia put our house
in order. I filled the streets with dodgers advertising our sale. I
have not been a paragraphist for nothing: the sale was a success. I
paid a part of my debts, and gave notes for the rest that will keep my
future poor. I started in again on the _Times'_ city force. To board I
hate: it's a chicken's life--roosting on a perch, coming down to eat
and then going back to roost. So I got a little domicile in "The
Patch." When the teakettle has begun to spend the evening the new cheap
wallpaper, the whitewash and the soapsuds with which the floor has been
scrubbed emit peculiar odors.

"It smells poor-folksy here," says Lydia.

"All the better!" say I.
                         --MARY DEAN.




SHORT STUDIES IN THE PICTURESQUE.


Although our American climate, with its fierce and pitiless extremes of
temperature, will never give the lush meadows and lawns of moist
England, yet in the splendid and fiery lustres of its autumn forests,
in its gorgeous sunsets and sunrises and in the wild beauty of its
hills and mountains there is that which makes an English Midland
landscape seem tame in comparison. The rapid changes of temperature in
summer and the sudden rising of vast masses of heated air produce
cloud-structures of the most imposing description, especially huge,
irregular cumulus clouds that float in equilibrium above us like
colossal icebergs, airy mountain-ranges or tottering battlemented
towers and "looming bastions fringed with fire."

  Yon clouds are big with flame, and not with rain,
    Massed on the marvellous heaven in splendid pyres,
  Whereon ethereal genii, half in pain
    And half in triumph, light their mystic fires.

The brilliant deep-blue Italian skies of the Middle and Southern States
are full of poetry, and will repay the most careful and prolonged
study. I have seen, far up in the zenith, silvery fringes of cirrus
clouds forming and melting away at the same moment and in the same
place, ethereal and evanescent as a dream, easel-studies of Nature.
Sometimes the clouds take the form of most airily-delicate brown crape,
"hatchelled" on the sky in minute lines and limnings. Now the sky looks
like a sweet silver-azure ceiling, the blue peeping here and there
through tender masses of silver frosting. The skies of the New England
coast States are filled, during a large part of spring, summer and
autumn, with a white and dreamy haze, and do not produce
cloud-phenomena on such an imposing scale as the more brilliant skies
of the interior. I shall never forget a vast and glowing sunset-scene I
once witnessed in the Ohio Valley. It lasted but a few moments, but
what a spectacle! The setting sun was throwing his golden light over
the intensely green earth, and suffusing the irregular masses of clouds
now with a tender rosy light and now with delicate saffron. All along
the eastern horizon extended a black-blue cloud-curtain of about twenty
degrees in height, across which played the zigzag gold of the
lightning. Overhead hung the gigantic ring of a complete rainbow (a
rare phenomenon), looking like the iridescent rim of some vast sun that
had shot from its orbit and was rapidly nearing our earth. In the north
the while slept the sweet blue sky in peace. What a phantasmagoria of
splendor, "the magic-lantern of Nature"! What a rich contrast of
color!--the black and the gold, the green, saffron, rose and azure, and
the whole crowned with a rainbow garland of glowing flowers. I felt
assured that no sunset of Italy or Greece could fling upon the sky more
costly pictures than these.

The delicacy and accuracy of touch exhibited in _The Scarlet Letter_
and in _Oldport Days_ can hardly be appreciated to the full by those
who are unacquainted with certain mellow and crumbling towns and
hamlets of the New England coast, especially of the warm south coast.
Soft mists rise in summer like "rich distilled perfumes" from the warm
Gulf Stream off Long Island Sound and drift landward in invisible airy
volumes. Suddenly, as at a given signal, the sky becomes troubled,
grows dun: trembling dew-specks glister upon the leaves, and in a few
moments the gray fog starts out of the air on every side and clings to
tree, crag and house like shroud to corpse. It is this warm moisture
that gives to the south-coast hamlets their mellow tint. I have
especially in mind at this moment one romantic village whose stout old
yeoman elms hold their protecting foliage-shields over many a gray
mansion as rich in tradition as the House of the Seven Gables, and only
awaiting the touch of some wizard hand to become immortalized. The
prevailing tint of these old houses, and of everything that a lichen
can take hold of, is a sage-gray. There seems to be something in the
sea-breezes unusually favorable to the growth of lichens, and they hold
high carnival everywhere, growing in riotous exuberance on every tree
and rock and fence. I saw whole board fences so thickly tufted and
bearded with a rich, particolored mosaic of lichens that from
base-board to cope-board there was scarcely a square foot of the
original wood to be seen. On any hazy Indian-summer afternoon, if you
look down the wide, irregular main street, lined with its mighty elms
and gambrel-roofed houses, all seems wrapped in a dim gray atmosphere
of antiquity, like that surrounding Poe's House of Usher, only not
ghostly as that is. It is a strange _je ne sais quoi_ that eludes
description, as if houses and trees stood at the bottom of a sea of
visible heat.

Whatever of picturesqueness an English hamlet has, this American one
has. It has its wealthy hereditary aristocracy, its small farmers or
squires and its peasants, its ruins and haunted houses, its traditions
of savages and of the great men who have honored it with their
presence. The town, moreover, is set off by a framework of the most
enchanting and varied scenery--river, streamlet, ocean, lighthouse,
hills with flower-and-grass-tufted crags, and forests, while on any
summer's day one may see, far away and "sown in a wrinkle of the
monstrous hill," some neighboring village with its graceful spire of
purest white gleaming and flaming in the hot sunshine, like marble set
in a foil of malachite.

A window of my room looked out upon a crystal stream that wound down
through the salt-meadows to the sea, and twice a day, under the
influence of the seemingly-mysterious systole and diastole of the
tides, spread out into a wide-glittering lake and anon crept back again
into its sinuous bed. This water was as fickle and wanton and
many-mooded as a coquettish girl. Now its translucent glassy surface is
unruffled by a single wrinkle, and in its brilliant depths every
minutest feature of yonder drifting hay-barge is weirdly mirrored. I
look out again, and the face of the water is working with rage under
the lashing of the wind: at the same time its face seems white with
fear, and its ghostly arms are tossing, now in defiance and now in
piteous appeal. But now, as I gaze, the winds in their uncouth gambols
tear a huge rent in the cloud-tent they had raised over the earth, and
in the sweet blue beyond appears the calm and smiling face of the sun.
Before its glance the wind-phantoms slink away in fear and the now
quiet streamlet smiles through its tears.

The stiff formality and the ridiculous solemnity of the old Puritan
times still linger about these secluded New England hamlets. But each
winter a huge Christmas tree is set up in the church of the village I
have mentioned, and loaded with presents. The winter I was there I went
to see the distribution. Recollecting the delightful Christmas days of
my own childhood, I was anticipating great pleasure. Of course I was
going to look in on a scene of childish joy, of shouting and laughing,
and eating of candy and pop-corn in unlimited quantities. Memories of
the stories of Hans Andersen and the Grimm brothers were floating
through my mind as I crunched the crisp snow under my feet on my way to
the church. I remembered the rapture of those Christmas mornings at
home, when we children stole down stairs by candlelight to the warm
room filled with the aromatic perfume of the Christmas tree, that stood
there resplendent with presents from old Santa Claus--Noah's arks,
mimic landscapes, dolls, sleds, colored cornucopias bursting with
bonbons, and especially those books of fairy-tales from whose rich
creamy pages exhaled a most divine and musty fragrance. Ah, the memory
of our childhood's hours! what is it but that enchanted lake of the
Arabian tale, from whose quiet depths we are ever and anon drawing up
in our nets some magic colored fish? Well, I reached the church. The
children, dressed in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, were sitting
in the high-backed pews in solemn silence, while a reverend gentleman
was delivering a solemn exhortation to gratitude and goodness. Another
followed. "Very well, gentlemen," thought I, "but now please to retire
and give up the field to these children." But no. The superintendent of
the Sunday-school now advanced: the children marched up one by one, as
their names were called, and received their presents from him. Some of
them came very near grinning (poor things!), but in general they looked
as if they were going to their execution. When all was done _the
meeting was dismissed_!

Sauntering through the streets of this village, and making note of the
quaint idiosyncrasies and irregularities of character and manner
displayed by its humbler folk, I thought of the sentiment which Thoreau
so exquisitely expresses in his _Week_: "The forms of beauty fall
naturally around him who is in the performance of his proper work, as
the curled shavings drop from the plane and borings cluster round the
auger." Picturesqueness characterizes the New England white laborer, as
it does the Southern black laborer: especially is this true of those
who have emigrated from Europe when of adult age, and have been unable
to lay aside the picturesque features of their Old-World life.

One winter evening I discovered, a few miles from the village, one of
this class: he was, on the whole, the strangest human being whom it has
ever been my fortune to meet. About dusk I found myself some distance
away from the village, near the great bridge that spans the river where
it debouches into the sea. The water was heaving in long, slow swells.
A deep silence had fallen over the earth. The evening red was reflected
in the sea in rich blood dye, while the colored lights of the bridge
and the lighthouse glowed and burned in the deep, here writhing along
the waves like long golden and crimson sea-serpents, and there shooting
down long streamers of light into the waves, to serve, I fancied, as
hanging lamps for that vast black, star-bespangled abyss of the sky,
that weird sunken dome, that inverted world, over which the water lay
stretched out like thin, translucent red glass, and to look down into
whose immeasurable and dizzy depths thrilled me both with pleasure and
a kind of terror--that vague feeling of pain which the sublime always
excites in the mind.

I crossed the bridge and wandered along the opposite side of the river
by a lonely path. Suddenly I saw smoke curling up from a small recess
of the beach. It was a full mile from any human habitation known to me,
and I hesitated for a moment about advancing upon such a place at dusk,
especially as the winter was one of the gloomiest in the period of our
long financial depression. However, I decided to go on. Several
overturned fishing-boats lay upon the beach, with a net drying upon one
of them. A few clamshells were scattered about, and near the door of a
small cabin lay a pile of split kindlings. The cabin was considerably
smaller in size than an English railway-carriage, and nestled under the
overhanging bank of the river. No human being was visible at first. But
presently I detected by the red glow of his pipe a man in the interior
of the cabin. I sat down on a boat, not venturing to approach nearer
and beard the old lion in his lair. But on his inviting me to come in I
went up to the door. It was, however, only a meaningless form of speech
that led him to say "Come in," for it would hardly have been possible
to get into a cabin only five feet wide, with the man himself sitting
by a large rusty stove right over against the door. He placed a
bootjack in the doorway for me to sit down upon. There was no window in
the cabin. Firkins of fish were piled up along the sides of the
interior, and in the dim background I saw a rude framework covered with
straw which served as a bed.

And now for the human being there. The most noticeable peculiarity
about the strange old hermit was an enormous wen which hung down from
the front part of his neck. This wen was fully as large as a man's
head. Long yellow hair hung over his shoulders, and a huge red beard
reached to the middle of his breast--

  His beard a foot before him, and his hair
  A yard behind.

His moustache alone showed signs of the scissors: he had there cleared
a path through the russet jungle of his beard, that an entrance might
be had to the inner man. The eyes that looked out from this thicket of
hair had not that hard, dangerous, angry look that experience of such
persons had taught me to expect, but they expressed loneliness. He told
of the high tides of the month of January in a certain year, when the
water rose so as to enter his cabin and ponderous cakes of ice were
knocking and grinding against its sides in the night. We talked of
fish. He spoke of fyke-nets and drag-nets and warp-lines, and of
eel-spearing through the ice. He took especial delight in telling me
how the snow in winter was swept away from his door in a clean circle
by the broom of some friendly wind. "It is the wind that does it," said
he with touching naïveté. It almost seemed to the poor old man's lonely
heart like a special favor on the part of the wind, like a tender
feeling and relenting on the part of the icy-hearted winter wind for
him in his solitude and sadness as he lay there cast out on the
desolate shore of the world, deformed and shattered in health--

  Gleich einer Leiche
  Die grollend ausgeworfen das Meer--

  "Like a corpse which the bellowing sea
  has cast out."

Strange life! O utter barrenness of existence! A pipe, a fire, fish,
rags and a bed of straw. God pity thee! God pity thee, thou poor
stricken deer! Take heart, man, take heart! Be brave, and dash away the
bitter tear. Look up from the lowly cabin-door into the solemn night
with its golden-burning stars, and even the loosened harp-strings of
thy shattered old frame will vibrate and tremble to the eternal
melodies that thrill through the mystic All: "God is in his heaven."

Dickens and Hawthorne have each written of canal-life in America, the
one in a satirico-humorous way, the other sympathetically. People side
with one or the other according as their disposition is active and
restless or indolent and epicurean. I fight under the banner of
Hawthorne in defence of the canal. The following sketch of one of the
old picturesque Pennsylvania canals may be called a vignette, for it is
a fragment without definite border or setting. But admirers of Dickens
are respectfully requested to note that it is no mere fancy sketch of a
poetic mind, but was drawn from Nature, every bit of it.

The first and most novel sensation I experienced was that of the quiet
and seemingly mysterious gliding movement of the boat. Ever and anon we
passed through a lock. How strange and thrilling the feeling, to stand
on the deck and see yourself slowly sinking into the great mossy box,
and then to see the great valves of the lock slowly open, disclosing
what seemed a new land and fresh vistas of green landscape! It was like
the opening of the gates of the future (I pleased myself with fancying)
to my triumphant progress. Gate after gate swung back its ponderous
valves: I was Habib advancing from isle to isle of the enchanted sea. I
uttered the word of power, and the huge unwieldy gates of opposition
swung back with sullen and unwilling deference, compelled to respect
the talisman I held. But hark! Hear the sweet notes of the supper-horn
floating through the cool gloom of twilight as the tired reapers trudge
home with their grain-cradles swung over their shoulders. Listen to the
tinkling mule-bells on the tow-path, see the bright crimson tassels of
the bridles, and the gayly-decorated boats, their cabin-roofs adorned
with pots of herbs and flowers.

As we glide down the canal, ever and anon we see some empty returning
boat (called "light boat" in the technical canal phrase) rounding a
curve before us, It comes nearer: the horses walk the same tow-path:
how _are_ the boats to pass without confusion? Ah, the riddle is
solved. Our captain (who holds the helm while the boy, his assistant,
is down in the cabin preparing supper) calls out suddenly, at the last
moment, "Whoa!" The well-trained horses instantly stop; the momentum of
the boat carries it on; the rope slackens, disappears in the water,
except at the two ends; the approaching horses step over it, and the
approaching boat glides over it. When the approaching "light boat" has
passed nearly or entirely over the rope our captain shouts to his
horses to go on: the rope tightens, and all is as before.

The parts of the canal lying between the locks are called "levels." On
long levels we could often see one or two boats far ahead of us and
going in the same direction. Nothing could be prettier than the thin
blue streamer of wood-smoke trailing out from the stovepipe of the
cabin-roof against the bright green of the foliage along the banks. It
told us the cheery news that the fragrant coffee or tea was a-making in
the cozy little cabin below. And now, when supper is done, the captain
brings up his guitar and plays sweet plaintive airs as we glide through
the quiet evening shadows. Night deepens: the stars come out one by
one, and are reflected in the smooth dark water below in dreamy, dusky
splendor. We brush the dew from the heavy foliage as we pass along.
Lithe alders and heavy vines trail in the cool flood, and the fresh
evening air is filled with grateful harvest-scents and the perfume of
unseen flowers. And now our pretty painted lamp-board is fixed in its
place in the bow. The bright lamp throws its rich golden splendor
before us. The lamp is hid from us by the board which holds it. We
stand behind in the dark, and watch the overhanging sprays of foliage
making strange, grotesque shadows that move fantastically and sport and
clutch and writhe like wanton fiends, while the solid banks of foliage
themselves, reflected in the water below, look, one fancies, like
hanging gardens in the weird world to which the water is but a window,
and far, far down upon whose dusky floor the flowers are golden stars.

The canal over which I am now conducting my readers is one of the
oldest in the country. For many miles it is cut out of the solid rock,
following the windings of the river and clinging close to the contours
of the hills. The particolored rocks jut out in great square blocks,
which, in summer, are usually tufted with grass or flowers. There is an
indescribable air of coziness and safety about the amphibious life one
leads on such a canal. You can here snap your fingers at the terrors of
the cruel water. Here the mocking waves cannot "curl their monstrous
heads" as on the sea, when with blind fury they dash against the
helpless ship their ponderous and shapeless forms, while sailors and
passengers alike are every moment expecting the final stroke that shall
sink them beneath the waves. On the canal you cannot be drowned, on the
canal you cannot be wrecked. The shore is so delightfully near! You
exult in the friendly companionship of the rocky wall that towers above
you, and in the assuring presence of the flowers and shrubs that cling
there or reach out to you their thin elvish hands. You feel that here
untamed Nature (that great wolf) cannot get her claws upon you. Upon
this thread of water you are soothed by the thought that you are under
the friendly and beneficent protection of man.

About nine or ten o'clock each evening the boats tie up at some lock.
At all of these locks there are refreshment-stands and neat taverns of
which the traveller must avail himself, since there are no
accommodations for visitors on the boats. On the fourth day, wishing to
vary my experience, I boarded another boat. Her deck was the very model
of neatness. Verily the spirit of either a Yankee housewife or a Dutch
vrow must have presided over that boat and tyrannized over the poor
wretches who managed it. Black Care seemed to sit continually upon
their brows. They were living scrubbing-brushes. They were scrub-mad.
From morn to dewy eve they scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, and
doubtless in their dreams they still scrubbed on. The crew consisted of
a man and his wife, their boy and an old uncle of the boy. I found, to
my delight, that the boy was a very communicative young gentleman,
flowing freely in talk without any pumping on my part. The various
quaint technical phrases which I learned from him shall now be imparted
to the reader. The _berme_, or _heel-path_, is the side of the canal
opposite the tow-path; _basins_ are small coves in the canal where
boats may lie over; _stop-lock_, a sort of quay; the _bit_, a
timber-head at the bow of the boat. _Snub her!_ is a phrase of command,
meaning, "Tie the boat to a post on the bank." _Pipe-poles_ are
steering-poles. The _stern pile_ (of coal on this canal) is in a large
crib near the stern and just in front of the cabin, and is placed in
this particular part of the long and unwieldy boat in order to make her
obey the helm better. _Timber-heads_ project above the deck to "snub"
lines on. _Tow-posts_ are short upright posts near the bow, to which
the tow-line is fastened. The _combings_ are the pieces the hatches
rest on and surround the hold in an oval form. The _wale-plank_ is the
edge of the deck, projecting out over the water like a welt around the
entire circumference of the boat.

It may surprise many persons to learn that on the tablelands of the
Alleghany Mountains there are still thousands of square miles of virgin
forests of hemlock and pine through which roam bears and deer in
considerable numbers. The hemlock trees are rapidly succumbing,
however, to the axe of the lumberman and the bark-peeler. Bark-peeling
is the great industry there, almost every mountain-hollow along the
lines of the few railways that have penetrated the region in
Pennsylvania having its tannery in active operation. This tanning
business, by the way, is in a very prosperous condition, owing to the
foreign demand for the liquor extracted from the bark as well as to the
steadiness of the leather market. There is a primitive freshness in the
life of the mountaineers and lumbermen of the Alleghanies like that of
the mining regions of the far West. There is a sprinkling of Canadians
among the lumbermen, and as a whole they are the most honest,
good-natured, childlike set of men in existence. They are the true
priests of those high and dim-green temple-aisles--priests of Nature
one might call them. The cabins of the bark-peelers are made of rough,
sweet-smelling hemlock planks. The smell of the hemlock bark is fresh
and tonical, and appetizing in the highest degree. The men eat fabulous
quantities of food: some require five meals a day. I well remember my
first meal in a mountain hemlock shanty. Imagine a long table of
unpainted boards with X-shaped legs, and along each side of the table
benches for seats. Let there be upon the table three large bowls of
black sugar, here and there towering stacks of white bread (the slices
an inch thick at least), and beside each cover a teacup and saucer, a
huge bowl filled to the brim with steaming-hot apple-sauce, together
with a bowl of the same dimensions containing beans. Now blow the
supper-horn, and hearken to the far halloo from the mountain-side.
Twenty blowzed and bearded men, ravenous and wild-eyed with hunger,
presently file into the room. They sit down: there is an awful and
solemn silence--they are evidently impressed with the momentous
importance of the occasion. You find your face growing long; you think
of funerals; make a timid and humble remark which you hope will be
acceptable and within the range of their comprehension. No answer: you
evidently have their pity. No word breaks the sullen silence, except an
occasional request to pass something, uttered with an effort as if the
speaker had the lockjaw. The meal is bolted with frightful rapidity,
generally in five or six minutes. I remember that I was considerably
scared and dazed, on my first acquaintance with these mountain-fauns,
at seeing such a systematic snatching and grabbing, such a ferocious
plying of knives and forks and rattling of cups, by those huge-limbed,
brawny, whiskered fellows.

It is difficult to describe the perennial beauty of the hemlock trees,
with their dark, rich foliage-masses and aromatic odor. It seems a
sacrilege to destroy them so ruthlessly. When stripped of their bark
and stained with the dark-red sap, they look like fallen giants spoiled
of their armor, lying there prone and white-naked, as if there had been
a battle of the giants and the gods. These giants were perfumed, it
seems. Their huge green plumes are now withered and torn, and their red
blood oozes slowly from their bodies in thin and trickling streams. You
think of Ossian's heroes, of Thor and his hammer, of the Anakim or of
the steeple-high Brobdignagian cavalry, and almost expect to hear
groans issuing from the colossal trunks that cumber the ground on every
side.

Everything is on a large scale in these mighty forests. The horizon of
your life noiselessly widens, rolls gradually back into immeasurable
distances, and "deepens on and up." There is elasticity and stretch in
your thoughts. If you have read Richter, his towering, godlike dreams
of time and eternity here find their fit interpretation. He had his
Fichtelgebirge, and you have your hemlock mountains. Life seems heroic
once more: you exult in existence, and fondly think that here you could
be happy for ever. To live far away from the cruel, hurrying world in a
sweet little hamlet you wot of, sunk in the heart of the mountains at
the bottom of a deep, mossy mountain-chalice--a chalice of richest
chasing and filled with the pure wine of God, the mountain-air; to live
there during the long summer days; to stand in the flush of dawn with
bared head and inhale the fragrance of the dew-drenched grass and the
scarlet balsams; to walk with hushed step through the wide forests,
communing with the powerful sylvan spirits that labor there, watching
with what miraculous delicacy of touch their unseen fingers weave the
rich fantastic shrouds of fern and moss that deck the dead and fallen
trees or anon give to the living their faint and mottled tints of green
and gray;--to live thus through the summer hours, and through autumn,
winter, spring watch the unrolling of the gorgeous scroll of
Time,--this, you think, were living to some purpose!--WILLIAM SLOANE
KENNEDY.




OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.



THE PARIS SALON OF 1880.


The Salon (official) catalogue contains this year 696 pages. There are
3957 paintings exhibited; 2085 designs, sketches in charcoal and
watercolors; 30 engravings on stone, etc.; 111 designs for
architecture; 46 specimens of lithography; 701 pieces of sculpture; 305
eaux-fortes; and 54 specimens of monumental art--in all 7280 objects.
Though we all thought last year that the number of paintings exhibited
was immense, this year the number is 917 more. Alas for the poor
critics! How many an additional ache that implies for them! Still, as
we have a cozy reading-room at the Palais de l'Industrie--an innovation
of this season for the benefit of those who get tired of looking at the
pictures and wish to "take a rest"--the weary critic may enter and take
a seat (if he can find one unoccupied, which is highly improbable), and
there write out his "notes," as I am doing at this moment.

While standing in front of a charming picture by Dagnan-Bouveret (_Un
Accident_), I felt a soft arm brush gently against mine, and glancing
down recognized the capricious Sara Bernhardt. Yes, Sara was there,
leaning on the arm of Mr. Stevens, the Belgian painter who is credited
with finishing Sara's paintings, and followed by her son Maurice and a
little retinue of admirers, mostly young men--artists and actors--and
stared at with persistency by all who saw her pass. "There goes
Bernhardt!" "Did you see Bernhardt?" were the remarks on all sides. Her
head, which bore itself as if quite unaware that a suit for three
hundred and fifty thousand francs damages was suspended over it like
the sword of Damocles, was covered with a mass of rich auburn-colored
hair. She is as changeable as a chameleon in the matter of her hair: I
never see her twice with the same colored _chevelure_.

The Salon this year contains at least four _good_--one might almost say
_great_--pictures. Of these four, the one to which popular opinion
seems to award the _grande médaille d'honneur_, is Bastien-Lepage's
_Jeanne d'Arc_. This large painting (3-15/100 mètres by 3-45/100
mètres) represents the Maid at the moment when, seeing the vision of
the Virgin, she is inspired to go forth and save her country. A
peasant-girl, strong and muscular, she leans against a tree, her face
uplifted to heaven and aglow with a noble inspiration. The cottage in
the background, the trees and weeds in the middle distance, the
distribution of light and the subdued tones of this impressive picture,
are all excellent. Some critics object to the artist's perspective, but
I fancy that is a bit of hypercriticism.

Then comes Fernand Cormon's _Flight of Cain_, suggested by Victor
Hugo's lines:

  Lorsqu' avec ses enfants couverts de peaux de bêtes,
  Échevelé, livide au milieu des tempêtes,
  Caïn se fut enfui de devant Jéhovah.

This canvas is one of the largest in the Salon--4 by 7 mètres. The
chief figures are grandly painted and the whole picture is very
impressive.

Alphonse Alexis Morot's _Good Samaritan_ is an exceedingly strong
picture. The Samaritan is represented holding upon his own beast the
poor maltreated Jew and walking by his side. The figure-painting is
wonderful in its vigor and _verve_.

The fourth picture is Alexandre Cabanel's _Phèdre_. The source of the
artist's inspiration was the well-known passage from Euripides:
"Consumed upon a bed of grief, Phèdre shuts herself up in her palace,
and with a thin veil envelops her blonde head. It is now the third day
that her body has partaken of no nourishment: attacked by a concealed
ill, she longs to put an end to her sad fate." Phèdre, as she lies
wishing only for death as a surcease of sorrow, gazed upon with
solicitude by her pitying attendants, is a vivid picture of
all-consuming grief. The decorative work of the bed and the wall is
chaste and classic.

Of the minor pictures, that of Dagnan-Bouveret, _Un Accident_, is one
of the best. It is indeed a rare picture in the excellence of its
execution in every detail. A boy has been badly wounded in the wrist by
some accident, and the surgeon is engaged in dressing the injured part.
The dirty foot of the boy as it peeps out beneath the chair, shod in a
rough sabot which fails to conceal its grime, the bowl standing on the
table half full of blood and water while the wrist is now being
skilfully bandaged by the surgeon, whose operations are watched with
great solicitude by the group of sympathetic relatives,--all these
features give a living interest to this painting which is unusual. The
red, grimy hands of the old mother of the boy are very faithfully
painted. The expression on the lad's face of heroic endurance and a
determination not to cry in any case is touching.

As for Mademoiselle Sara Bernhardt's _La Jeune Fille et la Mort_--a
veiled skeleton coming up behind a young girl and touching her on the
shoulder--it would attract little attention if it had not been signed
by the flighty (and lately _fleeing_) actress. The verses underneath
the picture are the best part of it:

  La Mort glisse en son rêve, et tout bas:
  "Viens," dit elle,
  "L'Amour c'est l'éphémère, et je suis l'immortelle."

The great names--Meissonier, Gérôme, Munkacsy, Madrazo,
Berne-Bellecour, Détaille, De Neuville, Rosa Bonheur, Flameng,
etc.--are conspicuous this year by their absence from the catalogue of
the Salon. It is whispered that the reason Munkacsy does not exhibit is
because the administration of the Beaux-Arts saw fit to place the
pictures by foreign artists separately in the Galérie des Étrangers. An
"impressionist" artist-friend of mine--Miss Cassatt, the sister of
Vice-President Cassatt of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company--says that
the reason these distinguished artists do not exhibit any more is that
they are disgusted with the way in which the Salon is conducted by
Edmond Turquet, the present sous-secrétaire aux Beaux-Arts, and the
very unfair acts committed in the awarding of medals, admission of
pictures, etc.

M. Jean Jacques Henner's _La Fontaine_ is a true Correggio in delicacy
and clearness of tone. His treatment of the flesh is peculiar, and much
envied by many a Paris artist. In this picture the nymph, leaning over
the fountain, is dressed in a very inexpensive costume--in fact, the
same fashion that Mother Eve introduced into Eden. There in the placid
water the beautiful creature contemplates the reflection of her face,
and seems to breathe, with all her being, those charming lines of
Lafenestre:

  Heure silencieuse, où la nymphe se penche
    Sur la source des bois qui lui sert de miroir,
  Et rêve en regardant mourir sa forme blanche
    Dans l'eau pâle où descend le mystère du soir.

Gustave Jacquet's _Le Minuet_ is one of those pictures which fascinate
and draw us back again and again. A rarely-beautiful girl is dancing
the minuet, surrounded by a group of her friends, beautiful blonde
girls and a fair-haired young man. The costumes are perfectly
exquisite, yet there is not too much _chiffonnerie_ in the picture.
There is a remarkable effect of depth in the painting of the figure of
the dancing girl, especially at the feet and at the bottom of her
skirt. Perhaps the only criticism that could fairly be passed upon M.
Jacquet's picture is that there is too much of mere "prettiness" about
his principal figures.

A curious feature in this year's exhibition is that there are three
pictures of the assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday, two of
which are hung in the same room. There are also three paintings
representing a scene from Victor Hugo's _Histoire d'un Crime_,
"L'enfant avait reçu deux balles dans la tête." The child is
represented in Henry Gervex's picture as being lifted up by his
friends, who are examining the poor little wounded, bleeding head. It
is powerful in composition and a very thrilling, realistic picture. The
other two representations of this subject are by Paul Langlois and Paul
Robert.

Gustave Courtois's _Dante and Virgil in Hell: The Circle of the
Traitors to their Country_, is a picture very much studied by all the
artists who visit the Salon because of its strange landscape, its
wonderful effect of the glacial formations and its marvellous effects
of color. Benjamin Constant's _Les Derniers Rebelles_ is one of the
best efforts of this artist, so fruitful in scenes drawn from Morocco
and Egyptian life. He has depicted the sultan going forth in great
splendor from the gates of the city of Morocco, surrounded by his army
and courtiers, and before him are brought, either dead or alive, all
the principal chiefs of the revolted tribes. There is much that is
noble in the composition, and the coloring is perfect.

The arrangement of the pictures this year is not altogether
satisfactory to the artists. A radical change has been made--grouping
all the _hors-concours_ men by themselves, and all the foreigners by
themselves, and crowding about one thousand pictures out of doors into
the corridors which run around the garden of the Palais de l'Industrie.
A friend of mine saw a French artist mount a stepladder and
deliberately cut out of the frame his picture and carry it away with
him, because it was so badly hung.

The _Illustrated Catalogue_ of the Salon is a somewhat remarkable work.
It is specially noticeable for the very curious English translations of
the titles of some of the paintings. For instance, the title of Gabriel
Boutel's picture, _Bonne à tout faire_--a soldier seated with a baby in
his arms--is rendered, _Maid for anything_(!). _Prière à Saint Janvier_
is rendered _Prayer_ AT _Saint Januarious_. _Le Cabaret du Pot d'Étain_
is translated _The Tavern of the Brass_ POT (instead of _Pewter Mug_).
Ed. Morin's _Promenade en Marne_ is _A_ F_rip on the Marne!_ Our friend
from Boston, Edwin Lord Weeks, is mentioned as "LORD" Edwin Weeks! But
the best of all is _La Cruche cassée_, translated _The Broken_ PIG! The
title of another picture is (in the catalogue) _Good-bye, Swee_L
_hart!_

Out of the 3957 oil paintings exhibited, our country is represented by
113 pictures, the productions of 83 Americans. Then we claim 13 of the
aquarelle painters, and there are in addition 11 natives of the United
States who exhibit designs in charcoal, _sanguine_, _gouache_, and
paintings on either porcelain or faïence; also 7 sculptors--in all, 114
of our compatriots whose works are in the present Salon. New York
claims the lion's share of these artists, 40 being accredited to that
State. Of the remainder, 18 are from Boston, 13 from Philadelphia, 6
from New Orleans, 3 from Chicago, 2 from Toledo, 2 from San Francisco,
etc. etc.

I think it will be generally admitted that the only really strong
pictures exhibited by the American artists are John S. Sargent's
portrait of Madame Pailleron (wife of the author of _L'Étincelle_) and
his _Fumée d'Ambre Gris_; Henry Mosler's _Toilette de Noce_; D.R.
Knight's _Une Halte_; Miss Gardner's _Priscilla the Puritan_; F.A.
Bridgman's _Habitation Arabe à Biskra_; Charles E. DuBois's _Autumn
Evening on Lake Neuchâtel_; and Edwin L. Weeks's _Embarkment of the
Camels_ and _Gateway of an Old Fondak in the Holy City of Sallée_
(Morocco)--both of which were sold immediately after the opening. Of
course there are several other good pictures by our compatriots, and
some that possess great merit. But the ones indicated above are the
only ones which (excepting Picknell's two landscapes, _Sur le Bord du
Marais_ and _La Route de Concarneau_) have called forth any special
notice from French critics or in any way attracted much of the public
attention thus far. Mr. Sargent is a surprise and a wonder to even his
master, Carolus Duran, whose portrait, painted by Sargent, attracted
great attention in the Salon of last year and received an "honorable
mention." He has painted this year a full-length in the open air,
producing a very sunny, strong out-door effect. The hands attract much
praise, but opinions vary as to the face. His _Fumée d'Ambre Gris_
represents a woman of Tangiers engaged in perfuming her clothing with
the fumes from a lamp in which ambergris is burning. The white robes of
the woman set off against a pearly-gray background, the rising smoke,
the curiously-tinted finger-nails of the woman, and the rich rug on
which the lamp stands, combine to make a very notable and curious
picture.

Miss Elizabeth J. Gardner of New Hampshire has two excellent pictures
in the Salon--_Priscilla the Puritan_ and _The Water's Edge_. They are
both well hung, as indeed are most of our American artists'
contributions to this exhibition. Out of the 111 pictures in oils sent
in by the Americans, I can recall 46 which are hung "on the line," and
there may be even more. This is certainly treating our countrymen very
fairly. Miss Gardner's _Au Bord de l'Eau_ represents two young girls
standing at the edge of a pond, the one reaching down to pluck a
water-lily, and the other supporting her by clasping her waist. There
is great purity in the tones of this picture, and, though lacking
somewhat in action, the coloring and drawing are both admirable.

The most notable piece of statuary in the Salon, the work of an
American, is Saint-Gaudens's statue of Admiral Farragut. Mr.
Saint-Gaudens, who is a native of New York, received about two years
ago from one hundred gentlemen of that city, who had subscribed the
necessary funds, a commission to make a statue of the great sailor. It
is to be placed in Madison Square, New York. The pedestal is to be of
granite, having at its base a large seat, on the back of which will be
an inscription mentioning the important events in the life of the hero.
The statue, of bronze, represents Farragut in a standing posture, a
little larger than life-size. It is now being cast, and will be ready
to be placed in position within two months. Mr. Saint-Gaudens is now at
work on a statue of Richard Robert Randall, the founder of the Sailors'
Snug Harbor on Staten Island, in front of which institution this statue
is to be placed. This sculptor has also nearly completed his cast of
the figures intended to ornament the mausoleum of Ex-Senator E.D.
Morgan (of New York), about to be erected at Hartford, Connecticut. Mr.
Saint-Gaudens intends removing his atelier from Paris to New York in
June, and will hereafter be permanently located in that city, where he
will be an important addition to the art-movement in our own country.

The catalogue numbers, names and birthplaces of the Americans who
exhibit this year are here given:

OIL PAINTINGS.


 103. Audra, Rosémond Casimir, New Orleans, La.
 127. Bacon, Henry, Boston, Mass.
 139. Baird, William, Chicago.
 142, 143. Baker, Miss Ellen K., Buffalo.
 193. Bayard, Miss Kate, New York.
 220, 221. Beckwith, Arthur, New York.
 329. Bierstadt, Albert, New York.
 344. Bispham, Henry C., Philadelphia, Pa.
 355, 356. Blackman, Walter, Chicago.
 362. Blashfield, Edwin H., New York.
 380. Boggs, Frank Myers, New York.
 490, 491. Bridgman, Frederic D., Alabama.
 519, 520. Brown, Walter Francis, Rhode Island.
 742. Cheret-Lauchaume de Gavarmy, J.L., New Orleans.
 823, 824. Coffin, Wm. Anderson, Allegheny City.
 841. Collins, Alfred Q., Boston, Mass.
 844. Comans, Mrs. Charlotte B., New York.
 855. Conant, Miss Cornelia, New York.
 866. Copeland, Alfred Bryant, Boston.
 890. Correja, Henry, New York.
 893, 894. Corson, Miss Helen, Philadelphia.
 933, 934. Cox, Kenyon, Warren, O.
 965, 966. Daniel, George, New York.
1009. Davis, John Steeple, New York.
1089. Delport, J.S., New York.
1132, 1133. Deschamps, Mme. Camille, New York.
2096. DeLancey, William, New York.
1155. Dessommes, Edmond, New Orleans.
1161. Desvarreux-Larpenteur, Jas., St. Paul, Minn.
1199. Dillon, Henry, San Francisco, Cal.
1234, 1235. Dubois, Charles Edward, New York.
1381. Faller, Miss Emily, New York.
1426. Flagg, Charles Noël, Brooklyn, N.Y.
1537, 1538. Gardner, Miss Elizabeth J., New Hampshire.
1559. Gault, Alfred de, New Orleans, La.
1569, 1570. Gay, Walter, Boston.
1614. Gilman, Ben Ferris, Salem, Mass.
1693, 1694. Gregory, J. Eliot, New York.
1796. Harrison, Thomas Alexander, Philadelphia.
1799, 1800. Healy, George P.A., Boston.
1801, 1802. Heaton, Augustus G., Philadelphia.
1835, 1836. Herpin-Masseras, Madame Marguerite, Boston, Mass.
1851, 1852. Hilliard, William H., Boston.
1853. Hinckley, Robert, Boston.
1859. Hlasko, Miss Annie, Philadelphia.
 387. Jones, Bolton, Baltimore, Md.
2011. Knight, Daniel Ridgeway, Philadelphia.
2337. Lippincott, William H., Philadelphia.
2364. Loomis, Chester, Syracuse, N.Y.
2513. Mason, Louis Gage, Boston.
2556, 2557. May, Edward Harrison, New York.
2666. Mitchell, John Ames, New York.
2730. Morgan, Charles W., Philadelphia.
2738. Mortimer, Stanley, New York.
2739, 2740. Mosler, Henry, Cincinnati, O.
2741. Moss, Charles E., Charloe, Kansas(?).
2742, 2743. Moss, Frank, Philadelphia.
2760. Mowbray, Henry S., Alexandria, Egypt (of American parentage).
2780. Neal, David, Lowell, Mass.
2789. Nicholls, Burr H., Buffalo, N.Y.
2823. Obermiller, Miss Louisa, Toledo, O.
2878, 2879. Parker, Stephen Hills, New York.
2895. Pattison, James William, Boston. (Mr. Pattison exhibits also an
        aquarelle.)
2944. Perkins, Miss Fanny A., New York.
3014, 3015. Picknell, W.L., Boston, Mass.
3147, 3148. Ramsey, Milne, Philadelphia.
3177. Reilly, John Louis, New York.
3284. Robinson, Theodore, Irasburg.
3428, 3429. Sargent, John S., Philadelphia.
3525. Shonborn, Lewis, Nemora.
3578. Stone, Miss Marie L., New York.
3579. Strain, Daniel, Cincinnati, O.
3584. Swift, Clement.
3606. Teka, Madame E., Boston, Mass.
3695. Tuckerman, Ernest, New York.
3697. Tuttle, C.F., Ohio.
5850. Vogel, Miss Christine, New Orleans.
3879. Walker, Henry, Boston.
3891, 3892. Weeks, Edwin Lord, Boston.
3900, 3901. Welch, Thaddeus, Laporte, Ind.
3908, 3909. Williams, Frederic D., Boston.
3921. Woodward, Wilbur W., Indiana.
3923. Wright, Marian Loïs.



DESIGNS, AQUARELLES, PORCELAINS, ETC.


4101. Berend, Edward, New York.
4182, 4183. Boker, Miss Orleana V., New York.
4187, 4188. Boni, Mrs. Marie Louise.
4370. Chauncey, Mrs. Lucy, New York.
4399, 4400. Clark, George, New York.
4462. Crocker, Miss Sallie S., Portland, Me.
4474, 4475. Dana, Charles E., Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
4578. Dixey, Mrs. Ellen S., Boston.
4586. Donohoe, Eliza, Buffalo, N.Y.
4686. Faquani, Miss Nina, New York.
4688. Faller, Miss Emily, New York.
4855. Goodridge, Miss S.M.
4867. Greatorex, Miss Eleanor E., New York.
4868, 4869. Greatorex, Miss Kathleen, New York.
4927. Hardie, Robert G.
4953. Heuston, Miss Emma L., Sacramento, Cal.
5384. Merrill, Mrs. Emma F.R., New York.
5396. Mezzara, Mrs. Rosine, New York.
5562. Pering, Miss Cornelia.
5914. Tompkins, Miss Clementina, Washington.
6008, 6009. Volkmar, Charles, Baltimore.
6015. Walker, Miss Sophia A.
6028. Wheeler, Miss Mary, Concord.
6029, 6030. Whidden, W.M., Boston.



SCULPTURE.


6081. Bartlett, Paul, New Haven.
6136. Boyle, John, Philadelphia.
6276. Donoghue, John, Chicago.
6312, 6313. Ezekiel, Moses, Richmond.
6371. Gould, Thomas Ridgway, Boston.
6534. Mezzara, Joseph, New York.
6661, 6662. Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, New York
                                              --J.J.R.




A PLOT FOR AN HISTORICAL NOVEL.


In Hawthorne's _American Note-Book_, among his memoranda, into which he
conscientiously put every scrap and detail which might be useful in his
writings, is an allusion to the "Grey Property Case," a lawsuit which
held the Pennsylvania courts for more than half a century, and turned
upon a curious story which will be new to some readers and may have
slipped from the recollection of others. It belongs to the history of
Mifflin, Juniata county, first settled by Scotch-Irish colonists in
1749. Two of the four men who claimed some land and built a fort had
the name of Grey, and the narrative concerns the younger of these two
brothers, John Grey. One morning in August, 1756, he left his wife and
children at the fort and set out on an expedition to Carlisle. He was
returning when he had an encounter with a bear, and was detained on the
mountain-road for several hours. This probably preserved his life, for
when he reached the settlement he found that the fort had just been
burned by the Indians, and that every person in it had either been
killed or taken prisoner. Among the latter were Grey's wife and his
child, a beautiful little girl of three years old. Grey was an
affectionate husband and father, and he was almost heartbroken by this
catastrophe. Fired with longing for revenge, he joined Colonel
Armstrong's expedition in September against the Indian settlement at
Kittanning on the Ohio, with some hope that his wife and child might be
found among the captives whom, it was rumored, the Indians had carried
there. Colonel Armstrong's onslaught was successful: he succeeded in
burning the village, killed about fifty savages and rescued eleven
white prisoners. Grey gained no information, however, about his family,
and, sick and exhausted by the disappointment and the fatigues of the
campaign, went home to die. He left a will bequeathing one-half of his
farm to his wife and one-half to his child if they returned from
captivity. In case his child should never be given up or should not
survive him, he gave her half of the estate to his sister, who had a
claim against him, having lent him money.

The rumor was true that the Indians had first carried Mrs. Grey and her
little daughter to Kittanning, but afterward, for greater security,
they were given over to the French commander at Fort Duquesne. They
were confined there for a time, then carried into Canada. About a year
later Mrs. Grey had a chance to escape. She concealed herself among the
skins in the sledge of a fur-trader, and was thus able to elude
pursuit. She left her child behind her in captivity, and after passing
through a variety of adventures returned to Tuscarora Valley, and,
finding her husband dead, proved his will and took possession of her
half of his property. Grey's sister was disposed to assert her claim to
the other portion, but Mrs. Grey always maintained that her little
daughter Jane was alive, and would sooner or later, after the French
and Indian wars were ended, be released and sent back. In 1764 a treaty
was made with the Indians enforcing a general surrender of all their
white captives. A number of stolen children were brought to
Philadelphia to be identified by their friends and relations, and Mrs.
Grey (who in the mean time had married a Mr. Williams) made the journey
to this city in the hope of claiming her little daughter Jane. Seven
years had passed since Mrs. Williams had seen the child, who might be
expected to have grown out of her remembrance. But, even taking this
into consideration, there seemed at first to be none of the children
who in the least respect answered the description of the lost girl.
Mrs. Grey probably longed to find her daughter for affection's sake.
But there was besides a powerful motive to induce her, inasmuch as she
wished to get possession of the other half of her husband's property,
which must otherwise be forfeited to his sister, Mrs. James Grey. One
of the captive children, apparently about the same age as the lost
Jane, had found no one to recognize her. Mrs. Williams determined to
take this girl and substitute her for her own, and put an end to Mrs.
James Grey's claim. She did so, and brought up the stranger for her own
child. The Grey property thus passed wholly into the possession of Mrs.
Williams. The girl grew up rough, awkward and ugly, incapable of
refinement and even gross in her morals. She finally married a minister
by the name of Gillespie.

Meanwhile, the heirs of Mrs. James Grey had gained some sort of
information which led them to suspect that the returned girl was no
relation of their uncle John Grey, and in 1789 they brought a lawsuit
to recover their mother's half of the property. By this time endless
complications had arisen. Mrs. Williams was dead: her half of her first
husband's farm had been bequeathed to her second husband's kindred, and
was now in part held by them and in part had been bought by half a
dozen others. The supposed daughter, Mrs. Gillespie, had died, as had
her husband, and their share had passed to his relations. It had become
almost impossible for the most astute lawyers to find beginning, middle
or end to the claims which were set forth. Plenty of evidence was
collected to show that Mrs. Williams had substituted a stranger for her
own child, and the decision finally rested on this, and the property
was given up to the heirs of Mrs. James Grey. This did not happen,
however, until 1834, when few or none of the original litigants
remained.

The real little Jane Grey, so it was said, was brought up in a good
family who adopted her, and afterward married well and had children,
residing near Sir William Johnson's place in Central New York.--L.W.




THE MISERIES OF CAMPING OUT.


My dear cousin Laura: So you are thinking about camping out, and want
my opinion as to whether the spot we chose for our trout-fishing in
June is a suitable place for ladies to go? I should give a decided
negative. My brother takes his wife and his sister usually, although he
fortunately left them at home last time. I think they must have to
"make believe" a good deal to think it fun. I am certain that had they
been with us they would have been forced to exercise their largest
powers of imagination. We set out in fine weather, but entered the
woods in a driving snowstorm, and enjoyed a forty-six-mile drive over a
road that has, I must say this for it, not been known to be so bad for
years. We came back in a pelting rain. We made our camp in a snowstorm,
and the wood was wet and would not burn, and our tent was damp and
would not dry. We fished in a boat on the lake, swept by cold winds
until we were chilled to the bone and our hands were so stiff we could
not hold the rods. My brother had a "chill" the first night in camp. I
had indigestion from eating things fried in pork fat from the first
meal until I got a civilized repast at Frank's house in New York. I was
bounced sore. My nose was peeled by sun and cold. My lips were
decorated by three large cold-sores. My hands bled constantly from a
combination of chap and sunburn. I made up my mind if I ever got safely
out of those woods it would be several years at least before I could be
persuaded to enter them again. The scenery _is_ lovely, but one cannot
enjoy it. The fishing _is_ good, but it is hard work, and my own
opinion is that there is altogether "too much pork for a shilling" in
the whole business. Talk about being "ten miles from a lemon"! Try
forty-six miles from a lemon over a corduroy road. At first we had cold
weather, hence no black flies or mosquitos. When warm weather came on
again we had both of them, and our experience was that the snowstorm
was preferable. The black flies made the day unendurable, and the
mosquitos made the night as well as the day a wasting misery. We had
them everywhere--in the hut, in the tent, at the table, on the lake, in
the woods. No smudge or lotion discourages them; oil of tar is their
delight, camphor they revel in; buzzing, singing, biting continually
are their pastime. They are a galling curse--a nuisance which no words
can describe. A lady _might_ go through all this if she had perfect
health and the endurance under punishment of a prize-fighter. Your
party may travel all those weary miles and strike a fortunate week of
pleasant weather, but you may, and more likely will, have a week when
it will rain dismally straight through without stopping. We found, on
looking up the statistics, that in an average season out of every
twenty-two days eighteen will always be stormy, lowering and dismal.
No, don't camp out unless you can make up your mind beforehand to every
kind of discomfort and inconvenience to mar all that is beautiful and
all that is pleasing. I speak of course of the localities I have known
in my three several attempts. _They say_ it is different in other parts
of the region. But when you have plank roads and first-class hotels and
all the modern conveniences, I don't call that going into the woods and
camping out. The real thing is not very much fun except in the
retrospect, when you can thank your stars that you got out alive. For
the greater part it is a snare and a delusion. But if you still pine
for the forests and streams and the free out-of-door life, I don't wish
to discourage you, and you know I never give advice.

                               Your affectionate cousin, F.G.




UNREFORMED SPELLING.


A little note has come to me which gives an entertaining glimpse of the
average ability of a class. "John Stubbs × his mark" is obviously
"low-watermark," but there are levels between that and high-school
possibilities which we cannot often measure. The note is written on
fair white paper and had a white envelope. The writer is American, the
wife of a fisherman, and about thirty years old, though the handwriting
is like that of the old ladies of our grandmothers' time. It is given
of course, in the full sense, _literatim_, and is offered for the
encouragement--or the despair--of the Spelling Reform Association. The
little touch of pathos makes one read with respect:


                                June the 2.
Dear Madam

Will you pleas to enclose the 100 dollars in an envelope, so that the
little boy wont loose it: the little dog was too years old the first of
May: and my babey too the 24 of April, they have always ben together
and he is verey intelegent indead and you can learn him eneything you
would wish to fealing asuared he will receve everey kindness you have
the best wishes of
                    Mrs. Hattie ----.

Perhaps it is well to add, the "100" means ten. The hero is a black
Skye, long-haired, plume-tailed and soft-eyed. What his views were upon
removal from the back alley of his youth to a well-appointed though by
no means luxurious home he never said, but his investigation was
comically thorough, winding up in dumb amaze at the discovery of
himself in a long mirror. His experience of feminine humanity being
limited to the variety that rolls its sleeves above its elbows and
comports itself accordingly, he bitterly resented good clothes,
transferred his affections to the housemaids, and only much coaxing and
much sugar could win his heart for his new mistress.

"The little boy" had dubbed him "Penny," which hardly suited his silken
attire and his little haughty, imperious ways; so, though the children
will still call him "Penny-wise" and "Four Farthings," the mistress
finds nothing less than "Pendennis" due to his dignity.--C.B.M.




OUR NEW VISITORS.


I should like to have Mr. Burroughs or some of our naturalists write
one of their pleasant papers and explain the mystery of the
wood-thrush's advent in our gardens and upon our lawns. Until a year
ago the wood-thrush was not one of the birds which ever raised its note
in our pleasure-grounds. We heard them in the woods, and looked at
them, when we intruded upon their privacy, with that sort of shyness
with which we watch strangers. We knew their "wood-notes wild," and
admired their plumage, but they did not inspire the same feeling as
their cousin the robin. But a year ago all at once here was the thrush.
Nobody could tell when he came, how he came or why he came. It seemed
an accident, for there was but one pair: it was as if through innocence
or ignorance, instead of building their nests in their old chosen
haunts, they had wandered away and lost themselves in the spacious
grounds of a gentleman's country-seat. They had no dismay, no doubts,
however: they took possession of the lawn with the utmost boldness.
They were rarely out of sight, hopping from morning until night about
the turf, flying from tree to tree with their impulsive movements, more
graceful than the robins. They were never silent, uttering perpetually
their mellow flute-like cry and singing their simple but ecstatic
melody.

That was last year; and this year, 1880, the thrushes are everywhere in
this Connecticut village by the Sound. Their orange-and-tawny backs
gleam in the sunshine from morning until night. There are numbers of
them. Their manners are very marked. They have quite the air of
conquerors. All the other birds yield them precedence, and they
positively domineer over the pugnacious little English sparrow, who is
content to keep in the background and watch his chance when
feeding-time comes.

And of all the curious things about them, what seems most inexplicable
is their tameness. They have no mistrust, but eye you with an
intelligent, knowing look while bringing their young to feed within
half a dozen feet of you. They perch on the croquet-arches in the midst
of a noisy game. They sing directly over your head with the utmost
spirit and vivacity, hardly ceasing all the forenoon, and again
bursting out toward evening and maintaining their song until every
other bird's lay is hushed in the twilight. White of Selborne would
have delighted in such a freak on the part of these pretty gay
strangers, who have left secluded swampy haunts, the deep dells where
the blackberries twine and the daisies and clover blossom, for our
close-cut lawns and elm- and willow-shaded nooks.--A.T.




LITERATURE OF THE DAY.


Alexander Pope. By Leslie Stephen. (English Men-of-Letters Series.) New
York: Harper & Brothers.

The interest of this series, which increases rather than diminishes--as
one might have feared would be the case--with each succeeding volume,
lies very much in the fact that the list of writers, almost as long and
varied as that of the subjects, is a representative one. It comprises
men who have won distinction in different departments--as novelists,
historians, scholars, scientific expounders--but who here meet in the
common field of biographical criticism and work together under the same
limitations and conditions. Hence their performances give us not so
much a measure of their individual powers as of the tone of thought and
intellectual depth of the class to which they belong. However diverse
their abilities and special fields of observation or research, their
general range of knowledge, methods of study and ideas of life are very
much the same. They are collectively "men of culture," as the writers
of Queen Anne's time were "wits," and it is the qualities associated
with that term, rather than any distinct gifts or characteristics, that
are here called into play. Mr. Trollope's _Thackeray_ was perhaps an
exception--a black spot on the otherwise immaculate whiteness. In a
different way the general effect would have been still more seriously
impaired if Mr. Ruskin's co-operation had been invited. The
outcroppings of a vulgar egotism might indicate a substratum necessary
to be taken into account, but it would have been a clear loss of labor
to follow the leadings of any eccentric vein. One might wonder at the
absence of Mr. Matthew Arnold, the high priest of culture; but we have
to remember that Mr. Arnold is solicitous to stand apart, that he holds
up ideals which he is careful to inform us are not those of his time,
and that he is fastidious in selecting a point of view where he cannot
be jostled, with perspectives to which no vision but his own can
accommodate itself. His culture may represent that of the future, but
certainly does not typify that of the present.

Mr. Leslie Stephen, on the contrary, might very well stand as a type of
his class both in its positive and negative qualities. He, more than
any of his confrères, is a product of culture. Unlike the greater
number of them, he has no special talent, or pet object of enthusiasm,
or erratic tendencies. He is a trained critic, and is "nothing if not
critical." His coolness is a real coolness, not the effect of any
"toning down" for the occasion, as we may suspect to have been the case
with Mr. Froude and Mr. Goldwin Smith. His knowledge is accurate, his
judgments are sound, his taste is seldom at fault, his style is
faultless and colorless, he never attempts what he is unable to do well
and without any appearance of strain. Though he may have given more
attention to the literature of the eighteenth century than to that of
any other period, one feels that he might safely have been entrusted
with the preparation of any volume of this series. It was probably from
a sense of fitness, not by mere chance, that he was selected to write
the initial volume, which pitched the key for those that were to
follow, and that so far he is the only writer who has been called upon
for a second contribution.

His task in the present instance has been much less easy and simple
than that which he before undertook. In the case of Johnson he had only
to select and condense from material so copious and authentic as left
no question of fact or problem of criticism unsettled. Pope's career,
on the other hand, after all the research that has been spent upon it,
is full of obscurities; his character, while it invites, seems to
evade, analysis; even his rank and exact position in literature cannot
be said to be conclusively determined. It is needless to say that Mr.
Stephen has been diligent and skilful in examining and summarizing
whatever facts relating to his subject have been brought to light by
recent or early investigation; that he weighs all the evidence with
strict impartiality, and, when it is insufficient, is content to
suspend judgment without resorting to conjecture; or that his views
both on points of conduct and literary questions, if not marked by any
striking originality, show clear and vigorous thinking and are stated
in a way that provokes no impatience or captious dissent. The interest
of the narrative is well sustained, and the general impression left by
it that of a report made by an expert on documents that needed to be
thoroughly sifted in order that the issues which had been raised might
be succinctly set forth and fully apprehended. Further than this Mr.
Stephen does not pretend to go. His report is preliminary, not final.
No matter previously left uncertain is here determined. Instead of an
added knowledge, we are only made more sensible of our former
ignorance. Pope's figure, far from coming more distinctly into view,
seems to have receded and grown more vague. Certain traits have perhaps
been made more noticeable than before, but those essential elements of
character which would define, explain, reconcile, and enable us to
conceive the combination as a unit, have eluded observation.

This is, of course, a natural result of the gaps and contradictions in
the evidence, the lack especially of those minute details which are not
only necessary links, but often the most suggestive features, in a
record of facts or delineation of character. And if it be urged that a
deeper insight would have in some measure supplied this deficiency, the
answer can only be that we have no right to expect from any man the
exercise of powers which he does not possess or affect to
possess--powers which, in a case like this, would need to be of the
finest and rarest kind. We may, however, fairly regret that Mr. Stephen
has not availed himself of a resource that lay within his reach for
making the accessories of his picture more brilliant and effective,
with the possible incidental result of throwing a stronger light on the
principal figure. Whatever else may be debated about Pope, no one would
deny that he was pre-eminently the man of his time--not only its most
conspicuous figure, but the very embodiment of its ideals. He suited it
and it suited him. Hence the fulness and in a certain sense perfection
of his work, the fact that he has given his name to an epoch as well as
a school, and consequently the important place which he still retains
in the history of literature. Men who were certainly not his inferiors
in intellectual power lived in the same age, partook of its influence
and contributed to its achievements; but they were not so thoroughly at
home in it: their best qualities were stunted, rather than developed,
by its soil and atmosphere. Dryden, one may safely say, would have been
greater had he lived earlier, Fielding had he lived later. But one
cannot imagine Pope thriving in any other air or producing equal work
under different influences. The qualities most esteemed by his
contemporaries he possessed in a superlative degree; his limitations
were common to the society in which he moved, and neither he nor it was
conscious of them as such; consequently, what would have been
impediments to a different nature were to his means of free and
spontaneous action. And not only does he represent the ideas of his
age, but he depicted its types and manners. In this respect he is the
link between the comic dramatists and the novelists, between Congreve
and Fielding. The wits, the beaux, the fine ladies, the Grub Street
drudges of the reign of Anne, whatever be the fidelity or other merits
of the portraitures, are more familiar to us in the satires of Pope
than as reflected in any other mirror. For these reasons Pope is one of
the last men who can be studied to advantage from a single point of
view or in a detached position. We need to understand not only his
personal relations but his general affinities with the men and events
of his time--of that world, at least, of which he was the centre. True,
the period is better known to readers generally than almost any other.
But it is not a copious accumulation of facts or a labored
analysis--for which there would have been no space--that we miss in Mr.
Stephen's book, but such groupings and irradiating touches as might
have given us a vivid glimpse, if only a glimpse, of the whole field.
Yet in lamenting that this much is not given us we are perhaps making
the mistake before noticed, of demanding from a given source what it
could not supply. We are driven back, therefore, on the reflection how
much the slightest things in art depend on inspiration, on original
power--how immeasurable the distance is between the man of culture and
the man of genius.

Samuel Lover: A Biographical Sketch. With Selections from his Writings
and Correspondence. By Andrew James Symington. New York: Harper &
Brothers.

The memory of so genial and popular a writer as Lover ought to be kept
as green as possible, and Mr. Symington has done well to embody his
Loveriana in a short life of the Irish humorist. The new material
brought forth is slender, consisting simply of a few letters and ten
short poems, not of his best; but it was worth publishing, and Mr.
Symington has the advantage, in treating of Lover, of writing from
personal knowledge. He has rather slurred over the earlier part of
Lover's career, apparently from a fear of trespassing on the preserves
of a longer biography previously published; which is a pity, as his
sketch will have most interest for readers who come fresh to the
subject. Even those whose curiosity in regard to the writer has not
been stirred by reading his works may get a very good idea of them from
the selections printed here. The book is not a critical study: it
enters into no details or analysis of Lover's character. It is simply a
hurried outline of his life, interspersed with songs and stories which
go a good way to make up for the meagreness of personal anecdote, and
ending with some friendly letters and short notes written by Lover
during the last few years of his life and addressed to Mr. Symington.
Most of these letters were written in poor health from the Isle of
Wight or Jersey, to which places he was sent by the doctors. They are
not of the brilliant or gossipy order, but they are admirable in their
good colloquial English and cheerful, unaffected style. Lover was a man
of great activity of mind, combined with warm affections. His
life-story was not very romantic, but it was a wholesome and pleasant
one. When young he was deeply attached to an English girl, with whom,
though they were separated (Mr. Symington does not say from what
cause), he maintained through life a warm friendship. The young lady
married, and Lover consoled himself and was married twice, each time,
it appears, very happily. His letters contain many little domestic
allusions, reporting his own occupations and those of "the good little
wife" at their fireside in Kent or away at the shore, where they look
back with regret to their own country-house. Lover had a warm
attachment to home, the house as well as the inmates. "I cannot tell
you," he writes from the Isle of Wight, "how much I have been put off
my balance by my exile from my own house. For a time one is willing to
make, for health's sake, a sacrifice of domestic comfort and give up
the pleasant habits one can indulge in in one's own home; but to lead
for months and months a lodging-house life is very miserable: it
benumbs the best of our faculties; the edge of enjoyment is blunted.
Music is sweeter within the compass of your own walls; the book is
pleasanter taken from the familiar shelf of your own library; in one's
own studio the habit of happy occupation has made an atmosphere that
has a charm in it."

Gifted with a rare variety of talents, Lover heartily enjoyed the
exercise of each, and found his chief pleasure in their development. He
worked incessantly at painting, writing or musical composition--worked
for love of the work, not from uneasy effort or outside pressure. In
this respect he presents a happy contrast to his fellow-countryman and
brother-humorist Charles Lever, whose biography, published some months
ago, left a painful impression on the mind in its view of a man of
genuine talent and attractive qualities living in a feverish way and
writing constantly against his inclination, too often below his powers.
As writers the two stand side by side. Lover had more versatility of
talent, taking him partly outside the field of literature. He made the
most of his powers: nothing which he has written gives the idea that he
might have done it better. He was a poet, which Lever was not, and had
an easy command of versification and language. His songs, while they
show no high poetic qualities, are excellent of their kind, and his
facility in turning an impromptu verse is shown in this scrap from the
book before us in praise of a friend and physician:

  Whene'er your vitality
  Is feeble in quality,
  And you fear a fatality
    May end the strife,
  Then Dr. Joe Dickson
  Is the man I would fix on
  For putting new wicks on
    The lamp of life.

In his stories Lover relied less on drollery of incident and indulged
more in play upon words than Lever, but the humor of both is
essentially of the same kind and drawn from the same source. Compared
with much of our American humor, it has a spontaneousness, and above
all a lovable quality, that ours lacks. The boy who has laughed over
_Lorrequer_ and _Handy Andy_ is apt to look back at them not merely
with amusement, but with a feeling of _camaraderie_ and even
tenderness. He has laughed with them as well as at them--has somehow
gained through the laughter a glimpse of the writer which inspires
liking and respect.

New England Bygones. By E.H. Arr. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

E.H. Arr has produced a very pleasant book by a simple effort of
memory. By letting the mind's eye travel back carefully and vigilantly
over the scenes of a youth passed in a rural part of New England, and
taking notes of its journey, she has made a graphic picture of life in
that corner of the country forty years ago. Not a few men and women who
were "raised" there have carried away, bit for bit, the same
reminiscences, so exactly does one New England landscape resemble
another, in details of foreground at least. The same description of
orchard, stone walls or old well will fit any farm in Maine or
Massachusetts, and fond recollection sniffs the same odor of sputtering
doughnuts through the kitchen-door, whether it carries one back to the
Green hills or the White. Recollections are alike, but impressions
differ, one class of minds retaining the sense of bareness and gloom
which is so continually insisted upon in some New England books, and
others, as in the book before us, dwelling lovingly upon the wholesome
flavor, pungent yet mellow, which gives New England country life a
distinctive charm unlike anything else either in this or the
mother-country. Even the Sunday is pleasant to look back upon to E.H.
Arr; which is probably one instance of the fact that retrospective
pleasure is sometimes totally disproportionate to present enjoyment.

The author is more successful in her treatment of landscape than of
figures. Her village people are shown too much under one aspect: she
possesses none of the humor which dares to take the most opposite
traits, the grotesque and the beautiful alike, and blend them in a
sound, artistic whole. Her characters are evidently drawn from life,
but we miss the many little touches which would make them alive. An
essay on "Old Trees" contains some of the best work in the book, with
its charming sketch of an old orchard, bringing to view the twisted
trees and even the irregularities of the ground, and to the palate a
sharp after-taste of yellowing apples picked up from tufts of matted
grass. After all, the New England of the writer's bygones does not
differ essentially from the New England of to-day, though a more vivid
study of life would perhaps have brought out more contrasts between the
two.




_Books Received_.


Homo Sum: A Novel. By Georg Ebers. From the German by Clara Bell. New
York: William S. Gottsberger.

Unto the Third and Fourth Generation: A Study. By Helen Campbell. New
York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert.

Allaooddeen, a Tragedy, and Other Poems. By the author of "Constance,"
etc. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

Third-Term Politics: A Lecture. By Horace White. New York: Independent
Republican Association.

The American Bicycler. By Charles E. Pratt. Illustrated. Boston: Press
of Rockwell & Churchill.

Alva Vine; or, Art _versus_ Duty. By Henri Gordon. New York: American
News Company.







*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE, VOLUME 26, SEPTEMBER, 1880 ***


    

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